ALAN writes:

What Jacob Hornberger wrote  [“Iraq and the National Security State”, Sept. 21] about the radical expansion of government power after World War II is right on the mark.

I expressed a similar judgment in part two of my essay looking back fifty years [the first part of which was “When I Was Seventeen”, Sept. 12].  Here is the second part:

FIFTY YEARS AGO  (Part Two)

         “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments,” said George Washington.

The current fake “war on terrorism” is a prime example.  The Vietnam War was another.

In 1967, when I watched the nightly Huntley-Brinkley news report on NBC television, I had the impression I was living in never-never land.  I hated the Communists, had no sympathy for “Hanoi Jane” Fonda and her crowd, but I also opposed any involvement of Americans in the Vietnam War.  I was more appalled by the “Conservatives” than by the “Liberals”.  Exactly what are the “Conservatives” conserving?, I wanted to know.  They failed to keep tens of thousands of Americans alive at home instead of dead in Southeast Asia.  I should respect such people?

The Vietnam War offered a classic example of the false alternative:  In one camp were the hippies, the “students”, and the “Liberals”.  In the other camp were the hard hats and the “Conservatives”.  I thought neither camp had the slightest claim to credibility.

Nor was I a pacifist.  If any part of my nation was attacked, I would gladly have seen the attackers annihilated.

But what Americans were doing in Vietnam was something very different.  I favored self-defense; I opposed self-immolation. Read More »

Read More »

MARRIAGE “EXPERTS” are often frustrated by the fact that “the uneducated” just don’t get it.

Ordinary people who will never be lawyers or human resource directors, and may even only be able to finish a mere 13 years of schooling (horrors!), just don’t get the Modern Marriage Rules. Here is the path to a happy marriage and family, promoted by the marriage “experts:

— Go to an overpriced institution of “higher education” to get a degree.

— Devote years of peak fertility to career-building.

— Then and only then, after secure in a well-paid and satisfying job, find a loving and devoted spouse.

— Then and only then, have a baby.

The uneducated won’t do all this. Despite enlightened instruction from marriage experts and enough cheap contraceptives to prevent human birth altogether, they move in with a “fiancé or “fiancée” and have children at a way too early age and without marriage or their eternal salvation secured by a good job. Are these people stupid, or what? How many times do we have to repeat the words, “condom” and “abortion,” “college” and “career,” before these idiots catch on? Do they actually like working at McDonalds to support their ill-timed brats? 

Well, let’s not put it that way. Let’s just say, um, “marriage has become a mark of privilege:”

Just over half of adolescents in poor and working-class homes live with both their biological parents, compared with 77 percent in middle- and upper-class homes, according to the research brief, by W. Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies. Thirty-six percent of children born to a working-class mother are born out of wedlock, versus 13 percent of those born to middle- and upper-class mothers.

The research brief defined “working class” as adults with an adjusted family income between the 20th and 50th percentiles, with high school diplomas but not bachelor’s degrees. Poor is defined as those below the 20th percentile or without high school diplomas, and the middle and upper class as those above the 50th percentile or with college degrees. Read More »

AMERICAN football fans have reacted with justified outrage to the anti-white bigotry and anti-police hate campaign of spoiled black NFL players. Too bad, though, that Mr. Patriotic American subverts so much of his protest energy and team spirit into watching these gladiators in the first place.

Mike King at The Anti-New York analyses the football protests and Trump’s criticism of players who refused to stand for the national anthem:

Trumpstein’s declaration of war and call for a boycott on the NFL & NBA represent a classic case of a clever politician doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. With his conservative / nationalist core constituencies shrinking due to his tiresome buffoonery, leftward movement and broken promises, this calculated move to fire-up the patriotard base may turn out to be a stroke of political genius for Ivanka’s daddy. Though Sugar and I, er, “The Editorial Board” of The Anti-New York Times can see right through the Orange Clown’s tactical trickery, any damage done to the National Felons League will come as a welcome side-effect. Read More »

SOME important facts about North Korea are highlighted in this video. (Sorry for the one vulgarity.)

MANY who fled Syria have returned. But few Christians have gone home to war-torn Iraq:

In a World Watch Monitor article, human-rights lawyer and genocide expert Ewelina Ochab made this conclusion after interviewing Christians from Iraq who had fled to Kurdistan or become refugees in Jordan: She stated that Iraqi Christians have faced persecution since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003. Christians were blamed for the invasion, and in the ensuing chaos, various Islamic extremists destroyed their churches, stole their homes and drove them out of the nation to either northern Iraq (Kurdistan), Jordan or Lebanon.

In the article, Ochab was quoted as saying that the reality for Syria is different because “Assad is perceived as the defender of Christian minorities.” She went on to say that, “Many Syrian Christians worry that once Assad is gone, they will face the same fate as Iraqi Christians suffered after Saddam Hussein’s fall.” [Source]

CALL ME JORGE writes:

Where’s the ADL of B’nai B’rith?

And the Southern Poverty Law Center?

Have you seen national news coverage, evening after evening of the growing anti-Catholicism in the United States?

FROM A COMMENTER at Real Jew News:

The main reason the Jew[ish] media praises Obama but reviles Trump is because Obama is black and Trump is white. Satan’s Zionist Jews are trying to replace the traditional old white Christian order of the world with their Jew World Order.

The Jews set up puppets and front men such as Obama and Trump with the intent to portray the Black puppet in the best possible ways and portray the White puppet in the worst possible ways. Jews do this with sports, movies, news stories, and the rest of the media also, not just politics only.

Jews are trying to destroy Christian power, influence, and traditions. Satan and his children, the Zionist Jews, view white Christians as the only substantial obstruction to their Jew World Order. Satan and his children hate white people most because Christian culture spread from Europe to North America, Australia, South America, islands in the oceans, and most of the rest of the world.

From Satan’s viewpoint, it’s the fault of white people that Christianity spread out to the rest of the world. So Satan and his Jews vilify Republicans, white Christian politicians, to weaken and destroy white people along with their Christian religion. Satan and his Jews made lots of progress in destroying Christianity over the last hundred years. Read More »

FROM RON PAUL’S weekly column:

The descent of US/North Korea “crisis” to the level of schoolyard taunts should be remembered as one of the most bizarre, dangerous, and disgraceful chapters in US foreign policy history.

President Trump, who holds the lives of millions of Koreans and Americans in his hands, has taken to calling the North Korean dictator “rocket man on a suicide mission.” Why? To goad him into launching some sort of action to provoke an American response? Maybe the US president is not even going to wait for that. We remember from the Tonkin Gulf false flag that the provocation doesn’t even need to be real. We are in extremely dangerous territory and Congress for the most part either remains asleep or is cheering on the sabre-rattling.

Now we have North Korean threats to detonate hydrogen bombs over the Pacific Ocean and US threats to “totally destroy” the country.

We are told that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is a “madman.” That’s just what they said about Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, and everyone else the neocons target for US military action. We don’t need to be fans of North Korea to be skeptical of the war propaganda delivered by the mainstream media to the benefit of the neocons and the military industrial complex. Read More »

A must-read review by John Pilger of the new Ken Burns epic on the Vietnam War:

In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans. “We are all searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy,” Novick is quoted as saying.  How very post-modern.

All this will be familiar to those who have observed how the American media and popular culture behemoth has revised and served up the great crime of the second half of the twentieth century: from The Green Berets and The Deer Hunter to Rambo and, in so doing, has legitimised subsequent wars of aggression.  The revisionism never stops and the blood never dries. The invader is pitied and purged of guilt, while “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy”. Cue Bob Dylan: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?” Read More »

THE audio system in the operating room was playing “Build Me Up, Buttercup” when I was wheeled in on Friday to have my broken wrist repaired.

I’m sure you have encountered this song, which was a big hit in that fateful year of 1968. If you have forgotten how supremely annoying it is, the video above will remind you. But be careful. Once you hear it, it may be difficult to get rid of it for the rest of the day, like bubblegum stuck on the bottom of your shoe. This is the kind of song that interrogators should play over and over when they are trying to get someone to divulge secret information. Torture should be unnecessary.

Fortunately, I fell asleep and the operation went well.

But it made me realize anew how bad the compulsory noise has gotten. The ugly music we hear everywhere has now invaded operating rooms too. We are a captive audience. We cannot close our ears. Many of the quasi-lewd rock songs in stores and offices feature a man or woman expressing resentment that he or she is not getting enough action. They all serve as advertising jingles. They are meant to get your juices flowing, so that you literally lose your reason and buy things you don’t need, but I also believe in a higher sinister plan to overwhelm the human mind with so much junk that it barely exists anymore. Perhaps the point of this music at a surgery center is to prevent you from, God forbid, feeling anxious or momentarily serious, but the point — by some crafty agents somewhere — is also to continue the ongoing demolition of the mind and soul.

The devil is fond of noise and sells these soundtracks by the millions. He is a big fan of The Foundations. That God created something so sweet and profound as silence truly ticks him off, but we can always celebrate its existence, even when we are prisoners to noise pollution.

Thank you to those who sent me get-well notes the last few days. I appreciate your concern. The recovery has been tough, with pain, swelling, weakness and grogginess, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

The surgery center did its best to make it a “fun” experience. Read More »

I’LL be having surgery tomorrow on my broken wrist. The radius bone was knocked out of place and will be put back with a neat metal plate. The surgeon said the procedure is one of his “favorite operations” and his young assistant said, “Yeah, it’s a whole lot of fun.” He wasn’t joking. I guess I’m glad there are people who get a kick out of this kind of thing.

 — Comments —

A reader writes:

You know ‘fun’ is the only important thing anymore…sigh. Read More »

THE organic food movement defends a natural habitat for vegetables, but not for human beings.

Steve Tennes, an organic farmer who does uphold the all-natural, organic family and has spoken against same-sex “marriage,” was even barred from selling his produce at a Michigan farmer’s market. Fortunately, for now, a federal judge has overturned the discrimination against Tennes. An interview before the court decision:

TRUMP threatened to “totally destroy” a country of 25 million people the other day — a country, by the way, which has not attacked us and does not seriously endanger us — and his approval ratings went up.

— Comments —

Lydia Sherman writes:

Consider where Trump’s ratings came from: the media was all against him until he favored war. After that, the headlines of every one of their news organizations praised him. The bankers must have their regular blood ritual.

AMERICA must repent of its invasion of Iraq and bring an end to the unconstitutional, national-security state that has been in place since World War II. Jacob G. Hornberger writes:

The worst mistake in US history was the conversion after World War II of the US government from a constitutional, limited-government republic to a national-security state. Nothing has done more to warp and distort the conscience, principles, and values of the American people, including those who serve in the US military.

[…]

To this day, there are those who claim that George W. Bush simply made an honest mistake in claiming that Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, was maintaining weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that US soldiers were justified in trusting him by loyally obeying his orders to invade and occupy Iraq to “disarm Saddam.”

They ignore three important points: it was a distinct possibility that Bush and his people were simply lying. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a president had lied in order to garner support for a war. Lyndon Johnson’s lies regarding a supposed North Vietnamese attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam come to mind. Two, Bush didn’t secure the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, most likely because he knew that congressional hearings on the issue would expose his WMD scare for the lie it was. And three, only the UN, not the US government, was entitled to enforce its resolutions regarding Iraq’s WMDs.

Moreover, the circumstantial evidence establishes that Bush was lying and that the WMD scare was entirely bogus. Many people forget that throughout the 1990s the US government was hell-bent on regime change in Iraq. That’s what the brutal sanctions were all about, which contributed to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. When US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright was asked on Sixty Minutes whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” she responded that such deaths were “worth it.” By “it,” she was referring to regime change. Read More »

NOVUS ORDO WATCH examines the widespread accusation that those who criticize are “haters:”

Contemporary man has long replaced reason with emotion. This is why we see such absurd phenomena as transgenderism in our day. It is also the reason why those who defend the natural law and the completely rational idea that there cannot be more than one true religion, are accused of “hate/hatred”, “anger”, “fear/phobia”, “insanity”, or “extremism.” People have simply lost (or never learned) the ability to reason and to reason correctly. They prefer to feel instead. And whatever makes them feel bad, is bad.

See additional commentary on what kind of hatred is morally permissible.

IF there is any doubt in your mind that the high incidence of obesity in America is the result of two factors — the decline of home cooking and the aggressive marketing of processed foods — then I suggest you read this piece in The New York Times about how multinational food companies have transformed the traditional diets of relatively poor countries like Brazil.

Obesity has soared in Brazil and a high percentage of its obese people are malnourished. That’s right — you can be fat and malnourished. Nestle runs a successful program employing women as a door-to-door sales force, much like Avon did with cosmetics. The families of these women, who get discounts for the sugary cereals and yogurts, are among those who now suffer from serious diet-related diseases.

[O]f the 800 products that Nestlé says are available through its vendors, Mrs. da Silva says her customers are mostly interested in only about two dozen of them, virtually all sugar-sweetened items like Kit-Kats; Nestlé Greek Red Berry, a 3.5-ounce cup of yogurt with 17 grams of sugar; and Chandelle Pacoca, a peanut-flavored pudding in a container the same size as the yogurt that has 20 grams of sugar — nearly the entire World Health Organization’s recommended daily limit.

Until recently, Nestlé sponsored a river barge that delivered tens of thousands of cartons of milk powder, yogurt, chocolate pudding, cookies and candy to isolated communities in the Amazon basin. Since the barge was taken out of service in July, private boat owners have stepped in to meet the demand.

These junk foods are slow-acting, habit-forming poisons. The Brazil government, at the urging of activists, attempted to impose marketing restrictions, but it was sued by multinationals which claimed their rights of free expression were being curtailed. Food companies have even argued that curtailing their incursions into Brazilian homes would unfairly deprive the country’s children of the cheap plastic toys that come with their products.

The Pizza Industrial Complex is in on the explosive growth. Last year, Domino’s opened a new outlet — mostly overseas — every seven hours. Pizza Hut Brazil has a special chocolate pie called the Brigadeiro Pizza:

Academics, many of whom get grants from food companies, provide cover for the industry.

“We’re not going to get rid of all factories and go back to growing all grain. It’s nonsense. It’s not going to work,” said Mike Gibney, a professor emeritus of food and health at University College Dublin and a consultant to Nestlé. “If I ask 100 Brazilian families to stop eating processed food, I have to ask myself: What will they eat? Who will feed them? How much will it cost?”

Notice how Gibney sets up a straw man — the abolition of all food factories, as if that is the only alternative to the unregulated marketing of toxic junk.

How did the people of Brazil survive before Kit Kat bars and double-crust stuffed pizza?