Why “Coercive Diplomacy” is a Dangerous Farce
By Gareth Porter | Dissident Voice | January 16, 2018
With his recent “my (nuclear) button is bigger than yours” taunt, Donald Trump’s rhetoric has fully descended into school yard braggadocio, with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as a convenient foil. But his administration’s overwhelming reliance on military and economic pressure rather than on negotiations to influence North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ICBM programs is hardly new. It is merely a continuation of a well-established tradition of carrying out what the national security elite call “coercive diplomacy”.
As Alexander George, the academic specialist on international relations who popularized the concept, wrote:
The general idea of coercive diplomacy is to back one’s demand on an adversary with a threat of punishment for noncompliance that he will consider credible and potent enough to persuade him to comply with the demand.
The converse of that fixation on coercion, of course, is rejection of genuine diplomatic negotiations, which would have required the United States to agree to changes in its own military and diplomatic policies.
It is no accident that the doctrine of coercive diplomacy acquired much of its appeal on the basis of a false narrative surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—that John F. Kennedy’s readiness to go to war was what forced Khrushchev’s retreat from Cuba. In fact, a crucial factor in ending the crisis was JFK’s back-channel offer to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey, which were useful only as first strike weapons and which Khrushchev had been demanding. As George later observed, enthusiasts of coercive diplomacy had ignored the fact that success in resolving a crisis may “require genuine concessions to the opponent as part of a quid pro quo that secures one’s essential demands.”
The missile crisis occurred, of course, at a time when the United States had overwhelming strategic dominance over the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War period has presented an entirely different setting for its practice, in which both Iran and North Korea have acquired conventional weapons systems that could deter a U.S. air attack on either one.
Why Clinton and Bush Failed on North Korea
The great irony of the U.S. coercive diplomacy applied to Iran and North Korea is that it was all completely unnecessary. Both states were ready to negotiate agreements with the United States that would have provided assurances against nuclear weapons in return for U.S. concession to their own most vital security interests. North Korea began exploiting its nuclear program in the early 1990s in order to reach a broader security agreement with Washington. Iran, which was well aware of the North Korean negotiating strategy, began in private conversations in 2003 to cite the stockpile of enriched uranium it expected to acquire as bargaining chips to be used in negotiations with the United States and/or its European allies.
But those diplomatic strategies were frustrated by the long-standing attraction of the national security elite to the coercive diplomacy but also the bureaucratic interests of the Pentagon and CIA, newly bereft of the Soviet adversary that had kept their budgets afloat during the Cold War. In Disarming Strangers, the most authoritative account of Clinton administration policy, author and former State Department official Leon Sigal observes: “The North Korean threat was essential to the armed services’ rationale for holding the line on the budget,” which revolved around “a demanding and dubious requirement to meet two major contingencies, one shortly after the other, in the Persian Gulf and Korea.”
The Clinton administration briefly tried coercive diplomacy in mid-1994. Secretary of Defense William Perry prepared a plan for a U.S. air attack on the DPRK Plutonium reactor after North Korea had shut it down and removed the fuel rods, but would not agree to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to determine how many bombs- worth of Plutonium, if any, had been removed in the past. But before the strategy could be put into operation, former President Jimmy Carter informed the White House that Kim Il-sung had agreed to give up his plutonium program as part of a larger deal.
The Carter-Kim initiative, based on traditional diplomacy, led within a few months to the “Agreed Framework”, which could have transformed the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. But that agreement was much less than it may have seemed. In order to succeed in denuclearizing North Korea, the Clinton administration would have been required to deal seriously with North Korean demands for a fundamental change in bilateral relations between the two countries, ending the state of overt U.S. enmity toward Pyongyang.
U.S. diplomats knew, however, that the Pentagon was not willing to entertain any such fundamental change. They were expecting to be able to spin out the process of implementation for years, anticipating the Kim regime would collapse from mass starvation before the U.S. would be called upon to alter its policy toward North Korea.
The Bush administration, too, was unable to carry out a strategy of coercive diplomacy toward Iran and North Korea over their nuclear and missile programs because its priority was the occupation of Iraq, which bogged down the U.S. military and ruled out further adventures. Its only coercive effort was a huge March 2007 Persian Gulf naval exercise that involved two naval task forces, a dozen warships, and 100 aircraft. But it was aimed not at coercing Iran to abandon its nuclear program, but at gaining “leverage” over Iran in regard to Iran’s role in the Iraq War itself.
On nuclear and missile programs, the administration had to content itself with the highly subjective assumption that the regimes in both Iran and North Korea would both be overthrown within a relatively few years. Meanwhile, however, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose primary interest was funding and deploying a very expensive national missile defense system, killed the unfinished Clinton agreement with North Korea. And after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got Bush’s approval to negotiate a new agreement with Pyongyang, Cheney sabotaged that one as well. Significantly no one in the Bush administration made any effort to negotiate with North Korea on its missile program.
Obama Whiffs on Iran and North Korea
Unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration pursued a carefully planned strategy of coercive diplomacy strategy toward Iran. Although Obama sent a message to Supreme Leader Khamenei of Iran offering talks “without preconditions,” he had earlier approved far-reaching new economic sanctions against Iran. And in his first days in office he had ordered history’s first state-sponsored cyber-attack targeting Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz.
Although Obama did not make any serious efforts to threaten Iran’s nuclear targets directly in a military attack, he did exploit the Netanyahu government’s threat to attack those facilities. That was the real objective of Obama’s adoption of a new “nuclear posture” that included the option of a first use of nuclear weapons against Iran if it were to use conventional force against an ally. In the clearest expression of Obama’s coercive strategy, in early 2012 Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that the Iranians could convince the U.S. that its nuclear program was for civilian purposes or face the threat of an Israeli attack or an escalation of covert U.S. actions against the Iranian nuclear program.
In his second term, Obama abandoned the elaborate multilayered coercive diplomacy strategy, which had proven a complete failure, and made significant U.S. diplomatic concessions to Iran’s interests to secure the final nuclear deal of July 2015. In keeping with coercive diplomacy, however, the conflict over fundamental U.S. and Iranian policies and interests in the Middle East remained outside the realm of bilateral negotiations.
On North Korea, the Obama administration was even more hostile to genuine diplomacy than Bush. In his account of Obama’s Asian policy, Obama’s special assistant, Jeffrey Bader, describes a meeting of the National Security Council in March 2009 at which Obama declared that he wanted to break “the cycle of provocation, extortion and reward” that previous administrations had tolerated over 15 years. That description, which could have come from the lips of Dick Cheney himself, not only misrepresented what little negotiation had taken place with Pyongyang, but implied that any concessions to North Korea in return for its sacrifice of nuclear or missile programs represented abject appeasement.
It should be no surprise, therefore, that Obama did nothing at all, to head off a nuclear-armed North Korean ICBM, even though former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last November, “We knew that it was a possibility six or seven years ago.” In fact, he admitted, the administration had not really tried to test North Korean intentions diplomatically, because “we’re not in a frame of mind to give much in the way or rewards.” The former Pentagon chief opined that no diplomatic concession could be made to North Korea’s security interests “as long as they have nuclear weapons.”
The Obama administration was thus demanding unilateral concession by North Korea on matters involving vital interests of the regime that Washington certainly understood by then could not be obtained without significant concessions to North Korea’s security interests. As Carter freely admits, they knew exactly what the consequences of that policy were in terms of North Korea’s likely achievement of an ICBM.
This brief overview of the role of coercive diplomacy in post-Cold War policy suggests that the concept has devolved into convenient political cover for maintaining the same old Cold War policies and military posture regarding Iran and North Korea, despite new and essentially unnecessary costs to U.S. security interests. The United States could have and should have reached new accommodations with its regional adversaries, just as it had with the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War. To do so, however, would have put at risk Pentagon and CIA budgetary interests worth potentially hundreds of billions of dollars as well as symbolic power and status.
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare was published in 2014.
Statin Drugs – The Real Reason Official Guidelines Still Demonize Fats Despite the Evidence?
By Gabriela Segura, M.D. | Sott.net | January 15, 2018
Nina Teicholz, investigative journalist and author of the International bestseller The Big Fat Surprise, wrote an article for the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) in September 2015, which makes the case for the inadequacy of the scientific advice that underpins the Dietary Guidelines (Teicholz, 2015). The title of the article was “The scientific report guiding the U.S. dietary guidelines: is it scientific?” Ian Leslie writing for The Guardian reports that the response of the nutrition establishment was ferocious: 173 scientists – some of whom were on the advisory panel, and many of whose work had been critiqued in Teicholz’s book – signed a letter to the BMJ, demanding it retract the piece (Leslie, 2016). Prominent cardiovascular and nutrition scientists from 19 countries called for the retraction. However, to this day, the article remains published. The BMJ has officially announced that it will not retract the peer-reviewed investigation after stating that two independent experts conducted formal post-publication reviews of the article and found no grounds for retraction (Sboros, 2016).
Yet, behind every mainstream medical practice, strict questionable guidelines are still followed faithfully every day. Doctors are still following cholesterol targets that are often unattainable without cholesterol lowering drugs, but many do try to achieve their targets with extremely low fat diets recommended irresponsibly in dietary guidelines.
Unfortunately the rest of the world has followed suit on these dietary changes. Traditional high fat foods have been given up for the low fat scam. Promoters of the highly touted Mediterranean diet, with its olive oil and ‘low animal fat’, fail to mention the fact that there are still fat loaded recipes that were passed from generation to generation among the Mediterranean people. Lardo di Colonnata with its cured strips of fatback and herbs and spices; Greek barbecue which often involves an entire lamb roasted on a spit; or the kokoretsi which is made from the internal organs of the lamb – liver, spleen, heart, glands – threaded onto skewers along with the fatty membrane from the lamb intestines, all of these are foods of the long-lived Mediterranean people. Yet the ‘American style Mediterranean Diet’ selectively picks foods from the diet of the Mediterranean people to give the picture they desire. Ironically, many of the Mediterranean people have adopted this Americanized version of the ‘Mediterranean Diet’.
The truth is that cholesterol is a substance our bodies make naturally, and it’s absolutely essential to our health. Cholesterol is so crucial that the body produces some 1000-1400 milligrams of it each day, mainly in the liver. Cholesterol is also synthesized to a smaller extent in the adrenal glands, intestines, reproductive organs, etc.
We are told by the “Official Thought-Control Institutions” to limit consumption to less than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day, but our liver’s production of cholesterol is controlled by a feedback mechanism based on how much we eat. If we eat a lot of cholesterol, we produce less, leaving much needed liver energy for other important tasks. If we eat little cholesterol, replacing it with carbohydrates and vegetable oils, then the body will produce the cholesterol from these dietary raw materials. However, a high-carb and vegetable oil diet yields a very bad cholesterol profile even when the cholesterol is in normal range. If we hardly eat any cholesterol and we block its production with lowering cholesterol drugs, then we are limiting the supply of something the body desperately needs for its proper function. Yet statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs, are among the most profitable drugs in the history of the world.
Restricting or eliminating cholesterol in the diet overburdens the liver, which now has to overproduce it through its enzyme HMG-CoA reductase from food in our diet. This enzyme is the one that is blocked by statin drugs for the purpose of lowering the amount of cholesterol the body produces. But, as with all pharmaceuticals, it comes with a price. HMG-CoA reductase is also the enzyme needed for the creation of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is a key nutrient for energy production in our cells. CoQ10 is also a major antioxidant. People complain of muscle cramps or aches while on statins drugs. Keep in mind that your heart is a muscle as well. Coincidence or not, the incidence of congestive heart failure has spiked during the time statins have been a top selling drug. Even when statin drugs are not at fault for the increased prevalence of congestive heart failure during the last decades, we don’t necessarily want to decrease CoQ10 levels in a failing heart.
Coenzyme Q10 – also called ubiquinone, which means ‘occurring everywhere’ – plays an important role in the manufacture of ATP, the fuel of our cells. It is present in every cell of our bodies, especially in the very active cells of our hearts. Depriving the heart of CoQ10 is like removing the spark plug from an engine. It just won’t work. Low levels of CoQ10 are involved in practically all cardiovascular diseases including angina, hypertension, cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure (Sarter, 2002). It is ironic that statins, for “heart health”, block coenzyme Q10.
Statins’ many potential side effects include depression, confusion, memory problems and inability to concentrate. It hinders our body’s ability to fight microbes, increases liver damage, increases risk of cancer, fatigue, impotence, kidney failure, rhabdomyolysis (destruction of muscle cells) and shortness of breath among other things (for a database on statin adverse effects, see here). Cholesterol levels that are below 150 mg/dL may increase the risk for cancer, hormonal imbalances, depression, sexual dysfunction, memory loss, Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, suicide, and violent behavior.
As scientists are beginning to understand the intricacies of cholesterol’s role in the function of our trillions of cell membranes, including the details of nutrient transport across membranes, they are starting to realize what a bad idea this whole statin business is. Well, some of them are, anyway. According to some researchers:
Current guidelines encourage ambitious long term cholesterol lowering with statins, in order to decrease cardiovascular disease events. However, by regulating the biosynthesis of cholesterol we potentially change the form and function of every cell membrane from the head to the toe. As research into cell morphology and membrane function realises more dependencies upon cholesterol rich lipid membranes, our clinical understanding of long term inhibition of cholesterol biosynthesis is also changing.” (Wainwright, Mascitelli, & Goldstein, 2009, p. 289)
We make highly unstable and dysfunctional cell membranes when we restrict organic animal fats. This harmful effect has far reaching consequences. And doctors, unfortunately, don’t seem to be receiving this information.
The past decade of research has shown the importance of cholesterol-rich membranes and their fundamental implications for our brain and nervous tissue, immune system and all areas where lipoproteins are created, secreted, delivered and utilized. Cholesterol is so vital to the formation and correct operation of the brain that neurons require additional cholesterol to be secreted by brain cells. No wonder some people lose their memories with statin therapy!
Statin drugs also impair the secretion of new myelin, the fatty coating that covers the nerve cells and facilitates their firing. The connection between cholesterol and its fundamental role in the immune system and in the cell membrane should also be kept in mind when it comes to autoimmune diseases.
Modern guidelines say that it is desirable to have a level of total cholesterol of less than 200 mg/dL. When I was in medical school, which was not that long ago, the upper limit was 240 mg/dL. Once upon a time, it used to be 280 mg/dl. Apparently, in 1970, the rule-of-thumb for a healthy serum cholesterol was in the 200 plus range. Now most doctors try to keep cholesterol below 200, which most people find very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve through diet and lifestyle changes alone. Since then, statin drugs like Lipitor became one of the all-time top-selling drugs in history (Angell, 2005).
The European guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention in clinical practice (Piepoli et al., 2016) recommends that very high-risk patients lower their LDL cholesterol to less than 70mg/dL (<1.8 mmol/L) or “a reduction of at least 50% if the baseline is between 70 and 135 mg/dL (1.8 and 3.5 mmol/L).” (Ibid., p. 2331) Conveniently, pharmaceutical companies have the drug just for such a drastic reduction. For example Orvatez by Merck which combines ezetimibe (blocks the absorption of cholesterol) and atorvastatin (a statin drug) can bring LDL cholesterol down to 50 mg/dL. Merck highlights in a chart made for doctors that if a patient has a baseline LDL cholesterol of 70 mg/dL, target LDL should be of 35 mg/dL! And I’m not the only one who sees a problem with this. As the Mayo Clinic shyly puts it:
“There is no consensus on how to define very low LDL cholesterol, but LDL would be considered very low if it is less than 40 milligrams per deciliter of blood… very low levels of LDL cholesterol may be associated with an increased risk of cancer, hemorrhagic stroke, depression, anxiety, preterm birth and low birth weight if your cholesterol is low while you’re pregnant.” (Lopez-Jimenez, 2015, para. 2-3)
The above-mentioned European guidelines include a disclaimer where we read the following:
“[the] Guidelines do not override, in any way whatsoever, the individual responsibility of health professionals to make appropriate and accurate decisions in consideration of each patient’s health condition and in consultation with that patient and, where appropriate and/or necessary, the patient’s caregiver. Nor do the ESC Guidelines exempt health professionals from taking into full and careful consideration the relevant official updated recommendations or guidelines issued by the competent public health authorities, in order to manage each patient’s case in light of the scientifically accepted data pursuant to their respective ethical and professional obligations. It is also the health professional’s responsibility to verify the applicable rules and regulations relating to drugs and medical devices at the time of prescription.” (Piepoli et al., 2016, p. 2315)
Since I have first hand experience of the way research is done in Europe, most specifically Italy, I decided to have a look at the disclosure forms of the experts involved in the development of these guidelines. As it happens, there is no direct hyperlink to the disclosure from the electronic version. I found it hyperlinked in a smaller font as the last section of the menu on a separate page at their escardio.org website. After a while you get good at digging for these details that very few are trained to look for and/or are interested in. The declaration of interest is a PDF file of 35 pages and it specifies that “the report below lists declarations of interest as reported to the ESC by the experts covering the period of the Guidelines production, from Task Force creation to publication.” (Available at https://www.escardio.org/static_file/Escardio/Guidelines/DOI_CVDPrevention.pdf)
That is, the declaration of interest only covers 2014 and 2015, and it is not given by a third party. Most of the authors have so many links to Big Pharma that their declaration of interest can take an entire page. The reader can have fun searching for Big Pharma sponsoring for the years not covered for both the sponsored and the few authors who had nothing to declare in 2014 and 2015. I challenge anyone to find at least one author who chose to attend only conferences that were not financed by Big Pharma as a general rule for his entire career.
As Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine states:
If drug companies and medical educators were really providing education, doctors and academic institutions would pay them for their services. When you take piano lessons, you pay the teacher, not the other way around. But in this case, industry pays the academic institutions and faculty, and even the doctors who take the courses. The companies are simply buying access to medical school faculty and to doctors in training and practice.
This is marketing masquerading as education. It is self-evidently absurd to look to companies for critical, unbiased education about products they sell. It’s like asking a brewery to teach you about alcoholism, or a Honda dealer for a recommendation about what car to buy. Doctors recognize this in other parts of their lives, but they’ve convinced themselves that drug companies are different. That industry-sponsored education is a masquerade is underscored by the fact that some of the biggest Madison Avenue ad agencies, hired by drug companies to promote their products, also own their own medical-education companies. It’s one-stop shopping for the industry.[…]
It’s easy to fault drug companies for much of what I’ve described, and they certainly deserve a great deal of blame. Most of the big drug companies have paid huge fines to settle charges of illegal activities. Last year Pfizer pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle criminal and civil charges of marketing drugs for off-label uses-the largest criminal fine in history. The fines, while enormous, are still dwarfed by the profits generated by these activities, and are therefore not much of a deterrent. Still, apologists might argue that, despite its legal transgressions, the pharmaceutical industry is merely trying to do its primary job-furthering the interests of its investors-and sometimes it simply goes a little too far.
Doctors, medical schools, and professional organizations have no such excuse; the medical profession’s only fiduciary responsibility is to patients and the public. (emphasis added) (Angell, 2010, para. 35-36, 39-40)
If only health care professionals at large would take a stand against the massive conflict of interests from pharmaceutical and food industries and their role in the corruption of the medical science, it wouldn’t have come to the point where there are guidelines advising the reduction of cholesterol to levels never seen before in medical records. Another line of research would have been followed where dietary and environmental factors and their role in inflammation and our health would play a greater role. Hopefully we will wake up soon, otherwise we risk a guideline recommending zero levels of LDL cholesterol. It sounds absurd, but then, I thought that an LDL target 35 mg/dL would shock conventional practitioners to realize the absurdity of these recommendations, and that doesn’t seem to have happened.
Statin drugs are among the most profitable drugs in the history of the world. Those profits buy a lot of propaganda: lobbyists, advertising and marketing to doctors, and free continuing medical education. Think of what even a small percentage of their massive profits could do for prevention if it were invested in public education towards a truly health promoting diet. Think of all the diseases that would essentially disappear from the face of the planet. But expecting a corporation to willingly cut off its main source of profit is a pipe dream. Even if they knew the truth about diet, it would be kept as the most tightly guarded secret in history.
It’s really not in the drug-maker’s’ best interest to have people making healthy dietary choices. So instead of promoting prevention strategies, cholesterol drugs continue to post record-breaking profits and create poor health and side effects in the people taking them. Those people in poor health can then be treated with more drugs. How many people do you know on multiple medications for various ailments? Whether the cause if malfeasance or ignorance is largely irrelevant because the result is the same.
It is only your own awareness that can turn things around. The public is gradually awakening to the fact that statins are virtually useless for the vast majority of people who take them, and yet they carry significant risks.
A group of eminent doctors including the President of the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Richard Thompson, argue in a declaration letter that a doctor making a case for these drugs can quite easily look ill-informed, biased or just plain stupid in the eyes of their patients. According to one of the letter’s signatories, Dr David Newman, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of clinical research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine:
I am always embarrassed when I have to tell patients that our treatment guidelines were written by a panel filled with people who stood to gain financially from their decisions. The UK certainly appears to be no different to that of the United States. The truth is, for most people at low risk of cardiovascular disease, a statin will give them diabetes as often as it will prevent a non fatal heart attack – and they won’t live any longer taking the pill. That’s not what patients are looking for. (Briffa, 2014, para. 20)
The letter was addressed to the chair of NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the United Kingdom. In the letter, the proposition to reduce the threshold for prescribing statins to those with a 10% risk of cardiovascular disease is rejected by addressing six major concerns (letter available at www.nice.org.uk/Media/Default/News/NICE-statin-letter.pdf):
- The medicalization of millions of healthy individuals
- Conflicting levels of adverse events
- Hidden data
- Industry bias
- Loss of professional confidence
- Conflicts of interest
So again we see guidelines being written to favor the industry and the over-medicalization of millions of people.
Ironically, the very same experts for some of these guidelines disagree, calling for expert groups such as the Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) IV to “abandon the paradigm of treating patients to LDL targets” (Hayward & Krumholz, 2012).
Blinded by the numbers, doctors will see LDL levels at 70 and say their patients are doing well. They could fail to see what might actually be in front of their eyes – an ill-looking and nutritionally deficient person. Cracking skin, plunging libido, muscle wasting, memory problems, blood sugar imbalances, premature aging – but hey, cholesterol numbers are right on the money! It is astounding to see how we as doctors do so little critical thinking, focusing only on arbitrary guidelines dictated by the same companies selling the drugs that are the only things that make the numbers possible. Talk about a collective blind spot facilitated by decades of programmed schooling. Even when a patient points out, ‘but I eat no fats and no salt and I’m getting worse!’, we might fail to connect the dots.
As if this weren’t enough, here’s another bit of irony. In one study, the use of statin drugs was associated with microalbuminuria (Van Der Tol et al., 2012). Microalbuminuria is a marker of poor endothelial function and it’s endothelial function which determines cardiovascular disease risk. Microalbuminuria is also a marker of kidney problems.
Similarly, in a study of nearly 26,000 beneficiaries of Tricare – the military health system in the United States – those taking statin drugs to control their cholesterol were 87 percent more likely to develop diabetes. The research confirmed past findings on the link between statins and diabetes risk, but it is among the first to show the connection in a relatively healthy group of people. The study included only people who at baseline were free of heart disease, diabetes, and other severe chronic disease (Veterans Affairs Research Communications, 2015).
In this same study, statin use was also associated with a very high risk of diabetes complications. Among 3351 pairs of similar patients–part of the overall study group–those patients on statins were 250 percent more likely than their non-statin-using counterparts to develop diabetes with complications (Mansi, Frei, Wang, & Mortensen, 2015). Statin users were also 14 percent more likely to become overweight or obese after being on the drugs. The study also found that the higher the dose of any of the statins, the greater the risk of diabetes, diabetes complications, and obesity. Ironically, it is those who have had a cardiovascular disease event who are prescribed higher doses of statin drugs.
Moreover, more frequent statin drug use is associated with accelerated coronary artery and aortic artery calcification, both of which greatly contribute to cardiovascular and all-cause mortality (Saremi, Bahn, & Reaven, 2012). An evaluation of thousands of individuals with no known cardiovascular disease and undergoing a coronary CT angiography which visualizes atherosclerosis, concluded that statin use is associated with an increased prevalence and extent of coronary plaques possessing calcium (Nakazato et al., 2012). So doctors might be prescribing a medicine that contributes to onset of the very thing they are trying to prevent.
In the meantime, people are getting increasingly high levels of calcified hearts. During heart surgery, the surgical instrument known as the ‘bone eater’ ends up being used to replace valves that should have remained silky and smooth. I know what I speak after witnessing and conducting thousands of open heart surgeries in three different countries.
Two top vascular surgeons have summarized statins in a damning report called “The Ugly Side of Statins. Systemic Appraisal of the Contemporary Un-Known Unknowns“. In the report they state: “The statin industry is the utmost medical tragedy of all times,” and that “statins are associated with triple the risk of coronary artery and aortic calcification.” (Sultan & Hynes, 2013, p. 180, 183)
The picture isn’t pretty. The decades of massive anti-fat propaganda has brainwashed all of us without exception. Upon being questioned about their dietary habits, a patient might guiltily recall all the fats they ate and think that those are to blame for their health woes. Never mind that they eat mostly carbs, or that most of the fats they do eat are of the processed, plastic and vegetable oil variety. On doctors orders, they remove the animal fat from their diets, thereby increasing the carbs and vegetable oils, the very two steps that will deteriorate their health. When and if cholesterol targets are not reached by these measures, then the doctor has ‘no choice’ but to put them on a statin drug.
There is, however, a small percentage of people out there who genuinely have a true genetic predisposition to high blood cholesterol called familial hypercholesterolemia, which is a condition which is characterized by an impaired or even lack of ability to metabolize cholesterol. This condition can have serious health consequences and sufferers may need medical interventions to bring their cholesterol levels down. But that doesn’t mean this can be extrapolated to all people who don’t have this genetic problem.
Medical research has not proven that lowering (or low) cholesterol in and of itself reduces risk of death from heart disease across a population (Siri-Tarino, Sun, Hu, & Krauss, 2010; Chowdhury et al., 2014). Men with very low cholesterol levels seem prone to premature death. Below 160 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl), the lower the cholesterol level, the shorter the lifespan. These men die of cancer, respiratory and digestive diseases, and trauma (Smith, 1997). As for women, if anything, the higher their cholesterol, the longer they seem to live (Teicholz, 2014).
Despite these facts, it is estimated that by 2020, revenues from statin drug sales will reach 1 trillion dollars. Never mind that most people taking these drugs are not at risk for heart disease.
References
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Chowdhury, R., Warnakula, S., Kunutsor, S., Crowe, F., Ward, H. A., Johnson, L., . . . Angelantonio, E. D. (2014). Association of dietary, circulating, and supplement fatty acids with coronary risk. Annals of Internal Medicine, 160(6), 398-406. doi:10.7326/m13-1788
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Siri-Tarino, P. W., Sun, Q., Hu, F. B., & Krauss, R. M. (2010). Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 91(3), 535-546. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.27725
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Dr. Gaby was born into a mixed Eastern-Western family in Costa Rica and she is a countryside family medicine doctor and former heart surgeon. Her research in the medical field, the true nature of our world and all things related to healing have taken her to Italy, Canada, France and Spain. Gaby is co-host of the ‘Health and Wellness’ show on the SOTT Radio Network and her writings can be found at The Health Matrix.
Russiagate Turns On Its Originators
By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute For Political Economy | January 8, 2018
Russiagate originated in a conspiracy between the military/security complex, the Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee, and the liberal/progressive/left. The goal of the military/security complex is to protect its out-sized budget and power by preventing President Trump from normalizing relations with Russia. Hillary and the DNC want to explain away their election loss by blaming a Trump/Putin conspiracy to steal the election. The liberal/progressive/left want Trump driven from office.
As the presstitutes are aligned with the military/security complex, Hillary and the DNC, and the liberal/progressive/left, the Russiagate orchestration is a powerful conspiracy against the president of the United States and the “deplorables” who elected him. Nevertheless, the Russiagate Conspiracy has fallen apart and has now been turned against its originators.
Despite the determination of the CIA and FBI to get Trump, these powerful and unaccountable police state agencies have been unable to present any evidence of the Trump/Putin conspiracy against Hillary. As William Binney, the former high level National Security Agency official who devised the spy program has stated, if there was any evidence of a Trump/Putin conspiracy to steal the US presidential election, the NSA would most certainly have it.
So where is the evidence? Why after one year and a half and a special prosecutor whose assignment is to get Trump has no evidence whatsoever been found of the Trump/Putin conspiracy? The obvious answer is that no such conspiracy ever existed. The only conspiracy is the one against Trump.
This has now become completely apparent. Russiagate originated in a fake “Trump dossier” invented by Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 intelligence officer. It is not yet clear whether it was the DNC, the CIA, or the FBI who paid Steele for the fake dossier. Perhaps he sold it to all three.
What we do know is that the FBI used what it knew to be a fake dossier to go to the FISA court for a warrant to spy on Trump.
As a consequence both Comey and the FBI, special prosecutor Mueller, and Christopher Steele are in hot water. The Chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Grassley, has instructed the US Attorney General to launch a criminal investigation of Steele for false statements to FBI counterintelligence officials.
You can see where this leads as former FBI director Comey is a participant in the Russiagate attack on President Trump. To protect himself Steele will have to rat on who put him up to it. If President Trump had any sense, he would put Steele under protective custody, as his life is clearly in danger. If the CIA and the FBI don’t get him, the Clintons surely will.
Trump’s easy election shook the Republican Establishment as well as it upset the Democrats and the military/security complex. The Republican Establishment hates losing control. Initially the Republican Establishment aligned with Trump’s enemies, but now understands that Trump’s demise means their demise.
Consequently, all of a sudden in Washington facts count. Not all facts, just those relating to the Steele dossier. Be sure you listen closely and carefully to these two videos of US Representative Jim Jordan’s destruction of US Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein for sitting on his ass while a totally corrupt FBI attempted to destroy the elected president of the United States. Keep in mind that Rosenstein is a member of the Trump administration. Why does the President of the United States employ people out to destroy him?
Here are the videos:
Here are 18 questions asked by US Rep. Jim Jordan:
1) Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele, author of the dossier?
2) Was the dossier the basis for securing FISA warrants to spy on Americans? And why won’t the FBI show Congress the FISA application?
3) When did the FBI get the complete dossier and who gave it to them? Dossier author Christopher Steele? Fusion GPS? Clinton campaign/DNC? Sen. McCain’s staffer?
4) Did the FBI validate and corroborate the dossier?
5) Did Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, or Bruce Orr work on the FISA application?
6) Why and how often did DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr meet with dossier author Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign?
7) Why did DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr meet with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson after the election? To get their story straight after their candidate Clinton lost? Or to double down and plan how they were going to go after President-elect Trump?
8) When and how did the FBI learn that DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr’s wife, Nellie Orr, worked for Fusion GPS? And what exactly was Nellie Orr’s role in putting together the dossier?
9) Why did the FBI release text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page? Normally, ongoing investigation is reason not to make such information public.
10) And why did FBI release only 375/10,000+ texts? Were they the best? Worst? Or part of a broader strategy to focus attention away from something else? And when can Americans see the other 96% of texts
11) Why did Lisa Page leave Mueller probe two weeks before Peter Strzok? This was two weeks before FBI and Special Counsel even knew about the texts.
12) Why did the intelligence community wait two months after the election to brief President-elect Trump on the dossier (January 6, 2017)? Why was James Comey selected to do the briefing?
13) Was the briefing done to “legitimize” the dossier? And who leaked the fact that the briefing was about the dossier?
14) The New York Times reported last week that George Popadopoulos’ loose lips were a catalyst for launching the Russia investigation. Was President-elect Trump briefed on this?
15) Why did Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya before and after her meeting with Donald Trump Jr.?
16) Why was FBI General Counsel Jim Baker reassigned two weeks ago? Was he the source for the first story on the dossier by David Corn on October 31, 2016? Or was it someone else at the FBI?
17) Why won’t the FBI give Congress the documents it’s requesting?
18) And why would Senator Schumer, leader of the Democrat party, publicly warn President-elect Trump on Jan. 3, 2017 that when you mess with the “intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you?”
Insouciant trusting gullible Americans who “believe in our government” have no comprehension how totally corrupt “their” government is. It is the most corrupt in the world. The corruption in Washington is really unbelievable. You have to experience it to know it, and those who experience it are part of it and will not tell.
The orchestration “Russiagate” proves that the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI are so corrupt and unaccountable that they comprise the greatest threat to the American people in the entire history of America. The only solution is to break these agencies into a thousand splinters, as President John F. Kennedy intended, and rebuild them from scratch with total transparency. No more protecting their vast crimes under the cloak of “national security.” No classification of any so-called intelligence unless it can pass a unanamous vote of Congress and the ACLU.
The orchestration of Russiagate is proof that the alleged “national security agencies” are an anti-American force detrimental to our survival as a free people. The criminals in the FBI, CIA, and DNC must be investigated, indicted, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned or freedom in America is forever dead.
If President Trump fails in this task, he will have failed America. Everyone of us will be the victims.
One question with which we are left is why has the mainstream media failed in its investigating and reporting responsibilities and instead served as a cheerleader for the orchestration known as Russiagate? The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, and the rest are serving as public relations agents for Russiagate, leaving it to Rep. Jim Jordan to ask the questions that the media should be asking. What explains the convergence of media and FBI/CIA interests? Are hidden subsidies involved? As the mainstream media is behaving as it would be if it were owned and controlled by the security agencies, this is a natural question. Why is the media not disturbed by its close relationship to the FBI and CIA? When did it become the function of the media to help the CIA and FBI control explanations?
Kushner family’s extensive business ties with Israel deepen: Report
Press TV | January 8, 2018
An Israeli firm says it has paid about $30 million to the family business of Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior aide, a new report states.
Kushner Companies, which specializes in real estate, has received an around $30 million payment from the Israeli insurance company Menora Mivtachim, The New York Times reported Sunday, citing one of the Israeli firm’s executives.
The hefty investment concerned Maryland apartment complexes owned by Kushner Companies, but did not involve Jared Kushner personally, the Times reported, noting that the transaction did not violate federal ethics laws.
Ran Markman, Menora’s head of real estate, told the daily that he had never even met Kushner and his position in the US government did not play a role in striking the deal.
“The connection to the president was not an issue,” Markman said.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka, resigned from the family business last year to join his father-in-law’s team at the White House. However, he still owns stakes in the company, including in the Maryland apartment buildings.
The Times had reported last year that Kushner had teamed up with a member of a wealthy Israeli family to invest about $200 million in apartment buildings across New York City’s flashy Manhattan neighborhood.
Kushner’s company has also received a number of loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which has been under a US Justice Department investigation over allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes.
Additionally, Kushner’s family foundation has contributed to Israel’s illegal settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian lands by donating money to a settlement group in the West Bank, the Times said.
The deep business ties raises questions about Kushner’s ability to maintain a neutral role in his mission as Trump’s designated mediator between Israel and Palestine.
He has had no prior career in diplomacy or governance and, like his father-in-law, was in real estate before Trump won an upset victory in the US presidential election in November 2016.
BDS calls for boycotting US projects in Palestine
Press TV – January 7, 2018
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has called for the boycott of American projects in the occupied Palestinian territories in retaliation for US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s capital.
In reaction to Trump’s December announcement, the BDS has called for a boycott of “activities organized or sponsored by US institutions, in Jerusalem and abroad.”
Managers of US-funded programs in Palestinian territories say the announcement has been followed by protests and refusals to meet with their project managers.
Activists have also urged groups working with the American programs to remove US-linked branding – including the US flag- from their promotional materials.
Palestinians have also rejected US assistance in various areas. Some law schools, for example, have pulled out of an international event for which the US consulate had planned to buy plane tickets.
Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the BDS movement, told The Guardian that most Palestinians were upset with Trump’s decision and saw Washington as an accomplice to Israel’s crimes.
“The overwhelming majority of Palestinians has always recognized successive US administrations as not just patrons of, but also partners in crime with Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid,” he said.
The activist also warned that Trump’s unconditional support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the constant undermining of Palestinian rights at the United Nations had taken the protests to an unprecedented level.
“The latest attempt by the far-right, anti-Palestinian Trump-Netanyahu alliance to take off the table UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people, including Jerusalem, has taken popular Palestinian protests against this deepening official US complicity to a level that has not been seen since the 1993 Oslo accords,” he argued.
Israel has placed a travel ban against Barghouti as part of a broad policy to counter BDS. He was recently denied to travel to Jordan for his mother’s surgery.
Infuriated by the campaign’s worldwide success and growing popularity, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry published on Sunday a blacklist of organizations whose activists were partaking in the BDS movement.
Activist: Peru’s Ex-Leader Pardoning Won’t Lead to National Reconciliation
Sputnik – December 28, 2017
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, sentenced to 25 years in prison for corruption and crimes against humanity, including ordering massacres by death squads, was pardoned by incumbent President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on December 24, prompting a heated debate and a wave of dissatisfaction among Peruvians.
“This measure does not solve the [country’s] main problems and does not lead to the national reconciliation the [Peruvian] government is talking about,” Miguel Angel Canales, president of the Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners, of the Missing People and Victims of Genocide of Peru, told Sputnik Mundo. “The amnesty should cover civilians, military and police, not Fujimori supporters alone. Both groups [Fujimori and Kuczynski] are responsible for the implementation of neo-liberal policies in Peru. They have never sought to solve the problems of [common] people.”
Fujimori was granted amnesty after his supporters put forward and then declined the proposal for an impeachment of the incumbent president.
On September 23 Sputnik suggested, citing Alvaro Campana, the general secretary of the Nuevo Peru (“New Peru”) movement, that the impeachment initiative could result in Fujimori’s pardoning.
The bid for impeachment of Kuczynski was put forward over the allegations of corruption and receiving money from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht when the present Peruvian leader was the minister of former president Alejandro Toledo between 2001 and 2006.
On December 21 the president survived the impeachment vote with 78 representatives supporting the measure and 19 against. The numbers fell short of the necessary 87 votes to impeach Kuczynski.
That became possible after 10 members of the hard-right Popular Force party, led by Fujimori’s daughter Keiko, abstained at the last minute instead of voting in favor of the measure, Simeon Tegel of The Washington Post reported last Friday.
It appeared symbolic that Alberto Fujimori’s son, Kenji, who also abstained from voting, was moved to tears when it became known that Kuchinsky would not be removed from power.
“Finally, Fujimori supporters and the government shake hands,” Campana said, commenting on the matter.
On December 24 Kuczynski announced that he granted amnesty to Fujimori. According to the presidential administration, the former Peruvian leader was released for health reasons. A day earlier, Fujimori was admitted to the intensive care unit at the Centenario Clinic in Lima. After the news, on December 26, the former leader of the Latin American country was transferred to an ordinary chamber.
In a video posted on his Facebook page the former Peruvian leader asked for forgiveness.
“I am aware that the results during my government on one side were well received, but I recognize that I have also disappointed others, and I ask them to forgive me with all my heart,” he said, as quoted by CNN.
Fujimori served as a president of Peru from 1990 to 2000. Between 1980 and 2000 more than 15,000 people had gone missing during an internal armed conflict in Peru. More than 4,000 common graves still remain undiscovered. Apparently therefore, the pardoning of the former leader of the country caused an ambiguous reaction within the Peruvian society and provoked mass protests in Lima and other cities.
On Monday, police fired tear gas to disperse crowds protesting Kuczynski’s decision in downtown Lima, while several members of the president’s party resigned.
In response, Kuczynski addressed the protestors, urging them to “turn the page” and accept Fujimori’s amnesty.
Intelligence Community Says US Had Better Reauthorize Surveillance… Or Else
By Caitlin Johnstone | Medium | December 23, 2017
The editorial board of the Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor, has published a predictably fact-challenged op-ed arguing that congress must reauthorize the Orwellian surveillance program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is deliberately used to collect communications of US citizens.
WaPo, which to this day continues to violate universal journalistic protocol by refusing to disclose its $600 million conflict of interest when reporting on the US intelligence community, just so happens to once again find itself in full agreement with that same US intelligence community. In a new joint statement by the Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, FBI Director Christopher Wray, NSA Director Michael Rogers, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the US intelligence community warns that should congress fail to reauthorize Section 702, something very, very bad may happen to America.
“There is no substitute for Section 702,” the statement claims. “If Congress fails to reauthorize this authority, the Intelligence Community will lose valuable foreign intelligence information, and the resulting intelligence gaps will make it easier for terrorists, weapons proliferators, malicious cyber actors, and other foreign adversaries to plan attacks against our citizens and allies without detection.”
Am I the only one who’s creeped out by this kind of language? This is after all the same US intelligence community that was seen in CIA documents casually discussing the option of the “real or simulated” sinking of a boatload of Cuban civilians as though they were discussing whether to buy two percent or whole milk at the supermarket. The same US intelligence community which lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to manufacture support for the Vietnam War, resulting in the needless deaths of millions of people including 58,220 Americans. The same US intelligence community which posed as a black civil rights advocate and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr into committing suicide. The same US intelligence community which infiltrated American civil rights movements and dissident groups in order to disrupt and discredit them and frame them for acts of violence. The same US intelligence community which compiled a list of American dissidents to be thrown in concentration camps in the event of a “national emergency”.
“But Caitlin,” you may be saying. “Despite all the countless unfathomably evil things that the US intelligence community is known to have done in the past, there’s no reason to believe they’re still that vicious and depraved. Just because the language of the joint statement makes it abundantly clear that they really, really want their 702 surveillance reauthorization doesn’t mean they’d do something unspeakable to get it!”
Well that’s an interesting theory, convenient hypothetical objection person, but one of the statement’s signatories, Mike Pompeo, recently said he’s actually helping the lying, torturing, drug-running, warmongering, government-toppling CIA to “become a much more vicious agency”. There is every reason to believe that the US intelligence community is at least as psychopathic as it has ever been.
So excuse the hell out of me if I can’t help but read the intelligence community’s joint statement in the voice of a cartoonish mafia thug threatening to arrange a little “accident” if his extortion victim doesn’t pay up. When a depraved, violent organization with a history of using false flags and psyops to advance its agendas says it urgently needs to be given unchecked surveillance powers in order to prevent acts of terror, I get a little nervous.
With the rare glimpses we’ve been given behind the curtain of USIC opacity, we’ve seen that US intelligence agencies don’t actually use their surveillance capabilities for fighting terrorism nearly as much as they pretend to. With WikiLeaks’ massive leak drop earlier this year on the CIA’s sprawling surveillance system, there was no reference in any of the documents to terrorists or extremists. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said in a press conference at the time that there was a “conspicuous” absence of any such references, adding the following:
“What is not there is any reference to terrorists, any reference to extremists. And that actually shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone; no one no one who studies the intelligence world that’s a surprise to. Because even if you just look at the budgets that came out in 2013 to the US intelligence black-budget, you don’t see anything like the majority of the budget going towards extremism, even though there are very strong political reasons to try and couch any operation in countering terrorism and countering extremism to get more money.
Despite that political pressure, something like a third of the entire US intelligence budget is described as countering various forms of extremism. And the overwhelming majority is not, but particularly for the CIA, the vast majority of the expenditure and attack types are geopolitical. They’re about, you know similar to the information revealed about the CIA attacking of the French election cycle — understanding who could be pals with the CIA, who could help out the institution in one way or another. So for example, you spy on Airbus. That information you then pass to the US Chamber of Commerce amongst others, which is listed in the material, and US Chamber of Commerce can then adjust what is doing in order to assist Boeing, and these companies are closely connected to each other.”
So going by what we ordinary people can actually put our eyes on, surveillance is not even really about fighting terrorism at all; it’s about having access to as much information as possible which can be used for geopolitical manipulation and leverage for America’s unelected power establishment. And yet these intelligence agencies, which appear to spend far less energy fighting terrorism than they pretend to, are warning of terrorist attacks should the American people’s elected representatives fail to grant them the reauthorization they demand.
In all probability, congress will bow to these demands. Hell, if they’re seeing what I’m seeing I can’t even say I blame them. To put it lightly, these are scary mofos. As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier this year, “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
Either way, we need to talk about this. We need to talk about the fact that there is a violent, unelected power establishment with zero accountability or transparency which cannot be trusted not to false flag Americans into consenting to an expansion of the Orwellian surveillance state. The only way to pretend that this is not a very real threat is to live in denial and shove this reality as far away from one’s consciousness as possible.
So let’s bring it into consciousness. This is a real thing. This is happening. America is ruled by a band of unelected, unaccountable thugs who will kill and terrorize in order to shore up power and advance agendas. These thugs rule America, and therefore much of the world. Pay attention to these things, everyone. This affects you personally.
Click here to contact your representatives and tell them to stand up to the US intelligence community’s demands for warrantless spying on innocent Americans.
Homeland Security’s Multibillion-Dollar Comedy Show
Image by James Bovard
By James Bovard | FFF | December 26, 2017
After the 9/11 attacks, Congress and the Bush administration pretended that unlimited federal spending was one of the best ways to thwart terrorist threats. In 2002, Congress created the Homeland Security Department (DHS), sweeping some of the most inept federal agencies, such as the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), into the new mega-department. Congress also created numerous programs — some run directly by FEMA — to shovel out more than $30 billion in anti-terrorism funding to local and state governments.
As Sen. Tom Coburn (R–Okla.) observed a few years ago, “FEMA’s lax guidelines and oversight made the agency a virtual rubberstamp for most anything that grant recipients creatively justified as related to homeland security — regardless of how loosely related.” Louisiana Homeland Security grant recipients spent $2,400 for a lapel microphone and $2,700 for a teleprompter. Fort Worth, Texas, spent $24,000 of a federal anti-terrorism grant on a latrine-on-wheels. Other Texas local governments spent Homeland Security grants on “a hog catcher for Liberty County, body bags, garbage bags, Ziploc bags and two 2011 Camaros at $31,000 apiece,” as a Senate report revealed.
DHS approved a Michigan police department’s spending $6,200 of its grant on 13 sno-cone machines. The Senate report noted that local officials “defended the sno-cone purchases saying the machines were needed to treat heat-related emergencies.” DHS also asserted that the machines were “dual purpose” because they “could be used to fill ice packs in an emergency.”
The Jacksonville Urban Area Security Initiative used a DHS grant to produce an 8-minute film entitled “Domestic Terrorism: The First Line of Defense.” The film urged viewers to report any suspicious activity and to be especially wary of people that are “alone or nervous” or people “of average or above average intelligence” (unlike the people who made the film). People were also told to be on the lookout for residents who displayed “increased frequency of prayer or religious behavior.” As a Techdirt analysis pointed out, “Broadly defined ‘suspicious behavior’ is a great way to make every citizen a suspect … and justify every violation of personal privacy. If you need warrantless wiretaps or a reason to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens, all you have to do is start listing everyday activity as ‘suspicious.’”
Anti-terrorism funding has proven to be a boon for the travel industry. Many DHS grant recipients paid to send their employees to the HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit in 2012, which took place at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa on an island near San Diego. Invitees were told that “this luxury resort features over 460 guestrooms, five pools, three fantastic restaurants overlooking the bay, a world-class spa and state-of-the-art fitness center. Paradise awaits.” The highlight of the conference was a “zombie apocalypse” show featuring “40 actors dressed as zombies getting gunned down by a military tactical unit…. Conference attendees were invited to watch the shows as part of their education in emergency response training,” as a Senate investigation reported. This type of federally subsidized mass-shooting rehearsal did not spur any protests from anti-gun groups.
DHS handouts make state and local law-enforcement agencies more intrusive and punitive. DHS has given a number of grants to purchase license-plate readers for police patrol cars. One California urban area spent $6 million on the readers, which were used to detect vehicles with “excessive traffic violations.” Two years ago, DHS solicited proposals for private companies to create a national database on license-plate data that could disclose exactly when and where citizens drive. The subsequent firestorm caused DHS to temporarily back off from its proposal but it was rolled out again in 2015.
Maryland used federal Homeland Security grants to equip hundreds of police cars with license-plate scanners that create almost 100 million records per year detailing exactly where and when each vehicle travels. The grants also paid for stationary cameras that recorded license plates passing on nearby roads. The massive databank, which mortifies the ACLU, has been almost a total failure at nailing violent criminals or car thieves or terrorists. Instead, almost all the license-plate alerts involve scofflaws who failed to take their cars in for mandatory vehicle-emissions tests.
Increased surveillance
Local governments and agencies in the Chicago area spent $45 million in Homeland Security grants to set up a network of surveillance cameras known as “Project Shield.” The system was justified as an anti-terrorist measure but was shut down after it was recognized as a boondoggle. A Chicago Tribune editorial derided the program as “Project Sieve.” Some of its equipment failed to function in hot or cold weather. Almost 20 percent of the equipment was misplaced or stolen. Idiotic decisions were made in where to place the surveillance cameras — in police-station lobbies for example. Congressman Michael Quigley (D–Ill.) denounced Project Shield as “corruption which makes us less safe.”
After the heavy-handed police response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, Barack Obama publicly fretted about the militarization of police. But many of the worst abuses have long been funded by DHS. A Senate report noted, “‘Militarized’ vehicles and bomb detection robots top the list of ‘must have’ equipment being purchased by law enforcement teams around the country.”
Many police departments use DHS grants to purchase the same type of armored personnel carriers used by the U.S. military. The most popular model is the BearCat — an acronym for Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck. The Keene, New Hampshire, police department justified using federal funds to purchase a BearCat because of rowdiness at a local pumpkin festival. An Arizona police department used a BearCat to carry out a raid on a cockfight organizer. A police department in Washington state used its BearCat to “pull over drunk drivers.” The Clovis, California, Police Department displayed its BearCat at a local Easter egg hunt. A Senate report noted, “Police departments rave about the vehicles’ ‘shock and awe’ effect saying the vehicles’ menacing presence can be enough of a deterrent for would-be criminals.” Unfortunately, there is no way to deter police departments from spending federal dollars to intimidate local taxpayers.
Police departments are also using DHS grants to buy drones to conduct surveillance over their entire domains. As the Senate report explained, “Given the proliferation of military drones used in war operations, local police now want similar equipment in their arsenal of crime-fighting tools.” Senator Coburn warned, “The deployment of these types of surveillance machines raises important questions about American citizens’ constitutional rights and the appropriate balance between improving security and freedom. Federal, state, and local policymakers must carefully consider whether new law-enforcement tools and strategies protect freedom or threaten civil liberties.” But few members of Congress have shown any interest in reining in federally funded abuses.
Federal grant money is enabling local police to buy other military-style devices. As a Senate report noted, “Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) machines were originally developed for use by the military as a nonlethal way to repel adversaries, including Iraqi insurgents or pirates, by making a loud and intense sound that is capable of damaging hearing.” Pittsburgh used $88,000 of DHS grant money to buy a “long-range acoustic device” and used it on protesters at a 2009 international summit in Pittsburgh, leading to at least one lawsuit from a victim claiming permanent loss of hearing.
Federal anti-terrorism grants are also spurring pointless intrusions around the nation. The Washington, D.C., subway system has been plagued by high-profile violent attacks by riders (as well as horrendous service which occasionally kills passengers). The feds’ solution? Special grants of $10 million or more per year to bankroll police to accost travelers before they enter the subway system and search their purse, briefcase, backpack, or whatever. Metro officials insisted that the searches were no big deal because they would be very brief — unless, of course, police found a reason to arrest someone or detain him for questioning. Police rely on hand-held explosive-detection devices which are well known to be ludicrously inaccurate (and can be triggered by hand sanitizer or soap). A Washington Post reporter noted that “many of those transit commuters still have the option of traveling by car, where their property is likely to be safe from police search as long as they don’t commit a crime, a distinction no longer available to Metro riders.” The police search teams are not deployed in response to any credible threat; instead, they are simply sent out to establish police presence. This is akin to the “security theater” that TSA has made famous. But news that police conduct warrantless searches of passengers entering subway stops quickly spreads on social media. If someone wants to avoid the hassle (or the discovery of the nuclear bomb in his suitcase), he merely needs to go to a different metro station a mile or two away.
Federal anti-terrorism grants have been a great political success regardless of pervasive waste, fraud, and abuse. As author James Risen (who was targeted for years by both the Bush and Obama Justice Departments for national-security leaks he received) observed, the “homeland security–industrial complex” has been a windfall for Washington. Politicians have “learned that keeping the terrorist threat alive provides enormous political benefits…. A decade of fear-mongering has brought power and wealth to those who have been the most skillful at hyping the terrorism threat,” enhancing the “financial well-being of countless federal bureaucrats, contractors, subcontractors, consultant, analysis and pundits.”
The Trump administration has proposed curtailing some anti-terrorism grants to state and local governments but it remains to be seen whether Congress gets on board. What does the United States have to show for tens of billions of dollars of Homeland Security antiterrorism spending by local and state governments? Michael Sheehan, former New York City deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, observed, “I firmly believe that those huge budget increases have not significantly contributed to our post–9/11 security.” But the war on terrorism has been an unmitigated victory for Leviathan and politicians at every level of government.
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Who Runs Our World?
Netanyahu addresses US Congress
By Richard Hugus | January 4, 2019
Our world is run by oligarchs, the holders of vast wealth from monopolies in banking, resource extraction, manufacturing, and technology. Oligarchs have such power that most of the world doesn’t even know of their influence over our lives. Their overall agenda is global power — a world government, run by them — to be achieved through planned steps of social engineering. The oligarchs remain in the background and have heads of state and entire governments acting in their service. Presidents and prime ministers are their puppets. Bureaucrats and politicians are their factotums.
Who are politicians? Politicians are people who work for the powerful while pretending to represent the people who voted for them. This double-dealing involves a lot of lying, so successful politicians must be good at it. It’s not an easy job to make the insane agenda of the powerful seem reasonable. Politicians can’t reveal this agenda because it almost always goes against the interests of their constituents, so they become adept at sophistry, mystification, and the appearance of authority. For example, wars for Israel have been part of the agenda of the powerful for years. Since 2001, wars for Israel have been sold as “the war on terror” and lots of lies had to be made up as to why the war on terror was a real thing. The visible faces promoting the war on terror were neoconservatives in the US, almost all of whom were advocates for Israel, or Zionists. Zionists are not the only members of the oligarchy, but they seem to be its lead actors. ... continue
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