Invasion and/or Assassination As An Official Policy Will Always Come Back To Bite You.

Ask America

Way back in 1961, the CIA Deputy Director of Plans, Richard Bissell laid plans for an invasion of Cuba in order to unseat Fidel Castro.

The invasion did not spark a popular uprising by the Cuban People and Bissell’s plan to organize the murder of the Cuban Leader failed as well.

The depths to which government officials can sink is illustrated by Bissell’s plan.

He recruited members of U.S. organized crime – specifically Sam Giancanana, among others to poison Fidel, in the hope that Castro’s death would enable the invasion to succeed.

The murder plot failed, but President John F. Kennedy had been “had”

JFK Trapped by the CIA

If Kennedy had cancelled the invasion, there was the real possibility that the CIA force of angry Cuban exiles might take over the government of Guatemala and so the invasion of Cuba went ahead. It failed dismally. It was denounced by Kennedy and forced the resignation of the Director of The CIA, Allen Dulles.

In the end, Castro’s forces captured hundreds of the CIA-sponsored invaders and eventually traded them for 50 million dollars worth of medical and other supplies.

All of this is contained in a recently-released top secret CIA report on the CIA fiasco.

Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul

The report contains damning evidence of an American shadow government, which operates in secret, following illegal policies with unlimited funds and – according to American politician Dr. Ron Paul – threatens American democracy. There is now a growing group of Americans who are calling for the dissolution of the CIA itself.

• When a government attempts to make policy by unlawful means, whether by invading another country or murdering political leaders, the door is opened to disaster.

We’ve seen it in Central America, in the Caribbean, in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Iraq and the new revelations about The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba shows us the roots of this failed approach to foreign policy. Congressman Paul believes that Israel is treading on dangerous ground.

More from Dr. Ron Paul, a U.S. Congressman from Texas in this video.

Thoughts on the Canadian Budget -

It’s interesting to me…and obviously to others as well…that one place to cut costs is the military budget, which has been bloated by the present government and the one before it. We spent hundreds of millions on tanks that were never used. (The enemy we are fighting is not intimidated b y tanks and/or fighter bombers).

Get real.

Harper is planning to spend billions on fighter bombers we do not need. Neither we nor the Americans have an enemy with an air-force.  If money is to be spent on the military…it should be spent to improve public relations and intelligence gathering.

We can cut the military budget drastically…by at least 20 billion dollars.

Further advice -

• Provincial transfers must be maintained, perhaps with some performance conditions attached.

• Correct the number one Conservative mistake and restore the 2% cut in the GST.

• Invest heavily in scientific and industrial R&D.

• Initiate a credible search for alternative means of energy production.

• Examine more creative and productive approaches to the rehabilitation of offenders and the operation of prisons in general.

• Focus on improving our educational system from bottom to top.

• Develop a national rail transportation system that improves on the one we have now; invest in railway technology and tir in more closely to U.S. rail road systems.

• Increase taxes on those individuals earning 250,000.00 or more, by 10%.

• Provide tax incentives for Canadian manufacturers employing up to 50 workers in rural areas. (The term “rural area” to be defined.)

• End the prohibition on marijuana and re-classify it and tax it as a legal drug in the same manner as alcohol and tobacco. For a rational argument on this issue, see Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. (Click Here).

• Have the Auditor general conduct a review of Crown Corporations and Crown-owned assets, with respect to their viability. Those that work well will be retained and those that do not, will be shut down or sold. The Auditor General’s Report on this matter would be discussed and debated in Parliament and acted upon by the House of Commons as a whole.

• Make a serious commitment to open government, accountability and transparency, thereby dramatically increasing Canadian confidence in the federal authority.

• Institute a freeze on all government salaries, including those of elected members and their staffs. This would also include the setting of a ceiling on the salaries of politicians and their staffs.

* For guidance on the above point, take a look at Elections Canada, which pays relatively low wages, for a relatively high return in terms of productivity.

*And finally, make a commitment to the exercise of common sense in government decision-making.

I have the feeling that a majority of my fellow citizens would agree.

Thanks

This is partly about interacting with people who read my stuff. I answer all my mail personally. I think it’s only fair. (Besides, I don’t have a secretary).

Recently I received an email from an acquaintance of mine who criticized me for an article I had written for a little magazine in Kincardine Ontario Canada.

It’s called Marketplace  Magazine and my friend took issue with my call for a public inquiry into the Afghan detainee issue. He’s a prominent businessman in the area, so I won’t mention his name.

My response to his rebuttal

My friend started off by saying that it had been a long time since we’d seen each other and he wondered if I remembered him. Anyway, it’s all here in my response. (My friend’s points are indented and in red).

As a Libertarian by nature and a Conservative by history I thought I would give a rebuttal to your Liberal “Window” in January’s Marketplace (Kincardine).

Dear ____

Thanks for writing. (more…)

In my early visits to the Middle East, I met people, who remembered the days when Jews and Arabs were friends.

An old Palestinian once told me that when he was a boy, a Jewish family lived next door. They were devout and couldn’t work on the Sabbath, so his father would visit the neighbour every week and light the Sabbath lamps. In return, the head of the Jewish family would light his family’s lamps on the Muslim Holy Day. He said he missed those times. But unfortunately wars mess up peoples’ lives. These days Jews and Palestinians seldom come into personal contact. So it’s heart-warming to find a story that provides a glimmer of hope that perhaps peace could come when a new generation grows up.

Orel is an Israeli Jewish boy who is in the ALYN hospital in Jerusalem. Marya is a Muslim girl in the same hospital. They are the same age; they met during their treatment. They have lived next door to each other for a year now and have become friends. The Jewish boy was wounded by a rocket fired by Hamas from Gaza.

The Muslim girl was paralysed by an Israeli missile, which killed her mother and injured her father and brother. Neither child has any idea why they were almost killed. Neither understands the long struggle between Israelis and Palestinians over lost lands, homes and identities. But they are both in the ALYN hospital, which was founded by an American in 1932, before the Jewish state was created.

Its first building was an old Christian Church, donated as a polio treatment centre, open to all children of all faiths. It still operates on that principle.

This post is published with a sense of sadness and despair

The coming western defeat in Afghanistan is the result of hubris, arrogance and a disregard for other cultures and other viewpoints. We thought we could just march in and impose a brand new ideology, philosophy and attitude on the part of a people we have never understood fully and probably never will.

Our cavalier attitude toward torture, our embrace of violence as a method of solving problems and our desire to get things done quickly, undercut all the efforts at improving Afghan society.

(The same applies to the overall “War on Terror”, by the way.)

Disorganization, lack of a coherent strategy and cynical motives cost us the support of the Afghan population.

Canada’s General Hillier delighted in calling the Taliban “scumbags”. By doing that, he showed his ignorance and lack of understanding of matters that were outside his sphere of knowledge.

He received no rebuke from his political masters, who were and remain equally misguided.

NATO leaders relied on a military solution, which was sure to fail, as it has almost always failed in the past.

The United Nations Security Council went along with the nonsensical approach and its reputation has been blackened along with the reputation of Canada and the rest of the western world.

Now a highly respected analyst and historian, who teaches at an American Military School, has laid it out in blunt terms.

His assessment is a confirmation that those of us who have for many years opposed the American-U.N.-NATO approach have been right and the warmongers have been wrong.

The following article is condensed from today’s Miami Herald.

No reason for optimism about war in Afghanistan

He goes even further to say that Obama knows this war is unwinnable, and that the surge is meant to provide political cover in advance of a full U.S. withdrawal before the 2012 election.

Johnson sees it as the same “cynical exit strategy” devised by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to get American forces out of Vietnam.

Obama wouldn’t be the first U.S. president to let domestic political concerns affect his military moves abroad, but he certainly campaigned as a different kind of leader.

According to Professor Johnson, the cost of the surge in American lives and dollars will be high, even if we stay only 18 months. And the mission of banishing al Qaeda forever from that region seems far-fetched, relying as heavily as it does on cooperation from Pakistan and competence from Afghanistan’s armed forces.

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Considering the loss of life, the vast expenditures and the further destruction of Afghan society…being right is very very cold comfort.