Manufactured Crisis

By D. Lindley Young

WASHINGTON (PRS) - A wise man once said “If you rob Peter to pay Paul you’ll have a lot of Pauls”. That seems, at least in part, to be the debate over the debt ceiling or so called debt “crisis”. As Obama jockeys for position in the 2012 presidential campaign, its is about the "blame." Let's say that Obama exacerbated America's financial by pitting Americas against each other.   His campaign moves in the direction of division not unity.  He pits the haves and the have nots, the poor and the rich, and the rich and the super-rich,, democrats against republicans, liberals against conservatives  as a Robin Hood mentality emerges where wealth is taken from the rich and redistributed to the poor becomes more prominent. Full Article>>

Iraq Update: Not what we hoped for

By D. Lindley Young

Compound where Osama bin Laden was killed is becoming an attraction

Killing Osama bin Laden: The Consequences

By D. Lindley Young
Originally Published in The Knoxville Journal

Sometimes death creates historic myths and questions that traverse through history. Many are still debating who shot John Kennedy. Others question whether John Wilkes Booth worked alone on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. There are situations where in death certain people are elevated to some kind of mythical status beyond what or who, they really were.

Many questions surround the killing, if not assassination, of Osama Bin Laden. President Obama said “Justice has been done”. International reaction is mixed. Some believe the assassination of Osama Bin Laden was a killing of what they perceived to be a “good   man”. Perspective and perception are the whole thing. While Americans exuded jubilation dancing in the streets, chanting “USA, USA, USA”, others in the Middle East and the Muslim world were hostile to what may be termed as dancing on the grave of Osama Bin Laden. To them, it is no different than our reaction to those celebrating the 9/11 attack upon America killing approximately 3,000 innocent civilians.

While it is generally accepted in America that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania resulting in hundreds of deaths, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen resulting in the death of 17 US soldiers, 9/11, the tube attacks in Great Britain and virtually all major terrorist attacks and suicide bombings around the world, others would argue that the evidence of Osama’s participation in these terrorist acts was, at best, scant. In fact, al-Qaeda was first learned about from an informant, of questionable reliability, and promoted in the United States. It was not until after President Bush and others accused al-Qaeda of 9/11 that Osama took up the name and positioned himself as its leader.

Osama Bin Laden may have been no more than a braggart after 9/11, trying to make himself feel important at a dinner with some friends that was recorded. Little evidence exists of Osama Bin Laden’s coordination of any of these attacks. Yes, there is no doubt that he released a lot of tapes saying what was going to happen to the United States and that he declared war on the US in 1996. Few Americans would dispute that the world is better off without Osama Bin Laden, just as the world is better off without Saddam Husain.

However, questions concerning Osama Bin Laden’s killing at the direction of President Barack Obama have already spawned conspiracy theories and legitimate debates as to the consequences of the President’s action. Some question the timing of the killing since Barack Obama had known about the location, or alleged location of Osama Bin Laden for months, if not years, and during his campaign for President in 2012 saw the opportunity to boost himself in the ratings and accent his claims of decisiveness and being  a war president. In his announcement that he had killed OBL he gave scant credit to George Bush, and the dedication of many others who had tracked Bin Laden for years, and touted himself as the tip of the spear so to speak.

One of the big questions now is what will be the consequences of killing Osama Bin Laden, disposing of his body at sea, and reaction by the President, Hillary Clinton, and Americans which could be perceived as arrogance and to a degree braggadocio. For example, Hillary Clinton said “Our message to the Taliban remains the same, but today it may have even greater resonance: you cannot wait us out, you cannot defeat us, but you can make the choice to abandon al-Qaeda and participate in a peaceful political process.” This statement may be perceived as provocative, and almost a dare, for an enraged al-Qaeda, Taliban, and large portion of the Muslim world, who have hate in their hearts because the west killed what to them was a Muslim leader.

Time will tell whether killing Osama Bin Laden was worth the consequences. It was widely believed that Osama Bin Laden was more of a figurehead than one who actually plotted and carried out the terrorist attacks. Yes, there appears to be evidence that he provided financing and inspiration for atrocities committed in the name of al-Qaeda and was closely associated with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was the mastermind of 9/11.

However, few would doubt that the killing of Osama Bin Laden will make any difference in the radical Islamic terrorists around the world. Another will rise to the top as the figurehead of al-Qaeda and some believe that al-Zawahiri may lead al-Qaeda. We will recall that OBL had urged individual jihads around the world and many attacks, or attempted attacks in the past were in response to that call for individual jihad. That individual jihad remains and the death of OBL could spur greater hostility and more attacks upon America than would have occurred absent Obama’s decision to assassinate Osama.

The Muslim brotherhood appears to be surfacing as more powerful than al-Qaeda because it organizes better in the communities and is spreading its message politically. The Muslim brotherhood has announced a war upon Israel and has said it will attack Israel in January of 2012. Many will recall that OBL, in one of his famous tapes, said that Israel will be hit before al-Qaeda, or let’s say the Muslim brotherhood, or radical Islamists around the world, and even in America, would hit America. There is concern that the death of Osama Bin Laden will elevate his status as a martyr and inspire action to fulfill his prophecy of hitting America after Israel has been attacked.

Another big question arising out of the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the location of that killing, is whether Pakistan had been covering up for Osama Bin Laden, for the past six or more years. Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, only 75 miles from capital city Islamabad, and near a Pakistani military training academy.  He was located in a large house, if not a mansion, that was surrounded by 8 layers of walls as high as 18 feet and barbed wire. Although, there were numerous Pakistani generals and high military personnel living in the same neighborhood, Pakistan pretended not to know where OBL was and it is believed that members of the Pakistani government, its military, and the ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence) could not help but know where he was. For years Pakistan’s ISI has been accused of having close ties to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and to OBL. Now, in the minds of many, doubt as to those relationships no longer exists. Pakistan took billions of dollars every year in US aid, yet, was not loyal to America and may have offered up several terrorists to convince America it was loyal in the war on terror, while such offerings were part of a plot to protect Osama Bin Laden and conceal where he was located.

Several members in Congress are calling for America to cut off foreign aid to Pakistan. "Pakistan must prove to the US that they didn't know that bin Laden was in the compound," said Joe Lieberman. He continued, "We have a lot of reason to believe that elements of their intelligence community continue to be very closely in touch with -- and perhaps supportive with -- terrorist groups that are fighting us and Afghans in Afghanistan". Senator Carl Levin chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee also commented "I think that the Pakistani army and intelligence have a lot of questions to answer," and Texas Republican Ted Poe wondered "Why do we give money to Lebanon, a country that now is controlled by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that's firing missiles into Israel? Why do we do that?"

There are a couple of things that are for sure. One is that America must be even more vigilant in protecting our borders, intercepting plots by sleeper cells already in America, and guarding against an anti-American sentiment that may have just thrown gas on the fire. Every American eye and ear must be on the lookout as they may be the best guardians for protecting America. Full Article>>

 See  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2623

Obama: The Cheater

By D. Lindley Young

Barack Obama was supposed to be “good at caucuses”. However, if the truth be known, what he was good at was “cheating.”  In other words, he cheated his way to the presidency and his manipulation of the caucuses and threats to super delegates are what made the difference.

Now, caucus states make up only 1.1 million (3%) of all democratic votes. However, the caucus states select 626 (15%) of the delegates. There are 4,048 delegates, including 795 Super- delegates.

The Super-delegates include the following: elected members of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors, Democratic U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives (including non-voting delegates), distinguished party leaders (current and former Presidents and Vice Presidents); former Democratic leaders of the Senate and House; former DNC chairmen and unpledged "add-on's" chosen by the DNC.

With respect to the caucuses, Gloria Allred said “All I know is that there are numerous allegations that the caucuses were not conducted in a way that would withstand a great deal of scrutiny and there are serious allegations about what went on and I just think we need to eliminate the caucuses.” However, there are witnesses to the cheating and threats employed by Obama and his supporters.

People were threatened because they were pulling the covers off of the manipulation of the caucuses by Obama and his team and making noise about the fact that Howard Dean and the DNC approved of the unfair and deceptive practices in violation of democratic rules.  

A documentary entitled We Will Not Be Silenced provides all the evidence one would need. In that documentary an anonymous African-American in Gary, Indiana reported the following, “Probably the worst thing that we saw in Gary, Indiana was parents coming into the office saying that the Gary Public School System had bussed their children to Crown Point, Indiana to vote in the election. And that’s great, that’s a great civics lesson. But if children were being told to go in and vote for Obama, which they were, their parents were outraged, they were livid and they wanted to know what could be done about this.”

He went on, “And they brought in an actual slate of candidates that each student had been given to take to the poles to vote for Mr. Obama and his slate. That was atrocious because what lesson in civics were the kids to learn by that? What, win by any means necessary? Because the right to vote is a sacred vote in America so how could we take school children, bus them on a school day, tell them who to vote for, then pay for their lunch and dismiss them early on taxpayer money? So yeah, the voter fraud was rampant in Gary.” Some of these children may not have been old enough to vote.

On film John Siegel, El Paso Area Captain said “Some people saw outright cheating, other people just saw strong arm tactics, I saw fraud.”

In the documentary We Will not be Silenced an unidentified lady said, “You’re supposed to sign these sheets and those sheets are supposed to be controlled and passed out and, you know, have you maintain order. None of that was done; the sheets were just flying all over the place. You could put in your own names; you could add your own sheets or anything. It was just filled with fraud.”

Dr. Linda Hayes found physical evidence of fraud. She quoted the New York Times, Monday, July 21^st 2008 edition, “The votes for Hillary by popular vote were 1,459,000, the votes for Obama were 1,358,000. So Hillary obtained 51% of the votes in Texas, the popular vote, Obama only obtained 47.4%. So as a scientist and as a mathematician, I was curious as the results came in from the precincts and the precinct caucuses did not reflect those numbers so I could see something was wrong because the precinct caucuses did not reflect the popular vote.”

According to a Midwest Delegate at the Democratic Convention in 2008, “During the roll call vote in the morning, our state was 44-44 on the roll call. Forty-four (44) delegates for Obama, 44 delegates for Clinton. We were pressured to switch. People who held state offices were threatened with their jobs. At the end only four (4) stuck with Senator Clinton.”

Obama and his supporters did much more than manipulate the caucuses. There were actual threats and intimidation by Obama supporters against Hillary supporters .

Super delegate Roy LaVerne Brooks, the Vice Chair of the Texas Democratic Party, who supported Clinton talked about her experience, “I want to talk about a phone call that I received from one of the Senator’s camps as it relates to my race as the Chair of the Texas Democratic Party … When he called, he asked me two major questions, he said ‘Roy, I want you to know if you run, we are not going to be there for you.’” The man clarified that the ‘we,’ he was talking about was “the Obama team” which was not going to be there to support her if she supported Clinton.

A civil rights activist who marched with Martin Luther King witnessed the following, “ I was riding through the communities [of Gary Indiana] … there were some guys that had put up lawn chairs in front of the doors on the walkway going into the … community center … I stopped and parked my car. There was this lady who was walking sort of slowly up the street. And as she was approaching the entranceway going into the building. One of the men called to her, ‘If you’re not voting for Obama go home because you’re not voting here today.’ And she turned and walked away.”

She went on, “This fight is a battle that has gone on for many, many, many years. And to see two African American young men deny the right under a veiled threat of violence to a woman who is an elder, who looked to be about 80 years old and not allow her to vote I found appalling. And of course as I was standing there, there were … maybe four (4) or five (5) people approaching and when they heard that they all turned and walked away … And for two young men to just feel that the end justified the means for reaching that end caused me great grief.”

For those that want to know the truth about Obama’s manipulation of the caucuses and threatening of delegates at the Denver convention of 2008 We Will Not be Silenced is a must see.

Although, there were threats and intimidation of the participants and the producers of the film, they produced it and it presents the truth about the man so many believe in. I challenge anyone to watch We Will Not be Silenced and defend Barack Obama and his supporters for their actions in bastardizing American democracy. The use of ACORN, the public threats by Donna Brazil, Representative Clyburn, the Color of Change and Al Sharpton had to be known by Barack Obama. Yet, he said nothing. He is culpable for condoning, if not encouraging, acts appalling to most Americans. That little difference in caucuses and threats to delegates made the big difference. We cannot let it happen again. Full Article>>