24 Signs That All Of America Is Becoming Just Like Detroit – A Rotting, Post-Industrial, Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

The American Dream
Dec 7, 2010

For years, people have been laughing at the horrific economic decline of Detroit.  Well, guess what?  The same thing that happened to Detroit is now happening to dozens of other communities across the United States.  From coast to coast there are formerly great manufacturing cities that have turned into rotting, post-industrial war zones.  In particular, in America’s “rust belt” you can drive through town after town after town that resemble little more than post-apocalyptic wastelands.  In many U.S. cities, the “real” rate of unemployment is over 30 percent.  There are some communities that will start depressing you almost the moment you drive into them.  It is almost as if all of the hope has been sucked right out of those communities.

Meanwhile, the economic downturn has been incredibly hard on the finances of state and local governments across the United States.  Unlike the federal government, state and local governments cannot use the Federal Reserve to play games with their exploding debt burdens.  Facing horrific budget deficits, many communities have begun adopting “austerity measures” in an attempt to slow the flow of red ink.  All over the nation, deep budget cuts are slashing police departments, fire departments and other basic social services, but it seems like no matter what many of these communities try the debt just keeps growing.

So when you combine economic hopelessness with drastic budget cuts, what you get are hordes of communities from coast to coast that are becoming just like Detroit.  In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 44 schools have been permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.  Many Americans thought that it was funny to make fun of Detroit, but little did they know that what happened there would soon start happening everywhere.

The following are 24 signs that all of America is becoming a rotting, post-industrial, post-apocalyptic wasteland just like Detroit….

#1 The second most dangerous city in the United States – Camden, New Jersey – is about to lay off about half its police.

#2 In the city of Camden, about the only “industries” that are truly thriving are drug-dealing and prostitution.  It is estimated that there are literally dozens of open-air drug markets in Camden.

#3 The city of Newark, New Jersey laid off 13 percent of its police force just last week.

#4 Of 315 municipalities the New Jersey State Policemen’s union recently surveyed, more than half indicated that they were planning to lay off police officers.

#5 At least 1000 people now live in the 200 miles of flood tunnels that exist under the city of Las Vegas.

#6 All over America, asphalt roads are being ground up and are being replaced with gravel because it is cheaper to maintain.  The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt road into gravel over the past year, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have transformed at least some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.

#7 The number of Americans on food stamps has hit yet another new all-time record.  42.9 million Americans are now enrolled and federal authorities fully expect that number to continue to skyrocket.

#8 The city of San Jose, California recently laid off 49 firefighters.

#9 Over the past year, approximately 100 of New York’s state parks and historic sites have had to cut services and reduce hours.

#10 In 2009 alone, approximately 4 million more Americans joined the ranks of the poor.

#11 The state of Arizona recently decided to stop paying for many types of organ transplants for people enrolled in its Medicaid program.

#12 Many of the police in Arizona that patrol communities near the border with Mexico say that they are “outmanned” and “outgunned” and now live in fear of being taken out by drug cartel assassins.

#13 Gang violence in America is getting totally out of control.  According to authorities, there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the country, and those gangs are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year.

#14 Oakland, California Police Chief Anthony Batts has announced that due to severe budget cuts there are a number of crimes that his department will simply not be able to respond to any longer.  The crimes that the Oakland police will no longer be responding to include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism.

#15 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.

#16 The state of Illinois is so far behind on its bills that not even schools and essential social services are getting their money on time.

#17 The sheriff’s department in Ashtabula County, Ohio has been slashed from 112 to 49 deputies, and there is now just one vehicle remaining to patrol all 720 square miles of the county.

#18 As our local communities degenerate economically, it appears that they are falling apart morally as well.  There are approximately 400,00 registered sex offenders in the United States as you read this.

#19 In a desperate attempt to save money, the city of Colorado Springs turned off a third of its streetlights and put its police helicopters up for auction.

#20 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.

#21 According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 25 percent of America’s nearly 600,000 bridges need significant repairs or are burdened with more traffic than they were designed to carry.

#22 In Georgia, the county of Clayton recently eliminated its entire public bus system in order to save 8 million dollars.

#23 Things have gotten so bad in Stockton, California that the police union put up a billboard with the following message: “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying off cops.”

#24 Major cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Sacramento have instituted “rolling brownouts” in which various city fire stations are shut down on a rotating basis.  So if you live in one of those cities and you have a fire, you had better hope that your local fire station is not scheduled for a “brownout” that day.

As I have documented in article after article, the “American Dream” is rapidly becoming the American Nightmare.  We were once a nation that was endlessly expanding, endlessly growing and endlessly becoming more powerful, but now just the opposite is happening.

All of this didn’t happen overnight.  Back in 1982, Billy Joel could see what was starting to happen and he released a song entitled “Allentown” which captured the depression that many residents of once great steel cities were experiencing.  The song started out with these two lines….

Well we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down

Well, the United States has lost over 42,000 factories since 2001 and now all of America is turning into “Allentown”.

Unfortunately, things are going to get even worse.  Thousands more factories and millions more jobs will be sent overseas.  The debt loads of our state and local governments will continue to skyrocket.  The truth is that city after city after city is going to start looking like something out of a third world country.

But perhaps you disagree.  Perhaps you believe that America’s greatest days are just around the corner.  Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….

Say What? 30 Ben Bernanke Quotes That Are So Stupid That You Won’t Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry

The Economic Collapse
Dec 7, 2010

Did you see Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on 60 Minutes the other night?  Bernanke portrayed the Federal Reserve as the great protector of the U.S. economy, he claimed that unemployment would be 15 percent higher if the Federal Reserve had sat back and done nothing during the financial crisis and he even started laying the groundwork for a third round of quantitative easing.  Unfortunately, 60 Minutes did not ask Bernanke any hard questions and did not challenge him on his past record.  It was almost as if they considered Bernanke to be above criticism.  But someone in the mainstream media should be taking a closer look at this guy and his record.  The truth is that the incompetence that Bernanke has displayed over the past few years makes the Cincinnati Bengals look like a model of excellence.  Bernanke kept insisting that the housing market was stable even while it was falling apart, he had absolutely no idea the financial crisis was coming, he declared that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in no danger of failing just before they failed, his policies have created asset bubble after asset bubble and the world financial system is now inherently unstable.  But even with such horrific job performance, Barack Obama and leaders of both political parties continue to publicly praise Bernanke at every opportunity.  What in the world is going on here?

Not that Bernanke is solely responsible.  His predecessor, Alan Greenspan, was responsible for many of the policies that have brought us to this point.  In addition, most of the other presidents of the individual Federal Reserve banks across the United States seem just as clueless as Bernanke.

But you would think at some point someone in authority would be calling for Bernanke to resign.  Accountability has to begin somewhere.

The Bernanke quotes that you will read below reveal a pattern of incompetence and mismanagement that is absolutely mind blowing.  Looking back now, we can see that Bernanke was wrong about almost everything.

But the mainstream media and our top politicians keep insisting that Bernanke is the man to lead our economy into a bright future.

It is almost as if we have been transported into some bizarre episode of “The Twilight Zone” where the more incompetence someone exhibits the more they are to be praised.

The following are 30 Ben Bernanke quotes that are so stupid that you won’t know whether to laugh or cry….

#1 (October 20, 2005) “House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.”

#2 (On 60 Minutes in response to a question about what would have happened if the Federal Reserve had not “bailed out” the U.S. economy) “Unemployment would be much, much higher. It might be something like it was in the Depression. Twenty-five percent.”

#3 (February 15, 2006) “Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”

#4 (January 10, 2008) “The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.”

#5 (When asked directly during a congressional hearing if the Federal Reserve would monetize U.S. government debt) “The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.”

#6 “One myth that’s out there is that what we’re doing is printing money. We’re not printing money.”

#7 “The money supply is not changing in any significant way. What we’re doing is lowering interest rates by buying Treasury securities.”

#8 (November 21, 2002) “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost.”

#9 (March 28, 2007) “At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency.”

#10 (July, 2005) “We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.”

#11 “Although low inflation is generally good, inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy – especially when the economy is struggling.”

#12 (February 15, 2007) “Despite the ongoing adjustments in the housing sector, overall economic prospects for households remain good. Household finances appear generally solid, and delinquency rates on most types of consumer loans and residential mortgages remain low.”

#13 (October 31, 2007) “It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve – nor would it be appropriate – to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.”

#14 (On the possibility that the Fed might launch QE3) “Oh, it’s certainly possible. And again, it depends on the efficacy of the program. It depends on inflation. And finally it depends on how the economy looks.”

#15 (November 15, 2005) “With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.”

#16 (January 18, 2008) “[The U.S. economy] has a strong labor force, excellent productivity and technology, and a deep and liquid financial market that is in the process of repairing itself.”

#17 “I wish I’d been omniscient and seen the crisis coming.”

#18 (May 17, 2007) “All that said, given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.  The vast majority of mortgages, including even subprime mortgages, continue to perform well.  Past gains in house prices have left most homeowners with significant amounts of home equity, and growth in jobs and incomes should help keep the financial obligations of most households manageable.”

#19 “The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing.”

#20 (Two months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed and were nationalized) “They will make it through the storm.”

#21 (September 23rd, 2008) “My interest is solely for the strength and recovery of the U.S. economy.”

#22 “Economics has many substantive areas of knowledge where there is agreement but also contains areas of controversy. That’s inescapable.”

#23 “I don’t think that Chinese ownership of U.S. assets is so large as to put our country at risk economically.”

#24 “We’ve been very, very clear that we will not allow inflation to rise above 2 percent.”

#25 “…inflation is running at rates that are too low relative to the levels that the Committee judges to be most consistent with the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate in the longer run.”

#26 (June 10, 2008) “The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.”

#27 “Not all information is beneficial.”

#28 “The financial crisis appears to be mostly behind us, and the economy seems to have stabilized and is expanding again.”

#29 “Similarly, the mandate-consistent inflation rate–the inflation rate that best promotes our dual objectives in the long run–is not necessarily zero; indeed, Committee participants have generally judged that a modestly positive inflation rate over the longer run is most consistent with the dual mandate.”

#30 (October 4, 2006) “If current trends continue, the typical U.S. worker will be considerably more productive several decades from now. Thus, one might argue that letting future generations bear the burden of population aging is appropriate, as they will likely be richer than we are even taking that burden into account.”

Happy as a Hangman

By Chris Hedges

Innocence, as defined by law, makes us complicit with the crimes of the state. To do nothing, to be judged by the state as an innocent, is to be guilty. It is to sanction, through passivity and obedience, the array of crimes carried out by the state.

To be innocent in America means we passively permit offshore penal colonies where we torture human beings, some of whom are children. To be innocent in America is to acquiesce to the relentless corporate destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species. To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity.

The steady impoverishment and misery inflicted by the corporate state on the working class and increasingly the middle class has a terrible logic. It consolidates corporate centers of power. It weakens us morally and politically. The fraud and violence committed by the corporate state become secondary as we scramble to feed our families, find a job and pay our bills and mortgages. Those who cling to insecure, poorly paid jobs and who struggle with crippling credit card debt, those who are mired in long-term unemployment and who know that huge medical bills would bankrupt them, those who owe more on their houses than they are worth and who fear the future, become frightened and timid. They seek only to survive. They accept the pathetic scraps tossed to them by the corporate elite. The internal and external corporate abuse accelerates as we become every day more pliant.

“Yes Sir” Illustration by Mr. Fish

Our corrupt legal system, perverting the concept that “all men are created equal,” has radically redefined civic society. Citizens, regardless of their status or misfortune, are now treated with the same studied indifference by the state. They have been transformed from citizens to commodities whose worth is determined solely by the market and whose value is measured by their social and economic functions. The rich, therefore, are rewarded by the state with tax cuts because they are rich. It is their function to monopolize wealth and invest. The poor are supposed to be poor. The poor should not be a drain on the resources of the state or the oligarchic elite. Equality, in this new legal paradigm, means we are all treated alike, no matter what our circumstances. This new interpretation of equality, under which the poor are abandoned and the powerful are unchecked, has demolished the system of regulations, legal restraints and services that once protected the
underclass from wealthy and corporate predators.

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The creation of a permanent, insecure and frightened underclass is the most effective weapon to thwart rebellion and resistance as our economy worsens. Huge pools of unemployed and underemployed blunt labor organizing, since any job, no matter how menial, is zealously coveted. As state and federal social welfare programs, especially in education, are gutted, we create a wider and wider gulf between the resources available to the tiny elite and the deprivation and suffering visited on our permanent underclass. Access to education, for example, is now largely defined by class. The middle class, taking on huge debt, desperately flees to private institutions to make sure their children have a chance to enter the managerial ranks of the corporate elite. And this is the idea. Public education, which, when it functions, gives opportunities to all citizens, hinders a system of corporate neofeudalism. Corporations are advancing, with Barack Obama’s assistance, charter schools and educational services that are stripped down and designed to train classes for their appropriate vocations, which, if you’re poor means a future in the service sector. The eradication of teachers’ unions, under way in states such as New Jersey, is a vital component in the dismantling of public education. Corporations know that good systems of public education are a hindrance to a rigid caste system. In corporate America everyone will be kept in his or her place.

The beating down of workers, exacerbated by the prospect that unemployment benefits will not be renewed for millions of Americans and that public sector unions will soon be broken, has transformed those in the working class from full members of society, able to participate in its debates, the economy and governance, into terrified people in fragmented pools preoccupied with the struggle of private existence. Those who are economically broken usually cease to be concerned with civic virtues. They will, history has demonstrated, serve any system, no matter how evil, and do anything for a salary, job security and the protection of their families.

There will be sectors of the society that, as the situation worsens, attempt to rebel. But the state can rely on a huge number of people who, for work and meager benefits, will transform themselves into willing executioners. The reconfiguration of American society into a corporate oligarchy is conditioning tens of millions not only to passively accept state and corporate crimes, but to actively participate in the mechanisms that ensure their own enslavement.

“Each time society, through unemployment, frustrates the small man in his normal functioning and normal self-respect,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1945 essay “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility,” “it trains him for that last stage in which he will willingly undertake any function, even that of hangman.”

Organs of state repression do not rely so much on fanatics and sadists as ordinary citizens who are desperate, who need a job, who are willing to obey. Arendt relates a story of a Jew who is released from Buchenwald. The freed Jew encountered, among the SS men who gave him certificates of release, a former schoolmate, whom he did not address but stared at. The SS guard spontaneously explained to his former friend: “You must understand, I have five years of unemployment behind me. They can do anything they want with me.”

Arendt also quotes an interview with a camp official at Majdanek. The camp official concedes that he has assisted in the gassing and burying of people alive. But when he is asked, “Do you know the Russians will hang you?” he bursts into tears. “Why should they? What have I done?” he says.

I can imagine, should the rule of law ever one day be applied to the insurance companies responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans denied medical care, that there will be the same confused response from insurance executives. What is frightening in collapsing societies is not only the killers, sadists, murderers and psychopaths who rise up out of the moral swamp to take power, but the huge numbers of ordinary people who become complicit in state crimes. I saw this during the war in El Salvador and the war in Bosnia. It is easy to understand a demented enemy. It is puzzling to understand a rational and normal one. True evil, as Goethe understood, is not always palpable. It is “to render invisible another human consciousness.”

“Yes Sir” Illustration by Mr. Fish

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his book “The Gulag Archipelago” writes about a close friend who served with him in World War II. Solzhenitsyn’s defiance of the Communist regime after the war saw him sent to the Soviet gulags. His friend, loyal to the state, was sent there as an interrogator. Solzhenitsyn was forced to articulate a painful truth. The mass of those who serve systems of terrible oppression and state crime are not evil. They are weak.

“If only there were vile people … committing evil deeds, and if it were only necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them,” Solzhenitsyn wrote. “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The expansions of public and private organs of state security, from Homeland Security to the mercenary forces we are building in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the burgeoning internal intelligence organizations, exist because these “ordinary” citizens, many of whom are caring fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, have confused conformity to the state with innocence. Family values are used, especially by the Christian right, as the exclusive definition of public morality. Politicians, including President Obama, who betray the working class, wage doomed imperial wars, abandon families to home foreclosures and bank repossessions, and refuse to restore habeas corpus, are morally “good” because they are loyal husbands and fathers. Infidelity, instead of corporate murder, becomes in this absurd moral reasoning the highest and most unforgivable offense.

The bureaucrats who maintain these repressive state organs, who prosecute the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or who maintain corporate structures that perpetuate human suffering, can define themselves as good—as innocent—as long as they are seen as traditional family men and women who are compliant to the laws of the state. And this redefinition of civic engagement permits us to suspend moral judgment and finally common sense. Do your job. Do not ask questions. Do not think. If these bureaucrats were challenged for the crimes they are complicit in committing, including the steady dismantling of the democratic state, they would react with the same disbelief as the camp guard at Majdanek.

Those who serve as functionaries within corporations such as Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil and carry out crimes ask of their masters that they be exempted from personal responsibility for the acts they commit. They serve corporate structures that kill, but, as Arendt notes, the corporate employee “does not regard himself as a murderer because he has not done it out of inclination but in his professional capacity.” At home the corporate man or woman is meek. He or she has no proclivity to violence, although the corporate systems they serve by day pollute, impoverish, maim and kill.

Those who do not carry out acts of rebellion, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, are guilty of solidifying and perpetuating these crimes. Those who do not act delude themselves into believing they are innocent. They are not.

Defend Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

 

The Excavator
Dec 7, 2010

The release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks last week has caused the further unraveling of certain psychopathic public officials within Washington who most represent and defend the barbaric, evil, and criminal United States government. If you think it is far-fetched and crazy to use language like “psychopathic” and “barbaric” and “evil” to describe the United States government and some if its highest officials like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Senator Joseph Lieberman then you have not dug deep enough for the truth.

Evil should not be a foreign concept. It is not out there – in the hearts of those evil Islamic terrorists, or behind us, in the cold graves of Nazis, but around us, and above us, in the United States empire, and its manufactured and criminal global war on terror. Evil is part of human nature, and it exists in every society. It crept up in governments in Europe and other countries in the 20th century, and it crept up in the United States as well. Germany’s evil government was recognized as evil by the rest of the world and got destroyed, and Russia’s evil government collapsed, but that has not happened to America’s evil government – yet.

For the most part the evil nature of the American government has escaped the attention of the American people. Those who saw Bush as evil were only half-right, and the same is true for those who see Obama as evil; if only both camps got together and agreed with each other that the entire two-party establishment is evil.

One of the reasons why so many people failed to see Washington’s policies as evil – until relatively recently – is because the government tricksters in the US National Security State have been way more skillful and cunning than the propagandists who worked in Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. The reason for the difference is simple. The war savages who control the American government have had more time to perfect the evil craft of propaganda and social engineering. Another reason is less public scrutiny because of the lack of public knowledge.

Although it took a long time, the American people are finally beginning to see that their government is controlled by evil men. The change in perspective is due from the fact that there is a massive political awakening happening in America, and the rest of the world. That it took many decades to recognize evil as evil in America is not all that shocking. The institution of slavery was just as evil in 1790 as it was in 1860, but it took a long struggle before it was recognized as evil by the majority of the people. Heroes like William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Tubman toiled for many years to raise their country’s conscious understanding that something had to be done to get rid of slavery, and make America whole.

In our time the examples of evil include government lies like “we know that Saddam has WMDs” and government false-flag attacks like 9/11 which cause people to hate and fear and demand war when in reality there is no good reason to go to war.

Government secrecy in the United States is evil because it allows U.S. policymakers and leaders to cheat, and lie, and invade innocent countries without the world’s full understanding. Arthur Silber cautions us to see “evil for what it is, we must identify evil as evil.”

Once we gain the understanding that the United States government is controlled by evil men who are steering it for evil purposes, its totalitarian attacks against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange become less surprising. But their shameless and arrogant attacks are not having an effect. Washington’s impotence and moral bankruptcy is all too clear.

A government that has slaughtered at least a hundred thousand people in a war that was based on lies is indefensible. It does not deserve any respect or consideration from human beings whatsoever. The current regime in America, represented by both political parties, the Federal Reserve, the National Security State, Wall Street, and the military-industrial-congressional complex, is totally illegitimate and belongs in the dustbin of history.

No sane and knowledgeable mind can defend Washington today. The highest U.S. government officials, starting from the President, the old one and the new one, the republican and the democrat, have committed crimes against humanity since the beginning of the War on Terror, and even before then. This is an undeniable fact, and it must serve as the backdrop of any criticism of WikiLeaks.

Releasing secrets from inside a lawless and repressive government is the greatest good a human being can do in our time. It is the right thing to do. It is the heroic thing to do. In a different era, if the American government was under sane and lawful management, releasing secret documents to the press would indeed be a serious offense against the common good of the nation, and against the dedicated individuals who serve the government. But when the government is run by tyrants and traitors, when it starts false wars, and kills innocent people, it must be defied, not deified.

If you doubt that the U.S. government is run by traitors and tyrants, future events will surely make you believe otherwise. The unraveling of the American empire has begun, and will accelerate. But if you don’t want to wait until the day of judgment, you can go through on your own time a mountain of facts that proves Washington is indeed run by traitors, and tyrants. You should start with the most explosive fact: the American people and the world was lied to about the September 11 attacks.

The fact that 9/11 was done by cunning officials within the United States government sounds too crazy, and too scary to be true, but, sadly, it is only too true. It is too true that a lot of U.S. leaders lie to the American people, and betray their trust. It is too true that American, Canadian, Australian, and other coalition troops are used like guinea pigs, made to fight evil wars. It is too true that Mankind never learns from history, and tragically repeats it. It is too true that I and others are convinced that 9/11 was an inside job because we have done hours of research, and looked at the evidence with an open mind, not because we are crazy and paranoid. When somebody says “where is your evidence that 9/11 was an inside job” all I hear is “where is your evidence that Santa Claus is not real,” and “where is your evidence that wrestling is fake.”

Standing up to these tyrants and traitors is every person’s duty. And anybody courageous enough to defy the treasonous United States government in a strong and public way and gets attacked for doing it must be defended. We must not buy into smear campaigns against individuals who stand up and shame government killers and liars. Julian Assange is innocent until he is proven guilty: that much the world public opinion owes him.

If you have already judged Assange’s character then you are wrong. He is due his day in court. American journalist Edward R. Murrow said: “We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.” We must keep this truth in mind for now and forever, but especially now, when an honorable and honest individual like Julian Assange is being falsely accused of crimes by Western governments and the mainstream media for the simple act of truth-telling.

I am happy to see that many journalists are not timid about their support for Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks for its much-needed work. At salon Dan Gillmor writes that journalists must defend WikiLeaks because their profession is on the line:

Media organizations with even half a clue need to recognize what is at stake at this point. It’s more than immediate self-interest, namely their own ability to do their jobs. It’s about the much more important result if they can’t. If journalism can routinely be shut down the way the government wants to do this time, we’ll have thrown out free speech in this lawless frenzy.

The Atlantic’s David Samuels calls out the hypocrisy of the United States government, comparing its response to WikiLeaks to the Chinese Communist Party:

Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press. The likely arrest of Assange in Britain on dubious Swedish sex crimes charges has nothing to do with the importance of the system he has built, and which the US government seems intent on destroying with tactics more appropriate to the Communist Party of China

Glenn Greenwald has been the most forceful and vigilant defender of WikiLeaks. In his latest article “The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks” he writes that tyranny is triumphant when it is allowed to suppress and crush loud critics outside of the law:

People often have a hard time believing that the terms “authoritarian” and “tyranny” apply to their own government, but that’s because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces. The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority: do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?

The assault on Assange’s character was expected. The tactic of character assassination is routine in the American media. Examples are not hard to find. Those who raise questions about the official 9/11 story are marginalized as “fringe crazies” and “conspiracy theorists.” If you spoke out against the Patriot Act in 2001 you were called unpatriotic. News broadcasters who didn’t cheer for the Iraq War in its beginning act were fired, and replaced with pro-war voices. In all of these cases it was so-called journalists and reporters who contaminated the public mind with government lies, like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The attacks against Assange and other fire-breathing hell-raisers must be called out for what it is, and resisted. Only tyrannical governments mercilessly pounce upon reformers like Assange. Some officials in the United States government, and one official in the Canadian government, have even called for the assaination of Assange. We cannot be silent in these circumstances. The threat against Assange and WikiLeaks is all too real. The death of one global truth-teller means the death of us all.

Could Assange be killed by the United States government? Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg thinks it is very possible. We have two reasons in particular to be worried that Assange could get assassinated by the United States government if WikiLeaks is not taken care off by other means, and those two reasons are the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. Despite what you may have been taught, both of these brave men were killed by officials within the United States government, and it is provable in court.

Read “JFK: What We Know Now” by James Fetzer, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, for the facts that point to a deep-seated government conspiracy behind the murder of JFK; Watch attorney and author William Pepper’s lecture “An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King” to know the real facts that are never ever discussed by the American media in regards to King’s assassination. Pepper wrote a book with the same title. In 1999, he represented the King Family in a Memphis courtroom, and successfully proved the innocence of James Earl Ray, the alleged killer of MLK, in front of a jury. Go to this site to read the transcript of the Martin Luther King Jr. conspiracy trial, and the press statements made by members of the King Family and by Pepper after the verdict by the jury that government agencies and officials were behind King’s death.

The “trial of the century” as it has been called by some was not covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Time Magazine. If you are trapped in the false consciousness that is produced and reinforced daily by the establishment media, the trial never happened. It is not a historic fact, because the past is controlled, and censored in Orwellian America.

Here is a quote from Pepper after the 30-day trial was done:

“Because he took on those forces, powerful economic forces that dominated politics in this land, they killed him. He was killed because he could not be stopped. He was killed because they feared that half a million people would rise in revolution in the capitol of this country, and do what Mr. Jefferson said needed to be done every 20 years, to cleanse this land. This land has not been cleansed. This nation has not faced the problems that Martin Luther King, Jr. died trying to face and confront. They still exist today, the forces of evil, the powerful economic forces that dominate the government of this land and make money on war and deprive the poor of what is their right, their birthright. They still abound and they rule.”

What Pepper said eleven years ago, about how the war machine crippled America’s growth and silenced one of its most compassionate rebels, resonates even more today, when America is fighting a criminal and barbaric war on terror that is based on a total lie, but is regarded by many as the holy truth.

Pepper’s words are so critically important, and must be read by all citizens in America, and around the world. Pepper’s book proves that the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. was not a freak accident. King made a big impact in American society when he began to oppose the Vietnam War, and the Washington War Machine. Pepper, who became a close friend of King’s a year before his death, said that King wanted to run for President on an anti-war platform and change America. Clearly, the tyrants in Washington were not amused. They did what all tyrants do when a genuine revolutionary seeks to change their cruel and unjust system: they got rid of him.

The same system in Washington now wants to get rid of Julian Assange, and destroy WikiLeaks. They probably want to get rid of Alex Jones, and Ron Paul, and anybody else that is prominent and revolutionary.

Assange’s only defense is a knowledgeable and courageous global civil society that is willing to stand beside him, and defend him against the tyrannical traitors who have seized Washington. We must guard his life and his reputation. If he is murdered, it won’t be the end of WikiLeaks, or whistle-blowing in the Internet age, but it will be a major setback. Others will be afraid to step up, and take on the arrogant war criminals in Washington.

By assassinating political opponents a dangerous precedent will be set for the rest of us: Anyone who dare challenges the high-level traitors in Washington and their evil policies will be murdered. Such a precedent was made before, in 1963, and then in 1968, but those two events were not understood by the American people at that time because government and media propaganda made people believe the official story. This time, however, it is different. The American people, and people around the world, are awake to the political reality that Washington was hijacked by evil traitors. In the event of an assassination of Assange or of any other outspoken figure that challenges the traitors and war criminals in Washington, the international community will know full well who did it, and take action accordingly.