Coup d’etat — Paul Craig Roberts
by Paul Craig Roberts
The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.”
An unconstitutional government is an illegitimate government. The oath of allegiance requires defense of the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As the Founding Fathers made clear, the main enemy of the Constitution is the government itself. Power does not like to be bound and tied down and constantly works to free itself from constraints.
The basis of the regime in Washington is nothing but usurped power. The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force. Those in government see the US Constitution as a “chain that binds our hands.”
The South African apartheid regime was more legitimate than the regime in Washington. The apartheid Israeli regime in Palestine is more legitimate. The Taliban are more legitimate. Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were more legitimate.
The only constitutional protection that the Bush/Obama regime has left standing is the Second Amendment, a meaningless amendment considering the disparity in arms between Washington and what is permitted to the citizenry. No citizen standing with a rifle can protect himself and his family from one of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2,700 tanks, or from a drone, or from a heavily armed SWAT force in body armor.
Like serfs in the dark ages
Like serfs in the dark ages, American citizens can be picked up on the authority of some unknown person in the executive branch and thrown in a dungeon, subject to torture, without any evidence ever being presented to a court or any information to the person’s relatives of his/her whereabouts. Or they can be placed on a list without explanation that curtails their right to travel by air. Every communication of every American, except face-to-face conversation in non-bugged environments, is intercepted and recorded by the National Stasi Agency from which phrases can be strung together to produce a “domestic extremist.”
If throwing an American citizen in a dungeon is too much trouble, the citizen can simply be blown up with a hellfire missile launched from a drone. No explanation is necessary.
For the Obama tyrant, the exterminated human being was just a name on a list.
The president of the united states has declared that he possesses these constitutionally forbidden rights, and his regime has used them to oppress and murder US citizens. The president’s claim that his will is higher than law and the Constitution is public knowledge. Yet, there is no demand for the usurper’s impeachment. Congress is supine. The serfs are obedient.
The people who helped transform a democratically accountable president into a Caesar include John Yoo, who was rewarded for his treason by being accepted as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt school of law. Yoo’s colleague in treason, Jay Scott Bybee was rewarded by being appointed a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We now have a Berkeley law professor teaching, and a federal circuit judge ruling, that the executive branch is above the law.
The executive branch coup has succeeded
The executive branch coup against America has succeeded. The question is: will it stand? Today, the executive branch consists of liars, criminals, and traitors. The evil on earth seems concentrated in Washington.
Washington’s response to Edward Snowden’s evidence that Washington, in total contravention of law both domestic and international, is spying on the entire world has demonstrated to every country that Washington places the pleasure of revenge above law and human rights.
On Washington’s orders, its European puppet states refused overflight permission to the Bolivian presidential airliner carrying President Morales and forced the airliner to land in Austria and be searched. Washington thought that Edward Snowden might be aboard the airliner. Capturing Snowden was more important to Washington than respect for international law and diplomatic immunity.
How long before Washington orders its UK puppet to send in a SWAT team to drag Julian Assange from the Ecuadoran embassy in London and hand him over to the CIA for waterboarding?
Snowden challenges the illegal exercise of power
On July 12 Snowden met in the Moscow airport with human rights organizations from around the world. He stated that the illegal exercise of power by Washington prevents him from traveling to any of the three Latin American countries who have offered him asylum. Therefore, Snowden said that he accepted Russian President Putin’s conditions and requested asylum in Russia.
Insouciant americans and the young unaware of the past don’t know what this means. During my professional life it was Soviet Russia that persecuted truth tellers, while America gave them asylum and tried to protect them. Today it is Washington that persecutes those who speak the truth, and it is Russia that protects them.
The American public has not, this time, fallen for Washington’s lie that Snowden is a traitor. The polls show that a majority of Americans see Snowden as a whistleblower.
It is not the US that is damaged by Snowden’s revelations. It is the criminal elements in the US government that have pulled off a coup against democracy, the Constitution, and the American people who are damaged. It is the criminals who have seized power, not the American people, who are demanding Snowden’s scalp.
The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are
oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force.
oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force.
Under the Obama tyranny, it is not merely Snowden who is targeted for extermination, but every truth-telling American in the country. It was Department of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, recently rewarded for her service to tyranny by being appointed Chancellor of the of the University of California system, who said that Homeland Security had shifted its focus from Muslim terrorists to “domestic extremists,” an elastic and undefined term that easily includes truth-tellers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden who embarrass the government by revealing its crimes. The criminals who have seized illegitimate power in Washington cannot survive unless truth can be suppressed or redefined as treason.
If Americans acquiesce to the coup d’etat, they will have placed themselves firmly in the grip of tyranny.
About Dr. Paul Craig RobertsPaul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/07/14/there-are-over-50000-swat-team-raids-annually-in-america/
There are Over 50,000 SWAT Team Raids Annually in America
Yesterday, Salon published a fantastic interview with Radley Balko, author of a new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop. The interview focused on the fact that the number of SWAT team raids has soared from a few hundred annually in the 1970′s to more than 50,000 per year by 2005. To make matters worse, most of these raids are focused on non-violent crimes. Radley identifies three main forces behind this disturbing trend. The “war on drugs,” the national overreaction to 9/11, and the creation and massive funding behind the Department of Homeland Security. Moreover, once these SWAT teams are in place, the individual police departments feel pressured to use them in order to justify their existence. More from Salon:
Radley Balko’s new book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” details how America’s police forces have grown to look and behave more like soldiers than neighborly Officer Krupkes walking the beat. This new breed of police, frequently equipped with military weapons and decked out in enough armor to satisfy a storm trooper, are redefining law enforcement.
Since 9/11, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security has distributed billions in grants, enabling even some small town police departments to buy armored personnel carriers and field their own SWAT teams.
Once you have a SWAT team the only thing to do is kick some ass. There are more than 100 SWAT team raids every day in this country. They’re not chasing murderers or terrorists. For the most part they go after nonviolent offenders like drug dealers and even small time gamblers. As you’d expect when there is too much adrenaline and too much weaponry, there have been some tragedies.
Balko talked to Salon about the decline of community policing, the warrior cop mentality, why so many dogs get killed by police. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
There are several levels of militarization. The rise of SWAT teams nationwide, the number of annual SWAT deployments in the U.S., has gone from a few hundred in the ’70s, to 30,000 per year in the early ’80s, to 50,000 in 2005.That’s 100, 150 times a day in this country you have these heavily armed police teams breaking into homes, and the vast majority of times it’s to enforce laws against consensual crimes.
Before 9/11, what do you see as the main drivers of the equipment aspect of this phenomenon?
The drug war, unquestionably. The drug war is what got us to a crisis point and Sept. 11 just kind of blew it out of the water. A Pentagon program hit its record in 2011 by giving away about $500 million of equipment. [Department of Homeland Security] grants in the last 10 years have given away $35 billion. DHS has accelerated the trend.
When talking about police recruitment videos, Radley states:
A disturbingly high percentage of them are [police] kicking down doors and siccing dogs on people and coming out of helicopters to heavy metal music or some kind of high-intensity music and that’s the very first step in the process in staffing a police department. You’re appealing to young people who are attracted to jobs that allow them to basically kick ass and take names and there’s no appeal to the [other] aspects of policing. If that’s your recruitment message, you’re sending a pretty strong message from the very start about what you think the proper relationship between police and the community ought to be.
At the same time, though, police unions are some of the few unions in this country that are still powerful. That in part goes back to the fact that no politician really wants to look anti-police officer, and so the unions have negotiated in a lot of states the Police Officer Bill of Rights, which give rights to cops above and beyond what regular citizens get when they’re accused of a crime.
Sounds like they got the same deal as Wall Street.
You say in the book that it’s not an anti-cop book. Is there a way for good cops to fight this culture in an effective way?
It’s difficult. I tell a couple stories in the book of cops who try to turn in other cops for this conduct, and usually they end up being the ones disciplined.
What sort of solutions do you see? What can be done?
At the local level, I think people could pressure local officials to rein in SWAT teams, and have them only used in the emergency situations and stop sending them on drug raids.
You can do an open record collection of the police department to find out how many times the SWAT teams had been out, for what reasons, and what the result was. Most times you’re going to find it was sent out, let’s say 200 times in the last year, and you’re going to find that maybe 40 of those cases are over criminal charges. Those are good numbers to put out, and just to spark a debate on whether this is an appropriate use of this sort of force.
I think all these raids should be videotaped and should all be subject to open record requests.
Great insight and suggestions on a topic we all need to pay a lot more attention to.
Full article here.
http://www.infowars.com/kokesh-to-be-released-no-guns-allowed-until-trial/
Kokesh To Be Released: No Guns Allowed Until Trial
$5000 bond granted, probation period to last until October
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
July 15, 2013
Infowars.com
July 15, 2013
Pro-Second Amendment activist Adam Kokesh has been released from jail following his arrest during a raid on his Virginia home last week.
Kokesh was granted bond Monday and is expected to be released this afternoon, according to a report by local ABC News affiliate WJLA.
The bond has been set at $5,000, with a Fairfax County judge ordering that Kokesh be prohibited from possessing firearms until his case goes to trial and is completed.
Kokesh, a former marine turned liberty activist, will have to wait out the probationary period at least until his next scheduled court appearance in early October.
As we reported last week, Kokesh was arrested in Herndon, VA following a SWAT raid during which 20 heavily-armed cops smashed in his door and deployed a flash bang grenade.
Kokesh’s media team alleges that police also assaulted Kokesh by kicking him to the floor when he politely asked to use the bathroom. Throughout the ordeal “police repeatedly showed a volatile desire to initiate aggressive, forceful conduct with detainees,” according to a press release.
Police also appear to have informed the media that the raid was about to take place as television vans were photographed outside Kokesh’s residence as soon as the raid occurred.
The raid came following the publication of a YouTube video on July 4 in which Kokesh is seen to load a 12 gauge shotgun before announcing “We are the final American revolution. See you next Independence Day.”
The video was filmed at Freedom Plaza, just down the street from the White House. Under DC law, it is illegal to carry firearms in public and Kokesh could face up to five years in a federal prison.
Kokesh’s open carry protest stemmed out of his call for a “new American revolution” that would have involved a march on all 50 state capitols. The former Iraq vet had previously planned to lead an armed march on Washington DC on Independence Day.
Kokesh later revised the plan after he was arrested in May for little more than exercising his First Amendment at a pro-marijuana legalization rally in Philadelphia. “When it comes to this event being executed properly,” Kokesh told the Alex Jones Show, “when the government has already escalated the violent tactics against me personally as an organizer, I can’t in good conscience go forward with a plan that is so centrally dependent and not open source.”
Kokesh has spent the past week in the Fairfax County lockup. During initial hearings the ‘Adam Vs The Man’ presenter refused to answer any questions, and would not co-operate with fingerprint scans or photographs, leading a judge to decide initially on holding him without bond.
Kokesh will also face drug related charges, after police allegedly found hallucinogenic mushrooms in his apartment. He has not yet made any public statements on the matter.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/07/15/NBCs-Al-Sharpton-Plans-Protest-in-100-Cities
During MSNBC's 11 am hour, above a chyron that read, "More Marches, Protests Planned in Coming Days, Weeks," MSNBC anchor Al Sharpton said that he and his National Action Network are "mobilizing" protests in 100 cities. Sharpton made clear that the protests were meant to pressure the Justice Department into taking legal action against George Zimmerman:
Well, I certainly think it is going to be on those that now feel that this verdict makes a lot of people vulnerable. The reason that people in the civil rights community, including [Sharpton's] National Action Network, is talking about these hundred cities that we're mobilizing this weekend, is not just questioning a verdict but, saying a precedent is now set where the Justice Department must come in[.]
NBC's Sharpton was one of the first people to turn the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin into a national news story back in March of last year. In the run up to the trial this year, Sharpton has used his primetime MSNBC program, "Politics Nation," to demand Zimmerman be convicted.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/07/15/the-most-ridiculous-30-seconds-of-news-youve-ever-seen/
“Being first on air and on every platform in all aspects of our coverage was a great accomplishment, but being 100% accurate, effectively using our great sources and social media without putting a single piece of erroneous information on our air, is what we are most proud of as a newsroom.”
Make up your own mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment