Oath Keepers Pledge to Prevent Dictatorship

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

READY TO REVOLT: Oath Keepers pledges to prevent dictatorship in United States

Group asks police and military to lay down arms in response to orders deemed unlawful

By ALAN MAIMON
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Depending on your perspective, the Oath Keepers are either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia. [Yes, depending on if you are lucid and have been paying attention or if you are a died-in-the-wool leftist who thinks the government is a giant Santa Claus and all we need to do to be good little girls and boys is to turn the power over our own lives over to the government.]

In the age of town halls, talk radio and tea parties, middle ground of opinion is hard to find.

Launched in March by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.

More specifically, the group's members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming "giant concentration camps," a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.

It's a Cold War-era nightmare vision with a major twist: The occupying forces in this imagined future are American, not Soviet.

"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here," Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.

"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution, we'll fight with you."

That type of rhetoric has caught the attention of groups that track extremist activity in the United States. [Who are the extremists, jackass?]

In a July report titled "Return of the Militias," the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center singled out Oath Keepers as "a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival."

The Patriot movement, so named because its adherents believe [i.e. know] the federal government has stepped on the constitutional ideals of the American Revolution, gained traction in the 1990s and has been closely linked to anti-government militia and white supremacist movements. [Umm, no it hasn't.]

The movement is blamed for spawning Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. [Nonsense.]

"I'm not accusing Stewart Rhodes or any member of his group of being Timothy McVeigh or a future Timothy McVeigh," law center spokesman Mark Potok said. "But these kinds of conspiracy theories are what drive a small number of people to criminal violence. ... What's troubling about Oath Keepers is the idea that men and women armed and ordered to protect the public in this country are clearly being drawn into a world of false conspiracy theory." [Are Goldman Sachs stealing hundreds of billions from taxpayers and Obama nationalizing GM a figment of our imaginations, among other abuses of power?]

Oath Keepers got some unwanted attention in April when an Oklahoma man loosely connected to the group was arrested for threatening violence at an anti-tax protest in Oklahoma City. Rhodes called the man "a nut" who had no real affiliation with his group. [This is irrelevant.]

Nonetheless, Potok's group now monitors Oath Keepers on its Web site blog "Hatewatch." [Yes, patriots do hate totalitarian leftists. What about it?]

Oath Keepers is not preaching violence or government overthrow, Rhodes said. On the contrary, it is asking police and the military to lay down their arms in response to unlawful orders. [This kind of deflates your narrative doesn't it?]

The group's Web site, www.oathkeepers.org, features videos and testimonials in which supporters compare President Barack Obama's America to Adolf Hitler's Germany. They also liken Obama to England's King George III during the American Revolution. [This is ridiculous! King George III was a piker compared to Obama.]

One member, in a videotaped speech at an event in Washington, D.C., calls Obama "the domestic enemy the Constitution is talking about." [Precisely right.]

According to the law center, militia groups are re-emerging in this country partly as a result of racial animosity toward Obama.

It's the "cross-pollinating" of extremist groups -- some racist, some not -- that is of concern, Potok said. As evidence that the danger is real, he points to several recent murders committed by men with anti-government or racist views. [Go to hell with your cross-pollination theory. This is Oath Keepers not "Bee Keepers."]

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reached a similar conclusion in a report earlier this year about the rise of right-wing extremism. The report said the nation's economic downturn and Obama's race are "unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment." [Yes, that DHS report is a paragon of clear thinking and realistic assessment.]

The homeland security report added that "disgruntled military veterans" might be vulnerable to recruitment by right-wing extremist groups. [Infamously, I might add.]

That warning was enough to make Rhodes feel paranoid.

"They're accusing anybody who opposes Obama of being a racist or a potential terrorist," he said. "What they're saying is, 'We're coming after you.'" [You're not paranoid if you are literate and can read the report. There are also a number of unconstitutional Congressional bills that deflate the "paranoia" smear as well.]

The motto of Oath Keepers: "Not on our watch!"

The message Rhodes hears from the government: We're watching you. [So what?]

Las Vegas police Lt. Kevin McMahill said his department's homeland security bureau isn't overly concerned with Oath Keepers at this point, even though Rhodes says several active-duty Las Vegas officers are members of the group.

"I wouldn't classify Oath Keepers as no threat at all, but I wouldn't classify them as a threat either," McMahill said. "There's always a chance an individual can step outside the boundaries of what an organization stands for and do something wrong."

Rhodes, a former firearms instructor, said he easily could have started Oath Keepers during the Bush administration, but his focus during those years was first on getting his law degree and then volunteering on the 2008 presidential campaign of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican in whose office Rhodes worked during the 1990s.

What Rhodes terms "the rise of executive privilege" during the post-9/11 years of the Bush presidency will in his opinion only accelerate with Obama in office. What's worse, he said, is that "gun-hating extremists" now control the White House. [A cogent argument, unlike that of the journalist writing this hit piece.]

Two things have happened since the Homeland Security Department and Southern Poverty Law Center released their reports on extremism: Membership of Oath Keepers has spiked dramatically. And Rhodes has had to do a lot of explaining.

"We're not a militia," he said. "And we're not part and parcel of the white supremacist movement. I loathe white supremacists." [Thanks for burying this statement.]

Oath Keepers doesn't offer paramilitary training; nor does it have a military command structure. It instead has board members, which include directors in seven states and outreach coordinators to currently serving local and federal law enforcement and military personnel. The group's state director in Montana, who goes by the name Elias Alias, has said Montana and other states should consider seceding from the United States in protest of the federal government's conduct.

Leaders of the group will come together in Las Vegas starting Oct. 24 for the inaugural national conference of Oath Keepers.

Among the group's other leaders is Dave Freeman, an Army veteran and former Las Vegas police sergeant who spent more than 30 years with the Metropolitan Police Department.

For Freeman, Oath Keepers has become something of a family affair. He recruited his niece, a former police chief, to serve as state director for Oath Keepers in Massachusetts.

"When you believe in something, you have to do more than just pay it lip service," said Freeman, the group's Southern Nevada director and national peace officer liaison. "This is a crusade I believe in."

Another prominent Oath Keeper is former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who has long been an outspoken government critic.

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Mack a "longtime militia hero" who helped weaken gun control laws.

An incident earlier this year in rural Iowa, not inside the Washington Beltway, motivated Rhodes to start Oath Keepers.

He questioned why the Iowa National Guard planned to use residents of a small town to participate in training on door-to-door searches for weapons.

The Guard said the training was to help soldiers who might be asked to carry out similar searches in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But for Rhodes, it looked like preparation for a future declaration of martial law. It reminded him of the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when police officers reportedly confiscated legally owned firearms. [Why don't you do some investigative work you lazy-ass "journalist" and find out?] What the government called emergency response after the levees broke, Rhodes saw as the imposition of martial law.

If it hadn't been for April 19 of this year, Oath Keepers might not have gained the notoriety it now has.

On the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington Green, the Massachusetts battle that started the American Revolution in 1775, a group of Oath Keepers went to the battle site and reaffirmed their pledge to the Constitution.

The gathering was mentioned in the Southern Poverty Law Center report because April 19 is also the anniversary of the deadly end to the federal siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993; and of the retaliatory bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.

Rhodes and Potok have never talked, but if they did, they might find themselves speaking a different language.

"Let them say what they want to say, but April 19 has very much become a day for the extreme radical right," Potok said. [This is an absolutely stupid smear.]

Rhodes couldn't disagree more.

"There are thousands of Americans who go to Lexington to watch re-enactments of people shooting at troops," Rhodes said. "But if you're a group of military and police there, they somehow find this offensive."

Rhodes said he hopes Oath Keepers members think about the lawfulness of day-to-day orders they receive.

For example, if a police officer feels he is being asked to do an illegal search of a home or vehicle, he should stand down.

Rhodes eventually wants to create a legal defense fund for Oath Keepers who are disciplined by their employers for defying orders they deem unlawful or immoral.

"The message to law enforcement is not to become a tool of oppression," he said.

Rhodes, a husband and father of five home-schooled children, said he gets hundreds of e-mails a day, mostly from people interested in knowing more about his group.

He also gets a lot of questions from "birthers" wanting to know if he thinks Obama is really an American citizen and from "truthers" asking whether he believes the attacks of 9/11 were an inside job. The group doesn't have an official position on either issue, he said. [Another implicit smear. I get a lot of questions on what I had for breakfast, but I don't have an official position on Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.]

Some of his responses to questions have turned would-be allies against him.

"I've been accused of being a traitor or a CIA operative because I'm not coming out and declaring that the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine is a biological weapon," he said.

Finland Wants to Have its Internet and Eat It Too

Life, liberty and the right to broadband access?
If Thomas Jefferson and our enlightened forefathers were here today, perhaps our unalienable rights would mimic Finland's, which will now include the right to broadband access. According to Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communication, 1-megabit Web access will become a legal right for all citizens in July.
France is one of the few countries that has made it a human right but Finland said it's the first country to make it a legal right.

This moronic bit of news looks surreal. What's next - the right to a five-story mansion in the Bahamas? The right to the pursuit of foolishness? Apparently they don't know that there ain't no such thing as free Internet. 

Russia Hosts Commie Sleepover for Chinese

Russia’s Leaders See China as Template for Ruling
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party.

Or at least, the one that reigns next door.

Like an envious underachiever, Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia, is increasingly examining how it can emulate the Chinese Communist Party, especially its skill in shepherding China through the financial crisis relatively unbowed.

United Russia’s leaders even convened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese Communist Party officials to hear firsthand how they wield power.

In truth, the Russians express no desire to return to Communism as a far-reaching Marxist-Leninist ideology, whether the Soviet version or the much attenuated one in Beijing. What they admire, it seems, is the Chinese ability to use a one-party system to keep tight control over the country while still driving significant economic growth.

It is a historical turnabout that resonates, given that the Chinese Communists were inspired by the Soviets, before the two sides had a lengthy rift.

For the Russians, what matters is the countries’ divergent paths in recent decades. They are acutely aware that even as Russia has endured many dark days in its transition to a market economy, China appears to have carried out a fairly similar shift more artfully.

The Russians also seem almost ashamed that their economy is highly dependent on oil, gas and other natural resources, as if Russia were a third world nation, while China excels at manufacturing products sought by the world.

“The accomplishments of China’s Communist Party in developing its government deserve the highest marks,” Aleksandr D. Zhukov, a deputy prime minister and senior Putin aide, declared at the meeting with Chinese officials on Oct. 9 in the border city of Suifenhe, China, northwest of Vladivostok. “The practical experience they have should be intensely studied.”

Mr. Zhukov invited President Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, to United Russia’s convention, in November in St. Petersburg.

The meeting in Suifenhe capped several months of increased contacts between the political parties. In the spring, a high-level United Russia delegation visited Beijing for several days of talks, and United Russia announced that it would open an office in Beijing for its research arm.

The fascination with the Chinese Communist Party underscores United Russia’s lack of a core philosophy. The party has functioned largely as an arm of Mr. Putin’s authority, even campaigning on the slogan “Putin’s Plan.” Lately, it has championed “Russian Conservatism,” without detailing what exactly that is.

Indeed, whether United Russia’s effort to learn from the Chinese Communist Party is anything more than an intellectual exercise is an open question.

Whatever the motivation, Russia in recent years has started moving toward the Chinese model politically and economically. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia plunged into capitalism haphazardly, selling off many industries and loosening regulation. Under Mr. Putin, the government has reversed course, seizing more control over many sectors.

Today, both countries govern with a potent centralized authority, overseeing economies with a mix of private and state industries, although the Russians have long seemed less disciplined in doing so.

Corruption is worse in Russia than China, according to global indexes, and foreign companies generally consider Russia’s investment climate less hospitable as well, in part because of less respect for property rights.

Russia has also been unable to match China in modernizing roads, airports, power plants and other infrastructure. And Russia is grappling with myriad health and social problems that have reduced the average life expectancy for men to 60. One consequence is a demographic crisis that is expected to drag down growth.

The world financial crisis accentuated comparisons between the economies, drawing attention to Moscow’s policies. In June, the World Bank projected that China’s economy would grow by 7.2 percent in 2009, while Russia’s would shrink by 7.9 percent.

Politically, Russia remains more open than China, with independent (though often co-opted) opposition parties and more freedom of speech. The most obvious contrast involves the Internet, which is censored in China but not in Russia.

Even so, Mr. Putin’s political aides have long studied how to move the political system to the kind that took root for many decades in countries like Japan and Mexico, with a de facto one-party government under a democratic guise, political analysts said. The Russians tend to gloss over the fact that in many of those countries, long-serving ruling parties have fallen.

The Kremlin’s strategy was apparent in regional elections last week, when United Russia lieutenants and government officials used strong-arm tactics to squeeze out opposition parties, according to nonpartisan monitoring organizations. United Russia won the vast majority of contests across the country.

Far behind was the Russian Communist Party, which styles itself as the successor to the Soviet one and has some popularity among older people. The Russian Communists have also sought to build ties to their Chinese brethren, but the Chinese leadership prefers to deal with Mr. Putin’s party.

The regional elections highlighted how the Russian government and United Russia have become ever more intertwined. State-run television channels offer highly favorable coverage of the party, and the courts rarely if ever rule against it. United Russia leaders openly acknowledged that they wanted to study how the Chinese maintained the correct balance between the party and government.

“We are interested in the experience of the party and government structures in China, where cooperation exists between the ruling party and the judicial, legislative and executive authorities,” Vladimir E. Matkhanov, a deputy in Russia’s Parliament, said at the Suifenhe meeting, according to a transcript.

United Russia praises the Chinese system without mentioning its repressive aspects. And the party’s stance also appears to clash with repeated declarations by Mr. Putin, the former president and current prime minister, and President Dmitri A. Medvedev that Russia needs a robust multiparty system to thrive.

The two endorsed the results of Sunday’s local elections, despite widespread reports of fraud, prompting opposition politicians to call their words hollow.

Sergei S. Mitrokhin, leader of Yabloko, a liberal, pro-Western party that was trounced, said the elections revealed the Kremlin’s true aspirations. And the China talks made them all the more clear, Mr. Mitrokhin said.

“To me, the China meeting demonstrated that United Russia wants to establish a single-party dictatorship in Russia, for all time,” he said.

Throughout recent centuries, Russia has flirted with both the West and East, its identity never quite settled, and analysts said that under Mr. Putin, the political leadership had grown scornful of the idea that the country had to embrace Western notions of democracy or governing.

That in part stems from the backlash stirred in the 1990s, after the Soviet fall, when Russia faced economic hardship and political chaos, which many Putin supporters say the West helped to cause.

Dmitri Kosyrev, a political commentator for Russia’s state news agency and author of detective novels set in Asia, said it was only natural that the Kremlin would cast its gaze to the East.

“When they discovered that there was a way to reform a formally socialist nation into something much better and more efficient, of course they would take note,” Mr. Kosyrev said. “Everyone here sees China as the model, because Russia is not the model.” [End]

Actually, this article is not all that provocative. But it is interesting from the standpoint of what message the New York Times is trying to project by "reporting" it.

US Gets a Marxist-Leninist President, Georgia Gets a Misean-Rothbardian One

Here's an Englih translation of Saakashvili's recent libertarian speech. Below is the most striking quote:

But when we are speaking about economic liberalism, this is something different - we do not refer to other cultures to implement economic liberalism in our country. Of course the ideology of economic liberalism comes from Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard, Hayek and von Mises, but for me an aspirator of this all is a great Georgian think-tank and one of the founders of our Georgian statehood Ilia Chavchavadze.

(unfortunately the names were misspelled - they hired a bad translator)

Bukovsky: Russia's Thomas Jefferson

Vladimir Bukovsky is perhaps the most sound, astute and libertarian of all Soviet dissidents. Compared to him, Sakharov was a relatively superficial pinko, and Solzhenitsyn was an ignorant nationalist.
In the 1960s to 1970s Bukovsky was sent to prisons and psychiatric asylums for his anti-Soviet activities. In 1976 he was exiled to the West in exchange for Pinochet’s permission to send Chilean commie thug Luis Corvalan to the USSR. He currently lives in the UK.
Unlike many other dissidents, Bukovsky was rational enough to understand that the detente was merely the Soviet Union’s attempt to expand its influence by disarming the West. He also understood that Gorbachev’s perestroika was yet another attempt to fool the West. Gorby's aim was to preserve the totalitarian empire through moderate concessions and maintain Soviet influence in the world, not to achieve any kind of freedom (the correct alternative to the perestroika would be a complete dismatlement of the Soviet regime). Thankfully, his plans got out of control.
When Yeltsin banned the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Bukovsky was invited as an expert for a commission that proved that the ban was constitutional. As a result, Bukovsky was allowed access to some communist party archives. He managed to scan them and subsequently publish them online. Most of the archives still remain secret, and those published by Bukovsky are the only ones publicly available.
Bukovsky was also one of the first to notice the failure of Russia’s post-Soviet reforms. The foundations of the Putin dictatorship were laid long before Putin came to power. Russia’s 1990s economic reforms, far from being radically “conservative” (as some ignorant people maintain), were actually not free-market enough. The entire monolith of the Soviet economy was subjected only to cosmetic changes, with most parasitic institutions continuing their existence well into the post-Soviet period. Moreover, no rule of law was established, and the constitution gave tremendous powers to the president (which was finally used by Putin).
In 2007 Bukovsky attempted to run for president. He understood quite clearly that Kremlin thugs would not even register him (let alone allow him to win even a tiny fraction of the vote), but intended the campaign as an emotional boost for the most sound elements of the Russian opposition (I attended a rally that nominated him for president, by the way). His campaign slogan was (if a translation of the meaning, not a literal translation, is used) “elect a rebel instead of Putin”, which fits in pretty well with my penchant for the rebels in the wars for American and Southern independence. Pretexts used for rejecting Bukovsky’s candidacy were as ridiculous as you can get – they said his Cambridge degree did not qualify as “higher education” required for a presidential candidate (of course, a degree given by some Russian backwater shithole qualifies well enough), and they also used some technical absurdity related to his citizenship status.
Bukovsky is closely connected with the libertarian community. He recently delivered a lecture on the Soviet economy at the Cato Institute’s Russian division. Unlike many other dissidents, he understands clearly the way the Soviet economy worked and why it failed.
Books authored by Bukovsky include To Build the Castle: My Life as a Dissenter (the English electronic version is available online for free), USSR: From Utopia to Disaster (available in English) and EUSSR: The Soviet Roots of European Integration (available in English, a comparison of European socialism with the USSR).
Below are some quotes from Bukovsky's Judgment in Moscow (Moskovsky Protsess, published both in Russian and English) that I translated:

On the human rights movement’s transformation from the libertarian struggle for the rights of the oppressed into a leftist bureaucratic behemoth that “killed” the entire human rights issue by promoting fake neutrality (hence the roots of modern Guantanamo-bashing and concern for the well-being of Arab terrorists). The leftists refused to cooperate with “hardline” Soviet dissidents:

Meanwhile, Western “human rights” watchdogs, which had played such a major role in our (anti-Soviet-ed.) campaign, were gradually taken over by the local leftist establishment, which started dabbling in human rights, mostly (human rights violations-ed.) in non-socialist countries, in order to pose as objective. A “human rights” bureaucracy emerged and became off limits for us (for hardline Soviet dissidents-ed.) because of our “non-objectivity.”
It became impossible to criticize the Soviet Union without heaping ten times as much criticism on (pro-Western-ed.) South Africa, (free-market-oriented-ed.) Chile or Iran. And some newspaper like the Helsinki Watch would then publish on good paper – and with handsome wages being paid – a report on human rights violations in the world: three violations in the USSR and eleven in the US. One wonders where such “human rights activists” came from. The establishment adapted and found a way to bury the entire issue under a layer of its spurious activities: some sort of commissions for Indian, women’s, Mexican, Micronesian and other minority rights – both real and made-up. (…)
The issue of “human rights” was stolen by the left and became their banner. Meanwhile, we (hardline Soviet dissidents-ed.) were barred from (human rights watchdogs).

On the naivete of those who thought the invasion of Afghanistan was somehow a departure from the Soviet “peaceful” (peaceful my ass) policy:

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 caused a virtual shock in the world, which extremely surprised me: (those shocked) seemed to be unaware of the preceding Soviet expansion all over the globe. The shock, indignation and astonishment were somewhat sham and false – something akin to the indignation of a person who marries a whore and then finds out that she – what a surprise! – is not a virgin.

On the USSR’s manipulation of leftist “useful fools” in the West:

In communist party lingo there is the expression “useful fool”, which was coined by Lenin. Now (…) Soviet rulers have achieved a devastating victory: they found millions of useful fools (i.e. peaceniks in the West-ed.) for implementing their bankrupt policy. (…)
At a news conference back then I was asked what one should do in order not to be a useful fool. I replied: first of all, not to be a fool. If this cannot be changed due to purely biological reasons, one should follow a very simple rule of thumb: never to be useful for the USSR and its policy. If one can’t manage to do that either, one should probably not be involved in public affairs at all. Nor should one take part in any activities together with Soviet representatives and those who are clearly their friends. This seems to be a pretty simple rule comprehensible even for a fool. But peaceniks have set up a trap for themselves by declaring their willingess to cooperate with all “anti-war” forces.

On the USSR’s alleged “struggle for peace” being a ploy used for expansion:

It’s easy to imagine the uproar (triggered by Bukovsky’s writings-ed.) that arose and the leftist intelligentsia’s hatred towards me. (…) As any Soviet-born person, I knew that the “struggle for peace” is an integral part of the Soviet ideological war against foreign countries – or, more precicely, one aspect of that war, because real peace, according to communist ideology, is only possible if socialism achieves victory everywhere. In communist Newspeak, these concepts have long become synonyms, and the expression “struggle for peace” meant the USSR’s struggle for expanding its influence.

The Greatest Form of Subversion

The greatest form of subversion is ideological, because once you implant the seeds of such corruption in a nation, it becomes a conspiracy with no identifiable acting conspirators. It acts of its own accord; it takes on a life of its own.

The key for the agent of subversion is to demoralize a people, to get them to choose "self-sacrifice" as a virtue, and altruism as the highest ideal - once this is accomplished, you are well on the way to causing the nation's collapse. The plausible deniability is nearly infinite because the damage becomes self-imposed.

Thus the trouble with Joseph McCarthy is that he saw communist corruption everywhere, and conflated willful treason with philosophical corruption. The communists had indeed infiltrated the U.S. government, but through legal means; several red professors from Russia and Germany intoxicated British and American professors and students with their socialist criticisms of Western civilization in the early twentieth century; and the education system, the news media, and the court system simply came to sympathize with socialist causes (though perhaps not always in the name of socialism).

It is an undeniable fact that the Democrat Party adopted much of the socialist program under the false flags of liberalism and progressivism. The Marxist recommendations for destruction of "capitalist" countries of ushering in a central bank, a graduated income tax, the destruction of private property, and the promotion of democracy were incrementally taken up by Democrats over the course of decades.

Our society, which is tolerant and embraces freedom of conscience, thus became the fertile soil for growing an enemy that one can only fight with words and ideas. If your opponents are liars, are intellectually dishonest, and systematically deceptive you have a slight problem under our Constitutional system. But if you have a majority faction that rises to power with access to unconstitutional machinery like a central bank, with no design to adhere to the Constitution, and with the strategy of impoverishing the country through destroying its purchasing power and fostering welfare paid for with imaginary money, then you have a serious problem. The country will be pulled ahead to collapse by people who think collapse was "inevitable" to begin with.

Those who are the greatest threat to America are mostly dead and gone; pragmatists like William James and John Dewey; socialists like Norman Thomas and Earl Browder; transcendentalists like Immanuel Kant; ultra-statists like George Hegel; philosophical corrupters like Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm, and Chomsky; revolutionaries like Marx, Gramsci, and Alinsky.

To claim that such men are destroying the country in a myopic culture with conditioned attention deficit disorder is often akin to feinting at ghosts; most men are not apt to believe that ruin is impending until the foundation is buckling, the support beams are cracking, and the roof is splintering above their heads.

In many ways the modern leftist sucks the oxygen out of such claims that the nation is indeed on the verge of economic and moral collapse by fabricating fake crises out of whole cloth and justifying them in their minds as Platonic noble lies, Goebbelesque big lies, or Sorelian/Nietzschean myths.

When Khruschev banged his shoe on a podium and garbled out, "We will bury you!" in Russian ("Мы вас похороним!" or My vas pokhoronim!), note that he did not say he would destroy us. Khruschev was more accurately saying that he would shovel dirt over our graves.

Once you corrupt the nation's moral system at the foundational level of ideological assumptions, then you have successfully defeated your enemy, as Sun Tzu lauded, without going to war.

Socialism: A Form of Mental Degeneration

Grand Strategy and Socialism
by J. R. Nyquist

Consider two categories: (1) grand strategy for states where power is constitutionally constrained; (2) grand strategy for states where power is concentrated in the hands of an unchecked oligarchy. In the first category, the grand strategist is forced into a conservative position. In the second category, the grand strategist takes a revolutionary position. It may be argued that the first position is linked to capitalism, while the second position is linked to socialism and Russia.

According to Ludwig von Mises, "It is the aim of Socialism to transfer the means of production from private ownership to the ownership of organized society, to the State. The socialist State owns all material factors of production and thus directs it." In other words, socialism signifies the concentration of economic power in the hands of government officials acting in the name of the state. The concentration of economic power naturally implies the concentration of all power - including international power. It is oddly significant, in this context, that the first socialist country was Russia, where the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was born. Russia thereby became the "motherland" of socialism, from whence all international socialists drew their strength.

Over 110 years ago Gustave Le Bon wrote The Psychology of Socialism. According to Le Bon, the fundamental problem of socialism is found in the dangerous misfits who support the socialist cause. Le Bon warned against a host of degenerates and failures who "are made at great expense by our colleges and universities." Le Bon explained that these superfluous "graduates, licensees, instructors and professors ... will one day, perhaps, constitute one of the most serious dangers against which society will have to defend itself." As he further explained, "Notwithstanding their diversity of origin, they are united by one common sentiment - hatred of the civilization in which they can find no place."

What Le Bon could not have foreseen, however, was something that Ludwig von Mises recognized decades later: "The subversive activities of these professional plotters are dangerous precisely on account of the naivety of those who are merely flirting with the revolutionary idea. Those confused and misguided sympathizers who call themselves 'liberals' and whom the communists call 'useful [idiots]'...." The fellow-traveler plays with socialism. And whether he realizes it or not, he has been tricked along with the communists into supporting Russia's grand strategy. "The distinctive mark of all present-day communist parties," wrote Mises, "is their devotion to the aggressive foreign policy of the Soviets. Whenever they must choose between Russia and their own country, they do not hesitate to prefer Russia."

The above statement is true today, despite the so-called "collapse of communism." On the fundamental issue of foreign policy, the useful idiots align themselves with Moscow. What Mises wrote more than half a century ago is still true today: "They strictly obey all orders issued from Moscow. When Russia was an ally of Hitler, the French communists sabotaged their own country's war effort and the American communists passionately opposed President Roosevelt's plans to aid England and France in their struggle against the Nazis. The communists all over the world branded all those who defended themselves against the German invaders as 'imperialist warmongers.' But as soon as Hitler attacked Russia, the imperialist war of the capitalists changed over-night into a just war...."

The same dynamic plays out today, in terms of the Islamic threat, and the threat from Iranian nuclear weapons. The United States is blamed as an aggressor in the Middle East, just as the Western powers were blamed at the outset of World War II. The West must always apologize, along with Israel, for its alleged exploitation of the Third World. The tendency of this propaganda is to disarm the West morally, psychologically, and physically. To prove our good intentions, we now rush to the negotiating table with the intention of laying down our nuclear arms. Meanwhile, the Russians are helping the Iranian clerical regime to develop nuclear arms. Russia has agreed, as well, to give nuclear technology to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

As America turns to socialism, the grand strategy of the United States turns to appeasing Russia. This is because socialism (as an overall movement) signifies the consolidation of Russian and Chinese power over the entire planet, whether the socialists realize it or not. This also explains why American socialists have always denounced the wickedness of the U.S. "military-industrial complex." One might ask the question, "Aren't American socialists in favor of their own country's survival?"

To answer this question, we must turn to abnormal psychology.

"Modern socialism is far more a mental state than a doctrine," wrote Gustave Le Bon in the 1890s. "What makes it so threatening is not the very insignificant changes which it has so far produced in the popular mind, but the already great changes which it has caused in the mind of the directing classes. The modern bourgeoisie are no longer sure of their rights. Or rather they are not sure of anything, and they do not know how to defend anything."

Obama's Communications Director A Fan of Chairman Mao

From Newsbusters:

The feud between the White House and the Fox News Channel took another, thanks to one of Glenn Beck's viewers.

On Beck's Oct. 15 program, the Fox News host played a video sent to him of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who had previously slammed Fox News and called it an organ of the Republican Party. In the video, Dunn reveals her two favorite political philosophers - humanitarian Mother Teresa and Mao Tse Tung, Chinese revolutionary and Communist leader responsible for an estimated 70 million deaths.

"A lot of you have a great deal of ability," Dunn said. "A lot of you work hard. Put them together and that answers the ‘why not' question. There's usually not a good reason and then the third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers - Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say why not. You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before, but here's the deal."

[Continued]

A Brave New Pyramid Scheme

Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty
by Adam Axvig

The Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on Wednesday evening. Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy presentation, complete with detailed charts, graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat of any significant anthropomorphic climate change.

A detailed summary of Monckton’s presentation will be available here once compiled. However, a segment of his remarks justify immediate publication. If credible, the concern Monckton speaks to may well prove the single most important issue facing the American nation, bigger than health care, bigger than cap and trade, and worth every citizen’s focused attention.

Here were Monckton’s closing remarks, as dictated from my audio recording:

At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand.

They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.

[laughter]

And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.

So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever.

And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.

But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty.

For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.

So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:

Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

Lord Monckton received a standing ovation and took a series of questions from members of the audience.

Among those questions were these relevent to the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty:

Question: The current administration and the Democratic majority in Congress has shown little regard for the will of the people. They’re trying to pass a serious government agenda, and serious taxation and burdens on future generations. And there seems to be little to stop them. How do you propose we stop Obama from doing this, because I see no way to stop him from signing anything in Copenhagen. I believe that’s his agenda and he’ll do it.

I don’t minimize the difficulty. But on this subject – I don’t really do politics, because it’s not right. In the end, your politics is for you. The correct procedure is for you to get onto your representatives, both in the US Senate where the bill has yet to go through (you can try and stop that) and in [the House], and get them to demand their right of audience (which they all have) with the president and tell him about this treaty.

There are many very powerful people in this room, wealthy people, influential people. Get onto the media, tell them about this treaty. If they go to www.wattsupwiththat.com, they will find (if they look carefully enough) a copy of that treaty, because I arranged for it to be posted there not so long ago.

Let them read it, and let the press tell the people that their democracy is about to be taken away for no good purpose, at least [with] no scientific basis [in reference to climate change]. Tell the press to say this.

Tell the press to say that, even if there is a problem [with climate change], you don’t want your democracy taken away. It really is as simple as that.

Question: Is it really irrevocable if that treaty is signed? Suppose it’s signed by someone who does not have the authority, as I – I have some, a high degree of skepticism that we do have a valid president there because I -

I know at least one judge who shares your opinion, sir, yes.

I don’t believe it until I see it. … Would [Obama's potential illegitimacy as president] give us a reasonable cause to nullify whatever treaty that he does sign as president?

I would be very careful not to rely on things like that. Although there is a certain amount of doubt whether or not he was born in Hawaii, my fear is it would be very difficult to prove he wasn’t born in Hawaii and therefore we might not be able to get anywhere with that. Besides, once he’s signed that treaty, whether or not he signed it validly, once he’s signed it and ratified it – your Senate ratifies it – you’re bound by it.

But I will say one thing; they know, in the White House, that they won’t be able to get the 67 votes in the Senate, the two-thirds majority that your Constitution has stipulated must be achieved in order to ratify a treaty of this kind.

However, what they’ve worked out is this – and they actually let it slip during the election campaign, which is how I know about it. They plan to enact that Copenhagen treaty into legislation by a simple majority of both houses.

That they can do. But the virtue of that – and here you have a point – is that is, thank God, reversible. So I want you to pray tonight, and pray hard for your Senate that they utterly refuse to ratify the [new] Treaty of Copenhagen, because if they refuse to ratify it and [Obama] has to push it through as domestic legislation, you can repeal it.

Regardless of whether global warming is taking place or caused to any degree by human activity, we do not want a global government empowered to tax Americans without elected representation or anything analogous to constitutional protections.

The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew their progeny allowed a foreign power such authority, effectively undoing their every effort in an act of Anti-American Revolution.

If that is our imminent course, we need to put all else on hold and focus on stopping it. If American sovereignty is ceded, all other debate is irrelevant.

Edited by Cole Younger of TeaPartyNation:

Skimming through the treaty, I came across verification of Monckton’s assessment of the new entity’s purpose:

38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:

World Government (heading added)
(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

To Redistribute Wealth (heading added)
b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts [read: the "climate debt" Monckton refers to], including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, © a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.

With Enforcement Authority (heading added)
© The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; © a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange [read; enforcement].

If You Have High Blood Pressure, You Might Want to Skip This...

The spendaholics in Congress can throw $867 BILLION down a bottomless pit, but they somehow feel the need to raid a defense bill for $2.6 billion that analysts say would have been used for needed fuel, ammo, and training for men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Americans' sons and daughters are putting their lives on the line to defend this country, and the sick, twisted out-of-control politicians feel the need to build a $20 million ode to a fat, philandering f*** like the very late Ted Kennedy. At least for that kind of money they can get the authentic SCUBA masks and claw-marked car roof for the Mary Jo Kopeckne wing.

Here's the story that will make you want to throw more than rotten vegetables at your Congressman.

Alice's Adventures in Obamaland - Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears

CHAPTER II

The Pool of Tears

`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was about to reproach herself for her lack of good grammar, but then recalled a lecture by a certain Professor Smugglesby that clearness of expression is a bourgeois virtue); `now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!' (for when she looked down it was as if her head were in the clouds and her feet were no longer on the ground). `Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can; --but I must be kind to them,' thought Alice, `or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I'll send them a new pair of boots every first of May.'

Alice stretched tall

Then she imagined, without any aforethought as to where she would take them from, sending boots to her feet every May Day. They would be big, shiny and black and lined with goose feathers. She imagined her tag would be as follows:

ALICE'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ.
FORWARD,
TOWARD THE DAY,
(WITH ALICE'S LOVE).

Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!'

Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now more than ten feet tall, and she at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the rose garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again.

`You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, `a strong feminist like you,' this made her feel even more desperate, 'to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!' Then she began to think of all the poor and oppressed people of the world, and how, if she could only make it through to that rose garden, to see the coming of the exalted one, what a joy that would be! The whole world would surely share in her happiness, and there would be no more fighting, no more war, and a cure to world hunger! But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.

After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a pistol-revolver in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, `Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I keep her waiting!' Alice felt so desperate that she was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the Rabbit came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, `If you please, sir--' The Rabbit swore furiously, dropped his white gloves and skurried away into the darkness as fast as he could go.

Giant Alice watching Rabbit run away

Alice took up the gloves, and, she went on talking: `Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!' And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.

`I'm sure I'm not Rosa,' she said, `for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't be Michelle, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, she's she, and I'm I, and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. I'll try and say "How doth the little--"' and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the same as they used to do:--

`How doth the little donkey
Improve his shining tail,
And flog the scorning honky
With his long black flail!

`How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How politefully he thanks us,
And welcomes it each time again
With meek and guilty glances!'

`I'm sure those are not the right words,' said poor Alice, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, `I must be Michelle after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky white house, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've made up my mind about it; if I'm Michelle, I'll stay down here!

As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see that she had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid gloves while she was talking. `How can I have done that?' she thought. `I must be growing small again.' She got up, did a pirouette, and went to the table to measure herself by it, and she found that she was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon found out that the cause of this was the other glove she was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.

`That was a narrow escape!' said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; `and now for the garden!' and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, `and things are worse than ever,' thought the poor child, `for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it's too bad, that it is!'

As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, `and in that case I can go back to my horse and buggy,' she said to herself. However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.

Alice in pool of tears

`I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. `I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.'

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.

Alice with Mouse in pool of tears

`Would it be of any use, now,' thought Alice, `to speak to this mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying.' So she began: `O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!' (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, `A mouse--of a mouse--to a mouse--a mouse--O mouse!' The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.

`Perhaps it doesn't understand English,' thought Alice; `I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.' (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: `Ou est ma chatte?' which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. `Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal's feelings. `I quite forgot you didn't like cats.'

`Not like cats!' cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. `Would you like cats if you were me?'

`Well, perhaps not,' said Alice in a soothing tone: `don't be angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Panzer: I think you'd take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear quiet thing,' Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the pool, `and she sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking her paws and washing her face--and she is such a nice soft thing to nurse--and she's such a capital one for catching mice--oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all over, and she felt certain it must be really offended. `We won't talk about her any more if you'd rather not.'

`We indeed!' cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his tail. `As if I would talk on such a subject! Our family always despised cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don't let me hear the name again!'

`I won't indeed!' said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of conversation. `Are you--are you fond--of--of dogs?' The Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly: `There is such a nice little dog near our house I should like to show you! A bright-eyed Afghan terrier , you know, with oh, such long curly brown hair! And it'll fetch things when you throw them, and it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things--I can't remember half of them--and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he says it's so useful, it's worth a hundred pounds! He says it kills all the rats and--oh dear!' cried Alice in a sorrowful tone, `I'm afraid I've offended it again!' For the Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went.

So she called softly after it, `Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we won't talk about cats or dogs either, if you don't like them!' When the Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to her: its face was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low trembling voice, `Let us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my history, and you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.'

It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.

Alice's Adventures in Obamaland - Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit-Hole

A tale of socialist experimentation and cosmic bunny holes in twelve installments:

Chapter I: Down the Rabbit-Hole

Alice was beginning to get very tired of being a well-to-do liberal arts professor, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, The Communist Manifesto, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `A crisis! A crisis! Now, before it's too late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a pocket-knife out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a pocket-knife to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a deep abyss.

Either the abyss was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw scholarly tomes and little red books. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled `CHERRY JUBILEE', but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! `I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. `I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--' ...

Presently she began again. `I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads upward! The Antediluvians, I think--' (she was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) `--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this China or Russia?' (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke--fancy curtseying as you're falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?).

Down, down, down. Alice was musing on whether she might one day become rich by opening up her own little printing shop, when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon an ash-heap.

Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, `Oh my ears and whiskers, what a crisis we have!' She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.

There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice's first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest rose garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a glass pitcher on it, (`which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and on the side of the glass pitcher was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters.

It was all very well to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about professors who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

However, this bottle was not marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast - like some new, wildly extravagant flavor of Kool-aid) she very soon finished it off.

`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.'

And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely rose garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery; and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing sat down and cried.

`Come, there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself, rather sharply; `I advise you to leave off this minute!' She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. `But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, `to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!'

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small chocolate, on which the words `EAT ME' were beautifully marked in pinkish creme. `Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, `and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the rose garden, and I don't care which happens!'

She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, `Which way? Which way?', holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats a little chocolate, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

So she set to work, and very soon finished off the little chocolate.

Obama vs. The Wildfire

In case some of you have forgotten from watching years of SNL - this is political satire.

The Battle of the Kebab House

As everything in Russia, this was farce bordering on tragedy.
During the Soviet era, a kebab house opposite the Soviet Hotel in Moscow was unofficially known as “Anti-Soviet” (a pun on its location in relation to the hotel). The businessman who runs the place has recently given the name official status.
However, a deranged Soviet veteran (who’s a former member of the Politburo, by the way) filed a complaint with the local city district, saying the name of the joint insulted the feelings of those who lived in the Soviet Union, including Soviet veterans.
Enter Oleg Mitvol, head of the city district. This political clown was widely known in Russia even before the event. He used to be a top environmental official and ousted Shell from Sakhalin Island on allegedly environmental grounds, though it was clear to everyone that the clown had been hired by state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which eventually took over Shell’s Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project. Mitvol has also become infamous for waging a war against a gay bar in his district.
Mitvol was immediately up in arms against infidels who dared to sin against the Soviet past. He declared that he would not tolerate such an insult. First – what a coincidence! – fire inspectors and other bureaucratic vermin found “violations” at the joint. Subsequently Mitvol was delighted to find out that the “Anti-Soviet” sign had been displayed without official registration. Just imagine a moronic city that requires registration even for kebab house signs. It was later found out that the joint’s owner had attempted to register the name several times before Mitvol’s siege of his business began and had been denied registration without any explanations. For his valiant deeds, Mitvol was awarded a state medal, which became widely known as “the medal for the battle of the kebab house.”
Alexander Podrabinek, a well-known Soviet dissident, then wrote an article about this farce. He addressed Soviet veterans, who are now something akin to priests in the Russo-Soviet “Great Patriotic War” (WW2) cult. Any criticism of said veterans is regarded as blasphemy, and anyone who dares to doubt their sacred status is regarded as a heretic. Podrabinek said that there is nothing to be proud of in the heritage of the totalitarian regime that butchered millions of people. He said that many Soviet veterans (though not all) had been accomplices in the regime’s crimes and that the people we should be proud of are not those who were “building communism” but those who fought against Soviet authorities.
Naturally, Podrabinek was declared enemy of the people number one, and the entire pseudopatriotic bullshit-manufacturing machine trumpeted that he had exceeded the atrocities of Hitler and even Beelzebub himself. Nashi, (literally “Ours”) popularly known as nashists (a pun on fascists) – a Kremlin-run Hitler youth clone – started picketing Podrabinek’s apartment, threatening and molesting him. He was forced to go into hiding.
I’ve just watched a talk show devoted to the issue at hand. The show reveals much about the way Russian media work. Most of the Russian media are controlled by the Kremlin either directly (through state ownership) or indirectly (through tycoons loyal to the Kremlin and such), with some marginal exceptions on the fringes of the media environment (such as some programs (not all) on the Echo of Moscow, a radio station, and Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper). Censorship is milder than in the Soviet period. The Kremlin is trying to create an illusion of “free press.” It allows some latitude to journalists as long as they don’t overstep the “party line.” Thus sham “discussion” and counterfeit “civil society” are created. In a way, it is akin to the leftist establishment’s domination of US media. The difference is that US media are not controlled by the government (so far), and there is much more free speech there.
The show I watched was perhaps even more farcical than the kebab house tragicomedy to which it was devoted. What’s the best way for the Kremlin to defeat an opponent? First, by the sheer force of numbers. Not one of the show’s guests was a proponent of the “extreme” pro-kebab house position. Two (Mitvol and some United Russia jerk) were pro-Soviet, while one (the editor-in-chief of GQ Magazine’s Russian edition) was relatively neutral, and the host was also neutral. Neutrality is, of course, a deadly poison that allows evil to triumph. Second, an opponent’s position should be misrepresented, distorted and shown in the form of a caricature. The kebab house and Podrabinek were “defended” by the person who did not present a single clear argument and only sputtered inane platitudes (his opponents were no better but won by default). What does GQ, a glamor magazine, have to do with political and ideological issues anyway?
The show polled spectators on whether the USSR is something to be proud of, to be ashamed of or to be accepted without moral judgment. Naturally, the first option won by a wide margin.
What is shocking, however, is that the possibility of being proud of a cannibalistic regime run by mass murderers or being morally neutral towards it WAS EVEN CONSIDERED. This issue is much more important for Russia than hollow (and false) promises by ruling thugs Medvedev and Putin to move towards a free-market economy and establish closer ties with the West. As long as the USSR evokes pride among the populace, it is destined to remain what it was under the mass-murderer regime – gun fodder and lab rats for lethal social engineering experiments.

Charles Krauthammer: Decline is a Choice

From Krauthammer's full speech, "Decline is a Choice."

Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe writes:

"Charles Krauthammer has an article in the forthcoming Weekly Standard that, to their great credit, the editors of that journal have now made available online here. Although it only says what should be obvious, Krauthammer's article is nonetheless a piece that should be read in its entirety by every American.

Krauthammer's point is simple and unassailable. There is, he argues, an intimate connection between the foreign policy being pursued by the Obama administration and its domestic policy. The work undertaken in the domestic sphere by what I have called "Obama's wrecking crew" will, he points out, put a stop to the pattern of dynamic economic growth that made it possible for the United States to defeat Japan, contribute decisively to the defeat of Nazi Germany, contain communism, and ultimately defeat and prepare the way for the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.

It will produce economic stagnation of the sort that the Europeans have suffered from for decades, and it will eventuate in a collapse of the American dollar

This, as Krauthammer shows, Obama and his minions understand, and this they want -- the elimination of the foundations for American hegemony and the crippling of this country. They regard the role that we have thus far played in the world as shameful; they are intent on dismembering the alliances that gave us our heft in the world; and they are not only appeasing our sworn enemies but openly, publicly embracing them and their agenda.

This explains the praise showered on President Obama by Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro. This is the meaning of our attempt to install a dictator in the Honduras on the model of Castro and Chavez; it is the meaning of our recent betrayal of Poland -- on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of that country.

It explains why Obama initially responded to the open theft of an election in Iran by professing his confidence in the Iranian government and why the State Department recently cut off funds for the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center in New Haven, Connecticut, which was collecting information on the imprisonment, torture, and murder of those in Iran who protested against the theft of that election (for the details see this post).

It explains the deliberate insults offered Gordon Brown of Great Britain and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, which I catalogued here and here. And, of course, this explains the speeches given abroad again and again by President Obama, apologizing for American behavior in the past. and signaling a radical shift in American policy.

It is for this change of posture that our President has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And if you think that the United States is the principal source of evil in the world, you should vigorously applaud. My bet is that in his acceptance speech Obama will confirm Charles Krauthammer's worst fears and my own."

Paul A. Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College. He is the author, most recently, of the companion studies Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic, and Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect.

[Via Linda W. of TeaPartyNation]

International Fascism: Shattering the Myth of Collectivist Contention

I have purported that what we are witnessing in the United States, and indeed the world, is neither socialism not fascism in their purest forms, but an entirely new phenomenon - international fascism.

Those who see the difference between fascism and communism as the difference between left and right politics are sorely missing the point. Both ideologies are means to the end of aggregating power in a ruling elite [1]. International fascism would be an application of fascist principles to international politics, in this case, under the rubric of a neomarxist agenda.

People who believe fascism to be primarily nationalist, racist, and anti-semitic have a conception of the political system as defined by circumstantial manifestations - fascism is an ideology of unity in a great leader or party. It is characterized by command control of the economy, intense political propaganda, and a police state apparatus that tramples the rights of individuals. Whether the cleavages the ruler(s) choose to accentuate or exploit is class, ethnicity, nation, or religion (or some combination of these) - it is a matter of the flavor of a given fascism at hand, not a matter of distinct political ruling principles. Fascism can even theoretically be extrapolated out to the world stage, with nations as the distinct cleavages to be 'unified' by a great leader (likely acting on behalf of a governing body of aspiring oligarchs). The great leader is the public relations persona, the charming, smiling "face" of the organization.

Before we consider the evidence on how the current world trend may be characterized as heading toward 'international fascism,' let us give some color to the concepts.

The great leader is usually a classic narcissist. He can be extremely dangerous, especially in the face of public ridicule. He believes himself to be a Hegelian "big man of history" who is ahead of his time and the embodiment of the Zeitgeist. The great leader's arrogance and narcissism can easily be publicly received as self-confidence, but this is usually a false image: Narcissists can be notoriously sensitive when it comes to criticism. The great leader usually wields what Max Weber referred to as "charismatic authority." He is a well-trained liar and manipulator. He may feel himself to be as a canvass upon which the collective paints their desires. This feeling of unity with the masses can feed into egomania and megalomania. Grandiose plans and desires may feel easily within reach. He may perceive himself or herself to be specially anointed by God. There have been great leaders who believed themselves to be gods, or acting in the aegis of God.

Control of the economy in collectivist regimes is carried out in many different ways. Private property may be abolished, but this is very rare; more common is the seizure and re-distribution of quasi-private property by the state. Capital may be abolished, but again this is highly impractical; so many collectivist regimes issue internal currency or industrial credits (similar in concept to "carbon credits"). Regulations may channel business into desired production, may kill small businesses in the interest of larger ones, and can potentially control the economy through a system of prohibitions. There are a myriad of means to control economies and the most effective is to control the currency through a central bank. Central banks can trigger an economic crisis through overly rapid and massive inflation of the money supply or alternatively, a sudden constriction of the money supply - both can play right into the ruling elites' hands. The chaos that ensues from a collapse of the currency demands swift and strong government action. Never let a good crisis go to waste, as it has been remarked.

The fascist regime is saturated with political propaganda. Politics infiltrates every sphere of life, and privacy seems to dissolve, like salt in a solution. Neighbors may spy on their neighbors, children on their parents, wives on their husbands, and teachers on their students. Speech is highly charged and explosive, leading to convenient calls to have it more regulated (thus cutting off dialogue and leading directly to frustration and violence). Television ads, billboards, newspaper and magazine articles, radio "PSAs" (propaganda service announcements), inundate the citizen with praise and support for the policies of the government and support for the great leader.

Last but not least comes the police state. It is inevitable in a command economy that an overly controlling central government unleashes a host of unintended consequences. A market economy is founded on, and is most sensitive to, the demand of each individual for a desired good or service at any given moment. This is not merely a matter of idiosyncracies, but what medical treatment he requires, what kind of food he wants to eat, how much, and when, what kind of exercise he needs to do and how much - it is inconceivable that millions of individual, distinct human beings can be programmed to operate in a desired manner by a few hundred politicians in Washington. But this doesn't stop the government from trying. As the central government's best-laid plans inevitably go awry, more and more regulations attempt to dam the problems in, but they eventually overflow the system of levees the government puts into place.

The government then needs to make examples out of people - to frighten the rest of the population. This leads to outrage and human outcry. The government feels vulnerable and exposed and cracks down on the people, leading to frustration and the potential for violence.

This is when it gets very tricky. The population can initiate violence, leading to a brutal crackdown, which the government will claim is justified. The government can feel threatened and take swift action on its own, usually framing a culprit or scapegoat before making its move. The government mobilizes into police state mode to protect itself, and the road to serfdom goes into full swing.

Many people think that it cannot happen here, in the "exceptional" United States. But the signs are all around for anyone to take notice of and compare to totalitarian regimes of the past. The propagandizing of children, the deification of a great leader, the nationalization of industry, the control of the currency, the overwhelming media propaganda, the attempt to create crises that demand swift and strong government action - does this not describe what is taking place in this country now?

Let us consider a few points. First of all, it is understood that all checks and balances in terms of party control are gone. Furthermore, the checks and balances between the central government and the states are utterly ignored. Now consider it a step further: What if the ideological checks and balances are gone? What if the radical socialists and corporatist fascists are cooperating together as elites?

Wonder why the Republicans are only shadow-boxing with the Democrats when it comes to matters of national security? Why they continually put up lame non-conservative presidential candidates? It is likely because a lot of what passes for partisan politics is a smoke and mirrors game.

It has been difficult to prove that the Republicans and the Democrats are nearly on the same page in regards to selling out our national sovereignty (think illegal immigration, e.g.) and instituting a more oligarchical system for those not disposed to what they consider "conspiracy theories." But the Bolsheviks were a conspiracy before they became the rulers of the Soviet Union. The Nazis were a conspiracy before they took over Germany and committed the Holocaust. So what do we need to back up the argument that there is a left-right alliance bent on controlling the United States and re-directing it in the direction of a weakened subordinate position and global wealth redistribution?

We must acknowledge that the agreed-upon rubric for "world unity" has been global warming or "climate change," which has been going through some trouble due to, ironically enough, climate change and a cooling period. Thus, shockingly, "Science Czar" John Holdren has just announced that a man-made Ice Age will kill over one billion unless we cede the government more power!

Why is the left insistent on trying to preserve the "climate change" narrative (as if we already forgot about global warming)? Because science and "pragmatism" are the perfect cover for a left-right alliance (think Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi in an infamous pitch on climate change legislation). Giving up one's freedom is the sensible, "scientific" thing to do, after all.

The greens are the heirs of the reds, brown shirts, and black shirts. They are ruthless, and I argue, even more dangerous than the Nazis. At least the Nazis left Aryans off their list of groups marked for extermination; to radical greens like Holdren, the enemy of the world is mankind. Of course, not everyone is as hard a leftist as Holdren, who has called for a so-called planetary regime and has suggested the forced sterilization of undesirables.

So under the big neomarxist umbrella of the environmentalist movement, the left is attempting to bring in not only radical groups and unions, but powerful corporations. The APOLLO alliance is one of the key operators in bringing these radical and supposedly "right-wing" forces together. But big corporations are not averse to environmental legislation of certain kinds because they have the best-placed lobbyists to acquire subsidies and get favorable regulations that hurt their competitors and boost market share. Consider growing big corporations as a sort of collectivism of the private sector, which collectivists in government want to nurture and eventually take over. All in the interest of the public good, of course.

So how can we examine the cross-breeding of the left and right in their natural habitat? There are a few websites where one can track the donations of large corporations to radical leftists. Just one of them is Activist Cash. It is illustrative to see corporations like ALCOA, GE, and Caterpillar donating millions to leftist super-funds like the Tides Foundation, which legally launder money to unsavory radical types for big businesses. There are number of transactions that only make sense if the radical-conservative ideological split is a relic of the past, and the American public is just now finding out.

Let us look at a few of these jaw-dropping left-right alliances. But first we should note that such "donations" may indicate bribe money to get environmentalists off their corporate backs and may not necessarily be a sign of ideological fellow-traveling. But there is little to suggest that corporations disagree with the leftists substantially because corporations are not funding the pro-market opposition. According to discoverthenetworks.org, leftist groups raise approximately 26 times what "conservative" groups (defined as pro-market and not pro-conservative) do when it comes to funding.

Examples of corporations or foundations built on corporations who donate to leftist causes (Source: Activist Cash.): Alcoa, Annenberg Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Bank of America, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Citigroup Foundation, DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Ford Foundation, General Motors Foundation, J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust, Merck Family Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Foundation,

This is but the tip of the iceberg for documenting the burgeoning left-right alliance. The poster child is not even on this list: General Electric. GE owns the Democrat mouthpiece MSNBC, and has benefited financially for its cozy relationship with Barack Obama, under the guidance of CEO Jeffrey Immelt.

Then there is Goldman Sachs, whose relations with Treasury and the SEC is so intimate and so disgusting it smacks one of a Roseanne Barr-Tom Arnold sex tape (so needless to say we won't go into it in great depth here). WSJ gives more than an ample glimpse of this debauchery, however.

Caterpillar. General Motors. Wal-Mart. Oh God, even Wal-Mart. All kissing the ring of leftist power. Is this merely a move of self-preservation in a climate of surging leftism?

I highly doubt it. Most of the country is conservative. Presidents govern from the middle in America or they are thrown out. (This is something Bill Clinton had to find out before it was too late.) So any victories accomplished by the left would theoretically be short-lived. Unless this is all just a game, that is.

Global corporations and foundations headed by aspiring oligarchs (George Soros and David Rockefeller to name a few) are undermining U.S. sovereignty with such agreements as last month's at the G-20 that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are to submit progress reports to the IMF on the nation's progress implementing the international fascist agenda. Their mutual goal is to empower global corporations by crushing their competition with environmental regulations and to promote interdependence among former nation-states.

Most saliently, this entails humbling (if not destroying) the United States as an independent world power. A huge blow would be moving in on a compromised dollar and implementing a reserve currency as its replacement. He would holds the currency holds the power, as the IMF and its backers know well.

Obama's recent call to "abolish" nuclear weapons smacks naive, but it is much worse. It shows that Obama could even ponder disbanding nuclear weapons unilaterally, if he could get away with it. Such a move, even if it weren't straight out of a Robert Zemeckis film, would only serve to empower Al Qaeda, the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, et al. (not to mention China and Russia).

But before this announcement was Obama's move to drop the ABM defense shield in Europe, which made Russia ecstatic. And it gets worse. Obama is now botching the wars in the Middle East with weak rules of engagement and a failure to implement a cogent strategy (if there actually is one). Israel is being warned by the administration not to attack Iran. Obama has kissed the ring a of Saudi ruler. Obama is supporting socialist dictators like Chavez, Lula, Zelaya, Ortega, the Castros - any Latin or South American dictator will do apparently.

This isn't world peace - this is the world going to pieces. And then who will save us?

[1] See Robert Michels' "Iron Law of Oligarchy" in his Political Parties (224-235).

Unbelievable: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize?

I had to check three times to make sure that this was the AP and not The Onion. But Bloomberg confirms: The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize goes to - Barack Obama!

Obama's cult of personality knows no bounds. Under his administration, the POTUS has become a resume enhancement on to bigger and more ambitious things. Obama for world dictator anyone?

The timing of the president's peace prize victory (if one could call it that) couldn't be more face-saving. The Olympics bid humiliation of the Obamas and The Oprah now forgotten, the lamestream news networks will be jumping up and down celebrating this monumentally worthless award.

The Nobel Peace Prize has become a sick joke - only of propaganda value to aspiring autocrats like Obama and terrorist leaders like Yasser Arafat (who won in 1994 along with Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres).

But even more suspicious of Obama's award is the timing of his eligibility: He was inaugurated only two weeks before the February 1st deadline.

What could Obama have accomplished in just two weeks in office? His Cairo speech to the Muslim world wasn't given until June, and everyone can see it has done nothing to curb the collision course between Iran and Israel. To hear the Nobel panel tell it, Obama's mellifluous words are responsible for quelling the insurgency in Iraq and causing the Taliban to trade in their automatic weapons for lilies.

This farce screams to me of international Marxism. In 2007, Al Gore and the U.N.'s climate change panel won the peace prize, alerting normal people that climate change is more about politics than it is about science. It doesn't take a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy buff to see that climate change is a neomarxist plot for global wealth redistribution.

The president's Nobel prize is a sad Sorelian attempt to add to the myth-construction of Obama as a transnational big man of history. Reality differs. Obama hems and haws when off telemprompter, makes numerous gaffes (such as his joke about the "Special Olympics" on a late night show), secretly smokes, and is a complete novice when it comes to international affairs. Obama is human, all too human.

Yet the propaganda keeps coming, and not just from the American press this time. Millions of people can see through the plastic attempt to make Obama out into something he is not - a great unifier. What has unified the American people for hundreds of years is not Obama, but our shared values and our Constitution. The left is trying to wipe all of that away the way they try to wipe it away in all countries, by erecting a cult of personality around a "great leader."

That is why this Nobel prize victory for Obama is more than just a sick joke. There is something very insidious about all these world organizations and their non-stop agitation and propaganda.

More importantly, some world organizations are gathering real power and influence. Obama could be being positioned to play some role as a unifier in some new global economic order. Obama thus appears to be the designated smiley face for some tenuously brokered global left-right alliance. It doesn't seem to matter at this point what form of collectivism is expended to herd the sheeple, as long as it's collectivism. And collectivism works best when there is a focal point who embodies the alternatively played fear and love the regime desires to project at any given time. Obama is the canvass on which the elites paint the emotions they desire to instill in the masses.

So along with the fluff and the accolades about our "dear leader" must come a real sense of crisis. After all, even if there are millions of true believers, the vast majority will only respond to fear and intimidation if they are to be pressed into relinquishing their freedoms.

That is the real motivator behind the swine flu agitation - to bully Americans into submitting to the authority of "experts" (one might call it a test of Milgram's "obedience to authority"). A mixture of swine, avian, and human virus components, this year's strain of H1N1 has been purported by the WHO to be dangerous enough to lead to a global pandemic that might kill millions. The strain is very similar to last year's version of the H1N1 virus - which killed hundreds of the frailest victims. But business is very good indeed for those corporations and health organizations who are in on the contrived swine flu hysteria.

Perhaps the most alarming of these international groups' agitation is the targeting of the dollar for culling, and replacement by the IMF of a "reserve currency" for trade - namely, enhanced SDR credits. More recently, there have been talks by the British, Russians, Chinese, and Saudis of scaling back the influence of the dollar, specifically of its privileging in the oil trade.

What we are seeing now overall might be called the next great wave of consolidation by international Marxists. The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States is completely out of control, causing fat-cat-enriching booms and bust periods of "consolidation," when big banks buy up small banks. These banks' regulatory powers are now being ceded to the IMF under the aegis of the Fed and Treasury, as Dick Morris discussed recently. What is important to get is that the financial power players and international Marxists are not at ideological war with one another, they are cooperating to erect a global oligarchy.

Obama is an integral part of that plan. As laughable as that may seem to some conservatives and natural cynics, the propaganda regarding the president has gone from annoying to unsettling.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama is as startling an example of myth-construction as can be recalled in recent history. The left has shown us that revisionism is now being done in real time.

Homo Barackobamacus

In the former U.S.S.R., the communists had a term for the "new Soviet man" they would mold into the apparatchik's desired image: Homo sovieticus. The theory that human nature could be remade was predicated on such theories of mind as Locke's tabula rasa, or "blank slate"; Jean-Jacques Rousseau's savage noblesse, who is polluted by civilization but redeemed through social equality (which Rousseau mystifyingly referred to as a state of "liberty"); and the sociologist Emile Durkheim's theories of social-structural determinism.

In the former U.S.A., the Barack Obama administration set out to redeem America by righting the injustices of the past, which entailed wealth confiscation and redistribution. This "Obama money" flowed to certain underprivileged "classes," especially those who shared his minority background, who now look upon him as a rich uncle (like "Uncle Joe" Stalin). In the soft socialist world of the elite universities and breathless progressive newsrooms, Obama's wealth redistribution back to its "rightful owners" will magically transform the impoverished masses and give them hope. We may term these newly baptized Americans: Homo barackobamacus.

To understand this new intellectual vanguard, the pioneers who will lead America to the burgeoning frontiers of Obamunism, let us listen to Homo barackobamacus in their own words: