Bilderberg: Coffee klatsch or conspiracy?

Photo by Andrew Harnik, Washington Times

The annual Bilderberg Group meeting ended last week in Chantilly, Va., marked by the largest protests since the meetings were first held in 1954. The protests were led by independent radio/web journalist Alex Jones, often accused of wild conspiracy mongering by the same mainstream media (MSM) organs that have never covered, or even mentioned, the Bilderberg confabs once in 58 years.

That's certainly a curiosity, considering that 140 of the world's most powerful movers and shakers convene to do more than play bridge and frolic in the pool, presumably. If there is a conspiracy involved, it seems to be a conspiracy of silence among the MSM to pretend Bilderberg doesn't even exist.

A general rule about conspiracy theories: They flourish when governments and powerful organizations operate in secrecy, breeding speculation in the absence of any public record of what is really going on. Sometimes that speculation is merely paranoid, and sometimes it's closer to the mark. The cure for paranoid conspiracy theories is the disinfectant of sunlight: Open the books, declassify the files (an estimated 50,000 JFK assassination files are still classified), and at least issue some kind of official report or accounting.

The more suspicious perspective on Bilderberg suggests that it, along with other secretive clubs like the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and Royal Institute of International Affairs, is trying to engineer a world government. Whether you believe that could be a good thing, or would be evil incarnate, determines whether you define Bilderberg as a conference or a conspiracy.

The European Union was conceived and nurtured into being largely in Bilderberg meetings and the E.U. is supposedly the foundation for other political consolidations that will overcome old patriotisms and animosities to form some kind of global union beyond the U.N. So far, it doesn't seem to be working very well — the whole E.U. looks ready to implode soon.

The era of market globalization has already led to a diminution of national sovereignty as multinational corporations enforced trade regulations that ran roughshod over national labor, environmental and tariff laws, spurring protests like the 1999 Battle of Seattle against the WTO. If a democratically governed people chooses to prohibit GM (genetically modified) crops in their land, that decision should stand without Monsanto and allies dictating otherwise.

Globalization and multinational corporations have given rise to a new “superclass” of billionaires whose main allegiance is to their network of political and business allies over their country of origin (see David Rothkopf's excellent book, “Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making”). Rothkopf concludes: “That doesn't mean we need a world government. What it means is that we need multilateral institutions and mechanisms to ensure that the minimum basic protections we expect in our national homes are not undercut while the world's most powerful pursue their narrow self-interests in the no-country's land of the global marketplace.”

And then we have Carroll Quigley, a former Georgetown University professor and Bill Clinton's “mentor” stating in his suppressed 1966 book “Tragedy and Hope”: “... the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”

That could certainly be construed as a conspiracy of sorts. The Bilderberg conference does release a list of attendees, notable for a preponderance of bankers. This year's list includes some notorious characters: Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and architect of financial deregulation that led to the current crisis; Peter Orszag, Obama's former OMB director and chief consultant to the Central Bank of Iceland before it went bankrupt; William Lynn, former Deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush when the Pentagon “lost” $2.3 trillion; Anatoly Chubais, privatization czar under Boris Yeltsin who oversaw a $240 billion rape of Russia; several Goldman-Sachs executives from around the world; and last but not least, Richard Perle, “Prince of Darkness” and principle driver of the Iraq invasion; and the guest of honor, war criminal Henry Kissinger (see Christopher Hitchen's “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”).

A strong case could be made that an Interpol SWAT team should have descended on the Marriott hotel in Chantilly and arrested a lot of these people. The bottom line is that while most of the world is now reeling under chronic depression, unemployment, austerity and riots, this superclass of “feudalist” capitalism is growing ever richer and more powerful.

The Marriott hotel staff complained to Alex Jones and others that, despite the fabulous wealth of the attendees, they tipped abysmally or not at all. Perhaps more than any expansive screed, that speaks volumes about the Bilderberg crowd.

Some may say that I'm simply bitter because I wasn't invited to the big pow-wow. OK, it's true, dammit, because I was really looking forward to the “Eyes Wide Shut” orgy with all those hot Illuminati babes! This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press.

One foot off the slippery slope: NDAA ruled unconstitutional

[NOTE: According to Carl Levin, co-author of the NDAA, the military detention provision was added at the insistence of Presidente Obama]

If the Founding Fathers have been spinning in their graves like centrifuges over recent assaults on the Constitution, their RPMs slowed down a bit last Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled that Section 1021 in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), allowing military detention of American citizens without due process, is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit was brought by veteran journalist Chris Hedges, with attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran doing the heavy lifting without compensation. None thought they had a chance to win, given the juggernaut of military/police state abuses that have rolled over us in the decade since 9/11. But as Hedges said after the verdict, “A stunning and monumental victory… every once in a while the gods smile on the damned.”

The defendants, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, had argued that this new NDAA merely codified what the panicked 2001 AUMF (Authorization to Use Military Force) had spawned over the last decade: indefinite military detention, unwarranted searches and seizures, assassination, torture — only now it all could be employed on American soil, against American citizens, however or whenever the president and Pentagon see fit.

Hedges argued that, as a journalist who spent seven years as a correspondent in the Middle East, he interviewed many unsavory characters, including ones that could be designated as our enemies. He noted after the verdict: “The government lawyers, despite being asked five times by the judge to guarantee that we plaintiffs would not be charged under the law for our activities, refused to give any assurances. They did not provide assurances because under the law there were none… We too could be swept away into a black hole.”

But we're not out of the woods yet: The administration could appeal the ruling, and it could go all the way to the Supreme Court, which, given the number of gung-ho Bush appointees on board, could be disastrous.

Unfortunately, the House refused to adopt the earlier bipartisan Smith-Amash amendment that would have repealed the indefinite detention provision. Instead, they adopted the Gohmert amendment, stating that the NDAA will not “deny the writ of habeas corpus or deny any Constitutional rights for persons detained in the United States under the AUMF who are entitled to such rights.”

This is still ambiguous language; Section 1021 states that the military is not “required” to detain American citizens. It does not forbid it. That is enough wiggle room for this president, or any future president, to strip American citizens of their entitled rights via some new Orwellian designation, and start disappearing enemies — of the state, or the party, or his own personal enemies, into the gulag of detention camps built by Halliburton subsidiary KBR (in 2006, the Dept. of Homeland Security awarded KBR a $385 million contract to build these camps for a possible influx of illegal immigrants, or to support the “rapid development of new programs,” whatever that means).

Here's what's at stake: Last week, a database compiled by two university law schools established that, since 1989, over 2,000 convicts had been exonerated for crimes they did not commit.

The average term of imprisonment for these innocent victims: 11 years. That's a lot of wasted life, and a lot of mistakes by our judicial system, with all of its constitutional protections.

But now the Pentagon is going to decide some of these criminal cases with no trial and ensure that many innocent people are not caught in the dragnet? And not abused Abu Ghraib style? How do you prove your innocence from a dungeon? Without lawyers or any due process at all, the DOD is going to do a better job than our imperfect judicial systems have done?

Tell it your gullible uncle. This is a dangerous precedent — one more arrow in the quiver of the “unitary executive” principle, which is to say King George will rule over us once more. Any citizen, Republican, Democrat or third party, who would support such a monstrosity needs a refresher course in the American Constitution, and if that doesn't work, an emigration visa to some seedy banana republic where military juntas and torture dens are routine. They have no place in this Republic, which as the Founding Fathers understood, requires eternal vigilance against control freaks and totalitarians.

As ever, James Madison said it best: “It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”

This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press.

Terminator IV: The cyborgs are coming

If you thought “Superman,” “Blade Runner” and the “Terminator” movies were pure fantasy sci-fi with no possible connection to reality, think again: Several new tech developments are bringing “Terminator IV” - the real thing - closer to birth.

First, Dutch scientists have bio-engineered the first bulletproof skin, by inserting a spider gene into a goat, which produces milk that can be spun out and woven into a material 10 times stronger than steel (the tensile strength of a spider web is phenomenal for its minuscule weight). The silk material is then mated with skin cells. Head researcher Jalila Eassaidi of the Forensic Genomics Consortium in the Netherlands stated:

“Imagine a spidersilk vest, capable of catching a bullet - the modern day equivalent of Genghis Khan's vests. (Genghis Khan equipped his soldiers with silk vests to deflect arrows). Now, let's take this one step further: why bother with a vest? Imagine replacing keratin, the protein responsible for the toughness of the human skin, with this spidersilk protein. This is possible by adding the silk producing genes of a spider to the genome of a human, creating a bulletproof human.”

The test video they released showed a .22 bullet, fired from a pistol at about 10 feet, penetrating a paper-thin patch of the silkskin taped onto a block of ballistic gelatin. The skin didn't stop the bullet, but it reduced penetration in the gelatin from about 12 inches to about 2 inches. They'll need some more trials and maybe a denser weave or multiple layers to stop anything larger than a .22, but the test has already demonstrated that this silk Kleenex, basically, is tougher than human skin.

Ms. Eassaidi is probably pitching the big money boys in our Military-Industrial Complex, which through its Mad Scientists department (DARPA) will fund just about anything. (The CIA spent several million dollars on “remote viewing” or ESP research, gleaning enough successes, supposedly, to keep the program operational for over a decade.) Over the last few years, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has funded the creation of an amazing array of eerily lifelike robots by the Boston Dynamics company.

Their first breakthrough, BigDog, was designed as a load carrier in rough terrain like Afghanistan. The robotic donkey can transport 300 pounds over 13 miles on flat ground, climb boulder gardens, jump and leap, and most spookily, recover its balance after being pushed or slipping on an ice sheet with a frantic motion of legs - just like a very athletic dog. With no head, and just the naked skeleton of armatures, joints and hydraulic tubes, it's damn scary to watch - a powerful, brainless beast capable of a lot of mayhem, it seems.

Actually chasing human prey is the mission of DARPA/Boston Dynamic's next creature, the Cheetah-Bot. With design and articulation more like a big cat, and the addition of a rotating head with all kinds of sensors, it's a special-ops hunter that could be diversely weaponized. Put a pair of red lasers shining out of those big eye sockets, and it probably wouldn't need any weapons. Like early Romans fleeing at the first sight of Hannibal's elephants, or the Incans terrorized by the Spanish conquistadors' horses, an enemy unit would probably run peeing and screaming before a herd of such fearsome mechanical animals.

Atlas is their humanoid robot, also headless at present, but capable of running, climbing, and crawling on hands and knees with human-like balance. It's not a leap to imagine advances 10 years down the road producing a Frankenstein monster close to Schwarzenegger's Terminator. Wrap it with the bulletproof skin, and give it a head filled with functioning senses and a brain (brain tissue has already been grafted with microchips, and prosthetic eyes have been developed), and you could have a regiment of bulletproof Supermen, remote-controlled like present-day drones.

Military incentives have spurred a great deal of scientific/technological progress throughout history, but those developments are not always limited to military applications. Boston Dynamics envisions their creations performing in “emergency response, firefighting, advanced agriculture and vehicular travel.” The robots and cyborgs may eventually replace humans for some of the most dangerous and difficult work - such as cleaning up the ongoing mess at Fukushima.

If they can make a basic Model-T version for the consumer, capable of hauling the garbage and mowing the lawn without terrorizing the dog, it just might be a better investment than a new car.

This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press.

Opening soon: McFrankenburgers for banksters

The British Telegraph reports that Prof. Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands has cultured artificial meat in a lab, using cow stem cells and serum. “In October,” he said, “we are going to provide a proof of concept showing out of stem cells we can make a product that looks, feels and hopefully tastes like meat. Eventually my vision is that you have a limited herd of donor animals in the world that you keep in stock and that you get your cells from there. Each animal would be able to produce about a million times more meat through the lab-based technique than through the traditional method of butchery.”

Although it may sound like a Soylent Green plot come to life, artificial meat actually makes a lot of sense when you look at the numbers. Maybe we'll see a chain of McFrankenburgers around the world, also serving genetically engineered fries and vegetables — like ketchup.

As carnivores, we are rapidly exhausting declining fresh water supplies worldwide, including the giant Ogallala aquifer that fuels the breadbasket of America. In the arid Southwest, many aquifers are bone dry or close to it. Estimates vary, but it takes 10-17 pounds of vegetable matter, mainly corn, to produce 1 pound of beef — a ruinously inefficient use of water. Yes, that 1 pound of beef is concentrated protein, but it also concentrates a toxic soup of herbicides, pesticides, hormones, prions and antibiotics largely if not mainly responsible for our soaring health care costs.

John Robbins' book “The Food Revolution” spelled it out 10 years ago, and I'm sure the stats are even more dramatic now: 25-30% lower rates of almost every type of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other maladies for vegetarians over meat-eaters. Pure vegans have even better rates. One long-term, post-mortem study in England determined that 14% of Alzheimer's patients actually had Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease, from eating contaminated beef.

Maybe the prospect of artificially generating meat in giant petri vats strikes us as bizarre or even repulsive, but is it as repulsive as cannibalizing cows with a stew of body parts that hatch brain-eating diseases? Or as repulsive as the Pink Slime recently revealed as an additive to most U.S. meat? Or the wretched life of a veal calf? The cow cannibalism and Pink Slime are efforts at recycling to make the beef industry more efficient. But what if the Frankenburger can be produced even more efficiently, using a fraction of the fresh water used for ranch beef, and without all the toxic sludge and waste (only 60% of a cow is edible by humans)? Buy your stock now, because the world is getting hungrier.

That would most likely be Monsanto stock, if they're able to wrangle another patent and monopoly on it. Hopefully, Prof. Post and Maastricht University don't sell out and will keep the process open source. If they can just make it taste like veal, or at least better than Spam, they may see it take over a big chunk of the tofu market. I have a venue suggestion for their big rollout test in the fall.

After the Big Crash of '08, an elite joint near Wall Street started selling deluxe hamburgers to our lords of finance — for $200. And that's not even a Whopper. Maybe the greenbloods thought eating burger would make a good show of contrition and solidarity with the rabble after their colossal and costly screw-up. But it comes across more like “Banksta in yo face!” The first edible lab patty will have cost 250,000 euros to produce, or $328,212. I'm sure our derivatives hustlers would savor every deliciously expensive bite, pronouncing it as exquisite as the flesh of some rare endangered turtle in the tropics.

And if something went horribly wrong with the experiment — like the lab patties accidentally infected with some virulent gene of Mad Cow Disease -- well, how much more brain damage could it do, really, to this species of ravenous parasites? The Bankster gangs have unleashed their spring offensive, flooding Washington with an army of lobbyists (five for every congressman) and loot to sabotage the Volcker Rule of the Dodd-Frank reform bill — a reinstatement of the venerable Glass-Steagull Act that for 60 years prevented a repeat of 1929.

And with virtually 100% of Republicans and a majority of Democrats in their pockets, they'll probably succeed in more sabotage, demonstrating that the nation is chronically and incurably infected with Mad Banker Disease.

This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press.

Digital dementia: our dangerous reliance on internet technologies

At a recent shooting competition in Kuwait, a woman from Kazakhstan won the gold medal and kept a stiff upper lip at the awards ceremony as the sound guys played the wrong national anthem — the parody anthem from the movie Borat. The Kuwaitis had inadvertently downloaded it from a Google search, thinking it was authentic.

The lyrics, with a very convincing chorus and deep cello rhythms, include: “Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world! All other countries are run by little girls…. Kazakhstan, home of Tin Shein swimming pool, filtration system a marvel to behold! It removes 80 percent of solid human waste…. Kazakhstan industry best in world! We invented toffee and trouser belt…”

Kazakhstan has demanded, and received, an apology from Kuwait, which is apparently too distant a target for Kazakhstan's air force.

Add this to the catalog of mishaps and disasters brought on by our ever-evolving digital age:

Several tourists in the Southwest and around the world have wandered off on hair-raising detours while following the recommended “shortest route” of their GPS units. No, the map is not the territory, they discovered, as the family SUV lurched and spun over un-indicated 4WD boulder gardens descending to a cliff edge.

With naïve postings on Facebook or online forums, many people have lost jobs, reputations, and sometimes their lives. Others have been the victims of malicious defamations or embarrassing photos that go viral, sometimes global.

Studies have shown that texting while driving causes the same impairment as half a bottle of moonshine, and it's endemic among the worst drivers, those under 22. Voice communications are almost as distracting, and irritating and dangerous to those who have to navigate around the erratic driving. In New York, a pedestrian yapping on her smartphone fell straight down an open manhole (the workers had taken a five-minute break).

There's a strong case that our addicting wireless devices have all but destroyed certain manners, not that we Americans practice many of them. Example: Two Americans are talking. A third enters the scene, who knows only one of them. Are the strangers introduced? No, of course not (unless it's a formal occasion). They're left there awkwardly ignoring each other, maybe eventually entering into a conversation together — or not. Soon, one of them may initiate the introduction, and the “host,” who knows both parties, blurts: “Oh, I'm sorry! (I should have introduced you).”

Unquestionably, it's gotten worse with the iPhone and clones. Parties A and B are dining out. Party A's cell rings, and he/she just must answer it, and enter into a long, animated conversation, and if it's really dramatic, sometimes loud enough for the neighboring tables to eavesdrop on with fascination (”Yes, I'm popular and interesting!”).

And Party B, unless he brought along a magazine or book, is left to study the owner's biography page on the menu. I know people who must check their device messages every 15 minutes, or they begin to fidget and black out — digital anoxia. A relative of mine keeps his cell in his bathrobe pocket on a hook by the stall when he's showering; he's bitterly disappointed that Jobs didn't come out with a fully waterproof model before his demise.

Some polls have shown that many people would give up almost anything else in their lives — including spouses — rather than their internet connection.

The Pentagon and allies are pumping up their cyberwarfare budgets, convinced that this will be the main front in the next cold war or hot war. Private corporations and political parties worldwide are following suit, as elucidated in an India Daily article featuring the research of University of Victoria computer science staff:

“The Internet Water Army is a group of individuals who act as paid mercenaries to inundate the internet with comments, gossip, or other content to build up or demolish credibility of articles, information, websites and more. These people demolish the consumer ranking of products and services, create false images, and provide a sense of false perception to destroy the truth. Some blame China as the pioneer of the Internet Water Army. China may be using the same but the list of abusers is vast. It is very common in the free world. The corporations are employing them, the unions are employing them, and even the political parties employ them. The Internet Water Army is typically tasked with registering on a website and then producing content in the form of posts, articles, links to sites and videos, etc.”

Yes, there is a war going on for control of your mind. And as the old saying goes, “the first casualty of war is the truth.” The new wireless world has enabled unparalleled convenience, communication and access to information, but spend too much time and trust here, and you may end up completely detached from reality — the definition of insanity.

This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press

Apocalyptic anxiety: The last myth

"The Fall of Babylon" by John Martin

I have to admit that I was seduced at one time by the whole Mayan 2012 calendar business — that there might be a great planetary/cosmic reckoning in December of this year.

It's been heralded and hyped in dozens of books over the last decade, along with a booming survivalist industry, and it's certainly not difficult to imagine some crescendo of dire problems in the offing with all the trends that beset us: climate change and extreme weather (whether “natural” or man-made, or a combination of both, it's definitely happening), peak oil, disappearing fisheries, overstressed fresh water supplies, declining crop yields, new viruses, antibiotic resistance, solar flares, economic mayhem, nuclear proliferation... and all these celebrities dying young! It's fuel enough to power even the moderately paranoid.

But a new book goes a long way in debunking the imminent apocalypse, “The Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us About America” (Prometheus Books; 2012) by Matthew Gross and Mel Gilles. (Disclosure: The authors are friends of mine from Moab). It is superbly written and researched, far exceeding my expectations.

The authors trace the lineage of apocalyptic thinking back to the ancient Hebrews after they suffered a series of invasions and calamities that, along with the novel influence of Zoroastrianism, inspired a new linear concept of history — that there was a beginning, and there will also be a climactic end, to human civilization.

Previously, traditional cultures viewed the world cyclically — a succession of deaths and rebirths, just like the seasons, changing regularly but stable and predictable, with humankind but a more sophisticated species of fauna in the natural world. But now, history had a new meaning: Humankind was on an evolutionary path beyond nature.

Christianity inherited the meme, and nowadays many Christians are convinced that the Tribulation and Rapture are nigh, as more secular-minded people are equally convinced that global warming, nuclear pollution, a solar knockout of the global electrical grid, or mutant bird flu are the four horseman of the coming apocalypse. The Mayan calendar, according to New Age folk, merely establishes a likely date for the beginning of a great transition, when a new phoenix of enlightened consciousness will arise from the ashes of the old order.

The end of the world has been scheduled many times before, of course, and all these dates, such as the “Great Disappointment” of 1844, have been postponed. Every decade some preacher sets a new date, the flock prepares for the Rapture, selling off assets and neglecting to milk the cows — and nothing happens. The 2012 date is just as phantasmagoric, so we can all stop hoarding gold and ammunition.

The advent of the 24-hour news cycle established by CNN opened the door for a lot of hyperbolic fear mongering — not only “if it bleeds, it leads,” but “if it might bleed, it leads.” As many psychological experiments have proven, there is no greater motivator than fear, which in some cases can serve as an early warning system, but it can also be crippling, as the authors' note: “By allowing the challenges of the 21st century to be hijacked by the apocalyptic storyline, we find ourselves awaiting a moment of clarity when the problems we must confront will become apparent to all — or when those challenges will magically disappear, like other failed prophecies about the end of the world.”

But that we will face some radical readjustments in the next few decades is not doubted, as exponentially growing world population collides with the reality of finite resource depletion; the era of the American Dream, predicated on an ever-expanding consumer economy and unbridled greed and gluttony is simply not sustainable — this is a matter of simple math, not philosophy. And we will have to come to terms with the changing new reality, governed by the one law supreme on this planet: Adapt or perish.

Some cultures in the past have stubbornly chosen to perish rather adapt, as the economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted: “Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” The two most salient cases being the Norse settlers in Greenland, who could not dispense with their dietary prohibition against eating fish, and starved to death as the more fertile Medieval Warm Period gave way to the Little Ice Age; and the Easter Island culture, which ravished its isolated and limited ecology with conspicuous consumption for competitive status displays (the famous sentinel sculptures).

The conclusion: Our sun has several billion years of provident energy left, and the world is not going to end anytime soon. However, the parameters of the world we have known in our lifetimes, fueled by cheap oil, is gradually changing, and it will behoove us to keep our minds open, unfettered by old habits and hyperbolic fears, and prepare to meet new challenges with our uniquely creative spirit.

This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press

Homeland Security: Big Brother on steroids

At the time of the founding of the FBI's predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation in 1908, there was a big debate in Congress and the nation about the possible dangers of an unprecedented domestic federal police agency; that it could, as has happened in so many other countries, degenerate into a corrupt political force or Praetorian Guard.

By 1935, in the depths of Prohibition and the Great Depression, the bureau officially became the FBI, and the warnings of the naysayers were soon validated under the 45-year reign of J. Edgar Hoover — a czar unlike any other in American history. Hoover's dirt cabinet was legendary: His agents snooped on everybody in Washington and beyond, so he could blackmail even as he was being blackmailed — the Mob had photos of Hoover in drag and intimate with his partner and “wife” Clyde Tolson.

Later came illegal domestic spying with COINTELPRO; the full-scale cover-up, if not complicity, in the '60s assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK; a catalog of other political cover-ups and hijinks featuring Gordon Liddy; the Frederic Whitehurst lab perversion revelations; intimidation and harassment of witnesses in hundreds of “sensitive” criminal cases; and most notoriously now (for those few who know it), the stubborn sabotage by D.C. headquarters of three field agents' investigations that could have prevented 9/11.

Given that the FBI was already in charge of domestic counterterrorism, and had a long, conflicted history with its bureaucratic rivals, it wasn't really clear why the solution was yet another bureaucracy joining the alphabet soup of our vast National Security empire — the DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security) joining the CIA, NSA, NRO, NCC, NGIA, FEMA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), the latter caught spying on demonstrations on American soil.

Recently, Ron Paul warned that the country was “descending into Fascism” — his utterance was dismissed by our mind-control punditocracy as either a rhetorical exaggeration or the raving of a lunatic. But the ever-expanding mandate and technological capabilities of the DHS are indeed worrisome, considering the long history of crimes and abuses committed by our other secret agencies. The DHS recently announced a new $50 million spy system, modeled after counterinsurgency programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, to detect bad guys in “emergency and non-emergency incidents” within the U.S. In conjunction with the FAA, it will soon be gathering surveillance with up to 30,000 drones flying over our neighborhoods, using the most sophisticated and invasive systems, FLIR and ground-penetrating radar.

According to a blizzard of memos and advisories issued to other federal and state agencies and private companies by the DHS and FBI over the last several years, red flags for potential “terrorist” activity include being “anti-globalist, suspicious of federal authority, defending online privacy, paying cash at Internet cafes, stocking up on more than 7 days of food, holding reserves of gold, engaging in any kind of public demonstration, creating alternative currencies, identifying as Libertarian.” Maybe “vegetarian, preferring herbal remedies, banking at credit unions, and enjoying sitar music” will soon join the list.

With the NSA building two gigantic new data processing and storage facilities in the Southwest (they've tapped out the grid in D.C.), the wiretapping scandals becoming normalized, the U.S. Army North holding regular domestic policing exercises in violation of Posse Comitatus, and the DHS funding the acquisition of hi-tech armored vehicles, assault weapons, grenade launchers and other military exotica by police agencies nationwide, it's really no surprise what this is all about: Ostensibly to suppress the nonexistent plague of terrorism that threatens us, but actually for controlling, pacifying and suppressing any dissent on the home front as the military-industrial complex escalates the never-ending War on Terror that the vast majority of Americans are sick of. As Pat Buchanan once commented, “They're over here, because we're over there.”

In the national Urban Shield 2011 exercise, two foreign units participated alongside American police: the Yaman, an Israeli Border Police unit long known for extra-judicial assassinations and systematic abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip; and a military unit from Bahrain, infamous for blasting nonviolent demonstrations with live fire and then arresting the wounded as they fled to hospitals. With the increasing militarization of our police forces, we can expect more tragedies like Waco and the inevitable erosion of our civil liberties unless we heed the advice of James Madison:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press

Buck Fever: Crosshairs on Iran

We all like to believe that we have a firm grasp on reality. That what happens in the world around us and how we perceive it are in perfect harmony; that not much “gets by us.” A now famous psychology experiment, available on YouTube, demonstrates how faulty this belief is.

A dozen students are milling around a basketball court, dribbling and passing a basketball between them. We are instructed to keep our eyes on the ball, as the students shift around. This goes on for about a minute or so. After the video ends, a question is posed: “Did you notice anything unusual?” Nope, was my answer. Then we watch the video again, without focusing on the ball, and incredibly, there it is — a MAN IN A GORILLA SUIT shuffles right through the middle of the crowd, doing the Michael Jackson moonwalk.

And I never saw it. Neither, apparently, do 99% of people who view this video when following the instructions. It's astounding and very discomfiting. The phenomenon is well known as tunnel vision, or “perceptual warp — we tend to see only what we want to see, expect to see, or what we've been programmed to see.

Another instance is “buck fever,” responsible for many tragic hunting accidents. One case involved a 22-year-old female student at a small college nestled in a woody rural area of Virginia, where hunting was popular. An avid outdoorswoman, she had gone on a hike with her boyfriend. A deer hunter shot her through the chest, killing her instantly and wounding her companion. She was about 100 yards away, not in dense cover, and, incredibly, the hunter used a 3x9 scope. Some apologists criticized the woman for wearing a solid white shirt in deer season (it looks like a deer's chest, they said), but the police and most residents placed the blame squarely on the hunter. How could he have mistaken a bipedal human being in a white shirt for a tawny quadruped deer at only 100 yards with a powerful scope?

Go through the annals of hunting accidents, and you'll hear this same story repeated over and over. A hunter has been sitting in his stand, or stalking for a full day, or many dull days, without seeing a sign of his quarry. Then there's a movement in the brush on the far hill, and he fires, killing or wounding another hunter. Frustration and desire have overwhelmed perception and judgment; whatever the creature is, his eager mind's eye sees a deer.

Another example, closer to the point I'm making, is the infamous video, leaked by Bradley Manning, of the U.S. Apache helicopter gunning down two Reuters journalists in Baghdad in 2007, and then blasting a family van with children arriving to give them aide. The “terrorist suspects” were walking nonchalantly down the center of the street, completely unconcerned about the deadly chopper overhead, and the one video camera visible does not resemble a rifle or RPG launcher, even to my unpracticed eye. But the crew requested permission from base to fire, and unloaded, killing the journalists and 18 innocent civilians.

And finally, we have that infamous mirage of “weapons of mass destruction” littering Iraq.

Our quagmires in the Middle East have ushered in a revolution in warfare: not only the commander, but also the triggerman now has been removed from the battlefield or target zone, with drone technology. The Pentagon has admitted to using civilian contractors to command and control drone strikes over Afghanistan and Pakistan. I would hope they're not teen computer nerds supercharged with angst and testosterone after a girlfriend break-up, but with all the wedding parties and child firewood gatherers they've been blowing up, that may be the case. Reality is so much slower and duller than Xbox.

Combine buck fever with remote control weapons, then you're certain to get a lot of collateral damage, and there goes your “hearts and minds” campaign, essential for defeating any insurgency. If we're going full sail forward into Terminator III territory, then we had better learn to use it more responsibly. I'd really like to know what kind of training these civilian joystickers are getting — hopefully, more than 20 hours per week on Tomb Raider.

Today our nation has a buck lined in the crosshairs — or is it? Iran is contemplating, researching and possibly developing a nuclear weapon -- precisely because the biggest, baddest military of all time has rendered its two closest neighbors into bloody wastelands, and threatens another “shock and awe” campaign almost daily. The mullahs can plausibly smear the protesters as CIA-led stooges, because in 1953 the mobs who helped overthrow Mossadegh were CIA-led stooges. As even a 9th grade history student understands, any nation threatened by a foreign power quickly succumbs to the most repressive government: focusing on an external enemy distracts from domestic problems, and all dissent is construed as treason.

Our incessant blustering against Iran has only solidified the rule of the hard-line theocracy that a majority of Iranians are sick of. The sanctions will probably be as effective as those imposed on Saddam's regime — strengthening the tyrant's power while killing thousands of civilians.

The Neocons are tense and itchy with buck fever now; Iraq has supposedly wound down another notch, and we have to keep a two-front war going, else Halliburton might have a bad quarter. But as many hunters know, and as we should have learned by Vietnam and Iraq now, sometimes you pull the trigger and it's a mistake with never-ending regret.

This first appeared in the Grand Junction Free Press