Between the chaos and artillery fire unfolding in Homs and Damascus, the current siege against the Ba’athist State of Bashar al-Assad parallels events of nearly a century ago. In efforts to maintain its protectorate, the French government employed the use of foreign soldiers to smother those seeking to abolish the French mandated, Fédération Syrienne.

While former Prime Minister Faris al-Khoury argued the case for Syrian independence before UN in 1945, French planes bombed Damascus into submission. Today, the same government – in addition to the United States and its client regimes in Libya and Tunisia – enthusiastically recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate leadership of Syria. Although recent polls funded by the Qatar Foundation claim 55% of Syrians support the Assad regime, the former colonial powers have made a mockery of the very democratic principles they tout.

Irrespective to the views of the Syrian people, their fate has long been decided by forces operating beyond their borders. In a speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2007 retired US Military General Wesley Clark speaks of a policy coup initiated by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Clark cites a confidential document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2001 stipulating the entire restructuring of the Middle East and North Africa. Portentously, the document allegedly revealed campaigns to systematically destabilize the governments of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Under the familiar scenario of an authoritarian regime systematically suppressing peaceful dissent and purging large swaths of its population, the mechanisms of geopolitical stratagem have freely taken course.

Syria is but a chess piece being used as a platform by larger powers. Regime change is the unwavering interest of the US-led NATO block in collaboration with the feudal Persian Gulf Monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This is being accomplished by using Qatar-owned media outlets such as Al-Jazeera to project their version of the narrative to the world and by arming radical factions of the regions Sunni-majority population against the minority Alawi-Shia leadership of Assad. Since 2005, the Bush administration began funding Syrian opposition groupsthat lean toward the Muslim Brotherhood and their aspirations to build a Sunni-Islamic State. The Muslim Brotherhood has long condemned the Alawi-Shia as heretics and historically attempted multiple uprising in the 1960’s. By arming radical Sunni factions and importing Iraqi Salafi-jihadists and Libyan mercenaries, the NATOGCC plans to topple Assad and install an illegitimate exiled opposition leader such as Burhan Ghaliun (leader of the Syrian National Council) to be the face of the new regime.

The recent example of implementing foreign policy by arming Al-Qaeda fighters in Libya has proved disastrous – as the rule of law passes from the NATO-backed Libyan Transitional Council to hundreds of warring guerilla militias. At a meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Hillary Clinton, Davutoglu pledged to find ways outside the United Nations Security Council to pressure Assad. In addition to bolstering longstanding sectarian divides in Syria, the US is smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkey and providing financial support for Syrian rebels. Syrian opposition forces led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad have been trained on Turkish soil since May 2011. xclusive military and intelligence sources have reported to Israel’s DEBKAfile that British and Qatari special operations units are assisting rebel forces in Homs by providing body armor, laptops, satellite phones and managing rebel communications lines that request logistical aid, arms and mercenaries from outside suppliers.

Although the UK has vehemently denied these reports, Qatar’s leader Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani recently suggested sending troops into Syria to battle Assad’s forces. Military bases situated near Turkey’s southeastern border with northern Syria have become a crucial hub used for the delivery of outside supplies. Unmarked NATO warplanes near Iskenderum have received fighters from Libya’s Transitional National Council wielding weapons formerly belonging to Gaddafi’s arsenal. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, (former leader of the extremist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group turned NTC military governor at the directive of NATO) is leading the infiltration of Libyans into Syria in person with the help of the Turkish government. It has also been reported that Mahdi al-Harati, resigned from his functions as deputy chief of the Military Council in Tripoli to oversee the Free Syrian Army.

Syrian press has also reported that armed terrorist groups brandishing up-to-date American and Israeli weapons have roamed the countryside of Damascus committing blind acts of terror by setting off explosive devices and kidnapping civilians. As the NATOGCC continue to insist that Assad is committing acts of genocide against unarmed civilians, one must draw correlations between events reported by the Syrian state media and recent statements released by the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, praising the arrival of Iraqi fighters in Syria and advising rebels to use roadside bombs. Paradoxically, Al-Qaeda front man Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims from across the Arab World to mobilize and support the Free Syrian Army after the disappointingRussian and Chinese veto at the UNSC. Few things are more absurd than the notion of Al-Qaeda terrorists – unanimously portrayed as ostensible “savages” by virtually all-Western media sources – entrust the apparatus of the United Nations and their capacity to resolve the Syrian conflict. The true purpose of Al-Qaeda and its role in influencing foreign policy has never been more evident.

Surely, Assad accusing foreign-sponsored terrorist groups of fomenting violence in Syria is simply evidence of his illegitimacy – as Western and Gulf allies assert. Even as Syrian state TV broadcasts reports showing seized weapons stockpiles and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources, the NATOGCC continues to draft legislation in an effort pressure the Assad regime into dissolution. In the face of an outright campaign of foreign-funded sabotage, Syrian hackers have targeted Al-Jazeera’s “Syria Live Blog”, which provides ongoing coverage of the unrest. The hacker-ring boldly denounced Al Jazeera for broadcasting“false and fabricated news to ignite sedition among the people of Syria to achieve the goals of Washington and Tel Aviv.”

Through the fiery rhetoric of Susan Rice and her relentless condemnation of Assad - like Gaddafi before him – the United States is again attempting to invoke the Right to Protect (R2P) doctrine to take direct action against the Assad regime. In another parallel to the Libyan conflict, the UN’s astounding official death toll in Syria is taken solely from human rights groups, backed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Criminal Court and the Syrian National Council. The official numbers rely exclusively on an obscure organization known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) – based in London, not Damascus – whose evidence is largely reliant on hearsay, pixelated YouTube videos and activist Twitter feeds. SOHR’s disputed reports present evidence that would not hold up in any court of law, much less should it be the basis of United Nations resolutions. The Observatory’s director Rami Abdelrahman collaborates directly with British Foreign Minister William Hague and derives legitimacy solely from connections with corporate/foundation – funded civil society networks. Claims that Assad’s security forces indiscriminately kill scores of newborn babies are palpably a product of Britain’s foreign office.

As a further indication of the on-going media war in Syria, none is more telling than the report produced by the Arab League’s observer mission into Syria. The contents of the report were completely ignored by the corporate-media after Qatar disputed its findings, the only nation to do so in the& Arab League’s Ministerial Committee. The report unalterably concluded that the Syrian government was in no way lethally repressing peaceful protestors. Furthermore, the report credits armed gangs with the bombing of civilian buses, trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and the bombing of bridges and pipelines. During an interview with Arab League observer Ahmed Manaï, he praises the Sino-Russian veto at the UNSC and encouraged the Syrian leadership to implement reforms. Manaï states, “The Arab League is entirely discredited by burying the report of its own observers’ mission and its appeal to the Security Council. It missed the opportunity to participate in the settlement of the Syrian affair. All it can offer in the future will be worthless.”

While the initial observer report is predictably absent from mainstream media coverage and cited as inept (presumably for contradicting the official line of the allied Western-Gulf powers), Arab League mission leader Mohammed al-Dabi officially resigned, stating, “I won’t work one more time in the framework of the Arab League, I performed my job with full integrity and transparency but I won’t work here again as the situation is skewed.” The United Nations and the Arab League are now considering what was originally a joint observer mission – now referred to as a peacekeeping mission. The Arab League, in tandem with Saudi Arabia is preparing a nearly identical resolution calling for an armed peacekeeping council to present to the UN. Much like the indistinguishable saber rattling seen before Libyan intervention, the new resolution condemns Assad for lethal repression and calls for a transitional shift to democracy. The resolution is expected to create similar Sino-Russian divisions over its implementation, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, previously scorned the document as “the same unbalanced draft resolution text.”

The conflict in Syria has brought light to longstanding Cold War divisions between world powers. The Sino-Russian veto of the UNSC resolution calling for intervention has blocked the opportunity for Western powers to exert overt aggression, as demonstrated by NATO in Libya. Instead, it appears that the Assad regime will be destabilized through covert mercenary groups bent on committing blind acts of terrorism by means of sniper assassinations and roadside bombs. Learning from the Libyan experience, Russia and China perceive the UN Human Rights Report authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the Washington-based corporate-funded think-tank, Middle East Policy Council - to be explicitly comprised; victims among the civilian population are a result of armed paramilitaries doing battle with the Syrian military in residential areas. In an interview with former Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov pledges that Russia will protect Iran, Syria, and the world from American fascism. In a show of support for the Syrian government, Russia has sent a large naval force into the region and China has further warned against a strike on Syria.

It is truly a paradox that the countries least fit to dictate principles of human rights, do so largely unhindered on the world stage. Without hesitation Hillary Clinton proclaimed, “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty” referring to the Sino-Russian veto. She then called for the formation of an international alliance between the war-profiteering elite of the West and absolutist Wahhabi Persian Gulf monarchies – amusingly titled, the Friends of Syria. International calls to abstain from violence have done little to influence the Gulf Cooperation Council and their brutal crackdown against Shiites in Bahrain. Incredibly, Saudi Arabia has entered the dialogue on human rights and democracy promotion – perhaps the world’s most defining feudalistic theocracy, a nation that prohibits political parties and national elections and executes those who apostatize Islam.

Iran’s Press TV news network has reportedly leaked intelligence exposing the American agenda in Syria. The report calls for the recognition of the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government and their positioning in Turkey to work against the Assad regime. Washington would then task Turkey with sending troops into Syria to arm the opposition forces, followed by Wahhabi fighters and Libyan mercenaries. Ominously, the intelligence stipulates that Israel will enter the fray to carry out military operations against Syria. If the regime fails to dissolve, Syrian state television channels will be taken down and Assad will be assassinated. Considering how other enemies of the West have faired in recent times, the sequence of events reported by Press TV would be largely unsurprising. The Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf are playing junior to American aggression in an effort to dominate the Shia-Alawi religious faction presently upheld by the leadership of Syria and Iran, but also to secure their places as regional powers.

Domestic affairs in Syria are of little consequence to the powers trying to topple the nation; the real priority is to further isolate Iran by eliminating its Shia-Alawi ally in Damascus. Israel reaps enormous benefit from toppling the Assad regime, as the Syrian Nation Council pledges to cut ties with Iran and discontinue arms shipments to Hezbollah and Hamas. If Syria falls and Iran is directly threatened, the potential for a regional conflict of the utmost seriousness exists, assuming China and Russia move in to defend Iran. Such a conflict would create detrimental implications for the global economy, potentially triggering a hyper-inflationary financial crisis. William Hague and billionaire financiers behind the civil society groups bestowing legitimacy to violent opposition actors are not the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Although the reforms have been slow, the Assad government is in the midst of drafting a new constitution. Syria’s sovereignty has come under direct fire from powers claiming to be defending Syria’s people. An attempt on the life of Bashar al-Assad may have similar consequences to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As the Syrian National Council familiarly calls for the implementation of a no-fly zone over, those members of the International Community with any integrity left must work diligently to diffuse conflict in the region.

Source: Activist Post
By: Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s Insouciance Has No Rival

Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he an idiot?

According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise “a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way. Afterwards, Obama declared that Washington would “continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of realizing the aspirations and rights of all people.”  Think about that for a minute………..

Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination.

One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, a country with destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into cinders is the proper way to show concern for human rights.

Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.

In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones bring human rights to the people.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prison sites are other places to which Washington brings human rights. Obama, who has the power to murder American citizens without due process of law, is too powerless to close Guantanamo Prison.
He is powerless to prevent himself from supplying Israel with weapons with which to murder Palestinians and Lebanese citizens to whom Obama brings human rights by vetoing every UN resolution passed against Israel for its crimes against humanity.

Instead of following Washington’s human rights lead, the evil Chinese invest in other countries, buy things from them, and sell them goods.

Has any foreign dignitary ever raised “a sensitive human rights issue” with Obama or his predecessor? How is the world so deranged that Washington can murder innocents for years on end and still profess to be the world’s defender of human rights?

How many people has China bombed, droned, and sanctioned into non-existence in the 21st century?

Will Syria and Iran be the next victims of Washington’s concern for human rights?

Nothing better illustrates the total unreality of life in the West than the fact that the entire Western world did not break out in riotous laughter over Obama’s expression of his human rights concern over China’s behavior.

Washington’s concern with human rights does not extend as far as airport security where little girls and grandmothers are sexually groped. Antiwar activists have their homes invaded, their personal possessions carried off, and a grand jury is summoned to frame them up on some terrorist charge. US soldier Bradley Manning is held for two years in violation of the US Constitution while the human rights government concocts fabricated charges to punish him for revealing a US war crime. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is harassed endlessly with the goal of bringing him into the human rights clutches of Washington. Critics of Washington’s inhumane policies are monitored and spied upon.

Washington is the worst violator of human rights in our era, and Washington has only begun.

Who will liberate Americans from Washington’s clutches?

Four Week Later: LAPD = no news, no suspects, NO CLUE…
(see Part 1 of this story here) 

It was the most conspicuous head disposal in living memory.

It’s been four weeks since a decapitated human head was found beside a well-traveled hiking trail leading to the iconic Hollywood Sign. The head was in a plastic bag underneath a bush, virtually right next door to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Hollywood Hills home.

It was there for no more than a few hours, investigators believe, before a golden retriever belonging to a top Hollywood publicist nosed it out and plopped it down for all to see.

It was a moment many have dreaded, when the vicious drug war raging in Mexico finally spilled over into Anytown USA.  Being just a hundred or so miles north of the country that’s the world capital of severed heads was enough to make some think of names—Los Zetas, the Sinaloa Cartel— that Americans have so far only had to read about in newspapers.

But the moment passed without notice. The police agency in charge of the case, the LAPD, went all out to discourage speculation that the head was the grisly work of a Mexican drug cartel.
Head had ‘no idea’ it might be discovered

On the four week anniversary of the discovery, authorities have nothing to report on efforts to solve the crime. A phone call to the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division revealed only that “the investigation is ongoing.”

A detective who identified himself as being assigned to the case answered a question about the frequency of decapitation in Southern California by saying he had “no clue” how many decapitations Southern California experiences annually.

Has beheading become an indigenous phenomenon in L.A. just since I left?

Still, however rare it may be, it was completely safe to say that the head was no — repeat not — a message left in the heart of America’s dream factory by any Mexican drug cartel..

The reason, according to LAPD Commander Andrew Smith, was simple. “The head was never meant to be found.”
Severed Head Disposal 101

“The remains may have been disturbed by animals at some point” Smith stated. “But we believe that everything was hidden off the trail. Whoever put it there did not want it to be found.”

If true, it instantly became the most inept severed head disposal in recent history. Disposing of a decapitated human head by leaving it next door to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s house is clearly not a winning criminal strategy.

People sell maps to the stars on almost every corner leading into the Hollywood Hills. Picking a neighborhood less flush with A-list movie stars would have been the way to go.

Moreover Pitt already had a history with severed heads, Entertainment Tonight reported breathlessly, going back to when he starred in the movie Se7en.
Maya Rudolph & the Hollywood Head

Finally, if it is even remotely possible for the first dog to stumble onto where-ever you’ve decided to drop the head will belong to a top Hollywood publicist… you’re asking for trouble.

The dog that found the head, Ollie, a golden retriever, belonged to a good friend of SNL and Bridesmaid’s star Maya Rudolph, who told her story on Conan.

When Ollie dragged a plastic bag with the head of Hervey Medellin out from under a bush, it signaled more than just a dashed bit of bad luck. It was beyond incompetent.

However, if on the other hand, you wanted the head to be found,  the placement was brilliant. The celebrity connection quickly turned the story into a three-ring media circus.

But, LAPD Commander Andrew Smith emphasized to reporters, that’s not what happened. “Whoever put it there did not want it to be found.”

“Without identifying the victim, and without identifying who he was associated with, it could be anything,” Smith stated.

“There is no indication that this was a serial case; there’s no indication that there’s more than one victim here.  What we have, by all appearances, is a single victim.”
A freshly-carved head, visible to all

Was the severed head just a case of a criminal scratching his head at his hide-out, wishing, in retrospect, he’d buried the head somewhere where it would have been less noticeable?

Probably not. For starters, LAPD Commander Andrew Smith’s statement was contradicted by an LAPD officer who was physically present at the crime scene on the night of the discovery.

The remains had not been there long enough to have been disturbed by animals.

“The head appears to be rather new,” stated LAPD Sgt Mitzi Fierro, as the coroner prepared to remove the head later that night.  “There aren’t any signs of decomposition yet.”

More importantly, there had been no attempt to conceal the crime.  The head was clearly visible from the hiking trail.

“It was not far off the trail,” Fierro told reporters.  “It was visible to passers-by. They were able to see it without walking off the trail.”
“Its not that kind of severed head”

It is safe to say this was one of the more conspicuous head disposals in recent memory.  The head couldn’t have more publicity if it had bounced out of an open trunk into the fast lane of the Hollywood Freeway at rush hour.

It was all over the news.

The LAPD sent a spokesman to shape the wild imaginings of an unruly crowd of reporters from the international media.  But he did it by saying things which were not—in point of fact—true.

Still, it worked. No one questioned him closely. No one demanded proof. Police had no motive, and no suspects, didn’t know where Medellin had been the last three weeks of his life,  nor where he was murdered.

But what he did know, with an apparent rock-solid conviction, was that the head was never meant to be found.

 Getting ready for the real drug war

Mexican Drug Cartels regularly use the placement of severed heads to make statements. And leaving a decapitated human head next door Angelina Jolie’s house is certainly one way of making a statement.

Even Nancy Grace could see that.

“It appears to many crime scene analysts, including myself,” she said on her show on Headline News, “that  its as if the perpetrator wanted the severed human head to be found. It was not left in a dumpster to be sent to be crushed and put into a landfill. It was not in some remote area. It was right there on a hiking trail.”

“You’re right,” replied a correspondent from the scene.

“There are people around here all the time, hiking walking sight-seeing. Almost every day someone says to me, “how do I get to the Hollywood Sign?”

“It seems this person had nothing to fear, and nothing to hide.”

Well said.

The severed head was intentionally-visible, and placed at a spot almost guaranteed to provide maximum media exposure. Right out in the open in the middle of the day and in front of everybody… somebody sent a message to somebody else.

And this is how something big—the intrusion of Mexican drug cartels—was concealed in a news story that received saturation coverage around the globe for three days in a row.

Was Judge Andrew Napolitano cutting to close to the bone for the establishment?

The Fox Business Channel has cancelled one of the only shows on the entire Fox News network that was in any way informative or watchable - Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano.

In a press release distributed late Thursday, the channel announced that its entire prime-time programming lineup had been changed, with re-runs of already existing programs replacing Freedom Watch.

Napolitano’s show had been airing for a year, in which time he had consistently covered major issues that other news programs would only gloss over, if they devoted any coverage to them at all.

Napolitano’s coverage of the freedom stripping National Defense Authorization Act for one was second to none as far as mainstream news output was concerned. His legal and constitutional expertise on such matters is also unrivalled.

His focus on Austrian economics and Libertarian social policy provided a much welcome alternative to the endless left/right bickering constantly played out on programming from the likes of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX News itself.

Napolitano regularly defended the free market and lambasted the actions of the Federal Reserve, holding it accountable daily for the economic crisis that the US finds itself mired in. Congressman Ron Paul was a regular guest on the show, with a host of other informative analysts who were not merely about peddling the establishment party line or representing special interests.

It is for these very reasons that many fans of the show suspect Napolitano has been axed by the corporate machine.

Regarding Napolitano’s future, Fox Business stated that the judge will be “continuing to make significant contributions to both FOX Business and FOX News” and would “be showcased throughout future programming on both networks”

“Currently one of the leading judicial analysts on television, Judge Napolitano will continue his role on both FOX Business and FOX News, providing key legal insights surrounding the growing intersection between Washington and Wall Street.” the statement read.

Linking to the press release on his Facebook page, Napolitano wrote “sad news friends, but don’t worry I’ll still be here defending liberty.”

Libertarian activist Lew Rockwell is spearheading a campaign to have Freedom Watch reinstated, writing on his website yesterday:

“If you are as outraged as I am at the cancellation of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch,” here is something you can do.”

Please contact Fox Business to ask them to reverse their decision.

Irena Briganti,
Senior Vice President Media Relations
Phone: 212-301-3608
Fax: 212-819-0816
E-Mail: irena.briganti@foxnews.com

“Be respectful but be sure to convey your outrage at this matter, and state that you and many others will boycott the network if the show is taken off the air.” Rockwell added.

The British Daily Mail published a stunning admission by “US officials” that Israel is indeed funding, training, arming, and working directly with US State Department listed terrorist organization, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK).The Daily Mail article states, “U.S. officials confirmed today that Israel has been funding and training Iranian dissidents to assassinate nuclear scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program.” The article continues by claiming, “Washington insiders confirmed there is a close relationship between Mossad and MEK, according to NBC, but said the U.S. was not involved.”

Of course, this is an overt lie, exposed by 3-4 years of documented collaboration between the United States and MEK, including an extensive conspiracy formulated within US policy think-tank Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, proposing to fully arm, train, and back MEK as it waged a campaign of armed terror against the Iranian people.

In their report, they openly conspire to use what is an admitted terrorist organization as a “US proxy” (emphasis added):

Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. - page 117-118 of”Which Path to Persia?“ Brookings Institution, 2009

It was also revealed in Seymour Hersh’s 2008 New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield,” that not only had MEK been considered for their role as a possible proxy, but that the US had already begun arming and financing them to wage war inside Iran:

The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. ‘The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.’ He added, ‘The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.’

Seymore Hersh in an NPR interview, also claims that select MEK members have already received training in the US.

It was also revealed that US forces in Iraq had provided MEK’s main camp with security, and with the recent “withdrawal” of US troops from Iraq, the US State Department and even the UN have been scrambling to find a new safe haven for the US listed terrorist organization. Even more unimaginable is the fact that many of the foremost fearmongers and proponents of the “War on Terror” are engaged in desperate lobbying efforts to get MEK delisted by the US State Department. In October of 2011, a full page ad was taken out in the Washington Post on MEK’s behalf.

Image: Full-page treason — US politicians, many the most prominent proponents of the “War on Terror,” appeal to the President of the United States to delist MEK as a terrorist organization. While hand-wringing humanitarian concerns are cited, what the ad fails to mention is that MEK has long been sought after to serve as an armed US-proxy to be turned on Iran and carry out a campaign of terror, as stated clearly in the Brookings Institution “Which Path to Persia?” report. (click image to enlarge)

Among those signing the statement made in the ad were John Bolton, Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, Ed Rendell, and Tom Ridge. When reading the statement, it must be kept in mind that the Brookings Institution already confirmed that MEK was a terrorist organization and that it had verifiably killed US military personal and civilians. It must also be kept in mind that Brookings admitted that MEK’s targets in Iran included political and civilian targets. With MEK’s specialty being among other things, assassinations, they already were the most likely suspects behind the recent spate of targeted killings of Iranian scientists. Now, Daily Mail and US officials have confirmed MEK’s role, however oafishly they try to cover-up obvious US involvement.

And while Israel’s current regime is most definitely assisting MEK logistically, financially, tactically, and rhetorically, working in tandem to achieve Western hegemony across the Middle East, MEK’s existence and sustenance is derived as much so, if not almost entirely from Wall Street and London, with Israel serving merely as a regional conduit and beachhead with its regime a complicit cog of globalist ambitions. “US officials” deceitfully attempting to pawn off full responsibility onto Israel signals a new level of dangerous deception and subterfuge few are prepared to understand — but again, clues of this can be found within US policy papers frankly admitting the advantages ofusing Israel as a convenient scapegoat for what is a Wall Street/London agenda propagated through their contrived “international institutions” of “global governance.”

Contrived Strategy of Tension

Indeed, Israel has long been portrayed as the “puppet master” of a vast “Zionist” conspiracy; however, it is quite clear they have been made overtly “evil” to take the blame for what is essentially a global-elite agenda based out of Wall Street and London — two cities that Israel’s current regime would not exist without the support of. For the people residing under the current Israeli regime, it would be beneficial for them to realize that they are being thrown under the bus by both their alleged allies and their own government and will be made the full scapegoats of increasing hostilities targeting both Syria and Iran to insulate and preserve the mechanics of an emerging global government they have helped carve out.

The intention is to create a religious-centric strategy of tension to obfuscate both the true aims and perpetrators of this global agenda in hopes of getting Jews, Muslims, Christians and others to divide along predictable lines against each other, globally, rather than recognize and target the elite that lord over them domestically and internationally.

It is essential to understand the criminality being perpetrated against sovereign nation-states throughout the Arab World, Iran, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and beyond; to identify the corporate-financier power structures driving it, and devise a method to undermine their source of power, and replace it entirely with local pragmatic solutions. We shouldn’t take the bait of a deceitful strategy of tension preying on long-held, petty social and political predispositions. While such predispositions may lead to the destruction of Israel and many of its people, it will ultimately fail in stopping the global elite that created the modern state of Israel in the first place. In fact, such petty myopically pursued predispositions will almost certainly insulate those truly responsible, and allow them and their “international institutions” to continue on with their agenda.

After already working together for years, CIA-created terrorist organizations al-Qaeda and al-Shabab link up to strengthen forces. 

Source:  Danger Room
By:  Spencer Akerman

al-Qaida was supposed to be a spent force after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. But it may just have replenished its forces and strengthened its brand.

In one bold move, al-Qaida incorporated al-Shabab, one of the world’s most assertive extremist groups, thereby expanding its reach out of tribal Pakistan and bolstering its dwindling ranks. Expect the growing U.S. shadow war in Somalia to heat up in response — and U.S. citizens who’ve joined Shabab are likely to be first in the crosshairs.

An audiotape circulating across the Internet on Thursday from Shabab leader Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr and Ayman Zawahiri announce that “jihadi unity” has motivated the merger — the first major move for Zawahiri since inheriting al-Qaida.

It’s good news for the “jihadi agglomeration,” Zawahiri tells supporters, “in the face of the crusader Zionist campaign and its agents of rulers and traitors who allowed invading crusader forces access into their countries, entering mounted on tanks into government palaces in Kabul, Baghdad, Mogadishu and Grozny.”

Perhaps, but those “crusaders” have also been building their counterterrorism forces in east Africa for years. The U.S. is establishing three new drone bases in the region. Special Operations Forces have detained Shebab “supporters” in the waters off of Somalia and launched raids into the interior of the country to free captive humanitarian aid workers.

When elite U.S. troops have hunted al-Qaida suspects in Somalia — missions that typically go unreported for years — they’ve been able to call on serious military hardware, from Navy Destroyers to AC-130 gunships. Oh, and the CIA’s set up shop in Somalia, too.

Zawahiri and al-Zubayr surely didn’t mean it this way, but the merger will have serious and potentially lethal consequences for al-Shabab’s cohort of U.S. members, affiliates and supporters. One of its members, Omar Hammami — who doubles as the group’s lead emcee — was born in Arkansas Alabama. If a drone strike could kill the U.S. citizen and al-Qaida propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, then a formal Shabab/Qaida merger probably puts Hammami squarely on the U.S.’ kill/capture list, if he wasn’t already.

Other Americans have gotten involved with Shabab, including one who became a suicide bomber in Mogadishu last October. The Justice Department has charged a number of Americans and U.S. residents with supporting Shabab, and the federal attention is sure to increase with the al-Qaida merger.

Still, the union might be more an act of desperation than strength. Shabab’s been trying for years to show al-Qaida how much it hearts the OG jihadis, with little reciprocal love. The group’s even been driven out of Mogadishu by U.S. proxies. Australian terror analyst Leah Farrall wrote shortly after the bin Laden raid that the “the benefits of a merger at a time when al-Qaida needs to project power and influence [might] outweigh any lingering concerns about al-Shabab’s suitability.”

Which provides some context to Zawahiri’s first major decision as al-Qaida’s leader. “Shabab has been allegedly losing ground, [so the merger provides] a boost to the movement and ‘legitimacy,” says Aaron Zelin, a terrorism researcher at Brandeis University who translated the video for Danger Room, “and it gives some press to al-Qaida, a failing brand, by associating it with Shabab, which has a nice safe haven.” Except the merger might soon make that haven less safe.

Source:  CounterPunch
By:  Pam Martens

On September 25, 2011, just eight days after the Occupy Wall Street protests began in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the much acclaimed CBS News program, 60 Minutes, aired a fawning look at the thousands of surveillance cameras affixed to buildings and lampposts throughout New York City.  The cameras feed live images of people going about their everyday lives to a $150 million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the daily habits of what are, for the most part, law-abiding Americans.

The thrust of the 60 Minutes  program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by the NYPD and its Commissioner, Raymond Kelly. It was a triumph in public relations for a police department about to go on an assault spree –  pepper spraying and punching  peaceful protestors;  kicking, ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

On air, the reporter, Scott Pelley, said the surveillance center was “housed in a secret location,”  as one would expect of a real counter terrorism program — as opposed to a program to simply quash dissent.  Mr. Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD.  As it turns out, neither of those assertions were accurate.

The New York Times, the worldwide news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), Wired Magazine, the New York City Council had all previously reported the location of the supposedly super secret counter terrorism  center on their public web sites: 55 Broadway in the bowels of the financial district.  What was a secret about the operation, and not reported by 60 Minutes to its viewers, despite being well aware of the facts, is that the center is jointly staffed and operated by the NYPD along with the largest Wall Street firms – the same firms under investigation in 50 states for mortgage and foreclosure fraud and widely credited with causing the Nation’s economic collapse.  The Wall Street firms that were involuntarily  bailed out by the 99% are now policing the 99%.

In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program, Robert Anderson, he conceded that he was aware of the presence of the Wall Street firms in the center.  It would have been hard to miss them.  The facility is designed with three long rows of computer workstations.  The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupants: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorganChase, etc.

You won’t find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any U.S. corporate news outlet, but a foreign news service has them openly displayed – a news organization servicing countries of the former Soviet Union.  These photos were taken during a large gathering of reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD.  As shown in the photos, the event was hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Very secret counter terrorism operation, indeed, with global reporters and photographers coming and going in both 2010 and 2011.

As we reported in October, the surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock with 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms and other corporations, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD.  At least 700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where all film is integrated for analysis.  The $150 million of taxpayer money that’s funding this corporate/police spying operation comes from both city and Federal sources, with the cost rising daily as more technology is added.

Not only is it unprecedented for corporations under serial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowed to spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimatur of the largest police force in the country, but the legality of the operation by the NYPD itself is highly questionable.

During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time 8:50), the following exchange takes place between the reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch, the NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policy and Planning who played a significant role in developing the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. (Tisch is in her early thirties and did not come up through the ranks of counter terrorism or law enforcement. She is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch, who built the Loews Corporation.  Her father, James Tisch, is the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was elected by Wall Street banks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank of  New York until 2013,  representing the public’s interest.  Ms. Tisch is apparently standing in for the public’s interest in this surveillance operation:  rather than public hearings, Ms. Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself.)

Pelley: “Tisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on a description – a red shirt for example.”

Tisch: “And I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someone wearing a red shirt.”

Pelley: “So the computer looks essentially through all the video, finds all of the red shirts and puts it together for you.”

Tisch: “Video canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do, you’ll now be able to do with the snap of a finger.”

Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis.

Unfortunately, electronic surveillance of individuals at the snap of a finger is exactly what New York State law prohibits.  New York Code, Section 700.15,  requires a warrant for video surveillance and the warrant is only issuable “Upon probable cause to believe that a particularly  described  person  is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a particular designated offense.”  Blanket surveillance of hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens with cameras that pan, tilt and rotate to track individuals to the doorsteps of their psychiatrist, debt counselor, Alcoholics Anonymous, or prosecutor’s office – shared with corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of these same individuals, is breathtaking in its blatant disregard for privacy rights.

In a letter dated March 26, 2009 to Police Commissioner Kelly, following years of being stonewalled with its Freedom of Information Law requests for more details on the surveillance program, the New York Civil Liberties Union warned:  “…virtually all of the enormous information gathered and maintained by the system will be about people engaged in wholly lawful activity…we believe this entire enterprise is illegitimate and inappropriate…”

In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network, the NYCLU noted that “Today’s surveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes. It has super human vision.  It has the capability to zoom in and ‘read’ the pages of the book you have opened while waiting for a train in the subway.”  The report further explained that “New York City has a long and troubled history of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest and dissent.  Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on more than 200,000 individuals and groups — suspected communists, Vietnam War protesters, health and housing advocates, education reform groups, and civil rights activists.”

An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v. Jones.  All nine justices agreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by law enforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant.

Writing the decision for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia stated: “As Justice Brennan explained in his concurrence in Knotts, Katz did not erode the principle ‘that when the Government does engage in physical intrusion of a consti­tutionally protected area in order to obtain information, that intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

Writing a concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential for unconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices: “GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations. See, e.g., People v. Weaver, 12 N. Y. 3d 433, 441–442, 909 N. E. 2d 1195, 1199 (2009) (‘Disclosed in [GPS] data . . . will be trips the indisputably private na­ture of which takes little imagination to conjure: trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meet­ing, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on.’) The Government can store such records and efficiently mine them for information years into the future.”

Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City, however, do for more than GPS devices: they film the individual, their features, their companions, and show just what doorsteps they are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day; week after week; 24/7.

What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from being targeted by this surveillance juggernaut.

The electronic tracking capability described by Ms. Tisch on 60 Minutes, where an individual in the snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan, with no warrant and no more probable cause than wearing a red shirt, seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegal activities.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.  They have fileda class action lawsuit against Police Commissioner Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October 1, 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge.  Ms. Verheyden-Hilliard had this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City:

“The clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause, a central guarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority, has been eviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that make certain people and groups the ‘usual suspects’ in an environment that authorizes racial, religious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land. The NYPD is engaged in mass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged in no criminal activity, but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicion to believe they have engaged, or are engaged, in criminal activity. This is a perversion of civil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the country.”

Chris Dunn, Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU, said in response to my question concerning  the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision: “This decision opens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track the movements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny.  We have long believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative]  violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers, and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that view.”  (Mr. Dunn is also an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinic and he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal.  He has written a detailed analysis of the United States v. Jones decision in his current column.)

Mr. Dunn’s opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale, which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase.  The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled: “Public Video Surveillance: A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Liberties.”

The report singles out New York, interpreting its law as follows: “Several state statutes regulate aspects of public use of video surveillance.  In New York, for example, video surveillance can only be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an individual pursuant to a warrant.  Because of what the statute terms ‘the reasonable expectation of privacy under the constitution of this state or of the United States,’ the bar for authorizing or approving such a warrant is set quite high, and the alleged crimes must be quite serious.  Arizona, in contrast, merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video ‘surveillance’ in a public place without posting notice.”

This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop proper guidelines, no public overseers, no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks and balances.

The City Council’s  Committee on Public Safety, chaired by Peter Vallone, did tour the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16, 2011.  The minutes of the meeting on the City Council’s  public web site list only the date, time and location.  A phone call and email request to Mr. Vallone’s office to make the full minutes available to the public was met with silence.

I asked Michael Cardozo’s office, Corporation Counsel for New York City, to give me a statement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program.  Mr. Cardozo declined to be quoted but his associate, Deputy Communications Director, Connie Pankratz, said: “It is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces.  This is no different than having a police officer watch or follow someone on a public street.”

That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile.  These cameras can pan, tilt, rotate and zoom.  The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan which can simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific human features or clothing colors.  To quote Ms. Tisch on 60 Minutes: “Nobody has a system like this.”

I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011.  New York State has an inspiring sunshine law, which acknowledges that “The people’s right to know the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statistics leading to determinations is basic to our society. Access to such information should not be thwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality. The legislature therefore declares that government is the public’s business and that the public, individually and collectively and represented by a free press, should have access to the records of government in accordance with the provisions of this article…”

Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate to respond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request, both of my requests received a written response stating it would take five months to answer — five months or 30 times longer than the legislative intent.  The NYPD has 15,000 non uniformed employees available to fulfill the legislative mandate to permit participatory government.  If it wanted to honor the legislative mandate, it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department.  Until it does, it is functioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate.

In the 2010 book “Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists” by Mike Wallace and Beth Knobel, the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance center, Robert Anderson, is quoted as follows:

“Mike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth, and that’s what we are.  We are seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing, and that they probably don’t know.  And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significance, because the more significant it is, the better the story it is for us.”

There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway.  The first is that the largest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Street firms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted, no matter how big the crime. The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tapped the public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegal program.

Kevin Tedesco, Executive Director of 60 Minutes, had this to say about my concerns with the program:  “We find your inquiry somewhat puzzling.  This was a story about defending against terrorism, probably the most important issue of our times.  You have only to look at 60 Minutes’ record to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions, the most recent of which, “Prosecuting Wall Street” was broadcast on December 4.  Robert Anderson, the producer of the story on the command center, produced  “The Next Housing Shock,”  an investigation about misleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutions when it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3.  No one told us what to report or not report in those stories and neither did anyone in this one.  We appreciate the chance to respond.”

I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports.  I have previously referenced their groundbreaking  work in my writing.  Robert Anderson’s work on “The Next Housing Shock” brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes into sharp focus and admirably serves the public interest.

But rather than deflecting my criticisms, Mr. Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to the December 4 broadcast of “Prosecuting Wall Street.”  This is a story alleging systemic corruption at Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm, Richard Bowen; a man so confident of his facts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.   Mr. Bowen had his duties reassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought the corruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup.

Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employees.  No senior executives have ever been prosecuted.  Now a Citigroup representative sits alongside police in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestrians, including potential whistleblowers.  If that’s notsignificant, I don’t know what is.

Revolutionaries: The Best Way to Tear Down the System is to Build Something New

Source: Activist Post
By: Eric Blair

Due to gross injustices built into the current system, angry mobs of disenfranchised protesters are pushing most of the world to the edge of global revolution.  It’s wonderful to see people find solidarity in opposing the destructive nature of the system.

However, the idea that the public will ever force the entrenched corporate-states around the world to bend to their will because they’re on the streets is very unlikely.  Even if the protests become violent riots like in Greece, the controllers will not release their clutches.  In fact, history says they’ll only tighten them.

Additionally, those seeking systematic solutions all seem well-intentioned and deserve credit for offering ideas.  But the more we understand that the system’s creators and beneficiaries don’t want it to change, the more we realize that even apparent solutions will never take place unless they’re co-opted to fit the needs of the controllers.  Therefore, so-called collective solutions forced by the current system of control are not likely to benefit the general public even if it appears that more crumbs are offered to the peasants.

There seems to be an awful lot of energy being spent fighting against the system, which is akin to swimming upstream.

We’re getting nowhere fast and it’s zapping our energy, as it seems intended to do.  We mustn’t concern ourselves with what other people are doing. Their behavior is and always will be out of our control.  Attempting to control people’s behavior is at the heart of what’s wrong with the current system; therefore, why would we think that imposing our flavor of control would taste any better?  It won’t.
What if each of us focused our energy on figuratively building our own rafts to float against the current?  What if each raft represented a productive individual solution?  And what would happen if each disenfranchised protester stopped demanding something, and, instead, simply started creating the change?

I’m not talking about solutions like drafting a petition or a certain piece of legislation and collecting signatures to influence government. That is the perfect example of swimming upstream.  Even if successful, it will just use the guns of government to force your ideas on the public, which will never work no matter how noble your collective solution may seem.

I’m talking about taking a systematic problem that you’re most passionate about, identifying a change you can make in your personal life to limit your contribution to the problem, while also finding a tangible alternative to fully support.  Ideally, this tangible alternative would be market-based to allow you to make a living while being the change you wish to see in the world.

For example, if you’re passionate about clean energy as part of the solution, don’t waste time railing against dirty energy.  Focus on what you can do in your own life. Limit your use of dirty energy, install solar panels on your house, start an alternative energy blog or business, organize an energy cooperative for your community to become cleaner and more self-sufficient, or all of the above.

If enough people took to this initiative on their own terms, the diversity of action would destroy the current energy paradigm much faster than holding a sign and screaming about nuclear energy, oil cartels, or safer working conditions for coal miners.

Or, if you oppose corporate farming and factory food production, don’t just spend all of your time informing people as to the evils of such a system — also live the change and help others to do so.  Produce your own food and share with your local collective, or simply buy directly from your local farmers.  Teach courses in organic foods or better farming techniques.  Raise funds or produce management or marketing tools for local organic farmers. In other words, harness all of the energy you can muster into productive personal goals, and the solutions will blossom around you.

As such, if each of us removes the fuel that we contribute to the inferno, its flame would burn out.  While at the same time, we’ll find fulfillment in living out our passions for the material betterment of ourselves and the collective benefit of society.

If each of us does something we believe in and are passionate about, no amount of force can stop the entropy of the change.  There won’t be one message that can be co-opted, or one law that can be written to stop its advance, or one group of protesters that can be minimized. The weight of collective energy of individuals creating something new in a multitude of arenas will cause the old abusive system to cave in on itself.  No hate-filled slogans necessary. No demolition needed.  No violence required.

It’s time to be the change.