The Empire in Decline

Here is an ethics question. If a $3 million reward is offered for the capture of a terrorist, and he turns himself in, does he get the money? Another question is who authorizes these absurd reward amounts? Is a gang of Arabs thinking: We would grab him for $3 million but not for just $1 million? Even in the USA, I think more than a $200,000 reward for any capture is excessive.

I suspect most of these rewards are diverted for personal or operational needs of our CIA folks. They can demand a commission for delivery or just shortchange the awardee. Or they can arrest the snitch since he must have some "association" with the terrorist, or for "obstruction of justice" for not reporting the information earlier.

I saw an article on a ceremony to remember the 84 American GI prisoners gunned down by German troops near Malmedy, Belgium on Dec 17, 1944. This is part a long standing propaganda effort to justify World War II and American worldwide domination. It seems the advancing Germans had taken so many prisoners they could not guard them all, so some were shot. Since 43 GIs managed to run away during this massacre, it wasn't a well planned event. There were many cases of GIs killing German prisoners too, but those are never mentioned.

That Wikipedia link explains another wartime myth - Japs never surrendered! This is mostly true, but not because they were all fanatics. GIs almost always killed Japanese soldiers who tried to surrender, discouraging the idea and resulting in very few prisoners.

A U.S. Army General formally announced that he will not abide by a treaty signed by American and South Korean leaders in 2004. He will keep forces near the DMZ to help justify the Army's budget and force structure, even though they are not needed and not desired by local South Koreans. Army Generals have planned this power play for years.

The annual Army-Navy football spectacle is today, where millions of taxpayer dollars are spent to foment friction between these two services. This reminded me of a proposal I wrote a few years back to ban sports competition between the service academies. Another expensive quirk about the academies that any injury these students suffer may cost taxpayers lifetime disability pay, even if off-duty and even if they drop out of the academy. This is because cadets and midshipmen are on active duty, and therefore serving their nation by attending college for free, along with free housing, free food, and a thousand dollars a month stipend for expenses.

I wrote an book about future warfare in 2006, and updated parts the following four years. A lot has changed since then, so I've spent this year updating and revising this book "The Spectrum of Future Warfare". I am 99% finished and I plan to read through it one more time for tweaks and corrections.

As a Christmas gift to my regular readers, I've allowed free access to the end of this year.

I love irony. Just after American airpower bombed the main ISIS city of Raqqa in Syria, the Syrian government conducted its own airstrikes there. U.S. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said she was "horrified" by Syrian regime bombardments. She announced: "The Assad regime’s continued slaughter of Syrian civilians further exposes its callous disregard for human life." Meanwhile, reports from Syria indicate that Syrian rebel groups are uniting under ISIS leadership as they view the USA as allied with the Syrian government. If I were in charge of American foreign policy, that's who I would ally with, but then the conflict would end quickly along with big profits for friends of the Pentagon.

One reason the USA lost in Vietnam was the U.S. military's perpetual public relations campaign combined with a zero defects culture in the U.S. military. American Generals often angrily dismissed news reports from battlefields as hogwash, only to discovered they had been lied to by their own lower-ranking officers. The great book "A Bright Shining Lie" covers this problem.

I recently stumbled across an example. I like reading the "Stars and Stripes" on-line because it has interesting stuff, but keep in mind that it is a U.S. government funded publication. I noticed this article linked in its archive: Marines kill 300 as Utah trap closes. That 1966 report began with:

QUANG NGAI, Vietnam — Eight Vietnamese and U.S. Marine Corps Battalions Sunday closed in on a north Vietnamese force estimated at regiment size. A Marine spokesman reported 300 of the enemy confirmed killed and a Vietnamese spokesman said government forces killed another 225. American and Vietnamese casualties were light.

I took notice because I included that battle in my list of 70 "Lost Battles of the Vietnam War". My summary is based on the Marine Corps' official history about the battle that can be read on-line: Here is my summary:

13. Operation Utah - On Mar 4, 1966, the 2nd battalion of the 7th Marines helicoptered into an area near Quang Ngai to investigate reports of an NVA regiment in the area. They found it dug into fortifications around Hill 50. Their attacked failed and the Marines fell back, but were surprised when the NVA counterattacked. The battalion was in trouble and more Marine units were flown in to join the battle. The enemy withdrew, but only after the Marines lost 98 dead, 278 wounded, with several aircraft destroyed.

Our media failed to cover how disastrous the new Iraqi army failed when confronted by ISIS. There are lots of photos of American M-1A1 heavy tanks and M-113 APCs destroyed by ISIS. But this photo of tanks captured by ISIS is shocking.

After years of training the new Iraqi army, Secretary Hagel made everyone laugh by saying such training has accelerated. I doubt that ISIS troopers are better, but they are allowed a pillage bonus.

As this blog has explained, invading Syria has been on the CIA/Pentagon agenda for years. They almost got approval a year ago, but with Americans tired of imperial wars fewer than 9% supported military action against Syria, and 9% of American are so nutty they approve of bombing any nation, including Canada! A new war is needed by our war machine since it has been ordered out of Afghanistan after 13 years of failure. Read these previous G2mil blog posts to refresh your memory:

Critics have accused the U.S. Government of waging perpetual war for decades, dating back to the 1948 publication of the famous book "1984". They claim citizens are kept in line and paying taxes for useless wars just to provide easy profits for millionaire insiders. This has always been denied, and those critics called delusional, until recently. A major military industry magazine just published an article: Top Marine Sees a Future of Perpetual War. It notes that our Generals see no end to combat once our forces leave Afghanistan, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said the military expects to remain on a permanent war footing.

Attacking Syria should erase all doubt that the USA has become a war machine monster. As our military withdrew from Iraq it shifted forces to Afghanistan. As it draws down there, a new enemy has arose. This war campaign plan was announced several years ago in public by retired General Wesley Clark....

As the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan, it is destroying billions of dollars of usable equipment because it is too costly to ship home. This reminds me of a 1986 passage from the late Col. Fletcher Prouty USAF:

" ...we must understand that it has become the objective of 'low intensity conflict' to continue the wasting of money, the pointless killing of defenseless people, and the consumption or attrition of costly war materiel to make way for the procurement of more. 'Low-intensity conflict' is a way in which the hundreds of billions of dollars of armaments produced each year can be used, destroyed, and wasted this year in order that more may be procured and used next year."

Obama rejected demands for a new war, so the CIA/Pentagon propaganda machine invented a new scheme. The Syrian "rebels" funded by the CIA itself would become a new threat, bigger than al Qaeda! They would be directed to attack the worthless Iraqi Army to destroy billions of dollars of new American equipment that we are now replacing. Ironically, American airpower was used to destroy some of it! Col. Prouty would not have been surprised as $5.6 billion has been requested as a down payment for this new war.

We now have American airpower conducting a dozen airstrikes a day in Syria! We are told this LIC may last for years! American advisors are in Syria too. Some may have been killed but the Pentagon will never tell the American public as it might disrupt their successful propaganda campaign to generate public and congressional support for an invasion of Syria. The next step is the introduction of "some" American troops to help the Iraqis defeat IS, or ISIS, or ISIL, or whatever name someone dreamed up. This should be approved soon after the idea is sold as "vital."

The final step is tricky and the same General Dempsey who announced last year that we would remain on permanent war footing is in Iraq right now plotting the invasion. Our new enemy is fighting our other enemy, the Syrian government. How to spin this into an excuse for an invasion of all of Syria? Most likely, an American aircraft will be shot down and a prisoner taken. American troops will arrive to rescue them. Somehow the Syrian government will be blamed, and Pentagon spokesman B. Obama will announce that we must act in "self defense" and to establish peace.

This may be a tough sell, which is why he waited until after the elections. He may combine this announcement with a dictatorial action to grant amnesty to millions of foreign invaders, something opposed by the vast majority of Americans, including Democrats. While Americans become outraged by Obama's edict, he will play "war president" with news images of American troops in action and flags waving in the background. Americans will be told the nation is at war, we have no choice, so shut up and support the troops!

"I teach at the Naval Academy, Annapolis. I’m in my 28th year. My students are typically 18-21, with a few older ones who were prior-enlisted, or who went to civilian schools before losing all their time by starting anew at the Naval Academy. (We accept transfer of individual courses from these, but not of years: the idea is that four years of Annapolis are so essential to the development of an officer—the fact that 80% of Naval officers don’t go the Academy be damned—that we don’t want to deprive people of any of them.) Still, without a rare waiver, they can’t be older than 23 on the day they swear in, right hand upheld, on I-Day, Induction Day.

So they are young. And worse (or is this, better?), they come with illusions about the Naval Academy that are created by our Madison-Avenue-level hype: the Naval Academy is full of “the best and the brightest,” we reject twenty applicants for every one admitted, we make (as our Web site says) “Leaders to serve the nation.” They find out soon enough (I say by October of their plebe, freshman, year, so I call it their “October Surprise”) that none of this is true: we have SAT scores lower than the nearby state school University of Maryland, the bottom 20% of our class needed a taxpayer-supported 13th grade at the Naval Academy Prep School (NAPS) to even be viable academically and even then usually aren’t, we define an “applicant” to include high school students applying to a six-day summer seminar—about a third of the “applicants” we claim, we recruit shamelessly for Division I athletics, and we don’t graduate “leaders” (which we never define) but only officers, which we have the power to create. The students expect what I call “jacked geniuses” and find mediocrity, and a million rules and “traditions” that serve no purpose except themselves. So it’s all intensely discouraging for the midshipmen."

Do you want proof that aliens from outer space are here on Earth? Recent interviews before the death of Boyd Bushman are convincing. He worked at Area 51 for years and on other secret government projects. I'd link one but they keep getting removed, just search youtube and you'll find some. I find them convincing because of their poor production quality. Some question why his pictures of aliens are poor, but remember that he's been out of the game for a long time and had to smuggle "big" old style film cameras through security.

But the hard proof is a complete lack of interest by our corporate media. We are told they are very competitive and love sensational stories to fill 24-hours worth of "news" each day. This is a great story that no one will cover. Why? Even if you do not believe him, a story about a government engineer going nuts is of interest.

One our government's most blatant cons is called "household income." What does that mean? Aren’t we concerned about worker income? That has slowly declined. As families become poorer, they must economize with housing, with a growing number of young adults living with their parents. More adult siblings are living together and more people are taking on roommates.

So when the government surveyor works, he encounters a small home filled with ten people, five making minimum wage, so their household income is $70,000 a year! If your brother loses his job and moves in to sleep in your basement, his “household” income isn’t measured. If he gets a job at Kmart making $10 a hour, your “household” income jumps by $20,000! Congrats on your new prosperity!

The effect of legalizing 10-20 million foreigners will push wages much lower. Employers will have stacks of applications from desperate foreigners willing to work any job to help out their “household” of twelve. Moreover, what will the world think of a second amnesty? Expect another 50 million to flood across the border the next decade for their chance, with most claiming they have been in the USA for years. They don’t give a damn about a “pathway to citizenship” all they need is a social security card to work or sign up for welfare benefits.

We’ll have ships full of desperate impoverished Africans, Indians, and Burmese pull up to American piers and families flood out, all refugees of course. Corporate front men like Jon Stewart and John McCain will shame those who think they should be deported, yet they will not open any of their many luxury homes to house these invaders.

Our media barely mentioned that the nurse who contracted Ebola from a patient in Dallas has been cured and released from the hospital. She was flown to the White House for an Obama hug.

Ebola is like the flu. It can kill those in poor health who don't get prompt medical attention, except it is much more difficult to spread than various strains of the common flu that kill 36,000 Americans each year. Everyone should accept that this was a massive media hoax and demand that "news" outlets go back to reporting news.

Ebola has caused a few thousand deaths in Africa since 1976. It is difficult to spread and several other diseases have killed far more. I was pleased to hear a rational voice on corporate TV explain that there is no Ebola outbreak in the USA. I was shocked that his commentary was allowed on Fox News, America's leading hysteria generator.

Our corporate media has been directed to ignore new NSA secrets that dribble out from the database Snowden provided Glenn Greenwald. These gradual revelations are needed to allow ample time for experts to "vet" the top secret material so that lives are not endangered, and to allow for years of media stories. However, our CIA directed media refuses to cover them anymore. As a result, Greenwald established a website "The Intercept" where anyone can read his latest revelations.

The American empire never gives up conquests. You may have heard that the U.S. military is pulling out of Afghanistan. It is just downsizing to free forces for new conquests elsewhere, like Syria. Read this story about new permanent base construction in Afghanistan, to include movie theaters. Many people assumed our empire had given up control of Iraq, but were wrong. We have thousands of troops there now, and forever.

Our empire is also building bases in Africa under the guise of humanitarian assistance. This has been a goal ever since the new Africa Command appeared a few years back, but Congress and the American people strongly opposed intervening in that continent's perpetual wars. Earlier this year, over 150 American Marines were dispatched to Uganda to fight "Kony" and the Marines quietly announced they have established new "staging" bases in Senegal, Ghana, and Gabon.

The U.S. Army has begun construction of a base in Liberia using the "Ebola" excuse. The "we must save kidnapped girls" was not a successful marketing effort to dispatch troops to Nigeria. Therefore, the CIA propaganda arm is going all out selling the "threat" of Ebola. Various strains of foreign influenza "the flu" kill 36,000 Americans each year, Ebola has killed one! The flu is far more dangerous because is transmitted through the air by coughs and sneezes. Ebola is spread by an exchange of fluids, just like HIV. Several other diseases kill more Africans each month, but no one reports on them. Avoid sex with West Africans and don't touch dead African corpses and you will not get Ebola.

Nevertheless, our media is flooding the nation with fear to explain the deployment of 4000 American GIs for a new base in Liberia. It remains unclear exactly what these troops will do since most will be needed just to operate the new base. It would be much faster, cheaper, and safer to dispatch Navy ships to help from offshore. The US Navy could dispatch one of its two hospital ships to perform this mission, which is why they exist! Help could be provided immediately without exposing troops to local illnesses, like bullets. The Army says its new base will have 25 hospital beds, while the USS Comfort (pictured) has 1000! With 4000 troops in West Africa, the U.S. Army will need these 25 beds just to care for deployed American GIs! The only explanation is that our empire is not deploying troops to Africa because of Ebola, but because it is building a new permanent military base.

While updating my book I noticed that one page had been corrupted and was scrambled. I checked my back up file and that had been corrupted by a previous backup update. I was about to spend a couple hours to recreate the entire page, but then I remembered the Wayback Machine. I had to check back a few years, but eventually found a good copy, cut and paste, and the page is restored!

I've always been suspicious of that great site. It must cost a fortune to maintain a copy of the entire Internet every week. The website charges nothing and doesn't try to sell anything. This makes me think that it's a covert NSA project, like something out of the book "1984". Someone could alter entries for events in the past to "prove" to everyone that their memory of events is faulty.

I'm updating and revising my on-line book first published in 2006. I'll give G2mil readers a few days of free access when I'm done this December. Here is part:

How should a nation train military strategists? The first challenge is teaching students that some of what they learned in school is false. Nations and institutions develop a culture partly based upon myths of superiority. For example, World War II combat infantryman Paul Fussel's book "Doing Battle" didn't sell nearly as well as books by Stephen Ambrose, who somehow missed military service but became wealthy writing about brave and brilliant American troops in World War II. Perhaps Fussell's work wasn't popular because he insisted on writing:

"In the opinion of British military historian Max Hastings, the American forces were so bad (and actually so were most of the British) 'that when Allied troops met Germans on anything like equal terms, the Germans almost always prevailed.' Thank God the troops, most of them, didn't know how bad we were. It's hard enough to be asked to die in the midst of heroes, but to die in the midst of stumblebums led by fools -- intolerable. And I include myself in this indictment."

It is difficult to learn from history because by definition it is "his story"; the victor's account of what happened. Students of history cannot learn from mistakes if they are hidden. Blunders are often spun into magnificent accomplishments. For example, during World War II the US Pacific Fleet Command thought the Japanese island of Iwo Jima was lightly defended and that it would take just three days to secure it with the loss of around 600 Americans killed. This tiny, remote island was not important since it posed no threat to American ships or aircraft, but bombers returning to Saipan after long missions over Japan often had problems and an emergency landing strip on Iwo Jima would be nice.

As a result, the Iwo Jima landing began with a light naval gunfire bombardment, then marines went ashore to mop up. They were surprised to find 21,000 Japanese dug into fortified mountains. An intense battle raged for 36 days that resulted in 6800 marines, soldiers, and sailors dead. Twice that many were wounded so badly they were discharged. This unnecessary battle wiped out almost half the combat power of the entire U.S. Marine Corps. Why was intelligence so bad? Was more reconnaissance possible? Should the marines have withdrawn when the mistake was discovered?

Such issues are never addressed because this bloody battle was spun into a dramatic victory. Even worse, there is a shallow mindset among many people not to question government historical accounts because it is viewed as unpatriotic. This controversy was summarized in an excellent yet unpopular book, "The Ghosts of Iwo Jima." A US Marine Corps major once stated that having an extensive and effective public relations branch was good, but its own officers confuse the pervasive positive sales crap with reality.

My local news is full of covert advertisements for the latest Apple iPhone. I've seen numerous TV "newcasts" and heard radio reports about long lines for this newest Apple product, with interviews of people stating why they must have one as soon as possible. Few Americans realize this is part of a common advertising campaign. The marketing departments of these corporations sell news slots to promote products. Another "news" marketing campaign at the moment is by America's weapons makers, promoting a new Cold War with Russia and an endless war in Iraq.

I rarely repost outside things. However, a reader sent one of the most important political speeches this decade, which was ignored by the corporate media. Opening America's borders with another amnesty would devastate the USA since it would encourage another 20 million poor, desperate refugees to flood across within a decade. If the Republicans were not so closely allied with big business, they would run on this issue and easily win the Senate and Presidency. Senator Sessions is very popular in his state due to vocal opposition on this issue so is less afraid of scorn from corporate lobbyists.

The Senate isn’t doing anything to stop Obama’s plans — thank the plutocrats.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, delivered a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday evening about Senate Democrats’ refusal to support legislation to block the president’s proposed executive actions on immigration policy, and the interests supporting amnesty. Following is an adapted version of his remarks.

________________________________________

Earlier this week I spoke about the president’s promise that he would issue an executive amnesty to 5 or 6 million people. The planned amnesty would include work permits, photo IDs, and Social Security numbers for millions of people who illegally entered the U.S., illegally overstayed their visas, or defrauded U.S. immigration authorities.

The Senate Democratic conference has supported and enabled the president’s unlawful actions and blocked every effort to stop them. Not even one of our Democratic colleagues has backed the House legislation that would stop this planned executive amnesty or demanded that Senator Reid bring it up for a vote. Every Senate Democrat is therefore the president’s partner in his planned lawless acts.

Tonight I would like to talk about the influence of special interests on our nation’s immigration system. How did we get to the point where elected officials, activist groups, the ACLU, and global CEOs are openly working to deny American workers the immigration protections to which they are legally entitled? How did we get to the point where the Democratic party is prepared to nullify and wipe away the immigration laws of the United States of America?

Just yesterday Majority Leader Reid wrote in a tweet something that was shocking. He said: “Since House Republicans have failed to act on immigration, I know the President will. When he does, I hope he goes Real Big.”

Let this sink in for a moment. The majority leader of the Senate is bragging that he knows the president will circumvent Congress to issue executive amnesty to millions, and he is encouraging the president to ensure this amnesty includes as many people as possible. And the White House has acknowledged that 5 to 6 million is the number they are looking at.

Has one Senate Democrat stepped forward to reject Mr. Reid’s statement? Has one Senate Democrat stepped forward to say: I support the legislation passed by the House of Representatives that would secure the border and block this executive amnesty? Have they ever said they support that? Have they ever said: I will do everything in my power to see that the House legislation gets a vote in the Senate so the American people can know what is going on? No. All we hear is silence.

This body is not run by one man. We don’t have a dictator in the great Senate. Every member has a vote. And the only way Senator Reid can succeed in blocking this Senate from voting to stop the president’s executive actions is for members to stop supporting him.

Every senator needs to stand up and represent their constituents — not big business, not the ACLU, not activist groups, not political interests, but the American interests, the workers’ interests. That is what we need to expect from them, and we don’t have but a few weeks, it looks like, to get it done.

In effect, the entire Senate Democratic conference has surrendered the jobs, wages, and livelihoods of their constituents to a group of special interests meeting in secret at the White House. They are surrendering them to executive actions that will foist on the nation what Congress has refused to pass and the American people have rejected. They are plotting at the White House to move forward with executive action no matter what the people think and no matter what Congress — through the people’s House — has decided.

Politico reports that “White House officials conducted more than 20 meetings in July and August with legal experts, immigration advocates and business leaders to gather ideas on what should be included in the order.”

So who are these so-called expert advocates and business leaders? They are not the law-enforcement officers; they are not our ICE officers; they are not our Border Patrol officers; they are not the American working man and woman; they are not unemployed Americans. They weren’t in the room. You can be sure of that. Their opinions weren’t sought.

No, White House officials are meeting with the world’s most powerful corporate and immigration lobbyists and activists who think border controls are for the little people. The administration is meeting with the elite, the cosmopolitan set, who scorn and mock the concerns of everyday Americans who are concerned about their schools, jobs, wages, communities, and hospitals. These great and powerful citizens of the world don’t care much about old-fashioned things like national boundaries, national sovereignty, and immigration control — let alone the constitutional separation of powers.

Well, don’t you get it? They believe they are always supposed to get whatever it is they want. They are used to that. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, one report says they have spent $1.5 billion since 2007 trying to pass their desired immigration bill — $1.5 billion. They tried and tried and tried to pass the bill through Congress, but the American people said: No, no, no. So they decided to just go to the president. They decide to go to President Obama, and they insist that he implement these measures through executive fiat. And Senate Democrats have apparently said: Well, that is just a wonderful idea. We support that. Just do it. Go big. But, Mr. President, wait a little bit. Wait until after the election. We don’t want the voters to hold us accountable for what you are doing. We want to pretend we in the Senate have nothing to do with it.

One of the groups that have joined the chorus of special interests demanding executive action on immigration is FWD.us, run by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He just turned 30, and I understand he is worth about $30 billion.

Mr. Zuckerberg has been very busy recently. One of his fellow billionaires, Mr. Carlos Slim — maybe the world’s richest man — invited Mr. Zuckerberg down to Mexico City to give a speech. What did Mr. Zuckerberg promote in his speech? Well, this is a report of it.

I guess I will first note that young Mr. Zuckerberg maybe doesn’t know there is a deep American tradition — a tradition in most developed nations — that you don’t go to a foreign capital to criticize your own government. I suppose he doesn’t know about that. They probably didn’t teach him about that when he was at one of the elite schools he attended.

This is what he said in Mexico City: “We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it’s a policy unfit for today’s world.”

Well, the “masters of the universe” are very fond of open borders as long as these open borders don’t extend to their gated compounds and fenced-off estates.

I have another article from late last fall that was printed in Business Insider about Mr. Zuckerberg’s actions. The headline is “Mark Zuckerberg Just Spent More than $30 Million Buying 4 Neighboring Houses for Privacy.” The article says:

Mark Zuckerberg just made an unusual purchase. Well, four purchases. Facebook’s billionaire founder bought four homes surrounding his current home near Palo Alto, Mercury News Reports. The houses cost him more than $30 million, including one 2,600 square-foot home that cost $14 million. (His own home is twice as large at 5,000 square-feet and cost half as much.) Larry Page made a similar move a few years ago so he could build a 6,000-square-foot mansion. But Zuckerberg’s reason is different. He doesn’t want to live in excess, he just wants a little privacy.

That is a world the average American doesn’t live in.

So Mr. Zuckerberg — who has become the top spokesman for expanding the admission of foreign workers — championed the Senate immigration bill for which all of our Democratic colleagues voted. One of the things the bill did was double the supply of low-wage foreign workers brought into the United States for companies such as Facebook.

Many of us have heard for a long time the claim that there is a shortage of STEM and IT workers. This has been the central sales pitch used by those making demands for massive increases in foreign-worker programs across the board — programs that bring in workers for every sector in the U.S. economy. But we know otherwise from the nation’s leading academics, people who studied this issue and are professionals in it. I have a recent op-ed here from USA Today which reports that there is actually not a shortage but a surplus of Americans who have been trained in the STEM and IT fields and that this is why wages for these fields have not increased since 1999.

If you have a shortage of workers in a field such as information technology or science and mathematics, wages go up, do they not? If wages are not up, we don’t have a shortage.

So rich high-tech companies are using the H-1B visa program to keep wages down and to hire less expensive workers from abroad. Indeed, the same companies demanding more guest workers are laying off American workers in droves.

I would like to read some excerpts from that op-ed published in USA Today. The article was co-authored by five of the nation’s experts on labor markets and the guest-worker program. I think it tells a story that has not been refuted. We have partisans and advocates who have been claiming there is a shortage in these fields, but the experts say no. And since they have been speaking out on this issue, we have seen no real data that would dispute what they say in this article dated July 27, 2014.

Headline: “Bill Gates’ tech worker fantasy.” Sub-headline: “Silicon Valley has created an imaginary staffing shortage.”

Business executives and politicians endlessly complain that there is a “shortage” of qualified Americans and that the U.S. must admit more high-skilled guest workers to fill jobs in STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math. This claim is echoed by everyone from President Obama and Rupert Murdoch to Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

Yet within the past month, two odd things occurred: Census reported that only one in four STEM degree holders is in a STEM job, and Microsoft announced plans to downsize its workforce by 18,000 jobs.

The five writers of this article — referring to themselves — go on to say:

None of us have been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry’s assertions of labor shortages.

The article was written by Ron Hira, Paula Stephan, Hal Salzman, Michael Teitelbaum, who has recently written a book on this subject, and Norm Matloff. These are labor-economics experts who have studied these issues for years. Many of them have testified before Congress. They say:

None of us have been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry’s assertions of labor shortages.

What a statement that is.

They go on to write — they all signed this article together — that:

If a shortage did exist, wages would be rising as companies try to attract scarce workers. Instead, legislation that expanded visas for IT personnel during the 1990s has kept average wages flat over the past 16 years. Indeed, guest workers have become the predominant source of new hires in these fields.

The “predominant source of new hires” in information-technology fields is guest-worker programs from abroad.

They go on to say:

Those supporting even greater expansion seem to have forgotten about the hundreds and thousands of American high-tech workers who are being shortchanged — by wages stuck at 1998 levels, by diminished career prospects and by repeated rounds of layoffs.

They go on to say:

There is an ample supply of American workers who are willing and qualified to fill high-skill jobs in this country. The only real disagreement is whether the supply is two or three times larger than the demand.

There is no doubt we have a surplus of IT workers. The question is whether the supply is two or three times as big as the number of job openings.

They go on to say:

Unfortunately, companies are exploiting the large existing flow of guest workers to deny American workers access to STEM careers and middle-class security that should come with them. Imagine, then, how many more Americans would be frozen out of the middle class if politicians and tech moguls succeeded in doubling or tripling the flow of guest workers into STEM occupations.

That is exactly what the bill before this Senate — the bill the House of Representatives rejected — would have done. It would have doubled the number of guest workers coming into America just to take jobs — coming in for the very purpose of taking a job that we need Americans to be taking.

The article goes on: “Another major, yet often overlooked, provision in the pending legislation” — that is the bill President Obama is pushing for, the Gang of Eight bill — “would grant automatic green cards to any foreign student who earns a graduate degree in a STEM field, based on assertions that foreign graduates of U.S. universities are routinely being forced to leave. Such claims are incompatible with the evidence that such graduates have many paths to stay and work, and indeed the ‘stay rates’ for visiting international students are very high and have shown no sign of decline. The most recent study finds that 92 percent of Chinese Ph.D. students stay in America to work after graduation.”

So there is this myth that we have thousands and thousands of students graduating from schools and being sent home. That is not accurate, according to the experts who study the data.

The article continues:

The tech industry’s promotion of expanded temporary visas (such as the H-1B) and green cards is driven by a desire for cheap, young and immobile labor. It is well documented that loopholes enable firms to legally pay H-1Bs below their market value and to continue the widespread age discrimination acknowledged by many in the tech industry.

I talked to a gentleman whom I knew a little bit who worked at a computer company. He is well into his 40s, maybe close to 50. I asked him what kind of security there is. He said, well, in the tech industry these companies go and fall. I said, what happens if you were to lose your job? He said, at my age, it would be very difficult.

The USA Today op-ed concludes by saying:

IT industry leaders have spent lavishly on lobbying to promote their STEM shortage claims among legislators. The only problem is that the evidence contradicts their self-interested claims.

So I would pose a question to Mr. Zuckerberg. I read in the news that Facebook is now worth more than $200 billion. Is that not enough money to hire American workers for a change? Your company now employs roughly 7,000 people. Let’s say you want to expand your workforce 10 percent, or hire another 700 workers. Are you claiming you can’t find 700 Americans who would take these jobs if you paid a good wage and decent benefits?

Let me just say one more thing: Facebook has 7,000 workers. Microsoft just laid off 18,000. Why doesn’t Mr. Zuckerberg call his friend Mr. Gates and say: Look, I have to hire a few hundred people; do you have any résumés you can send over here? Maybe I will not have to take somebody from a foreign country for a job an unemployed U.S. citizen might take.

There is this myth that we have surging employment in the high-tech industry.

As Byron York reported, Hewlett-Packard, a high-tech company, “laid off 29,000 employees in 2012” — 29,000. “In August of 2013, Cisco announced plans to lay off 4,000 workers in addition to the 8,000 cut in the last 2 years,” and Cisco was right in the White House this summer with a group of other companies demanding more workers from abroad. Cisco was signing a letter with a bunch of other companies: “United Technologies has announced 3,000 layoffs this year”; “American Express cut 5,400 jobs”; “Procter and Gamble announced 5,700 jobs cut in 2012”; “T-Mobile announced plans to lay off 2,250 employees in 2012.”

“According to a recent Reuters report,” York writes, overall “U.S. employers announced 50,000 layoffs in August of 2013, up 34 percent from the previous month, then up 57 percent through August 2012.”

There is no shortage of workers.

But FWD.us and other immigration lobbyists are working with the White House to extract executive orders from the president that provide them with the same financial benefits that were included in the Senate bill that was rejected by the House of Representatives. One proposal would increase by as much as 800,000 the number of foreign workers admitted for the explicit purpose of taking jobs in the United States.

A recent Associated Press article, entitled “Obama Weighs Broader Move on Legal Immigration” reports that “President Barack Obama is considering key changes in the nation’s immigration system requested by tech, industry and powerful interest groups.” Not by the American people was he being requested to do this, not by the national interest, but by “powerful interest groups” that are referred to here.

It goes on to say:

After recent White House meetings, top officials have compiled specific recommendations from business groups and other advocates.

“Other advocates.” Who are they? We know the ACLU has been there. We know La Raza has been meeting there on a regular basis. It goes on. The article says:

One of the more popular requests is a change in the way green cards are counted that would essentially free up some 800,000 additional visas the first year, advocates say. . . . Other requests would extend work permits to the spouses of all temporary H-1B skilled workers who have not been able to work.

But how about the fact that a single mom might like that job? An unemployed single mom or a single mom who has a job prospect that would pay $3 more than the job she is now working while trying to raise a family? Or an unemployed father? Maybe they would like those jobs first.

So these actions fall on the heels of previous executive action in which the president already acted unilaterally earlier this year to grant companies an additional 100,000 guest workers. He has already done that. In just the first year of this order, it adds 100,000 guest workers by providing work authorizations to the foreign spouses of temporary guest workers. It would increase the supply of guest workers by approximately 30,000 each year thereafter — this at a time when we have 58 million working-age Americans who are not working. Since 2009 the number of adults has increased by 13 million, while the number of people actually working has decreased by 7 million.

Median household income has dropped $2,300 since 2009. According to the National Employment Law Project, wages are down across all occupations.

A CBS report titled “Why American workers feel increasingly poor” writes of the NELP’s study:

Real median hourly wages have declined across low, middle and high income levels from 2009 to 2013, the study found. No matter if workers were in the lowest bracket ($8.84 to $10.85 an hour) or the highest ($31.40 to $86.34) median hourly wages declined when you take into account the impact of inflation.

It goes on: “Across all occupations, real median hourly wages slipped 3.4 percent since 2009. While even better-paid workers saw median hourly earnings erode, the worst hit segments were at the bottom” — the people who got hurt the most were at the bottom — “with declines in their wages of more than 4 percent.”

We have business CEOs, lobbyists, activists, immigration groups, and clever politicians who demand that we have to have even more workers brought into America even when we have a decline in wages and a decline in jobs. But what does the president do? His administration issues an executive order to provide foreign spouses — the citizens of other countries, not American citizens — with 100,000 jobs in the United States, precious jobs that many Americans would love to have. How many American spouses struggling to support their families would benefit from one of those jobs? How many single moms would benefit from a chance to earn a better paycheck?

Our Senate Democratic friends talk about paycheck fairness repeatedly. Yet they are supporting policies that take jobs and wages directly from American women by the millions.

Immigration policy is supposed to serve the national interest and the people of the United States, not the interests of a few activist CEOs and the politicians who are catering to them. We have had 40 years of mass immigration combined with falling wages, a shrinking workplace, and exploding welfare rolls. We know that, don’t we, friends and colleagues? It is time for a shift in emphasis. It is time to get our own people back to work, and our communities out of poverty, and our schools back on their feet.

Harvard professor Dr. George Borjas — who is probably the leading academic in this entire area and has been for many years — estimates that our current immigration rate results in an annual loss of more than $400 billion in wages for Americans competing with immigrant labor. Between 2000 and today the government issued nearly 30 million visas to temporary foreign workers and permanent immigrants, largely lower-skilled and lower-wage.

A recent Reuters poll showed that Americans wish to see the record rate of immigrant admissions reduced, not increased (as the Gang of Eight bill would have done), by a huge 3-to-1 margin.

Another poll from pollster Kellyanne Conway recently showed that 80 percent of Americans think companies should hire from among the existing unemployed rather than bringing in new workers from abroad to fill these jobs. Yet Senate Democrats have unanimously supported legislation to double the annual supply of labor brought into the United States. These workers would be brought in to take jobs in every field, occupation, and industry in America.

So what about the good, decent, and patriotic citizens of our country who fight our wars, who obey our laws, who follow our rules, and want a better future for their children? Should their needs not come first?

As National Review explained, we are “a nation with an economy, not an economy with a nation.” We cannot put the parochial demands of a few powerful CEOs ahead of an entire nation’s hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

The basic social contract is that citizens agree to follow the law, pay their taxes, and devote their love and loyalty to their country, and in exchange the nation commits to preserve and protect and serve their interests, safeguard their freedom, and return to them in kind their first allegiance and loyalty.

The job of elected officials is to answer to the people who sent them to Washington — not to scorn them, not to demean them, not to mock them, and not to sell their jobs and dreams to the highest bidder.

I yield the floor.

Two decades ago I sat in a briefing about the dangers of using small lasers to blind soldiers during combat. This had already been used, even by the British in the Falklands war to protect ships against attacking aircraft. This problem has mostly been ignored, but now the U.S. Marine Corps is fielding blinding lasers as a standard attachment for machine guns.

These are spun as "dazzlers", designed to warn people by causing temporary blindness with a restricted power setting. I suppose they think it immoral to permanently blind people that are trying to kill you as you try to place bullets in their head. With the Marines putting 1,848 of these in the force, it's only a matter of time before some are stolen and end up on the streets as a great tool for bank robbers. The next step of course is your local police force that can use them to blind people before they tase them.

This headline is a great example of propaganda. It leads this article from the "respected" AP that indicates the evil Ruskies are out to no good. However, if you read the article you learn the Russians have done nothing! Germany and a few other NATO nations oppose new bases in Eastern Europe fearing it will worsen tensions, and cost them money. They also say it violates a 1997 agreement between NATO members and Russia, called the Founding Act, in which both parties agree to avoid provocative actions. The headline is so misleading that it cannot be blamed on an error. Someone is tinkering with the "news" at AP to generate support for the idea that the Cold war has returned.

I always liked the idea of using simple mirrors to generate solar power instead of expensive solar cells that quickly wear out. Soon after the Aria resort opened in Las Vegas with its glassy curved building, some people by the swimming pool were sunburn after just a few minutes. Management learned to track sun movements to put certain areas off limits during certain days of the year.

The new BrightSource Energy mirror farm outside Las Vegas recently began producing power by focusing sunlight on a tower. The idea was popular until it was revealed that thousands of birds are killed each year. They catch fire in mid air! Perhaps they should open a fowl restaurant at the site.

I did some internet research a year ago on bird problems, in my case birds pooping on a sidewalk from trees. The cheapest solution is to hang large, silver colored, plastic reflective spheres. These are very inexpensive since they are sold as Christmas tree decorations and some are size of a soccer ball. Buy these ultra cheap after Christmas and hang some using fishing line in trees. As they move and spin due to slight winds, they reflect things and frighten away birds.

A year ago, I asked "How did we end up with 80,000 Somalis living in Minnesota?" I found the answer in this interview where a lady explains the corrupt racket in which large private organizations profit from importing "refugees" and dumping them in American communities. They must support a refugee for just three months, enough time to place them in public housing and sign them up for free Medicaid health care and food stamps.

She suggests that citizens do research to detect covert dumping of refugees in their community and try to stop it, although they will be dumped elsewhere. She points out that once they get a refugee family settled, they profit from importing an endless stream of family members and are paid handsomely by the federal government for each one. I dislike the video title "former liberal", which is inaccurate. America's billionaires and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce openly support open borders while most Democrats oppose the resulting loss of jobs and lower wages. This is why President Obama is hesitant to impose "immigration reform" with a pen. A majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents would be furious!

DNA shows that an ancestor of first lady Michelle Obama was a slave owner. Does she owe others restitution? If so, I want to learn more about my ancestors. Some must of been slaves to Romans. Then I will demand money from Italians. I suspect everyone on Earth has an ancestor who was a slave at sometime in history. One of my favorite actors, Morgan Freeman, grew up in Alabama and dismissed those who play the race card with these comments.

NATO bureaucrats and the Pentagon insist that the Cold War has returned and demand billions more in military spending. Most Americans can't find Ukraine on a map and don't give a damn what Russia does there. The issue are two provinces in eastern Ukraine that are inhabited mostly by Russians who recently voted in favor of rejoining Russia. Ukraine wants to keep the provinces but has trouble dealing with unrest because its soldiers have mostly refused to fight in this political squabble. There is a myth that Russia invaded Ukraine but common sense tells us otherwise, as Paul Craig Roberts explains:

"The latest Washington lie, this one coming from NATO, is that Russia has invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops and self-propelled artillery. How do we know that this is a lie? Is it because we have heard nothing but lies about Russia from NATO, from US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, from assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, from Obama and his entire regime of pathological liars, and from the British, German, and French governments along with the BBC and the entirety of the Western media.

This, of course, is a good reason for knowing that the latest Western propaganda is a lie. Those who are pathological liars don’t suddenly start telling the truth. But there are even better reasons for understanding that Russia has not invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops. One reason is that Putin has invested heavily in diplomacy backed by unprovocative behavior. He would not risk his bet on diplomacy by sending in troops too few in number to have a decisive effect on the outcome.

Another reason is that if Putin decides he has no alternative to sending the Russian military to protect the Russian residents in eastern and southern Ukraine, Putin will send in enough troops to do the job quickly as he did in Georgia when the American and Israeli trained Georgian army invaded South Ossetia and was destroyed in a few hours by the Russian response. If you hear that 100,000 Russian troops accompanied by air cover have invaded Ukraine, it would be a more believable claim.

A third reason is that the Russian military does not need to send troops into Ukraine in order to stop the bombing and artillery shelling of the Russian populations by Washington’s puppet government in Kiev. The Russian air force can easily and quickly destroy the Ukrainian air force and artillery and, thereby, stop the Ukrainian attack on the secessionist provinces."

A few years ago, famous peacenik Noam Chomsky suggested that a coup occurred in the USA and Pentagon Generals are running the nation. That seemed absurd, but not when one hears Army Gen. Charles Jacoby, head of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, saying during an Aug. 13 speech that it is “virtually impossible right now to make a strategic decision” due to funding unpredictability. “When you go to the Hill … old friends are not friendly on this subject and old enemies are still enemies,...“It’s really a different world approaching Congress about the budget.”

Enemies in Congress? Just because a Congressmen has a different opinion on national priorities should not make him an enemy, and certainly not publicly stated. The General never apologized for his supposed "misstatement" and no one demanded one. Does the General conspire to destroy his enemies, as Senator Pelosi has stated the CIA does? (see my Aug 3 blog) Recall that the Army run NSA has admitted that it spies on US Congressmen.

As for future budgets, Congress enacted a specific plan for future annual budgets way back in 2011 to restrain growth. The problem is that Generals refuse to cut fat and plan for realistic budgets that don't involve continual growth.

We've all seen the debris from the crash of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine. Bodies, airline seats, luggage, and debris were everywhere. Now watch this news video (and others linked there) about the site in Pennsylvania where we are told Flight 93 crashed on 9-11.

It's not the people of Ferguson, Missouri who are rioting and looting. That region is full of gangbangers who drove over to enjoy the fun and seek looting opportunities. Many came from nearby East St. Louis, which has the nation's highest crime rate, TWICE as high as Detroit!

Google "East St. Louis" images to see that disaster. This is the story our national media should be covering, The Deindustrialization of America, which has left millions of low skilled Americans without jobs that pay a decent wage. To make matters worse, our corporate leaders and their political operatives in Washington DC refuse to enforce immigration laws to encourage the illegal entry of millions of desperate foreign workers each year. These "refugees" displace American workers and drive wages down further, while filling low income housing to allow rent increases by millionaire owners.

If our nation had real black leaders they would be leading protests against "free trade" agreements and mass immigration, as this writer explains. Unfortunately, our national ethnic leaders are not elected, but appointed by our corporate controlled media. They choose corrupt men who they pay millions of dollars to incite racial tensions to keep the working class distracted. This is the traditional tactic employed by British royalty to keep peasants confused and subdued. Young men are protesting and looting in Ferguson not because of racism, but because they don't have work at 8:00am.

Cryptome exposed government secrets years before "Wikileaks" and Ed Snowden fueled "Intercepts" became famous. They've remained on-line despite lawsuits, threats, and investigations. Cryptome has become bolder as it recently began posting "off-site" info on CIA officers, which I believe violates US law, but may be protected by the 1st Amendment. I'm watching to see if they survive.

As most readers know, this website has spotlighted the flawed V-22 tilt-rotor for years and even has a webpage dedicated. V-22 Scandal Homepage After reading about a June 27, 2014 V-22 mishap in Japan, I checked the Navy Safety Center website for details. Their link is dead and I learned that one must now request such data with a FOIA request.

Startling news this past week was mostly ignored by our corporate media. After denying hard evidence presented by US Senate committee staffers, the head of the CIA finally admitted that his people spied on Congress. No one was arrested, no one fired, no one resigned, and no one outraged. President Obama said nothing. The leader of the Democrats in the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi refused to criticize the CIA because:

"In the past I have made my statements about the CIA, and they really come after you," she told a group of reporters, chuckling. "There's a price to pay."

Wow! Meek reporters did not demand that she explain further. She is a long-time Congressman and Democratic leader and openly admits that she is afraid of the CIA!

In my Aug 30 blog from a year ago, I showed how our military's "deep cuts" were a public relations stunt. Over the previous year, our military had shrunk by just 20,000 GIs and added 136,000 new GIs during that time. Official stats from this past year show a similar minor cut. Our military shrunk from 1,383,371 active duty personnel in June 2013 to 1,357,218 in June 2014, a reduction of just 2%!

Like all the services, Marine Corps Generals refuse to shed Cold war fat. I just finished this very detailed proposal to downsize the Corps to 160,000 active-duty Marines by shedding fat to counter wild claims that further manpower cuts will devastate the Marines. Not cutting fat is what will devastate the Marines because they will lack funds for new equipment.

This video of a State Department briefing shows the arrogance of our federal government. History has shown that whenever a foreign policy conflict becomes news, our government usually lies. After the Russians presented evidence that Russian rebels had not shot down a Malaysian airliner the media expected the USA to disclose some of its evidence.

The U.S. government refused to present evidence, refused to explain why, yet insisted that docile corporate reporters/stenographers record its "assessment" based on youtube videos as fact. When a reporter meekly attempted to confirm that no facts would be released, the spokesman became agitated and continually repeated her "talking points", something she learned as a CIA spokesman. I find it incredible that no one in the Obama administration has removed her for poor performance. All she had to do is acknowledge that no facts would be released for national security reasons, but insisted that everyone must trust the U.S. government and all other accounts of the incident are not logical.

Russia nor Russian rebels in Ukraine had anything to gain by shooting down a civilian jetliner. Nevertheless, the tragedy was quickly exploited by our war machine and their propaganda arm known as the mainstream media. With no evidence, they instantly blamed evil Russians and once again demand more military spending and actions to increase tensions with Russia.

One must search the web for other viewpoints, like this one, which provides evidence that Ukraine is responsible. Ukraine announced on July 9th that all civilian aircraft were banned from flying over that conflict area. So why did Ukrainian air traffic controllers route this aircraft over that area where everyone had been told only military aircraft could fly? I don't know, but our war machine was quick to exploit this tragedy to further demonize Russia, and President Obama, who they insist must take action with no proof of wrongdoing. The neo-Cold War, neo-con imperial, anti-Russian/anti-Putin propaganda spewing out of America's media is childish and dangerous.

People are quick to dismiss the NAU plot because they've never heard about this "conspiracy" and no one discusses it on C-SPAN or CNN. I wrote "semi-secret" because powerful people accidently refer to it. A recent example is career CIA agent and former U.S. Army General David Petreaus, who rose to CIA Director until his lack of values forced him to leave government service and perform international manipulation in the private sector. In this video clip of a recent conference, he states that the USA no longer exists, we are now "North America." I couldn't find a video of the entire conference, only the "Alex Jones" clip, which is good, but his stories often drift toward paranoia. However, the NAU plan has been underway for at least two decades.

You may be confused about the never ending conflict in Gaza. Every year "militants" in Gaza launch rockets at Israel, doing little harm. Israeli warplanes bomb Gaza "in self-defense" and kill dozens, to recruit more militants. The conflict goes on and on because we are told that neither side wants peace.

If one reads international news (i.e. non-USA), stories appear about Israel's gradual ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Israeli squatter towns (aka settlements in American news) continually expand after Arabs are forced off their lands, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. In order for this to continue year after year, a "comprehensive peace plan" must be avoided. This is achieved by perpetual "fighting" around Gaza. Israel maintains complete control of Gaza's borders (including access to the sea), so how do "militants" acquire thousands of unguided rockets every year? Most are home made, but where do they get the propellant and explosives?

Israel ensures they are supplied. Israel refuses to guard Gaza's border with Egypt, even though it could easily establish a security strip on the Gaza side to ensure that no rockets, propellants, or explosives cross into Gaza. Egyptian troops could also secure the border, but show no interest. There have been several international news reports over the years of large tunnels under the Gaza border where all sorts of things are "smuggled." This includes the current issue of "National Geographic" and television news shows where reporters walk through the tunnels. However, whenever Israeli airstrikes occur, the tunnels are rarely targeted. I wouldn't be surprised if Israel's Mossad secretly ensures a steady supply of rockets to Gazans.

Despite all our "news" coverage, no one ever suggests the solution is to simply seal the Egyptian-Gazan border, using UN troops if necessary, so that no more rockets rain on Israel and a comprehensive peace plan can be enacted. No one asks why Israeli warplanes bomb varied targets around Gaza rather than the tunnels? Why doesn't the Israeli army just sweep into the border area and destroy all the tunnels? Most television reporters can read a map, so why do they fear to address this obvious question?

This week an experienced NBC reporter was playing soccer with four boys on a Gazan beach when Israeli gunboats opened fire. The boys were killed while the angry reporter escaped and reported on the incident, noting there were no military targets in the area and the locals are furious. He was quickly ordered out of Gaza by NBC executives and replaced by a reporter who happens to be Jewish.

A few days ago, Microsoft founder Bill Gates joined two of our nation's other multi-billionaires calling for unlimited work visas for skilled STEM workers. We are told this is needed because of a shortage of skilled Americans. Today, Microsoft announced the largest layoffs in its history. Up to 18,000 Americans will be fired as Microsoft continues to enjoy strong profits. The process began by sending a layoff notice by e-mail to 12,500 dedicated workers. Note that Hewlett-Packard laid off 34,000 Americans this past year.

As I often note, the key objective of American billionaires is open borders to allow a flood of desperate workers (including skilled workers) to drive down wages further. This is part of what economist William Greider calls, the "Brazilination" of the USA; becoming a nation of super wealthy 1% and impoverished workers with no middle class. President Obama wants to force "immigration reform" on a nation whose people strongly oppose this objective. He began by halting all non-serious criminal deportations and pressing for a second amnesty. This resulted in a bigger flood of poor refugees that made Obama's job more complex. Last week, a train derailed in Mexico leaving 1300 "migrants" stranded, yet no one expressed alarm that this one train is evidence of a mass, uncontrolled invasion of the USA.

Obama blames Republicans for not following orders. The US Chamber of Commerce funnels millions of dollars to Republican congressmen, but most congressmen of BOTH parties refuse to sell out. Angry billionaires blame workers who they demean as: extreme tea party types, racists, or nativist. America's biggest billionaires, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Sheldon Adelson recently authored an opinion piece in the New York Times where they demanded action. In particular, they want unlimited visas for skilled workers so they can lay off higher paid American workers. The medical industry already has an unlimited supply of J visas, which is why you see mostly foreigners working in our hospitals.

They say that foreigners who we train in American universities must be allowed to stay and work. I say that we should train American workers at our universities who are already allowed to work here! You might think the Democratic party would openly oppose open borders since they claim to represent working Americans. This is a ruse since they are funded by the same billionaires as the Republicans. Their main "liberal" mouthpiece, The Huffington Post, even posted an article about the billionaires pushing for open borders to prove that everyone understand the benefits. This is a good example of media spin, as the HuffPo article focuses on the billionaires criticizing the GOP, with no mention of their very unpopular idea of unlimited "skilled" work visas.

The comments afterwards are interesting because many true pro-working class liberals and progressives strongly oppose open borders, and are attacked by the weak minded who are naively anti-worker and anti-American. Some claim that "we" are responsible for economic problems abroad, so powerless American workers must tolerate an invasion of poor workers (that benefit American corporations) because American corporations caused disruptions in Latin America decades ago with military invasions and NAFTA.

If our nation truly has a shortage of skilled workers, why don't these billionaires and their spokesman B. Obama propose a training plan for unemployed and underemployed American workers? It's interesting to watch this battle between billionaires and their puppets in Washington DC against American workers, who strongly oppose another amnesty and work visas, despite misleading corporate funded polls that pretend voters are indifferent. I suspect this last battle for American democracy will fail, reinforcing Mark Twain's comment a century ago: “If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.” Welcome to New Brazil.

This great chart clearly shows the madness of bankrupting our nation for "national defense" of which aircraft carriers play no direct role. In case you are confused, our nation is defended by the Coast Guard and Border Patrol. The USA has 19 aircraft carriers, to include the amphib flattops used by the Marines in the left column, which are bigger than any World War II carriers and many foreign aircraft carriers. Nevertheless, our Navy plans to add an 11th supercarrier, and warns the nation is in danger because it needs to double its shipbuilding budget to remain "ready" for "something."

The Navy needs drop the idea of adding another supercarrier and downsize to nine this year, as an easy solution to all of its budget problems. The planned $5 billion overhaul of the 25-year old USS Theodore Roosevelt can die, while the unneeded carrier at ultra-expensive Yokosuka, Japan can be sent home. No sane person thinks that eliminating one ship depicted in the middle column above will leave the USA vulnerable to attack. Finally, Admirals must be ordered to stop abusing crewmen and their ships by over deploying them on senseless long "missions" overseas to prove that more supercarriers are needed, and then blaming Congress for abusing sailors.

The situation in Iraq is interesting. American advisors arrived and quickly organized an airmobile assault on Tikrit, which failed. The leader of Iraq has refused to resign as the USA, Kurds, Saudis, and Sunnis demanded. The Kurds seized a disputed oil rich city and declared independence, something powerful Turkey promptly rejected. An Iranian combat pilot is killed in action supporting Iraqis. Russia sent Iraq attack aircraft with Russian mechanics that are already in action, while Iraq's American-built F-16s fly around Arizona practicing air-to-air combat, which US Air Force Generals insist must be completed before Iraqi F-16 pilots are qualified and can return to defend Iraq. Saudi troops are massing on the border. ISIS talks of invading Jordan, while Israel retakes the West Bank and promises to defend Jordan. Now the USA has deployed Apache attack helicopters to Baghdad, for "embassy security."

I assumed that child labor had been eliminated in the USA decades ago, so was shocked to see this report that tobacco farmers are exempt. Our corporate media ignored this story for decades, and it only recently made news after the "Daily Show" did a comedy/documentary segment about it. I highly recommend watching this short video linked above -- shocking! The plantation owner deserves an academy award, except he is not acting. Why aren't TV pundits and politicians screaming about this?

Now we know why our corporate controlled White House encouraged Central American children to flood across our borders. Tobacco farmers need more cheap labor! As I've noted in the past, illegal immigrants have replaced black slavery in many American corporations. Making illegals legal helps no one because if they become "uppity" and demand decent wages and work conditions, they are fired and replaced by newly arrived illegals, while the new legals discover welfare benefits.