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http://www.vdare.com/articles/war-on...war-on-freedom


War On Terror Or War On Freedom?
By Chuck Baldwin on September 23, 2011
A recent major investigative report by the Los Angeles Times sheds light on what all this “war on terror” is actually costing–and actually accomplishing. According to the report,

“A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives.

“But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been?

“‘The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It’s basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year,’ said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.”

The LA Times report goes on to say, “Like the military-industrial complex that became a permanent and powerful part of the American landscape during the Cold War, the vast network of Homeland Security spyware, concrete barricades and high-tech identity screening is here to stay. The Department of Homeland Security, a collection of agencies ranging from border control to airport security sewn quickly together after Sept. 11, is the third-largest Cabinet department and–with almost no lawmaker willing to render the U.S. less prepared for a terrorist attack–one of those least to fall victim to budget cuts.

“The expensive and time-consuming screening now routine for passengers at airport boarding gates has detected plenty of knives, loaded guns and other contraband, but it has never identified a terrorist who was about to board a plane. Only 14 Americans have died in about three dozen instances of Islamic extremist terrorist plots targeted at the U.S. outside war zones since 2001–most of them involving one or two home-grown plotters.”

The report also notes, “Large sums of Homeland Security money, critics complain, have been propelled by pork barrel politics into the backyards of the congressionally connected.”

See the LA Times report Is Homeland Security spending paying off?, By Kim Murphy, August 28, 2011.



Add to the LA Times report a report by Madison Ruppert. In the report, Ruppert notes that it is clearly the Bill of Rights–especially the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms–that are suffering the most egregious attacks from the federal government’s “war on terror.”

Ruppert concludes his report saying,

“In short, despite the fact that all the statistics and data in the world directly contradict the report’s findings and the claims made by clearly biased ‘experts’ on the threat of terrorism, especially of the homegrown variety, the HSPI [Homeland Security Policy Institute] and other bodies continue to fearmonger and lie to the American people to keep us scared while they empty our pockets and continue their imperialistic adventures in the Middle East and now North Africa.”

See Ruppert’s column here.



Back to the Times report, not only do we Americans have about an equal chance of dying at the hands of a terrorist as we do dying in our own bathtubs, we have a much greater risk of dying at the hands of prescription drugs–something lawfully encouraged and tightly controlled by the US government. According to a recent report, more people now die each year from prescription drugs than from automobile accidents. That’s some 37,000 deaths via prescription drugs annually! (Come to think of it, how many people do you know who have died from marijuana?) And as hard as it will be for some people to accept, this number is gigantically greater than those who die from hard drugs such as heroin or crack cocaine. In fact, the prescription drug Vicodin, by itself, has killed more people than cocaine and heroin combined.

See the report on prescription drug deaths here.


So, what has this trillion-dollar “war on terror” accomplished? If it’s not making us more secure, what is it doing? Well, for one thing, it has created a stupendous surveillance society. Virtually every piece of public communication is now captured and stored by the federal government. Surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous throughout the United States. We have a gargantuan federal police department (which is anathema to the US Constitution): the Department of Homeland Security. We have thousands of Orwellian laws, most of which were spawned by the Patriot Act. And more and more often, law enforcement agencies are demonizing US citizens for their religious and political beliefs and statements–even categorizing them as potential domestic terrorists based simply on those religious and political beliefs.

To refresh reader’s minds regarding how Americans have been labeled, profiled, and denigrated as “terrorists” because of their religious or political beliefs, please peruse the material on this web page.

Fortunately, it does appear that the combination of an emerging police state and a declining economy that has resulted from this “war on terror” is finally starting to catch the attention of the American people. According to a Brooking Institution report, “Six in ten Americans believe that that the United States weakened its economy by overspending in its responses to the 9/11 attacks. In particular, respondents felt this was especially true of the U.S. mission in Iraq. Two out of three Americans perceive that over the decade since 9/11, U.S. power and influence in the world has declined.”

A Rasmussen report further revealed, “As with the recent turmoil in Egypt, most Americans (67%) say the United States should leave the situation in the Arab countries alone.”

Beyond that, “A Zogby poll conducted in August 2007 found that 51% of Americans want Congress to probe Bush/Cheney regarding the 9/11 attacks, two-thirds (67%) of Americans say the 9/11 Commission should have investigated the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.”

See the BlacklistedNews.com report containing the above survey

[plogypeskelry]

The MADNESS CONTINUES for another day.....

[propolo]

Our Freedoms are considered 'Terror' to the ruling Elite......

[j2Y6Ysmb]

chuck baldwin and cynthia mckinney are the only 2 politicos to really touch 9/11....

kudos to them

[Usesdiums]

Eisenhower's farewell speech has wise words on split government and militarism


Gallery





Dwight D. Eisenhower: After the presidency
Dwight D. Eisenhower's grandson David Eisenhower recently released a book about the life of the 34th president after he left office.
» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

















By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 13, 2010; 7:13 PM

New information about the drafting 50 years ago of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Jan. 17, 1961, farewell address shows that he would have had a second pertinent message for today beyond his famous warning about the "military-industrial complex."
Ike also was concerned about split government.
Released last week by the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, the newly discovered papers include a draft dated Dec. 21, 1960, that says though he as a Republican faced Democratic control of both the House and Senate for six of his eight years in the White House, "We did not fall out into bitter, unreconcilable factions which in other nations have paralyzed the democratic process."
Instead, he goes on, "Despite our differences, we worked together, and the business of the nation went forward, and the fact that it did so is in large measure a credit to the wisdom, forbearance, and sense of duty displayed by the Congress."
Given today's enormous governmental issues, President Obama, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress and particularly legislators coming to Washington next year should reflect on Eisenhower's concern about government paralysis.
The subject had been on Eisenhower's mind for a while.
Malcolm Moos, a special assistant and chief speech writer in whose cabin the draft was found, in a May 24, 1959, memo suggested it as a topic for the farewell address, saying it should stress "the need for common sense to accommodate the broad range of beliefs in the political spectrum of America, particularly in an era when the nation may have an Executive of one party and a Congress of another."


One day later, Eisenhower wrote to his brother, Milton, who served as an unofficial adviser, that "one reason I have been toying with this idea is because of my experience . . . a full six years in working with a Congress controlled by the opposite party." But, he added, he did not want to do "anything that was partisan in character."
By the time Milton Eisenhower did his rewrite Jan. 7, 10 days before delivery, the section about split government had been toned down and shortened. Milton's version spoke of the fervent hope "that the Executive and Legislative Branches of our government will find essential agreement on the great issues whose wise resolution will shape the future of our beloved country."
In the final speech, delivered from the Oval Office, that section became even blander. Eisenhower said that he and Congress became "mutually interdependent during these past eight years," and "in this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward."
While the lecture on split government faded, Eisenhower's concerns about militarism grew stronger in the speech. Those details are even more pertinent for today. In reviewing the several drafts, it appears that only one strong sentence was dropped. It was in an Oct. 31, 1960, memo by Ralph E. Williams, a White House speechwriter. He wrote it after receiving "guidelines" from Moos.
Williams wrote that not only had a "permanent war-based industry" developed, but "flag and general officers retiring at an early age take positions in [the] war-based industrial complex shaping its decisions and guiding the direction of its tremendous thrust. . . . We must be very careful to insure that the 'merchants of death' do not come to dictate national policy."
Though that section is gone, the final speech does contain more than the phrase "military-industrial complex."
Speaking of the threat from the Soviet Union and communism, Eisenhower used terms that still have resonance. "We face a hostile ideology - global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. . . . Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration."
Eisenhower pointed out the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" creates an influence that is "economic, political, even spiritual." He said there would be continuing crises, foreign and domestic, but warned against "a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."
Instead, he laid out the need to weigh proposals that are worth full consideration today - and to seek balance: "Balance in and among national programs - balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage - balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future."

[Usesdiums]

i hope it alright that i posted this if not let me know LS