Our whole lives we have been told that we have “freedom”, that we live in a “democracy”, that “we the people” have the ability to choose the kind of society in which we want to live.

However, if you ask most Americans what kind of place they want, I guarantee you that a vast majority would disagree with almost every government action that has been put forward in their lifetime.

If we truly lived in a free society, we would not be in a half-dozen wars across the planet; we would not be subject to authoritarian policies such as the PATRIOT act and the NDAA; and the government would not have grown to become the biggest and most menacing dictatorship in the history of the world.  It seems that in the past year these major events have really resonated with a great number of people, not just in this country, but throughout the world.

In the past, the oppressed would beg and plead with the very people who were responsible for their condition because they knew no other way of affecting change in society.  People would ask the government to change their ways because they were under the impression that those in authority actually cared about them.  After generations of failing to create change through politics, people are now shifting the direction of their message towards one another, instead of pleading with politicians and organizations that don’t care about anyone but themselves.

People are now reaching out to their neighbors and devising methods of solving the problems that are created by politics, without depending on politicians to fix them.  In an article last month, I said that the only way we will truly win this revolution is if we take matters into our own hands in a series of small battles where we call the enemies bluff every time they attempt to assert their illegitimate authority.  Right now is an example of one of those battles, and considering that I have probably never seen this level of activism and participation among the general public, I would say that we are at least moving things in the right direction. Read more at www.activistpost.com

Dr. Gary North thinks the President is serious but not from any fundamental belief in essential freedom of expression by the American people. Instead, the President’s change of heart has everything to do with politics. The threat to SOPA and PIPA gave him a chance to “curry favor” with the protesters, whose numbers are legion. Wrote North: “He saw that this was a way to take a stand that would cost him nothing and gain support with a huge constituency.”

It’s not the principled statesmen that the blackout is designed to influence, it’s the fence-sitters and go-along-to-get-along types. It even works on company owners who wind up on the wrong side of their customers. The new CEO of web hosting service Go Daddy, Warren Adelman [no relation to the writer] offended them by announcing his support for SOPA on December 22. Within five days the company lost 72,000 domain names and was forced to retract the president’s statement.

The power of the Internet continues to grow. Even Tim Wu, a professor at the liberal Columbia Law School, was forced to admit: “This is the first real test of the political strength of the Web and, regardless of how things go, they are no longer a pushover. The Web taking a stand against one of the most powerful lobbyers and seeming to get somewhere is definitely a first.”

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and creator of the “blackout,” put it well:

One of the things we have learned … is that the internet is a powerfully effective tool for the public to organize and have their voices heard. Read more at www.thenewamerican.com

Let’s start with red lines. Here it is, Washington’s ultimate red line, straight from the lion’s mouth.  Only last week Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the Iranians, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

How strange, the way those red lines continue to retreat.  Once upon a time, the red line for Washington was “enrichment” of uranium. Now, it’s evidently an actual nuclear weapon that can be brandished. Keep in mind that, since 2005, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has stressed that his country is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran from the U.S. Intelligence Community has similarly stressed that Iran is not, in fact, developing a nuclear weapon (as opposed to the breakout capacity to build one someday).

What if, however, there is no “red line,” but something completely different? Call it the petrodollar line.

It’s not at all far-fetched to imagine hardcore Full-Spectrum-Dominance practitioners inside the Pentagon riding a false-flag incident in the Persian Gulf to an attack on Iran (or simply using it to pressure Tehran into a fatal miscalculation).  Consider as well the new U.S. military strategy just unveiled by President Obama in which the focus of Washington’s attention is to move from two failed ground wars in the Greater Middle East to the Pacific (and so to China). Iran happens to be right in the middle, in Southwest Asia, with all that oil heading toward an energy-hungry modern Middle Kingdom over waters guarded by the U.S. Navy. Read more at www.counterpunch.org

I had an epiphany today. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, was not written by people who fundamentally misunderstand how the web works. They understand all too well, and want to change it forever.

Behind the almost unreadable (yet truly scary) text of SOPA (and its Senate doppelganger, PIPA, or the Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a desire, likely fueled by powerful media conglomerate backers, to take us all back to the thin-pipe, content-distribution days of 1994 — right before the World Wide Web launched. From the moment the Internet and websites arrived, a veritable Pandora’s box of opportunities have opened to every average Joe and Josephine in the world. Everyone became a content creator. Everyone had an audience.

The Internet also almost immediately became the transport mechanism for a steady flow of pirated content — first images, then music and, when the pipe got fat enough, movies. Major media companies, which once upon a time had sole control of the creation and distribution of popular entertainment, were appalled — and also powerless to stop it.

Yet the language in SOPA is so irrational that I can only assume that the authors and backers wanted nothing more than to fundamentally change the rules of the web: To shut down the open post fields, kill reposting (goodbye, Tumblr), end shared videos (sorry, YouTube), expand the definition of what it means to infringe (sorry, Twitter, no sharing links that aren’t yours). Read more at mashable.com

Following his second-place finish in the New Hampshire GOP primary, when Ron Paul stood before the television cameras to address the crowd, he didn’t crow about his personal victory or denigrate his opponents. Instead, he told supporters that “we are dangerous to the status quo of the country,” and spoke about the power of ideas.

“I think the Intellectual Revolution that’s going on now to restore liberty in this country is well on its way, and there’s no way they’re going to stop the momentum that we have started,” Ron Paul said.

In fact, Gerald Celente has been championing the call for an “Intellectual Revolution” for years. In 2009 he secured the domain www.IntellectualRevolution.com, and in an April 2009 Trend Alert he wrote:

“I am calling for an ‘Intellectual Revolution.’ This is a revolution about thinking – not manning the barricades. It’s about brain power – not brute force.

Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America. We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in intellectual subjugation.” Read more at www.lewrockwell.com

“They’re vultures that are sitting out there on the tree limb, waiting for a company to get sick, and then they swoop in … eat the carcass … and … leave the skeleton.”

So Rick Perry colorfully characterized the private equity firm Bain Capital, once run by Mitt Romney.

How did Bain prosper? Says Perry:

“These companies … come in and loot the people’s jobs, loot their pensions (and) loot their ability to take care of their families.”

Behind this depiction is a 28-minute documentary, “King of Bain,” being aired in South Carolina by a super political action committee that supports Newt Gingrich and is financed by Vegas-Macau casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

The truth, however, turns out to be less colorful, as The Washington Post has awarded the documentary four Pinocchios for “manipulative interviews” and a “highly misleading portrayal of Romney’s years at Bain Capital.”

Undeniably, Americans cherish their economic freedom and respect the men who helped make America great, inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison and industrialists such as Henry Ford.

But they do not revere the men who make millions and billions at the big casinos of capitalism. They do not admire a George Soros for winning his billion-dollar bet shorting the British pound.

They believe that a man’s professional, as well as private, life should be guided by a conscience. And because they recoil from the teachings of Karl Marx does not mean they embrace the values of Ayn Rand. Read more at www.theamericanconservative.com

Since the drug war has become so unpopular with the electorate, instead of politicians actually changing the drug laws, the Department of Defense seeks to reduce and conceal the real costs by transferring the “dirty work” to private contractors to do what “U.S. military forces are not allowed or not encouraged to do.”

The BBC (in Spanish) is reporting that the U.S. Department of Defense is delegating the war on drugs to private mercenary companies. Of those companies, the increasingly infamous organization previously known as Blackwater is said to have received several multimillion-dollar government contracts for “providing advice, training and conducting operations in drug producing countries and those with links to so-called “narco-terrorism” including Latin America.”

The “no bid” contracts, issued under the Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office’s $15 billion dollar budget, are described as “non-specific” and are said to be “juicy” for the private contractors. The Pentagon says “the details of each cost in very general contracts do not go through bidding processes.”

An unnamed analyst says “the responsibility of the public and national security changing from a state’s duty to be a private business…has become the trend of the future.”

Although parts of the drug war have been privatized for years, the BBC reports this “transfer” of responsibilities is an attempt to placate those looking for Pentagon budget cuts in an election year. Read more at www.activistpost.com

Let’s start with red lines. Here it is, Washington’s ultimate red line, straight from the lion’s mouth.  Only last week Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the Iranians, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

How strange, the way those red lines continue to retreat.  Once upon a time, the red line for Washington was “enrichment” of uranium. Now, it’s evidently an actual nuclear weapon that can be brandished. Keep in mind that, since 2005, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has stressed that his country is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran from the U.S. Intelligence Community has similarly stressed that Iran is not, in fact, developing a nuclear weapon (as opposed to the breakout capacity to build one someday).

What if, however, there is no “red line,” but something completely different? Call it the petrodollar line.

It’s not at all far-fetched to imagine hardcore Full-Spectrum-Dominance practitioners inside the Pentagon riding a false-flag incident in the Persian Gulf to an attack on Iran (or simply using it to pressure Tehran into a fatal miscalculation).  Consider as well the new U.S. military strategy just unveiled by President Obama in which the focus of Washington’s attention is to move from two failed ground wars in the Greater Middle East to the Pacific (and so to China). Iran happens to be right in the middle, in Southwest Asia, with all that oil heading toward an energy-hungry modern Middle Kingdom over waters guarded by the U.S. Navy.

So yes, this larger-than-life psychodrama we call “Iran” may turn out to be as much about China and the U.S. dollar as it is about the politics of the Persian Gulf or Iran’s nonexistent bomb.  The question is: What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Beijing to be born? Read more at www.tomdispatch.com

Under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the legal right to produce nuclear power for peaceful purposes. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said on CBS that Iran is not currently trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Nevertheless, the United States and Israel are mounting a campaign of aggression against Iran. The United States has imposed punishing sanctions against Iran that are crippling Iran’s economy, and pressuring other countries and strong-arming financial institutions to stop buying oil from Iran, the world’s third largest exporter.  The Obama administration is also preparing new punitive measures that target the Central Bank of Iran. And the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011 which would outlaw any contact between U.S. government employees and some Iranian officials.

There is also evidence that Israel, with the possible assistance of the United States, has orchestrated the assassinations of at least five Iranian nuclear scientists or engineers since 2007. The New York Times reported: “The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on [January 11] when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran’s morning rush hour.” These assassinations constitute acts of terrorism. There have also been cyber-attacks on Iranian centrifuges and an explosion at a missile facility last year that killed a senior general and 16 other people.

These acts of aggression are designed to provoke Iran to retaliate, including possibly closing the Strait of Hormuz, which will spark a war that could spread to the entire Middle East. Read more at www.globalresearch.ca

FOR SOME weeks now, our almost new Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, has been announcing at every possible opportunity that a new war against the Gaza Strip is inevitable. Several commanders of the troops around the Strip have been repeating this dire forecast, as have their camp-followers, a.k.a. military commentators.

One of these comforted us. True, Hamas can now hit Tel Aviv with their rockets, but that will not be so terrible, because it will be a short war. Just three or four days. As one of the generals said, it will be much more “hard and painful” (for the Arabs) than Cast Lead I, so it will not last for three weeks, as that did. We shall all stay in our shelters – those of us who have shelters, anyway – for just a few days.

Why is the war inevitable? Because of the terrorism, stupid. Hamas is a terrorist organization, isn’t it?

But along comes the supreme Hamas leader, Khaled Mash’al, and declares that Hamas has given up all violent action. From now on it will concentrate on non-violent mass demonstrations, in the spirit of the Arab Spring.

If Israel attacks alone – “the most stupid idea I ever heard of,” as our former Mossad chief put it – that will make no difference. Iran will consider it an American action, and close the strait. That’s why the Obama administration put its foot down, and hand-delivered to Netanyahu and Ehud Barak an unequivocal order to abstain from any military action. Read more at www.counterpunch.org