Whistleblower Realities

The Issue

Some people claim that whistleblowers are individuals who are concerned about: fairness, integrity, justice, honesty, transparency, society, rights, democracy, truth, and sovereignty for the people. Government authorities, however, argue that whistleblowers are criminal, selfish, treasonous, ego-driven, publicity seeking troublemakers who are jeopardizing national security as well as violating the principle that democracy is best served when secrets are preserved and the people are kept ignorant about what is being done through the process of governing. Where does the truth lie?

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The Grand Deception

The American form of government is supposed to be rooted in republican principles. Such principles were derived from, and shaped by, a moral philosophy that was promoted during the Enlightenment. At the heart of this Enlightenment philosophy is a belief which requires the process of government to be run as a moral enterprise. In other words, rather than governement officials acting in ways that are arbitrary and intended to serve the interests of the government rather than the interests of citizens, republicanism indicated that government officials must abide by certain moral principles such as: honesty, objectivity, fairness, truth, nobility, keeping promises, charitability, transparency, tolerance, service to the public, and not being a judge in one's own affair.

The foregoing outline of republicanism is integral to the United States Constitution. Indeed, the principle of republican moral philsophy was enshrined in the American form of government through Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitutiion. That portion of the document stipulates that the federal government guarantees the states, and, therefore, the people, a republican form of government ... a form of government which does not violate the moral principles of republicanism. 

To operate in accordance with Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, a government cannot be a judge in its own affair. Among other things this means that governments (whether federal or state) do not get to be the final arbiters of what is in the best interests of democracy or promoting the sovereignty of the people, and this includes the Supreme Court (both federal and state) since the judiciary constitutes one of the three branches of centralized government.

For several hundred years (in fact from practically the beginning of the founding of the American Republic), both federal and state governments have sought to render Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution relatively invisible and irrelevant to the process of governance. And, yet -- and this is precisely why Article IV, Section 4 has been rendered obscure by the federal and state governments -- this portion of the Constituion is, probably, the most fundamental principle set forth in that document becuase it was intended to allay the fears of the people that government would become tyrannical, but through a guaranteed, Constitutionally enshrined promise, the people would find assurance that the process of government would not be oppressive or tyrannical and, instead, would operate in accordance with the moral requirements of republicanism.

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Bait and Switch

Centralized government in the United States has been conducting a sleight-of-hand routine before the American public from almost the very beginning of the founding of our experiment in democracy. However, this form of governmental prestidigitaton has been picking up steam over the last one hundred years as the sorcerers of governance seek to induce the public to believe that protecting 'national interests' or 'national security' is the same thing as protecting the sovereignty of the citizens, and this illusion is assisted by misdirecting people's attention away from the moral requirements of republicanism -- which, in the present case, means that the government does not have the right to determine what is, and is not, in the best interests of citizen sovereignty. Invoking the terms: "national interests" and "state security" is about protecting governments, not the people, although governments have done their best to try to deceive people and induce people to believe that there is no difference between "national interests" and citizen sovereignty.

Governments don't like whistleblowers because, in essence, such individuals remind us all that sovereignty is the right of the people and is not derived from, or a gift, of the government. Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution indicates that whistleblowers have the right to be heard by the people beyond the horizons of a legal process which may serve the interests of central government but does not necessarily serve the sovereign interests of citizens.

Whistleblowers perform a public service to the cause of citizen sovereignty, often at great personal risk. Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution not only encourages such selfless acts, but guarantees that the government must let such acts take place quite indepedently of what the government believes to be the case and quite free of criminal prosecution. Indeed, every prosecution of a whistleblower constitutes a violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution and, as such, represents an unconstitutional act on the part of the government. 

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution is the 'supreme law of the land'. It takes precedence over every other aspect of the Constitution because it is the only guarantee which appears in that document. To seek to deny the requirements of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution not only renders the rest of the Constitution meaningless, but it seeks to suppress the principles of republican moral philosophy in which the American form of democracy is supposedly rooted.

Israel and Orwellian NewSpeak

An Israeli Myth

I.F Stone, publisher and primary investigative reporter for the highly regarded Stone's Weekly (which probably reached its height of influence in the mid-1960s when, among other things, Stone was the only American journalist to challenge Lyndon Johnson concerning the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident), was a supporter of Zionist aspirations early in his life even as he also was a proponent of a two-state solution with respect to the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Later in his life he became more sympathetic to the cause of Palestinians.

For example, a favorite slogan of the Zionist movement suggested that Palestine was 'a land without a people', while Jews were 'a people without a land', and, therefore, the match between Palestine and the Jewish people seemed to be a match made in Heaven. At one point, I.F. Stone had the temerity to state that the slogan was not accurate because Palestine had never been a land without a people, but much like the American-French deal concerning the Louisiana Purchase and the American-Russia deal involving Alaska, no one seemed to want to reflect on the fact that the lands beings sold and confiscated were inhabited by people who might object to the nature of such transactions.

Hypocrisy

While the Jewish people are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they are not entitled to deny these same rights to the Palestinian people. The Jewish people are entitled to water, but they are not entitled to deny Palestinians access to that same resource. The Jewish people are entitled to shelter, but they are not entitled to build illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The Jewish people are entitled to freedom of movement, but they are not entitled to prevent this same sort of freedom to the Palestinians. The Jewish people are entitled to food and to pursue agricultural self-sufficiency, but they are not entitled to destroy the crops and means of livelihood of the Palestinians. The Jewish people are entitled to fish and enjoy the waters off their coast, but they are not entitled to stop Palestians from the same right to fish and enjoy the waters off their own coast. The Jewish people are entitled to sovereignty, but they are not entitled to prevent the same sort of sovereignty to the Palestinian people. The Jewish people are entitled to make laws to govern themselves, but they are not entitled to establish a completely different and unfair set of laws to govern the Palestinian people. The Jewish people are entitled to security, but they are not entitled to torture Palestinians or impose Nazi-like collective punishment on the Palestinian people for the acts of individuals, nor are they entitled to build massive illegal walls which disrupt and undermine Palestinian life. The Jewish people are entitled to protect themselves, but they are not entitled to carpet-bomb Palestinians or arbitrarily invade and occupy the territories of the Palestinians. If Jewish people are entitled to a right of return to ancestral lands, then, so too, are Palestian people entitled to the same kind of right of return, but in neither case does such a right (if it exists at all) entail being able to take and occupy whatever land and property one likes if and when one does return. The Jewish people are entitled to the protection of the international community, but they are not entitled to thumb their noses at international law when it suits their purposes ... such as in the case of U.N. Resolution 242 which indicates that no country -- including Israel -- has the right to acquire territory through war, as the Israelis did during the 1967 Six-Day War. The Jewish people have a right to be concerned about the intentions of Iran with respect to its nuclear program, and the rest of the world has the right to demand that Israel open up its own nuclear program to international inspection. In many ways, Israel is an amazing society, culture, and experiment in democracy, but Israel also has a very dark underbelly which, for more than half a century, has sought to place many obstacles and hardships in the way of Palestinians becoming a similarly amazing society, culture, and experiment in democracy.

The first plane hijacking was perpetrated by Israelis. The first terrorist attacks in the Middle East were committed by Jewish groups such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang (Lehi). The first bombings of innocent people were committed by members of the Jewish community in relation to the King David Hotel, Alhambra Cinema, Damascus Gate, Jaffa Gate, and the Haifa market.

None of the foregoing justifies 'suicide bombings' by the Palestians, but there is considerable innocent blood on Israeli hands, and, consequently, it is time for the duplicitous, self-serving, hypocritical Israeli dance of death, destruction, and tyranny to come to an end.

The United States gives approximately two-three billion dollars a year to Israel and has been doing this for over fifty years. Much of this aid is in the form of military weapons and assitance which means that the United States government is both directly and indirectly responsible for the oppression of the Palestinian people.

Such aid is granted despite the fact that in additon to the scandals that have been uncovered involving the state of Israel spying on, and stealing (or attempting to) classified information from, America (for example, Jonathan Pollard, Ben-Ami Kadish), Israel also made an unprovoked attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 and killed 34 crew members, while wounding an additional 171 other crew members despite the fact that the Liberty was in international waters at the time of the attack. Both the Israeli and American government conducted inquries into the matter and concluded that the matter was a tragic mistake, but the people who were on the Liberty and who actually experienced what took place have no doubt that the Israelis attackers knew the identity of the ship which they bombed and strafed ... and did so for hours. Then, of course, there was the incident in which Mossad agents were discovered cheering and dancing on the roof of their van as they watched the Twin Towers burning on September 1st, 2001. Moreover, after being released by American authorities, the agents went home to brag and joke about the whole affair on Israeli television.

The United States is quite willing to impose onerous economic and financial sanctions upon Iran for a nuclear program whose actual status is quite unclear, and, yet, the Americans looked the other way when the Israelis produced some 400-600 nuclear weapons, thereby enabling the situation to evolve into a much more dangerous and destabilizing set of circumstances which threatens everyone because there is no such thing as a precision nuclear weapon -- toxic radioactivity travels everywhere and adversely affects everyone. As such, the state of Israel has joined an 'elite' group of nations (which includes: America, Russia, China, France, Britain, India, and Pakistan) that constitute nuclear menances in the world -- countries that act out of paranoia, fear, myths, and a desire to control the world through tactics of intimidation and force because they don't have the competency or the inclination to solve problems in a non-violent way.

I'm not in favor of Iran acquiring nuclear weapon capability. Nonetheless, I also am not in favor of Israel actually having such weapons. But the beat of hypocrisy continues on in so many, many different ways when it comes to the state of Israel.

Recognizing the human rights of Jewish people does not require one to approve of, or agree with, Israeli policies concerning its continued oppression of the Palestianian people. In fact, one cannot possibly recognize the human rights of Jewish individuals -- while simultaneously failing to extend equal recognition with respect to the rights of Palestian people -- without becoming entangled in indefensible nonsense. Engaging in such double-talk is a clinic in Orwellian Newspeak that is uncivilized, distasteful, shameful, and constitutes, as well, an egregious violation of international law.

The Principle of 'No'!!

The following paragraphs were just posted to my websites and constitutes a mission or official policy statement, if you will, that governs the intent and content of the postings which appear on my websites, blogs, and the material within all of my publications. 

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The Anab-Whitehouse.com website operates in accordance with the Principle of 'No'. Another way of giving expression to the spiritual orientation that is rooted in the 'Principle of No' is to bear witness (via my writings, actions, commitments, values, and beliefs) that: 'There is no reality but the truth'.

The foregoing principle or form of bearing witness requires me to declare the following: I am against violence -- that is, I say "No!!" to such acts -- irrespective of whether those activities are given expression through: religious fundamentalists (of whatever denomination) who seek to forcibly impose their beliefs on others; national security agencies; the killing of innocents (through whatever means); domestic abuse; compulsory educational systems; sexual exploitation; slavery; ethnic cleansing; tyrannical governmental agencies (whether in the United States or elsewhere); corporate pathology; techniques of undue influence; financial/banking injustices; censorship; military adventurism (via armies, militias, jihadists, mercenaries, and so-called 'freedom fighters'); unfair and unsafe labor practices; ecological destruction; police brutality; suicide bombings; processes of ideological control (e.g., propaganda and indoctrination); spiritual abuse; market manipulations; arbitrary legal and constitutiional systems; intelligence agencies; political parties; torture (or 'enhanced interrogation'); unwarranted surveilance; extreme rendition; spying; assassination; drones; martial law; preemptive wars; congressional malfeasance; executive imperalism/dictatorship; inhumane prison conditions and treatment; as well as oppressive social/economic/religious/political majorities or minorities which results in the violation of basic human rights involving: truth, worship, speech, creed, assembly, health care, learning, shelter, food, privacy, movement, and sovereignty.

In my opinion, all of the foreging forms of violence constitute expressions of terrorist-oriented practices, and this is true whether, or not, such expressions of violence are perpetrated by: nations, states, governmental agencies, organizations, banks, the judiciary, institutions, social groups, economic entities, international bodies, the media, military personnel, or individuals. Some years ago, Issac Asimov -- a writer and teacher -- indicated in one of his fictional works that: "Violence is the last refuge of incompetence." In other words, only people who are incompetent when it comes to issues of: truth, character, justice, sovereignty, integrity, and decency find a sense of refuge or solace in using violence to control and destroy the lives of other human beings.

Approximately a thousand years ago, the Sufi saint Hazrat al-Hujwiri (also known as Hazrat Dada Ganj Baksh) stated in his Kashf al-Mahjub -- and he, actually, was quoting someone from a still earlier time -- "Once Sufism was a reality without a name, and now it is a name without a reality." The problem has gotten worse since that time.

One of the primary purposes of this Web Site is to serve as a virtual library (including written, audio, and video selections) that is intended to provide authentic information on, and insight into, numerous dimensions of the Sufi (tasawwuf) Path, in particular, and Islam, in general. There is nothing in any of the writings or audio and video presentations which appear on this website which run contrary to the 'Principle of No' that was outlined in the opening paragraphs of this web page. This is also true of the more than thirty publications (covering over 12,000 pages of material) that are available through Bilquees Press. I invite you to test the truth of the foregoing claim for yourself either in relation to the material contained in this web site or in any of my real world or virtual world publications. The 'Principle of No' is at the very heart of Islam and the Sufi Path. Until an individual says no to all the myriad delusional modes of perpetrating violence against others and oneself, one will not be in a position to recognize, understand, and acquiesce to the truth of reality's nature ... including one's own potential for serving as a locus of manifestation in relation to reflecting, according to one's capacity and Divine Grace, certain dimensions of the truth concerning the nature of reality.

American Indigenous Peoples and the Palestinians

There is much which has been written about the 6 million Jewish people who were killed by the Nazis. There is much less that is written about the 3-4 million non-Jewish people who were exterminated by Hitler and his fellow 'true believers' during the Second World War. Moreover, there has been even less written about the 19 million indigenous peoples in America (and the foregoing figure is actually a very conservative estimate) who were slaughtered by allegedly enlightened, democratic, and liberty loving people over the course of some 500 years within the areas now occupied by the United States ... a program of abuse and oppression which continues to this day.

According to Hitler, himself, the Nazis based their model for the holocaust on the programs which were implemented by the United States that has been directed toward exterminating, imprisoning (within reservations), and/or forcefully assimilating the indigenous peoples of America. The apartheid government of South Africa also used what might be termed 'the American model' to deal with the indigenous peoples of South Africa.

When indigenous people in America were not being killed, placed on and restricted to reservations, or forced-assimilated into American culture, every treaty that was ever made between one supposedly democratic government or another within the United States was broken by representatives of the latter agencies. Today, the most impoverished, oppressed, unemployed, and abused people in the United States are the indigenous population -- unless, of course,  one's tribe owns a casino ... but even this is an economic and social model that has been borrowed from the white man and which tends to repudiate many dimensions of the moral and spiritual heritage of indigenous cultures, and, thus, constitutes a pyrrhic victory at best.

However badly black people have been treated prior to, during, and after the birth of the United States -- and their treatment has been horrific, oppressive, and uncivilized in very shameful, violent, and demeaning ways -- that abuse has been far less than what has been imposed upon indigenous peoples in America. To cite a minor issue in this respect, an abolitionist movement in relation to blacks has been in existence for hundreds of years in America, but there has never been a comparable abolitionist-like movement among white people to end the incredibly abusive and tyrannical manner in which indigenous peoples have been, and are continuing to be, treated. Indeed, in light of how indigenous people are, and have been, treated in this country, slavery might be considered a step forward for them -- although I certainly am not advocating that this be done but, rather, I am just pointing out an interesting feature of comparison.

Furthermore, there has never been something comparable to an 'Underground Railroad' to carry indigenous peoples to safety as was the case in relation to Black slaves. And, perhaps, one of the reasons for this is that, historically, indigenous people in Canada have tended to be treated every bit as horrendously as their counterparts in the United States have been treated ... although in some ways, Canada has done much more to rectify things vis-a-vis indigenous peoples than America has done.

The Civil Rights movement led to a great leap forward for many people of African-American heritage. Unfortunately, that same movement led to little, or no, improvements for indigenous peoples ... indeed, many facets of the lives of the latter groups of peoples are still being controlled by a very pathological entity known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Like people of African-American  heritage, indigenous peoples have been slaughtered, tortured, raped, abused, ripped from their lands, deprived of their culture and languages, had their communities and families destroyed, as well as have been stripped of their spiritual beliefs. However, whereas tremendous progress has been made (although much still remains to be done) in recognizing and attempting to rectify the many forms of racism which are directed toward people of African-American heritage, almost no progress has been made to acknowledge and ameliorate the varied forms of racism that continue to be directed toward indigenous peoples in America.

Little by little -- and oftentimes painfully slowly -- people of African-American heritage have been ceded some degree of power within the United States. Part of this is the result of the growing political realities associated with a demographic which is rooted in 27 million people of African-American heritage who currently reside in the United States.

How extraordinary that, on the one hand, a group of peoples who were abducted from Africa now totals some 27 million, while, on the other hand, a group of peoples who lived in America long before the forced migration of those who would become African-Americans, now number a little under 3 million -- less than one-ninth the size of the former group of peoples. Perhaps, if some 19 million indigenous peoples had not been subject to a Western holocaust, political realities might have accorded them some of the same rights and privileges as their African-American brothers and sisters ... but, instead, they are largely ignored and continue to be subject to the arbitrary, unjust, and oppressive decisions of the United States government.

One of the reasons why many people in the United States -- including so-called Executive, Judicial and Congressional leaders -- not only tolerate, but provide financial support for (to the tune of $2 billion dollars a year) the continued oppression of the Palestinian peoples by the Israeli government, is because the Israeli government engages Palestinian indigenous peoples over there in the same way that the American government engages indigenous peoples here. Both groups are considered to be 'savage', 'uncivilized,' demonic, and unworthy of being treated with the dignity and rights to which all human beings are entitled.

Both Israel and the United States are considered to be among the leaders in the fight for democracy. However, as long as those two countries continue, each in its own way, to oppress and abuse Palestinians as well as American indigenous peoples, they are merely hypocrites who speak with forked tongue.

Learning versus Education ... Thinking versus Compliance

If you are interested in education or if you are an educator or if you are entangled in education (as a student or as a parent or as tax payer), you might find the accompanying 15-minute video to be either very disturbing or quite exhilarating (maybe even both). Whatever your response might be, I believe that truth is being given expression through this video.

The video has two parts. The first section is a four-minute talk given at a graduation ceremony by the school valedictorian, Erica Goldson. It is a brilliant talk, and one can't but wonder if anyone in the audience or among the school staff attending the event or even among the other students who are graduating on that occasion is listening to her ... and if they are not, they are missing an opportunity to learn important principles since there is great wisdom being expressed through her words.

The quality of the first part of the video is not that good. However, what is important are the words and not the visual dimension ... although I do wonder what the couple on the right seem to be talking about every now and then.

An eleven minute presentation by Sir Ken Robinson follows the foregoing 4-minute talk. It, too, is brilliant (and so is the accompanying animation).

The latter talk nicely complements the first one. It outlines the many ways in which public education has lost its way ... becoming little more than an institutional factory for mass-producing students to become compliant, conforming citizens who can be taught to serve the economy but who have little capacity for either critical or divergent thinking, and whose curiosity about life or passion for learning have been sucked from their souls.

Learning is so much more than education will permit it to be. Human potential is so much more than the limits which education has placed upon it. 

Easter, Civil War, and Sovereignty

Happy Easter!!!???

The topic is not pleasant, but the issue has become threateningly real. Most unfortunately, the prospect of a possible, coming civil war in the United States is no longer just a fictional scenario that remains safely locked away in the film canisters of Hollywood (See accompanying 10 minute video).

Although I pray that things may never reach such a level of insanity, we cannot just continue to live our lives in denial in relation to what is taking place within the federal government. Indeed, for quite some time -- and across a number of administrations -- various dimensions of the federal government of the United States have been making preparations to go to war against American citizens should the time arrive when committing federal forces and resources to that sort of path is considered necessary with respect to advancing the economic, financial, social, and political agenda of those who are in power.

The Patriot Act, The John Warner Defense Authorization Act, the Military Commissions Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, unprecedented, warrantless surveillance on all forms of domestic communication in the United States (one should familiarize oneself with what NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake have to say on this matter, not to mention Mark Klein's comments concerning AT&T's role in all of this), and a slew of Executive Orders (such as 10990, 10995, 10997, 10998, 10999, 11000, 11001, 11002, 11003, 11004, 11005, and 11921), together with the procurement of 1.5 billion rounds of hollow point ammunition by Homeland Security, as well as the purchase of enough body bags by DHS to house half the population of the United States, are all parts of the whole being alluded to above.

There also are treaties now in place between the United States and Canada which stipulate that if one of the two nations declares martial law, the armed forces of the other nation can be sent into (or will be permitted into) the country that has established martial law in order to assist the latter government in support of its oppression of  citizens. Furthermore, the federal government has indicated that military personnel returning home from overseas may, because of their skill sets, constitute terrorist threats to the United States.

All the pieces are in place for the Office of the President to declare martial law at the drop of a hat. if this is done, the President would become a military dictator (remember he is Commander in Chief of the armed forces, though not of America citizens), having complete control (thanks to the aforementioned Executive Orders) of: all communications media (including the Internet); all modes of transportation (including highways, seaports, trains, buses, inland waterways, and air fields); all sources of energy, all food resources and farms; all forms of education; and all financial institutions. In addition, Executive Order 11921 empowers the Office of the President to declare a state of emergency that is not defined and which Congress cannot review for 6 months. Moreover, Executive Order 11000 permits the federal government to organize American citizens into work brigades that serve the pleasure of the federal government.

The accompanying 10 minute piece consists largely of an interview involving Dr. James Garrow, a Canadian citizen, who wrote the book: The Pink Pagoda: One Man's Quest to End Gendercide in China, and over the past 16 years, or so, has spent more than $25 million dollars in a successful effort to rescue approximately 40,000 Chinese baby girls from the almost certain fatal ramifications of China's one-child-per-couple policy. However, the interview does not explore the gendercide taking place in China but, instead, talks about the potential for a different kind of genocide which might be facing Americans.

Certain patriots high up in the command structure of the U.S. military have spoken with Dr. Garrow and urged him to come forward to give public expression to a set of events that is taking place between the military and certain facets of the federal government. More specifically, there is a litmus test that has been operating within military circles which is asking the following question: 'Would you fire on American citizens if they refused to give up their guns.'

This is not an idle issue. During Hurricane Katrina, homes were breached in Louisiana by military personnel, as well as by employees of military contractors such as Blackwater (which has gone through several name changes and is now known as Academe). The residents of those homes were threatened at gun point to hand over their weapons.

I am not a gun owner. In fact, I have never owned a gun ... although I went hunting a couple of times when a teenager using a .22 that belonged to my father.

Furthermore, I am not a fan of the gun lobby. For, despite whatever platitudes it mouths in conjunction with 2nd Amendment rights, it often ends up playing everyone against the middle in a self-serving policy intended to generate huge profits.

In addition, I am saddened by tragedies like those in Newtown, Conneticut, Aurora, Colorado, and the Arizona rampage which nearly cost Gabby Gifford her life while ending the lives of so-many other innocents. However, if tragedy and loss of life is the criterion for generating public policy, then, perhaps one should go after the medical profession for the nearly one million iatrogenic deaths which are caused every year through the recklessness, thoughtlessness, and negligence of hospital personnel ... in fact, al-Qaeda -- whatever its sins might be (I am sure those sins are legion) and despite its more than a decade of operations in one form or another -- has killed or injured only a small fraction of the people who have been killed, injured, and maimed through the medical/health professions in the United States every single year. Given such mayhem, it is a wonder that the professionals in that latter array of occupations have not been declared a terrorist group.

Or, let's consider all the people who are killed every year through automobile accidents (quite a few thousands of these are linked to drunk drivers). There are many times the number of people who are killed and injured through the misuse of the automobile as a weapon than are killed and injured through the misuse of guns. If tragedy and loss of life are the criteria for banning things, then, perhaps, we need to take a closer look at cars, their owners, and the people who manufacture, distribute, and sell alcohol.

Another inconvenient set of facts which is often hid in the debate over guns, is the role which pharmaceuticals (e.g., anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medications, mood stabilizers, attention deficit disorders, and a host of other arbitrary inventions in the medical cornucopia of profit-making) play in generating senseless deaths (both of others and via suicide) within, and beyond, the walls of schools and homes across America. Having taught all manner of courses in psychology for a number of years in both Canada and the United States, I am well acquainted with the evidence indicating that not only do prescribed psychoactive drugs not work as hyped, but, just as importantly, those drugs actually de-stabilize people's mental and emotional condition (for those who are interested, read: 'Medication Madness' by Peter Breggin, 'Our Daily Meds' by Melody Peterson, Side Effects by Alison Bass, and 'The Myth of the Chemical Cure' by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff), and, yet, hardly a word is mentioned about the role which pharmaceutical companies have been shown to play in conjunction with the perpetuation of violence in America.

When I taught criminology in Canada, I made certain that my students were aware of the following fact. Namely, there are far more deaths, injuries, and theft which take place as the result of corporate activity than is due to street crime considered collectively. Maybe, we should begin to think about banning corporations and classifying them as terrorist groups.

Guns were taken away from the people of the Soviet Union. Dictatorship ensued.

Guns have been taken away from people in Australia. Crime has skyrocketed.

Many Australians rue the day that they permitted their weapons to be confiscated by their government. One can shake one's head in the negative all one wants, but there is a negative correlation between crime rates and the presence of citizens who are armed -- that is, when citizens are armed, the rate of crime tends to be suppressed ... although there are always exceptions to this general tendency.

The 2nd Amendment is not about hunting wild game or target practice. It is the right of citizens to bear arms and, if necessary, to use those arms in defending themselves against whatever oppressive and tyrannical forces seek to take away the inherent right to sovereignty which people have ... a right that precedes, and, therefore, is not derived from, or granted by, governments, and in the light of the revelations being issued by Dr. James Garrow in the accompanying 10 minute interview, the American people will need their guns to protect themselves against a government which has established all of the legal mechanisms that are necessary to destroy democracy in America and take over the United States and make it a military dictatorship under the auspices of the Office of the President ... and if this is not what certain people at the federal level of government had in mind, they would have not rammed such legislation as: the Patriot Act, or the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, the Military Commissions Act, or the National Defense Authorization Act through Congress (and, unfortunately, very few people in Congress actually take the time to carefully read what they are voting on, and,  therefore, are guilty of violating Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution).

Will some people use guns irresponsibly, arbitrarily, and criminally when interacting with other human beings? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is: "Yes."

However, people -- being human -- will also use cars, medical licensing, corporate power, and political office in various irresponsible, negligent, and criminal ways when interacting with other individuals as well. Tragedies due to the misuse of guns are many, but there are many more tragedies in American life which are due to the misuse of economic, political, financial, and corporate power than to the misuse of guns, and, therefore, before considering the issue of guns, one should deal with the other, more pressing, devastating and more problematic ramifications which ensue from the acts of criminality, insanity, and cruelty which are made possible through governments, corporations, banks, and educational institutions.

For those of you who are Christian, then, in addition to the issues surrounding the resurrection of Jesus (peace be upon him) on which you focus during this time of year, you might also want to reflect on a different kind of resurrection during, and following, this Easter holiday -- namely, the resurrection of sovereignty in the United States. Sovereignty  is suffering, and the centurions are gambling on its robe beneath the shadow of sovereignty's ebbing light.

Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution -- All Federal Branches of Government Are Violating the One Guarantee Given In The Constitution

Last week, someone, who at this point remains anonymous, slipped in a rider to HR 933 (a 6-month funding bill intended to prevent the U.S. government from shutting down) that effectively nullified the ability or power of federal courts to stop companies like Monsanto from planting and selling genetically modified crops in the United States even when such products can be shown to pose a risk to public health.

The bill with the above mentioned rider has passed through Congress. It has been signed into law.

Prior to the vote, the foregoing rider should have been reviewed by the Committee on Agriculture, but it was not. The lone voice of opposition to the rider came from John Tester, a Democrat from Montana, and, yet, Tester's attempt to delete the rider from HR 933 was never put to a vote.

The passage of HR 933, along with legislation such as The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, and National Defense Authorization Act, and numerous other pieces of legislation are all in clear violation of the Constitution. More specifically, Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution states: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government ..."

Nowhere else in the Constitution is the idea of a guarantee mentioned -- which means that Article IV, Section 4 has priority and supremacy over every other part of the Constitution ... even that of so-called National Security. Every single thing which is done by any of the three branches of Federal government must be capable of meeting the standards inherent in the guarantee of a republican form of government which is stated in Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution.

What is meant by the notion of a 'republican government' has nothing to do with the Republican party or, for that matter, the Democrats. Republicanism was a moral philosophy rooted in the Enlightenment, and it encompassed principles of: fairness, openness, honesty, objectivity, impartiality, rationality, integrity, compassion, justice, truth, freedom from all manner of corruption, and not serving as judges in one's own affairs.

Consequently, the biotech rider in HR 933, the Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and many, if not most, of the Executive Orders that have been issued by the Office of the President (during a number of Administrations, including the present one) with respect to matters such as: torture, the use of drones, warrantless surveillance, undeclared wars (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria), provisions for the suspension of all rights in relation to whatever future events might be trumped up as a 'national emergency' ... all of these are in violation of the most central and essential part of the Constitution: namely, Article 4, Section 4.

Whatever is hypothesized to be a matter of national security, or in the national interests, as well as whatever powers Congress, the Executive Office, or the Judiciary believe themselves to have -- as outlined in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution -- are all subordinate to, and in the service of, the guarantee given in Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, in accordance with the guarantee of Article IV, Section 4, NONE of the three branches of federal government has the requisite authority to determine the meaning and scope of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, because one of the key requirements entailed by the moral philosophy of republicanism is that one must not be a judge in one's own affair, and, therefore, none of the three branches of federal government can have any legal standing in any matter in which they have a vested interest or conflict of interest that has the potential to undermine the intended protections of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution for the people of the states of the union.

Article IV, Section 4, together with the 9th and 10th Amendment, clearly indicate that the people who comprise the various states of the union are the only ones who can establish the meaning and scope of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution. Indeed, acknowledging the ultimate authority of the people as the source of all law -- and considered quite independently from the issue of alleged political representation -- this is the only means through which the federal government can guarantee that the states will be given a republican form of government because Article IV, Section 4 was intended to place a clear set of constraints on what any branch of federal government could and could not do ... in short, everything the branches of the federal government does or intends to do must satisfy the moral requirement of republicanism.

All of the enumerated powers given to any of the three branches of federal government under the provisions of Articles I, II, and III in the Constitution must comply with the guarantee given in Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution. In addition, the individual who holds the position of President may bear the designation of Commander in Chief, but this is only in relation to the military since the Commander in Chief, himself or herself, must act in consort with the guarantee stipulated in Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution.

Learning Is Free: Degrees Still Cost Lots of Money!

The accompanying video is a little longer than usual -- 11 minutes -- but it might well be worth your while because it explores the expanding realm of free, university level, on-line courses, taught by top professors in their fields. Currently, there are more than 2,000,000 students from all over the world -- including war-torn areas like the Gaza strip -- who are taking advantage of these programs.

Udacity ( http://udacity.com ), EdX ( http://edX.org ), and Coursera ( http://coursera.org ) are three of the leaders in this growing field. And, for the moment, each of the foregoing organizations is intent on developing innovative, technologically savvy techniques for providing a quality learning experience for prospective students.

The financial advantages of such courses for a would-be participant are obvious. For example, it costs approximately $54,000 a year to go to a private university such as Stanford for one year (and, of course, there is the little problem of being accepted), and even at a publicly financed institution like Berkeley, the cost can be over $30,000 per year.

So, what's the catch? Quite a big one as it turns out.

First of all, given the way in which the aforementioned programs are presently organized, the most one might hope for is a certificate of completion. In other words, there are no college level credits given for those courses, and, therefore, if one mentions such a certificate on a job application, one is likely to be shown the door with some free advice: "Come back to us when you get a real education (i.e., a degreed one)."

While offering free learning opportunities of high quality is a good thing, everyone knows that higher education has become a game of degreed pedigree. Pass your courses at Stanford or Berkeley, and you get a degree which has a potential exchange value for a good paying job. However, pass your courses at Udacity, EdX, or Coursera -- and such courses might be precisely the same as the ones which are given through the two foregoing establishments of higher learning -- but one can expect little more than the satisfaction which comes from having completed such a process and having learned something.

One might as well borrow free books from the local library. After all, in the end, irrespective of whether one reads a book from a library or takes a course on line, one is going to have to invest the time and energy necessary to learn, if not master, the subject matter.

To the extent that Udacity, EdX, Coursera and others are committed to pushing the technological envelope and, thereby, enhancing the process of learning through various technologically-based efforts which are geared toward making the generation of insight and understanding more efficient and more accessible to a wider cross-section of the population, this encompasses important work. Nonetheless, unless the aforementioned educationally-oriented innovators offer something beyond an opportunity to learn -- such as a realistic chance to translate that learning into an actual job -- I have a lot of doubts about the ultimate value of these sorts of extracurricular programs.

Higher education -- which really means higher degree programs -- has become (and, really, has been this way for quite some time) the new housing market. More and more young people are going into debt to finance an education that, after all is said and done, often does not have all that much market value.

Consequently, following the completion of the degreed programs, more and more people are discovering that they have become the modern world's version of an indentured servant. In other words, those individuals have accumulated a debt load which is unlikely ever to be paid, and this means that they will be forced into doing whatever jobs come along (often low paid, without benefits, and unrelated to their college degree) in order to service their debt.

Just as in the case of the mortgage fiasco of 2007-2008, banks and financial institutions that have bankrolled a student's long day's journey into a living nightmare, will make all manner of profits. Unfortunately, the indebted student will have little to show for the price of admission but debt, along with a certain amount of learning which could just as easily have been extracted for free from a local library or by purchasing a few $14.00 books (rather than the obscenely priced textbooks which have become a mandatory staple of higher education degree programs).

A further perk of the current arrangement in higher education -- at least from the perspective of the government -- is that people who are heavily indebted are so busy trying not to financially drown, they have little time to reflect on what the banks, financial institutions, and governments are doing to democracy with the profits which have been squeezed from those who are really in no position to afford higher education. Indebted people often tend to be individuals who can be induced to go along with the way in which the power elite wish to run things.

In the accompanying video, one professor is interviewed who thinks that the whole idea of free online courses is fraught with potential problems. She worries that those sorts of courses will displace professors -- many of whom earn quite good salaries (paid for, in part, through student debt), and she also worries that highly-paid professors could be replaced by lowly grad students and even more lowly undergrad students who will be given token amounts of money to teach courses much more cheaply than their high-priced professional counterparts.

Aside from being somewhat self-serving, the good professor's remarks also fail to capture the real problem of higher education. Higher education is a game of musical chairs intended to suppress the numbers of people who have access to the kind of degree qualifications that are needed to obtain decent jobs. In addition, higher education is intended to serve the needs of professionals (i.e., the professors and administrators), corporations (e.g., textbook companies as well as pharmaceuticals), financial institutions (the people lending students money), and the defense department (which, in one way or another, has its hooks into most institutions of higher learning across America).

The interests being served by higher education have corrupted the learning process. What is taught, how it is taught, why it is taught, who is taught, and who gets to teach are all heavily shaped by such financial, military, governmental, and economic interests.

The people organizing the free, on-line college-level courses believe that everybody should have access to opportunities for learning -- that learning is a universal human right. I agree with this, but I also believe that until an social/political/economic system is put into place that uses education to further the interests of all the people rather than the economic, financial, and political interests of the few, then free, on-line college-level courses have rather limited value.

Learning should be free ... it is a human right. In addition, however, degree programs need to be phased out, and in the place of those programs should be a process that makes getting a job dependent only on what one knows and not on where and how one learned such knowledge or gained that kind of understanding.

I have written about some of the foregoing issues in a more expansive way through my book: Reflections On Education And Learning (available through Amazon and other fine book stores everywhere). If you don't wish to read the book, then consider the above discussion my offering toward a free, on-line, college-level teach-in.

Ten Year Anniversary: Congratulations to the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

It is not just American government officials who have committed war crimes in Iraq, but, as well, their English counterparts are guilty of those same category of crimes against humanity. The stupidity (both moral and intellectual) of Gordon Brown's smug, self-absorbed, pathological claim of hubris that going to war in Iraq was: "the right decision, and for the right reasons -- despite the mass of evidence indicating that it was 'the wrong decision, and for the wrong reasons' -- is overwhelmingly pathetic and self-serving -- but, wow, his suit and tie are so elegant.

A million Iraqis are dead. Tens of thousands more have been wounded. Millions of other Iraqis have become refugees. Thousands have been arbitrarily imprisoned and many of these individuals have been, and still are being, subjected to torture. Moreover, in the gift that keeps on giving, the presence of tons of depleted uranium that now litter the Iraqi countryside as a result of  coalition munitions is continuing to generate birth defects, illnesses, and deaths among the Iraqi people.

The society has become completely destabilized with hundreds of people continuing to die every week through the internecine bloodbath which America and its allies set in motion ten years ago. Whatever the sins of Saddam Hussein were (and they were many -- most of which were done with the assistance and support of the United States), those sins pale in comparison to the magnitude of the evil which the coalition, led by America, rained down on Iraq and its people.

America and its motley crew of morally challenged thugs destroyed a country and its people knowing, from the very beginning, that the idea of such a war being: 'the right decision, and for the right reasons' was a complete lie used to manipulate a largely gullible public so that the fear being manufactured by the different governments could be leveraged into a multi-trillion dollar bonanza for the entire military industrial complex. When Eisenhower issued his warning about the military industrial complex more than fifty years ago, relatively few people knew that he wanted to add Congress' name to his warning in order to complete the unholy trinity, but, for obscure reasons, allowed himself to be talked out of including the name of Congress to his clarion call -- indicating that despite his desire to inform people about the presence of an insidious set of forces within democracy, Eisenhower, himself, was still very much a captive of that industrial-military-congressional alliance.

The arrogance and mental/moral deficiencies which are on display in Gordon Brown's callous, Machiavellian disregard concerning the lives and rights of other human beings is symptomatic of the same moral and intellectual diseases which ravaged the minds, hearts and souls of his American partners in crime. Congratulations to ten years of inhumanity, as well as the underlying moral and spiritual turpitude, that made such uncivilized behavior possible.

There are a few very disturbing images toward the end of the accompanying four minute video. Despite their graphic nature, perhaps, we need to be reminded in a rather heart-rending manner about some of the handy-work of the people who call themselves leaders, for, notwithstanding all of their polished verbal presentations (e.g., "it was the right decision, for the right reasons"), one can clearly see who the real 'evil doers' are in the whole sorry saga of the Iraq War. To borrow, with some slight changes, from the words of Winston Churchill -- who was, himself, once responsible for gassing the Iraqi people: 'Never have so few done so much to so many.'

The Bell Is Tolling For the Death of Sovereignty

The coils of the Anaconda-like Leviathan tighten ever more inexorably about the oxygen-starved sovereignty of the American people. The sounds one hears from the streets of the United States are the bones of: rights, social justice, liberty, and democracy that are being crushed beneath the grip and power of such unpatriotic legislation as: the National Defense Authorization Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, and a slew of Executive Orders that have been issued under both Bush and Obama.

This governmental ordinance (in both senses of the word) have been set in place waiting for the right moment to be applied in order to finish America as a democracy. If that time arrives,  America will be turned into a full-fledged oppressive dictatorship in which any and all dissent will be shut away in some government-run hell-hole where the inmates have no due process, no rights, no freedom, and no democracy.

The austerity programs which have been instituted in Europe have not only led to social misery and demonstrations (and, on occasion, riots) but, as well, they have led to an ever lowering rate of employment, along with a downward pressure on wages and benefits. Those austerity programs are increasingly emerging on both the state and federal level within the United States -- e.g., witness what is taking place in states like California, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as in relation to the on-going sequestration process in the federal government (and this is just the beginning since there is a strong likelihood that more such cuts are on the way as Obama and Congress maneuver America into a economic, fiscal, and political straight-jacket). As a result, we are likely to see that what has, and is, happening in Europe will be called on to give a command, encore performance in America as well.

On the surface, legislation like the National Defense Authorization Act might seem to be directed solely at the so-called alien "terrorists" who supposedly hate America's freedoms. However, in truth, that legislation, along with all the other correlative acts of oppression which have been passed by self-absorbed legislators, have another strategic and tactical operational use.

More specifically, if Americans wake up to the reality of how democracy is being dismantled in America, piece by piece - the operative word here is 'if' since there is a very good chance that Americans will sleep their way into a nightmare -- and, consequently, citizens begin to persistently and demonstratively demand that their allegedly Constitutionally guaranteed rights be honored rather than continually being stripped from them, such people will be labeled as "terrorists" and, and in short order, will be disappeared into tyrannical, governmental/military black holes that will erase their existence through a complete absence of any rights whatsoever. When this happens -- and I believe there is a strong potential for this to occur in the not too distant future (although these things are hard to predict with any degree of precision, and one could always hope that Americans will awake in time to do something constructive) -- Americans will come to understand that, all along, they have been the intended targets of the aforementioned legislation, and that the 'war on terror' has merely been a false-flag operation which served as camouflage for the real intentions underlying such legislation.

If you don't think this can happen in America, ask the 110,000 law-abiding and loyal American citizens of Japanese descent who were thrown into detention camps, stripped of all rights, during World War II. What is worse, the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, the Military Commissions Act, and all of the supporting Executive Orders which have been issued over the last 13 years are like World War II directives on super-steroids.

The bell is tolling ... and it is tolling for thee.

The 6 minute interview withChris Hedges which accompanies this posting covers a lot of important information concerning the foregoing perspective, and does it very well.

Banking, Control, and The Generation of Servitude

The essence of banks is captured in the one minute, 43 second accompanying video. Banks are not in the business of helping people (or, at least, this is, at best, incidental to the real purpose of banking), but, rather, they are in the business of inducing people to go into debt. When people are in debt, they are controlled by those who hold the promissory notes, and one sees this control becoming more and more manifest via the whole educational loan scam which is turning an ever-increasing number of people into indentured servants for an oppressive economic, military, and political system in exchange for degrees and a form of education that promise freedom but only deliver indebtedness.

That debt is the means through which more money is conjured into existence through a fractional reserve system which permits banks to leverage what they are, by law, required to keep as collateral against outstanding loans (beginning at a ratio of about 10 to 1 but with an upwardly mobile capacity into a leverage rate of 1000s, if not millions, to 1). Then, the money generated through leveraging is dumped into, among other places, the derivatives market where the excess cash is leveraged even further to an extent that is many times more than the collective GNPs of the national economies of the world.

The financial mess of 2007-2008 was not solved by the bailouts. In fact, those bailouts merely camouflaged the nature of the underlying debt crisis. Bill Black, a former bank regulator during the savings and loan scandal back in the 1980s, was, and is, right when he titled his best-selling book: 'The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is To Own One'. By owning, and, then, using the bank to control the economic milieu through which people live their lives, democracy becomes a joke because the ones who are really calling the shots in relation to both domestic and international public policy are the banks.

As Mayer Amshed Rothchild, a prominent European banker of the 18th century, once said: "Permit me to issue and control the money of the nation and I care not who makes its laws". The banks do issue and control the money, and they are the power behind the thrones that generate the wars, drug trafficking, economic exploitation, and governmental dysfunction around the world ... to suppose otherwise is mere illusion, if not delusional.

Genetically Modified Organisms: Who Should Have First Right of Refusal?

The accompanying 9 minute animated video provides a simple but accurate overview of some of the problems entailed by both genetically modified organisms and, perhaps, more to the point, the corporations, lobbyists, courts, and governments who insist on taking away people's right to choose what is eaten, grown, labeled, and permitted to impact the surrounding environment. This is not a matter of intellectual property rights, general property rights, or commercial rights, this is an issue of humanity having the right to protect itself against those who seek profits while externalizing costs to everyone else (and all the health costs which ensue from the problematic dimensions of such products is an example of how the costs are socialized, while profits are privatized).

Corporations/governments are doing the same thing with GMOs that were done with: pesticides, cigarettes, chlorofloro-carbons, Bis-Phenal A, Agent Orange (dioxin), all manner of pharmacological psychoactive pills (whether for depression or other psychological/emotional difficulties), depleted uranium, and a host of other poisonous pollutants of body, mind, and environment. The burden of proof should not have to fall on those who are being adversely affected by the aforementioned products, but, rather, the burden of proof should rest with the manufacturers of those substances ... they should have to prove that these agents are 100% safe.

Moreover, the testing not only needs to go on for a lot longer than a few years, but there should be no fast-tracking to approval for any of those products. In addition, the testing should be run and regulated by someone other than the companies who have a vested interest in such products or who are funded by those kinds of vested businesses.

The problem is not too much regulation. The problem is that there is a highly lucrative and powerful revolving door connecting industry and government which tends to ensure that the people who make decisions concerning the safety of products will undermine and render dysfunctional the implementation of anyone's attempt to establish an effective regulatory process.

The aforementioned revolving door exists because there are too many companies and so-called public servants (along with influential members of the media) who believe they have an inalienable right to run amok in society and who believe their alleged rights to do so are, somehow, more important than the rights of everyone else to be free from such pathology. Predatory capitalism is not about people earning a living with integrity, but, instead, it is a diabolical set of practices directed toward ensuring that the few benefit regardless of the costs which accrue to society, the world, or the future.

A Sufi Perspective Concerning A Dysfunctional Form of Governance: The Constitution and Sovereignty

The Office of Legal Counsel is a division of the Justice Department which provides legal advice for the Executive Branch of the United States. The framework for the OLC was created through Congressional legislation, and, by law, the members of the Executive Branch are required to follow the directives which are handed down by the OLC.

Relatively recently, a legal opinion was issued by the OLC concerning the issue of drones. That legal opinion sought to justify the use of drones, and, as a result, the President was legally enabled, allegedly, to pursue his drone program free from other Constitutional considerations and responsibilities.

Whether Congress had the constitutional right to pass the OLC legislation as it is currently framed -- e.g., with provisions that force the Executive Branch to follow the dictates of legal counsel issuing forth from the OLC -- is an interesting constitutional issue. In effect, the Congressional legislation underlying the OLC says there are individuals within the Executive Branch who have greater authority than does the President ... the man who occupies the desk where, according to Harry Truman, the buck stops.

One might suppose that the Judicial Branch of government, under the auspices of the Supreme Court, has the requisite authority and responsibility to fulfill the mandate which has been handed to the OLC within the Executive Branch. If so, then, one wonders about why the OLC was created in its current form -- except, perhaps, to give cover to, and plausible deniability for, the President in matters of policy (e.g., like drone killings) which the President wants to carry out but for which he does not wish to be held responsible ... after all, he could argue that it was just those nasty folks in the OLC which forced him to pursue the drone policy legally, his hands were tied.

On the other hand, when one begins to critically explore the whole issue of Constitutional interpretation and the basis on which it supposedly rests -- e.g., the Marbury v,. Madison case, along with a few other decisions of the Marshall Court which helped to establish some of the basic legal filters through which the Supreme Court engages issues  -- one finds that the work of the Supreme Court is rooted in a manner of reasoning which is entirely -- and, I do mean, "entirely" -- arbitrary. More specifically, noting how the Supreme Court operates in accordance with its manner of framing legal issues, is one thing -- i.e., it does what it does as a matter of custom -- but what is done by the Supreme Court with respect to the generation of legal decisions can't really be justified in any way that could satisfy the legal condition of, say, beyond a reasonable doubt ... and I realize this legal condition usually refers to criminal cases handled by a jury.

Nonetheless, if Supreme Court Jurists cannot reach unanimity in the way jurors for criminal cases are required to do, then how much legitimacy do the decisions of the Supreme Court actually have? 5-4 and 6-3 decisions, or even 7-2 decisions, give expression to judgments with respect to which there are serious reservations on the part of various members of the Supreme Court concerning whether, or not, the 'right' conclusions have been reached, and, of course, this leads naturally to questions like the following: What are the criteria for knowing what constitutes a 'right' decision with respect to the Constitution, and what justifies the use of those criteria?

Consequently, even if one were to concede the point that it is the Supreme Court and not the Office of Legal Counsel which should be calling the shots on what is, and is not, constitutionally legal in relation to various acts of the Executive Office, this doesn't really solve the drone problem. The Constitution, the manner and circumstances of its creation, and the interpretive pathways which historically have issued forth from it constitute much more of a dangerous philosophical and legal body of quicksand than is usually believed. In fact, the sovereignty of the American people has been sucked under by the three branches of government almost from the very beginning of the framing and ratification of the Constitution, along with passing of the first ten amendments.

While I applaud Rand Paul's stand (see the 8 minute video accompanying this post) to speak out against the way in which the Office of Legal Counsel and the Executive Branch have awarded themselves the power to eviscerate ;the rights of American citizens, not to mention the rights of foreign nationals -- if that Branch should choose to exercise those assumed powers, and, in fact, they have so exercised those powers in the slaying of, at a minimum, the teenage son of Anwar al-Awaki -- nevertheless, I believe that Rand Paul and Acronym TV are missing a more important point. The reason why problems like the drone issue exist is because the Constitution is flawed in fundamental ways ... ways which inexorably have led, and are leading, to irresolvable conflicts and tensions within American society.

In my opinion, the only things of value in the Constitution, are: the Preamble; Article IV; Section 4 of the Constitution; the Bill of Rights; the 13th Amendment; Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, along with the 15th and 19th Amendments (having to do with the right to vote). The rest of it is, at best, a mess and, at worse, the progenitor of conflict and misery among the citizenry. However, even in relation to the aforementioned constructive aspects of the Constitution, there are still a variety of difficult issues concerning how those facets of the Constitution should be understood or interpreted.

The problem which confronts the American people is not, strictly speaking, a function of: a self-absorbed Congress, or an imperial Presidency, or an arbitrary Supreme Court (as true as such characterizations might be). The problem is that the Constitutional framework through which those Branches of government operate is dysfunctional, and this dysfunctional disease has infected the entire process of governance.

Rand Paul and Acronym are talking about symptoms. They are not addressing the issue of the underlying Constitutional disease that is giving rise to those symptoms.

Irrespective of how the Brennan/CIA issue is resolved, the country will be right back in the same quagmire again tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and beyond. This is what happens when one deals only with symptoms and never with the disease.

Many people -- including Rand Paul and the people at Acronym -- believe they understand the nature of the American Constitution, as well as how and why that document came into being. I would take issue with the accuracy of such a belief.

I have written extensively about these issues, and many more related matters, in the book: The Unfinished Revolution: The Battle for America's Soul (Bill Whitehouse). One can follow the lead of Dr. Rand Paul and become entangled in symptoms, or one can consider exploring an alternative perspective which seeks to diagnose the actual disease from which we all are suffering. As with everything else, the choice is yours ... caveat emptor.

Economic Humanism and The Issue of Wealth

The following 6 minute video points out, in graphic detail, the real magnitude of the increasing chasm (it is not a gap) between the rich and the poor in America and, by implication, the rest of the world. The echoes of war and social conflagration which are being heard around the Earth are not the sounds of freedom casting off the shackles of oppression, but, rather, they are reverberations from the brutal crushing of humanity as the anaconda-like financial, economic, and political power exerted by the ever increasingly more wealthy tightens its compressive grip on resources, lands, markets and people everywhere.

Yesterday, the stock market hit an all time high in value, while the actual economy involving the vast majority of people stagnates, stumbles, and sputters. There is a causal relation between the two ends of the financial spectrum.

Profits cannot increase without someone being deprived of a place in the economic game of musical chairs. If stock owners are making out like bandits, this is because the money they are receiving has been ripped from the pockets of those who are becoming increasingly poor ... this, after all, is how profits are made -- by making sure that workers are not given a livable wage (or needed benefits) while those workers are forced to increase their level of productivity (workers today are producing 2-3 times as much as workers in 1968, and when adjusted for inflation, being paid less).

I do not subscribe to communism, socialism, or capitalism. I believe in the kind of economic humanism which seeks to discover ways through which to provide everyone with the basic necessities of life with respect to: food, clothing, housing, health care, and  non-compulsory eduction. The resources of the Earth do not belong to nations, corporations, or even to the people ... the resources belong to no one and must be treated as a trust for everyone and for all species.

One of the basic tents of economic humanism is: to neither control, nor be controlled. This is not the same as a libertarian philosophy (although there is a certain amount of overlap). Libertarians tend to be advocates of free markets, and the problem with that sort of advocacy is that there is no such thing as a free market. As soon as one forces desperate people to work for less than livable wages, the market is no longer free, but rigged in favor of those who control the money and who insist on oppressing people through the violent ways in which that control is exerted.

The Real Face of Betrayal With Respect to the American People

The Washington Post and the New York Times were presented with what amounts to a first offer of refusal by Bradley Manning which would have enabled those newspapers to access documents which, among other things, showed unarmed journalists being gunned-down by US forces from a military helicopter. In addition those documents contained information that played a role which helped to ignite the Arab Spring -- events that have since turned to winter. However, the two aforementioned newspapers apparently had no interest in holding Obama's administration accountable for its promise of transparency. Whether those newspapers should be considered as co-conspirators in treachery concerning the interests of the American people or just cowards is hard to know, but whatever the answer might be, they are hardly worthy of the title: 'journalist'. 

More than four decades ago, Daniel Ellsberg had released sensitive, classified information to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and 15 other news outlets which became the basis of the best-selling 'The Pentagon Papers'. Those newspapers seemed to have a much different opinion about such matters in 1971 than presently is the case, and, as a result, those papers appear to have joined forces with the side which they are supposed to critically investigate.

Like Ellsberg, Manning is a whistleblower who was seeking to help, not hurt, the American people. Manning believed that if the American people actually knew what was going on in their name, they might take steps to stop such activities.

Some people, of course, take issue with the foregoing characterization and claim that Manning is a traitor -- that he endangered American interests by releasing information that provided behind the scenes insight into what actually happens within the circles of the power elite rather than the sanitized version which is handed out by official government sources and their journalistic partners in an attempt to keep the American people, and the rest of the world, in the dark about such matters. The secrets that are being protected by the government and its journalistic allies are all about how to control: information, resources, economies, nations, finances, and people in order that they might all better serve a plutocracy ... the rule of the wealthy few.

The whole idea behind legislation such as: 'The Patriot Act' and the 'National Military Authorization Act', along with whatever 'Acts' and 'Executive Orders' that people like Bradley Manning are being charged as having violated is to establish a position of power which is capable of: labeling, marginalizing, prosecuting, jailing, torturing, censoring, eliminating, punishing, disappearing and/or executing anyone who is deemed to constitute a threat to the interests of the plutocrats. Those aforementioned pieces of Congressional/Executive/Judicial betrayal of the American people all all about destroying America, not protecting it ... and by refusing to live up to their true fiduciary responsibilities to the American people (not the sham ones which they spout in their sound bites), both the government and papers like The New York Times and the Washington Post have issued a death notice to any real semblance of democracy in America.

There can be no real sovereignty in America, or elsewhere, when secrecy is maintained in order to serve the sort of national interests which are dedicated to the oppression of people on behalf of the plutocrats in governments, corporations, and the world of journalism. The 'national interests' that people like Bradley Manning threaten are not yours or mine, but, rather, they are the interests of those who do not have our best interests at heart.

The following 7-plus minute excerpt is a commentary by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks Network television show concerning the Bradley Manning issue.