Here we go again, marching off to war into another Middle Eastern conflict, where we will spend billions, and kill thousands, and have nothing to show for it in the end, except more enemies.  This appears to be a bi-partisan effort in Washington between the warmongers and the ridiculously awarded, Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Barrack Obama.

There has been a narrative told in the mainstream press in this country for some time, and harped on by Republican warmongering politicians like John McCain that portrays President Obama as reluctant to intervene in the Syrian civil war that has been going on for two years now, resulting in the estimated death toll of 93,000 and rising.   Republicans like John McCain, the pro-war-all-the-time senator and sore-losing presidential candidate, and the warmongering, pro-government surveillance supporter but anti-gun guy, Senator Lindsay Graham, have laid on the criticism of Obama’s lack of aggression in Syria, as they have on Obama’s un-willingness to attack Iran on Israel’s behalf in another pre-emptive war.

Now, President Obama appears to be stepping up to the plate to push the button again on another unnecessary war to topple another leader the United States doesn’t like to be replaced by presumably, some other brutal dictator who serves the U.S. and it’s western allies’ interest.  The President has now said that Assad crossed a line by using chemical weapons (yet to be proved and highly suspect as lies such as ‘weapons of mass destruction’) and that he now supports sending small arms and ammunition aid to the rebels fighting to overthrow the Assad government in Syria.  This also coincides with the European Union letting expire it’s ban on arming the rebels.   There are calls for a no-fly zone to be in place.  Russia and Iran and Hezbollah are backing Assad and Russia is supplying Syria with sophisticated anti-aircraft technology and weaponry.  Obama is so far saying no to the no-fly zone and “boots on the ground.” but this is deceiving.

It appears that we have already been involved in, and perhaps a huge instigator, and certainly a facilitator, in the civil war that has claimed the 93,000 lives in Syria already.  The United States has already given over 500 million dollars to the rebels fighting the Syrian government.  That’s a half a billion dollars to all the bean counters who favored the sequester and think we can’t afford basic government services because taxes on the rich are too high.  That’s a half a billion dollars to all the republican shit bags in the House of Representative who held up or voted against funding for the hurricane victims in New Jersey and New York this past year.  Half a billion dollars has already been given to the “rebels,” many of which are foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia and other areas outside of Syria, and many linked directly to Al-Qaeda.  Supposedly, this has been “non-lethal aid” which is of course bullshit; if you are giving money to the rebels who are waging war, it’s lethal aid.  There is an ex-CIA officer named Philip Giraldi who has written that the United States and it’s NATO allies Britain and France have been operating out of Turkey on the Syrian border for some time, helping train the rebels and provide them with communication equipment as well as weapons.  Other reports in the foreign press have stated that foreign fighter rebels were killing civilians in Syria and then photographing the carnage and feeding it to the western press, claiming it was Assad’s army that was killing it’s own citizens when in fact, it was not.  Just part of the massive propaganda campaign being waged to gin up support in this country and others to topple Assad in Syria in the name of a “humanitarian crisis.”

John McCain has even met the Syrian “opposition” groups.  Apparently, he feels quite comfortable handing over weapons to jihad-dist to overthrow the secular government in Syria.  John McCain seemingly thrives on being in the middle of endless war, he can’t seem to get enough of the endless bloodshed.   Does he think one day he’s going to wake up and say “checkmate!” and then finally retire to one of his numerous houses that he couldn’t count the exact number of when he was running for president?

Another old man who seems to miss the action of directing the bombing and killing of others (though not so much on Bin Laden as in Yugoslavia), former President Bill Clinton voiced his support of escalating our involvement in the Syria civil war.  I suppose he has to be the one in his marriage to cheer lead on this new march to war, since Hillary Clinton is currently under fire from the republicans.  No matter, war comes first, and Bubba will carry his wife’s torch on that one.  We know from our own press that as Secretary of State, Hillary Warmongering Clinton  was an early advocate of arming the rebels and pressing Obama to take a more aggressive role in overthrowing another foreign government.

So here we go, with a feigned reluctance on the Drone Ranger’s Administration and a frothing at the mouth on the usual neo-con suspects, towards another costly and immoral war, and this time without even any readily apparent economic gains such as oil being in play.

This is in spite of two very important facts:   the Syrian people support Assad staying in power by 55 percent in a poll conducted by the Quatar Foundation (considered reliable as Quatar is anti-Assad) which blows away any flimsy lies and propaganda that attempts to portray the United States and it’s allies as good Samaritans protecting the Syrians.  The second fact that should also be relevant to Washington and President Obama is that a Pew research poll shows that 70 percent of Americans are opposed to arming the rebels.

Neither fact appears to matter.  Sadly, unless we wake up quickly as a nation and recognize that another senseless war is becoming more and more likely if we do not stand up to this madness.  The weight of propaganda is heavy in the American press, unfortunately, and our politicians lie with such ease and glee.  I hope enough of us see through this bullshit and say enough if enough.

This past week has revealed shocking new details about the U.S. government and the Obama Administration’s expansion of secret surveillance on its citizens, which began under President George W. Bush after the September 11 terrorist attacks. We learn that Verizon (and possibly others) was forced by a secret government order to collect and hand over to the U.S. government all records of all of its calls both in the United States and abroad, from this past April 25th until July 19th, effectively sweeping millions of American citizens’ private communications data into the National Security Agency’s (NSA) vast data base. And thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we have also learned shocking new revelations about a top-secret government domestic spying computer program known as Prism, which collects all of our internet information, such as our search history, our emails, our shared files, etc. The government is forcing internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and others, into not only complying but into keeping silent about it as well. Sound Orwellian enough for you yet?

Sadly, there once was a seemingly honest man known as Senator Barack Obama, who in 2005 was part of a small number of senators objecting to portions of the Bush Administration’s Patriot Act – a historical piece of legislation crafted after the 911 attacks to allegedly give the government more tools to fight terrorism. What the Patriot Act actually did was anything but patriotic, because it gave the government broad new powers over its citizens, chipping away at our civil liberties and constitutional protections; in other words, what the right-wingers claim to cherish so dearly: freedom. Then Senator Obama was concerned about the possibility that certain provisions in the Patriot Act, specifically section 215, could lead to “government fishing expeditions targeting innocent Americans.” Unfortunately, he was right.

Now, section 215 of the Patriot Act is being used by the Obama Administration to legally justify their enormously expanded domestic spying program. The former Senator and Candidate Obama once led the charge against the Bush Administration’s Big Brother tactics in its war on terror, but now President Obama has done a 360 degree reversal and not only embraced it, but expanded it.

At best, Mr. Obama’s change of heart as President is the height of hypocrisy. At worst, perhaps the then would be president was merely offering lip service to the liberals, the civil libertarians, and the moderates in this country who feared the U.S.’s new assault on our constitutional rights in the name of fighting terror, to vote for him, “change you can believe in.”  Whether or not candidate Obama was being sincere in his original opposition to domestic spying and other chilling aspects of Bush’s war on terror is hard to determine. What is easy to determine now is that he has taken Mr. Bush’s approach and embraced it, amplified it, and is running strong with it.

The Obama Administration has also prosecuted more government whistle blowers than all the other Administrations before him combined, by using the extreme measure of charging them with violating the Espionage Act of 1917, which was meant to punish people handing over government secrets to foreign enemies. When the Obama Administration first took over the White House, it spoke of its intention to strengthen laws to protect whistle blowers. More lip service or outright lies? It seems all but certain now that Edward Snowden, who has come forward with the information about the use of Prism, will be hunted down by the U.S. government for severe punishment.

What is further maddening about Obama’s heavy-handed pursuit of whistle-blowers and his Administration’s continuing assault on the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights that protects us from “unreasonable search and seizure” is the outrage and hostility directed by many of our politicians and news pundits towards Edward Snowdwen and other whistle-blowers. There is a race to demonize him and paint him as an enemy of the state instead of what he actually is, which is a brave man who forever may have ruined his own individual life to get the truth out to the rest of us about what our government is doing to us behind closed doors, which is spying and taking notes on all of our communications in secrecy.

President Obama now claims to be happy to have a debate about this. Really? If he were happy to have a discussion and debate about it, we’d have heard from him or other government officials starting the conversation about the vast high-tech spying that is going on against its own citizens. Instead, we find out through the leaks of federal employees who face possible life in prison for bringing to light all of the government abuses in the first place. We can no longer trust anything he or anyone in his Administration has to say about this, as they have been lying and deceiving us all along, and viciously pursuing and attempting to imprison anyone within the government who provides the truth to the press.

Columnist and conservative and phony intellectual David Brooks of the New York Times wrote in an editorial yesterday that it wasn’t Big Brother that was the problem, but rather “the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric” that was the real danger, and went on further to say that Edward Snowden was making this worse. The entire editorial was a shining example of how Mr. Brooks and others like him spin words of bullshit into propaganda that is then interpreted as truth by many. In his editorial, he attacks the character and personality of Mr. Snowden in order to distract us from what was actually revealed. He then goes on to assure us that Edward Snowden acted “unilaterally” and un-ethically when leaking this information to the public. The editorial is a perfect example of how propaganda manages to be fed to us even through such seemingly liberal leaning and respected newspapers such as the New York Times.

Of course David Brooks is just towing the Establishment line in attacking the messengers of the truth instead of the truth itself. Aside from President Obama’s new-found support of spying on and lying to the American public, he is supported in unusual bipartisan manner in both chambers of Congress, though there are a few notable dissenters, one of which is a man I don’t agree with on many things, but on this matter is absolutely right, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. I saw some of the hacks on the FOX Propaganda Channel last night decrying the shocking news about our being spied upon by the government, but I don’t seem to recall any of this outrage from these jack asses when their chosen one, President George. W. Bush was first starting the whole program up.

What I have not heard enough from the average person yet is any sense of outrage. I heard many more grumblings in the public from what I have maintained was an over hyped non-scandal, the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative political groups. There was much saber rattling and falsehoods being spread during the gun control debate recently, which resulted in zero new federal regulations of guns. But where is the outrage on this assault on our First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the freedom of speech and the press, and the Fourth Amendment, on our protection against illegal search and seizure by the government? Surely Americans still value these rights as much as they do criminals’ rights to buy and sell firearms without a background check. Do Americans not care all that much that all of our phone call records and details of our internet connection are being collected by the government without our knowledge? Have we been made so afraid by propaganda about the threat of terrorism that we are willfully giving up our rights with barely a murmur of protest?

I for one salute the courage of Edward Snowden and other whistle blowers before him and those that come after him, for making available to the American public what our government is doing behind closed doors. I salute The Guardian newspaper from the U.K.  for breaking the story, and encourage you to become as informed as you can about what Big Brother is doing with your private information by checking out the Guardian’s very informative coverage of the NSA leaks at :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files

And the next time you are on your cell phone or your computer, just remember, Uncle Sam is watching you, and recording your every move. Here is a music video for you to enjoy as you ponder the Orwellian state of things in this country:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY