Just Who Are The Real Terrorists?

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Just Who Are The Real Terrorists?

For seven consecutive presidential administrations (since Bush, Sr. invaded Kuwait–2016 will make it 28 years), the American people have been told that they are at war with terrorists. Republican and Democrat administrations and congresses alike have built America’s entire foreign policy around this hypothesis. Trillions of taxpayer dollars have been spent. Thousands of American troops have lost their lives. And tens of thousands have been wounded–many of them seriously. Plus, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East have lost their lives to America’s “war on terror.”

In the name of the “war on terror,” the people of the United States have become the most spied upon and surveilled people in world history. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice, and Pentagon have constructed the most elaborate domestic spy machine known to man. We are told that all of this is helping to keep America “safe.” We are told the same thing about our incessant drone attacks, the thousands of sorties conducted by our military aircraft, and our never-ending wars of aggression in the Middle East.

First, we were told the terrorists were Al Qaeda and the Taliban. We invaded two countries to rid the world of these sand people. But after years of war by the most powerful and sophisticated military might in the world (the U.S. military), Al Qaeda and the Taliban are still with us–stronger than ever. Then we were told the terrorists were ISIS. Supposedly, Barack Obama has been at war with these sand people ever since he took office. But all that has happened is ISIS has gotten stronger and stronger. Surely, any rational person should be able to see through this façade.

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The truth is the United States is not at war with ISIS; the United States helped to create and continues to fund and support ISIS. America’s so-called war against ISIS is a total farce. The U.S. government in Washington, D.C., has used ISIS to fight a proxy war against Syria on behalf of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel–not to mention the globalist puppetmasters. Outside of the United States, virtually the entire world knows it. But, you see, America has the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever known to man: the national news media.

The entire national press corps in this country (with FOX News at the front of the pack) constantly promotes the drumbeat of war by regurgitating government-sponsored talking points and “intelligence,” never bothering to investigate or question the veracity of the government’s assertions. Joseph Goebbels could only have dreamed of such an efficient propaganda ministry.

Joining the national news media are millions of evangelical Christians such as John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Hal Lindsey, et al., who use the doctrine of Christian Zionism to also pound the drumbeat of war.

See this report:

Christian Zionism: The New Heresy That Undermines Middle East Peace

Yet, by supporting Islamic terror groups such as ISIS, what U.S. foreign policy (with the support of the national news media and Hagee-type evangelicals) is actually doing is assisting the most violent and barbaric stripe of Islam. ISIS is nothing more than the resident terror group of Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Muslim empire. Without any risk of being hyperbolic, Saudi Arabia is one of the most barbarous terror-nations in the entire world. Yet, the U.S. government considers Saudi Arabia to be one of its closest allies. And that’s the problem: it is.

By far, the richest man in the world is Saudi Arabia’s King Salman. To give you an idea of how wealthy this Sunni Muslim is, billionaires such as Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, and Warren Buffet are only 1/20th to 1/50th as rich as he is. And, as you can imagine, Salman is joined at the hip to the most powerful and wealthiest international bankers in the world, such as the Rockefellers and Rothschilds–and giant oil companies such as Chevron and Standard Oil.

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And in the Sunni Muslim mind of King Salman, the greatest enemy is Shia Muslims which are predominantly located in countries such as Syria, Iran, and Yemen. It is Saudi Arabia (assisted by its allies in the United States, Turkey, and Israel) that is the chief sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East. This is why the so-called “war on terror” by the United States is such a joke. Ever since the administration of George H.W. Bush, the White House has been in the pocket of petro-dollar billionaires around the world–with the king of Saudi Arabia being the Cock-A-Doodle-Do of them all.

See this report:

The Saudi Dynasty, Key U.S. Ally, Tops The World In Barbarism

I’m sure everyone readily remembers seeing news video of those caravans of Toyota pickup trucks with ISIS flags waving proudly atop them. Well, guess what! Those Toyota pickup trucks were supplied by the United States. Just another reason why the greatest military force in the world was unable to locate and destroy these trucks (and the terrorists riding in them) as they crawled along the Middle Eastern desert. Again, what a crock!

See the report:

The U.S. Government Supplied ISIS’ Iconic Pickup Trucks

No wonder Iraqi Commander Hassan al-Sari said that Vladimir Putin’s Russian coalition “is fighting against the ISIL on behalf of the whole world” while the US had played no role in the recent victories against the terrorists.

Here is the report:

Commander: Russian Coalition ‘Fighting ISIL On Behalf Of The Whole World’

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, was more than blunt in his praise of Putin’s genuine war against the Sunni terrorists in Syria, while denouncing in no uncertain terms the phony war on terror in Washington, D.C. He writes, “The distinguished and knowledgeable international commentator William Engdahl, in a superb statement, has expressed the view I gave you that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on September 28 at the 70th anniversary of the United Nations changed the balance of power in the world. Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully. Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar confiscations of bank net worth as the price of not following Washington’s policies toward other countries.”

Roberts continues: “President Putin of Russia brought all that to end on September 28. He stood up before the world in the presence of the overflowing hubris of the hegemon and belled the cat.

“Putin denounced Washington’s threat to the sovereignty, and thereby the freedom, of peoples and countries. He denounced the heartless criminality of Washington’s destruction of the lives of millions of peoples on the basis of nothing other than Washington’s own arrogance. He denounced the illegality of Washington’s assaults on the sovereignty of other peoples, and declared that Russia can no longer tolerate this state of affairs in the world.

“Two days later he took over the war in Syria and began exterminating the Washington financed and equipped Islamic State. Cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea hit ISIL targets with pinpoint accuracy and showed Washington’s EU vassals that Washington’s ABM system could not protect them if Europe permitted Washington to force Europe into conflict with Russia.

“Washington’s response was more lies: ‘the missiles hit Iran,’ said the idiots in Washington. The entire world laughed at the lie. Washington, some said, is whistling past its empire’s own graveyard.”

Roberts goes on: “This is a sea change. It will affect the behavior of every government. Even some of the craven vassals states, whose ‘leaders’ are bought-and-paid-for, will move toward a more independent foreign policy.

“The remaining danger is the crazed American neoconservatives. I know many of them. They are completely insane ideologues. This inhuman filth has controlled the foreign policy of every US government since Clinton’s second term. They are a danger to all life on earth. Look at the destruction they have wreaked in the former Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, in Georgia and South Ossetia, in Africa, in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The American people were too brainwashed by lies and by political impotence to do anything about it, and Washington’s vassals in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan had to pretend that this policy of international murder was ‘bringing freedom and democracy.’

“The crazed filth that controls US foreign policy is capable of defending US hegemony with nuclear weapons. The neoconservatives must be removed from power, arrested, and put on international trial for their horrendous war crimes before they defend their hegemony with Armageddon.

“Neoconservatives and their allies in the military/security complex make audacious use of false flag attacks. These evil people are capable of orchestrating a false flag attack that propels the US and Russia to war.”

See Roberts’ column here:

The Fall Of The Unipower

Plus, Christians around the world (especially in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Eastern Europe) are not hypnotized by Christian Zionists such as John Hagee. Here is a sample of the numerous pieces of communication that I often receive from Christians in these regions:

“I grew up in an Evangelical pastor’s house in Nigeria, reading the fallacies of Mr. Scofield’s ‘Bible’ teaching the false doctrines of dispensations. By the Grace of God I know better now.

“The current State of Israel is a nation based on the accursed Talmudic doctrines of the Pharisees [exactly right].”

This Middle Eastern Christian goes on to say, “Vladimir Putin is a man of God, who knows these people and their hate for our Lord Jesus and for Christians.

“God forbid those Obama-and-Netanyahu-rented bearded barbarians called ‘moderate rebels,’ Al Nustra, Al Qaeda, and ISIS enter the city of Damascus! Our Christian brothers and sisters would all be annihilated, raped, and forcefully converted to Islam, with the support of USA, NATO, and Israel.”

(Name and location withheld by this author)

Go outside the westernized Christian world, and the believers that I have communicated with almost universally echo the Christian man’s sentiments above. Then again, they have not been indoctrinated by the teachings of dispensationalism and Christian Zionism.

Have American Christians not noticed that ISIS doesn’t attack Israel? Gee. I wonder why not. If ISIS is the mortal enemy of Israel, why don’t we hear about these terrorists attacking Israel? In truth, Israel is often a safe haven for ISIS terrorists, providing supplies and medical care for wounded ISIS warriors. Again, the Israeli Mossad, along with America’s CIA, and Saudi Arabia’s special forces helped create–and continue to maintain–ISIS.

The “crazed American neoconservatives” that Paul Craig Roberts refers to would be impotent without the massive support they receive from evangelical Christians throughout the United States. Pray tell, what will these Christians in America say to their brothers and sisters in Christ from Iraq, Syria, Palestine, etc., when they stand side-by-side at the judgment bar of God? It is the massive support for war in the Middle East by evangelical Christians in the United States that is forcing our brothers and sisters in Christ there into exile, causing increased persecution and torture among them, and killing thousands and thousands of them. Not to mention the torture and martyrdom of our Christian friends in the home of America’s great “ally,” Saudi Arabia. That is a future scene I shudder to think about!

There is a war on terror going on alright; but just who are the real terrorists?

P.S. I am pleased to announce that James Jaeger’s brand new film, “Midnight Ride: When Rogue Politicians Call For Martial Law” will be premiered on Friday, November 6, 2015, from 6pm through 11pm Mountain Time. Distinguished luminaries such as Pat Buchanan, Larry Pratt, Ron Paul, G. Edward Griffin, Sheriff Richard Mack, Stewart Rhodes, Edwin Vieira, Jr., and several others are featured in this film. I am honored to also be featured.

I invite readers to go to my website on Friday evening, November 6, and watch the premiere of this outstanding film. And please tell your friends. DVDs of the film will also be available the night of the premiere via my website. Watch the film here:

Midnight Ride: When Rogue Politicians Call For Martial Law

Hillary emails confirm US and NATO destroyed Libya over gold-backed currency

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Hillary emails confirm US and NATO destroyed Libya over gold-backed currency

Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention.

The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook.


But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.

Gaddafi addressing the United Nations

Hillary’s Death Squads

A March 27, 2011, intelligence brief on Libya, sent by long time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear evidence of war crimes on the  part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:

Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.

(Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…).

While the illegality of extra-judicial killings is easy to recognize (groups engaged in such are conventionally termed “death squads”), the sinister reality behind the “foreign mercenaries” reference might not be as immediately evident to most.

While over the decades Gaddafi was known to make use of European and other international security and infrastructural contractors, there is no evidence to suggest that these were targeted by the Libyan rebels.

There is, however, ample documentation by journalists, academics, and human rights groups demonstrating that black Libyan civilians and sub-Saharan contract workers, a population favored by Gaddafi in his pro-African Union policies, were targets of “racial cleansing” by rebels who saw black Libyans as tied closely with the regime.[1]

Black Libyans were commonly branded as “foreign mercenaries” by the rebel opposition for their perceived general loyalty to Gaddafi as a community and subjected to torture, executions, and their towns “liberated” by ethnic cleansing. This is demonstrated in the most well-documented example of Tawergha, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan brigades.

These attacks were well-known as late as 2012 and often filmed, as this report from The Telegraph confirms:

After Muammar Gaddafi was killed, hundreds of migrant workers from neighboring states were imprisoned by fighters allied to the new interim authorities. They accuse the black Africans of having been mercenaries for the late ruler. Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans have been rounded up since Gaddafi fell in August.

It appears that Clinton was getting personally briefed on the battlefield crimes of her beloved anti-Gaddafi fighters long before some of the worst of these genocidal crimes took place.

Al-Qaeda and Western Special Forces Inside Libya

The same intelligence email from Sydney Blumenthal also confirms what has become a well-known theme of Western supported insurgencies in the Middle East: the contradiction of special forces training militias that are simultaneously suspected of links to Al Qaeda.

Blumenthal relates that “an extremely sensitive source” confirmed that British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs.

While analysts have long speculated as to the “when and where” of Western ground troop presence in the Libyan War, this email serves as definitive proof that special forces were on the ground only within a month of the earliest protests which broke out in the middle to end of February 2011 in Benghazi.

By March 27 of what was commonly assumed a simple “popular uprising” external special operatives were already “overseeing the transfer of weapons and supplies to the rebels” including “a seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition.”

Yet only a few paragraphs after this admission, caution is voiced about the very militias these Western special forces were training because of concern that, “radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”

The Threat of Libya’s Oil and Gold to French Interests

Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians, an April 2011 email sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.

The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”

Most astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war [emphasis mine]:

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)

Though this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent from the briefing.

Instead, the great fear reported is that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new pan-African currency.

French intelligence “discovered” a Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military aggression.

The Ease of Floating Crude Propaganda

Early in the Libyan conflict Secretary of State Clinton formally accused Gaddafi and his army of using mass rape as a tool of war. Though numerous international organizations, like Amnesty International, quickly debunked these claims, the charges were uncritically echoed by Western politicians and major media.

It seemed no matter how bizarre the conspiracy theory, as long as it painted Gaddafi and his supporters as monsters, and so long as it served the cause of prolonged military action in Libya, it was deemed credible by network news.

Two foremost examples are referenced in the latest batch of emails: the sensational claim that Gaddafi issued Viagra to his troops for mass rape, and the claim that bodies were “staged” by the Libyan government at NATO bombing sites to give the appearance of the Western coalition bombing civilians.

NATO bombing Libya

In a late March 2011 email, Blumenthal confesses to Hillary that,

I communicated more than a week ago on this story—Qaddafi placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing—though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know, Robert gates gives credence to it. (See story below.)

Sources now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will seek further confirmation.

Not only did Defense Secretary Robert Gates promote his bizarre “staged bodies” theory on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” but the even stranger Viagra rape fiction made international headlines as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice made a formal charge against Libya in front of the UN Security Council.

What this new email confirms is that not only was the State Department aware of the spurious nature of what Blumenthal calls “rumors” originating solely with the rebels, but did nothing to stop false information from rising to top officials who then gave them “credence.”

It appears, furthermore, that the Viagra mass rape hoax likely originated with Sidney Blumenthal himself.

[1] The most comprehensive and well-documented study of the plight of black Libyans is contained in Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (publ. 2012, Baraka Books) by Maximilian Forte, Professor Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec.

SEE ALSO:

– 10 things about Gaddafi they don’t want you to know
– The truth about Gaddafi and Libya (watch and learn)

Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?

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Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?

Millions of Americans are embarrassingly ill-informed.

Excerpted from Just How Stupid Are We?, by Rick Shenkman, by arrangement with Basic Books.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

Just how stupid are we? Pretty stupid, it would seem, when we come across headlines like this: "Homer Simpson, Yes -- 1st Amendment 'Doh,' Survey Finds" (Associated Press 3/1/06).

"About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family, according to a survey.

"The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms."
But what does it mean exactly to say that American voters are stupid? About this there is unfortunately no consensus. Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who confessed not knowing how to define pornography, we are apt simply to throw up our hands in frustration and say: We know it when we see it. But unless we attempt a definition of some sort, we risk incoherence, dooming our investigation of stupidity from the outset. Stupidity cannot mean, as Humpty Dumpty would have it, whatever we say it means.

Five defining characteristics of stupidity, it seems to me, are readily apparent. First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

American Ignorance

Taking up the first of our definitions of stupidity, how ignorant are we? Ask the political scientists and you will be told that there is damning, hard evidence pointing incontrovertibly to the conclusion that millions are embarrassingly ill-informed and that they do not care that they are. There is enough evidence that one could almost conclude -- though admittedly this is a stretch -- that we are living in an Age of Ignorance.

Surprised? My guess is most people would be. The general impression seems to be that we are living in an age in which people are particularly knowledgeable. Many students tell me that they are the most well-informed generation in history.

Why are we so deluded? The error can be traced to our mistaking unprecedented access to information with the actual consumption of it. Our access is indeed phenomenal. George Washington had to wait two weeks to discover that he had been elected president of the United States. That's how long it took for the news to travel from New York, where the Electoral College votes were counted, to reach him at home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Americans living in the interior regions had to wait even longer, some up to two months. Now we can watch developments as they occur halfway around the world in real time. It is little wonder then that students boast of their knowledge. Unlike their parents, who were forced to rely mainly on newspapers and the network news shows to find out what was happening in the world, they can flip on CNN and Fox or consult the Internet.

But in fact only a small percentage of people take advantage of the great new resources at hand. In 2005, the Pew Research Center surveyed the news habits of some 3,000 Americans age 18 and older. The researchers found that 59% on a regular basis get at least some news from local TV, 47% from national TV news shows, and just 23% from the Internet.

Anecdotal evidence suggested for years that Americans were not particularly well-informed. As foreign visitors long ago observed, Americans are vastly inferior in their knowledge of world geography compared with Europeans. (The old joke is that "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.") But it was never clear until the postwar period how ignorant Americans are. For it was only then that social scientists began measuring in a systematic manner what Americans actually know. The results were devastating.

The most comprehensive surveys, the National Election Studies (NES), were carried out by the University of Michigan beginning in the late 1940s. What these studies showed was that Americans fall into three categories with regard to their political knowledge. A tiny percentage know a lot about politics, up to 50%-60% know enough to answer very simple questions, and the rest know next to nothing.

Contrary to expectations, by many measures the surveys showed the level of ignorance remaining constant over time. In the 1990s, political scientists Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter concluded that there was statistically little difference between the knowledge of the parents of the Silent Generation of the 1950s, the parents of the Baby Boomers of the 1960s, and American parents today. (By some measures, Americans are dumber today than their parents of a generation ago.)

Some of the numbers are hard to fathom in a country in which for at least a century all children have been required by law to attend grade school or be home-schooled. Even if people do not closely follow the news, one would expect them to be able to answer basic civics questions, but only a small minority can.

In 1986, only 30% knew that Roe v. Wade was the Supreme Court decision that ruled abortion legal more than a decade earlier. In 1991, Americans were asked how long the term of a United States senator is. Just 25% correctly answered six years. How many senators are there? A poll a few years ago found that only 20% know that there are 100 senators, though the number has remained constant for the last half century (and is easy to remember). Encouragingly, today the number of Americans who can correctly identify and name the three branches of government is up to 40%.

Polls over the past three decades measuring Americans' knowledge of history show similarly dismal results. What happened in 1066? Just 10% know it is the date of the Norman Conquest. Who said the "world must be made safe for democracy"? Just 14% know it was Woodrow Wilson. Which country dropped the nuclear bomb? Only 49% know it was their own country. Who was America's greatest president? According to a Gallup poll in 2005, a majority answer that it was a president from the last half century: 20% said Reagan, 15% Bill Clinton, 12% John Kennedy, 5% George W. Bush. Only 14% picked Lincoln and only 5%, Washington.

And the worst president? For years Americans would include in the list Herbert Hoover. But no more. Most today do not know who Herbert Hoover was, according to the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey in 2004. Just 43% could correctly identify him.

The only history questions a majority of Americans can answer correctly are the most basic ones. What happened at Pearl Harbor? A great majority know: 84%. What was the Holocaust? Nearly 70% know. (Thirty percent don't?) But it comes as something of a shock that, in 1983, just 81% knew who Lee Harvey Oswald was and that, in 1985, only 81% could identify Martin Luther King, Jr.

What Voters Don't Know

Who these poor souls were who didn't know who Martin Luther King was we cannot be sure. Research suggests that they were probably impoverished (the poor tend to know less on the whole about politics and history than others) or simply unschooled, categories which usually overlap. But even Americans in the middle class who attend college exhibit profound ignorance. A report in 2007 published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute found that on average 14,000 randomly selected college students at 50 schools around the country scored under 55 (out of 100) on a test that measured their knowledge of basic American civics. Less than half knew that Yorktown was the last battle of the American Revolution. Surprisingly, seniors often tested lower than freshmen. (The explanation was apparently that many students by their senior year had forgotten what they learned in high school.)

The optimists point to surveys indicating that about half the country can describe some differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties. But if they do not know the difference between liberals and conservatives, as surveys indicate, how can they possibly say in any meaningful way how the parties differ? And if they do not know this, what else do they not know?

Plenty, it turns out. Even though they are awash in news, Americans generally do not seem to absorb what it is that they are reading and hearing and watching. Americans cannot even name the leaders of their own government. Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Fewer than half of Americans could tell you her name during the length of her entire tenure. William Rehnquist was chief justice of the Supreme Court. Just 40% of Americans ever knew his name (and only 30% could tell you that he was a conservative). Going into the First Gulf War, just 15% could identify Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense. In 2007, in the fifth year of the Iraq War, only 21% could name the secretary of defense, Robert Gates. Most Americans cannot name their own member of Congress or their senators.

If the problem were simply that Americans are bad at names, one would not have to worry too much. But they do not understand the mechanics of government either. Only 34% know that it is the Congress that declares war (which may explain why they are not alarmed when presidents take us into wars without explicit declarations of war from the legislature). Only 35% know that Congress can override a presidential veto. Some 49% think the president can suspend the Constitution. Some 60% believe that he can appoint judges to the federal courts without the approval of the Senate. Some 45% believe that revolutionary speech is punishable under the Constitution.

On the basis of their comprehensive approach, Delli Carpini and Keeter concluded that only 5% of Americans could correctly answer three-fourths of the questions asked about economics, only 11% of the questions about domestic issues, 14% of the questions about foreign affairs, and 10% of the questions about geography. The highest score? More Americans knew the correct answers to history questions than any other (which will come as a surprise to many history teachers). Still, only 25% knew the correct answers to three-quarters of the history questions, which were rudimentary.

In 2003, the Strategic Task Force on Education Abroad investigated Americans' knowledge of world affairs. The task force concluded: "America's ignorance of the outside world" is so great as to constitute a threat to national security.

Young and Ignorant -- and Voting

At least, you may think to yourself, we are not getting any dumber. But by some measures we are. Young people by many measures know less today than young people forty years ago. And their news habits are worse. Newspaper reading went out in the sixties along with the Hula Hoop. Just 20% of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 read a daily paper. And that isn't saying much. There's no way of knowing what part of the paper they're reading. It is likelier to encompass the comics and a quick glance at the front page than dense stories about Somalia or the budget.

They aren't watching the cable news shows either. The average age of CNN's audience is sixty. And they surely are not watching the network news shows, which attract mainly the Depends generation. Nor are they using the Internet in large numbers to surf for news. Only 11% say that they regularly click on news web pages. (Yes, many young people watch Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. A survey in 2007 by the Pew Research Center found that 54% of the viewers of The Daily Show score in the "high knowledge" news category -- about the same as the viewers of the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News.)

Compared with Americans generally -- and this isn't saying much, given their low level of interest in the news -- young people are the least informed of any age cohort save possibly for those confined to nursing homes. In fact, the young are so indifferent to newspapers that they single-handedly are responsible for the dismally low newspaper readership rates that are bandied about.

In earlier generations -- in the 1950s, for example -- young people read newspapers and digested the news at rates similar to those of the general population. Nothing indicates that the current generation of young people will suddenly begin following the news when they turn 35 or 40. Indeed, half a century of studies suggest that most people who do not pick up the news habit in their twenties probably never will.

Young people today find the news irrelevant. Bored by politics, students shun the rituals of civic life, voting in lower numbers than other Americans (though a small up-tick in civic participation showed up in recent surveys). U.S. Census data indicate that voters aged 18 to 24 turn out in low numbers. In 1972, when 18 year olds got the vote, 52% cast a ballot. In subsequent years, far fewer voted: in 1988, 40%; in 1992, 50%; in 1996, 35%; in 2000, 36%. In 2004, despite the most intense get-out-the-vote effort ever focused on young people, just 47% took the time to cast a ballot.

Since young people on the whole scarcely follow politics, one may want to consider whether we even want them to vote. Asked in 2000 to identify the presidential candidate who was the chief sponsor of Campaign Finance Reform -- Sen. John McCain -- just 4% of people between the ages of 18 and 24 could do so. As the primary season began in February, fewer than half in the same age group knew that George W. Bush was even a candidate. Only 12% knew that McCain was also a candidate even though he was said to be especially appealing to young people.

One news subject in recent history, 9/11, did attract the interest of the young. A poll by Pew at the end of 2001 found that 61% of adult Americans under age 30 said that they were following the story closely. But few found any other subjects in the news that year compelling. Anthrax attacks? Just 32% indicated it was important enough to follow. The economy? Again, just 32%. The capture of Kabul? Just 20%.

It would appear that young people today are doing very little reading of any kind. In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts, consulting a vast array of surveys, including the United States Census, found that just 43% of young people ages 18 to 24 read literature. In 1982, the number was 60%. A majority do not read either newspapers, fiction, poetry, or drama. Save for the possibility that they are reading the Bible or works of non-fiction, for which solid statistics are unavailable, it would appear that this generation is less well read than any other since statistics began to be kept.

The studies demonstrating that young people know less today than young people a generation ago do not get much publicity. What one hears about are the pioneer steps the young are taking politically. Headlines from the 2004 presidential election featured numerous stories about young people who were following the campaign on blogs, then a new phenomenon. Other stories focused on the help young Deaniacs gave Howard Dean by arranging to raise funds through innovative Internet appeals. Still other stories reported that the Deaniacs were networking all over the country through the Internet website meetup.com. One did not hear that we have raised another Silent Generation. But have we not? The statistics about young people today are fairly clear: As a group they do not vote in large numbers, most do not read newspapers, and most do not follow the news. (Barack Obama has recently inspired greater participation, but at this stage it is too early to tell if the effect will be lasting.)

The Issues? Who knows?

Millions every year are now spent on the effort to answer the question: What do the voters want? The honest answer would be that often they themselves do not really know because they do not know enough to say. Few, however, admit this.

In the election of 2004, one of the hot issues was gay marriage. But gauging public opinion on the subject was difficult. Asked in one national poll whether they supported a constitutional amendment allowing only marriages between a man and a woman, a majority said yes. But three questions later a majority also agreed that "defining marriage was not an important enough issue to be worth changing the Constitution." The New York Times wryly summed up the results: Americans clearly favor amending the Constitution but not changing it.

Does it matter if people are ignorant? There are many subjects about which the ordinary voter need know nothing. The conscientious citizen has no obligation to plow through the federal budget, for example. One suspects there are not many politicians themselves who have bothered to do so. Nor do voters have an obligation to read the laws passed in their name. We do expect members of Congress to read the bills they are asked to vote on, but we know from experience that often they do not, having failed either to take the time to do so or having been denied the opportunity to do so by their leaders, who for one reason or another often rush bills through.

Reading the text of laws in any case is often unhelpful. The chairpersons in charge of drafting them often include provisions only a detective could untangle. The tax code is rife with clauses like this: The Congress hereby appropriates X dollars for the purchase of 500 widgets that measure 3 inches by 4 inches by 2 inches from any company incorporated on October 20, 1965 in Any City USA situated in block 10 of district 3.

Of course, only one company fits the description. Upon investigation it turns out to be owned by the chairperson's biggest contributor. That is more than any citizens acting on their own could possibly divine. It is not essential that the voter know every which way in which the tax code is manipulated to benefit special interests. All that is required is that the voter know that rigging of the tax code in favor of certain interests is probably common. The media are perfectly capable of communicating this message. Voters are perfectly capable of absorbing it. Armed with this knowledge, the voter knows to be wary of claims that the tax code treats one and all alike with fairness.

There are however innumerable subjects about which a general knowledge is insufficient. In these cases ignorance of the details is more than a minor problem. An appalling ignorance of Social Security, to take one example, has left Americans unable to see how their money has been spent, whether the system is viable, and what measures are needed to shore it up.

How many know that the system is running a surplus? And that this surplus -- some $150 billion a year -- is actually quite substantial, even by Washington standards? And how many know that the system has been in surplus since 1983?

Few, of course. Ignorance of the facts has led to a fundamentally dishonest debate about Social Security.

During all the years the surpluses were building, the Democrats in Congress pretended the money was theirs to be spent, as if it were the same as all the other tax dollars collected by the government. And spend it they did, whenever they had the chance, with no hint that they were perhaps disbursing funds that actually should be held in reserve for later use. (Social Security taxes had been expressly raised in 1983 in order to build up the system's funds when bankruptcy had loomed.) Not until the rest of the budget was in surplus (in 1999) did it suddenly occur to them that the money should be saved. And it appears that the only reason they felt compelled at this point to acknowledge that the money was needed for Social Security was because they wanted to blunt the Republicans' call for tax cuts. The Social Security surplus could not both be used to pay for the large tax cuts Republicans wanted and for the future retirement benefits of aging Boomers.

The Republicans have been equally unctuous. While they have claimed that they are terribly worried about Social Security, they have been busy irresponsibly spending the system's surplus on tax cuts, one cut after another. First Reagan used the surplus to hide the impact of his tax cuts and then George W. Bush used it to hide the impact of his cuts. Neither ever acknowledged that it was only the surplus in Social Security's accounts that made it even plausible for them to cut taxes.

Take those Bush tax cuts. Bush claimed the cuts were made possible by several years of past surpluses and the prospect of even more years of surpluses. But subtracting from the federal budget the overflow funds generated by Social Security, the government ran a surplus in just two years during the period the national debt was declining, 1999 and 2000.

In the other years when the government ran a surplus, 1998 and 2001, it was because of Social Security and only because of Social Security. That is, the putative surpluses of 1998 and 2001, which President Bush cited in defense of his tax cuts, were in reality pure fiction. Without Social Security the government would have been in debt those two years. And yet in 2001 President Bush told the country tax cuts were not only needed, they were affordable because of our splendid surplus.

Today, conservatives argue that the Social Security Trust Fund is a fiction. They are correct. The money was spent. They helped spend it.

To this debate about Social Security -- which, once one understands what has been happening, is actually quite absorbing -- the public has largely been an indifferent spectator. A surprising 2001 Pew study found that just 19% of Americans understand that the United States ever ran a surplus at all, however defined, in the 1990s or 2000's. And only 50% of Americans, according to an Annenberg study in 2004, understand that President Bush favors privatizing Social Security. Polls indicate that people are scared that the system is going bust, no doubt thanks in part to Bush's gloom-and-doom prognostications. But they haven't the faintest idea what going bust means. And in fact, the system can be kept going without fundamental change simply by raising the cap on taxed income and pushing back the retirement age a few years.


How much ignorance can a country stand? There have to be terrible consequences when it reaches a certain level. But what level? And with what consequences, exactly? The answers to these questions are unknowable. But can we doubt that if we persist on the path we are on that we shall, one day, perhaps not too far into the distant future, find out the answers?

Child Porn “Epidemic” Among Pentagon Officials & US Government Employees

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Child Porn “Epidemic” Among Pentagon Officials & US Government Employees

Posted by: TLB Staff

By: Lori Handrahan, Ph.D

(FORBES) – Last week the IRS decided to award Bradley Birkenfeld his $104 million dollar share for helping bust UBS bank. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and his staff were instrumental. Senator Grassley vowed to delay pending Department of Treasury nominations if the IRS Whistleblower Program, he wrote the legislation in 2006, continued to be mismanaged.

This powerful voice from Iowa has been a beacon in the storm during an Obama Administration that has targeted whistleblowers and prevented accountability as never before.  The Pentagon is also under Senator Grassley’s fire for failing to examine 1,700 of the 5,200 reports of employees doing child porn.  The Pentagon claimed it “wasn’t a priority.” Senator Grassley and his staff have made it one. The closed investigation into wide-spread use of child porn at the Pentagon is now re-opened.

There is a national crisis of federal employees engaged in the child porn industry and a related epidemic at the state level.  I’ve documented two states,Vermont and Maine, that appear to be running state protected child trafficking rings with evidence of cops, judges, lawyers, clergy and government employees covering for each other. This kind of racketeering creates powerful, and extremely profitable, pedophile rings.

Money drives the crime. It is estimated that a criminal willing to molest a child in front of a live webcam can earn $1,000 a night. In Kittery Maine, at the “Danish Health Club,” one bust yielded $6.1 million in “door fees” over a five year period with “prostitutes” earning $12 million. Pimps’ earnings were not reported. The “door man” was a retired police officer whose wife worked in back. This bust happened because of one hard-working IRS agent, Rod Giguere.

An estimated $1.4 billion has been collected by the IRS’s Whistleblower program since 2006; $464 million collected in 2010 but only $48 million in 2011. Half of all global child porn is produced in America.  Ten new images of children are posted daily.  Estimates of the global profits from child porn range from $3-20 billion.  Imagine what the IRS Whistleblower program could collect if they focused on child trafficking as Agent Rod Giguere did in Maine.

The Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Child Exploitation and Obscenities unit has been, by many accounts, totally disabled under US Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Holder even refused to prosecute his own Assistant United States Attorney caught doing child porn on DOJ computers. The IRS wants 4,000 new agents and a $300 million budget to enforce ObamaCare. Instead, these resources should be allocated, entirely, for an IRS Child Exploitation & Trafficking Unit.

With so many police, judges, clergy, state and federal employees across America involved in the child porn industry Americans should be able to turn to the IRS’s Whistleblower program. Richard Weber, Chief of IRS’s Criminal Division in Washington DC, is one point of contact. Apparently, the IRS cares about trafficked children. That’s good news because America’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, does not.

Child trafficking and porn are the fastest growing crimes in America. With billions being laundered in black money it makes solid economic sense for the IRS to focus on the child porn industry.  Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has demonstrated they have no interest in prosecuting pedophiles, not even their own. The IRS should be given substantial resources to compensate for DOJ’s disgraceful failure. American tax-payers, not to mention America’s children, will reap huge rewards.

Perhaps Senator Grassley will raise his powerful voice in support.

Lori Handrahan, Ph.D., is a professor at American University’s School of International Service researching the national and international security ramifications of America’s child porn industry. She can be reached at handraha@american.edu

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TLB Recommends you visit Red Flag News News for more pertinent articles and information.

Blair promised UK support to US in Iraq 1 year before invasion – report

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Blair promised UK support to US in Iraq 1 year before invasion – report

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, committed the UK to joining the US invasion of Iraq a year before it began, a newly disclosed White House memo reveals.
The US documents obtained by the Daily Mail and published on Sunday are part of the batch of emails from the private server of former US State Secretary, Hillary Clinton, which US courts have made her disclose.

Among the leaked papers is one written in March 2002 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to then-President George W. Bush, where he said: "On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary…He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success."

Meanwhile, at the time Blair was quoted by the British media as saying that “this is a matter for considering all the options,” and “we’re not proposing military action at this point in time.”

The document was written a week before the famous meeting between Bush and Blair at the Crawford ranch in Texas, where the latter for the first time signaled his readiness to support military action in Iraq.

In the note titled “Secret …Memorandum for the President,” Powell also said that “the UK will follow our lead in the Middle East.”

According to the document, Blair also was going to provide Bush with “strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause.” It added that Blair has the presentational skills to “make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace.”

Five months after the meeting at the Crawford ranch, the British government published a dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and even had a nuclear weapons program. This dossier was one of the reasons for US invasion to Iraq and later all its claims were proved to be false.

The newly disclosed documents also reveal that Blair agreed to act as de facto PR person for Bush and convince skeptical lawmakers and public that Iraq posed a real and imminent threat. He also reportedly suggested “how to… handle calls for UN Security Council blessing.”

In response, Blair wanted the US to treat the UK as an equal partner in a “special relationship” aiming to boost his public support, the new media report said. In one of the documents, Powel wrote Bush that Blair wanted to minimize “the political price” of joining the US in its Iraqi campaign, adding that the PM’s voters “will look for signs that Britain and America are truly equity partners.”

The new revelations sparked a wave of criticism of Tony Blair’s actions among the British politicians.

“The memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet,” said former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, as quoted by The Daily Mail.

“He was happy to launder Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it … for George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK,” he added.

Scottish National Party foreign affairs spokesman and the former Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, said on Sunday that “the evidence against Blair is piling up” and the “net was now closing” around him, eported the Guardian.

“The memo contradicts claims from Mr Blair that all that time he had been seeking diplomatic ways to avoid an invasion. It also adds weight to the evidence given by Sir Christopher Meyer, the former UK ambassador to the United States – to the Chilcot inquiry – that the military timetable and preparation for invasion took precedence over any diplomacy and specifically over the timetable for the weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix,” Salmond said.

"The illegal invasion of Iraq has been unequivocally proven as a fraud and a massive deception by Tony Blair and the then UK Labour government," he said as quoted by the Mail.

READ MORE:Chilcot to apportion Iraq blame far beyond Tony Blair’s inner circle

At the same time, Blair’s spokesperson claimed that the content of the newly revealed documents corresponds with both the former prime minister’s public statements at that time and to what he told the Chilcot inquiry investigating the circumstances of the 2003 Iraq invasion. However, Blair previously repeatedly denied that he was planning military action in Iraq before the invasion.

In 2010, Blair told the inquiry that, before the invasion, he said that the UK would only join the US “in confronting and dealing with this threat” referring to Iraq.

"I think what he took from that was exactly what he should have taken, which was if it came to military action because there was no way of dealing with this diplomatically, we would be with him," Blair told the investigation.

The newly disclosed documents could potentially lead to calls for reopening the inquiry into the circumstances of the Iraq invasion, although the chair of the investigation, Sir John Chilcot has recently announced that he was ready to publish a final report. At the same time, he continues to avoid announcing an exact publication date.

READ MORE: 2003-2011: Half million Iraqis died in war, occupation

Last month, Chilcot said he would consult with Prime Minister David Cameron in order to set a timetable for publication.

In the meantime, relatives of British soldiers that lost their lives in Iraq threaten to file a legal complaint if the report is not published by December, BBC reports.

The UK participated in the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 without a UN mandate on the premise that they would find WMD, although such weapons were never discovered there. The invasion and subsequent occupation claimed the lives of more than half million Iraqis only between 2003 and 2011 and cost the UK lives of 179 British soldiers.

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The Rape of Latinas in the US Military

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The Rape of Latinas in the US Military

Los Angeles, Alta California - May 10, 2004 - (ACN) Today, I heard and viewed the "goody two-shoes" First Lady on ABC's "Good Morning America" and almost vomited when I heard her say that the sexual torture of Iraqi POW's and female detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison was not what the USA stands for. I ask, where did she study US history? I would like to invite her to "obtain some culture" and view the play "Ramona" that has been playing continuously for 81 years in Hemet, Alta California (http://www.ramonabowl.com/home.shtml). The rape of American Indians, Mexicans and African slaves has been an ongoing enterprise by barbaric whites ever since European savages set foot on the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps, the "First Lady" can be excused for her ignorance. White Texians are not known to be particularly "educated" nor "cultured"!

The USA military has pillaged and raped the American Indians and the Mexicans in the southwest in the same way they are now doing to the Iraqis. Even today, naive Latinas who join the US Armed Forces are being brutalized and raped by racist Jews and white military personnel. They are being recruited for the exclusive enjoyment of depraved US Jewish and white military personnel. If they are doing this within the US military ranks, what can Iraqi men and women expect in their own occupied land? The brutalization of people of color by white military armed forces is a historical fact.

Another "dirty secret" of the Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz run Pentagon is the shameful "raping" of women of color in the US military that has reached "epidemic proportions". There are hundreds of Mexican-American and other enlisted women in the US military whose lives have been totally shattered by a military they thought would never betray them. Their lives are now in total shambles after the Pentagon threw them out and blame them for the brutal rapes that took place while they were in uniform.

There are hundreds of documented rapes of Latinas in the US military and thousands more that were never reported because of fear and shame of the victims. This is also true of the hundreds of rapes of Iraqi women and young girls that took place in Baghdad during the early days of the US occupation. The following five cases are just examples of the hundreds that have occurred during recent years.

The Rape Case of Second Lieutenant Orlinda Marquez

Orlinda Marquez, one of many Mexican-Americans brainwashed by the US educational system, dreamed of being an officer in the military ever since she was a kid in the fifth grade. Ms. Marquez confesses, "I bought a rucksack from an Army surplus store and ran to and from school with that rucksack." Naive and innocent Orlinda Marquez took an ROTC scholarship and graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden with a degree in engineering and geophysics. She fulfilled her lifetime dream and joined the Army Corps of Engineers in 1987 as a Second Lieutenant.

Second Lieutenant Marquez was brutally raped by a non-commissioned officer while she slept in her barracks and her entire illustrious career and life completely destroyed. She has than self-destructed after a racist US command that has no respect for women of color blamed her for the rape.

The Rape Case of Airwoman Arabella Rivera

Arabella Rivera came from a military family. Her brother was in the Air Force and her father in the US Army. Ms. Rivera , at age 18, joined the Air Force, and was sent to Lowry Air Force Base. Naive and innocent as most Catholic girls, the white military beasts started conspiring against her. Her first orders were to wear short skirts. She had been in photography school at the base for about three months when she was set up for a sexual assault. An officer she trusted forced her to perform oral sex in his car. "I didn't know what the hell he was doing. He grabbed me and pulled me down. ... He wouldn't let me go. I was choking. I thought I would die," she recalled.

After that night, her life was in shambles and she began to drink heavily to relieve her shame. A few days later, walking home from the airmen's club, the same man followed her to a remote part of the base and sodomized her. She said she screamed and cried until he let her go.

The next week, when a master sergeant followed her into a bathroom and began putting his hands up her shirt, she "freaked out," she said. He stopped, and told her the incident never happened, and that life would be hell if she told anyone. Arabella Rivera was subsequently assaulted numerous times. After one incident she was forced to work with her attacker. Arabella Rivera has had intensive therapy, but had to drop out after an extremely traumatic session.

She never reported the assaults because of the threats and feeling that no one would believe her.

Being a female in the military, she said, meant "you had to fight tooth and nail to compete with the men. So I became one of the boys. Had a foul mouth like the men. Drank like them and became promiscuous. I didn't know how to be a lady anymore. I didn't show emotion. I didn't cry."

The above behavior may be the same "syndrome" Lynndie England demonstrated and that is depicted in the the Abu Ghraib torture photographs of Iraqi POW's. Lynndie England reputed to be a lesbian, never-the-less was extremely promiscuous and is now five months pregnant in the brig at Fort Bragg.

Arabella Rivera began therapy, but at first reliving the trauma was too much to take. "I crawled on the floor, cried and cried and said, 'I can't do this anymore.' "I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to live." She ended up in the psychiatric ward of VA Hospital.

The Rape Case of Sailor Yuriria Acuna Pineda

Yuriria Acuna Pineda of the US Navy now lives in Los Angeles . . . homeless. A young Mexican-American woman of very meager economic resources, she has been unable to find help for her mental problems due to the brutal rape inside a bathroom by another sailor by the name of Roger Northern II in June of 2001. The US Navy investigator by the name of Kevin O'Neil concluded that Yariria had "asked for it"!

At a homeless shelter for veterans in Long Beach, Acuna Pineda has applied for benefits for post-traumatic stress syndrome and has begun counseling.

Although she is only 24, she said it's hard to feel hopeful about her future when she had planned to remain in the Navy. "Everything I learned in there, it's useless now. I have to start all over. I feel it was all taken from me, what I had worked so hard to get."

The Rape Case of US Army Medic Susana Armenta

As one of the few women working in an ambulance unit at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, 18-year-old Susana Armenta did not question a supervisor when he instructed her to wear only dresses.

She was alone in her barracks early one morning when her supervisor walked in and sexually assaulted her. As he was leaving, Armenta, now 39, recalls his saying, "Thank you. You just made my day."

She did not report him, she said, for fear she would be demoted or punished.

Two months later, she left the service and eventually joined the Reserves.

In 1991, Armenta was activated for Operation Desert Storm. She was at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs doing laundry when she walked back into her room and suddenly felt a huge shove.

"I remember seeing a face and blond hair. I know the person was very heavy because I was hurting so bad," she recalled.

She remembers few details of the rape itself, but can recall waking up the next morning feeling numb. "I went to the bathroom and saw the blood and the stickiness and the bruises," she said. "I took the longest shower of my life, and that was it."

Weeks later, she realized she had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from the assault, she said, and was treated by a doctor.

After the rape, Armenta returned to work. "I drank wine to keep myself under control. I was so scared I would see him again. One day at work I began crying hysterically. I asked for a chaplain, and the next thing I knew I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital."

The Rape Case of Airwoman Sofia Rodriguez

Sofia Rodriguez was 25 and had been in the Air Force one year when she became pregnant. She was in the third month of pregnancy at McClellan Air Force Base in California when she was raped. A staff sergeant brutally raped her and she almost lost her baby.

"The next thing I remember ... he was raping me," Rodriguez said. "I couldn't move. All I could do was cry and think, 'What's going to happen to my baby?' I can remember the tears coming down my face, and he was saying I was crying because I was enjoying it. He had his hand on my throat."

Rodriguez doesn't remember how she got away. "I went to my dorm, locked myself in my room, and my whole life changed." She says , "I blamed myself. I even thought about suicide."

The trauma from rape, she said, "takes your life if you let it. ... I joined the military with my whole heart. You don't expect to be raped by your own peers or superior."

The above five case of rape of Latinas in the US Armed Forces are just examples of the hundreds that have occurred in recent years. There are thousands more that never get reported or investigated. These and the known cases of rape in occupied Iraq are not mere isolated cases as the First Lady and her husband George Bush are saying. It is a pattern that has been established ever since the hordes of invaders pillaged Aztlan and are now doing in Islamic countries. This is one primary reason why many in Aztlan do not consider the stupid jock Pat Tillman a hero. He was, for us, just another "white (or Jewish) rapist" responsible for the murder of an unknown number of Afghani children. There are actually "no heros" in the current Zionist instigated war against Islam. Soldiers of Mexican descent in the US military should instead fight for the honor of the Mexican-American women that were raped as described above.

In addition, La Voz de Aztlan is calling for all the elected Congresswomen of Mexican descent to STOP giving our community mere "lip service" and start doing something constructive in making sure, that at least, the US military cease "raping" our enlisted military women. The US military has been accused of raping a 9 year old Iraqi girl in Baghadad, a 12 year old Iraqi girl at the Abu Ghraib prison and of the sodomization of Iraqi boys in addition to adult Iraqi POW's. What is it going to take for all five of you to speak out vociferously?

Please do not follow the example of Congressowman Loretta Sanchez of Orange County, California who shamelessly partied with the Jewish pornographer Hugh Hefner at the PlayBoy Mansion? PlayGirl Loretta Sanchez has now been instrumental in electing as a congresswoman her "do-nothing sister" Linda Sanchez because apperantly she colluded with certain questionable elements of the Califronia Jewish dominated Democratic Party. We have been witnesses of the Jewish inspired pornographic tactics that Loretta Sanchez utilized during her campaign. Her "flashing of her calzones" during opportune times is worst than what Lynddie England did to the Iraqi POW's. Our community will not stand for this! Congresswomen Loretta Sanchez, Linda Sanchez, Lucille Royball-Allard, Grace Napolitano and Hilda Solis . . . stop "prostituting" yourselves just to be re-elected. Stand up for moral principals and human justice around the world now or you will be kicked out of office by our community! Stop the rape of Mexican women and other Latinas! Stop the rape and the occupation of Iraq now!