U.S. Maintains Embargo of Cuba After 50 Years, Despite International Condemnation

February 8, 2012

Democracy Now

By DN

“Isn’t it time we at least start talking to Cuba?  Are we still in 5th grade?”  –KTRN

There are no commemorations planned in Washington, D.C., but today marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. embargo against Cuba — the longest-running embargo in the world. On February 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy formally expanded the harsh regime of commercial and financial sanctions against Cuba that have continued to the present day. The embargo has been solidly bipartisan, notably intensifying under the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The United States has targeted Cuba in defiance of widespread international condemnation. “That’s been the longest-enduring embargo we have had in the world. And the question is, why is it still there? What good has it done? Of course, it has squeezed the Cuban people,” said Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who has been involved in efforts to challenge the U.S. embargo against Cuba for many years.

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Free Market Education vs. The NWO

February 8, 2012

Lew Rockwell.Com

By Gary North

In my report, “The Crucial Pillar of the New World Order,” I argued that education is the key to the modern New World Order, or Superclass, as David Rothkopf calls it. The system of about 20 elite universities, plus a handful of exclusive four-year private colleges, is the crucial institutional means of screening entry into the inner ring of power.

I argued that a great shift has been in progress since 1960. The best universities began to screen by means of a specific kind of intellect, namely, the ability to take written examinations. I described this as the Prussian system. It is a system based on merit, but a peculiar form of merit: performance on exams. Writing well also counts. As these formal criteria have been made the barriers to entry, legacy sons from the Old World Order have not gained entry.

The Prussian system is replacing the Oxford-Cambridge-Harvard system. The Prussian system extends its way into the K-12 educational system. There, two tracks existed until 1950: the Prussian and the vocational. What is formal and unbreakable in Germany is less formal and less unbreakable in the United States. But it exists. Today, there is a third track. There are the vocational students, the community college-bound students, and the Advanced Placement exam students. Not many students cross over.

The dreams of those Utopian Unitarians of the nineteenth century who pioneered tax-funded K-12 education are no longer taken seriously. The messianic character of American education has slowly morphed into the caretaker mentality described by John Taylor Gatto.

BREAKING INTO THE INNER RING

From the day that the Irish got off the boats in New York City and Boston in 1848, they set up parochial schools. German Lutherans did the same. So did Dutch Calvinists. They recognized the threat posed to their confessions by the supposedly Protestant but in fact Unitarian public school system. They chose to pay taxes and then fund their own school systems. They did not want their children to strive to enter the inner rings of power in the New Country. They were content to remain outside the New World Order.

If there is a symbol of the capitulation of the Irish to the NWO it is the Kennedy family. John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald was a master politician in Boston. The Irish were very good at politics. But they were outside the inner ring of Boston high society, where family connections and Harvard connections had reigned supreme since 1636. Harvard went Unitarian after 1805, but it lost none of its prestige. The Boston Brahmins were well named. The Irish were initially the untouchables.

That irked Honey Fitz’s son-in-law, Joe Kennedy. He wanted in. He knew he could not get in. So, he primed his sons to get in. Joe. Jr. Went to Harvard. Jack went to Harvard. Bobby went to Harvard. Teddy went to Harvard. When Jack became JFK, he hired the scions of the Harvard-Yale axis to serve as his courtiers.

When Lyndon Johnson replaced him in 1963, he got rid of as many of them as he could. He had no plans to enter their inner ring. The only inner ring he cared about was the one he controlled. He was a true son of Southwest Texas State Teachers College. He let the pointy-headed liberals from Harvard stick around for only as long as he could use their pointy heads to stick into his enemies’ backs.

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The Deaths of JFK, RFK—and the Silence of the Lambs

February 6, 2012

WhoWhatWhy

By Russ Baker

“It appears most of the JFK stories are bogus. One has to wonder who is releasing so much disinformation on the JFK assassination.” –KTRN

As the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy approaches, there is a growing flurry of material about—or even from—the Kennedy clan. This includes “insider” accounts and what are described as exciting, must-read and must-watch revelations.

Yet, for some reason, little of it is truly revelatory, or if it is, it seems, almost by design, very, very small potatoes indeed.

Take for example a new documentary by Bobby Kennedy’s daughter, for HBO. What’s the big revelation? That Bobby feared…are you ready… that someone would throw acid in the face of his children. Who? The mafia. And when was this a threat? In the 1950s. When RFK was a Senate investigator, years before he and his brother ever got near the White House. And years before his brother and then he himself were killed under still-unresolved circumstances.

Got that? Nothing about elements other than “professional criminals.” Threat to his children, not him. And this was before RFK became Attorney General and started really going after the mob, and everyone else.

Oh—and nothing about who…killed him.

That’s Hollywood!

***

I subscribe to a newsfeed with articles related to JFK. It’s an endless stream of banality: the death of democracy packaged as consumer goods for collectors. For example, you could have bid in a recent auction for the hearse that carried JFK’s body, and of course, there are the requisite collector plates and supposedly valuable limited-edition coins.

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The Greatest Conspiracy Of Them All

January 16, 2012

The Dollar Vigilante

By TDV

“Like stereotypes, conspiracies exist because there is some truth to them. Perhaps many of them are the truth.” –KTRN

I’m reading an interesting book by Gary North called, “Conspiracy: A Biblical View”. I generally like reading Gary North because he not only has an extremely strong foundation in Austrian economics, monetary theory, and free market capitalism, but he has prolific publications showing that the Bible is largely a doctrine supporting those principles, and specifically espouses against socialism, totalitarianism and for the sovereignty of man.

I won’t comment on the book further, but it raises what I think is a question of profound importance: Are there conspiracies? And what impact have they had on history and our current state of affairs? Conspiracies often get a really bad rap, but fundamentally understanding this question is paramount to understanding the way the world works, how we got to this point, and where we are likely headed.

If you believe there’s no such thing as conspiracy theories, it follows that the governments of men are just bumbling incompetents, or isolated and greedy individuals acting in their own self-interest (albeit on a vast scale). However, if conspiracy theories are right, there’s a more coordinated, nefarious agenda at work here, and our current path seemingly towards totalitarianism is a more pre-determined, more inevitable outcome. If a conspiratorial view of history is valid, the root causes of our present social problems probably run deeper, and will be more difficult to root out than many of us imagine.

It’s amazing to me how many analytical and insightful people dismiss conspiratorial explanations out of hand, despite all factual evidence to the contrary, just because the term “conspiracy theory” carries so many negative connotations. Even if the conspiracy is not dismissed, it is often rendered off-limits to further discussion or analysis, to the obvious benefit of the conspirators (by design one could say). Let’s look at some illustrative and well known “conspiracy theories” to clarify some terms:

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

The preeminent conspiracy theory of the last century has still not been adequately explained in line with existing evidence. The government’s (Warren Commission) report is more evidence of a cover-up than a credible conclusion. Yet, with time, most of America has seemingly moved on.

But let’s separate fact from theory. To say that the single bullet scenario defies the laws of physics is a fact, not a theory. To say that the autopsy on the body was doctored and inaccurate is a fact, not a theory. It might be evidence of a conspiracy, but it is not a “conspiracy theory”. To say, however, that the CIA was behind the killing, or the mafia, is a theory.

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New TSA ‘Theft’ Leaves Teen’s Bag $100 Lighter

August 2nd, 2011

New York Post

By: Philip Messing

They’re stealing again — this time, from a kid!

An allegedly sticky-fingered screener for the Transportation Security Administration is being investigated after $100 went missing from a 16-year-old honor student’s gym bag before he boarded a July 21 flight at JFK Airport, The Post has learned.

Rodeen Dunn, the mother of the Brooklyn student, Chris Dunn, called the alleged theft of his cash — a gift from his grandma — “disgusting and a violation of my son’s trust.”

The incident occurred shortly after 5:15 a.m., after Chris went through screening to board a JetBlue flight to Los Angeles.

A Port Authority police source said surveillance video shows a female TSA screener spending six minutes with Chris’ bag. At one point, the worker can be seen tossing away a piece of paper, the source said.

The worker hasn’t been arrested or suspended.

Just hours later, another TSA screener at JFK was caught on surveillance video swiping a senior citizen’s cellphone. The worker, Roy Richburg, 25, of Queens, was arrested and fired.

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said the agency has a “zero-tolerance policy for theft.”

Click here for the full report from New York Post