Important life lesson I've learned recently: Never fall in love with an anarchist.

Trump pillow salesman martial law

Trump bringing Lindell into the White House on Friday shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, which is probably more ludicrous than the visit itself. “Boy, do you sell those pillows,’ Trump said as he introduced him. (Lindell acquired a financial stake in the company that produces the product shortly before pushing it to the president.) Trump even invited Lindell to speak during a coronavirus task force briefing from the White House Rose Garden. (Lindell described the riot at the Capitol as “very peaceful,” which will be great news for the five people who died.) He’s also advised the president on Covid-19, and reportedly helped inspire Trump’s promotion of an exotic plant extract as a cure. The MyPillow guy has appeared at several of the president’s rallies, and even after last week’s insurrection maintained that Trump would remain president for another four years. This is far from the first time Trump has turned to Lindell, maybe the president’s most ardent supporter from the business world. So just to reset where we’re at here: As states are struggling to inoculate their citizens against a relentless pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000 Americans, and as the nation continues to reckon with how a violent mob of extremists was able to infiltrate the Capitol and kill five people in an attempt to overthrow the government, the president of the United States is meeting with a pillow salesman to discuss the possibility of instituting martial law. “…Insurrection Act now as a result of the assault” … something, something … “martial law if necessary upon the first hint of any…” Lindell left his notes exposed as he was heading into the White House, and it looks like he and the president were set to talk about something related to … steps to be “taken immediately to save” … something, something … “Constitution.”OK, this doesn’t seem good. Now why, exactly, is Trump spending his final days in office meeting with the CEO of a pillow company? We don’t have to guess. DOJ Probe: Sessions Separated Immigrant Families With No Plans in Place to Reunite.States Thought Trump Administration Was Releasing Extra Vaccine Doses, But It Isn't.'Useful Idiots': The Scary End of Trump's Reign.Mike Lindell, the MAGA-friendly affordable bedding entrepreneur also known as the MyPillow guy, was seen entering the White House on Friday. He’s still got a solid five days to drum up another ill-fated scheme to stay in office, and he’s calling in the big guns. No, he’s going to “fight like hell,” just like he told his supporters before they attacked the Capitol last week. As things stand currently, Joe Biden is still scheduled to be sworn in as president on January 20th.But Donald J. Inciting a mob of thousands of his supporters to storm the U.S. Pressuring Republican politicians to hold up the certification of the election results didn’t work. President Trump appears to be out of options in his quest to con his way into a second term in office. Trump Calls in Pillow Salesman to Discuss Possibility of Instituting Martial LawRyan Bort Fri, January 15, 2021, 4:37 PM Starlog Future Life Magazine 1979.Do we REALLY have to endure more days of this mad dog? airbrat on “The Cygnus”, the titanic space habitat and lab.tiki god on “The Cygnus”, the titanic space habitat and lab.tiki god on Meet my new friend: Joardan.Bolthorn on Meet my new friend: Joardan.Bolthorn on Steve Bannon Charged With Money Laundering and Conspiracy for Alleged Border Wall Scam.Old Tofu on Steve Bannon Charged With Money Laundering and Conspiracy for Alleged Border Wall Scam.Bolthorn on I wanna like it but I just can’t.Description from Stewart Cowley’s ‘Spacewreck’: “A huge spaceberg containing the hull of an Interstellar Queen, an ancient type of passenger liner which had been operational in the 21st century.” kangxi on Steve Bannon Charged With Money Laundering and Conspiracy for Alleged Border Wall Scam.Karl Lewis on Disowned by Trump not for robbing his supporters but for getting caught.Greenman037 on Bernard Shaw, Legendary CNN Anchor And Pioneering Black Journalist, Dies At 82.kangxi on ‘If kids are old enough to be shot, they’re old enough to have an opinion about being shot’.

I’ve had to answer this a couple times already so I want to share it with you to help make some sense of the Capitol Hill Attack. In bold are the questions/comments from someone else and then my response follows. 

I don't know what these people expected by doing this. We must first remember that these are not the "average person". These are people who firmly believe in an underlying persecution. I grew up in such a cult, where we were taught that everyone is persecuting us, secretly or overtly. To account for the fact that we were part of a religious majority in the US, we were taught that the "other Christians" were not "true" Christians. They were liars who pretended to believe in God hoping for eternal life, but would vote for "worldly and Satanic" ideas like gay marriage or abortion.

These people genuinely believe that the entire political system of the United States is a Satanic cult that sacrifices children. They are told not to donate blood because the Satanic Leaders (politicians and celebrities) steal this blood in order to use it for youth (by putting it on their skin or ingesting it or both). In some cases, young Christian children are stolen and drained of blood for this purpose. They believe that Trump, and only Trump, was fighting a secret battle against the Powers That Be. They believed that Trump's lack of presidential activity/effects was due to him being far too busy fighting the secret Satanists. In other words, the fact he was ineffective (in public) meant he was effective (in private).

So, to your question: what did they expect by doing this? Any or all of the following:

die a glorious death for the man hand-selected by Jesus, thus gaining access to Heaven

they believed they would find the "hidden votes", exposing the Satanic Politicians and showing the world they were really right this whole time

force another recount, which would finally prove that Trump actually won

The election was fair, there's no damning evidence of election fraud and Trump's legal bullshit is baseless and a desperate attempt to cheat the system.

True. But these are not reasonable people we are dealing with. In their minds, the lack of evidence is the evidence, that cheating the system was done so well that they made sure to really cover their tracks. Oddly, they also believe that it was done so sloppily that they do have evidence in the form of a video that Trump referenced multiple times in his Georgia Phone Call. It doesn't matter that the actual, unedited footage wholly disagrees with Trump's accusations; remember, he was hand-selected by Jesus, and the people in possession of the unedited footage are hand-selected by Satan. This, then, means Trump's video and Trump's claims are automatically correct, while anyone else is a liar and holds forgeries. After all, Lucifer is "the Father of Lies", so his agents (politicians) surely can lie effectively.

Again, we are left with this problem: the lack of evidence is the evidence.

Storming the Capitol was a shitty idea, what was going to change? People are dead because of this "overthrow". The government wasn't going to be affected by this.

In addition to what I mentioned earlier, they have a very small view of the world. These are people who typically believe the Earth is only 6000 years old and evolution cannot happen because they cannot fathom the long periods of time it takes. These are people who believe that those of us outside of the US are all collectively lying about the SARS-CoV-2 virus so we can hurt President Trump's reputation. They cannot understand scale. They are the people who watch movies like “Independence Day”, where a single person who has no knowledge of alien computers can take down the entire fleet. They don't understand how complex things really are. Thus, they genuinely think a "last stand" type of attack on a building will bring on the glorious end to this troubled tale.

Trump repeatedly bashed people who protested for BLM and said it was violent, unnecessary, etc. But when people riot and kill in his name he's just like "well they didn't do anything wrong".

This is unfortunately an easy one to answer: if they're against me, they are wrong...but if they are for me, they are right.

This is a classic "in-group/out-group" type of thinking. In-Group: the group you belong to Out-Group: the group you do not belong to (often with directly opposing views) In this type of thinking, you stereotype the Out-Group by their worst actors but your worst actors in your In-Group are different. We can see this in the media in the form of the following examples:

Example A: foreigners who attack something on national soil are "terrorists", but domestic attackers are "troubled individuals"

Example B: if the majority is white, a 17 year-old black male who shoots some people is written about in the news as a "violent man" or "man opened fire on innocent victims". If the shooter is a 17 year-old white male, the news is characterizes him as a "troubled teen" or "boy open fires at school, family wonders where they went wrong"

Example C: if the minority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's because that religion is clearly false and laughably erroneous; if the majority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's not sexist and just needs to be understood in cultural context

The subconscious reasoning for this type of thinking is very tribal but also ego-preserving...that we each believe we are always making the most correct and most reasonable/logical choices, so if someone makes a different choice, that person and choice are unreasonable and illogical.

None of this excuses the behavior, but I hope it helps shed some light on this type of extreme thought process. 

These Artifacts Were Stolen. Why Is It So Hard to Get Them Back?

In 2004, Steve Dunstone and Timothy Awoyemi stood on a boat on the bank of the River Niger.

The two middle-aged men, both police officers in Britain, were taking part in a journey through Nigeria, organized through the Police Expedition Society, and had reached the small town of Agenebode, in the country’s south. Their group brought gifts with them from British schoolchildren, including books and supplies. The local schools had been alerted in advance, and a crowd came down to the river banks to meet them; there was even a dance performance.

It was a wonderful — if slightly overwhelming — welcome, Mr. Dunstone recalled.

In the back of the crowd, Mr. Awoyemi, who was born in Britain and grew up in Nigeria, noticed two men holding what looked like political placards. They didn’t come forward, he said. But just as the boat was about to push off, one of the men suddenly clambered down toward it.

“He had a mustache, scruffy stubble, about 38 to 40, thin build,” Mr. Dunstone recalled recently. “He was wearing a white vest,” he added.

The man reached out his arm across the water and handed Mr. Dunstone a note, then hurried off with barely a word.

That night, Mr. Dunstone pulled the note from his pocket. Written on it were just six words: “Please help return the Benin Bronzes.”

At the time, he didn’t know what it meant. But that note was the beginning of a 10-year mission that would take Mr. Dunstone and Mr. Awoyemi from Nigeria to Britain and back again, involve the grandson of one of the British soldiers responsible for the looting, and see the pair embroiled in a debate about how to right the wrongs of the colonial past that has drawn in politicians, diplomats, historians and even a royal family.

By the end, Mr. Dunstone and Mr. Awoyemi would have done more to return looted art to Nigeria — with two small artifacts — than some of the world’s leading museums, where the debate over the right of return continues.

World Treasures

The Benin Bronzes are not actually from the country of Benin; they come from the ancient Kingdom of Benin, now in southern Nigeria.

They’re also not made from bronze. The various artifacts we call the Benin Bronzes include carved elephant tusks and ivory leopard statues, even wooden heads. The most famous items are 900 brass plaques, dating mainly from the 16th and 17th centuries, once nailed to pillars in Benin’s royal palace.

There are at least 3,000 items scattered worldwide, maybe thousands more. No one’s entirely sure.

You can find Benin Bronzes in many of the West’s great museums, including the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They’re in smaller museums, too. The Lehman, Rockefeller, Ford and de Rothschild families have owned some. So did Pablo Picasso.

Their importance was appreciated in Europe from the moment they were first seen there in 1890s. Curators at the British Museum compared them at that time with the best of Italian and Greek sculpture.

Today, the artifacts still leave people dumbstruck. Neil MacGregor, the British Museum’s former director, has called them “great works of art” and “triumphs of metal casting.”

There’s one place, however, where few of the original artifacts are found: Benin City, where they were made.

That may change. Benin’s royal family and the Nigerian local and national governments plan to open a museum in Benin City in 2023 with at least 300 Benin Bronzes. Currently the site is a bit of land that’s little more than a traffic island.

Those pieces will come mainly from the collections of 10 major European museums, such as the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the Weltmuseum in Vienna and the British Museum. They will initially be on loan for three years, with the possibility to renew. Or, when those loans run out, other Benin Bronzes could replace them. The museum could become a rotating display of the kingdom’s art.

This hugely complex initiative — organized through the Benin Dialogue Group, which first convened in 2010 — is being celebrated as a chance for people in Nigeria to see part of their cultural heritage. “I want people to be able to understand their past and see who we were,” said Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo State, home to Benin City, and a key figure in the project.

But is the Benin plan — a new museum filled with loans — a more practical solution than a full-scale return, long called for by many Nigerians and by some activists? That probably depends on what you think about how the Benin Bronzes were obtained in the first place.

Ill-Gotten Gains

On Jan. 2, 1897, James Phillips, a British official, set out from the coast of Nigeria to visit the oba, or ruler, of the Kingdom of Benin.

News reports said he took a handful of colleagues with him, and it’s assumed he went to persuade the oba to stop interrupting British trade. (He had written to colonial administrators, asking for permission to overthrow the oba, but was turned down.)

When Phillips was told the oba couldn’t see him because a religious festival was taking place, he went anyway.

He didn’t come back.

For the Benin Kingdom, the killing of Phillips and most of his party had huge repercussions. Within a month, Britain sent 1,200 soldiers to take revenge.

On Feb. 18, the British Army took Benin City in a violent raid. The news reports — including in The New York Times — were full of colonial jubilation. None of the reports mentioned that the British forces also used the opportunity to loot the city of its artifacts.

At least one British soldier was “wandering round with a chisel & hammer, knocking off brass figures & collecting all sorts of rubbish as loot,” Capt. Herbert Sutherland Walker, a British officer, wrote in his diary.

“All the stuff of any value found in the King’s palace, & surrounding houses, has been collected,” he added.

Within months, much of the bounty was in England. The artifacts were given to museums, or sold at auction, or kept by soldiers for their mantelpieces. Four items — including two ivory leopards — were given to Queen Victoria. Soon, many artifacts ended up elsewhere in Europe, and in the United States, too.

“We were once a mighty empire,” said Charles Omorodion, 62, an accountant who grew up in Benin City but now lives in Britain and has worked to get the pieces returned from British museums. “There were stories told about who we were, and these objects showed our strength, our identity,” he said.

He said that seeing the Benin Bronzes in the world’s museums filled him with pride, as they showed visitors how great the Benin Kingdom had been. But, he added, he also felt frustration, bitterness and anger about their being kept outside his country. “It’s not just they were stolen,” he said, “it’s that you can see them being displayed and sold at a price.”

Insult to Injury

Benin City has been calling for the return of its artifacts for decades. But a key moment came in the 1970s when the organizers of a major festival of black art and culture in Lagos, Nigeria, asked the British Museum for one prized item: a 16th-century ivory mask of a famous oba’s mother.

They wanted to borrow the work, to serve as the centerpiece of the 1977 event, but the British Museum said it was too fragile to travel. Nigeria’s news media told a different story, reporting that the British government had asked for $3 million insurance, a cost so high it was seen as a slap in the face.

That incident is still fresh in some Nigerians’ minds, more than 40 years later. At a recent meeting of the Benin Union of the United Kingdom, an expatriate group that meets at a church in south London, several members brought up versions of the festival incident when asked about the Benin Bronzes. Then they started criticizing British museums, which they said never seemed willing to return stolen items, despite repeated requests.

“I wouldn’t go there,” said Julie Omoregie, 61, when asked if she’d ever been to the British Museum, a half-hour away by subway, to see the mask. It was “an insult” that it was in the museum, she said. When she was a child, she recalled, her father would sing her a song about the raid, and she would cry every time. “It is time for them to give us back what they took from us,” she said.

David Omoregie, 64, another member of the group, said “The British are very good at telling you, ‘We are looking after it. If you’d been looking after it, it would have been stolen by now.’”

He agreed with that once, he said, but he didn’t anymore: “You can leave your car to rot outside your drive; at least it’s your car,” he added.

Some pieces stolen in the raid have gone back to Nigeria from institutions. In the 1950s, the British Museum sold several plaques to Nigeria for a planned museum in Lagos, for instance, and sold others on the open market. But those were not the free, full-scale returns people call for now.

Pressure for those types of returns has grown recently. In 2016, students at Jesus College, part of Cambridge University, campaigned to have a statue of a cockerel removed from the hall where it had been displayed for years. Last November, the college announced that the cockerel must be returned. (It has yet to say when or how.)

In the United States too, students have protested the presence of a Benin Bronze at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. The museum has said it is looking to return the item, but was struggling to find out whom to actually work with: the Nigerian government, the Benin royal family or others.

But nothing has publicly gone back to Nigeria in decades, except, that is, for two small items. And, that’s thanks, at least in part, to Mr. Awoyemi and Mr. Dunstone.

Heading Back

When Mr. Dunstone got back to England from Nigeria, he couldn’t shake that note from his mind: “Please help return the Benin Bronzes.”

He didn’t even know what they were, he recalled recently, but Mr. Awoyemi did — he’d learned all about them and the 1897 raid as a teenager in Nigeria — and he filled Mr. Dunstone in.

Mr. Dunstone simply couldn’t understand why Britain still had the Benin artifacts, he said. That feeling grew one day when he went to the British Museum to look at its collection. He was blown away by the 50-odd plaques on display, and more so when a security guard told him that there were 1,000 more items in the basement. (In fact, the museum owns around 900 items from Benin, and many are in storage in another building.)

“We really did steal them,” Mr. Dunstone, now 61, said. “We weren’t at war, we turned up and hacked them off the walls.”

In 2006, Mr. Dunstone created a web page about the Benin Bronzes, with Mr. Awoyemi’s input. He added a note at the bottom of the page asking anyone with information about the whereabouts of any items to get in touch. The two men, who became friends as colleagues in the police force protecting the British royal family, even wrote to the oba in Benin and the Nigerian government, asking for permission to act as envoys to Britain’s museums to try and get the artifacts back to Nigeria.

No one replied, Mr. Awoyemi, 52, said. “We were so passionate,” he added, “but we were becoming frustrated with the whole thing.”

Mr. Awoyemi and Mr. Dunstone were just about to give up when, one day, in 2013, an email arrived. It was from a doctor from Wales named Mark Walker. Mr. Walker said he owned two of the looted items: a small bird that used to be on top of a staff, and a bell that had been struck to summon ancestors.

He wanted to give them back.

Mr. Walker, 72, is now retired and spends much of his time sailing. His grandfather was Captain Walker, who described the looting in his diary and took the pieces during the 1897 raid. They were once used as doorstops, Mr. Walker said, but after he inherited them they sat on a bookshelf, gathering dust. They’d be better off in Nigeria with the culture that created them, he said.

“My view is the British Museum should use modern technology to make perfect casts of its whole collection and send it all back,” he said recently. “You wouldn’t know the difference.”

At first, Mr. Walker didn’t want to go to Nigeria, afraid, Mr. Awoyemi said, that he might be prosecuted for having had them at all. But Mr. Awoyemi and Mr. Dunstone convinced him that the publicity from such a bold move could lead others to return items.

The Nigerian Embassy in London agreed to sponsor the trip, but pulled out when Mr. Walker insisted the items had to be returned directly to Benin City and the current oba, rather than to Nigeria’s president, Mr. Awoyemi said.

So Mr. Dunstone and Mr. Awoyemi mounted an amateur public relations campaign, securing appearances for themselves on radio and TV, to help raise the funds and show the royal court in Benin City that they were serious.

It worked.

In June 2014, Mr. Walker, Mr. Dunstone and Mr. Awoyemi headed to Benin City to return the artifacts to the oba.

The ceremony at the oba’s palace was as overwhelming as the welcome on the river bank that had begun the whole journey, Mr. Dunstone said. It was filled with so many dignitaries and journalists, there was initially no room for him.

Mr. Walker said he handed over the objects quickly, without fuss. In return, the oba gave him, just as calmly, a tray of gifts, including a modern sculpture of a leopard head’s that weighed about 40 pounds.

“I was horrified,” Mr. Walker said. “I’d gone all that way to get rid of stuff, not get more.”

Where Next?

If there aren’t more individuals like Mr. Walker on the horizon, looking to give unwanted artifacts back, is the new museum full of items on loan the best Benin City can hope for?

Maybe.

Nigerian government officials have played down the need for items to be permanently returned. Mr. Obaseki, the state governor, said at a news conference at the British Museum last year: “These works are ambassadors. They represent who we are, and we feel we should take advantage of them to create a connection with the world.” His message: Nigeria wants them on display in the world’s museums, not just in Benin City.

Some museums do appear open to returning looted objects permanently, rather than lending them. Last March, the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands launched a policy to consider claims for cultural objects acquired during colonial times.

Nigeria could claim the museum’s 170 or so artifacts from Benin City under the policy, if it proves that the items had been “involuntarily separated” from their rightful owners, or that the items are of such value to Nigeria that it “outweighs all benefits of retention by the national collection in the Netherlands.”

German museums have agreed to a similar policy.

Given how many Benin Bronzes are in Western museums, it seems likely some requests made under those policies would be accepted.

Until the museum in Benin City is built, however, nothing is likely to be returned permanently unless it is done by individuals. No one has a firm idea how many looted items are in private hands, but they used to regularly come up at auction. (The record price, set in 2016, is well over $4 million.)

Mr. Dunstone said he had hoped that dozens of people would have come forward with items to return by now. The ceremony in 2014 received a flurry of media attention, and he went back to England expecting new Mr. Walkers to appear.

It didn’t happen. He got one email from a man in South Africa who claimed to have fished a Benin Bronze out of a river. He was willing to mail it to Mr. Dunstone for $2,500.

Mr. Dunstone, ever the police officer, suspected a scam and didn’t write back.

“I’m less proactive now,” he said. “But my heart’s still open.”

Mr. Awoyemi said he was disappointed, too, that no one came forward, but was excited by the museum plan. He was even willing to help with security, he said, if the oba would let him.

Mr. Walker can’t put the Benin Bronzes behind him, either. A few months ago, he was looking online at Benin Bronzes held by the Horniman Museum in London and came across an intricately carved wooden paddle. It was almost identical to two he had in his home, which he thought his parents had bought on vacation.

Then he realized his grandfather must have looted them from Benin City, too.

In December, he lent the paddles to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford — a member of the Benin Dialogue Group — with one condition: They had to be returned to Benin City within three years.

He wasn’t going to be getting on a plane with Mr. Dunstone and Mr. Awoyemi this time. “It would be harder to get two six-foot paddles through customs,” he said. He also didn’t want his motives questioned. He’s wasn’t returning the items for glory, he said: They should just go back. It’s the right thing to do.

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Dave Gaubatz is a former U.S. Federal Agent with Top Secret/SCI clearance, expert in counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism on national security issues, highly trained in Islamic ideology and tactics, Arab linguist, author of Muslim Mafia, has investigated over 300 mosques/Islamic Centers in the USA and 150 outside USA, and after leaving his position in the government continued this work as a Civilian Agent. Using firsthand investigation, he then evaluates Risk/Threat Levels based on multiple factors including Materials on Premises and What They Advocate, Ties to Muslim Terrorists, and Sharia Adherence. Mr. Gaubatz estimates that 80% of mosques in America recruit and train in jihad (violent & civilization). Finally, he makes Recommendations to protect America, our citizens, our children. He asks about each mosque: Would ISIS be proud? NOTE: Several Reports/Affadavits will be published. When you read one from earlier dates, note that Dave Gaubatz issued Risk/Danger warnings ahead, but in some cases, violence occurred later from a member of one of those reported mosques (ex: Trolley Square, Salt Lake City, Utah shooting; child abuse Nashville, TN). When you read a report that came after an attack (Ex: Report 2017, Boston Marathon Bombing by Tsarnaev brothers 2013), note that violence had already occurred, Mr. Gaubatz reported continued Risk/Danger years later from the same mosques terrorists had attended. Reading professionally investigated and evaluated Reports/Affadavits from various years is important so the American public is aware of new or continuing Risk/Danger and can demand protection from all levels of government officials and law enforcement that they are sworn to provide. Firsthand Research Conducted in Boston Mosques By Dave Gaubatz Author: Muslim Mafia October 2017 The FBI does not have the capabilities to conduct firsthand research in the 3000 plus mosques in America, so who does it on a nickel budget? Dave Gaubatz, a former U.S. federal agent, author of ‘Muslim Mafia’, and a U.S. State Department trained Arabic linguist does what the FBI can’t do for politically correct reasons and because they (FBI Agents) do not have the required training to undertake such a task. Yes, in the past the FBI has conducted a few investigations in mosques, but they use unreliable and often dirty confidential informants who are primarily Muslim and working off crimes they have committed. It is a security issue to use dirty sources when the stake of our country and more importantly our children will be harmed when mistakes are made or the informant has more loyalties toward Islam than America and the U.S. Constitution. Since returning from Iraq in 2003 (as the first U.S. federal agent assigned to the war zone at the beginning of operation Iraqi Freedom), Dave has conducted firsthand research in over 300 plus mosques inside America alone. Dave made a pledge after leaving federal service in late 2003. He swore to his family he would conduct the same level of investigations that he had while a Special Agent, but instead of putting valuable classified information inside a secure safe and stamping the intelligence ‘Secret or Top Secret’, he would as a civilian provide the intelligence he gathers first to the public, then the media, then law enforcement, and lastly to politicians. Dave explained the majority of U.S. government classified information is classified not because it is a national security risk to release the intelligence, but because mistakes were often made while collecting the intelligence and it keeps all government personnel safe from public scrutiny. After every Islamic terrorist attack in America the public always wants to know which mosque the Muslim attended and what intelligence does the FBI have on that particular mosque. Seldom does the public ever get answers to these important questions. More intriguing is why do most large media outlets ignore this issue as well? The answer is most of our media outlets are no more than propaganda tools for either the conservative or liberal news corporations and when Islam may receive negative attention, there is a ‘hands off approach’. Who suffers? The American citizens who pay taxes and payroll government officials who are supposed to be providing security for our country. Americans are very much aware of the sadistic and cowardly Islamic terrorist attack two brothers (Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev) committed in Boston, MA, during the Boston Marathon on 15 April 2013. Dave, like most American citizens wanted to know which mosques the brothers attended, what is being advocated at the mosques, and if violence against innocent people is being advocated, then why do the authorities allow the mosque to remain open? It is believed the brothers attended two of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) mosques. One is located in Cambridge and the other is in Roxbury. Dave Gaubatz conducted firsthand research inside both of these mosques and he had a trusted witness observe at both locations. While Dave was a federal agent his primary duties were counterintelligence and counter-terrorism. Our government relied on him to investigate, evaluate the threat level of persons or organizations, and recommend solutions to neutralize the threats against America and its people. In Oct 2017, non-government citizens in the Boston area requested Dave to travel to Boston and conduct an analysis of the two mosques the Tsarnaev brothers had attended. The citizens had lost faith in our FBI to conduct investigations based on their inexperience and political biases against America, and instead in favor of Islam. On 27 Oct 2017, Dave, along with a witness, visited both ISB mosques and based on the following criteria evaluated their potential risks to America and our citizens. Materials found on the premises Ties to known Muslim terrorists Shariah adherence ISB (Roxbury Mosque): Dave rated this mosque very ‘High’ for worshipers to commit terrorists attacks in America in the near future. This mosque has an Islamic bookstore attached with thousands of books and Dvds. All Islamic subjects are covered to include advocating Shariah law for America, by force if needed, and the various levels of Jihad, to include physical Jihad. Additionally inside the prayer room there are numerous Islamic manuals calling for killing Christians and Jewish people worldwide and calling for the Muslim people in America to educate themselves on the newest types of military weapons and to arm themselves for Jihad in the future when called upon. Slavery, child marriages, and killing homosexuals worldwide was also being advocated. The ISB has known Muslim terrorists within its background. ISB was founded by the terrorist Abdulrahman Almoudi. He plead guilty in 2004 in a U.S. federal court and convicted. He had provided over 1 million dollars to Al Qaeda. In addition, we know the Boston Marathon Bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers had attended the ISB mosques. Dave observed approximately 1000 plus worshipers and evaluated their adherence to Shariah while in the mosque. The worshipers were strictly adherent to Shariah law. ISB Cambridge Mosque: Dave rated this mosque a Medium to High rating. The only difference in this ISB mosque in comparison to the Roxbury mosque is that the Cambridge mosque was smaller with fewer worshipers and fewer materials. The small amount of materials they did have advocated exactly what the Roxbury mosque had. It must be noted that the majority of violent materials at both mosques were published in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The following is my recommendation for the media, politicians, and law enforcement: MEDIA: It is imperative media organizations warn citizens of the potential for violence the mosques I analyzed to be of “High Risk” and to put pressure on our law enforcement and politicians to conduct criminal and civil investigations in order to prosecute Islamic leaders conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government and conduct violence against innocent Americans inside and outside of our country POLITICIANS: Elected officials from both liberal and conservative sides must demand our law enforcement from local, state, and federal levels investigate mosques conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government and harm innocent Americans, specifically targeting our children. The mosques rated “High Risk” must have their non profit organization status removed by the authorizing federal agency (IRS) and immediately closed for the safety of American citizens. CITY, COUNTY, STATE, AND FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT: It is imperative U.S. law enforcement use legal means to fully investigate the leadership and worshipers of this mosque. The ISB mosques should be closed down immediately based on their advocating of establishing an Islamic caliphate worldwide and under Shariah law. ISIS and Al Qaeda would be very proud of the ISB mosques and without any doubt it is likely that they have loyal members from within. If our media organizations, law enforcement, and politicians are either not willing or do not know that the Islamic ideology itself is a danger to America and is our number one world enemy, we will lose our beautiful land and our children will suffer in their lifetime as millions of innocent people already have who have firsthand experienced the atrocities of this dangerous ideology. Americans must also know that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are not the friends of America. They are friends and supporters of the Islamic world which desires a worldwide caliphate under Shariah law.

Expert: Guardian columnist George Monbiot has responded to our recent media alert on the alleged gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, Syria, on April 4: ‘Here’s a response to the latest attempt by @medialens to dismiss the mounting evidence on the authorship of the #KhanSheikhoun attack’ This is a very serious misrepresentation of what we have argued in two media alerts. We made our position crystal-clear in the latest alert: We have no idea who was responsible for the mass killings in Idlib on April 4; we are not weapons experts. But it seems obvious to us that arguments and evidence offered by credible sources like Postol should at least be aired by the mass media. To interpret this as an attempt to ‘dismiss the mounting evidence on the authorship of the #KhanSheikhoun attack’ is to exactly reverse the truth, which is frankly outrageous from a high-profile Guardian journalist. We are precisely calling for journalists to not dismiss evidence on the authorship of the alleged attack. This is why we quoted investigative reporter Robert Parry: The role of an honest press corps should be to apply skepticism to all official stories, not carry water for “our side” and reject anything coming from the “other side,” which is what The New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest of the Western mainstream media have done, especially regarding Middle East policies and now the New Cold War with Russia. We have most certainly not urged anyone to ‘dismiss’ the White House version of events. We have asked journalists to consider that version as well as evidence offered by credible critics like former UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Scott Ritter, and by investigative journalists like Parry. We are clearly arguing in favour of inclusion of evidence, not exclusion. Monbiot has simply reversed the truth. In an expanded version of his tweeted response titled, ‘Disavowal’, he writes: There’s an element on the left that seems determined to produce a mirror image of the Washington Consensus. Just as the billionaire press and Western governments downplay and deny the crimes of their allies, so this element downplays and denies the crimes of the West’s official enemies. We have no interest in downplaying or denying any crimes. We hold no candle whatever for Assad or Putin, as we held no candle for Milosevic, Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. We are simply urging journalists to consider both ‘Washington Consensus’ arguments and serious counter-arguments offered by credible sources. Monbiot writes: The pattern is always the same. They ignore a mountain of compelling evidence and latch onto one or a few contrarians who tell them what they want to hear (a similar pattern to the 9/11 conspiracy theories, and to climate change denial). The lastest [sic] example is an “alert” published by an organisation called Media Lens, in response to a tweet of mine. Our latest alert was not ‘in response’ to Monbiot’s tweet; it was in response to Professor Postol’s analysis challenging a White House report on the alleged attacks in Idlib. We simply used Monbiot’s tweet as a typical example indicating what we described as the ‘corporate media zeitgeist’. Is it reasonable to describe Postol, one of the world’s ‘leading weapons experts’, according to the New York Times, as a ‘contrarian’? Is Hans Blix, who led the weapons inspections team in Iraq in 2002-2003, a ‘contrarian’? How about former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who was 100% vindicated by the failure to find WMD in Iraq? Can Noam Chomsky also be dismissed as merely a ‘contrarian’ following a ‘pattern’ which is ‘always the same’? Chomsky commented recently: Well, there are some interesting questions there — you can understand why Assad would have been pretty crazy [to provoke a US intervention] because they’re winning the war. The worst thing for him is to bring the United States in. So why would he turn to a chemical weapons attack? You can imagine that a dictator with just local interests might do it, maybe if he thought he had a green light. But why would the Russians allow it? It doesn’t make any sense. And in fact, there are some questions about what happened, but there are some pretty credible people — not conspiracy types — people with solid intelligence credentials that say it didn’t happen. Lawrence Wilkerson said that the US intelligence picked up a plane and followed that it probably hit an Al-Qaeda warehouse which had some sort of chemical weapon stored in it and they spread. I don’t know. But it certainly calls for at least an investigation. And those are not insignificant people [challenging the official narrative]. We are saying no more or less than this – it calls for at least an investigation. Chomsky pointed to comments made by Wilkerson, former chief of staff to General Colin Powell, in a recent interview on the Real News Network: I personally think the provocation was a Tonkin Gulf incident….. Most of my sources are telling me, including members of the team that monitors global chemical weapons –including people in Syria, including people in the US Intelligence Community–that what most likely happened …was that they hit a warehouse that they had intended to hit…and this warehouse was alleged to have to [sic] ISIS supplies in it, and… some of those supplies were precursors for chemicals….. conventional bombs hit the warehouse, and due to a strong wind, and the explosive power of the bombs, they dispersed these ingredients and killed some people.’ There is also the collective judgment of 20 former members of the US Intelligence Community, the Steering Group of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.” Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died…..This is what the Russians and Syrians have been saying and – more important –what they appear to believe happened. Monbiot’s ‘one or a few contrarians’ include all of the above, plus journalists John Pilger, Jonathan Cook, Peter Hitchens, Gareth Porter, Philip Giraldi, and others. They also include Piers Robinson, Professor of Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, who responded to our request for a comment: Monbiot supports the official narrative that the Assad regime is responsible for the April 4 event when it is alleged that Assad’s forces launched a chemical weapon attack on civilians. He is presenting this as factually correct even though some credible commentators have raised questions regarding these claims and whilst there remains a lack of compelling evidence. In a recent posting Monbiot quotes recent French intelligence service claims regarding Assad’s guilt in this matter. The problem here is that there are substantial grounds for remaining cautious of official claims. It is no secret that Western governments and key allies of theirs (Saudi Arabia, Qatar) have been seeking the overthrow of Assad for many years now. Indeed, the recently published Chilcot Inquiry, in section 3.1, revealed discussions between Blair and Bush which indicate that Syria was considered a potential target straight after 9/11. Given these objectives it is entirely plausible that Western intelligence services might be manipulating information so as to generate the impression that the Assad regime is responsible. Indeed, this kind of propaganda was well documented in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq when weak intelligence was used by US and British politicians to justify their certainty that Iraq possessed WMD. These are all very good reasons for journalists and commentators to ask challenging questions rather than to dismiss out of hand any such attempts in the way Monbiot does. (Email to Media Lens, May 3, 2017) Tim Hayward, Professor of Environmental Political Theory at Edinburgh University, has also responded to Monbiot’s piece here: There are serious unsettled questions about every aspect of the incident, not only the anomalies concerning time of incident, identity of victims, causes of death, role of White Helmets, and about whose interests it served, but also concerning the forensic evidence itself. And here: In a tweeted response, he repeated his opinion that people like me, who question it, are denying a mountain of evidence. So to state a point that should not need stating: to question is not to deny – although nor is it to affirm. It is to seek knowledge and understanding. Being less impressed than George by the quantity of data presented as evidence, I have only ever commented on its quality. Hayward adds that in Monbiot’s latest post: ‘he has entrenched more deeply his defence of the NATO narrative’. Monbiot says ‘the pattern is always the same’. In fact, there is indeed a pattern of ‘mainstream’ media insisting on the need for war in response to unproven claims that are often later debunked. We gave several examples in our first alert on the alleged chemical weapons attacks in Idlib. It is absurd for Monbiot to wearily dismiss our ‘pattern’, when our scepticism over claims made on Iraq and Libya – and numerous other issues, over many years – has so obviously been justified. Again, our problem is with the refusal of ‘mainstream’ media to report or discuss the opinions of credible experts challenging government claims. Back to Monbiot: As it happens, just as Media Lens published its article, the French intelligence agency released a new report, which adds substantially to the growing – and, you would hope, un-ignorable – weight of evidence strongly suggesting that the Assad government was responsible: Doubtless the French government will now be added to the list of conspirators. We have not argued for any kind of conspiracy – perhaps the US, UK and French governments all agree because they have seen the same evidence and are correct in their apportioning of blame. We don’t know; we are not weapons experts. Our point is that if journalists like Monbiot are serious about establishing the truth, they will test the French government and other claims against the arguments and evidence offered by dissidents. They will consider the different claims, and come to some kind of informed conclusion. What is not acceptable is that journalists should simply accept as Truth arguments made by Western governments openly seeking regime change in Syria and that have a spectacular track record of lying about claims supposedly justifying war. Monbiot continues: For the record, I oppose Western military intervention in Syria. I believe it is likely only to make a dreadful situation worse. I believe that the best foreign governments can do at the moment is to provide humanitarian relief, seek to broker negotiated settlements and accept refugees from the horrors inflicted by all sides in that nation. I have no agenda here other than to ensure that the reality suffered by the people of Khan Sheikhoun is not denied. The survivors of the chemical weapons attack are among the key witnesses to the fact that the weapons were delivered by air – it is their testimony as well as that of investigators that is being dismissed by people who would prefer to deny that the Assad government could have been responsible. Again, we are not arguing for any evidence or testimony to be ‘dismissed’. We are arguing for counter-arguments to be admitted and considered by a press that is supposed to be objective, neutral and fair. Monbiot adds: When people allow geopolitical considerations to displace both a reasoned assessment of the evidence and a principled humanitarianism, they mirror the doctrines of people such as Henry Kissinger and Tony Blair. The victims become an abstraction, a political tool whose purpose is to serve an agenda. That this agenda stands in opposition to the objectives of people like Kissinger and Blair does not justify the exercise. This is really outrageous. We are not mirroring, but exactly opposing, the positions adopted by the likes of Kissinger and Blair. They, of course, were strongly against fair consideration of all the available evidence. Blair, for example, did everything he could to manufacture a case for war on Iraq by manipulating and hyping evidence, and by keeping evidence exposing his fake case for war from public view. In responding to Monbiot, former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook is able to understand the point that somehow eludes Monbiot: We need more debate about the evidence, not less of it. Postol, Blix and Ritter may be wrong. But they should have a fair hearing and their arguments should be fully aired in the mainstream – especially, in supposedly liberal media outlets like the Guardian. Anyone who wants to understand what happened in Idlib must also want a vigorous and open debate that most members of the public will have access to.’ (Our emphasis) And, in fact, Postol was wrong in his April 27 misreading of the French intelligence report on the Idlib incident. He quickly issued a correction and has subsequently poured scorn on the French claims. Monbiot concludes: The implications should be obvious. If we deny crimes against humanity, or deny the evidence pointing to the authorship of these crimes, we deny the humanity of the victims. Aren’t we supposed to be better than this? If we do not support the principle of universalism – human rights and justice for everyone, regardless of their identity or the identity of those who oppress them – what are we for? We agree but for reasons Monbiot would probably not understand. When we admit only the view of Western governments and agencies supporting their position, and ignore the evidence of courageous whistleblowers and dissidents, we are risking the lives of people in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. When those of us promoting inclusion of evidence are smeared as ‘deniers’, then we are in a sorry state indeed. Asking awkward questions is not a Thought Crime. A few years ago, Monbiot had what he believed was a brilliant, revelatory insight: that the left is marred by a ‘malign intellectual subculture’, comprised of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger and others, including us, that is as blinkered and intellectually dishonest as the ‘libertarian right’. The left also sees only what it wants to see. Monbiot was able to grasp this because, as he says: I’ve long prided myself on being able to handle more reality than most… The perfect irony is that, to cling to this view of the ‘malign’ subculture, Monbiot has had to turn his own blinkered eye to the many times the left’s sceptical response to state-corporate claims justifying war has been vindicated. Saddam Hussein did not ‘expel’ weapons inspectors prior to bombing in December 1998, as claimed. He did not deliberately attempt to worsen the effects of sanctions by obstructing UN food supplies. He was not involved in the September 11 attacks and did not have links to al-Qaeda. He did not attempt to hide WMD that he did not have. Gaddafi did not fuel mass rape with Viagra, he did not use African mercenaries, and there is no evidence that he was planning a massacre in Benghazi. The ‘pattern’ of the left questioning these claims is something to celebrate, not disavow. http://clubof.info/

The US Politician Who Could Become Second Abraham Lincoln 

There are several reasons why the progressive Tulsi Gabbard stands an extraordinarily good likelihood of repeating the extraordinary achievement of the progressive Abraham Lincoln.

The electoral defeat of a liberal Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the widespread recognition of the fact that a progressive Bernie Sanders as the Democratic candidate would have stood a far higher probability of beating Donald Trump than Clinton did, combines with an equally widespread recognition that the Democratic Party’s corrupted leadership by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton brought enormous harm to the Democratic Party by actually cheating the stronger and more progressive candidate Sanders out of the Party’s nomination, so that competition has already begun within the Democratic Party, to determine whom the Party should nominate in 2020 to run against President Donald Trump. There is no longer an incumbent (such as Obama), nor his chosen successor (such as was the former Secretary of State, Clinton), to dominate the Democratic field in 2020 (as was the case in 2016); and yet even Sanders himself — who in 2016 was more preferred to become President than was any other of the twenty major-Party candidates — would likely be too old for some of his 2016 voters to support again in 2020. Many Democratic voters will be looking for «new blood» — a progressive like Sanders, but one whose remaining life-expectancy will extend well beyond two terms as the U.S. President.

Clinton is simply out of the running because of her failure and because of the clear harms that she has already done to the Party (losing across-the-board: Presidency, Senate, House, governorships, and state houses); and yet Sanders is still considered as a possibility, although he would be 79 years old in 2020 and is therefore unlikely to be chosen. The field is wide open this time around, not at all like it was in 2016.

Attention thus has begun to be focused upon the young progressive who nominated Sanders at the Democratic National Convention on 26 July 2016: U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. One of the chief arguments that are presented against her as being a Presidential candidate in 2020 (if she won’t already by that time have become a U.S. Senator) is that she is «only» a member of the large U.S. House of Representatives, and not a member of the far smaller, and yet more powerful, U.S. Senate — nor is she a state governor (which post, along with that of being a Senator, have traditionally been the two preferred springboards into the White House). But her being «only» a Representative is not actually a disqualifier.

There were two U.S. Representatives who ran for the White House and who won, and one of those two was possibly the greatest U.S. President ever: the progressive Abraham Lincoln in 1860. (The other was James Garfield, 20 years later.) Also like Lincoln, who staked out and led a stunningly courageous progressive political position on the central political issue of his time, Tulsi Gabbard has staked out and led a stunningly courageous progressive political position on what is perhaps the central political issue of our time.

This young progressive might therefore repeat what Lincoln did.

Abraham Lincoln went from being one of Illinois’ Representatives in Congress, directly to becoming (according to historians in our time) tied with the progressive Franklin Delano Roosevelt as having been the greatest American President.

The progressive Illinois Representative Lincoln became a U.S. President because he displayed the extraordinarily rare moral courage, as a U.S. Presidential candidate, to condemn the most evil conservative tradition in his time, slavery, that had been cursing this country for decades, ever since America's founding in the Constitution of 1787 — the nation’s founding document that accepted slavery, and that thus granted slave-owners an additional three-fifths or 60% of representation in Congress, for each and every slave that they owned; or, as wikipedia describes the net impact of the Constitution’s Three-Fifths Clause, «The effect was to give the southern states a third more seats in Congress and a third more electoral votes than if slaves had been ignored, but fewer than if slaves and free persons had been counted equally, allowing the slaveholder interests [the slave-owners] to largely dominate the government of the United States until 1861». Lincoln broke the stranglehold that the slaveholding Southern aristocracy (and their backers amongst the northern aristocrats) had held, during the nation’s early decades, over the U.S. government. Lincoln broke the dictatorship of the slave-owners (and of their northern bankers and slave-merchants — after all, those suppliers to the slave-market had benefited considerably from the added clout that the Three-Fifths Clause was providing to their customers, and which had helped continue and even expand the slaving tradition: the buying of slaves, from those slavers).

The progressive Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard similarly displays extraordinarily rare moral courage, hers being to condemn the most evil conservative tradition of our time: she condemns the U.S. military-industrial complex’s decades-long stranglehold, ever since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, over the U.S. government — the dictatorship that the weapons-corporations such as Lockheed Martin have over the U.S. federal government after the Cold War had ended on the Russian side, in 1991, and after Russia’s communism had ended and its Warsaw Pact military alliance to defend against America’s NATO alliance, also both ended in 1991, on Russia’s side, but the Cold War did not really end on America’s side. The Cold War continues, even today, on the American side, because of the stranglehold of the U.S. military-industrial complex over our government, which expands (instead of ends) its anti-Russian military alliance, NATO, even after that alliance's very reason-for-being — the communist threat — had ceased a full quarter-century ago.

As Gabbard has courageously expressed this matter, regarding specifically the very hot issue of America’s participation in the war in Syria, when speaking on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, on 8 December 2016:

Ms. GABBARD. Mr. Speaker, under U.S. law, it is illegal for you or me or any American to provide any type of assistance to al Qaeda, ISIS, or other terrorist groups. If we broke this law, we would be thrown in jail. Yet the U.S. Government has been violating this law for years, directly and indirectly supporting allies and partners of groups like al Qaeda and ISIS with money, weapons, intelligence, and other support in their fight to overthrow the Syrian Government.

A recent New York Times article confirmed that «rebel groups» supported by the U.S. «have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of al Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as Al Nusra».

The Wall Street Journal reports that rebel grounds are «doubling down on their alliance» with al Qaeda. This alliance has rendered the phrase «moderate rebels» meaningless. We must stop this madness. We must stop arming terrorists.

I am introducing the Stop Arming Terrorists Act today to prohibit taxpayer dollars from being used to support terrorists.

She would refocus our military against jihadists, instead of against Russians.

Rather than asserting such a hateful conservative lie as «Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe», Gabbard was saying that jihadists in all countries (and implicitly thereby, the aristocracies, such as the Sauds, that fund them) are that. (But, of course, America’s military-industrial complex sells lots more weapons if nuclear war is the goal than if killing terrorists is the goal — so, they can’t support a candidate such as Gabbard, who prefers to defend the American people, instead of to sell weapons.) And not only was she asserting that Russia’s ally Syria was defending itself against the jihadists, as the U.S. itself is, but she was asserting that our country, the United States, has actually been supporting those jihadists because they’re trying to overthrow Syria’s anti-jihadist government, which is supported by Russia. She was interviewed hostilely by both the liberal newsmedia and the conservative newsmedia — both Democrats and Republicans — and was condemned especially by the Democratic Party’s leadership — for her leading this anti-aristocratic position, and for her displaying this moral courage, even in the face of the aristocracy who buy ‘electoral’ wins, such as seats in Congress, and ultimately buy even America’s Presidencies, the people who occupy the U.S. White House.

(As regards Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s famous assertion that «Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe», the only sense in which that statement is even conceivably realistic is that the settlement at the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 was for the U.S. and Russia to have a balanced level of mutual-deterrence nuclear forces: the concept of maintaining Mutually Assured Destruction, or «MAD», which had prevented another world war, was to continue, to the mutual benefits of both sides, and of the entire world. But that is very different from continued mutual hostility and a nuclear-arms race, such as the neoconservatives (all the way from John McCain to Hillary Clinton) want. After the end of the Soviet Union, that costly arms-race wasn’t supposed to continue. George Herbert Walker Bush and his agents all assured Mikhail Gorbachev that the Cold War would be over if communism ended and the Warsaw Pact ended. The U.S. aristocracy just doesn’t want to fulfill its side of that bargain — they lied; they want conquest.)

As I look at the viewer-comments that are posted on all of those videos of Gabbard presenting this position — a position which is rejected by all of the U.S. Establishment — I get the impression that her position wins such broad public support, that Representative Gabbard would, if she becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 2020, sweep the White House and the Senate and the House, and become, as Abraham Lincoln was in the 1860s, a President who would, temporarily, conquer America’s aristocracy, which this time owns the giant ‘defense’ oligopoly firms, instead of owns the most slaves.

Here, for example, was a typical statement from Lincoln — the first and only progressive Republican President (the only one, because his Party got taken over by the U.S. aristocracy immediately after he was shot dead in 1865); it's dated 3 December 1861:

——

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital, producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and, with their capital, hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others, nor have others working for them. In most of the southern States, a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters; while in the northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men with their families — wives, sons, and daughters — work for themselves, on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital — that is, they labor with their own hands, and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed, and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

Again: as has already been said, there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just, and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way to all — gives hope to all, and consequent energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all. No [Page  53] men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty — none less inclined to take, or touch, aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost.

——

Here was a typical statement from Gabbard, this one condemning the then Democratic President Barack Obama’s hyper-conservative (or extremely pro-aristocracy) proposed TPP commercial treaty with Pacific-Rim countries:

——

gabbard.house.gov

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: ITC’s Report Confirms TPP is A Bad Deal for the American People

May 20, 2016 Press Release

Washington, DC — Today, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, released the following statement after the International Trade Commission (ITC) released a report on the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) projected impact on the U.S. economy:

«The International Trade Commission report confirms what we have known all along—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement is a bad deal for the American people.  We’ve heard from TPP proponents how the TPP will boost our economy, help American workers, and set the standards for global trade.  The ITC’s report tells us the opposite is true. In exchange for just 0.15 percent boost in GDP by 2032, the TPP would decimate American manufacturing capacity, increase our trade deficit, ship American jobs overseas, and result in losses to 16 of the 25 U.S. economic sectors. These estimates don’t even account for the damaging effects of currency manipulation, which is not addressed in the deal, environmental impacts, and the agreement’s deeply flawed Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process that empowers foreign corporations to supersede our sovereignty and domestic rule of law. This report further proves that the TPP is worse than we thought, and will benefit Wall Street banks and multinational corporations on the backs of hard-working Americans and our economy».

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard strongly opposed «fast-track» Trade Promotion Authority when it came before the House last year and has continued to speak out against the TPP.  Earlier this year, Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, Rosa DeLauro and other lawmakers released a joint op-ed on why the American people deserve better than the TPP.

——

Gabbard’s anti-TPP position, and her anti anti-Russia position, happen actually to be intimately connected, because a major motivation for Obama’s geostrategy behind all three of his mega-‘trade’ deals — TPP, TTIP, and TISA, all three of which were greatly facilitated by Congress’s passage of «Fast Track» — had also been designing it so as to exclude both Russia and China (as well as the other BRICS countries) from belonging to any of these proposed huge trading-blocs. TPP, TTIP, and TISA, were thus intended actually as huge collective acts of «trade war». For example: «TISA involves 51 countries, including every advanced economy except the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)». The U.S. aristocracy are like a giant boa-constrictor, with an unlimited appetite for conquest, and they cannot succeed without their alliances with the aristocracies of other nations. Gabbard repeatedly has said that she wants to do everything she can to help «ending our country’s interventionist regime-change war policies». A progressive believes that being more aggressive isn’t necessarily being stronger, but can (and often does) cause a nation to become weaker, and less prosperous — even if not for its aristocrats, who thrive by invading other lands.

Both Lincoln and Gabbard are Representatives (and, in Lincoln’s case, subsequently a President) who courageously waged ideological battle for the public, against the aristocracy — they were/are progressives. The main difference between them is that the aristocracy today wages its warfare against the public differently than it did in 1860. Whereas nowadays it derives the biggest source of its power from selling weaponry and energy and disease-care products and financial services (including to U.S. soldiers), in Lincoln’s time it was selling slaves and the products of slaves. So, today’s government has been designed for the ‘defense’ firms, whereas until 1860 it was designed for the slaving firms.

Though the times have changed, the basic ideological struggle remains basically the same as it always has been: the aristocracy versus the public. And, like Representative Abraham Lincoln did in the 1850s,   Representative Tulsi Gabbard in our time has been making very clear, by her courageous actions and statements, on which side of the ideological divide she stands. It’s the same side that Sanders himself stood on: the progressive side. He would be terrific — in her Cabinet, or in her White House: like William H. Seward was, to Abraham Lincoln.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/01/31/the-us-politician-who-could-become-second-abraham-lincoln.html