Flash Editorials April 21, 2012

By Russell D. Longcore

The Nation I: Twelve Secret Service agents and ten military personnel went to Colombia on an advance security detail before the President attended a meeting in Cartagena last week. They stuck to the old adage…”wheels up, rings off.” When they got there, they rounded up at least 20 hookers and did what men do with hookers. The next morning, one of the agents tried to stiff (yes, I know) his paramour and she called the cops. I don’t know what the big furor is. Men of too much power and too little morals regularly step out of line. And military personnel? Please! Ever been to the area just outside a military base? More titty bars, porn shops and massage parlors per square mile than anywhere else. I’m just thinking that they were good consumers trying to get a volume discount. It’s laughable that anyone in America cares about this while this President is taking American into the gulag as fast as he can. Perspective, folks…perspective.

The Nation II: This week, the Virginia Legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill that nullifies the National Defense Authorization Act. The governor has promised to sign the bill. You remember where Virginia is? Sharing a common border with Washington DC? This is a small glimmer of hope that the states haven’t completely caved in to DC’s plans for America. But signing a bill don’t mean shit. Let’s see what Virginia law enforcement does when some Federal goon tries to enforce the NDAA on a Virginia citizen. I hope the Virginia law allows for clapping a Fed in irons and throwing him in jail…if he didn’t get shot first.

The Nation III: George Zimmerman had a good week. One judge recused herself from his case, and in Friday’s hearing, another judge granted him bail at $150,000…of which he only has to post 10% to be free from the Greybar Hotel. In a newsclip, I saw Zim’s lawyer questioning one of the detectives in the case. He asked him if the police had any evidence who started the fight that ended in Martin’s death. “No,” the cop replied. The attorney was trying to make the case that a charge of Second Degree Murder was a politically motivated charge, not based in facts. Zim’s lawyer won. Naturally, the family of Martin was not happy.

International I: India successfully launched a missile on Thursday that can carry a nuclear warhead up to 5,000 kilometers. Why isn’t Washington having a hissy fit? Iran doesn’t have anywhere close to this technology. And India is buying oil from Iran with gold and rupees. Answer: because India has a billion people and isn’t cowed by DC. Answer 2: India also has lots of gold and is one of the BRIC nations. India doesn’t need America, except to pay for Tech Support and Customer Service.

International II: In Bahrain, the government and protesters are having constant violent clashes, and much blood is being spilled on both sides. The Formula One Grand Prix event is supposed to be held there Sunday, but race officials are talking about canceling the event. That’ll show em. Nothing worse than a spinout when a tire runs through a puddle of blood.

Business: I saw a video Friday by Gerald Celente, founder of the Trends Research Institute. He was talking about how the rich and powerful can steal billions in fraudulent scams and go scot free, yet if you or I steal a pack of gum from the 7-11 we will be face down on the pavement with a cop’s knee on our neck. And he’s right. When banks and investment houses can play fast and loose with your money, you don’t really own it. Here is Celente’s money quote: “If you don’t have your money, it’s not yours.” The only money you can count on is the money that you physically hold and can touch. Celente has liquidated all his paper investments and is 100% in gold and silver. In fact, Celente had made a purchase of gold on a future delivery contract through MF Global, and when that company went bankrupt, there went his gold purchase. He said he’s recovered about 60% of his money, but the rest is gone. And this video by Celente only backs up what I have been telling you now for months…How much of your savings and investments should you keep in stocks, bonds and mutual funds? Only that amount you are willing to completely lose. Liquidate ALL paper assets right now and get into precious metals that you can hold and touch.

That brings me to tonight’s commercial message. Quick Question: Do you know how much invested money it takes for you to earn $1,000 month in income without touching the principal? The math is easy. $1,000 a month is $12,000 a year, right? But what kind of return on investment can you expect these days? Could you get a 3% return? Maybe. But let’s use that number. You would have to have $400,000 in some investment that earned 3% a year to get yourself $1,000 a month. Next question: How many of you could live on $1,000 a month? Don’t you need $3,000…$4,000…$8,000 or more to live? And we haven’t factored in the inflation rate, which is about 3% and is going higher. Do you have $1.2 million, or $1.6 million…or $3.2 million in investments? No young families I know have that kind of money. Only a few six-figure income earners that I know have it either. And in an economic depression…which we are in NOW…putting that kind of money away is next to impossible. But there’s a business in America right now that throws off monthly income just like an annuity. It’s my energy business. Think about your utility bills. You pay your energy bills every month, and every month, your energy provider earns a little profit on your payment. Now multiply that times thousands. Folks, there is a huge amount of money in the energy business, and you could get paid just like the big monopolies. Imagine owning a business that throws off income every month on a life-essential service that every adult that lives indoors pays every month. To learn more about this unique business, and see if this business is right for you, go to: MasterpieceEnergy.com. Look to the left and click on “The Ignite Business Plan” to learn about a truly recession-proof business.

Economy I: The number of actual new unemployment claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 367,550 in the week ending April 14, a decrease of 22,916 from the previous week. Yet, the Labor Department reported 386,000 new jobless claims last week. I know that many of you just skip over this because this heading is always the same, showing how breathtakingly stupid the Labor Department is. But think a little deeper, friends. Labor is only one Federal department or bureaucracy. You’ve seen how the GSA acts when no one’s looking. And the Secret Service imbroglio is merely the tip of the iceberg. ALL OF THE bureaucracies are wildly wasteful, and they know that Americans won’t do ANYTHING about it.

Sports: OOPS! At a team event, the parent of one of the University of Alabama’s football players was holding the $30,000 Waterford crystal football-shaped trophy when he caught his shoe on a rug. He dropped the trophy which shattered on the floor. Team officials are looking for a way to replace the trophy. Excuse me? This is easy. The parent likely has homeowner’s insurance, which provides liability insurance. File a claim with his insurer, and call Waterford. They still remember how to make the trophy…they make one each year. Done.

Entertainment: So sorry to hear of the passing of two enormous talents in music. Levon Helm, the founder of The Band, died Thursday after a long battle with cancer. A gentle man, superb musician and a gentleman, he was still performing until recently. And Dick Clark died this week from a heart attack. Clark founded “American Bandstand,” the teen music show that started all other rock music shows. I remember in the early 60s that “Bandstand” came on ABC at noon on Saturdays. Everybody I knew tried to be home for the show on Saturdays. You might not know that Clark also created and produced the American Music Awards show that has been fantastically successful for decades. Both men made enormous contributions to American music.

Dump DC: Six Letters That Can Change History.

Copyright 2012: Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The Need to Lynch Zimmerman

The Coming Race War in America

The Coming Race War in America was published in 1996 by Carl Rowan, the black columnist and former ambassador to Finland. The title is not ironic. He foresaw a major racial explosion. The book of course was furiously ignored. It should not have been. It dealt with an apocalyptic vision that has lurked around the edges of American consciousness since before the Civil War. And still does. We just don’t talk about it.

What has this to do with George Zimmerman?

This: Our racial policy has proved a disaster. Sixty years after Brown vs. the School Board, blacks have not assimilated. They constitute a separate people having almost nothing in common with the surrounding European society. They fiercely maintain their identity with their own music, dialect, customs, dress, and names. All attempts to turn them into middle-class whites in darker packaging have failed. Only relentless governmental pressure forces an appearance of partial integration.

Let’s consider a few awkward facts that loom ghoulishly above the body politic, which seems to be decomposing. First, on every known measure of cognitive ability, on IQ, SATs, GREs, everything, blacks average about one standard deviation, fifteen IQ points, below whites. The gap is a fact. It exists. It is reflected in performance. It has proved intractable. In a technological civilization that rewards intelligence, the deficit sharply limits legitimate access to the higher reaches of money, power, class, and prestige.

Second, blacks continue to show little interest in schooling. Exceptions and degrees, yes. Yet consider cities such as Washington, which usually has a black mayor, black city council, mostly black school board, black staffs in the schools, black parents, black students, a high per-capita expenditure—and perhaps the worst schools in the country. This is a fact, and shows no signs of diminishing. It is repeated in countless cities.

If the United States had large numbers of manual jobs that paid a living wage, as for example assembling cars, things might not be so bad. But the United States no longer has many such jobs. The economy has no need for huge numbers of people who read at the level of second-graders, if that. The existence of these people is a fact. When such jobs exist, as for example on police forces, better qualified whites are invariably available. Without remedial intervention, the academic and professional worlds, the managerial ranks of blue-collar trades, would turn almost pure white, and there would be actual hunger in the inner cities.

The solution, to the extent that it can be called a solution, has been a combination of welfare and affirmative action. Each has produced its own kind of dependency. Whites in their own way depend on welfare payments to blacks in that ending welfare would send the cities up in flames. We now have dense concentrations of unemployed, unemployable blacks leading meaningless lives in rotting cities. They are angry, blame whites for their troubles, and do not have a lot to lose. The torching of Los Angeles in 1992 is endlessly repeatable. Only a spark is needed.

None of this improves, and it seems to be getting worse. On the Drudge Report and elsewhere on the web, video after cell phone video appears of pack-attacks by feral blacks on whites and Asians. These attacks often result in brain damage: the attackers are trying to hurt the victims badly, and usually laugh while doing it. Other videos time and again show black teenagers looting Seven-Elevens. The perpetrators show no signs of worry about being caught. They know that white police wouldn’t dare arrest thirty black adolescents.

Whites are frightened of blacks. They are afraid of taking the wrong exit from the freeway and ending up in a black ghetto. They are afraid when they pass young black males in a dark neighborhood. White women clutch their purses and cross the street, try not to get into elevators with them. The fear, seldom mentioned, determines where whites live, where they go, and where they send their children to school.

This unacknowledged fear engenders unacknowledged consequences. When white men buy guns, journalistic organs of that prissy rectitude we call political correctness—the Washington Post, probably National Review—speak of gun nuts, psychosexual inadequacies, and sordid fantasies. Hardly. The purchasers of guns have in mind defending their families should the need arise. Gun buyers do not fear attack by Jewish violinists.

Government also is afraid of blacks. Los Angeles burned because blacks didn’t like the outcome of a trial. Recently cities in England went up because a policeman shot a black. The Zimmerman shooting looks very similar, and blacks are very angry. Jesse Jackson has said that Trayvon was “hunted down like a rabid dog in the street,” that he was “murdered and martyred,” that it was a “hate crime.”

These are the words of a man looking for a fight. One may be available. Charging Zimmerman with murder buys time. If he is acquitted…

The signs are ominous. Tension rises in America. Incomes fall, foreclosures rise, jobs go east, police powers increase, trust in government evaporates, and expectations for the future decline. An unfocused edginess germinates. It is not a recipe for domestic tranquility.

The response of whites to riots by blacks has always been to back away. This prudence, as it is thought to be, has been enforced by the government. If a minority in Russia started burning cities, the army would shoot the rioters on sight. America doesn’t work that way, or hasn’t recently. The lack of consequences for beatings and flash-mobbings, the history of saying “racism” and walking, produces a sense of untouchability in blacks. It could be a mistake.

A spring is being wound. On one hand, when you live in a sprawling tightly packed concentration of people like yourself, it is easy to forget that you are very much a minority, that the majority holds all the high cards, and that food doesn’t really come from Safeway.

On the other hand, via the internet whites now know of the racial attacks, and grow quietly very sick of them. There is among many white men an undercurrent of “Bring it on.” This is not confined merely to cops, soldiers, conservatives, Southerners, westerners, the rural and the blue-collar. You can find it, carefully hidden, in federal offices and even among men in newsrooms. The extent of this sentiment is easy to underestimate. Those who share it don’t dare express it, and most journalists live in ideological bubbles.

We must lynch Zimmerman. Not.

What Are Liberals Liberal About?

By Russell D. Longcore

The world of politics in America seems to be all about the fantasy that there is a substantive philosophical difference between Conservatives and Liberals. I have already written an article about conservatism, entitled “Conservatives Aren’t.” You can find that article posted on April 18th.

Today, I’m going to pick on Liberals.

Let’s start with my definition: Liberalism is a political philosophy that promotes the infinite growth of the State until it ultimately becomes totalitarianism. Liberalism is the antithesis of individual liberty.

Liberals are threatened by true liberty and the freedom of the individual, preferring the grouping of people into special interests that need protection by the State.

Today’s political liberalism is not to be confused in any way with Classical Liberalism, which emphasizes individual rights, natural law and equality of opportunity. Today’s liberalism is exactly the opposite of Classical Liberalism.

Liberals believe that the State knows better how to spend the individual’s money than the individual does. Therefore, Liberals support ever-increasing levels of taxation.

Liberals believe that the Constitution is a “living document,” and for the most part, should not be interpreted strictly like the writers intended. Consequently, the Amendments in the Bill of Rights beyond Amendment Ten are efforts at social engineering. But at its truest foundation, liberalism understands (better than conservatives) that the Constitution has no authority whatsoever, and that liberals and conservatives may both ignore it at will and do what they please.

Liberals believe that tax policy should be used to promote certain societal behavior, and punish other behaviors. That is why you see tax credits and tax deductions sprinkled throughout new legislation.

Liberals are not content to allow the individual States to exert control over the Federal Government, but wish to see an ever more powerful Federal Government controlling the States.

On the social issues like abortion, civil rights, “gay” rights, gun control, etc., liberals are not found embracing individual rights, but once again, believe in the power of the Federal Government to force society to change under the threat of death.

And, finally, Liberals and Conservatives believe the same things. Just look at what they have done to America over the last 100 years. Ever encroaching and growing Federal Government and ever shrinking individual liberty are their legacies.

In the end, the only fight that truly exists between Liberals and Conservatives is who gets to write the checks. It is NEVER about whether the checks should be written, only about who writes the checks.

Dump DC: Six Letters That Can Change History.

Copyright 2012: Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Conservatives Aren’t

By Russell D. Longcore

(Editor’s note: I wrote this in 2008. As we are now in a Presidential primary season in which the top candidates fight amongst themselves for which is the most conservative…or the REAL conservative, I take a few minutes to point out some glaringly obvious points. The office-seekers…except for Ron Paul…have entirely re-defined the word “conservative” in a cynical bid to play on the societal memory of a conservatism long gone by. That’s only part of it, since only the oldest retirees could hold any memory of what true conservatism is. For the rest of America, conservatism means whatever the current crop of politicians says it means. And the conservatism of 2012 is room-temperature socialism.)

The old adage, “Actions speak louder than words,” has never been truer as it relates to the idea and ideal of conservatism.

Scores of books have been written about conservatism and liberalism, and more will be written. In my view, they mostly cloud the issues and make the definitions fuzzy at best.

Here is my definition of true Conservatism.

Conservatism is a political philosophy that stands for a government, at any level, that functions within the strictures and boundaries of a written Constitution.

That’s it. Anything less than that definition is not true Conservatism.

Now, in light of that definition, look at what the people who call themselves Conservatives today believe and do. Remember, forget what they say, watch what they do. We will use the US Constitution as our yardstick.

The Constitution does not allow for a standing army. Conservatives support unlimited amounts of tax money for standing armies, air forces and military bases in over 130 foreign countries.

The Constitution does not allow for war to be declared by anyone other than Congress, nor military invasions of sovereign nations. Conservatives have supported undeclared wars and invasions abroad since Lincoln invaded the Confederate States of America.

The Constitution does not provide for all of the various Cabinet departments, like Labor, Energy, Education, Commerce, Health and Human Services, etc. The only Cabinet departments I can see authorized in the Constitution are Treasury, War, and State. Conservatives not only like all of the various departments…they willingly fund them and fight over their control.

The Constitution does not provide for the Federal Reserve or a national bank. Conservatives work hard to place their own favorite guy as the Chairman, and manipulate the currency as they choose.

The Constitution does not promote nor restrict any faith or the practice of any religion, leaving any religious concerns to the states. Conservatives promote nearly exclusively in the religions of Western Civilization, which are Judaism and Christianity. Conservatives have always been in favor of the tax-exempt status of the Church…something else not found in the Constitution.

The original Constitution does not allow for a personal income tax or the Internal Revenue Service. Conservatives rely on tax revenues to fund the unconstitutional things they love.

The original Constitution did not provide for a Social Security or Medicare system. Conservatives have called the Federal social programs “the Third Rail of politics”…so sacrosanct that to touch them is to die politically.

The Constitution does not allow for the vast array of regulations of every facet of human existence. Conservatives in Congress have helped pass all of the regulatory legislation and regulations. They have kept most regulation in place, and only in rare exceptions have repealed regulations and law.

The original Constitution does not provide for ANY immigration law, leaving immigration policy to the states. Conservatives are hostile to nearly everyone who wants to come to America.

The original Constitution does not provide for the legalizing or funding of killing babies still in their mother’s wombs. Conservatives talk anti-abortion rhetoric, but do nothing to overturn the law.

The Constitution restricted the Federal government to very tight, very defined duties. Conservatives promote HUGE federal government.

So, we can see that those who call themselves Conservatives today…aren’t. They are big-government state worshippers. Those who embrace true conservatism today are usually labeled anarchists or libertarians, simply ignored or purposefully omitted from news coverage.

Isn’t that right, Ron Paul?

Dump DC: Six Letters That Can Change History.

Copyright 2012: Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Nuclear Power Secrets Revealed

Nuclear Power Is Expensive and Bad for the Environment. It’s Being Pushed Because It Is Good For Making Bombs

by Washington’s Blog

(Editor’s note: Once again, Washington completely screws up something it controls. We are learning that the Fukishima nuclear disaster has its origins in DC. What a surprise.

Imagine a seceded state, now a new nation. How does it become 100% energy independent without uranium/plutonium reactors or coal-fired plants? Thorium reactors, called Molten Salt Reactors (MSR). Completely safe with no radioactive waste, and a proven 50-year-old technology. When you read the article below, you should get pissed at Washington. I did. You might also find THIS ARTICLE infuriating. China is leading the world in MSR technology.)

If nuclear energy is expensive and bad for the environment, why is it being pushed so heavily? And why did the Fukushima reactors use plutonium – instead of just uranium? We need a little background to understand the answers.

Virtually all of the nuclear reactors in the U.S. are of the same archaic design as those at Fukushima. This design was not chosen for safety reasons. Rather, it was chosen because it worked in Navy submarines, and produces plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

Indeed, safer designs – such as thorium reactors – were left on the shelf because they don’t produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for 50 years in order to protect the nuclear plant production of weapons-grade nuclear material. They have also suppressed the findings of their own top scientists about the health risks of radiation. Indeed, “nuclear regulators” are really just promoters for the nuclear cycle.

As veteran investigative reporter Joseph Trento – who has received six Pulitzer nominations, worked for CNN’s Special Assignment Unit, the Wilmington News Journal, and prominent journalist Jack Anderson – notes in a new report, the U.S. circumvented national and international laws to secretly give Japan nuclear weapons:

The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.

***

[Japan] has used its electrical utility companies as a cover to allow the country to amass enough nuclear weapons materials to build a nuclear arsenal larger than China, India and Pakistan combined. This deliberate proliferation by the United States fuels arguments by countries like Iran that the original nuclear powers engage in proliferation despite treaty and internal legal obligations.

***

That secret effort was hidden in a nuclear power program that by March 11, 2011– the day the earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant – had amassed 70 metric tons of plutonium. Like its use of civilian nuclear power to hide a secret bomb program, Japan used peaceful space exploration as a cover for developing sophisticated nuclear weapons delivery systems.

Political leaders in Japan understood that the only way the Japanese people could be convinced to allow nuclear power into their lives was if a long line of governments and industry hid any military application. For that reason, a succession of Japanese governments colluded on a bomb program disguised as innocent energy and civil space programs.

***

Until the March 2011 tragedy, the Japanese nuclear industry had largely remained hidden from critical eyes. The less than thorough InternationA nuclear-armed Japan would relieve much of the drain on American military resources. The need to keep two divisions on the ground in Korea, as well as nuclear armed ships and aircraft in the Pacific as a hedge against China and the missile bases in the Soviet Far East detracted from the Pentagon’s chief mission – preparing for all-out war on the plains of Central Europe. The Reagan administration’s strategy was to push the Soviet war machine until it broke, taking the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes with it. The less than thorough International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s proliferation safeguard agency, also turned a blind eye.

In a rare glimpse of a Japanese industry that has remained top secret for so many decades, our investigation raises serious concerns about Japanese and Western nuclear policies and the officials who shaped those policies during and after the Cold War. International corporations and officials sacrificed the safety and security of the public to carry out the deception. Under the guise of a peaceful nuclear power program, they made huge profits.

***

Both the Monju fast-breeder reactor in 1995 and the Tokai reprocessing plant in April 1997 suffered serious, accidental radiation leaks; both accidents were the subjects of attempted cover-ups. Most egregious was the fire and leak of radioactive sodium at the Monju FBR. Japan’s Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), the government corporation that operated Monju, lied repeatedly to the public about the accident. PNC attempted to suppress video footage that showed the cause of the accident: a ruptured pipe in a secondary cooling system that had spilled an estimated two to three tons of radioactive sodium – the largest such leak in the history of fast-breeder technology. One of the reasons PNC gave for releasing the misinformation was that Monju was too important to Japan’s energy program to jeopardize the reactor’s operation. In other words, the public’s safety was secondary to the breeder program.

Had it not been for a courageous act by a group of Fukui prefecture officials in the early morning of December 11, PNC’s attempted cover-up probably would have succeeded. Suspecting a cover-up, the officials entered the plant and secured the videotape. The action came as a direct result of a previous accident at Fukui’s Tsuruga Unit I reactor in the early 1980s. Fukui prefecture officials were not permitted to investigate that mishap. When the Monju accident took place, the officials were determined not to be turned away a second time. Following revelations that the agency itself had been involved in trying to withhold the video, a PNC executive committed suicide.

***

The Fukushima nuclear disaster was not Japan’s first close call with nuclear weapons grade plutonium. Japan came very close to contaminating the Chilean coast on March 20, 1995, when the Pacific Pintail, laden with enough waste plutonium to build hundreds of nuclear bombs, tried to head into the protection of Chilean waters during a storm [with] 40-foot waves crashing over her bow, the spray flying away horizontally in the storm. He was in the midst of an Antarctic gale off Cape Horn at the tip of South America – the deadliest ocean in the world….

BBC notes:

A veteran of the nuclear industry wrote this: “What the industry needs to regain the support of the British public is… something akin to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”

It needs to be admitted that governments and industry lied to the public about the links with the military programme” ….

Washington’s Blog is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

US-Israel War on Iran : The Myth of Limited Warfare

by Prof. James Petras
www.GlobalResearch.ca

(Editor’s note: Read this and spread it widely. Before you begin reading, you may not realize how desperately bad this potential war will be. We have talked about how the Dollar will collapse from either (1) China’s efforts to dethrone the Dollar as world reserve currency, or (2) the Euro’s collapse which will take the Dollar with it. But I have not factored in war in the Middle East. I will now. The first wave of war that Professor Petras speaks of may collapse the world economy, but China and Russia will remain on the sidelines during initial hostilities. If it goes badly for Iran, expect them both to jump in. Perhaps the Biblical prediction of the Battle of Armageddon will come true.)

Introduction

The mounting threat of a US-Israeli military attack against Iran is based on several factors including: (1) the recent military history of both countries in the region, (2) public pronouncements by US and Israeli political leaders, (3) recent and on-going attacks on Lebanon and Syria, prominent allies of Iran, (4) armed attacks and assassinations of Iranian scientists and security officials by proxy and/or terrorist groups under US or Mossad control, (5) the failure of economic sanctions and diplomatic coercion, (6) escalating hysteria and extreme demands for Iran to end legal, civilian use-related uranium enrichment, (7) provocative military ‘exercises’ on Iran’s borders and war games designed for intimidation and a dress rehearsal for a preemptive attack, (8) powerful pro-war pressure groups in both Washington and Tel Aviv including the major Israeli political parties and the powerful AIPAC in the US, (9) and lastly the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (Obama’s Orwellian Emergency Decree, March 16, 2012).

The US propaganda war operates along two tracks: (1) the dominant message emphasizes the proximity of war and the willingness of the US to use force and violence. This message is directed at Iran and coincides with Israeli announcements of war preparations. (2) The second track targets the ‘liberal public’ with a handful of marginal ‘knowledgeable academics’ (or State Department progressives) playing down the war threat and arguing that reasonable policy makers in Tel Aviv and Washington are aware that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons or any capacity to produce them now or in the near future. The purpose of this liberal backpedaling is to confuse and undermine the majority public opinion, which is clearly opposed to more war preparations, and to derail the burgeoning anti-war movement.

Needless to say the pronouncements of the ‘rational’ warmongers use a ‘double discourse’ based on the facile dismissal of all the historical and empirical evidence to the contrary. When the US and Israel talk of war, prepare for war and engage in pre-war provocations – they intend to go to war – just as they did against Iraq in 2003. Under present international political and military conditions an attack on Iran , initially by Israel with US support, is extremely likely, even as world economic conditions should dictate otherwise and even as the negative strategic consequences will most likely reverberate throughout the world for decades to come.

US and Israeli Military Calculations on Iran’s Capability

American and Israeli strategic policy makers do not agree on the consequences of Iran ’s retaliation against an attack. For their part, the Israeli leaders minimize Iran ’s military capacity to attack and damage the Jewish state, which is their only consideration. They count on their distance, their anti-missile shield and protection from US air and naval forces in the Gulf to cover their sneak attack. On the other hand, US military strategists know the Iranians are capable of inflicting substantial casualties on US warships, which would have to attack Iranian coastal installations in order to support or protect the Israelis.

Israel intelligence is best known for its capacity to organize the assassination of individuals around the world: Mossad has organized successful overseas terrorists acts against Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese leaders. On the other hand Israeli intelligence has a very poor track record with regard to its estimates of major military and political undertakings. They seriously underestimated the popular support, military strength and organizational capacity of Hezbollah during the 2006 war in Lebanon . Likewise, Israel intelligence misunderstood the strength and capacity of the Egyptian popular democratic movement as it rose up and overthrew Tel Aviv’s strategic regional ally, the Mubarak dictatorship. While Israeli leaders ‘feign paranoia’ – tossing clichés about ‘existential threats’– they are blinded by their narcissistic arrogance and racism, repeatedly underestimating the technical expertise and political sophistication of their Arab and regional Islamic foes. This is undoubtedly true in their facile dismissal of Iran ’s capacity to retaliate against a planned Israeli air assault.

The US government has now overtly committed itself to supporting an Israeli assault on Iran when it is launched. More specifically, Washington claims it will come to Israel ’s defense ‘unconditionally’ if it is “attacked”. How can Israel avoid being ‘attacked’ when its planes are raining bombs and missiles on Iranian installations, military defenses and support systems, not to mention Iranian cities, ports and strategic infrastructure? Moreover, given the Pentagon’s collaboration and coordinated intelligence systems with the Israel Defense Forces, its role in identifying targets, routes and incoming missiles, as well as integrated weapons and ordinance supply chains will be critical to an IDF attack. There is no way that the US can dissociate itself from the Jewish State’s war on Iran , once the attack has begun.

The Myths of ‘Limited War’: Geography

Washington and Tel Aviv claim and appear to believe that their planned assault on Iran will be a “limited war”, targeting limited objectives and lasting a few days or weeks – with no serious consequences.

We are told Israel ’s brilliant generals have identified all the critical nuclear research facilities, which their surgical air strikes will eliminate without horrific collateral damage to the surrounding population. Once the alleged ‘nuclear weapons’ program is destroyed, all Israelis can resume their lives in full security knowing that another ‘existential’ threat has been eliminated. The Israeli notion of a war, limited in ‘time and space’, is absurd and dangerous – and underlines the arrogance, stupidity and racism of its authors.

To approach Iran ’s nuclear facilities Israeli and US forces will confront well-equipped and defended bases, missile installations, maritime defenses and large-scale fortifications directed by the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Armed Forces. Moreover, the defense systems protecting the nuclear facilities are linked by civilian highways, airfields, ports, and backed by a dual purpose (civilian-military) infrastructure, which includes oil refineries and a huge network of administrative offices. To ‘knock out’ the alleged nuclear sites will require expanding the geographic scope of the war. The scientific-technological capacity of the Iranian civilian nuclear program involves a wide swath of its research facilities, including universities, laboratories, manufacturing sites, and design centers. To destroy Iran ’s civilian nuclear program would require Israel (and thus the US ) to attack much more than research facilities or laboratories hidden under a remote mountain. It would require multiple, widespread assaults on targets throughout the country, in other words, a generalized war.

Iran ’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stated that Iran will retaliate with a war of equivalence. Iran will match the breadth and scope of any attack with a corresponding counter-attack: ‘We will attack them at the same level as they attack us’. That means Iran will not confine its retaliation to merely trying to shoot down US and Israeli bombers in its airspace or launch missiles at offshore US warships in its waters but will take the war to equivalent targets in Israel and in US-occupied countries in and around the Gulf. Israel ’s ‘limited war’ will become a generalized war extending throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Israel ’s current delusional fetish about its elaborate missile defense system will be exposed as hundreds of high-powered missiles are launched from Teheran, Southern Lebanon and just beyond the Golan Heights .

The Myth of Limited War: Time Frame

Israeli military experts confidently expect to polish off their Iranian targets in a few days – some might think a mere weekend – and perhaps without the loss of even a single pilot. They expect the Jewish state will celebrate its brilliant victory in the streets of Tel Aviv and Washington. They are deluded by their own sense of superiority. Iran did not fight a brutal, decade-long war against the US-supplied Iraqi invaders and its western/Israeli military advisers, to just turn over and passively submit to a limited number of air and missile attacks by Israel . Iran is a young, educated mobilized society, which can draw on millions of reservists from across the political, ethnic, gender, religious spectrum, galvanized in support of their nation under attack. In a war to defend the homeland all internal differences disappear to confront the unprovoked Israeli-US attack threatening their entire civilization – its 5000-year culture and traditions, as well as its modern scientific advances and institutions. The first wave of US-Israeli attacks will lead to ferocious retaliation, which will not be confined to the original areas of conflict, nor will any such act of Israeli aggression end when and if Iran ’s nuclear research facilities are destroyed and some of its scientists, technicians and skilled workers are killed. The war will continue in time and extend geographically.

Multiple Points of Conflict

Just as any US-Israeli attack on Iran will involve multiple targets, the Iranian military will also have a plethora of easily accessible strategic targets. Though it is difficult to predict exactly where and how Iran will retaliate, one thing is clear: The initial US-Israeli strike will not go unanswered.

Given Israeli-US supremacy in long and medium range sea and air power, Iran will probably rely on short-range objectives. These would include the highly valued US military facilities and supply routes in adjoining terrain (Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan) and Israeli targets with missiles launched from Southern Lebanon and possibly Syria. If a few Iranian long-range missiles escape the Jewish State’s much vaunted ‘anti-missile dome’, Israeli population centers may pay a heavy price for their leaders’ recklessness and arrogance.

The Iranian counter-strike will lead to an escalation by US-Israeli forces, extending and deepening their air and sea war to the entire Iranian national security system – military bases, ports, communication systems, command posts and government administrative centers – many in densely populated cities. Iran will counter by launching its greatest strategic asset: a coordinated ground attack involving the Revolutionary Guards together with their allies among the Iraqi Shia troops, against US forces in Iraq . It will coordinate attacks against US facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the growing nationalist-Islamic armed resistance.

The initial conflict, centered on so-called military objectives (scientific research facilities), will spread rapidly to economic targets, or what US and Israeli military strategists refer to as “dual civilian-military” targets. This would include oil fields, highways, factories, communications networks, television stations, water treatment facilities, reservoirs, power stations and administrative offices, such as the Defense Ministry and headquarters of the Republican Guard. Iran, faced with imminent destruction of its entire economy and infrastructure (which occurred in neighboring Iraq with the unprovoked US invasion of 2003), would retaliate by blocking the Straits of Hormuz and sending short range missiles in the direction of the principle oil fields and refineries of the Gulf States including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, a mere 10 minute distance, crippling the flow of oil to Europe, Asia and the United States and plunging the world economy into deep depression.

It should not be forgotten that the Iranians are probably more aware than anyone in the region of the total devastation suffered by Iraqis after the US invasion, which plunged that nation into total chaos and devastated its advanced infrastructure and civilian administrative apparatus, not to mention the systematic obliteration of its highly educated scientific and technical elite. The waves of Mossad-sponsored assassinations of Iranian scientists, academics and engineers are just a foretaste of what the Israelis have in mind for Iran ’s outstanding scientists, intellectuals and highly skilled technical workers. Iranians should have no illusions about the Americans and Israelis who seek to thrust Iran into the brutal dark ages of Afghanistan and Iraq . They will have no more role in a devastated Iran than their counterparts had in post-Saddam Iraq .

According to US General Mathis, who commands all US forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, ‘an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for the United States there’ (NY Times, 3/19/12). General Mathis “dire cost” estimate only takes account of the US military losses, likely several hundred sailors on warships within missile distance of Iranian gunners.

However the most delusional and self-serving assessment of the outcome and consequences of an Israeli air attack on Iran, emanates from top Israeli leaders, academics and intelligence experts, who claim superior intelligence, superior defenses and supreme (if also racist) insight into the ‘Iranian mind’. Typical is Israeli Defense Minister Barak who boasts that any Iranian retaliation will at worst inflict minimal casualties on the Israeli population.

The ‘Judeo-centric’ view of re-ordering the balance of power in the region, which is prevalent in leading Israeli war circles, overlooks the likelihood that war will not be decided by Israeli air strikes and anti-missile defenses. Iran ’s missiles cannot be easily contained, especially if they arrive several hundred a minute from three directions, Iran , Lebanon , Syria and possibly from Iranian submarines. Secondly, the collapse of its oil imports will devastate Israel ’s highly energy dependent economy. Thirdly, Israel ’s principle allies, especially the US and the EU, will be severely strained as they are dragged into Israel ’s war and find themselves defending the straits of Hormuz, their army garrisons in Iraq and Afghanistan , and their oil fields and military bases in the Gulf. Such a conflict could ignite the Shia majorities in Bahrain and in the strategic oil-rich provinces of Saudi Arabia . The generalized war will have a devastating effect on the price of oil and the world economy. It will provoke the fury of consumers and workers rage everywhere as factories close and powerful shocks throughout the fragile financial system result in a world depression.

Israel ’s pathological ‘superiority complex’ results in its racist leaders consistently overestimating their own intellectual, technical and military capabilities, while underestimating the knowledge, capacity and courage of their regional, Islamic (in this case Iranian) adversaries. They ignore Iran ’s proven capacity to sustain a prolonged, complex multi-front defensive war and to recover from an initial assault and develop appropriate modern weaponry to inflict severe damage on its attackers. And Iran will have the unconditional and active support of the world’s Muslim population, and perhaps the diplomatic backing of Russia and China , who will obviously view an attack on Iran as another dress rehearsal to contain their growing power.

Conclusion

War, especially an Israeli-US war against Iran is indissolubly linked to the asymmetrical US-Israeli relationship, which sidelines and censors any critical US military and political analysis. Because Israel’s Zionist power configuration in the US can now harness US military power in support of Israel’s drive for regional dominance, Israeli leaders and most of their military feel free to engage in the most outrageous military and destructive adventures, knowing full well that in the first and last instance they can rely on the US to support them with American blood and treasure. But after all of this grotesque servitude to a racist ,isolated country, who will rescue the United States ? Who will prevent the sinking of its ships in the Gulf and the death and maiming of hundreds of its sailors and thousands of its soldiers? And where will the Israelis and US Zionists be when Iraq is overrun by elite Iranian troops and their Iraqi Shia allies and a generalized uprising occurs in Afghanistan ?

The self-centered Israeli policy-makers overlook the likely collapse of the world oil supply as a result of their planned war against Iran . Do their Zionist agents in the US realize that as a result of dragging the US into Israel ’s war, that the Iranian nation will be forced to set the Persian Gulf oilfields ablaze?

How cheap has it become to ‘buy a war’ in the US ? For a mere few million dollars in campaign contributions to corrupt politicians, and through the deliberate penetration of Israel-First agents, academics and politicians into the war-making machinery of the US government, and through the moral cowardice and self-censorship of leading critics, writers and journalists who refuse to name Israel and its agents as the key decision makers in our country’s Mid East policy, we head directly toward a war far beyond any regional military conflagration and toward the collapse of the world economy and the brutal impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people North and South, East and West.

James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Principle Of The Gold Standard Part 10

Editor Notes:

This is the final installment of a ten-part series on the gold standard.

I discovered a remarkable thinker and author recently. Antal E. Fekete is a Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has written outstanding articles and does compelling lectures about money. Ladies and Gentlemen, the first thing that a state must do at secession is invent a monetary system…that is the Power of the Purse. Creating gold money is a lot easier than you think.

The Principle Of The Gold Standard Part 10

Flash Editorials April 14, 2012

By Russell D. Longcore

The Nation I: Thank God, Rick Santorum quit the Republican Presidential race. But give the man his due. This guy did more with less resources, less integrity and less intelligence than all the other candidates. After spending every moment trashing Romney, how is he going to turn 180° and support Romney? There is a simple answer, folks. The answer is that none of the stuff he said over the last year was true or mattered one whit. If Santorum was driven by deep convictions and unshakeable morality, he could not tell America how horrible Romney was as the Republican candidate and then smilingly throw his support to him at the convention. Santorum is a mega-hypocrite. So he’s the perfect Republican. You folks will probably get to vote for him in 2016.

The Nation II: In the ongoing George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin story: On Tuesday, his lawyers got in front of some microphones and said that they were quitting. Seems the Zimster went into hiding and was not calling them. So they bailed. Then that night on TV, the talking heads started decrying Zimmerman’s erratic behavior. My thoughts? First, just because George wasn’t talking to THESE lawyers doesn’t mean he wasn’t talking to SOME lawyers. I’m guessing he was trying to get better representation, since he is now getting a guided tour through the Florida legal system. Remember that the New Black Panthers put a dead-or-alive bounty on Zimmerman. I’d probably disappear too.

The Nation III: Angela Corey, Florida State Attorney stepped to a press conference podium smiling widely on Wednesday night, 6:00 pm Eastern, and announced that they would “seek justice for Trayvon.” How about justice for Zimmerman? They had already issued a warrant for Zimmerman’s arrest on Second Degree Murder charges. At the time of the press conference, Corey divulged that Zimmerman already surrendered voluntarily and was in custody. Folks, if you saw this press conference, you saw a woman with her mind already made up about the outcome. By the way, the so-called “Stand Your Ground” law was written exactly for this kind of assault…the assault on Zimmerman by Martin. Martin didn’t have a mark on him. Read it yourself.

International I: Let’s talk about the Middle East for a moment. Aside from Israel, which is a rogue nation entirely undeserving of American support, let’s concentrate on the Arab world. Folks, from the western shore of the Mediterranean to the border of India, along the northern shore of Africa and surrounding the Persian Gulf, all of the peoples are some form of Islam. The conflicts, overthrows, Arab Spring, and civil wars are Sunni versus Shi’ite…the two major Islamic groups. Washington has no understanding of Islam and the tribal culture of the Middle East. So it blithely wades in to confrontation after confrontation with its imperialism goggles on, convinced that Arabs and all those other brown-skinned oily types will love democracy if they would just try it. Hey Washington! The Islamic world has no societal history like Europeans, and will not accept the government of the Great Satan America or any other infidel European nation. Sure, you can force them or bribe them for a time. But like the Afghanis, the Islamists know that you will tire of the fight or go broke and just go away. Then they will return to tribalism and carve another deep notch in the stock of their AK-47s. The notch right next to the one for the Soviet Union.

International II: Washington is not the Great Satan, though. But it is the Great Whore. There is no issue for which DC will not play both sides against the middle. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington wages war against the Taliban and the so-called Al Qaida group. But in Syria, DC is working with them to overthrow the Assad government. And the only reason to overthrow the Assad regime is to weaken Iran. DC could not care less about the Syrian people, and are sending vast amounts of armaments and electronics to the rebels. There is no behavior or action for which Washington is, or could be, controlled by a core belief and a conscience. The American foreign policy of the Middle East is about The Dollar, folks. DC is doing whatever it takes to keep the Dollar as reserve currency for oil payments. If DC thinks that overthrowing every Middle East government and installing its puppet will keep the Dollar as world reserve, it will do it. I just think that Iran will be the place where Washington finally gets its comeupuppance.

Business: According to ZeroHedge.com, Apple’s market capitalization is greater than all of the companies in Greece, Portugal and Spain combined. Know what you call this? A Bubble. Apple stock is trading at seventeen times earnings. I know that’s not crazy high, but normal stock trades at about a third of that. And this kind of market value is not sustainable. I predict that an awful lot of investors, private and institutional, are going to get hurt when the bubble bursts.

That brings me to tonight’s commercial message. Quick Question: Do you know how much invested money it takes for you to earn $1,000 month in income without touching the principal? The math is easy. $1,000 a month is $12,000 a year, right? But what kind of return on investment can you expect these days? Could you get a 3% return? Maybe. But let’s use that number. You would have to have $400,000 in some investment that earned 3% a year to get yourself $1,000 a month. Next question: How many of you could live on $1,000 a month? Don’t you need $3,000…$4,000…$8,000 or more to live? And we haven’t factored in the inflation rate, which is about 3% and is going higher. Do you have $1.2 million, or $1.6 million…or $3.2 million in investments? No young families I know have that kind of money. Only a few six-figure income earners that I know have it either. And in an economic depression…which we are in NOW…putting that kind of money away is next to impossible. But there’s a business in America right now that throws off monthly income just like an annuity. It’s my energy business. Think about your utility bills. You pay your energy bills every month, and every month, your energy provider earns a little profit on your payment. Now multiply that times thousands. Folks, there is a huge amount of money in the energy business, and you could get paid just like the big monopolies. Imagine owning a business that throws off income every month on a life-essential service that every adult that lives indoors pays every month. To learn more about this unique business, and see if this business is right for you, go to: MasterpieceEnergy.com. Watch the opening video about “Lifestyle.” Then look to the left and click on “Defining Moments” to learn about a truly recession-proof business.

Economy I: The number of actual new unemployment claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 381,875 in the week ending April 7th, an increase of 62,530 from the previous week. Yet, the Labor Department reported 380,000 new jobless claims last week. Whether it’s upside or downside, the government cannot tell the truth. But do not forget that over 381,000 people had their lives changed for the worse last week in America. Do not believe anything either the Republicans or Democrats are saying about this economy.

Sports Part I: Bobby Petrino, head coach for the Arkansas Razorbacks, got his ass handed to him this week by the University. Seems that Coach was riding his motorcycle and lost control, crashing on the side of a road. Didn’t kill him…didn’t really injure him much. But then the shyt started dripping onto the fan blades. Petrino had a passenger he didn’t disclose…his mistress, 25-year-old Jessica Dorrell. Where, oh where was the girl after the crash? She must have scooted. We’ve learned that Petrino handed a cherry job (pun definitely intended) in the Recruiting Department to Dorrell after over 150 other candidates applied for the job. Then the Coach failed to disclose all this stuff after the accident. Once the Athletic Director and University President learned how much Poon-hound Petrino was thinking with his little head, they fired him “with cause.” That usually means that the fired guy did something that violated his contract…in this case, likely a violation of the morals clause. His booty call cost him $18 million he won’t get paid now. The Razorbacks went 11-2 last season with a lot of starters returning this coming season. But here is the thing that I hate most. Petrino is married with four kids. He betrayed them and humiliated them. And finally in this story…we down here in Atlanta are loving the fact that Petrino got the axe. He came to the Atlanta Falcons in 2007 as a head coach and quit mid-season to run to the Arkansas job. Atlanta hates Bobby Petrino. Now Fayetteville and Little Rock do too.

Entertainment: I went to see The Hunger Games last Saturday. As an action adventure movie, it’s very well done. But then you have to think about the underlying story, which is that some of the states of the USA tried to secede, Washington defeated them and is now punishing them for their insolence and treason. The fact that the despotic State would choose 12 children to fight each other to the death is much like Washington today. The power elite, regardless of party, has no compunction whatsoever about shoving 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds into the desert to carry a rifle and get their limbs blown off. Then Hollywood makes movies like The Green Zone, Jarhead and The Hurt Locker that glorify military service. The best part of this movie is the back story, which is that this book trilogy is wildly popular with the young. That bodes very well for the future. Young people today know that are forced at the point of a gun to pay into a Social Security system that they will never get to use. They know that the national debt has been hung around their necks, not the Baby Boomers. All you have to do to get a taste of the youth disillusionment is to go to a Ron Paul rally. Doctor Paul packs football and basketball stadiums on college campuses and shares a message of solutions, not just platitudes. Go see the Hunger Games. And thank the ticket sales girl that you can see a great movie for only about ten bucks.

Dump DC: Six Letters That Can Change History.

Copyright 2012: Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The Principle Of The Gold Standard Part 9

Editor Notes:

I discovered a remarkable thinker and author recently. Antal E. Fekete is a Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has written outstanding articles and does compelling lectures about money. This is a ten-part series on the gold standard. Ladies and Gentlemen, the first thing that a state must do at secession is invent a monetary system…that is the Power of the Purse. Creating gold money is a lot easier than you think.

The Principle Of The Gold Standard Part 9

Some Things Detwaddled

Cops, Race, Reporters

by Fred Reed

Nobody starts a fist fight with a man holding a gun. Nobody holding a gun starts a fist fight with his left hand. Nobody who is winning a fist fight pulls a gun.

Journalism in America, and perhaps everywhere, works according to unacknowledged templates in which the reporter fills in blanks, thus saving him the nuisance of thought, for which he is generally not well suited anyway. In matters of race, it also saves him from being drawn and quartered for Crime Thought. If he follows the template, he is safe. Stupidity, sloth, and cowardice are thus fertilized.

A favorite template is: evil racist white cop shoots meritorious black because the cop hates blacks.

This is twaddle. Why is it twaddle? Because every white cop knows that if he shoots a black, he will first be savaged in the local and quite likely the national media. He will then be suspended and probably fired, losing both income and years toward retirement. An ambitious prosecutor will charge him with murder and, in the cities, a black jury will lynch him. A civil suit may follow, led by a lawyer seeking a national reputation. The cop, freshly fired, will not be able to pay his legal bills or his mortgage.

Do you really think he is going to do this to himself intentionally?

A variation on the template is: evil white cop deliberately shoots unarmed meritorious black. The “deliberately” part is tacit but strongly implied. The cop usually says he thought the dead guy had a gun. The media dismiss this with an implicit “Oh, sure.”

Let us play a little game in the peace and security of your living room. You will be a cop responding to an armed-robbery call at a Seven-Eleven, and you will have your pistol in your hand. I will play the robber, initially with my back to you as you enter the store. I will tell you before the game begins that I will have in my hand, close to my body, either a (toy) gun or a dayglo-yellow plastic banana.

You will yell “Freeze!” or something else suitably dramatic. I will then turn, very fast—which is how it would go down in real life—and point the object in my hand at you. Your job is to decide to shoot me or not.

If I am holding the gun, and you don’t shoot, I will, and for a month or so your kids will say, “Mommy, why doesn’t Daddy come back?” If I am holding the banana and you do shoot, you just killed an unarmed kid, he was such a nice boy, everybody liked him, it was a banana for god’s sake. The joker in this deck is that I will, every time, be able to get a round or two off before you can shoot—if you wait to see what I am holding—because you have to make a decision and I don’t. Do you see how this might make for an unstable evening?

That’s in your living room. Try it for real. You’re a cop and you screech into the parking lot, bar lights going. You are scared. You are pumped up on adrenaline. People are screaming. You don’t know who the hell the bad guy is. Somebody is on the floor bleeding out. A guy turns suddenly toward you….

If the robber is white, you will be suspended, there will be a one- or two-day story in the papers, the incident will be investigated until everyone forgets about it, and you will be back on duty. If the dead man is black, you killed him for his color, you racist swine. Tell your wife to get a job.

Another media template is “profiling.” In real police work, it means simply the recognition of patterns. Let me give a few examples.

In a region known for prostitution, a young woman is leaning against a lamp post in fish-net stockings, a plastic mini-skirt up to her armpits, and eight pounds of lipstick. A cop will profile her as a hooker.

Maybe she isn’t. Profiling is statistical. Maybe she just didn’t have enough money for a longer skirt, and she may think the lamp post is about to fall down and wants to support it. But the odds are with the profile. This is how profiles work, and why they are sometimes wrong.

A cop is patrolling in ritzy Montgomery County, in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. A pricey car full of white teenagers tops beside him at a light. The kids see the cruiser and look straight ahead, fixedly, like statues. This isn’t how kids normally act. The cop runs the tags. Stolen, for a joy ride. He is profiling.

A cop sees a scruffy unshaved man driving a new BMW. Nine times out of ten, the car has been stolen. People who buy Beemers do not usually look as if they slept in dumpsters. The cop finds an excuse, which a cop can always do, and pulls him over.

If the driver is white, he is arrested if the car is stolen, or sent on his way if it isn’t. Either way, it is profiling. If the driver is black and scruffy because he is seventeen and making an adolescent statement, and the car belongs to his father who is a surgeon, then it is racial profiling. In the real world, the kid will get stopped over and over and be furious. But if the car was stolen, and the cop doesn’t check it out, daddy’s new Beemer will be in a chop shop in twenty minutes. Take your choice.

Whites all engage in profiling, chiefly of blacks. If you are white, when was the last time you went at night into the black inner city for dinner? Why?

Whether your profiling is in fact racial is debatable. You are walking down a dimly lit street and hear footsteps behind you. You turn and see three black men in business suits, carrying briefcases. Do you worry? No. If you see three young blacks in hoods, or three Hell’s Angels with bicycle chains in their hands, you do. Maybe they are very nice Hell’s Angels on their way to repair a bicycle, but you play the odds. You are profiling.

Let’s play another game. We will recruit a group of black students from Yale, put them in hoodies and butt-hanger pants, and have them walk by night, talking loudly in Ebonics, through a neighborhood inhabited by the staff of the Washington Post, crossing lawns. You will give me a dollar for every call the cops get about it.

Profiling. I’ll spend the summer in the south of France.

All original material © Violeta de Jesus Gonzalez Munguia
www.FredOnEverything.net