From: Broken_Clock | 5/9/2024 3:52:02 AM | | | | brownstone.org
 The Machinery of Fascism Revisited By Jeffrey A. Tucker May 5, 2024 Economics, Government, History 9 minute read
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Fascism became a swear word in the US and UK during the Second World War. It has been ever since, to the point that the content of the term has been drained away completely. It is not a system of political economy but an insult.
If we go back a decade before the war, you find a completely different situation. Read any writings from polite society from 1932 to 1940 or so, and you find a consensus that freedom and democracy, along with Enlightenment-style liberalism of the 18th century, were completely doomed. They should be replaced by some version of what was called the planned society, of which fascism was one option.
A book by that name appeared in 1937 as published by the prestigious Prentice-Hall, and it included contributions by top academics and high-profile influencers. It was highly praised by all respectable outlets at the time.
Everyone in the book was explaining how the future would be constructed by the finest minds who would manage whole economies and societies, the best and the brightest with full power. All housing should be provided by government, for example, and food too, but with the cooperation of private corporations. That seems to be the consensus in the book. Fascism was treated as a legitimate path. Even the word totalitarianism was invoked without opprobrium but rather with respect.
The book has been memory-holed of course.
You will notice that the section on economics includes contributions by Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. Yes, their ideas and political rule were part of the prevailing conversation. It is in this essay, likely ghostwritten by Professor Giovanni Gentile, Minister of Public Education, in which Mussolini offered this concise statement: “Fascism is more appropriately called corporatism, for it is the perfect merge of State and corporate power.”
All of this became rather embarrassing after the war so it was largely forgotten. But the affection on the part of many sectors of the US ruling class had for fascism was still in place. It merely took on new names.
As a result, the lesson of the war, that the US should stand for freedom above all else while wholly rejecting fascism as a system, was largely buried. And generations have been taught to regard fascism as nothing but a quirky and failed system of the past, leaving the word as an insult to fling at in any way deemed reactionary or old-fashioned, which makes no sense.
There is valuable literature on the topic and it bears reading. One book that is particularly insightful is The Vampire Economy by Günter Reimann, a financier in Germany who chronicled the dramatic changes to industrial structures under the Nazis. In a few short years, from 1933 to 1939, a nation of enterprise and small shopkeepers was converted to a corporate-dominated machine that gutted the middle class and cartelized industry in preparation for war.
The book was published in 1939 before the invasion of Poland and the onset of Europe-wide war, and manages to convey the grim reality just before hell broke loose. On a personal note, I spoke to the author (real name: Hans Steinicke) briefly before he died, in order to gain permission to post the book, and he was astonished that anyone cared about it.
“The corruption in fascist countries arises inevitably from the reversal of the roles of the capitalist and the State as wielders of economic power,” wrote Reimann.
The Nazis were not hostile to business as a whole but only opposed traditional, independent, family-owned, small businesses that offered nothing for purposes of nation-building and war planning. The crucial tool to make this happen was establishing the Nazi Party as the central regulator of all enterprises. The large businesses had the resources to comply and the wherewithal to develop good relations with political masters whereas the undercapitalized small businesses were squeezed to the point of extinction. You could make bank under Nazi rules provided you put first things first: regime before customers.
“Most businessmen in a totalitarian economy feel safer if they have a protector in the State or Party bureaucracy,” Reimann writes. “They pay for their protection as did the helpless peasants of feudal days. It is inherent in the present lineup of forces, however, that the official is often sufficiently independent to take the money but fails to provide the protection.”
He wrote of “the decline and ruin of the genuinely independent businessman, who was the master of his enterprise, and exercised his property rights. This type of capitalist is disappearing but another type is prospering. He enriches himself through his Party ties; he himself is a Party member devoted to the Fuehrer, favored by the bureaucracy, entrenched because of family connections and political affiliations. In a number of cases, the wealth of these Party capitalists has been created through the Party’s exercise of naked power. It is to the advantage of these capitalists to strengthen the Party which has strengthened them. Incidentally, it sometimes happens that they become so strong that they constitute a danger to the system, upon which they are liquidated or purged.”
This was particularly true for independent publishers and distributors. Their gradual bankruptcy served to effectively nationalize all surviving media outlets who knew that it was in their interests to echo Nazi Party priorities.
Reimann wrote: “The logical outcome of a fascist system is that all newspapers, news services, and magazines become more or less direct organs of the fascist party and State. They are governmental institutions over which individual capitalists have no control and very little influence except as they are loyal supporters or members of the all-powerful party.”
“Under fascism or any totalitarian regime an editor no longer can act independently,” wrote Reimann. “Opinions are dangerous. He must be willing to print any ‘news’ issued by State propaganda agencies, even when he knows it to be completely at variance with the facts, and he must suppress real news which reflects upon the wisdom of the leader. His editorials can differ from another newspaper’s only in so far as he expresses the same idea in different language. He has no choice between truth and falsehood, for he is merely a State official for whom ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’ do not exist as a moral problem but are identical with the interests of the Party.”
A feature of the policy included aggressive price controls. They did not work to suppress inflation but they were politically useful in other ways. “Under such circumstances nearly every businessman necessarily becomes a potential criminal in the eyes of the Government,” wrote Reimann. “There is scarcely a manufacturer or shopkeeper who, intentionally or unintentionally, has not violated one of the price decrees. This has the effect of lowering the authority of the State; on the other hand, it also makes the State authorities more feared, for no businessman knows when he may be severely penalized.”
From there, Reimann tells many wonderful if chilling stories about, for example, the pig farmer who faced price ceilings on his product and got around them by selling a high-priced dog alongside a low-priced pig, after which the dog was returned. This kind of maneuvering became common.
I can only highly recommend this book as a brilliant inside look at how enterprise functions under a fascist-style regime. The German case was fascism with a racialist and anti-Jewish twist for purposes of political purges. In 1939, it was not entirely obvious how this would end in mass and targeted extermination on a gargantuan scale. The German system in those days bore much resemblance to the Italian case, which was fascism without the ambition of full ethnic cleansing. In that case, it bears examination as a model for how fascism can reveal itself in other contexts.
The best book I’ve seen on the Italian case is John T. Flynn’s 1944 classic As We Go Marching. Flynn was a widely respected journalist, historian, and scholar in the 1930s who was largely forgotten after the war due to his political activities. But his outstanding scholarship stands the test of time. His book deconstructs the history of fascist ideology in Italy from a half-century prior and explains the centralizing ethos of the system, both in politics and economics.
Following an erudite examination of the main theorists, along with Flynn provides a beautiful summary.
Fascism, Flynn writes, is a form of social organization:
1. In which the government acknowledges no restraint upon its powers—totalitarianism.
2. In which this unrestrained government is managed by a dictator—the leadership principle.
3. In which the government is organized to operate the capitalist system and enable it to function under an immense bureaucracy.
4. In which the economic society is organized on the syndicalist model; that is, by producing groups formed into craft and professional categories under supervision of the state.
5. In which the government and the syndicalist organizations operate the capitalist society on the planned, autarchical principle.
6. In which the government holds itself responsible for providing the nation with adequate purchasing power by public spending and borrowing.
7. In which militarism is used as a conscious mechanism of government spending.
8. In which imperialism is included as a policy inevitably flowing from militarism as well as other elements of fascism.
Each point bears longer commentary but let’s focus on number 5 in particular, with its focus on syndicalist organizations. In those days, they were large corporations run with an emphasis on union organization of the workforce. In our own times, these have been replaced by a managerial overclass in tech and pharma that have the ear of government and have developed close ties with the public sector, each depending on the other. Here is where we get the essential bones and meat of why this system is called corporatist.
In today’s polarized political environment, the left continues to worry about unbridled capitalism while the right is forever on the lookout for the enemy of full-blown socialism. Each side has reduced fascistic corporatism to a historical problem on the level of witch burning, fully conquered but useful as a historical reference to form a contemporary insult against the other side.
As a result, and armed with partisan bête noires that bear no resemblance to any really existing threat, hardly anyone who is politically engaged and active is fully aware that there is nothing particularly new about what is called the Great Reset. It is a corporatist model – a combination of the worst of capitalism and socialism without limits – of privileging the elite at the expense of the many, which is why these historical works by Reimann and Flynn seem so familiar to us today.
And yet, for some strange reason, the tactile reality of fascism in practice – not the insult but the historical system – is hardly known either in popular or academic culture. That makes it all the easier to reimplement such a system in our time.
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author.
Author -
Jeffrey A. Tucker Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Life After Lockdown, and many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
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From: Broken_Clock | 5/13/2024 4:22:08 PM | | | | wallstreetonparade.com
“About $52 billion, or 31%, of all office loans in commercial mortgage bonds were in trouble in March, according to KBRA Analytics.
“That share is up from 16% a year ago, according to the firm. Some cities have bigger headaches than others, with Chicago and Denver offices having 75% and 65% in jeopardy, respectively.” |
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From: Broken_Clock | 5/17/2024 2:59:38 AM | | | | Authored by Donald Jeffries via I Protest,
There are only so many ways one can say that America is collapsing. That the Fat Lady is nearing the end of her song. That we’re running on fumes. If Yogi Berra were around, he’d say it’s over. We had a good run, as far as civilizations go. We were the light of the world for a long time. Maybe even Reagan’s shining city upon a hill.
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Yesterday, Jason Whitlock reported on one Dexter Taylor, a software engineer who was just convicted and sentenced to ten years for constructing his own guns without a license. Shades of January 6. Taylor is Black, by the way, for those of you to whom that matters. I don’t expect to see former crack dealer turned FBI informant “Reverend” Al Sharpton leading a protest about this particular Black man being a victim of injustice. Our record-setting prisons are overflowing with people like Taylor, of all races. People who most decidedly don’t belong behind bars. Having watched enough of those Investigation Discovery shows, and cops gone wild videos, I often wonder just how many actual criminals are in prison. The system devotes so much effort to framing innocent people, that they may no longer be capable of convicting truly guilty ones.
I could have titled this Substack Whistling Past the American Graveyard. Maybe I should have. But America 2.0 isn’t literally dead yet. On life support? Yes. With an almost certain terminal prognosis? Yes. I used the train wreck analogy because everywhere we look, things are wrecked. A sad vestige of what they were even a decade ago. It’s fitting that we haven’t addressed our Third World infrastructure for over sixty years. What you see is what you get now. America is in critical condition, and it looks it. You can judge this book by its cover. Give me your obese, your tattooed, your weezing, chronically ill with oxygen tanks and walkers. Wretched refuse indeed. Your endless migrants, who don’t speak English and urinate and defecate in public. What’s not to love?
A society is reflected in its leaders. And what leaders America 2.0 has! Our political “representatives” are so dedicated to not representing us that every piece of legislation they pass is assumed to be yet another figurative drone strike to the population. I’ve been a political junkie for over fifty years, and I couldn’t tell you when the last law was passed that benefited the People in the slightest way. That’s why libertarianism, and now anarchy, has become popular. The best we can hope for with these beloved statesmen (and stateswomen, and soon to be statetransgenders), is that they do nothing. That we pay them their generous salaries, and give them the lucrative benefits very few of us get, to maybe rape an underage page, or be bribed by a special interest group. Just don’t pass any legislation. Pretty please.
As I wrote recently in depth about, Americans also have to contend with the occupying force of militarized police officers. They are the standing army Thomas Jefferson warned about. They serve no function other than to annoy, harass, and sometimes kill the befuddled citizens who pay them. They are never there when you need them, and are incapable of solving any real crime. They are good at beating people (as long as you are a vulnerable target who represents no danger to them), planting evidence, and lying on their police reports. But people love them. Jolly coppers on parade, as Randy Newman called them long ago. The best you can hope for is to completely avoid any interaction with them. They are upholding the systemic corruption. Doing the bidding of their masters. Guarding the train wreck.
Our government agencies are all worthless, providing no real services other than to begrudgingly pay us back the money they stole from us (Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment Compensation), or provide the benefits they promised (military personnel). But, like savage beasts that are always hungry, they must be fed. Paid better than those who pay them, and with much better benefits. While conservatives bemoan “welfare,” which was altered significantly under Bill Clinton, so that fewer people receive less money, they fail to see the federal government itself for what it is: a gigantic, entitled welfare recipient. Think of Reagan’s mythical Welfare Queen. Living it up with house money. Taxpayer money.
To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, private industry is no winner, either. Much of it would welcome back child labor. They hate the minimum wage. If we raise it, your Big Mac will cost $50 and all that. They’ve been chipping away at the best legislation of the twentieth century, the 1938 act that created the forty hour work week, overtime, sick and vacation pay. They don’t like paying their lowly serfs time and a half. Remember, this law only came about because of the pressure Huey Long put on the Left, to pass a thirty hour work week, with a month’s paid vacation for all workers. The 1938 act was a watered down version of his ideas, a compromise that was still far better than what workers had before that. Which was basically nothing. I think that 1938 act may have been the last good law, passed eighteen years before I was born.
Corporate America used to represent the epitome of conservatism. Now, they are at least as “Woke” as every government agency is. Say that men can’t have babies at your own risk. Object to some mentally unbalanced co-worker complaining that you don’t respect his/her/its ridiculous new “pronouns,” and be immediately “cancelled.” Without passing “Go” or collecting $200. Say “All Lives Matter.” Wear a MAGA hat. You’ll find that your right to “free expression” is severely restricted. I could never make it in any work environment today. Virtually every word I uttered would be a fireable offense under the “new normal.” And sociable guys like me would be in hot water constantly. Just smiling and saying “hello” to the wrong Karen is no longer permitted. Unless you’re Black. Then be as loud and vulgar as you like. Except saying “9/11 was an inside job,” or talking about the Jews in a loud voice, that is.
Our dystopian downfall might be a bit more tolerable if it had a nice soundtrack. This one doesn’t, because new music has effectively stopped. I don’t consider rap and the American Idol-inspired wailing to be rock or pop music. It’s like the Titanic going down, and the band decides to be fronted by Snoop Dogg and Cardi B. That’s not quite the same as Nearer my God to Thee. And we can’t even watch any good movies or television shows that critique or satirize the madness. That’s because this train wreck can’t even be mentioned, let alone criticized. So we’re forced to watch old movies and television shows instead. It’s a form of therapy, like digitized valium. That’s how I wind down at night. Get lost in that black and white world, with attractive people, simple values, solid acting, writing, and production values.
And then there’s the populace. Sure, there are millions of people awake now, to varying degrees. But millions more are sound asleep. If you try to act as their alarm clock, they can quickly become violent. Against all reason, they appear to like the present situation. They seem to feel there is hope for the future. They recoil at our re-pilled and black-pilled proclamations like we were holding them up at intellectual gunpoint. As e.e. cummings once chided his fellow poet Ezra Pound, who was obsessed with Jews, the Federal Reserve, and unnecessary wars, and involuntarily committed to a mental health facility for a decade by the government, “You bastard- you’re trying to get them to think!” Most people desperately don’t want to think. It’s an ignorance is bliss thing, you wouldn’t understand.
A citizenry basically has two ways to try and reform things. To abolish bad laws and “mandates,” get rid of corrupt leaders, and enact better laws that ensure better leaders. One is by the voting process. As should be obvious by this point, that isn’t an option here. ‘Murricans reelect some 96 percent of the worst people on earth to “represent” them every election. Either this is because they are incurably stupid, or because the votes aren’t honestly counted. Either way, we’re screwed. The other way is by legal redress. Judicial Review, which everyone except Thomas Jefferson, and me, seems to think is the constitutional way to do it. Donald Trump’s and Alex Jones’s show trials alone demonstrate that the legal system is hopelessly compromised, by criminally biased judges, unethical prosecutors, and brainless juries.
The judge in Dexter Taylor’s trial proclaimed that the Second Amendment didn’t exist in her court. These lordly judges seem to think that the courtroom itself is their property, that it belongs to them. Instead of “get off my lawn,” they yell, “you’re in contempt!” So the Constitution she is supposed to be upholding, which includes the Second Amendment, is irrelevant to her. That statement alone would instantly assure her removal from office in an honest society. This obviously isn’t an honest society. And it follows on the heels of all those Trump and Jones’ judges who have decreed that the First Amendment can’t be cited as a defense in their courtroom. All rise! Here comes ‘da judge, as they used to say when you could lampoon such things.
Some allegedly famous “social media influencer” named Haley Kalil, who has some ten million followers on social media, recently scoffed at the unwashed masses by quoting Marie Antoinette’s iconic “Let them eat cake.” And to think, I can’t even get 5,000 followers on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Now, it’s highly unlikely that young Haley has even heard of Marie Antoinette. She certainly doesn’t have the mental acuity to realize how that sounds. What she is representing. But some other celebrities, as crazed as they are themselves, became incensed enough at the remark to announce that they were going to subject her to the digitine- the digitalized guillotine. I’m impressed that any young celebrity knows the connection between Marie Antoinette and the guillotine. So I guess that’s a positive development.
If present-day Americans had anything of the mindset of the eighteenth century French, or the American colonists, then they would have long ago started sharpening some real guillotines. I must stress that I am not supporting guillotining anyone. I oppose capital punishment. Period. Whatever the French monarchy was doing to the masses in the late 1700s certainly cannot compare to the tyranny we see in America today, or really everywhere around the world. Taxes on tea and stamps are laughable compared to the unfair and unjust monolithic establishment present-day Americans must contend with. Someone in an American courtroom faces the same cruel and unusual punishment which is forbidden under the Constitution, every day in this country. And we still have that whole “taxation without representation” thing.
RFK, Jr.’s recent inexplicable disclosure that he had suffered from a brain worm, which caused him to lose some cognitive function, really hammered home how tragically comic things are. We have Joe Biden, so obviously suffering from dementia that he wouldn’t be trusted by the average nursing home to lead a transgender story time hour, and Donald Trump, who if you accept him at face value (which I don’t), has the emotional maturity of a twelve year old. And now Bobby, Jr. With a worm in his head. Not exactly Jefferson vs. Adams. But many- perhaps millions- still believe the “White Hats” are just around the corner. Despite no evidence of any good people in power anywhere, some still trust that they will save us.
So all aboard the American train wreck. It’s not going anywhere, but you’ll need to give your ticket to the conductor anyway. You’re forced to watch (and finance) inaction in motion. Just don’t point out it’s not moving. There are a lot of fellow passengers that will want to punch you for that. To them, it’s the best ride they’ve ever been on. Maybe they can keep this facade up a bit longer. Look what they’re doing with the stock market. Even evil magicians can work wonders. This is still the greatest country in the world. Love it or leave it. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Those who don’t work don’t eat. Choose your pronouns wisely. And stay on this wreck. We’re number one! And we prosecute dissenters.
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From: Thomas M. | 6/3/2024 7:52:45 PM | | | | Unrealized losses in the US banking system are climbing once again.
In its latest Quarterly Banking Profile report, the FDIC notes that banks now face over half a trillion dollars in paper losses on their balance sheets, primarily due to their exposure to the residential real estate market. These unrealized losses, the gap between the purchase price of securities and their current market value, are becoming a significant burden.
The FDIC also highlighted a rise in the number of lenders on its Problem Bank List last quarter. These banks are teetering on the brink of insolvency due to various weaknesses.
“The number of banks on the Problem Bank List, those with a CAMELS composite rating of ‘4’ or ‘5’, rose from 52 in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 63 in the first quarter of 2024. This figure represents 1.4% of all banks, a range considered normal for non-crisis periods, typically between 1% and 2%. The total assets held by problem banks increased by $15.8 billion to $82.1 billion during the quarter,” the FDIC stated.
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From: Broken_Clock | 6/11/2024 12:56:49 PM | | | | Crypto Just Got Exponentially More Dangerous: Meet Fairshake Katie Porter, Target of Fairshake Attack Ads
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 11, 2024 ~
The first thing you need to know about crypto is that some of the smartest minds in investment and technology have studied crypto carefully and determined it’s a total sham.
In July 2019, NYU Professor and economist Nouriel Roubini summed up his findings like this:
“Crypto currencies are not even currencies. They’re a joke…The price of Bitcoin has fallen in a week by how much – 30 percent. It goes up 20 percent one day, collapses the next. It is not a means of payment, nobody, not even this blockchain conference, accepts Bitcoin for paying for conference fees cause you can do only five transactions per second with Bitcoin. With the Visa system you can do 25,000 transactions per second…Crypto’s nonsense. It’s a failure. Nobody’s using it for any transactions. It’s trading one sh*tcoin for another sh*tcoin. That’s the entire trading or currency in the space where’s there’s price manipulation, spoofing, wash trading, pump and dumping, frontrunning. It’s just a big criminal scam and nothing else.”
On June 1, 2022, more than 1,600 computer scientists, software engineers and technologists from around the world sent a letter to key members of the U.S. Congress and to the Chairs of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees, disputing that crypto was a worthwhile financial innovation. Among the signatories to the letter were 45 experts who worked at Google; 19 from Microsoft; 11 from Apple; and Ph.Ds from the most prestigious universities in the world, including Oxford and MIT. These experts told Congress the following:
“We strongly disagree with the narrative — peddled by those with a financial stake in the crypto-asset industry— that these technologies represent a positive financial innovation and are in any way suited to solving the financial problems facing ordinary Americans…
“As software engineers and technologists with deep expertise in our fields, we dispute the claims made in recent years about the novelty and potential of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal or data privacy mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design. Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither.”
In February of last year, the Wall Street Journal gave the iconic investor, Charlie Munger, space for a 393-word OpEd on crypto. Munger, who died in November of last year at age 99, used the space to urge the U.S. to ban crypto, as China and numerous other countries have already done. Munger wrote this:
“…A cryptocurrency is not a currency, not a commodity, and not a security. Instead, it’s a gambling contract with a nearly 100% edge for the house, entered into in a country where gambling contracts are traditionally regulated only by states that compete in laxity. Obviously, the U.S. should now enact a new federal law that prevents this from happening.”
But even after the FTX crypto exchange and Sam Bankman-Fried and his colleagues perpetrated one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history, billionaire investors in crypto companies are still getting their way with far too many members of the U.S. Congress in exchange for fat political contributions.
In February and March, the crypto billionaires became exponentially more dangerous. They decided they were going to knock Congresswoman Katie Porter out of the running for a U.S. Senate seat. What was Porter’s transgression against crypto? In January 2022, Porter had joined with Senator Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats in Congress in investigating the inherent dangers between crypto, energy usage and dangerous heating of the planet. A press statement summarized their concerns as follows:
“Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and the United States’ share of Bitcoin mining increased from 4% in August 2019 to 35% in July 2021. This share of mining is growing even more rapidly after China’s crackdown on cryptomining, which left 500,000 mining operations looking for new locations. This could push North America to represent over 40% of the total global computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin. As more cryptomining operations proliferate in the United States, the extraordinary energy use raises alarms about massive carbon emissions and the impacts of this energy consumption on consumer energy prices. A recent study estimated that cryptomining in upstate New York raised annual electric bills by about $165 million for small businesses and $79 million for consumers.”
The famously outspoken Porter ( armed with her whiteboard and Harvard Law degree) could have posed a bigger problem in the Senate than she already does for crypto in the House. So a small group of crypto billionaires decided to simply take Porter out of contention for a Senate seat by spending an acknowledged $10,041,118.54 on grossly misleading attack ads against Porter, falsely claiming she was taking money from Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Banks. Because Porter’s House term is up in January, she will no longer be a problem for crypto in either the Senate or House come next year.
The funding for the attack ads came from a Super Pac with the Orwellian, reverse-speak name of “Fairshake” – exactly what it did not want to give to Porter.
As of April 30, Fairshake has taken in $92.87 million in political contributions with the vast bulk of that coming from a handful of tightly-linked crypto interests related to the crypto exchange — Coinbase — according to records at the Federal Election Commission. Coinbase and its payments arm, Coinbase Commerce, contributed over $51.5 million — 55 percent of the total of all receipts at Fairshake thus far.
A major investor in Coinbase, Marc Andreessen, of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a/k/a AH Capital Management), chipped in $9.5 million. His partner in AH Capital Management, Ben Horowitz, added another $9.5 million.
Not wanting to look like pikers – given the huge sum contributed from publicly-traded Coinbase – AH Capital Management itself chipped in $19 million.
The Chairman and CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, handed Fairshake a cool $1 million. The Lead Independent Director on the Board of Coinbase, Fred Wilson, gave Fairshake $1,047,540.
Coinbase-related contributions to Fairshake represent 98.5 percent of its total receipts thus far.
Unfortunately, knocking out Porter does not appear to be game-over for Fairshake. Two other Senators who are crypto skeptics are running for re-election: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chair of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, and Jon Tester (D-MT).
Fairshake has thus far spent just $40.6 million of its $92.87 million haul. |
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From: Broken_Clock | 8/8/2024 2:02:52 AM | | | | American Theocracy: Politics Has Become Our National Religion
Wednesday, Aug 07, 2024 - 05:25 PM
Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
- The Ten Commandments
“Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
- Donald Trump
Politics has become our national religion.
While those on the Left have feared a religious coup by evangelical Christians on the Right, the danger has come from an altogether different direction: our constitutional republic has given way to a theocracy structured around the worship of a political savior.
For all intents and purposes, politics has become America’s God.
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Pay close attention to the political conventions for presidential candidates, and it becomes immediately evident that Americans have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into worshipping a political idol manufactured by the Deep State.
In a carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” have become victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.
Every confidence game has six essential stages: 1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion; 2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted; 3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome; 4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up; 5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and 6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.
In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Kamala Harris—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.
In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.
Terrorist attacks, pandemics, economic uncertainty, national security threats, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.
No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.
Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.
When it comes to the power players that call the shots, there is no end to their voracious appetite for more: more money, more power, more control. Thus, since 9/11, the government’s answer to every problem has been more government and less freedom.
Yet despite what some may think, the Constitution is no magical incantation against government wrongdoing. Indeed, it’s only as effective as those who abide by it.
However, without courts willing to uphold the Constitution’s provisions when government officials disregard it and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, the Constitution provides little to no protection against SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the like.
Unfortunately, the courts and the police have meshed in their thinking to such an extent that anything goes when it’s done in the name of national security, crime fighting and terrorism.
Consequently, America no longer operates under a system of justice characterized by due process, an assumption of innocence, probable cause and clear prohibitions on government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our courts of justice have been transformed into courts of order, advocating for the government’s interests, rather than championing the rights of the citizenry, as enshrined in the Constitution.
The rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, once the map by which we navigated sometimes hostile government terrain, has been unceremoniously booted out of the runaway car that is the U.S. government by the Deep State.
What we are dealing with is a rogue government whose policies are dictated more by greed than need. Making matters worse, “we the people” have become so gullible, so easily distracted, and so out-of-touch that we have ignored the warning signs all around us in favor of political expediency in the form of electoral saviors.
Yet it’s not just Americans who have given themselves over to political gods, however.
Evangelical Christians, seduced by electoral promises of power and religious domination, have become yet another tool in the politician’s toolbox.
For instance, repeatedly conned into believing that Republican candidates from George W. Bush to Donald Trump will save the church, evangelical Christians have turned the ballot box into a referendum on morality. Yet in doing so, they have shown themselves to be as willing to support totalitarian tactics as those on the Left.
This was exactly what theologian Francis Schaeffer warned against: “We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way, ‘We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag.’”
Equating religion and politics, and allowing the ends to justify the means, only empowers tyrants and lays the groundwork for totalitarianism.
This way lies madness and the certain loss of our freedoms.
If you must vote, vote, but don’t make the mistake of consecrating the ballot box.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it doesn’t matter what religion a particular candidate claims to subscribe to: all politicians answer to their own higher power, which is the Deep State. |
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From: Broken_Clock | 8/17/2024 3:34:43 PM | | | | SCOTT RITTER: A Farewell to Truth August 16, 2024
Save The F.B.I. agents did more than seize my personal electronics when they searched my home on Aug. 7, the author writes. They stole the truth.
Lockheed U-2C Dragon Lady at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum in Ashland, Nebraska. (Kelly Michals, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
By Scott RitterSpecial to Consortium News
The execution of a search warrant on my residence by the F.B.I. on Aug. 7 was not my first run-in with America’s premier law enforcement agency.
In the 1990s, when I was working as chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) — set up by the U.N. Security Council to disarm Iraq as part of the ceasefire that ended the 1991 Gulf War — the F.B.I.’s National Security Division undertook an investigation premised on the working theory that I was committing espionage on behalf of the State of Israel.
The keystone fact that held their case together was that I had, on multiple occasions, travelled to Israel for the purpose of turning over rolls of U-2 film for joint imagery interpretation work conducted by Israel photo interpreters and those of UNSCOM (including myself.)
The U.S. refused to give UNSCOM its own photo-interpretation capability, and would not allow UNSCOM into their photo-interpretation center to evaluate the U-2 imagery.
Israel had a significant amount of intelligence they wanted to share. Much of it couldn’t be shared without revealing sources and methods. The joint exploitation of imagery allowed the Israelis to release intelligence by claiming it was revealed through the evaluation of imagery, or that the imagery opened the door to share additional information.
It was one of the most fruitful intelligence collaborations I was involved in, and the C.I.A. hated it because it took the control of out of their hands of what, and where, UNSCOM inspected.
The U-2 film was the byproduct of what was known as “Olive Branch,” a program set up between the United States and UNSCOM in which a U-2 high-altitude surveillance aircraft, flown by a U.S. military pilot who had been designated as a U.N. “expert on mission.”
The U-2’s classic black color scheme was an integral part of the integral heat and protective shield of the aircraft, and as such the airframe could not be painted in the traditional all-white color of United Nations aircraft on official missions. However, the aircraft was marked with a white “U.N.” on its tail.
The U-2 aircraft would only fly over Iraq with the permission of UNSCOM and would only image those areas inside Iraq designated by UNSCOM as being of interest.
Under the terms of the official protocol agreed to by the U.S. and UNSCOM, the U.S. would provide UNSCOM with high quality prints, but not negatives, of the targets designated for collection by UNSCOM. These prints would be stored by UNSCOM using its own security arrangements.
UNSCOM inspection team, in Iraq as part of a U.N. ceasefire agreement requiring the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, return from a destroyed warehouse at Muhammadiyat Storage site, Oct. 22, 1991. (UN Photo/H. Arvidsson)
In 1995 I participated in a meeting between UNSCOM and the C.I.A. where it was agreed that the C.I.A. would provide me with rolls of developed U-2 film which I would then transport to Israel for the express purpose of conducting joint imagery analysis with Israeli photo interpreters.
During the initial mission, the Israelis wanted to make prints of the targets of interest that had been revealed by our joint work. To do this, however, the Israelis had to convert the roll of film into a negative.
The protocol governing my work in Israel allowed me, as the expert on mission, to institute imagery handling procedures above and beyond those listed in the original protocol in consultation with the supporting government (i.e., Israel). As such, the Israelis and I agreed that they would make a negative copy of the film roll and use this to make prints of sites of interest to UNSCOM.
The C.I.A. claimed Israel could use the U-2 imagery for planning purposes regarding air attacks on Iraq. But by the time the imagery got to Israel, it was already more than a month old. Plus, as Israel showed me, they had their own high resolution satellites which provided real-time coverage of sensitive targets in Iraq. Being able to print out a U-2 image meant Israel didn’t have to share top-secret satellite imagery.
Upon my departure from Israel, I was to bring with me the original roll of film, the negative copy and copies of any prints that had been made by the Israelis. I authorized the Israelis to keep a copy of the prints for their own records, in case there was a need to further consult on the images.
Upon my return to the United States, I travelled to Washington, D.C., where I arranged a meeting with the State Department’s Special Commission Support Office (SCSO). There I tried to return not only the original roll of film, but also the negative copy.
I was told by the SCSO that they could receive the original roll of film, but that they were not permitted to take into custody the negative copy. I returned to UNSCOM with the negative copies.
Storage Problem
One of the problems I faced at the time was that my relationship with Israel was limited to only a few people inside UNSCOM. UNSCOM maintained a safe where we stored the high-quality U-2 prints provided by UNSCOM.
However, the number of people who had access to this safe, including UNSCOM personnel from several different countries (including Russia) was significant, making my ability to store the negative copy roll in that safe impossible, since its presence would potentially compromise the Israeli cooperation. The same held true concerning the U-2 prints produced by Israel.
The solution was simple — I took the negative roll and Israeli prints home, where I stored them in a filing cabinet located in my basement.
I was originally brought to UNSCOM for the purpose of helping set up a U.N. intelligence unit capable of receiving and assessing intelligence information provided by supporting nations in support of our inspection work. Many nations provided such intelligence.
The problem was UNSCOM needed to retain copies of this intelligence so that it could be properly assessed over the long term. The documents provided would either contain no classification markings or, if they did, would be appended with “release to UNSCOM.”
For the most part, these documents would be stored in the common UNSCOM safe. However, as the Iraqi efforts to conceal proscribed materials and activities intensified, and as the extent to which Iraq and its supporters among sympathetic nations (France comes to mind) infiltrated UNSCOM, intelligence information pertaining to missions that were planned as “no notice” surprise inspections had to be compartmentalized.
I had tried to get the U.S. government to set up a safe house outside the U.N. Headquarters building where these materials could be stored and accessed by designated UNSCOM personnel, but the C.I.A. balked at the expense.
As such, to prevent the contents of the sensitive planning documents pertaining to these no-notice inspections, I would take these documents home with me and store them in the file cabinet in my basement.
FBI Investigation
Aerial view of FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., 2011. (Adam Fagen, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
In 1997 the F.B.I. was informed that I was taking U-2 imagery to Israel. This imagery was marked “Secret Release UNSCOM,” but from the F.B.I.’s perspective, all they focused on was “Secret.”
They began an investigation.
At the time that the investigation began, I had implemented a covert communications intercept program inside Iraq which I oversaw in close coordination with the C.I.A. (which provided the equipment), the British GCHQ (which provided the personnel), and the Israeli Unit 8200, which provided the code-breaking and transcription.
Many of the reports generated by the Israelis were marked either “Secret” or “Top Secret.”
The nature of this operation was such that it was known to only a very small select number of UNSCOM personnel, which meant — you guessed it — documents produced in support this project and derived from this project were stored in the file cabinet in my basement.
The nature of this work required me to be in close contact with both the British MI-6 representative in New York, and designated Israeli personnel working out of the Israeli Mission to the United Nations.
There were many days when I would literally shuttle between the Israeli and U.K. Missions, coordinating on urgent operational matters, and often stopping off at the U.S. Mission to coordinate with the C.I.A. liaison there.
In June 1998, during a particularly hectic time, I was making my way from the U.K. Mission to the U.S. Mission when I was met by the C.I.A. liaison in the streets of New York City.
“I don’t want to meet you inside the Mission,” the C.I.A. liaison said. “The F.B.I. has a hard on for you and are getting ready to bring you in for questioning. They may grab you off the street tonight on your way home.”
This was, of course, disconcerting.
“For what?” I asked.
“Spying for Israel. The F.B.I. thinks you’re handing over classified information to the Israelis.”
“Like what?”
“The U-2 film.”
“But you give it to me so I can take it to Israel. This makes no sense.”
The liaison agreed. “It is what it is. Where are you heading now?”
“The Israeli Mission.”
The C.I.A. liaison scanned the building surrounding our meeting place. “Great. Now the F.B.I. has me on film talking to you. Good luck!”
Later, in August, when I was preparing to resign from UNSCOM in protest over U.S. interference, the C.I.A. liaison officer invited me up to his working space, where he showed me a classified letter from the C.I.A.’s general counsel addressed to the F.B.I.
The gist of the letter was that since UNSCOM was an international organization staffed primarily by foreign nationals, the U.S. was prohibited from providing classified information to it. As such, by law, all documents and materials which were turned over by the U.S. government to UNSCOM became automatically declassified at the time they were received by UNSCOM.
“That solves that,” the C.I.A. liaison said. “If the F.B.I. gives you any trouble, just reference this letter.”
“Can I have a copy?” I asked.
“It’s classified Secret,” he said. “I can’t give it to you for retention.”
Go figure.
The F.B.I. didn’t sweep me off the street, but thanks to CBS News, I became aware that the F.B.I. continued to investigate me for espionage even after I resigned from UNSCOM. The investigation was being run by David N. Kelley, the chief of the Organized Crime and Terrorism Division of the Southern District of New York. Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, was overseeing the overall investigation.
The investigation continued for more than two years. Finally, after I agreed to be interviewed under what is known as “Queen for the Day” agreement, three F.B.I. agents conducted the interview, after which the Southern District informed me the matter had been dropped.
The Receipts
But I still retained the archive. When, in the summer of 1998, it became clear that the U.S. was undermining the work of UNSCOM, I began copying critical files, which would be used to document this interference.
Most of these documents dealt with inspections and the planning that went into them, including the briefings that I had prepared for the UNSCOM executive chairman’s signature that outlined the goals and objectives of each mission.
I used these documents as sources for the various articles and books I wrote documenting the behavior of the U.S. government regarding Iraq and UNSCOM inspections. In the vernacular of today, these documents would be referred to as “receipts.”
I had the “receipts” which documented the lies of the U.S. when it came to their narrative that Iraq retained proscribed weapons of mass destruction.
I provided copies of many of these documents to Barton Gellman, The Washington Post reporter who wrote a detailed series of articles spelling out my claim that the U.S. was using UNSCOM to spy on Iraq. Initially the U.S. government took the position that I was lying.
When Gellman informed them that he had the receipts, the U.S. government changed its tune, simply saying that I “lacked the context” to fully understand U.S. policy behind the actions I had documented.
Which was rich, since I had been with the U.S. government, side-by-side, implementing these policies, almost all of which were conceived by me and adopted after I briefed senior U.S. leadership of the need to implement them.
I had the receipts.
Article Distributed to Congress
Senator Biden addressing the press inside the Green Zone in Baghdad after meeting with Iraq’s Interim Prime Minister lyad Allawi, on right, and fellow U.S. senators, from left, Lindsey Graham and Tom Daschle, June 19, 2004. (Office of U.S. Secretary of Defense, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
I used these documents to write an article that was published in the June 2000 issue of Arms Control Today which was subsequently distributed to all members of Congress. As I previously wrote in an article published in TruthDig, then-Senator Joe Biden dispatched a senior member of the minority staff of the Foreign Relations Committee to meet with me.
“This meeting,” I wrote, “was a singular disappointment. The staffer began by calling me a traitor for speaking out about Iraq and took umbrage when I backed up my claims with documents. ‘You are not supposed to have these materials,’ he said. ‘They are classified, and you are a traitor for publicizing the information they contain.’
“After reminding the staffer that he was walking a very dangerous line in calling a former officer of Marines a traitor, I pointed out that the information I cited was from my time as an inspector and was not classified in any way.
No U.S. intelligence sources or methods were compromised by my efforts. While U.S. policymakers may have been embarrassed by my revelations, this was only because truth did not comport with the policies they were pursuing.
I reminded the staffer of Biden’s stated desire to call on my ‘knowledge and expertise in the future,’ [note: this desire was expressed in a personal letter written by Biden to me in September 1998, following his much-publicized clash with me during my testimony before the U.S. Senate] noting that this meeting was supposed to be conducted in keeping with that intent in mind.
“Senator Biden will not be meeting with you,” the staffer declared. “You’re too controversial.”
I slid the Arms Control Today article across the table. “How are facts controversial?” I asked. “Point to one thing in this article that you believe to be false or misleading.”
The staffer agreed that the article was fact-based, even if he disagreed with its conclusion. “But this isn’t about facts. This is about politics, and Senator Biden will not go against the policies of the Clinton administration, even if those policies are failing.”
I couldn’t think of a more damning indictment of a public official.
Between my resignation from UNSCOM in 1998, and up through the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, I wrote dozens of articles and opinion essays which were published in prestigious newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and around the world.
All of these touched upon the issue of whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq continued to possess weapons of mass destruction.
In every article and essay I wrote, I debunked the lies being peddled by the Bush administration claiming Iraq was a threat worthy of war because of its continued pursuit and possession of proscribed weapons.
Every article was unassailable in terms of its factual predicate.
Because I had the receipts.
Scott Ritter on C-Span, August 2002. (C-Span screenshot)
One of the documents in my possession was the UNSCOM report on the debriefing of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law in August 1995, following his defection from Iraq. In it, Hussein Kamal stated that under his orders all weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed by Iraq in the summer of 1991.
In August 2002, then-Vice President Dick Cheney told an audience of U.S. veterans that Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law had told the U.S. that Iraq had hidden its weapons of mass destruction from the U.N.
“But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” Cheney said. “Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from the firsthand testimony from defectors — including Saddam’s own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam’s direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.”
I took the UNSCOM debriefing document to CNN, where they agreed to do a sit-down interview discussing its contents to contradict the false statement made by the vice president. But CNN was, at that time, a veritable tool of the U.S. government.
After the interview was in the can, CNN informed the Bush White House that it would be running the story. The Bush administration convinced CNN to kill the story in the interests of national security.
But I had the receipts.
Jan. 28, 2003: President George W. Bush delivering the State of the Union Address with Cheney on left, House Speaker Dennis Hastert on right. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
In early March 2003, on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, I made one last effort to get this information before the public. I reached out to John Barry, a reporter with Newsweek, and briefed him on the document’s existence. After he examined it and was assured of its authenticity, Barry wrote a piece which was published on March 3, 2003 — too late to stop the war.
But at least I had publicly put the lie to Dick Cheney’s claims.
Because I had the receipts.
I wrote a book that was published in 2005, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the U.N. and Overthrow Saddam Hussein. This book detailed the history of my work in UNSCOM disarming Iraq. The book is unassailable from a factual perspective, because in writing it I was able to draw upon by archive of documents.
My receipts.
I am in the process of finishing up a book provisionally titled The Scud Hunters, which details my experiences during the Gulf War and as an inspector in eliminating Iraq’s Scud missile force.
The book, if and when published, will be unassailable factually.
Because I have the receipts.
The F.B.I., in searching my home for personal electronics, visited my basement, where they encountered my file cabinet and its contents.
My archive.
The archive than enabled me to expose without fear of contradiction the lies told by the U.S. government and its agencies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The senior F.B.I. agent approached me with the bad news. “We found a bunch of classified documents in your basement,” he said.
“They aren’t classified,” I replied. I explained to him the history of the documents and referred him to the C.I.A. general council’s letter about classified documents and UNSCOM.
The agent left, only to return. “The assistant U.S. attorney says that we cannot leave these documents in your possession until this matter is investigated further.”
“They aren’t classified,” I said. “You have no right to take them.”
“Well, we are going to take them. If what you say checks out, we will return them back to you.”
The F.B.I. left with some two dozen boxes containing the totality of my UNSCOM archive.
My receipts.
The Only Independent Record
Justice Hugo Black in 1937. (Harris & Ewing, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
The only record of the truth about UNSCOM’s work in Iraq disarming Iraq that isn’t controlled by the U.S. government, which continues to promulgate lies about the reasons it invaded Iraq.
Simply put, the F.B.I. seized the literal truth.
In the receipt provided to me, the F.B.I. simply wrote down “documents.”
There is no way the F.B.I. will be able to wrap its head around these documents. I spotted one of the senior F.B.I. agents walking around with several Vu-Graph slides I had made in support of a briefing I had prepared for a meeting in the White House Situation Room with the Deputies Committee where I would detail an inspection concept of operations targeting sensitive sites in downtown Baghdad.
The White House had asked me to prepare a Power Point presentation, but that was beyond what I could do at UNSCOM. Instead, I took a bunch of maps, photos and diagrams to the local Kinko’s, where I slapped together a number of Vu-Graph’s.
“The Kinko’s brief!,” I said as she walked past.
The look in her eyes underscored that she had no clue what I was talking about.
And therein lies the rub.
While I am confident I will not get into any trouble about the archive (how can I? It is unclassified), I do not have any confidence that the F.B.I. will return the documents.
The U.S. government simply cannot allow an archive such as this to exist “in the wild.”
They will find some excuse.
This archive isn’t just my personal collection of documents.
This is an archive of truth.
Indisputable fact.
A source of knowledge and information unique in the world which has served a very useful purpose — to expose the lies of the government.
I am a journalist — my record clearly reflects this reality.
And as such, I am part of what the Founding Fathers called “a free press.”
In his concurring opinion of the landmark 1971 Supreme Court decision, The New York Times v. The United States, Justice Hugo Black noted the following:
“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
As wielded by me, my UNSCOM archive literally fulfilled its duty of helping me “bare the secrets of the government and inform the people” to prevent the government from “deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
By seizing this archive, the F.B.I. literally engaged in an act of censorship.
In seizing my archive, the F.B.I. invoked the notion of “national security.” But, as Justice Black noted,
“The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security.”
There can be no doubt that my UNSCOM archive did more than any other source of documented information to apprise the American people about the lies of their government when it came to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
And now it is gone.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press. |
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