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by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com
1 May, 2012

Ray Bradbury’s classic 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of a fictional society in which books are not read, but burned, and the populace is distracted by television and radio. In this dystopian world, reading books is outlawed to prevent the public from thinking independently and “firemen” are employed to burn the remaining books in the quest to rid the world of all literature.

Bradbury himself insists the book is about the replacement of book reading by television and other forms of media, and the effect these modern media have on reducing the level of discourse in and independent thought in society. Still, the book is more commonly read more literally as an allegory for the ills of state-sponsored censorship. Ironic, then, that Fahrenheit 451 itself has been banned from school libraries numerous times over the years.

Less well known than these ironic acts of censorship that arise in the public school system, however, although arguably much more ominous, are the ways that the book publishing industry itself is becoming more and more controlled by fewer and fewer media moguls. In this process, the ease with which political and governmental bodies have been able to block the publication of books that are uncomfortable to the Washington elite, and even to destroy entire print runs of tell-all whistleblower stories, has greatly increased. Simultaneously, books that fulfill a social function of rallying the populace around the flag and supporting the dominant narratives of our time, from the war on terror to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, are given copious attention by a fawning lapdog press.

Earlier this year, Navy Seal Chris Kyle released his autobiography, an account of his years as a sniper in combat. Published by William Morrow and Company, an imprint of Rupert Murdoch-owned HarperCollins, Kyle’s title of the “deadliest sniper in US military history” with 150 kills to his name–glorifying the entire American military combat experience as it did–was given glowing praise and wall to wall media coverage in the controlled corporate press.

That the feel-good flag-waving “heroics” of a Navy Seal who brags about slaughtering Iraqis in a turkey shoot from hundreds of yards away is portrayed as wholesome family entertainment on prime time and late night tv should come as no surprise to those who, like Bradbury, realized the stultifying, lowest-common-denominator effects of television as a medium. That Kyle’s book is heavily promoted by the very television stations owned by the same media mogul who controls the book’s publishing company should come as no surprise to those who are aware of the spider’s web of connections that guarantee that 90% of the American media are owned by the same few corporations.

More surprising and insidious altogether, however, are the ways that people of questionable morality, and even outright criminals, are allowed to not only flaunt their criminality in the corporate-media sanctioned books published and promoted by the big name media moguls, but to actively profit from their admissions of guilt. Such is the case of Jose Rodriguez, an ex-CIA agent who has just released a new book, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives. As Glenn Greenwald notes in a recent article, particularly galling about this ode to torture is the fact that this is the same Jose Rodriguez who made the decision to destroy 92 videotapes of CIA torture practices that numerous federal courts and even the 9/11 Commission had ordered the CIA to produce. When 9/11 Commission co-chairs Kean and Hamilton discovered the destruction, they wrote a New York Times Op-Ed outright accusing the CIA, and thus Rodriguez, of the criminal offense of obstruction of justice. Still, no punishment of any kind was handed down by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who himself had ordered the CIA to produce the tapes. Now, Rodriguez is profiting from a book in which he actively and aggressively defends his decision to break the law by destroying those tapes.

Still, Rodriguez is given the full court press for his new book launch, and what little pushback he gets during interviews is of the jocular, non-threatening variety that is destined to cause just enough controversy to increase book sales. Not disclosed to viewers of the 60 Minutes piece on Rodriguez is that the Simon & Schuster imprint that publishes Rodriguez’ boastful criminal confession is owned by the same CBS Corporation that broadcasts 60 Minutes.

Even more worrying than these puff pieces, however, is the ways that books that would threaten the status quo rather than support it are effectively suppressed by the very same system of corporate and judicial control.

Last year ex-FBI agent Ali Soufan attempted to publish a book critiquing the agency’s use of torture techniques in the so-called war on terror and the decision to withhold information on two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers openly living in the US for a year before the attack, from the FBI. In return, the CIA launched an all-out attack on Soufan’s book, attempting to cut and redact significant portions of the book that they called “classified” but were in fact part of the public record.

In perhaps the most alarming example, the Pentagon literally burned the entire first print run of “Operation Dark Heart,” the tell-all book of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a US Army intelligence officer who attempted to blow the whistle on “Able Danger,” a data mining program employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency which has been alleged to have identified and let go alleged 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta one year before the attacks:

Earlier today I had the chance to talk to Sibel Edmonds, famed FBI whistleblower and author of the tell-all memoir, Classified Woman, about her own experience attempting to publish her book in the mainstream press.

It is ironic that it has been six centuries since Jonannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press, freeing the masses to access the printed word for the first time, and we are once again at a spot where the printed word can be so thoroughly controlled and restricted. However, thanks to the Internet and print-on-demand technologies–our own version of the Gutenberg revolution–the self-publishing industry is not only a viable alternative for suppressed and dangerous works, but often the only outlet for books that truly challenge the status quo.

And now, as we edge closer to the nightmare dystopia of Bradbury’s 451, we must ask whether those brave souls who dare to challenge this system of control toil in vain to bring this information to the public. Because, ultimately, if the efforts of whistleblowers and truth-tellers like Sibel Edmonds go unrewarded, even this last hope for circumventing the systems of state censorship may be squelched out of existence, not by force, but by the apathy of a public that is more content to be distracted by entertainment than to stand up for the public’s right to know.

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by James Corbett
GRTV.ca
1 May, 2012

When the nuclear “security” summit in Seoul, South Korea concluded last month with a politically safe communique about the participants’ resolution to make a “safer world for all” by aiming to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material in four years” and strengthening the IAEA as a means of “facilitating international cooperation,” even Reuters was quick to point out the blandness of the document.

Given the careful political platitudes about security and cooperation that dominated the summit itself, however, this was not an unexpected denouement to the meeting.

What the vague rhetoric language about securing nuclear materials, reducing stockpiles, and eliminating the threat of nuclear terrorism paper over, however, is that, exactly as in so many other political contexts, the operative definition of each of these goals is the exact opposite of what the politicians who are reading them off of teleprompters want you to believe.

For years now, politicians have been using the specter of nuclear terrorism as a type of boogeyman to justify all manner of draconian crackdowns in the ongoing “war on terror.” Left out of these grim assessments for obvious reasons are the pieces of evidence that detail how, quite contrary to the image of a beleaguered US government striving to keep nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists, that very US government has in fact been complicit in helping rogue networks and so-called nuclear terrorists to proliferate nuclear weapons to countries like Pakistan and North Korea.

The most well-known nuclear proliferator was Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani scientist working in Europe who passed detailed nuclear design information to his native government. The official history states that Khan was able to help Pakistan to gain the bomb, and then to spread that technology to the governments of North Korea, Iran and Libya without drawing the attention of the US intelligence apparatus. This runs precisely counter to Dutch Economic Minister Ruud Lubbers, who claimed that the CIA knew about Khan’s activities as far back as 1975, but did nothing to stop him. “The Americans wished to follow and watch Khan to get more information.”

Indeed, those who tried to stop such proliferation activities were actively hounded and prosecuted by American authorities. In the 1980s Pakistani government operatives were trying to purchase equipment for their nuclear program from American companies. When the CIA learned of the deal, a sting was set up to catch the Pakistanis in the act, but two high-ranking US government officials tipped the target off and he got away. When Richard Barlow, a CIA analyst, tried to blow the whistle on the illegal actions, he was forced out of his job and his career was derailed.

In 2000, Atif Amin, a British customs officer, independently discovered the AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network in action in Dubai. When he tried to present the evidence to his bosses, his investigation was shut down. The police raided his home and an Official Secrets Act investigation was started against him.

Time and again, the network that helped to proliferate nuclear weapons internationally to some of the west’s favourite arch-villains were allowed to continue with their operations unimpeded, despite being known about by western intelligence. Other signs that the US is not as committed to stopping the spread of nuclear technologies as they claim to be are unfortunately all too abundant.

From 1990 to 2001, former US Defense Secretary and long-time Washington insider Donald Rumsfeld sat on the board of ABB, a European engineering company. It was during his tenure on the board of ABB that the company closed a $200 million contract to supply components and design specifications for light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea. These reactors are capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material that the nation, deemed part of the “axis of evil” during Rumsfeld’s reign as Bush’s Defense Secretary, can now use to hold East Asia hostage in its game of nuclear brinksmanship.

Perhaps most galling of all is a program that has operated in complete secrecy for decades, in which the US has illegally supplied Japan with over 70 tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The program broke the laws of the US and Japan, as well as the spirit of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and was only recently uncovered after an exhaustive decades-long investigation by Joseph Trento of the National Security News Service. I had the chance to talk to Trento about the program and its inherent hypocrisies earlier this month.

Perhaps in a certain sense the title of last week’s conference in South Korea is not a misnomer after all. The US government, Israel, and other power players on the global chessboard are interested in nuclear security, after all. For them, however, “security” means the securing of a monopoly on the use of nuclear weapons. The securing of global governmental structures in the name of the nuclear scare. The securing of the IAEA’s dominance over the regulation of the nuclear industry that has so openly bought and controlled them since its inception. And, of course, securing the fear in the minds of the public over the possibility of nuclear terrorism that they themselves have fostered and encouraged over the decades.

Perhaps the most telling fact of all is that countries like Iran were not even welcome at the table during this summit. What better example is possible of the ways in which the nuclear powers think, act, and function as a monopolistic cartel. And exactly like any other cartel, they seek to secure the power to operate their racket free from competition by any other group.

While delivering platitudes about reducing stockpiles and securing materials, the real aim of the nuclear community is to insure that their extraordinary military power, the power to level entire nations and threaten entire continents at the push of a button, is kept out of the hands of the very peoples whom they constantly threaten with this power.

This is the nuclear “security” that they speak of at these events: security in their position of unquestionable military dominance. Security in their position as arbiters of what countries may have access to nuclear power, and under what conditions they can achieve that access. And security in the ability to terrorize the peoples of the world directly through their own arsenals, and indirectly through the implied threat of nuclear false flag terrorism.

Until the underlying hypocrisy of this gang of nuclear thugs is pointed out, and their noble-sounding term “nuclear security” is unmasked as a smokescreen for military hegemony, such conferences will continue to assuage the world with their bland rhetoric about securing the world, and the proliferation that they pretend to fear the most will become a weapon of last resort to the nations that they have so pointedly excluded from their gang.

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Welcome to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Story #1: White House Takes Aim at CISPA with Formal Veto Threat
http://ur1.ca/93x9t
Related: James Bamford on How the NSA’s New Spy Center Might Know Everything
http://ur1.ca/93xa1
NWNW Flashback: SOPA Is Back As Websites Go Black
http://ur1.ca/93xab

Story #2: FOIA: FBI and Police Free to Launch Spies In Sky Over US Cities
http://ur1.ca/93xad
Here’s Who’s Buying Drones – Local Cops Watching You from the Sky
http://ur1.ca/93xag
Related: Bird Strikes Pose Ongoing Danger to Aircraft
http://ur1.ca/93xal
US Relaxes Drone Rules – Obama Gives CIA, Military Greater Leeway in
Use Against Militants in Yemen
http://ur1.ca/93xao
NWNW Flashback: Drones Assist In Corralling North Dakota Cattle Rustlers
http://ur1.ca/7z4q9

Story #3: Company Aims to Mine Resource-Rich Asteroids
http://ur1.ca/93xay
Related: Murdoch Faces More Grilling Over UK Phone Hacking
http://ur1.ca/93xb2
Navigating Netflix: The Shape of Things to Come
http://ur1.ca/93xb7

Bonus: Food World Order on Corbett Report Radio
http://ur1.ca/8khqu

Visit http://NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. And as always, stay up-to-date by subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report http://ur1.ca/39obd and Media Monarchy http://ur1.ca/kuec Thank you.

Previous Episode: SCO Grows, Bigger Banksters, Crowd-Sourced Research
http://ur1.ca/93xba

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[CLICK HERE to continue watching the report on Boiling Frogs Post.]

by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com
April 24, 2012

To the residents of Baluchistan it must be puzzling that this remote, sparsely populated region in Pakistan’s southwest is increasingly gaining the attention of far-flung corners of the globe, from Beijing to Moscow to Tel Aviv to Washington. A rugged, arid region dominated by the ethnic minority Baluch tribes, Baluchistan straddles parts of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its rugged, mountainous landscape has historically sheltered it from the various imperial, regional and national powers that have claimed authority over it, from the Persians and Indo-Parthians thousands of years ago to Iran and Pakistan in more recent times.

Now, however, the region is suddenly gaining attention on the geopolitical stage as a strategic area in one of the most hotly-contested regions of the globe. Along with this newfound attention has come the sudden attention of human rights groups and even Congressmen who now claim to be deeply concerned with the struggle for independence of the Baluch peoples.

Exactly as in Sudan, Libya, Uganda and other flavours-of-the-week in the great game that has defined global geopolitics for decades, however, this newfound attention on Baluchistan has very little to do with grievances about the plight of the long-suffering locals and much more to do with the region’s vast, untapped mineral and resource wealth, its geostrategic location on a proposed pipeline route that threatens to undermine Western influence in the region, and its role as a base of operations for terror groups that Mossad and the CIA have been using to wage a proxy terror campaign on Iran.

That the region contains important minerals and resources is openly acknowledged by people like Congressman Rohrbacher, even while making their case for humanitarian intervention in the area.

Perhaps of even greater importance than its raw natural resources, however, is Baluchistan’s key location. Sitting as it does in the border region between Iran and Pakistan, the Sistan-Baluchistan region is central to a proposed pipeline connecting the Assaluyen Gas Field in southern Iran to Pakistan. Known as the IP pipeline for the two countries it would straddle, the project has been on the drawing board for decades and at various times has also included the possibility that India would be the pipeline’s ultimate endpoint.

Bisecting as it does a proposed logistical corridor connecting the port of Gwadar in the south and China’s Xinjiang region in the north, the pipeline has also attracted the interest and investment of both China and Russia, who are keen to protect their oil interests in the Middle East and counter the US presence in Central Asia. Earlier this month, Russia proposed a $1.5 billion financial and technical aid scheme to help finish the project, which is already mostly completed on the Iranian side.

Earlier this week I talked to Eric Draitser, a researcher and the editor of StopImperialism.com, about this proposed pipeline and its potential ramifications.

One of the most troubling aspects of the outside influence in the region, however, is the admitted use of the area as a staging ground for terror operations against Iran, operations that have been puppeteered by both American and Israeli intelligence.

Baluchistan is home to Jundallah, a Sunni terror group founded by Abdolmalek Rigi to fight against the Shiite government of Iran. It has been conducting operations in Iran since 2003, and is estimated to have killed between 150 and 300 Iranian citizens in a series of deadly attacks. In 2010, the US State Department added Jundallah to a list of designated terrorist organizations, citing the group’s reliance on “suicide bombings, ambushes, kidnappings and targeted assassinations.”

In 2007, however, ABC News reported that the group was being advised and encouraged by American officials, reports that were subsequently repeated by the London Telegraph and the New Yorker. These reports were confirmed by Rigi himself, who was captured by Iranian authorities en route to Kyrgyzstan from Dubai in 2010.

The US continues to deny involvement with the group, however, and earlier this year Foreign Policy magazine floated a story indicating that Israeli Mossad agents had in fact posed as CIA officers in order to recruit Jundallah operatives for strikes against Tehran.

The persistent reports of American involvement with Baluchi terror groups sheds further light on an announcement earlier this year that the CIA has been involved in a heavy recruitment of Baluchis since at least March 2011, paying each agent $500 a month for help in its operations in the area. In fact, the use of American intelligence informants dates back at least to the 1990s, when FBI whistleblower Behrooz Sarshar indicates a high-ranking Iranian informant was used in intelligence gathering operations in the region. Interestingly, the area was also the birthplace of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the supposed mastermind of 9/11, and the area where US officials gained intelligence that led to his capture in Rawalpindi.

Now, under the banner of “Free Baluchistan,” a number of think tanks, policy “experts,” human rights groups and Washington insiders are calling for support of terror groups in the region that are fighting against the Pakistani government itself, which is drifting further and further from Washington as it begins to cement ties with Iran, formalize its membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and draw closer to Beijing. The repeated attacks in the area by Baluchi independence groups provide a way for the Americans to help stop the strategic port of Gwadar from falling under China’s sway and helps to keep Islamabad on its toes.

It will come as no surprise to keen observers of geopolitics that yet another independence struggle is being used as an excuse for outside powers to become embroiled in a geostrategic corner of the globe. In fact, in the wake of numerous such interventions, from CIA involvement in Afghanistan in the 80s to American and Israeli involvement in the creation of South Sudan to the NATO-led humanitarian love bombing of Libya, it would be foolish for the public not to question the hidden motivation behind such interventions in the name of peace and freedom.

Much is up for grabs in this volatile region and it is far from clear which side of the global power struggle will gain the upper hand in the area, but one thing is certain. With this intervention, as in every such cynical manipulation of regional difference and grievance, it is the people who will be divided and conquered, paying with their blood for the imperial avarice of those who are content to chew them up and spit them out as it suits the grander geopolitical agenda.

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Audio/Notes: http://ur1.ca/92fet On Thursday nights, Media Monarchy joins Corbett Report Radio live on Republic Broadcasting to go over all the latest stories from the world of food, environment and health. This week’s menu features Fluoride, Hugs and Drugs and more…

Thanks as always to Morgan Lesko of WikiWorldOrder for posting this video on his YouTube account.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have once again engulfed Cairo’s Tahrir Square in protest against the ruling military council. The rally involves supporters from exact opposite ends of the political spectrum, with secular activists rubbing shoulders with Islamists. To discuss this latest display of civil unrest, joining me now is James Corbett, a political analyst with a special interest in the Arab uprisings.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Welcome to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Story #1: Becoming Full Member, India Will Strengthen SCO
http://ur1.ca/91bkf
Background: Meet the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
http://ur1.ca/5ztd4
Related: Children of Immigrants to US Expatriating Themselves
http://ur1.ca/91bkk
So, You Want to Move ‘Back’ to India?
http://ur1.ca/91bkm

Story #2: Giant Banks Now 30% Bigger than When Dodd-Frank Financial “Reform” Law Was Passed
http://ur1.ca/91bko
The Too Big To Fail Banks Are Now Much Bigger And Much More Powerful Than Ever
http://ur1.ca/91bkq
Flashback: McCain, Obama Headed to Washington for Bailout Talks
http://ur1.ca/91bks
Flashback: Martial Law Will Be Declared If Banker Bill Not Passed In House
http://ur1.ca/91bkt

Story #3: Crowd-Sourcing Brain Research Leads to Breakthrough
http://ur1.ca/91bkv
Related: Research, Retractions, Access and more
http://ur1.ca/91bkx

Bonus: Food World Order on Corbett Report Radio
http://ur1.ca/8khqu

Visit http://NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. And as always, stay up-to-date by subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report http://ur1.ca/39obd and
Media Monarchy http://ur1.ca/kuec Thank you.

Previous Episode: DHS Hacks Xbox, Sibel Ungagged, Knockout Gas
http://ur1.ca/91bky

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

[CLICK HERE to continue watching the report on Boiling Frogs Post.]

by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com
17 April, 2012

The hysterical refrain “won’t someone think of the children” has been so overused as a knee-jerk populist appeal for overarching, tyrannical legislation–from proposals for internet censorship to calls for illegal government spying–that it has become a self-parodying cliche. Still, the essential argument appeals to such a basic part of the human experience that it is trotted out time and again by politicians, sometimes subtly and effectively, sometimes clumsily and heavy-handedly, and sometimes like George W. Bush.

However the argument is framed, it is always essentially the same: For the sake of the children upon whose shoulders the future of civilization rests, this or that particular program needs to be enforced. Thus it should not come as a surprise that the Council on Foreign Relations, that group of globalist insiders founded by Colonel Edward house in 1921 as a tool for shaping American foreign policy and undermining American sovereignty, took up the question of education in a recent report looking specifically at how U.S. education reform is tied to the question of national security.

The idea that a sense of national identity is fostered through the education system must be particularly horrifying to an American public that is now subjected to daily reports of elementary school children being handcuffed and arrested for schoolyard fights or an autistic teens being tasered a sickening 31 times for the heinous crime of not removing his jacket in class.

While the oppressive environment of today’s schools do provide a window onto the increasingly militarized police state that America is becoming, the idea that the school system could be used as a tool for inculcating a national identity and taming a traditionally independent population is by no means a new one. In fact, as any careful study of the books and quotations of the western school systems progenitors will show, the modern idea of schooling was formulated specifically to create a nation of intellectually crippled, docile workers, who would be more dependent on authoritarian systems of control and more easily  manipulatable by the ruling class.

In his article “The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control?” Andrew Gavin Marshall carefully documents the process by which the school system came to be seen as a tool of nation-building and then as a mechanism of social control. Writing in the American Journal of Sociology in the 1970s, researchers noted:

“The spread of schooling in the rural North and West can best be understood as a social movement implementing a commonly held ideology of nation-building. It combined the outlook and interests of small entrepreneurs in a world market, evangelical Protestantism, and an individualistic conception of the polity.”

In contrast to this, reformers wanted to implement a system  of social control, one capable, in the words of Robert Wiebe, of “serving all citizens, stamping them American and unifying the nation.”

Whereas the educational impulse in the early days of the schooling movement was to foster and encourage the curiosity and independence of the largely agrarian population for whom these qualities would have evident utility, this morphed into a system for forcing obedience to authority, mechanical repetition of tasks, and rote memorization of facts as the economy itself became increasingly dependent on industrialized processes of production. In this paradigm, the task of the education system itself was to prepare the vast majority of the population for the repetitious, highly regimented labor of the factories.

One of the intellectual precursors for this idea was a German philosopher named Johann Gottlieb Fichte. According to British philosopher Bertrand Russell:

“Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.”

As John Taylor Gatto, former New York City and New York State Teacher of the Year, has exhaustively documented in his books on the subject, the philosophical roots of this tradition trace back to Prussia, where the modern system of universal compulsory education was first formulated.

More than just the control of primary and secondary education, however, the institution of the academy itself had to be tamed in order to make this system of control complete. With a history that could theoretically trace its ancestry back to Plato’s Academy and at the very least to the universities of the middle ages, academia’s rich history of fostering independent thought had long made it an uneasy ally of the establishment hierarchy. In the late 19th century, however, a generation of robber barons arose from the American industrial revolution to amass fortunes never before dreamt of by non-aristocrats. Fortunes which they were soon to put to the task of moulding society in their image.

In the 1950s, the Congressional commission known as the Reece committee explored historical documents of the major foundations established by the robber barons, including the Carnegie Corporation, and lead researcher Norman Dodd discovered how they took control of the levers of American state power by grooming a class of academics that would be amenable to their interests.

Earlier today I had the chance to talk to Andrew Gavin Marshall, contributing writer to BoilingFrogsPost and founder of ThePeoplesBookProject.com, about the ways that this system of control via the education system has been consciously revised, updated and reformulated by well-connected insiders under the guise of “The Crisis of Democracy.”

If it is the insiders at organizations like the CFR who have been self-consciously steering society in this self-defeating direction, then, it should be relatively easy to determine what not to do. We merely have to examine what it is they are suggesting, and then pursue a different course of action.

The framing that the would-be directors of society put on the issue is as transparent as it is effective on a populace who have had their powers of critical thinking greatly reduced by an education system that no longer teaches it: if the school system is broken, then what we need is more schooling. More hours in government indoctrination camps, more taxpayer dollars thrown at the problem in a cynical attempt not to ameliorate the problem, but exacerbate it, more power consolidated in the hands of the education department that has been organizing this dumbing down of society the whole time. And like any other false flag event, it is a feedback loop: the worse the problem gets, the more power the perpetrators of that problem can obtain.

No, the problem will never be solved by allowing the same self-proclaimed elites and would-be social engineers even more time, money and power to wreak havoc in our children’s lives. This problem, like so many others, will only ever be solved when parents stop waiting for government agencies and globalist think tanks to descend from the heavens with the perfect solution and take matters into their own hands.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Audio/Notes: http://ur1.ca/90a8n On Thursday nights, Media Monarchy joins Corbett Report Radio live on Republic Broadcasting to go over all the latest stories from the world of food, environment and health. This week’s menu features EnviroPigs, Rooftop Farms and more…

Thanks as always to Morgan Lesko of WikiWorldOrder for hosting this video on his YouTube account.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by James Corbett
GRTV.ca
16 April, 2012

France’s 2012 presidential election cycle is finally winding up this month as the country prepares to head to the polls this Sunday for the first round of voting. For the candidates, it’s a time to consolidate their vote, energize their base and rally their troops on the home stretch. For the electorate, it marks the end to what has been a particularly grueling campaign, one that has been at times surprising, salacious and terrifying.

Contrary to all expectations, the first major event of the French presidential election occurred almost one year ago, not in Paris but in a New York hotel room, where Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and at the time a leading candidate in the presidential race, was embroiled in a sex scandal. Accused of sexually assaulting a made at the Sofitel New York Hotel on May 14, 2011, Strauss-Kahn found his presidential aspirations scuppered as he was quickly arrested, indicted, and placed under house arrest. By July, significant holes had been discovered in the prosecution’s account and on August 23 the case was dropped completely, but the damage had already been done to Strauss-Kahn’s reputation, and he had taken himself out of contention for the presidency.

Although the media predictably chose to focus on the sexual nature of the scandal, a pattern of outside involvement in the affair formed a remarkable undertone to the story, one that fingered Sarkozy’s campaign as the ones who potentially orchestrated the entire event.

On April 28, 2011, just two weeks before the alleged incident, Strauss-Kahn was profiled in the French daily Libération, which noted he was “worried his political opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, would try to frame him with a fake rape.” Subsequent analysis of hotel security cameras showed the hotel’s chief engineer, Brian Yearwood, and an unidentified man high-fiving, clapping and dancing in celebration after the incident was reported to the police. Right before the incident was reported, Yearwood had been in contact with John Sheehan, a security director for Accor, the French-based company that owns Sofitel. Sheehan’s boss, René-Georges Querry, was a close associate of Sarkozy’s intelligence coordinator, Ange Mancini, before joining Accor. The first person to break the news of the arrest was an activist in Sarkozy’s party, who managed to tweet news of the incident before it was even made public by the NYPD, because, he alleged, he had a “friend” who worked at the Sofitel.

Regardless of the nature of the allegations or how they transpired, Strauss-Kahn’s political career was over and Sarkozy had one less political heavyweight to contend with in his bid for re-election.

The campaign took another unexpected turn in March of this year, when a series of shootings targeting French soldiers and Jewish civilians gripped France and drew the attention of the world. The shootings resulted in seven deaths and five injuries in three separate incidents over the span of eight days. When the gunman was identified as 23 year old French Muslim Mohammed Merah, a narrative was quickly formed that this was a terror attack by a “self-radicalized lone wolf” and comparisons were soon drawn to other spectacular terrorist incidents. Sarkozy himself likened the effect of these shootings on the French psyche to the effect the 9/11 attacks had on the American psyche.

Interestingly, exactly as in 9/11 and the 7/7 London underground bombings, details quickly began to emerge calling into question the official narrative of the attack. Far from a “lone wolf” or a “clean skin,” Merah was revealed to have been debriefed by French internal intelligence, or DCRI, after a visit to Pakistan in 2011. The fact that he had asked for a particular DCRI agent during his siege led many to question whether he had in fact been an informant for French intelligence, a possibility later confirmed by a source in an Italian newspaper article.

Despite the as-yet unresolved nature of these serious claims, what political commentators and journalists from across Europe and around the world noted in the immediate wake of the attacks was how the dramatic siege was likely to boost Sarkozy’s political campaign.

But now, as the French prepare to head to the polls and cast their ballot for the next President of the Republic, there is something more at stake than mere political grandstanding or prurient sex scandals. Instead, as scholars, journalists, politicians and even the people of France have repeatedly pointed out, the presidency of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy has been doggedly centered on catering to American interests abroad. In a decisive break with Gaullist tradition, Sarkozy has so doggedly pursued a policy of appeasement toward Washington that he has from the very outset earned the French nickname Sarko l’Americain.

What many don’t realize is that, far from a simple moniker, Sarkozy’s ties with the American political establishment are in fact quite real, and easily documentable.

In an explosive 2008 article, Réseau Voltaire founder and French dissident Thierry Meyssan traced Sarkozy’s family lineage directly to the heart of the CIA. In 1977, Sarkozy’s faher, Pal Sarkozy de Nagy-Bosca, a Hungarian aristocrat, divorced Nicolas’ step-mother, de Ganay. Christine then married Frank Wisner, Jr., son of famed CIA official Frank Wisner, Sr., who established the CIA’s Operation Mockinbird to implant controlled assets in the news media in the late 1940s. According to Meyssan, it was Wisner, Sarkozy’s step-father, who insisted that Nicolas install arch-globalist, Iraq war supporter, and “humanitarian intervention” advocate Bernard Kouchner as his Foreign Minister.

Sarkozy’s half-brother, Olivier, went with his mother, Christine de Ganay, when she married Wisner, eventually settling in America. Maintaining good relations with his step-family, including Nicolas, Olivier now goes by the name “Oliver,” and was appointed as co-head and Managing Director of the now infamous Carlyle Group’s Global Financial Services group less than one year after the Sarkozy became President of France.

Earlier this month I had the chance to talk to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, about Sarkozy’s presidency, and what these American ties mean for the formulation of French foreign policy.

As election day approaches, polls are showing that the French electorate is hungry for change, with opponents on both Sarkozy’s left and right gaining momentum with Sarkozy battliing to hold his ground. A damning poll for the Journal du Dimanche last weekend showed Sarkozy with a 64% disapproval rating, making him the least popular president in the history of the survey. If he does indeed fall to surging Socialist candidate Francois Hollande in the second round of voting next month, as expected, he will be the first President since d’Estaing in 1981 to fail to secure a second term. In such an event, much ink will doubtless be spilled on the downfall of the once high-flying Sarkozy and his political legacy, but the French public, as well as the next President, would do well to understand the distinctly American tenor of Sarkozy’s term in office. For the French people, after all, this election represents a referendum on Sarkozy’s policies as much as a chance to support alternatives.