The Goddess of Freedom:   From Libertas to Lady Liberty 

by Selena Fox   Circle Magazine

The honoring of the Goddess of Freedom began more than two thousand years ago among the ancient Romans. They called Her, Libertas, the Latin word for Freedom. Libertas signified freedom of action, freedom from restraint, independence, rights, and related forms of personal and social liberty.

The Roman religion had a large and complex pantheon with a great assortment of Goddesses, Gods, and other sacred forms. Ancient Romans revered and deified certain values, known as Virtues, and Libertas was one of the most important of these. A few of the more than two dozen other private and public Virtues were Hope (Spes), Justice (Justica), Piety (Pietas), and Courage (Virtus). According to their religion, Roman citizens were to uphold Virtues in their personal lives as well as in the culture as a whole.

Libertas as a deity usually took the form of a Goddess. A temple to Her on the Aventine Hill in Rome was dedicated around 238 BCE. Sometimes She merged with the chief Roman God Jupiter, in the form of Jupiter Libertas, whose feast was celebrated on April 13. Libertas also was closely associated with the Goddess Feronia, and some viewed them as aspects of the same Goddess, including the Roman scholar Varro, a contemporary of Cicero. Feronia is thought to have been originally an ancient agricultural and fire Goddess among the Etruscan and/or Sabine peoples. During the Roman Republic, Feronia's feast day was November 13. She was honored in central Italy as the Goddess of freedwomen and freedmen, and She was associated with the granting of freedom to slaves. Part of the passage from slavery into freedom in Roman society involved having the head ritually shaved, being ceremonially tapped by a magistrate with a rod, called a vindicta, and then wearing a cap, known as a pilleus, to symbolize freed status.

Some of the Roman depictions of Libertas have survived to this day on coins and other artifacts. Libertas usually is pictured as a matron in flowing classical dress. She often is shown holding both the Liberty Pole (vindicta) and Liberty Cap (pilleus). In some depictions Libertas wears the Liberty Cap or a crown of Laurel leaves. Sometimes She carries a spear instead of the Liberty Pole. Sometimes the Goddess Liberty is shown with a Cat at Her feet.

Although the Roman empire is no more, the Goddess Liberty still survives. Over the centuries and across cultures, She has continued to signify Freedom in Her appearances in paintings, sculptures, songs, stories, poems, and other literature. In recent centuries, the form She has most often taken is that of Lady Liberty.

Libertas as Lady Liberty began emerging in America during the colonial era as part of the American quest for political independence from Britain. American patriot Paul Revere may have been the first to depict Lady Liberty in that context. In 1766, on the obelisk he created in celebration of the repeal of the Stamp Act, he used the image of Liberty with a Liberty Pole surmounted by a Liberty Cap. Another patriot leader, Thomas Paine, included Her in his poem, the "Liberty Tree," referring to Her as "The Goddess of Liberty." Freedom Goddess depictions not only emerged in America during its Revolution, but a few years later in France during its own Revolution, with the female symbol of the French Republic, the Marianne, depicted wearing the Liberty Cap, and often accompanied by Liberty's Cat.

As the USA became a nation, Lady Liberty became part of the official symbology of some of its newly formed states. Holding Her Liberty Cap atop the Liberty Pole, Lady Liberty appears along with the Goddess of Justice on the New York State Flag. On the obverse of the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia, created in 1776, Liberty holds the Liberty Cap atop a pole in Her right hand and is flanked on Her left side by the Roman Goddess of Eternity (Aerternitas) and on Her right by the Goddess of Fruitfulness (Ceres). In addition, the Goddess Liberty, also with a Liberty Pole and Cap, appears with Ceres on the front of the Great Seal of New Jersey, adopted in 1777.

As more states were formed in the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries, some of them also chose to include Liberty imagery as part of their iconography. In addition, Lady Liberty images appeared on coins, paintings, stamps, and in sculptures throughout the land, including the colossal bronze Statue of Freedom, which was commissioned in 1855 and in 1863 set on the top of the dome of the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, where it can still be seen today. It is interesting to note that during America's Civil War era both sides claimed Liberty and sought to use Her images to promote their own causes. Among abolitionists, Liberty was depicted freeing slaves, while states rights advocates used Her image to signify independence from the "tyranny" of centralized government. Today, Liberty images are used in connection with a wide range of political parties, candidates, and positions on various issues.

The most famous of the Freedom Goddess' American depictions, the Statue of Liberty, was a gift from France to the United States in honor of America's 100th birthday. Originally called "Liberty Enlightening the World," the Statue of Liberty was designed by French Freemason and sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi with the assistance of engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. The head of Lady Liberty's statue wears a crown with solar rays, similar to the crown on the Colossus of Rhodes, a magnificent monument to the Sun God Helios that once stood astride a Greek harbor and was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The seven rays on Liberty's crown represent the seven continents and seven seas. The torch Liberty holds in Her right upstretched hand is the Flame of Freedom, and underneath Her feet are broken chains representing overcoming tyranny and enslavement. The tablet Liberty holds in Her left hand is inscribed with July 4, the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the USA as a nation. Her flowing gown is similar in design to depictions of Libertas in ancient Rome.

More than 100,000 people in France contributed money to the creation of the 151 foot (46 meters) high copper clad Statue of Liberty. In the USA, in a grass-roots effort spearheaded by newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, thousands of Americans contributed money for the creation of the 65 foot high granite pedestal to serve as the Statue's base. The Statue was completed in Paris in May of 1884 and shipped in pieces to the USA where it was reassembled. Work on pedestal construction began in August 1884 following the laying of the cornerstone by Masons of the Grand Lodge of New York in a traditional Masonic ritual. The Statue of Liberty was erected on top of Her pedestal in New York Harbor on Bedloe Island, which was renamed Liberty Island in Her honor seventy years later. Thousands of people attended the dedication ceremony held on October 28, 1886, including Suffragettes, who, while circling the island in a boat, loudly proclaimed through a megaphone their freedom demand that women have the right to vote. A plaque was added in 1903 to an interior wall of the pedestal containing "The New Colossus," the poem written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 as a tribute to the Statue and to immigrants coming to America for freedom. In the twentieth century, in preparation for the one hundredth birthday of the Statue of Liberty, an extensive renovation project was undertaken from 1984-1986. On the weekend of July 4, 1986, a great centennial celebration was held and the newly restored Statue was re-opened to visitors. The Statue of Liberty continues to be one of the most beloved of America's civic shrines. The United Nations designated it as a World Heritage site in 1984. The Statue of Liberty receives over 5 million visitors each year.

Lady Liberty images can be found not only throughout America, but elsewhere in the world. She sometimes makes appearances at political rallies, usually in Her Statue of Liberty form. Such was the case in May, 1989, when She gained worldwide attention as She emerged as the Goddess of Democracy in student demonstrations in Beijing, China. Pro-democracy demonstrators erected a 33 foot styrofoam and plaster Liberty Goddess with torch image in Tiananmen Square, and this became a powerful rallying symbol of their quest for Freedom. Although, a short time later, tanks moved in and crushed this statue as well as demonstrators and their demonstrations, their vision and work for Democracy continues within and outside of China.

Images of Lady Liberty now abound in American popular culture. In addition to the variety of Statue of Liberty replicas, postcards, t-shirts, and other souvenirs at tourist shops in New York City and elsewhere, Lady Liberty imagery can be found in movies and on television, on postage stamps and posters, in books and newspapers, in art museums and theaters, in poems and songs, in cartoons and advertisements, in public squares and private homes, in pageants and costume parties, plus in many other contexts. Lady Liberty's biggest Feast day in the USA is Independence Day, July 4. She is honored on other occasions as well, such as having Her own float in the globally televised Rose Parade which took place on January 1, 2000 in Pasadena, California, USA. The float, "Liberty for All," was sponsored by the Family of Freemasonry and included a 50 foot high replica of the Statue of Liberty.

To many contemporary Wiccans and other Pagans, Lady Liberty is more than a symbol. She is a powerful and ancient Goddess who can guide, inspire, protect, and comfort. Pagans have invoked Lady Liberty in rituals for personal and/or social liberation. Some Pagans include Her image in their household shrines and altars. Because of Her ancient Pagan origins, Lady Liberty is an excellent Goddess to work with in support of Pagan religious freedom.

New World Order

How The Government’s Lies Become Truth

Paul Craig Roberts      Prisonplanet.com      Sept 30, 2012

In my last column, “A Culture of Delusion,” I wrote that “Americans live in a matrix of lies. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision.” This column will use two top news stories, Iranian nukes and Julian Assange, to illustrate how lies become “truth.”
The western Presstitute media uses every lie to demonize the Iranian government. On September 28 in a fit of unmitigated ignorance, the UK rag, Mail Online, called the president of Iran a “dictator.” The Iranian presidency is an office filled by popular election, and the authority of the office is subordinate to the ayatollahs. Assange is demonized alternatively as a rapist and a spy.
The western media and the US Congress comprise the two largest whore houses in human history. One of their favorite lies is that the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, wants to kill all the Jews. Watch this 6 minute, 42 second video of Ahmadinejad’s meeting with Jewish religious leaders. Don’t be put off by the title. Washington Blog is making a joke. http://www.globalresearch.ca/horrifying-graphic-video-of-iranian-leader-savagely-abusing-jews/ 
Last week the news was dominated by the non-existent but virtually real Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, blatantly intervened in the US presidential election, demanding that Obama specify the “red line” for attacking Iran.
Netanyahu believes his maximum leverage over Obama, the president of the “world’s only superpower,” is just prior to the election. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own without the risk of Israel’s destruction. But Netanyahu reasons that if he attacks Iran the week before the US election, Obama will have to join in or lose the Jewish vote for not supporting Israel in states such as Florida, which has a large Jewish population and many electoral votes. If the election is close, Netanyahu, a person consumed by arrogance and hubris, might exercise his threat and attack Iran, despite the opposition of former chiefs of Israeli intelligence and military, the opposition party, and a majority of the Israeli people.
In other words, the outcome of the “superpower’s” presidential election might depend upon whether the sitting president of the “superpower” is sufficiently obedient to the crazed Israeli prime minister.
That the outcome of the US presidential election could depend upon the agenda of the prime minister of a tiny country that exists only because of US financial, military, and diplomatic support, especially the UN veto, should disturb those Americans who think that they are the “indispensable people.” How indispensable are you when you have to do what the Israeli prime minister wants?
The US media makes certain that this question never enters american minds. Americans have been told that if Iran doesn’t have nukes, it has a nuke weapons program. This is what the politicians of both parties, the media, and the Israel Lobby tell them. Americans are told this despite the facts that the CIA and the National Intelligence Estimate stick to the conclusion that Iran abandoned its flirtation with a nuclear weapon in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran report no evidence of a nuclear weapons program and no evidence of any diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.
Moreover, what could Iran do with a nuclear weapon, other than use it against an aggressor? Any offensive use would result in Iran’s destruction.
Why do Americans believe Iran has nukes or is making nukes when the CIA says they are not? The answer is that Netanyahu says so, and the elected members of the US government in the House, Senate, and White House are afraid to contradict the Israeli prime minister, as are the American print and TV media. Some “superpower” we are! The “indispensable people” have to grovel in the dirt before Netanyahu. Americans are not even aware of their shame.
Iran, unlike Israel, signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories to the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy requires a low level of enrichment, 5% or less. The minute Iran announced a nuclear energy program, the Israeli government and its prostitutes in Washington lied that Iran was building a bomb. For exercising its legal rights under the treaty, Iran has been painted as a rouge criminal state and demonized.
A nuclear weapon requires 95% enrichment. To get to 5% from scratch and then to 95% is a long drawn out process. I think I first started hearing Israeli government claims of an Iranian nuke back in he 1990s of last century.
When Iran announced that, in view of the sanctions imposed by the US, sanctions that affect medical supplies, Iran was going to enrich uranium to 20% in order to supply itself with medical isotopes, the Israeli allegations that this would lead to a bomb resulted in Iran saying that the Iranian government was content for France or some other country to supply their medical isotopes and would not pursue enrichment beyond energy requirements. The US and Russia were also mentioned as suppliers.
According to the NY Times on September 29, 2011, “the Iranian president told the Washington Post and later, in basically the same terms, the New York Times: ‘if you [the United States and Europe] give us uranium grade 20 percent now, we will stop production.’”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/30iht-edvaez30.html?_r=0
On Israel’s orders Washington vetoed the Iranian concession. Solving the problem is not what the Israeli government wants. The problem has to be kept alive so that it can be used to foment an attack on Iran.
The Iranian nuke is one of those grand hoaxes, a lie designed to hide the real agenda.
What is the real agenda?
The real agenda hiding behind the hysterical concern about an Iranian nuke, is the rightwing Israeli government’s design on the water resources of southern Lebanon.
Twice the Israeli government sent the Israeli army into southern Lebanon to occupy and eventually annex the territory. And twice Hizbollah defeated and drove out the vaunted Israeli army.
The few thousand Hizbollah fighters were able to defeat the Israeli army, which is equipped and supplied by US taxpayers’ dollars while Americans are foreclosed out of their homes and left unemployed as Washington applauds the offshoring of their jobs, because Syria and Iran provide Hizbollah with financial support and weapons that destroy Israeli tanks.
Syria, of course, is currently resisting its destruction by Israel and its american puppet state. The overthrow of Syria hasn’t gone well, because the Russians and Chinese didn’t go along with it, like they stupidly did in Libya. But the far rightwing Israeli government has concluded that with american prestige involved in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, the deed will be done.
That leaves Iran. The Israeli government knows that it cannot be forthright and say that it wants Americans to go to war with Iran so that Israel can steal southern Lebanon. But if fear over nonexistent nukes can muster the Western populations to support an attack on Iran, Iran can be eliminated as Hizbollah’s supplier, and Israel can steal the water from Lebanon.
There is no discussion whatsoever of the real agenda anywhere in the US print and TV media. I doubt there is any discussion anywhere in Europe, which is a collection of american puppet states.
Will we get World War III for Christmas? Possibly, if the US election is close as it approaches. If the election is too close to call, Netanyahu might throw the dice and rely on Obama following his lead. Iran will be attacked, and the consequences are unknowable.
Let’s turn to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Like Iran, Assange has been demonized, not on the basis of facts but on the basis of lies.
Washington, which poses as a purveyor of human rights, has been mistreating if not torturing Bradley Manning since May 2010 without bringing him to trial in an effort to make Manning say that he and Assange constitute a spy team working against the US.
Assange is a celebrity, because Wikileaks publishes the news leaked to the organization that the Presstitute media suppresses. While in Sweden, Assange was picked up by two celebrity-hungry women who took him home to their beds. The women later bragged of their conquests on social media, but apparently when they found out that they were rivals, they turned on the “two-timer” Assange and made charges. One claimed that he had not used a condom as per her request, and the other claimed that she had offered one helping but he had taken two.
Whatever the accusations, the Swedish prosecutorial office investigated and dismissed the case.
Despite this known fact, the Western Presstitute media reports that Assange is a fugitive evading rape charges by hiding in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Even RT, an alternative media voice, has fallen for this disinformation.
After Assange was cleared in Sweden, a female prosecutor has tried to reopen the case. There is no evidence for her to bring charges, so she demand

New World Order

New Tracking Frontier: Your License Plates

WSJ  | 28 Sept 2012 | 

For more than two years, the police in San Leandro, Calif., photographed Mike Katz-Lacabe's Toyota Tercel almost weekly. They have shots of it cruising along Estudillo Avenue near the library, parked at his friend's house and near a coffee shop he likes. In one case, they snapped a photo of him and his two daughters getting out of a car in his driveway.

Mr. Katz-Lacabe isn't charged with, or suspected of, any crime. Local police are tracking his vehicle automatically, using cameras mounted on a patrol car that record every nearby vehicle—license plate, time and location.

"Why are they keeping all this data?" says Mr. Katz-Lacabe, who obtained the photos of his car through a public-records request. "I've done nothing wrong."

Until recently it was far too expensive for police to track the locations of innocent people such as Mr. Katz-Lacabe. But as surveillance technologies decline in cost and grow in sophistication, police are rapidly adopting them. Private companies are joining, too. At least two start-up companies, both founded by "repo men"—specialists in repossessing cars or property from deadbeats—are currently deploying camera-equipped cars nationwide to photograph people's license plates, hoping to profit from the data they collect.

The rise of license-plate tracking is a case study in how storing and studying people's everyday activities, even the seemingly mundane, has become the default rather than the exception. Cellphone-location data, online searches, credit-card purchases, social-network comments and more are gathered, mixed-and-matched, and stored in vast databases.

Data about a typical American is collected in more than 20 different ways during everyday activities, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Socially Engineering Humanity Under the Planned Society

Globalists Want Chinese-Style Control for Americans Under Agenda 21

Aaron Dykes     Infowars.com     September 28, 2012

While major metropolitan cities including San Francisco, New York and Boston are rolling out tiny micro-apartments, local and rural areas are working across the United States heartland to implement Agenda 21 containment policies by stealth.

Under H.U.D. grants driven by President Obama’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities, regional governments are implementing “smart growth” and “sustainable” policies to force the population into concentrated development patterns that favor insider profits and “green”-branded solutions. It is a “planned-opolis” vision for the future where the State is God and the individual is subservient to the “greater good.”

Whether or not such measures are preferable or favored by a majority is irrelevant to the fact that the public has not been properly informed nor has it been asked about this drastic shift in policies concerning property rights and lifestyle. Instead, a slow and sustained kettling has been underway to corral the population into a total control grid, circumventing the common practices of law while eroding at the natural rights recognized under the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta, and other key documents. If the tyranny is not recognizable by its tip-toeing silence, then it is surely marked by its deceptive aims.

The already evident abuses of world government bodies (under various names and sub-organizations) is masked by declarations of respect for the environment, for human rights, and other lofty ideals. In reality, however, there are ruthless control freaks manipulating the terms of our enslavement. Real life measures for carbon tax schemes, energy austerity, food management, species & habitat management, re-wilding (land seizure) takeovers and more have been vehicles for eugenicist-banker led agendas– indeed ambitious components of Agenda 21 that are changing the rules of the game to the eternal detriment of freedom.

New World Order

Bizarre TSA “Freeze” Security Drill Caught on Camera

Pointless policy little more than “obedience training”

Paul Joseph Watson    Prison Planet.com    September 27, 2012

The TSA’s bizarre new policy where it orders travelers who have already passed security to “freeze” on command has been caught on camera, with the clip illustrating once more how the federal agency has implemented a series of ludicrous policies that seemingly have no other purpose than to act as an obedience test for the traveling public.

The video shows the final 24 seconds of a 2 minute period during which travelers were ordered to “freeze” by TSA workers and were not allowed to move.

One TSA screener is heard to say, “stay right where you are,” at a man who is walking through the airport, as the other static travelers look on in bewilderment.

According to the You Tube user responsible for uploading the clip, “This video was shot within the “secure” area of the terminal, BEYOND the security gate.”

“Note that the TSA “guard” is offering no explanation, only giving harsh threats and orders to stay still. Note that there was NO event or threat taking place of any kind,” he adds.

As we have previously highlighted , the “freeze” policy, which has been experienced by numerous travelers across the country, is known as Code Bravo Sierra or simply Code Bravo by the TSA.

New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey described  how he was caught up in the policy on two separate occasions last year while traveling through airports in Atlanta and Los Angeles.

When Sharkey failed to obey a TSA screener who shouted “freeze,” he was assailed by another traveler who “growled” at him, “You’re supposed to freeze!” as other passengers complied with the bizarre demand. Sharkey later discovered that the TSA had no power to force travelers to comply with the command.

“Passengers are not required to ‘freeze’ in place like statues,” TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee admitted.
“It was clear to me that travelers believed they were required to stop and stand motionless — even those who had cleared security and were merely within shouting distance of the checkpoint. Officers seemed to reinforce that impression, too,” writes Sharkey.
As WeWontFly.com’s James Babb describes, this is nothing more than “obedience training.” The American people and travelers in general are being ‘broken in’ to accept their subservience in what represents the human equivalent of horse training.

“There is literally no other purpose to this “drill” than to reinforce the notion in travelers’ heads that this is a “security state”, and that you may be told to stop dead in your tracks by a TSA “voice of authority” at any time. Legally, TSA has NO RIGHT TO STOP YOU… but it’s hard to imagine that defending your rights by walking away would end well in a (phony) tense situation if there happens to be an armed police officer nearby,” concludes the You Tube user who uploaded the video.

This absurd policy has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with security. Would a terrorist really be so dumb as to make himself stand out from the crowd by refusing to freeze and making himself look conspicuous?

It makes no sense whatsoever, until you realize that this is just another “layer” of pointless TSA security theater. It’s about reinforcing the notion that people are mandated to obey every order made by someone in uniform no matter how asinine.

The TSA has also provoked controversy by implementing other preposterous policies which have a tenuous security justification, most notably a new procedure where TSA agents test travelers’ drinks for explosives after they have already passed through security and purchased beverages inside the secure area of the airport.

Given that these bizarre policies are solely based around coercing obedience and have nothing to do with genuine security, we are encouraging Americans to show civil disobedience and reclaim their human dignity by opting out and filming TSA procedures during Thanksgiving week November 19-26. Click here  for more details about the campaign or click here  for the Facebook page.

Remember, it is your right to opt out of radiation firing naked body scanners and the TSA’s website also admits that it is perfectly legal to film TSA procedures, whether that’s inside an airport, in a subway, at a political event, a music concert or wherever else TSA screeners have infested. The TSA also admits it has no power to force you to “freeze” as is depicted in the video above.

New World Order

India’s Gargantuan Biometric Database Raises Big Questions

Rebecca Bowe    EFF.org      September 28, 2012

The government of India has amassed a database of 200 million Indian residents’ digital fingerprints, iris scans, facial photographs, names, addresses and birthdates. Yet this vast collection of private information is only a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of data it ultimately intends to gather. The Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), the agency that administers Aadhaar — India’s Unique Identity (UID) program — has a goal of capturing and storing this personal and biometric information for each and every one of India’s 1.2 billion residents. Everyone who enrolls is issued a 12-digit unique ID number and an ID card linked to the data.

Once it’s complete, the Aadhaar system will require so much data storage capacity that it is projected to be 10 times the size of Facebook. And while it’s optional to enroll, the program is envisioned as the basis for new mobile apps that would facilitate everything from banking transactions to the purchase of goods and services, which could make it hard for individuals to opt out without getting left behind.

India’s is the largest biometric ID scheme in the world, and the masssive undertaking raises serious questions about widespread data sharing, a lack of legal protections for users’ data, and concerns about whether adequate technical safeguards are in place to keep individuals’ information safe and secure.

Recently, EFF attended a talk by Srikanth Nadhamuni, a technologist and one of the program’s chief architects, at UC Berkeley’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. While he characterized Aadhaar as a cutting-edge tool for fighting corruption and assisting the rural poor, EFF has concerns about the privacy implications of this sweeping effort.

Is Biometric Collection Necessary to Achieve the Program’s Goals?

Nadhamuni framed Aadhaar as a program that could alleviate the plight of India’s rural poor, a large subset of the population that lacks reliable access to government services. “The city governments … were still being run by leather-bound books and pen,” he explained. “Not using technology to improve service delivery was something that we wanted to change. … The thought that I had was, if we could embed a unique number for each baby that was born, and that number got used in all the different applications, then that service delivery could improve. Once you have enrolled yourself, then you can go and buy your rations, or banking transactions, and so on, using authentication.”

Nadhamuni said UID would serve to eliminate fraud in circumstances where it is now impossible to verify individuals’ identities. He described the tedious and costly weekly journey of a laborer to cash a paycheck to illustrate how UID could be used to make peoples’ lives more convenient. He described a system in which UID numbers would spur the development of mobile phone apps, which would allow vendors to scan fingerprints on a handheld device to use UID authentication for all kinds of purposes and transactions.

When evaluating biometric systems, it’s important to determine whether the collection and processing of personal information fit with the program’s stated objectives. The goal of assisting the rural poor is well-intentioned, but the means Nadhamuni is proposing to achieve this end should be carefully examined. It’s also worth asking why, if the stated objective is to aid the rural poor, the UIDAI intends to extend Aadhaar’s reach to each and every one of India’s 1.2 billion residents. EFF remains concerned about the problems inherent in centralized biometric ID databases, systems that have been met with resistance elsewhere and, in the case of Britain, even dismantled in the face of public outcry stemming from privacy concerns.

The creation of such a system raises concerns about the security of users’ highly sensitive personal information. Nadhamuni said very little about whether there is a contingency plan in the case of a data breach, like the one that transmitted Israel’s entire population database onto the Internet in a freely available format. What happens if people start to spoof fingerprint scanners, which German hackers have already proven is a relatively easy feat? What if identity thieves take it a step farther, by spoofing iris scanners (which Javier Galbally showed was possible at the Black Hat Security Conference this past summer)? Unlike a PIN code, a fingerprint or an iris is impossible to cancel and re-issue.

A Centralized Unique ID System is Risky

Nadhamuni seemed to accept without question that implementing a universal ID card would benefit India. “There is no standard identity document in India,” he said. He justified the collection of biometric data by saying that insurmountable overlap between existing governmental databases makes it impossible to create a unique database by merging all existing data sets.

Yet the assumption that there is an inherent need for a governmental framework that would aggregate all individuals’ personal information in one place should not go unchallenged. There are fundamental flaws in a system with a centralized database at its core, which grants a disproportionate amount of control to a single governmental entity that collects and stores the information. Regardless of the security precautions Nadhamuni assured would be in place, the creation of such a database inevitably creates a honeypot of sensitive information that becomes a natural target for would-be criminals.

India has no data privacy protection law to speak of, and the fact that this program is moving ahead in the absence of such a safeguard is problematic, particularly given the widespread data-sharing that is contemplated under this endeavor. Similar proposals have run into legal trouble. In March 2012, the Conseil Constitutionnel, the highest authority on the French Constitution, declared the provisions of a law permitting judicial and police use of a centralized national ID database to be unconstitutional.

In other countries, we’ve seen how biometric data can ultimately be used for purposes other than stated intentions. In Argentina, for instance, a new centralized, nationwide biometric ID will allow law enforcement to “cross-reference” information with biometric and other data initially collected for the purpose of operating a general national ID registry. This reverses the traditional practice of limiting police fingerprint databases to those suspected or convicted of criminal offences.

Once it is built, an enormous system based on the personal information of 1.2 billion people can begin to serve all manner of previously unimagined purposes. What’s more, Nadhamuni suggested biometric identification with Aadhaar could become a convenient part of everyday life: the UIDAI lets private parties accept the IDs and verify their content online, for outsourced financial transactions or authenticating users for third-party applications. For example, people could have their fingerprints scanned on a shopkeeper’s mobile device as a way of paying for items at a shop. 

It’s astonishing to think that the enormous flows of data that would result from these applications – and the associated potential for monitoring Indians’ physical whereabouts and day-to-day lives – would come with few legal safeguards.

Beware of Function Creep

A telling moment in Nadhamhuni’s lecture came when an audience member asked whether Aadhaar would be used for national security purposes. “I don’t know about the linkage between UID and security,” Nadhamuni responded. “I was head of technology, and the specification that I was given was to build a system for social inclusion and the poor. So if there’s a linkage, I don’t know of it, and so I can’t comment on what that linkage is.”

It’s disappointing that he didn’t say more, particularly given this New York Times op-ed by Indian journalist Aman Sethi suggesting that national security was at the root of a government initiative to collect biometric ID that predates Aadhaar and is now moving ahead in sync with the UID program. Function creep – when a program is introduced for one purpose and ultimately used for another – is a serious consideration when assessing biometric ID systems. What will happen when data collected by the UIDAI is used in conjunction with a governmental surveillance program or national security initiative? So far, this question remains unanswered, but there are good reasons to be concerned.

This colossal, IT-driven effort is moving forward without adequate transparency or public dialogue, and it’s no wonder that activists have pushed back against the idea in India. Internet policy researcher Sunil Abraham, of the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society, has voiced concerns over Aadhaar’s identification system and proposed alternatives that would be far less privacy-invasive.

“Privacy protections should be inversely proportional to power,” Abraham wrote in a Business Standard op-ed. “The transparency demanded of politicians, bureaucrats and large corporations cannot be made mandatory for ordinary citizens. Surveillance must be directed at big-ticket corruption, at the top of the pyramid and not retail fraud at the bottom. Even for retail fraud, the power asymmetry will result in corruption innovating to circumvent technical safeguards. 

Government officials should be required by law to digitally sign the movement of resources each step of the way till it reaches a citizen. Open data initiatives should make such records available for public scrutiny. With support from civil society and the media, citizens will themselves address retail fraud. To solve corruption, the state should become more transparent to the citizen and not vice versa.”

A biometric data collection program of this scale, particularly in the absence of an existing data protection law, presents serious risks to individuals’ privacy. Rather than improving people’s lives, Aadhaar could place their highly sensitive personal information at risk.

New World Order

Spain is in 'total emergency’, the EU in total denial
 
After a Spanish exit from the euro, there would be nothing left to exit from.   By Janet Danley  Telegraph.co.uk
 

I’ve never actually heard the term “total emergency” before, at least not in the context of global economics. It sounds like the title of a disaster movie. When it is uttered in sober tones by the elder statesman of an advanced democracy to describe his country’s financial condition, the effect is rather startling. 
 

The man who delivered this apocalyptic judgment, former Spanish prime minister Felipe González, being a socialist, might be expected to detest austerity programmes that require cuts to government spending. But there seemed to be few disinterested observers of Spain’s economy prepared to quibble with his assessment. 

Forget Grexit. Greece’s teeny, tiny economy is a footnote now. As is Ireland’s decision – which seemed more like a sigh of resignation than a plebiscite – to engage in however much self-flagellation the EU gods insist on, for however long it takes. What might have seemed dramatic a week or so ago has now shrivelled in importance by comparison to the realistic possibility of a spectacular crash in the fourth largest economy in the EU. Spexit (and Spanic) are lodged in the lexicon, and have become part of the psychological reality that moves markets. The equivalent of more than £55 billion was withdrawn and transported out of Spain last month – and that was before the country’s largest bank was nationalised. No one seems to be kidding himself that the collapse of the Spanish economy could be somehow weathered and overcome, as the default of Greece might be. 

There is no talk of firewalls, or of simply letting Spain go, or of the European banking system being re-capitalised to compensate for the losses that it would suffer. Nope. This is it. The cancer has now spread to the vital organs of the EU. Spain is not a peripheral Mediterranean country. It is not an insignificant player in the political project. It is not a marginal going-along-for-the-ride-and-the-free-money passenger on the euro train. Not only is its economy so large as to be indispensable, but its ties with Italy mean that the Italian economy (which is the third largest in the EU) would be fatally compromised by its fall. “Itexit” is almost unpronounceable, so perhaps it’s fortunate that it will never be required: after Spexit, there would be nothing left to exit from. 

With Spain’s “total emergency”, the point at which denial and bluster become absurd has been well and truly reached, but this being the EU, the gamesmanship goes on. Still the pointless demands for “decisive action” continue, even though the only action that would possibly constitute a remedy is politically untenable if member states are to maintain any pretence of democratic accountability. 

To repeat (sorry, but it does seem necessary) what I have said before on these pages: however much she is beaten about the head by blowhards in Brussels, Rome, London and Washington, Angela Merkel cannot let the ECB (in effect, the Bundesbank) print money to soak up the debts of Spain, Greece or Italy. To do that would not simply be to fly in the face of her own electorate’s wishes. (What the hell, you might say – every European political leader is doing that.) It would be to contravene the constitution which was enforced upon Germany by the post-war settlement. In other words, it would be both undemocratic and illegal within the terms of the German nation state which, for all the hokum about European political union, still exists. And there it is. 

This is the heart of the irreconcilable contradiction on which the euro is being broken. As everyone has been saying, in order to be viable in the face of market pressures, a genuine currency (as opposed to a pretend one) must have a “lender of last resort” – a true central bank like the US Federal Reserve System. But this is impossible within the EU because the constitutions of member states are not compatible with each other or with the principle of underwriting debt across national boundaries (as the states of the US are under their genuinely federal system). So, either the existing democratic institutions and historical principles of all EU countries must be forcibly reconciled in a Year Zero political reconstruction, or there can never be a monetary union (let alone fiscal union) that will be sustainable. This is where we are. 

What would such a reconstructed political entity look like (assuming that someone in the delusional European political class should think of trying it)? Presumably it would involve wealth redistribution on an epic scale – since the most urgent problem to be remedied is the disparity between the poor, indebted states and the rich, thrifty ones. Fiscal transfers (meaning Germany pays for everybody) would be an accepted, perhaps automatic, mechanism, thus creating more or less permanent dependency of the less productive on the more productive. We have grown accustomed in Britain to this form of cross-subsidy, in which wealth produced in the South East is channelled to the North. Even within one country with a shared identity and linguistic culture, it breeds some resentment and resistance. 

Applied across the boundaries of nations whose peoples have profoundly different historical experiences and social attitudes – and whose democratic institutions have been shaped by their collective memories – it would be incendiary. And it is worth saying that there is nothing invidious in this. For Germans to refuse to bend in the face of shrill demands to (as they see it) debauch the currency is a sign of conscience: an unwillingness to forget the shame and criminality into which such a process led them in the last century. It is ironic that Germany itself was one of the great drivers of economic union, and specifically of the democratic socialist model in which “the rich nations help the poor ones” as José Manuel Barroso (who seems less and less capable of remaining in touch with reality) likes to put it. 

Now the “socialist” and the “democratic” sides of this utopian vision are heading for a collision: the EU can embrace wealth-redistribution wholeheartedly – with the full works of a central bank, fiscal uniformity and no nonsense about the will of the people – or it can accept the separate, and morally defensible, differences between its member states which will mean thinking seriously about other options than browbeating Germany. Generally, when given a choice, Europe ditches the democracy and keeps the socialism – so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

New World Order

War Pigs - The Fall of a Global Empire

By Jim Quinn  The Burning Platform   May 2012

“We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”  -Dwight D. Eisenhower
“How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of deaths construction

In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds, oh lord yeah!
                             Black Sabbath – War Pigs

As Americans mindlessly celebrate another Memorial Day with cookouts, beer and burgers, the U.S. war machine keeps churning. As we brutally enforce our will on foreign countries, we create more people that hate us. They don’t hate us for our freedom. They hate us because we have invaded and occupied their countries. They hate us because we kill innocent people with predator drones. They hate us for our hypocrisy regarding democracy and freedom. Just when we had the opportunity to make a sensible decision by leaving Iraq and exiting the Middle East quagmire, Obama made the abysmal choice to casually sacrifice more troops in the Afghan shithole. We have thrown over $1.3 trillion down Middle East rat holes over the last 11 years with no discernible benefit to the citizens of the United States. George Bush and Barack Obama did this to prove  they were true statesmen. The Soviet Union killed over 1 million Afghans, while driving another 5 million out of the country and retreated as a bankrupted and defeated shell after ten years. Young Americans continue to die, for whom and for what? Our foreign policy during the last eleven years can be summed up in one military term, SNAFU – Situation Normal All Fucked Up. These endless foreign interventions under the guise of a War on Terror are a smoke screen for what is really going on in this country. When a government has unsolvable domestic problems, they try to distract the willfully ignorant masses by proactively creating foreign conflicts based upon false pretenses.  General Douglas MacArthur understood this danger to our liberty.

“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”

Economic Opportunity Cost

“You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.”  – Will Rogers

Any doubt that the Military Industrial Complex is as strong as ever should be removed after examining Obama’s 2012 Budget which has $900 billion dedicated to our military machine. We spent $370 billion in 2001, $620 billion in 2006, and now this liberal anti-war Democrat from Illinois is spending 45% more than that war monger Bush who was burned in effigy by the anti-war Democrats during Iraq War protests. It seems both parties are war pigs.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, leaving the United States as the only remaining superpower on earth. Since 1990, the United States has depleted the U.S. Treasury of $11.5 trillion for spending on War. With no military on earth capable of challenging us why would there be a need to spend this much on the military? Over this same time frame the U.S. spent $500 billion on science, space & technology and $70 billion on energy, a mere 6% of the spending on invading sovereign countries. Military expenditures benefit humanity in no way. If these trillions had been invested by the private sector or devoted to energy and scientific research, our economy might not be a hollowed out shell, dependent on China for financing and oil exporting countries for energy. Neo-Cons argue the Arms Industry employs millions and benefits the country. These companies employ brilliant engineers and scientists who spend their days developing weapons that kill people more efficiently. If they had been employed manufacturing high tech goods to export around the world, inventing new technologies that didn’t obliterate human beings, newer safer nuclear power plants, a more efficient electric grid, upgrading our deteriorating infrastructure, or finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, would the United States be better off today?

The National Debt in 1990 was $3.2 trillion. Today, it is $15.7 trillion. This is a 500% increase in twenty-two years. What benefit has $11.5 trillion of spending on War produced for the United States or the world? In 2001, spending on Defense was 17% of total governmental spending. In 2012, Defense, Homeland Security, and war spending account for 25% of government spending. In the meantime, major cities experience blackouts due to an overloaded electrical grid, our 156,000 structurally deficient bridges crumble, one hundred year old water pipes burst under our streets every day, and we transfer over $300 billion per year to foreign countries for our precious oil. The 19 terrorist hijackers who implemented their plan with box cutters, spent less than $500,000 to pull off their 9/11 acts of terror – not war. The United States will directly spend at least $3 trillion on our wars of choice in response, while turning our country into a prison camp and stripping our citizens of their freedoms and liberties for perceived security and safety.

You would think we must be trying to keep up with our enemies by spending $900 billion per year on past and present military adventures. But one look at the following chart reveals the United States is spending almost as much as the rest of the world combined. The two countries considered potential rivals, China and Russia, spent $200 billion combined in 2010. This is 22% of U.S. spending. From a foreign viewpoint, one must wonder why the U.S. is spending such vast sums on our military. They can only conclude that it is for offensive intentions rather than defensive. The United States soil has not been attacked by a foreign power since December 7, 1941. Prior to that surprise attack, a foreign power hadn’t attacked the U.S. since the War of 1812. With this stupendous level of wasteful spending, our leaders feel compelled to interfere in the business of sovereign states and dictate how they should govern their nations . When you have an enormous hammer, every country looks like a nail.

Laughably, the neo-con hawks and Fox News pundits declare that our military is a hollow shell and needs much greater funding to insure our safety from attack by our many enemies. Other countries, such as China and Russia, feel they have no choice but to increase their expenditures on the military. On a percentage basis, they have more than doubled their expenditures in the last ten years, and still are a drop in the ocean compared to  American Empire spending. The fact is that the U.S., China and Russia all have enough nuclear weapons to obliterate the world – mutually assured destruction. The United States could realistically protect itself from attack with only the 18 ballistic missile nuclear submarines we have in commission.

When did Americans lose their ability to distinguish between intellectual and moral pygmies like George Bush, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney versus statesmen like Dwight D. Eisenhower? The Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war when our country was not threatened has proven to be financially and diplomatically disastrous and his blueprint is being followed by our Nobel Peace Prize President in his saber rattling with Iran. Following this policy puts them in fine company.

“Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

The U.S. borrowed $807 billion from China, Japan and oil exporting countries to wage a war in Iraq that was based on false pretenses. None of the terrorist hijackers on 9/11 were Iraqis, they had no links to Al Qaeda, and Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Historian Barbara Tuchman description of “war as the unfolding of miscalculations” was never so fitting. In 2002, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld estimated the costs of the war in the range of $50 to $60 billion, a portion of which he believed would be financed by other countries. The United States invaded Iraq to secure the 115 billion barrels of oil reserves, pure and simple. We traded the blood of young Americans for oil because we chose to not develop a cohesive logical energy policy in the last 30 years. Americans, not in the military, sacrificed nothing in the last 11 years of war. We bought BMW SUVs, 6,000 square foot McMansions, flat screen HDTVs, iPads, iPhones and Rolexes while less than 1% of Americans fought and died, with the cost passed to future unborn generations. We are a country of chickenhawks, willing to sacrifice the few so the ruling class can comfortably relax on their decks sipping wine, believing Fox News propaganda about terrorists lurking behind every bush, and filling up their Mercedes convertibles for their excursions to the summer cottage in the Hamptons.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”  – Dwight D. Eisenhower

As we spend $900 billion per year on instruments of destruction, 49 million Americans live in poverty, with 46 million on food stamps. There are 3 to 4 million people homeless in any given year. Military Veterans, who make up 13% of the population, account for 23% of the homeless. This is another example of Federal government politicians using young Americans to fulfill their agenda and then tossing them away like pieces of garbage. With the country supposedly three years into an economic recovery, tent cities of homeless dot the landscape across the nation. We pour billions into killing technology while millions of American families are forced to live in tents or sleep in their cars.

As the world spends $1.7 trillion per year on new methods of killing, millions die the old fashioned way.

• 13 million people per year die from starvation in the world.
• The FAO says that 925 million people worldwide are undernourished.
• For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years.
• One child dies every 5 seconds as a result of hunger – 700 every hour – 16 000 each day – 6 million each year – 60% of all child deaths (2002-2008 estimates) 
• 
  

What kind of a civilized society allocates 44% of the taxes taken from its people to war? Only 2.5% of your taxes go to science, energy, and environment. Only 2.2% of your taxes go to education and jobs. You produce the results that you would expect from your investments. A full 13% of our population doesn’t have a high school diploma (20% of African Americans & 43% of Latinos) and only 30% have a college degree. How do we expect to lead the world in technology and research with these figures? We do lead the world in government issued student loan debt with $1 trillion and rising.

Human Cost

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait till their judgment day comes, yeah!
                    Black Sabbath – War Pigs
George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Barack Obama are cowardly politicians who never had the “pleasure” of coming under fire in battle. The brilliant anti-war novel Catch-22 describes these men perfectly.

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.”

The world has been a huge game of Risk for these warmongers, with young Americans as the game pieces. Instead of conquering Kamchatka in a board game, these non-veterans sent 6,470 Americans to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan for a false cause. Their ideology of empire convinced them they could change the world into their image of how it should be, and their re-election campaigns were funded with millions from the purveyors of death – the arms industry.

“In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.” – Ernest Hemingway

Another 47,545 Americans have been badly wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Three of these despicable politicians have written their memoirs, raking in millions for telling lies and half-truths. The 6,470 dead Americans won’t have a chance to write their memoirs or get rich. They will never get a chance to see their kids’ graduate college or walk their daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Their children will grow up with a giant hole in their hearts. Their widows will never recover from their endless heartache.

Politician chickenhawks who send our young people to their deaths for oil and ideology will receive their reward on judgment day if there is a just God.
As National Guard troops have been deployed over and over again to Iraq and Afghanistan, they must realize that Catch-22 is alive and well in today’s military.

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”

 ”That’s some catch, that catch-22,” he observed.

 ”It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed

American soldiers, who have completed their duty to country, have been lied to and had the rules of the game changed again and again. Their politician leaders have reneged on their promises by sending men and women back to the war zone or not letting them come home on the timeline that was agreed to. Meanwhile, their families have gone bankrupt, lost their houses, and saw their marriages dissolve. Politicians started these wars and are too cowardly and prideful to accept failure.

“The military don’t start wars. Politicians start wars.”  – General William Westmoreland

Over 1,300 more Americans died needlessly when Barack Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, chose to double down in Afghanistan to prove he was as tough as Bush and McCain. Another man who has never been under fire needed to prove his manliness to his opponents and his constituency. He should have studied the words of former Presidents who were under fire.

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

“My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.” - George Washington

President Obama follows the standard Presidential game plan and dutifully gives patriotic speeches at military bases proclaiming the bravery and sacrifice of our troops. These are the words of politicians. The brutal reality for troops is much different. Representative Ron Paul in November 2003 described the early mistreatment of our soldiers:

• Fort Stewart, Georgia housed hundreds of injured reserve and National Guard soldiers in deplorable conditions who were forced to wait months just to see a doctor. These soldiers made huge sacrifices, leaving their families and jobs to fight in Iraq. They found themselves living in hot, crowded, unsanitary barracks and waiting far too long to see overworked doctors. This was hardly the heroes’ welcome they might have expected. Only an exposé in a major newspaper brought attention to their plight, prompting an embarrassed Defense department to rush additional doctors to the base.
• Some wounded soldiers convalescing at Walter Reed hospital in Washington were forced to pay for hospital meals from their own pockets. Other soldiers returning stateside for a two-week liberty had to buy their own airfare home from the east coast. Still others paid for desert boots, night vision goggles, and other military necessities with personal funds.
• Existing federal rules forced disabled veterans to give up their military retirement pay in order to receive VA disability benefits. This meant that every VA disability dollar paid to a veteran was deducted from his retirement pay, effectively creating a “disabled veterans tax.” No other group of federal employees is subject to this unfair standard; in every other case disability pay is viewed as distinct from standard retirement pay.

The Humvees that soldiers were forced to drive did not have enough protective armor. In December 2004, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was giving one of his usual inspirational speeches when Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, a unit that consisted mainly of reservists from the Tennessee Army National Guard asked him a question:

“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?”

This set off what the AP described as “a big cheer” from his comrades in arms. Rumsfeld paused, asked Wilson to repeat the question, then finally replied, “You go to war with the army you have.” Besides, he added, “You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can be blown up.” I’m glad Donald Rumsfeld has a clear conscience. History will not be kind to this despicable excuse for a human being.
Rumsfeld also sent Americans into battle without protective body armor. Only after bad publicity did the proper protection reach the troops. The blood of dead soldiers is on Rumsfeld’s hands. While President Bush sacrificed by not golfing, terribly wounded soldiers were sent to Walter Reed Hospital to recover. Instead they entered hell on earth. Outpatient mistreatment was reported in 2004, but nothing was done. In 2004 and 2005, articles appeared in the Washington Post and in Salon interviewing First Lt. Julian Goodrum about his court martial for seeking medical care elsewhere due to poor conditions at WRAMC. A Washington Post expose in 2007 finally revealed the horrible mistreatment of our brave wounded soldiers. These reporters uncovered the following conditions:

• WRAMC’s Building 18 was described in the article as rat- and cockroach-infested, with stained carpets, cheap mattresses, and black mold, with no heat and water reported by some soldiers at the facility. The unmonitored entrance created security problems, including reports of drug dealers in front of the facility. Injured soldiers stated they are forced to “pull guard duty” to obtain a level of security.
• The typical soldier was required to file 22 documents with eight different commands – most of them off-post – to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems were used to process the forms, but few of them could communicate with one another. This complicated system has required some soldiers to prove they were in the Iraq War or the War in Afghanistan in order to obtain medical treatment and benefits because Walter Reed employees were unable to locate their records.

There was a tremendous surge in suicides by soldiers who have been pushed beyond their limits as they increased by 80% between 2004 and 2008. There are almost as many deaths by suicide as deaths in combat:

• Overall, the services reported 434 suicides by personnel on active duty, significantly more than the 381 suicides by active-duty personnel reported in 2009. The 2010 total is below the 462 deaths in combat, excluding accidents and illness. In 2009, active-duty suicides exceeded deaths in battle.
• Soldiers returning from long tours in Iraq or Afghanistan suffering from combat stress were sometimes met with scorn from their superiors and something bordering on neglect from some medical officials. As their largely untreated problems deteriorated, their marriages unraveled under the strain. They turned to alcohol and drugs and in some cases saw no other way out than suicide.
• Healthcare officials at various installations who are struggling to help say they’re overwhelmed by huge numbers of troops returning from two, three or even four deployments with acute mental problems from combat.
• Statistics on Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, obtained in 2011 through a Freedom of Information Act request by a San Francisco newspaper, found that more than 2,200 soldiers died within two years of leaving the service, and about half had been undergoing treatment for post-traumatic stress or other combat-induced mental disorders at the time.
• For five years, beginning in 2005, a service member died by suicide every 36 hours, according to the report by the Center for New American Security.

Nearly 20% of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to a RAND Corporation report. Many service members said they do not seek treatment for psychological illnesses because they fear it will harm their careers. But even among those who do seek help for PTSD or major depression, only about half receive treatment that researchers consider “minimally adequate” for their illnesses. Recent studies expect PTSD to affect 30% of all returning veterans.
For all the glory and accolades of dying for chickenhawks like Dick Cheney, enlisted soldiers make between $17,000 and $32,000 per year. The military evidently does not prepare them well for the outside world as their unemployment rate is 12.1% versus the national rate of 8.2%. The pandering Obama gives speeches and the criminal bankers at JP Morgan have their PR maggots create TV commercials about hiring veterans, but the numbers don’t lie. A country can be measured by how well it treats its veterans. Our leaders talk a good game, but their actions prove they don’t care about the human costs of war. They are busy planning their next move in their game of Risk.

Moral Cost

Now in darkness, world stops turning
As the war machine keeps burning
No more war pigs of the power

Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of Judgment, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings
All right now!
                  Black Sabbath – War Pigs
Omar Bradley, the last five star General in the U.S. military, was known as the “soldier’s general” during World War II. He was portrayed by Karl Malden in the movie Patton as a thoughtful man who cared about his troops. He was one of the key architects of the Normandy invasion and led the 12th Army Group consisting of 900,000 men until the end of the war. After the war, Bradley headed the Veterans Administration for two years. He is credited with doing much to improve its health care system and with helping veterans receive their educational benefits under the G.I. Bill of Rights. He ultimately rose to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Contrast the words of the fictional Colonel Kilgore from the movie Apocalypse Now, with the words of General Bradley:
Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like
[ sniffing, pondering ]
victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…
[ suddenly walks off ]

“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” - Omar Bradley

We need giants like Omar Bradley and Dwight D. Eisenhower to lead our country through the difficult times ahead. These men knew the horrors of war and didn’t act like it was a game of chess. Instead we will be led by intellectual and ethical infants, Obama or Romney. There are no wise men with a conscience and high moral standards in power today. Only those with no conscience and a willingness to lie are able to gain power in today’s world. General Bradley understood that morality was ultimately more important than power and strength in determining the progress of a country. His words are those of someone who knew we had failed in our moral duty:

“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.”

Peacemakers are ridiculed and shunned in America today. Those who preach diplomacy and non-interventionism, like Ron Paul, are scorned and ignored. Old men who care more about their own power than the human race are willing to sacrifice the blood of young people for precious oil, phony nationalism, their own strategic interests or corporate interests disguised as philosophical agendas. The world is a game for these old men. They care about their personal legacy and rigid ideologies. War and militarism are a failure of passion over reason. Albert Einstein, whose discovery brought about this age of potential world destruction, had no love for these blind warriors.

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”

The overwhelming cost of maintaining a global empire eventually bankrupted Rome and Great Britain. Treasures were wasted, young men were needlessly sacrificed in the name of the flag, and the morality of leaders sank to unprecedented levels. The U.S. had advanced financially and technologically for more than a century, but since the takeover of our economic system by private banking and corporate interests in 1913 we have seen continuous war, continuous currency debasement, and continuous moral decay. How far will we decline before a sufficient number of Americans are outraged enough to lead a new American Revolution?
Our current situation reminds me of the movie Planet of the Apes. The apes are divided into a strict class system: the gorillas as police, military, and hunters; the orangutans as administrators, politicians and lawyers; and the chimpanzees as intellectuals and scientists. Humans, who cannot talk, are considered feral vermin and are hunted and used for scientific experimentation. The United States is now in the control of gorillas and orangutans. If we continue down the current path of financial and moral decay, allowing the Military Industrial Complex, criminal bankers and corrupt politicians to push us into further world conflicts, we will experience the shock and horror that George Taylor, played by Charlton Heston, displayed in the final scene of Planet of the Apes .
George Taylor: Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it.
 [ screaming ]
 You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

The War Pigs must be stopped before it’s too late. The Military Industrial Complex, with the unwavering support of central bankers printing unlimited amounts of fiat currency, while controlling the scoundrel puppets in Washington DC, will destroy this country in their never ending quest for power and profits. One man fights a lonely battle against these forces of oppression. We must join his legion and take this country back from the war pigs.

“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.” – Ron Paul

New World Order

The United States of Amaruca?

By mysteryoftheinquity.wordpress.com

Tom Horn has some great research! He is an GODLY man and the Holy Spirit resides within him for in his quest to find these truths he has came across great personal challenges and the simple fact is that his quest has angered quite a few people in these last several years. Why is that? Because he is uncovering details of our past as it relates to our religious origins.
In his recent endeavors he has produced a series of articles which are a portion of his new book which has yet to be released.
He writes;
In The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Hall writes:
This volume [Popol Vuh] alone is sufficient to establish incontestably the philosophical excellence of the red race.
“The Red ‘Children of the Sun,’” writes James Morgan Pryse, “do not worship the One God. For them that One God is absolutely impersonal, and all the Forces emanated from that One God are personal. This is the exact reverse of the popular western conception of a personal God and impersonal working forces in nature. Decide for yourself which of these beliefs is the more philosophical [Hall says sarcastically]. These Children of the Sun adore the Plumèd Serpent, who is the messenger of the Sun. He was the God Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Gucumatz in Quiché; and in Peru he was called Amaru. From the latter name comes our word America. Amaruca is, literally translated, ‘Land of the Plumèd Serpent.’ The priests of this [flying dragon], from their chief centre in the Cordilleras, once ruled both Americas. All the Red men who have remained true to the ancient religion are still under their sway. One of their strong centres was in Guatemala, and of their Order was the author of the book called Popol Vuh. In the Quiché tongue Gucumatz is the exact equivalent of Quetzalcoatl in the Nahuatl language; quetzal, the bird of Paradise; coatl, serpent—‘the Serpent veiled in plumes of the paradise-bird’!”

The Popol Vuh was discovered by Father Ximinez in the seventeenth century. It was translated into French by Brasseur de Bourbourg and published in 1861. The only complete English translation is that by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, which ran through the early files of The Word magazine and which is used as the basis of this article. A portion of the Popol Vuh was translated into English, with extremely valuable commentaries, by James Morgan Pryse, but unfortunately his translation was never completed. The second book of the Popol Vuh is largely devoted to the initiatory rituals of the Quiché nation. These ceremonials are of first importance to students of Masonic symbolism and mystical philosophy, since they establish beyond doubt the existence of ancient and divinely instituted Mystery schools on the American Continent.

Thus from Hall we learn that Freemasons like him believe “ancient and divinely instituted” mystery religion important to students of Masonry came to Amaruca/America—the Land of the Plumèd Serpent—from knowledge that the Red Man received from the dragon himself. What Hall conceals is that when he refers to those “extremely valuable commentaries” made by James Pryes, he is referencing an article from Helena Blavatsky’s Lucifer magazine, which was published by the Theosophical Society and that illuminated the inner doctrine of Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and all the secret orders—that Lucifer is the “angel of light” who, in the form of a serpent, bids mankind to partake of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” so that their eyes would be open and they could become as gods. Even to this day, in the secret societies, Lucifer is considered this benevolent serpent-god who has nothing more than the best intentions for man, while Jehovah is an evil entity who tries to keep mankind in the dark and punishes him if he seeks the truest wisdom. Since these ancient serpent legends include the Mesoamerican feathered serpent gods and can be looked upon as a historical testament of that Angel thrown down by God, “then perhaps The Land of the Plumèd Serpent may also be known as the Land of Lucifer,” concludes Ken Hudnall in The Occult Connection II: The Hidden Race.
In addition, when the first Spanish chroniclers arrived with the conquistador Pizaro, the Inca explained that Tiahuanaco had been constructed by a race of giants called “Huaris” before Chamak-pacha, the “period of darkness,” and was already in ruins before their civilization began. They said these giants had been created by Viracocha (“Kukulkan” to the Maya and “Quetzalcoatl” to the Aztecs), the god who came from the heavens (a.k.a. the Watchers).

He (Viracocha) created animals and a race of giants. These beings enraged the Lord, and he turned them into stone. Then he flooded the earth till all was under water, and all life extinguished. This flood was called uñu pachacuti, by the Inca which means “water that overturns the land.” They say that it rained sixty days and nights, that it drowned all created things, and that there alone remained some vestiges of those who were turned into stones. Viracocha rose from the bosom of Lake Titicaca, and presided over the erection of those wondrous cities whose ruins still dot its islands and western shores, and whose history is totally lost in the night of time.
Near Lake Titicaca in the Hayu Marca Mountain region of Southern Peru at fourteen thousand feet exists a huge, mysterious, door-like structure carved into a solid rock face in an area long revered by Peruvian Indians as the “City of the Gods.” Shamans still come to perform rituals at this site, which they call Puerta de Hayu Marca or the Gate of the Gods. It measures exactly twenty-three feet in height and width, with a recess in the center slightly smaller than six-feet high. Native Indians say the site is “a gateway to the lands of the Gods” through which, in their ancient past, great heroes arrived and then departed with a “key” that could open the mysterious doorway. Another legend tells of the first Incan priest—the Amaru Meru (note again the Amaru-ca/America connection)—who used a golden disk to open the portal, which turned the solid rock into a stargate. According to local legend, this priest was the first of other “kings” who came to Earth from heavenly locations specifically associated with the Pleiades (Apollo) and Orion (Osiris). This disc-key section of the Gate of the Gods may be depicted by a small, circular depression on the right side of the recess of Puerta de Hayu Marca, which in turn could be related to another “portal” not far away—the Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco, identified by some historians and archaeologists as the gate of Viracocha who created the race of giants -

Mythology involving such giants, followed by world deluge, is universally recorded in the legends of the Inca, Maya, Olmec, and Aztec cultures of Mexico. These stories are consistent with Sumerian and Hebrew accounts of the Great Flood and of the subsequent destruction of giant nephilim whose history of human sacrifices parallel Mayan rituals (victims of Maya had their arms and legs held down while a priest cut their chests open and ripped out their hearts). The Greeks likewise recorded how prehistoric giants were responsible for the creation of megalithic structures discovered around the world, and Islamic folklore ascribes this prehistoric “building” activity to a race of super beings called “jinn” (genies):
The Jinn were before Adam: They built huge cities whose ruins still stand in forgotten places.
In Egypt, the Edfu temple texts, believed to predate the Egyptians themselves, explain something of additional significance, reminiscent of nephilim activity before and after the Flood:
The most ancient of earth’s temples and monuments were built to bring about the resurrection of the destroyed world of the gods.
Within the Inca religious paradigm, the oldest record of the Andean region available, the Tiahuanaco geoglyphs are therefore viewed as the vestiges of a lost civilization that knew its destiny…to be destroyed by world cataclysm. In this regard, the geoglyphs serve not only as a memorial of an ancient existence, but also as a warning for future humanity and the return of a destructive epoch, or as David Flynn concluded:
The geoglyphs seem to be physical evidence that supports the Middle and South American myths of world deluge and giants. Their discovery in modern times fits Inca and Mayan prophecies of an “awakening” to knowledge of the ancient past, of the “builder gods” and of their return. It is perhaps testament to the accuracy of these prophecies that the date, December 21, 2012, is known so widely in modern times…the end of the Mayan calendar.

Secrets of Amaru-Ca in the US Capital Dome
That the Maya prehistory echoes the advent of the mysterious Watchers, their giant offspring, the end date 2012, and a connection between these histories and early American freemasonry could be beyond coincidence. In fact, what appears to be fabulous evidence that early Freemasons and those working with them were not only aware of the Mesoamerican belief system and the calendar ending date 2012, but actually incorporated it directly into the design of the Capital Dome in Washington, DC, is vividly illustrated in the commissioned artwork of Constantino Brumidi, the artist who also painted the Apotheosis of George Washington. The book Apollyon Rising 2012 explains:
Born July 26, 1805, in Rome, Brumidi was an Italian/Greek painter who made his name restoring sixteenth-century Vatican frescos, as well as artwork in several Roman palaces. Following the French occupation of Rome in 1849, Brumidi immigrated to the United States, where he became a citizen and began work for the Jesuits in New York (viewed at that time as the “hidden power and authority” of the Roman Catholic Church). This work included frescos in the Church of St. Ignatius in Baltimore, Maryland; the Church of St. Aloysius in Washington DC; and St. Stephen’s Church in Philadelphia, namely, the Crucifixion, the Martydom of St. Stephen, and the Assumption of Mary.
Abruptly in 1854, the Jesuits financed a trip for Brumidi to Mexico, where he… engaged in the curious task of making copious notes of the ancient Aztec Calendar Stone (also known as the “Stone of the Sun”), which ends in the year 2012.
Immediately upon his return from Mexico, Brumidi took his collection of notes and drawings to Washington DC, where he met with Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, supervisor of construction over the wings and Dome of the United States Capitol. Brumidi was quickly commissioned to be the “government painter,” and began adorning the hallways and Rotunda of the Capitol with pagan frescos sacred to Freemasonry, including the Apotheosis of George Washington and the famous Frieze of American History. Brumidi died in 1880 and three other artists completed the frieze, but not before Brumidi attached to his historic work—sometime between 1878–1880—a scene called Cortez and Montezuma at Mexican Temple, featuring the Aztec Calendar Stone and other important symbolism.

The Stone of the Sun depicted in Brumidi’s frieze (the circular object behind the figures on the right) is based on the actual twelve-foot tall, four-foot thick, twenty-four-ton, monolithic Aztec Calendar Stone. During the pinnacle of Aztec civilization when the Aztec dominated all other tribes of Mexico, this Stone rested atop the Tenochtitlan Temple in the midst of the most powerful and largest city in Mesoamerica. Today, Mexico City’s Cathedral, where Brumidi worked, occupies this site. The Spaniards buried the Stone there, and it remained hidden beneath the Cathedral until it was rediscovered in 1790. Then it was raised and embedded into the wall of the Cathedral, where it remained until 1885. Today, the Stone of the Sun is on display in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park.
The inclusion of this symbolism and its accompanying idols in the U.S. Capitol Dome is important. The sun god Tonatiuh, whose face and protruding tongue are seen at the center of the Sun Stone, is the god of the present (fifth) time, which began in 3114 BC and ends in 2012. The Aztec solar calendar is second only in accuracy to the Mayan calendar, which also ends on December 21, 2012. Tonatiuh—who delivered important prophecies and demanded human sacrifices (more than twenty thousand victims per year were offered to him, according to Aztec and Spanish records, and in the single year of 1487, Aztec priests sacrificed eighty thousand people to him at the dedication of the reconstructed temple of the sun god)—was also known as the lord of the thirteen days (from 1 Death to 13 Flint), a number sacred to Aztec, Maya, and Freemasons for prophetic and mystical reasons.
Like the Maya, Aztecs believed the first age, or “First Sun,” was a time when giants had lived on earth who were destroyed by a great flood or deluge long before the Mayan or Toltec civilizations came along. The final age, or “Fifth Sun,” would end in 2012. While the Aztecs assimilated such knowledge from the Maya, they built their culture primarily on Toltec ideas. Their great city of Tenochtitlan, on an island in Lake Texcoco with its causeways, canals, marketplaces, and vast towers and temples rising majestically into the air, was so spectacular that when the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, saw it, he exclaimed:
When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments…on account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream.… I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.
Not only was the Aztec culture so advanced in engineering, astronomy, and mathematics, but the warriors of Montezuma outnumbered the expedition of Cortez by a thousand to one. How then did the Spaniards conquer the Aztecs so easily? Toltec prophecy had told of Quetzalcoatl, who would come from the east as a light-skinned priest to rule their civilization. Nezhaulcoyotl, a great astrologer who supported Montezuma, believed this vision, and when Cortez arrived exactly when the prophecy said the god would return, Montezuma received him as the coming of Quetzalcoatl, and surrendered. This event is symbolized in the Cortez and Montezuma frieze by Brumidi.

Another connection between Brumidi’s prophetic Stone of the Sun depiction and Freemasonry can be seen in the serpent coiled around the sacred fire, toward which Montezuma’s left hand intentionally gestures. The sacred fire was connected to the seven-star Pleiades (Tianquiztli, the “gathering place”) by the Aztecs, and represented the final year in a fifty-two-year cycle called “calendar round,” which ended when the Pleiades crossed the fifth cardinal point at midnight that year. At this time, the Aztecs would let the fires go out and conduct the “dance of the new fire” to start the cycle again. When the priests lit the new “sacred fire” as well as the hearth fires, it ensured the movement of the sun (the serpent coiled around the sacred fire in Brumidi’s painting) along the precession anew. In the year 2012, not only will the Pleiades be in this zenith over Mesoamerica, but the alignment will come into full conjunction with the sun… This sacred knowledge is why the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan near Mexico City also corresponds with the Pleiades. Its west side and surrounding streets are aligned directly with the setting point of the Pleiades, a configuration held in high esteem by the Maya as well. They built the Kukulcan pyramid at Chichen Itza so that during the spring and autumn equinox, at the rising and setting of the sun, a slithering, snake-like shadow representing Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent) would cast along the north stairway to the serpent’s head at the bottom. Sixty days later, when the sun rises over the Pyramid at midday, it aligns with the Pleiades again.

By portraying the Stone of the Sun that ends in 2012, the sacred fire that ends in 2012, and the astrological alignment with the Pleiades in the Frieze of American History, Brumidi is telling us quite clearly that the designers of the Capitol were aware of the implications of 2012. This adds clarity to the reasons the designers of the Great Seal of the United States similarly incorporated the Mayan 13 katun system—which started in 1776 and ends in 2012—on the nation’s primary cipher [the Great Seal of the United States and the Sibyl's 'Novus Ordo Seclorum' prophecy which predicts the return of Apollo as Antichrist in 2012].
Yet a deeper and related message is also openly hidden in the Capitol Dome. A third piece of imagery from Brumidi’s Cortez and Montezuma scene that not only connects Mesoamerican belief to the Freemasons and prophecy, but to the Vatican, can be found in the drum behind the kneeling Aztec. The drum bears the shape of the Maltese cross, a symbol connected in history with the empire of Osiris as starting on the island of Malta. The Maltese cross was adopted by the Knights of Malta (connected with Freemasonry) and the Vatican (where Brumidi first worked and found favor). We believe this is not by chance. Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, the engineer who placed Brumidi over the paintings for the new Dome, wanted artwork reminiscent of that at the Vatican. With Brumidi’s ties to the Vatican and the Jesuits, it was a match “made in heaven.” By including this well-known Mayan, Illuminati, and Freemasonic symbol, Brumidi cleverly connected the design of the Capitol Dome in Washington, DC with the Vatican, Masonic mysticism, and the year 2012 in more ways than one.

New World Order