The Most Transparent Administration...Fails Terribly. Look To See Who Is Worst!

Government Agencies Failing On Freedom Of Information

March 13, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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A watchdog report out this week reveals that none of the Federal agencies that receive the greatest number of Freedom of Information Act requests are going to great effort to provide Americans with access to information.

The Center for Effective Government report, titled “Making the Grade: Access to Information Scorecard 2014,” rates seven of the 15 agencies with an “F” in the transparency department. None of the agencies in the group that handles 90 percent of FOIA requests received an “A.”

The Center for Effective government graded the agencies on the following criteria:

1. Processing requests for information (the rate of disclosure, the fullness of information provided, and timeliness of the response);
2. Establishing rules for information access (effectiveness of agency policy on withholding information and communicating with requesters); and
3. Creating user-friendly websites (facilitating the flow of information to citizens, online services, and up-to-date reading rooms).

The watchdog group called the findings of the analysis “sobering.”

“The low scores are not due to impossibly high expectations. In each of three performance areas, at least one agency earned an A, showing that excellence is possible,” The Center for Effective Government said in a release explaining the results. “But the fact that no agency was able to demonstrate excellence across all three areas illustrates the difficulty agencies seem to be having in consistently combining all the elements of an effective disclosure policy.”

Here’s how the agencies stacked up:

The report detailing Federal agencies’ FOIA failures comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill are giving serious thought to transparency reforms to strengthen FOIA.

Last month, a bipartisan FOIA reform bill introduced by House Oversight Committee Representatives Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) passed with unanimous support.

The Senate has yet to pass a version of the popular House legislation. But during a Judiciary hearing Tuesday, the lack of Federal transparency in recent years was at the center of discussion.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) expressed interest bringing forth the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act to increase government transparency and require that Government Information Services, which was established in 2007 to serve as a sort of FOIA ombudsman, answer to Congress. Currently, OGIS takes recommendations and reports to the White House Office of Budget and Management.

Meanwhile, FOIA activists want to take away the exemptions that Federal agencies so often use to avoid complying with FOIA requests.

“Foremost among these, the open government community would like to see Congress put tighter boundaries around the government’s overuse of FOIA’s Exemption 5, or, as many requesters like to refer to it, the ‘We don’t want to give it to you’ exemption,” said Amy Bennett, the assistant director at OpenTheGovernment.org. “Exemption 5 is intended to protect the government’s deliberative process and was intended to have narrow application. Over time, federal agencies have expanded the scope of Exemption 5 to the point that it covers practically anything that is not a final version of a document.”

Who Is Left To Support Obama? Only The Hard Core Who Would Vote For Him If He Was In Jail, Dead Or In A Coma!

White Voters Abandon Obama In Droves

March 13, 2014 by Wayne Allyn Root 

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Hello, I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. Have you seen Barack Obama’s poll numbers? They are among the lowest in history. As of last week, Obama’s approval rating is at 38 percent. That’s just barely above Richard Nixon. But that’s not the big story here.

Keep in mind that Obama has the support of about 35 percent to 40 percent of the population that will never abandon him — no matter what he does, no matter how bad the jobs numbers look, no matter how low the economy goes, no matter how much scandal and corruption are exposed, no matter how strong the facts are against him. Nothing will ever change their minds. These are the “low-information voters” of the Democratic Party.

In many cases, they love Obama because of the color of his skin — and nothing else. They will never abandon a black President — even though black unemployment is at record levels; even though black youth unemployment is at record levels; even though black poverty is at record levels; even though Obama’s exact policies have been in place for more than 50 years in Detroit (a majority black city run by black Democrat politicians) and the black population has been devastated, destroyed and discarded, left for dead in an abandoned, bankrupt city with very few streetlights operating and the police leaving residents in many areas to fend for themselves.

So just think about those poll numbers for a moment. Let those numbers sink in. If 35 percent to 40 percent of the population would support a Democrat for President if he ran from a prison cell, if 35 percent to 40 percent would support Obama no matter what he does, no matter how far America sinks under his leadership (even if they have no jobs and their own lives are in total misery), how could Obama’s approval rating be at only 38 percent?

That means that among the rest of America, outside of loyal, lifelong, Kool-Aid-drinking Democrats, Obama’s ratings are nil. Among voters who don’t identify as Democrat, he is the lowest-rated President in history. No numbers like this have ever been recorded, if you filter out the Kool-Aid-drinking low-information and partisan voters.

Obama’s approval among the heartland of America (middle-class Americans) is lower than Nixon’s, lower than George W. Bush’s, lower than Lyndon Johnson’s at the height of the Vietnam War, lower than Jimmy Carter’s at the height of the Iranian hostage crisis with the added burden of an economy in misery and malaise.

I’m betting that outside of lifelong Democrats and welfare recipients (I know; I repeat myself), Obama’s ratings are in the unimaginable range of single digits.

I’m betting that outside of food stamp recipients, Obama’s ratings are in the single digits.

Among the white middle class, I’m betting Obama’s ratings are in the single digits… or lower.

Keep in mind many of the white middle class originally voted for Obama. He could not have been elected without white support.

Among those who actually own small businesses, pay most of the taxes and create most of the jobs, I’m betting Obama’s ratings are in the vicinity of zero.

Actually, if you take the white middle class and subtract out a few Ivy League intellectuals, Hollywood liberals and pathetic Upper West Side of Manhattan Democratic zombies, there are few Obama supporters left to be found anywhere in America.

Remember that about 47 percent of Americans get entitlement checks from government. Obama is paying for their support and he still has only 38 percent approval. You know you’re unpopular when even bribes don’t work anymore!

This man has managed to pull off something remarkable and historical: He has alienated almost every single American who actually works for a living and pays taxes, outside of Chicago, Manhattan, Hollywood and Detroit. He has virtually zero support among the 53 percent who aren’t getting a check from government. You can’t find another instance of that in the history of American politics.

Obama is amazing!

Now… one last bit of housekeeping. I do want to answer my critics whose only response will be: “All of these white voters who don’t support Obama are racists. It’s all about race.”

First of all, the very definition of racism is voting for a black candidate because… he’s black.That’s racism. The fact that 92 percent of black voters voted for Obama and 96 percent of black women voted for Obama is nothing but voting based on race.

As far as white voters abandoning Obama in droves, I’ve yet to meet one white voter who bases it on the color of Obama’s skin. We all base it on the color of his policies. The color of his policies is red — as in communist red. We hate his policies, not the man and not the color of his skin.

We hate the record-setting $12 trillion in debt he’ll have piled up by the time his second term is finished, because Obama has ruined the future of America with that debt. And he’s ruined our children’s future quality of life with that debt. We hate Obama’s big tax increases for the middle class and small business, and the fact that those tax increases haven’t helped the economy or created new jobs because the money was handed to Obama’s voters and donors — for more entitlements, more welfare, more food stamps, bailouts, stimulus and wasted failing green energy “investments.”

We hate the fact that Obama has killed millions of jobs. We hate the fact that the economy is in ruins under his leadership, except for Wall Street. Of course, Wall Street goes up because Obama has directed the Fed to print trillions in fake dollars to make his biggest donors richer than they ever imagined.

We hate the fact that Obama ruined the finest healthcare system in the world, which about 80 percent of Americans were happy with in the first place. We hate the fact that he is a liar and fraud who promised “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” Now we either don’t have insurance, or our prices have been raised through the roof. He has damaged our lives beyond belief. The color of his skin has nothing to do with it. But the facts have everything to do with it.

Over the years, I hated the policies of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter. They were both white. So did that mean I hated whites? Today, I hate the policies of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Does that mean I hate Italians and Mormons? I hate the policies of Hillary Clinton. Does that mean I hate women? I hate the policies of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Senator Chuck Schumer. Does that mean I hate Jews? Well guess what? I’m Jewish. There goes that argument.

And I hate the policies of Joe Biden. Does that mean I hate idiots? I’m just kidding… kind of.

The point is in every case, it’s the politics and policies that we hate — not the person or the race. So the argument is just plain misleading, fraudulent and stupid.

It all comes down to common sense. White, middle-class Americans are suffering because of the policies of an incompetent, fraudulent, lying Marxist. And we’re not in delusion and denial, simply because we’re not blinded by the color of his skin. The fact is we don’t care about the color of his skin. So we can see the plain truth.

That’s why Obama’s poll numbers are amazing. That’s why among Americans who arenot Kool-Aid drinkers blinded by the color of his skin, Obama’s poll numbers are the lowest in history.

I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. See you next week. God bless America.

Idiocy Rains Supreme. Saudi Arabia Will Not Let Israeli Fruit To Be Sold In The Country. Huh?

Invasion of ‘Zionist’ Persimmons Puts Saudi Arabia on High Alert

Perhaps the Saudis are afraid that eating Zionist fruit will indoctrinate its citizens with a bit of common sense.

By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu

Published: March 13th, 2014

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Packing plant in Israel prepares persimmons for shipment.

The Saudi Arabia city of Qurayyat, located near the border with Jordan, went on high alert Tuesday after official discovered a local fruit market was selling persimmons that came from Israel.

Anything from Israel is considered evil in the kingdom, home of the holiest city for enlightened Muslims.

The Saudi Gazette reported that a local inspection team, acting on a tip, confiscated approximately 300 pounds of persimmon that had Israel stickers.

“The municipality team conducted a surprise inspection after the closing hours of the fruit market and confiscated the fruit boxes that originated from Israel,” said them municipality environment health department director Abdulaziz Al-Musaed.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry was alerted at the chutzpa of someone daring to buy and selling fruit from the forbidden country of Israel.

The Saudi Food and Drug Authority also was notified. It seems every official agency was alerted except perhaps for the Air Force. Al-Musaed reminded Saudis that “such fruit is not allowed in the Kingdom, and he warned shopkeepers not to deal with fruit vendors without knowing the true origin of produce.

An investigation is underway to determine how the evil persimmons found their way into the holy Muslim country.

Al Qurayyat is located 19 miles from the border with Jordan.

If authorities catch the poor soul who violated the purity of the country by contaminating it with Israeli fruit, he will be lucky to get away with flogging instead of having his hands chopped off so he never again will be able to touch anything from Israel.

If authorities catch the poor soul who violated the purity of the country by contaminating it with Israeli fruit, he will be lucky to get away with flogging instead of having his hands chopped off so he never again will be able to touch anything from Israel.

In 2005, Saudi Arabia announced the end of its ban on Israeli goods and services, mostly due to its application to the World Trade Organization, where one member country cannot have a total ban on another. However, the boycott in practice still stands.

The truth is that there are many Israeli products in Saudi Arabia, but they have no labels that would divulge that they were sent from the enemy of darkness.

When I worked at a kibbutz plastics factory years ago, we made sure that the product being shipped to Saudi Arabia was sent in a box marked “Made in Jordan.”

Search For Malaysian Plane Moves To The Indian Ocean. We Still Fear The Plane Being Used For Something Dastardly. Also, No Terrorist Organization Has Claimed Responsibility, Yet!

Missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner could have flown for over 7 hours

Published March 15, 2014

FoxNews.com

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    Missing plane’s disappearance deliberate

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    Malaysian PM: Flight 370 deliberately disabled

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    A look at Malaysia Airlines jet's mysterious course

The missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner sent out its last signal about 7 1/2 hours after take off, which means the plane could have have ended up as far as Kazakhstan or deep in the southern Indian Ocean, the Malaysian prime minister said.

"In view of this latest development, the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a press conference, stressing they were still investigating all possibilities as to why the plane deviated so drastically from its original flight path.

"Clearly the search for (Flight) MH370 has entered a new phase," Najib told a televised news conference.

Najib also said that authorities are now trying to trace the airplane across two possible "corridors" -- a northern corridor from the border of Kazakstan and Turkmenistan through to northern Thailand, and a southern corridor from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. 

The prime minister said that searching in the South China Sea, where the plane first lost contact with air traffic controllers, would be ended. He said the new search corridors were based on the latest available satellite data.

Najib also confirmed that Malaysian air force defense radar picked up traces of the plane turning back westward, crossing over Peninsular Malaysia into the northern stretches of the Strait of Malacca. Authorities previously had said this radar data could not be verified.

He said the jetliner's "movements are consistent with the deliberate action of someone on the plane," BBC News reported.

The Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was carrying 239 people when it departed for an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing at 12:40 a.m. March 8. The plane's communications with civilian air controllers were severed about 1:20 and the plane went missing in one of the most puzzling mysteries in modern aviation history.

The prime minister said investigators have not ruled out any possible cause for the plane's disappearance, despite an earlier report by The Associated Press that investigators had concluded that one of the pilots or someone else with flying experience hijacked the jetliner.

A Malaysian government official involved in the investigation told the AP on Saturday that no motive has been established, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. 

The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory. "It is conclusive," he said.

He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane's communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar. 

Malaysian officials have said radar data suggest it may have turned back and crossed back over the Malaysian peninsula westward, after setting out toward the Chinese capital. 

Malaysian police have previously said they were checking whether any passengers or crew had personal or psychological problems that might offer clues to why the plane vanished, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

Earlier Friday, a senior U.S. official told Fox News that the search effort would be broadened deep into the Indian Ocean, based on new intelligence assessments that there is a "higher probability" the aircraft went down in that region. 

As a consequence of shared U.S.-Malaysian intelligence assessments, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Kidd is expected to expand its search into a southern quadrant of the ocean, while Indian authorities will cover a northern quadrant. 

The development comes as authorities speculate that the disappearance may have been an "act of piracy,” and more evidence suggests the plane was diverted by a skilled pilot before it vanished, U.S. and Malaysian officials familiar with the investigation said Friday.

Key evidence for "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance is that contact with its transponder stopped about 12 minutes before a messaging system quit, an unidentified American official told the Associated Press. The official -- also not authorized to speak publicly -- said it's also possible the plane may have landed somewhere. 

A source familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News that flight 370 continued to send "periodic pushes" of data after the transponder went dark for about four hours after contact was lost with the aircraft, suggesting the jet continued to fly. This was described to Fox News as signals data that, in isolation, would not provide location data.  

While the systems were no longer transmitting maintenance data, the satellite communication link was still active. Once an hour, the system sent out a “handshake” -- a form of reset, like a cell phone searching for an antenna tower. 

The “handshake” allows the satellite to work out how much tilt or arc was needed to be in range of the plane's signal. It therefore provides a scope or range for the aircraft, but it does not provide altitude, speed or location.

If the plane had disintegrated during flight or had suffered some other catastrophic failure, all signals — the pings to the satellite, the data messages and the transponder — would be expected to stop at the same time.

Analysis of the Malaysia flight data suggests the plane diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and instead flew west, using airline flight paths normally taken to the Middle East and Europe, Reuters reported Friday. 

This points to the theory that the plane was being flown by the pilots or possibly someone familiar with those routes, according to sources in the Reuters report.

Malaysian police searched the home of the pilot of the missing jetliner Saturday after it was revealed at a press conference that the flight tracker was turned off from inside the plane’s cockpit on the day it disappeared. 

Details such as these are leading investigators to sharpen their focus the possibility of sabotage, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

Mike Glynn, a committee member of the Australian and International Pilots Association, said he considers pilot suicide to be the most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight from Los Angeles to Cairo in 1999.  

"A pilot rather than a hijacker is more likely to be able to switch off the communications equipment," Glynn said. "The last thing that I, as a pilot, want is suspicion to fall on the crew, but it's happened twice before."

"What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," said that source, a senior Malaysian police official.  

The current search involves 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft.

Fox News' Catherine Herridge, Justin Fishel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Gun Issue Has NOT Gone Away. Two Recent Developments Are Indicative Of Ongoing Interest In Banning Weapons. Will They Win?

Obama’s Anti-Gun Surgeon General And Connecticut’s Attempted Gun Grab

March 12, 2014 by Bob Livingston 

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President Barack Obama’s nomination of Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy for U.S. Surgeon General was passed from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to the full Senate by a vote of 13-9 last month. It is a nomination that should make gun owners shudder.

Murthy founded a campaign organization called Doctors for Obama in 2007. After Obama’s election, the group changed its name to Doctors for America. The organization has supported every one of Obama’s gun grab attempts. The group’s efforts to pass a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines earned it the moniker “Docs vs. Glocks.”

Murthy supports having physicians document which of their patients have guns in their homes. He believes gun ownership is a public health issue, not a right protected under the 2^nd Amendment. His organization supports gun licensing, limits on ammunition purchases and mandatory 48-hour waiting periods.

He has not been quiet about his anti-gun views. Here are a couple from his Twitter feed that the Senate committee questioned him about:

• “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they’re scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue.”
• “NRA press conference disappointing but predictable — blame everything in the world except guns for the Newtown tragedy. #wakeup”

In a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, Murthy wrote:

Pharmacies track and limit the purchase of pseudoephedrine to prevent the manufacture of crystalline methamphetamine. Every state requires a driver’s license and car registration in order to drive, and physicians certify those who should no longer drive because they would be a grave danger to themselves and others. We should approach the purchase, transfer, and operation of guns and ammunition with similar rigor.

The Surgeon General does not set policy. But he is a mouthpiece for the policy of the President and has a big bully pulpit from which to pontificate. As such, Murthy would be disastrous Surgeon General.

In Connecticut…

Registration of so-called “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines aren’t going well for the elites. First, some 350,000 gun owners have simply ignored the State’s unConstitutional law requiring registration of their weapons. Now, it seems some police officers are in a state of open rebellion against the law.

The Connecticut Peace Officers Association has released a letter signed by 250 officers that says local police will not “be a party to the oppression of the people of the state by enforcing an unconstitutional law.”

This is in stark contrast to the words of Connecticut State Police Spokesman Lt. Paul Vance, who told a female citizen he was her “master” when questioned about gun confiscation and Branford, Conn., police officer Joseph Peterson’s Facebook conversation in which Peterson said, among other outrageous things, “I give my left nut to bang down your door and come for your gun…”

Other Thoughts On The Ukraine Conflict. Are We Americans Being Played As Stooges By Our Government Or Is Putin Really The Problem?

Neocon Lies Could Trigger Nuclear War

March 12, 2014 by John Myers 

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Washington never runs out of Adolf Hitlers. Two decades ago, it was Saddam Hussein. Then, it was it was Osama bin Laden. In quick succession, it was Syria’s Bashar Assad and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Last week, the newest Hitler was dubbed. He is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was given that moniker by former Secretary of State and 2016 Presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Clinton pronounced that if Putin’s order to send troops to Russia’s strategically essential and mostly Russian populated Crimea “sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s. All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.”

What should have everybody nervous is that Clinton is lying. The real Nazis are the ultra-right-wingers who now control the Ukrainian government, even as events have spun out of control. They come from generations of anti-Semites. It is they who believe Europe’s troubles stem from Jews in Moscow. This is the reality that Clinton easily brushes aside out of her loyalty to her New World Order masters — masters she may fully serve in 2016.

Worse yet, the mainstream media and those who hang on every lie uttered by Clinton and other neocons are indignant over the fate of freedom-loving Ukrainians. Even though Putin is no longer a communist, those who shape American opinions are eager to paint him as a nefarious ex-Red, a former KGB assassin who schemes as Hitler did.

And so begins the latest crusade for the neocons, but this time the crusade is against a resolute Russian leader who commands a modern nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the world several times over. Picking on Putin is not the same game as beating up Saddam or hunting down bin Laden. It has dangerous consequences that have not been thought through since old guard communists like Andrei Gromyko were ousted from the Kremlin in the 1980s.

Three decades later, modern Russian leaders are playing an updated version of “Dr. Strangelove.” They understand all too well that America has a weak hand, given that its military is stretched thin.

At the same time, even a cursory understanding of the past four centuries reveals that Crimea is a territory attached to Russia as much as Scotland is a part of Great Britain. That Crimea is rich in natural resources contributed to Germany’s launching World War II. Of strategic importance to Russian leaders is that Crimea holds Sevastopol, the home base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It is Russia’s only warm-water port, the only port Russia has that provides access to the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic year-round. To the Kremlin it is non-negotiable.

Yet Clinton and her fellow neocons in both parties act as if Crimea were essential to America’s strategic interest. In accordance with this fallacy, they are fermenting fear and inciting hatred against Russia for protecting what is in its national interest in a region populated mostly by Russians.

There is even speculation that the government of the United States has authorized the CIA to sponsor riots in Kiev with snipers that have totaled more than 100 kills during the recent uprising that coincided with the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

David Shayler, a former British MI-5 officer, believes the Kiev protests were an attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO and to rip Russia apart. In a radio interview with The Voice Of Russia, Shayler said of events last month:

So, clearly these people are paid mercenaries and this revolution was nothing to do with the will of the people. As you say, most of the people in the Ukraine either speak Russian or have relations in Russia and so on. This was something that’s been orchestrated by the west, they’ve been trying to start the Third World War, and we saw that last year in Syria. It failed then, but they are obviously now trying to open another front to try and cause that war.

It might be easy to dismiss Shayler’s comments as ramblings of an old Cold War warrior, but what he says makes sense demographically and historically.

Before any Americans get too cozy with to the idea of freedom-loving Ukraine, it is important to remember that, with the exception of Germans, no other nation was more involved in the Holocaust than Ukraine.

Timothy Stanley, author, noted historian and columnist for the Daily Telegraph, opined onCNN:

[I]n the eyes of many ethnic Russians, it is the Ukrainian nationalists — not Putin — who are the Nazis. The Russians have asserted, quite accurately, that the revolution that overthrew a pro-Russian, democratically elected leader has resulted in the elevation of Russophobe fascists into key government positions. For example, the new secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council is Andriy Parubiy — co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU).

Another creator of the SNPU is Oleh Tyahnybok, a high-profile leader of the Kiev protests who has blamed Ukraine’s problems on a Jewish conspiracy run out of Moscow. Ukraine’s new deputy secretary of national security is Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector group, which regards Tyahnybok as a soft liberal and which flies the old flag of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators at its rallies.

The truth is Ukraine “freedom fighters” battling the Russian Empire are national socialists who harbor Hitler’s obsession against Jews and are willing to risk global war to see it happen. The real question is: Why are American neocons like Senator John McCain and Hillary Clinton onboard opposing Russia while supporting the national socialists? And why is the press so eager to spin a fairytale to which millions of Americans eagerly embrace?

My suspicion is that Putin won’t play ball with the New World Order, an organization that answers only to its global ambitions and one that has recruited Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and potential future President Hillary Clinton.

Putin may be more accountable to his people than our leaders are to us. Millions of ordinary Russians understand that Washington has militarily cornered Russia since 2001 by drawing in NATO anti-ballistic missiles right to the very border of Russia in once-Soviet-dominated nations such as Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Croatia and Albania.

To put ourselves in Russian shoes would be like Canada, Mexico and several Latin American nations taking full membership in the Warsaw Pact and installing offensive and defensive missile systems that could provide Russia with a nuclear first-strike capability against the United States.

This has been a reversal of a promise that President George H.W. Bush made to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 and it begs the question: Why? Why for this past decade has the United States played an increasingly restless game of cornering the Russian bear? Why have George W. Bush, Obama and, mostly recently, Clinton tempted global nuclear war? And whose orders are they following? Just as importantly, why have so many Americans become willfully ignorant enough to not question Obama, Clinton and neocon propaganda?

One thing is certain: America is playing a dangerous game. There is a growing patriotism in Russia and a deep distrust of the United States that did not exist under Soviet rule. In vast tracts of Russia there is a renewed reverence for Josef Stalin, a man who killed more Russians than Hitler did. Stalin’s revival comes from ordinary Russian citizens who believe Washington has written away their role in the Great Patriotic War. Remarkably ordinary Russians fear and loath the government of the United States the way Americans feared and loathed the Soviet Politburo, which millions of us saw as men dressed like gangsters bent on world domination. Perhaps in the 21^st century, Russians and Americans need to fear the undertakings of major governments in both Washington and Moscow — especially when leaders in Moscow and Washington are willing to spin lies to force their vision of the future on all peoples of the world.

When I hear about freedom-loving Ukrainians, I wonder whatever happened to freedom-loving Americans — Americans who wouldn’t accept a government that lied to them, spied on them and assassinated them.

Yours in good times and bad,