"Mr. President" aka "The Führer"?

There will soon be no official restrictions on what the president can do.  As usual, most Americans could care less.

Osama bin Laden speaks - in 2001

"I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people." - Usamah Bin-Ladin

Ron Paul: Declare victory and leave

With the announced killing of Osama bin Laden, the U.S. should withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, says Ron Paul. "There is no reason for our presence in the region – unless indeed it was all about oil, nation-building, and remaking the Middle East and Central Asia."

Hopefully bin Laden does not get the last laugh. He claimed the 9/11 attacks were designed to get the US to spread its military dangerously and excessively throughout the Middle East, bankrupting us through excessive military spending as he did the Soviets, and to cause political dissention within the United States. Some 70 percent of Americans now believe we should leave Afghanistan yet both parties seem determined to stay. The best thing we could do right now is prove bin Laden a false prophet by coming home and ending this madness on a high note.

Welcome to 1984, Americans!

Bin Laden's death serves too many agendas not to be seriously questioned, says Paul Craig Roberts.

Everyone knows we killed bin Laden. How could it be otherwise? We – the indispensable people, the virtuous nation, the world's only superpower, the white hats – were destined to prevail. No other outcome was possible.

No one will notice that those who fabricated the story forgot to show the kidney dialysis machine that, somehow, kept bin Laden alive for a decade. No doctors were on the premises.

No one will remember that Fox News reported in December, 2001, that Osama bin Laden had passed away from his illnesses.

If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how it is possible that the 'terror mastermind,' who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America's European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the 'terror mastermind' doing for a decade after 9/11?

Chomsky on bin Laden

MIT Professor Noam Chomsky writes:

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

bin Laden knew too much to stand trial

He was a "creature of American foreign policy," as Butler Shaffer describes him.  Killing him Mafia-style and feeding his carcass to the fishes eliminates any possibility of a singing canary.

What about the various reports years ago claiming bin Laden had died of natural causes?  Well, no one remembers those anymore, and besides, the Taliban has confirmed his most recent death.  But what does that mean?  If OBL is in fact still alive, he could very well prefer letting the world believe he's dead.

But what if Vito Obama really did make the hit on a real, live bin Laden?  Why would the U.S. want to kill the man who's been the excuse for fattening the MIC?  In a word, ratings.  And besides, the MIC doesn't need OBL anymore.

Commentaries on the Osama bin Laden Murder

Go to the usual mainstream sources for the triumphalism, etc., and the solemn memorials.  Here I present views that challenge the "correct" reactions and viewpoints.

In no particular order:

When Liars Murder A Dead Man - Becky Akers

Bigger Than bin Laden – America’s New Public Enemy No.1 - Gerald Celente

The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event - Paul Craig Roberts

Doug Casey on Obama Killing Osama Interviewed by Louis James

Why bin Laden’s Ghost Is Smiling by Eric Margolis

Osama bin Laden’s Second Death by Paul Craig Roberts

Ron Paul — "Osama Bin Laden Is Dead... Time To Come Home" (video)

The US Is Editing 'The Killing of Osama' Film by Jack D. Douglas

Show us the shooter by Pepe Escobar

Media Scrambles as Bin Laden Story Crumbles by Alex Newman

My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death by Noam Chomsky

Dead Men Tell No Tales by jfl

Egypt shut down net with a switch

From Wired.com:

The Egyptian government shut down most of its country’s internet not by phoning ISPs one at a time, but by simply throwing a switch in a crucial data center in Cairo.

That according to a February presentation to the Department of Homeland Security’s Infosec Technology Transition Council, obtained by Wired.com.

The presentation — made by Bill Woodcock, the research director of the Packet Clearing House — argues that the Egyptian Communciations Ministry acted quite responsibly in the procedure it used to cut ties from the net, after the shutdown was ordered by Egypt’s much-feared intelligence service.

Further:

The presentation concludes that the ministry’s course of action in obeying the orders may have some positive effects in the future: “Itʼs unlikely that Egyptʼs communications ministry will ever be asked to flip that switch again.”

Here’s the timeline in the report (verbatim):

Tuesday, January 25:
Amn El Dawla, the State Security Intelligence Service, orders the blocking of Twitter, which was largely accomplished.

Wednesday, January 26:
The State Security Intelligence Service orders the blocking of Facebook, and DNS is blocked but this is not completely effective.

This was the second time they had tried to have Facebook blocked, but the previous attempt had been successfully countered by the communications ministry.

Arrests of people posting to the El Shaheeed and Yom Elsawra 25 January groups on Facebook begin.

 Read the rest of the article.

If Egypt has a switch, what does the high-tech U.S. government have?

Thomas Edison on Success

From today's article on Mises.org, "How Thomas Edison Succeeded":

"What do you think is the first requisite for success in your field, or any other?"

"The ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary."

"Do you have regular hours, Mr. Edison?" I asked.

"Oh," he said, "I do not work hard now. I come to the laboratory about eight o'clock every day and go home to tea at six, and then I study or work on some problem until eleven, which is my hour for bed."

"Fourteen of 15 hours a day can scarcely be called loafing," I suggested.

"Well," he replied, "for 15 years I have worked on an average of 20 hours a day."

When he was 47 years old, he estimated his true age at 82, since working only eight hours a day would have taken till that time.

Mr. Edison sometimes worked 60 consecutive hours upon one problem. Then, after a long sleep, he was perfectly refreshed and ready for another.

A Run for Breakfast

Mr. Dickson, a neighbor and familiar, gives an anecdote told by Edison that well illustrates his untiring energy and phenomenal endurance. In describing his Boston experience, Edison said he bought Faraday's works on electricity, commenced to read them at three o'clock in the morning and continued until his roommate arose, when they started on their long walk to get breakfast. That object was entirely subordinated in Edison's mind to Faraday, and he suddenly remarked to his friend: "'Adams, I have got so much to do, and life is so short, that I have got to hustle,' and with that I started off on a dead run for my breakfast."

"I've known Edison since he was a boy of 14," said another friend; "and of my own knowledge I can say he never spent an idle day in his life. Often, when he should have been asleep, I have known him to sit up half the night reading. He did not take to novels or wild-western adventures, but read works on mechanics, chemistry, and electricity; and he mastered them too. But in addition to his reading, which he could only indulge in at odd hours, he carefully cultivated his wonderful powers of observation, till at length, when he was not actually asleep, it may be said he was learning all the time."

Not by Accident and Not for Fun

"Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions? Do they come to you while you are lying awake nights?" I asked him.

"I never did anything worth doing by accident," he replied, "nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.

"I have always kept," continued Mr. Edison, "strictly within the lines of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable only as novelties to catch the popular fancy."

"I Like It — I Hate It"

"What makes you work?" I asked with real curiosity. "What impels you to this constant, tireless struggle? You have shown that you care comparatively nothing for the money it makes you, and you have no particular enthusiasm for the attending fame. What is it? "

"I like it," he answered, after a moment of puzzled expression. "I don't know any other reason. Anything I have begun is always on my mind, and I am not easy while away from it, until it is finished; and then I hate it."

"Hate it?" I said.

"Yes," he affirmed, "when it is all done and is a success, I can't bear the sight of it. I haven't used a telephone in ten years, and I would go out of my way any day to miss an incandescent light."

Doing One Thing 18 Hours Is the Secret

"You lay down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed in life," I ventured," working 18 hours a day."

"Not at all," he said. "You do something all day long, don't you? Everyone does. If you get up at seven o'clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed.

"Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object — one thing to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application."

They harder they push, the harder we push back

"The surveillance state is now entrenched," writes Michael Edwards. "Free speech is set to be eradicated; and the Internet kill switch has been placed in the White House, while it has been calmly announced that world is indeed run by 'Globocrats,'  but not a conspiracy.  And yet we are aware of it en masse.  The alternative media, talk radio, lone activists, card-carrying organization members, and Facebook virtual activists are all something new for the managers of society to deal with.  This certainly has not been present in past closed totalitarian systems. 

"The dialogue is becoming heated to a point where the elite controllers seem to be worried about what they might have overlooked in their desire to predict and control mass populations.  So much so that they have engaged us, seemingly looking for a truce . . . or perhaps a bait and switch.  They have been pushed to the limit of revealing their structure and many of their actions because of free humanity's mass awakening.  They now want to have a role within our human world; a place where they feel that they very well could be excluded.  The new world being born through climatic and technological change is one that very well could be total chaos.  In such a world, the all-encompassing State has no role; the individual regains control over their own actions and solutions to the problems which lie ahead.  The worldwide protests taking place are a clear sign that individuals are feeling powerful even in the face of increasing threats.  Each form of resistance is communicated on a global scale, and serves as an example to others, building into a powerful force of solidarity.  The more oppressive the response by governments, the nearer to victory we are." (emphasis added)

Lew Rockwell on state aggression

Lew's post is so good I repost it here completely. The only point I question is the apparent understatement of the murders committed by governments in the 20th century.  In his review of Death by Government by R. J. Rummel (1994), Richard Ebeling writes:

How many people, in fact, have been killed by government violence in the 20th century? Not deaths in wars and civil wars among military combatants, but mass murder of civilians and innocent victims with either the approval or planning of governments — the intentional killings of their own subjects and citizens or people under their political control? The answer is: 169,198,000. If the deaths of military combatants are added to this figure, governments have killed 203,000,000 in the 20th century.

Even these figures are probably low.  The point is the state is the bloodiest institution in human history.

Questioning the Legitimacy of the State
Posted by Lew Rockwell on January 11, 2011 12:34 PM

Jacob Weisberg of Slate knows who’s really to blame for the attempted murder of a congresswoman:

At the core of the far right’s culpability is its ongoing attack on the legitimacy of U.S. government—a venomous campaign not so different from the backdrop to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Then it was focused on “government bureaucrats” and the ATF. This time it has been more about Obama’s birth certificate and health care reform. In either case, it expresses the dangerous idea that the federal government lacks valid authority. It is this, rather than violent rhetoric per se, that is the most dangerous aspect of right-wing extremism.

So, if you do not accept the asserted right of a socially parastic group of officials, tax collectors, money-printers, redistributors, spies, regulators, planners, soldiers, jailers, capital punishers, and police–the US government–to rule and spy on every aspect of your life, to seize whatever amount of your property it deems proper, to send you and your children to kill in foreign lands, to read your emails and listen to your phone calls, to run your family, your business, your community: you foment murder. Does this mean, by the way, that those who promoted the recent aggressive wars of the US government, which have built a mountain of Muslim skulls under the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, are accessories to murder? Of course not. Anyone killed by the US government deserves it. Anyone seized in secret, renditioned to a federal torture facility, abused and and held in secret or even killed in secret, deserves it. To doubt the validity of such actions by the US government makes you no better than a government-trained bomber who bombed a government building.

In other words, we are to believe that what Murray Rothbard correctly called “a gang of thieves writ large,” the State, owns us. We refuse to be owned. And all over America and the world, more and more people, young people, especially, are coming to understand the anatomy of the State, and its filthiest activity, mass murder. It is the job of anarcho-capitalists and our allies precisely to delegitmatize that locus of aggressive violence, the State. Even our Austrian economics seeks peace and social cooperation above all else. We understand that government harms both, and prosperity, too.

Everyone knows that private criminality is wrong. The far-vaster public criminality, which gave the world more than 100 million murders in just the last century, remains enshrined in too many minds.  Of course, the delegitmization process is, of necessity, non-violent, and not only for religious and other ethical reasons. It is the US government that has the atom bombs, the chemical and biological weapons, the armies, the spies, the secret police, the black ops, the CIA assassins, the mercenaries–a million and one instruments of horror. Even if we wanted to, and we do not, we could not possibly compete on those grounds. However, we have the truth, and when that truth is known and understood, the edifice of aggression can topple over, without violence. Freedom and peace: that is our hope, that is our prayer, that is our goal.