By Ralph Forbes

In early May the Middle East crackled with explosions, threatening to engulf the entire region in a catastrophic war, after pro-Israeli forces in Washington claimed the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on its own people, followed by Israel unleashing waves of sneak attacks against Syria.

Contrary to mainstream media propaganda, the Syrian loyalists, led by President Bashar al-Assad, are beating the Mossad-backed, CIA-sponsored “Free Syrian Army” terrorists, although Israel has desperately tried to embroil America into salvaging its plot to engulf the Middle East in flames.

But with Syria winning the war, the Western powers resorted to setting up a false-flag chemical attack to convince America to start yet another war. That plan failed when Carla del Ponte, the respected former chief prosecutor of two United Nations (UN) international criminal law tribunals, and now a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, said in a May 5 interview with Italian-Swiss broadcaster RSI, “The rebels used chemical weapons, sarin gas. . . . There is no evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons.”

Assad called on the UN to investigate a chemical weapons attack near Aleppo in March, which he says was carried out by rebel groups, but was rebuffed. Numerous “red-line” false-flag allegations and doctored videos have been exposed as war propaganda produced by the U.S. military-intelligence-security apparatus and then promoted by the Zionist-controlled mainstream media.

The plan for a broad Middle East war was meticulously spelled out in a Brookings Institution document, “Which Path to Persia?” So far, though, these gambits have failed since the Western powers and Israel have been unable to provoke Iran or Syria into firing the first shot. Iran has exercised great restraint even while crippled by Western-backed economic sanctions.

Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, has written of leaked intelligence describing terrorist intervention in Syria by the CIA and Britain’s MI6 spy agency. UK mercenary firm Britam was identified as conspiring with Qatar to plant a poison-gas bomb in Syria and blame the Russians for supplying it, so Syria could be framed for crossing President Barack Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons.

After this failed, the Israelis launched multiple air attacks on Syria, claiming they needed to keep missiles out of the hands of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. In fact, Israel was trying to goad the Syrian military into widening hostilities and force U.S. intervention.

Ralph Forbes is a freelance writer based in Arkansas. He is also a member of AFP’s Southern Bureau. Contact him at rforbes@centurytel.net.

By Victor Thorn

As a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), in November 2005, Thomas Drake revealed to Siobhan Gorman of the Baltimore Sun that his employer wasted $1.2B on an Internet surveillance system named Trailblazer. Rather than pursue this boondoggle that benefited a host of contractors within the military-industrial complex, the NSA could have financed it in-house for a mere $3M. Moreover, Drake claimed that NSA officials were using Trailblazer to conduct unconstitutional cyber-searches on American citizens without their knowledge.

As a result, a dozen gun-toting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents stormed into Drake’s home before ruthlessly interrogating him. Later, after being terminated from the NSA, the Deptartment of Justice charged him with five counts of violating the 1917 Espionage Act. If convicted, Drake would have spent the remainder of his life in prison. His crime: exposing rampant corruption and billions of dollars of waste within the Puzzle Palace. Fortunately, Drake was cleared of all charges following his April 2010 indictment.

Afterward, Drake fretted, “It’s extremely dangerous in America right now as a whistleblower when the government is so wrong . . . [they] convinced themselves I was a bad guy, an enemy of the state, and went after me with everything they had seeking to destroy my life, my livelihood, and my person.”

During a March 15 speech at the National Press Club, Drake commented, “I knew too much truth and exposed government illegalities, fraud and abuse and was turned into a criminal for doing so . . . it was five years of living under the boot of the surveillance state.”

Drake also criticized the government’s innate sense of secrecy. “In an open and transparent society, the citizenry are supposed to know the truth of its own government. So, if the First Amendment is the sunshine of our liberty, how else are we to remain free if the government casts its shadow over you and me?”

Obama vs. Whistleblowers

During his first term in office, Barack Obama promised to lead the most transparent administration in history. Yet, if actions are any indicator, his cabinet exhibits an obsessive preoccupation with Nixonian-style secrecy. According to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, “In 2011, there were 92 million classification decisions [under Obama], four times the number of decisions [made during] the last year of George W. Bush.”

Who precisely is Obama protecting? Ellsberg again provided an answer. In a recent documentary he stated, “[Obama] pretends to be interested in national security, but in fact they’re interested in the security of corporate interests, agency interests, and politicians keeping their jobs.”

Obama’s war—some may even call it a vendetta—directed against truth-tellers has been chilling. In a June 12, 2012 article, Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department Foreign Service officer, noted, “The Obama administration has charged more people under the Espionage Act for the alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidents combined.”

Other tactics utilized by Obama’s cronies include firings, career threats and harassment within the workplace. Tom Devine, the Government Accountability Project’s legal director, has gone so far as to claim that Obama’s people could potentially dismiss thousands of government employees, without appeal, if they revealed any type of embarrassing state secrets.

Another criticism of Obama revolves around his cozying up to the intelligence community, military-industrial complex, and those involved in maintaining our national security apparatus. If anyone attempts to shine a light on their secrecy, the vindictiveness leveled against them far outweighs even that of Bush-Cheney. On the other hand, when it comes to divulging state secrets such as those associated with the alleged 2011 murder of Osama bin Laden, the White House leaks like a sieve.

Stephen C. Webster, senior editor of a progressive website called Raw Story, complained in his April 14 column, “There’s a shortage of investigative news because so many whistleblowers are worried that they could face prosecution for dishing dirt on the ill-dealings of power.”

Or, as Van Buren pondered, under Obama, “1984 starts looking more like a handbook than a novel.”

What You Can Expect if You Decide to Blow the Whistle

On May 2, AFP contacted three separate lawyers to get a better insight into what whistleblowers face once they decide to take actions that will forever alter their lives.

Jordan Thomas, who helped to draft and implement rules for the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) whistleblower program, told AFP, “Contrary to stereotypes, being a whistleblower isn’t always glamorous, easy or lucrative. Usually, their goal is to right a wrong and protect people that are being taken advantage of. But by doing so, whistleblowers face collateral consequences such as retaliation and blacklisting.”

As a specialist in financial crimes, Thomas described what occurs on Wall Street. “Corporate wrongdoing is like a bank robbery. It’s not a one-man job, and there are always witnesses. People knew about this misconduct, but historically they didn’t come forward because there weren’t enough protections. Many investors realized Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, but they failed to report it.”

This situation looks better, though, thanks in part to Thomas’s leadership role in developing an SEC enforcement division. “Ever since Madoff, the SEC whistleblower program has been a powerful tool in helping law enforcement be more effective. Prior to Madoff, the corporate beat lacked a 911 number. Now we work with the FBI, forensic accountants, investigators and analysts to uncover securities violations, market manipulation and insider trading.”

Attorney Mark Schlein, who has spent 35 years as a lawyer and police officer, spoke with AFP about corporations that do business with the feds. “Anyplace the government spends money,” Schlein began, “people are trying to figure out how to cheat and steal. It’s like Willie Sutton: he robbed banks because that’s where the money was.”

When asked about the scope of this problem, Schlein replied, “The government gets ripped off for mega-billions of dollars each year due to fraud and abuse. The culprits could either be defense contractors, those in the pharmaceutical industry, or Medicare scams.”

Schlein next revealed a most surprising statistic. “Each year the Department of Justice elects not to intervene in 80% or more of all cases presented by external whistleblowers. There are simply too many cases and not enough prosecutors to review, investigate and determine each case. This dilemma puts whistleblowers in a precarious situation.”

AFP inquired about the backlash, to which Schlein responded, “Within the government, whistleblowers become a pariah. They’re isolated and minimized, which makes their job security very fragile. It takes great courage to come forward, but most people are so committed they do it anyway because they know it’s the right thing to do.”

Confirming these difficulties, Robert Nelson—an attorney specializing in False Claims Act cases—told AFP, “The biggest hurdle facing whistleblowers concerns reprisal. By law, companies aren’t allowed to retaliate, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. Plus, after many years devoted to investigating and prosecuting these cases, it’s hard for whistleblowers to get work within their industry. They’re viewed as traitors.”

Although most whistleblowers aren’t specifically motivated by financial gain, Nelson described an interesting premise. “The False Claims Act provides that a whistleblower with inside knowledge of a company defrauding the U.S. Treasury can bring action against that entity. This statute allows whistleblowers to receive a certain percentage of the total amount of money recovered on behalf of our government. So, people are incentivized to come forward, and therefore they can profit financially.”

However, Nelson emphasized the following point. “This process is stressful, and typically most whistleblowers realize that once they put their foot across the line, there’s no turning back. They face real consequences to themselves and in regard to making a living within their profession. Still, they do it for the right reasons because they’re honest and they care.”

Benghazi Cover-up and Intimidation Continues

The most recent assault on whistleblowers revolves around the Obama administration’s attempts to silence individuals whose accounts of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi consulate attack differ from the official version.

Attorney Victoria Toensing, who represents Greg Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, stated to FoxNews.com, “People have been threatened, and not just at the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA . . . It’s frightening, and they’re taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over.”

A Special Ops member, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporter Adam Housley on April 30 that, in direct contradiction to the White House account, military troops had enough time to intervene on September 11 and save those who were eventually slain. Yet, instead of responding, these Special Ops were instructed to stand down and abandon their countrymen.

This whistleblower told Housley, “You’ve got guys in the Special Ops community who are still active and involved, and they would be decapitated if they came forward with information that could affect high-level commanders.”

The explosive details being concealed by Obama and his inner circle extend far beyond lies about the Benghazi slaying as, allegedly, a spontaneous uprising triggered by an anti-Islamic video.

On April 29 columnist and political commentator Katie Kieffer confirmed what AFP reported months ago. “President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus were likely behind a mishandled gun-trafficking program that ended up arming radical jihadist rebels who stormed the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi.”

Kieffer went on to describe how weaponry seized after the U.S.-NATO-led Libyan invasion was funneled through Turkey to anti-Assad forces fighting in Syria. In addition, other arms such as machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades were sold directly to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and author of over 40 books.

By Keith Johnson

In modern-day America, parental rights are being systematically compromised by domineering government bureaucrats who believe they alone have the authority to determine what’s best for the health and welfare of a child. Alex and Anna Nikolayev of Sacramento, California, recently learned this the hard way after their five-month-old son Sammy was abducted by police and Child Protective Services (CPS) simply because the couple wanted to get a second opinion on their baby’s medical condition, a heart murmur.

The Nikolayevs’ troubles began when they took their son to a local hospital to be examined for flu symptoms. The parents became distressed when staff administered antibiotics that could have complicated the boy’s pre-existing heart condition.

After a few days in the hospital’s pediatric unit, doctors recommended Sammy undergo heart surgery. But, citing the earlier error on the part of hospital staff, the couple declined.

“We got the one mistake after another, [and] I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel he is safe,” Mrs. Nikolayev told a local news station.

While the Nikolayevs sought a second opinion from other hospitals, police visited their home on two occasions, demanding the couple surrender their child. Although the first visit endedwith police leaving without incident, the second turned ugly.

“I was pushed against the building, smacked down,” Mr. Nikolayev told California’s local News-10. “I said, ‘Am I being placed under arrest?’ He smacked me down onto the ground [and] yelled out, ‘I think I got the keys to the house.’”

Fortunately, the Nikolayevs had had the foresight to put up a video camera to record any encounter with police. In footage released to local news outlets, one police officer can be heard telling the couple, “I’m going to grab your baby—and don’t resist and don’t fight me, OK?”

Incidents like this are nothing new and occurring with greater frequency. How did it come to this? And is there any way to make things right?

PARENTAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT SOUGHT

This newspaper recently spoke with Michael Ramey, director of communications and research for ParentalRights.org, a political organization working to pass a Parental Rights Amendment to the Constitution. The organization represented Michigan parents in a story covered here.

When asked why government agencies are becoming more brazen in their abuse of family rights, Ramey replied: “Traditionally the Supreme Court has upheld the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education and care of their children dating back to 1923. But in the year 2000, in a case called Troxel v. Granville, they maintained the language of fundamental parental rights but removed the high legal standard the state has to reach before [they’re] allowed to make the decision for the child. Prior to that case, the legal presumption was that parents acted in the best interests of their child. And if you were acting on behalf of the state, you needed to establish that the parent is unfit, negligent or abusive before the court could make a decision.”

The proposed Parental Rights Amendment that Ramey’s organization is behind seeks to restore the high legal standard government had to reach prior to Troxel. According to sections I and II of the amendment: “The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education and care of their children is a fundamental right. . . . Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.”

But Ramey is not just addressing the power of states and the federal government.

“We’re also very concerned about the use of international law in American courts,” said Ramey. “There are a couple of UN treaties that are contrary to U.S. sovereignty and our system of governance. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities both establish the legal standard that our nation would be required to hold. The presumption that a parent acts in the best interests of the child would no longer suffice. The government would be obligated by the treaty to make sure that every action is made in the best interests of the child, making them responsible for child-rearing decisions, rather than the parents.”

Ramey said the Rights of People with Disabilities treaty went before the Senate in September but was narrowly defeated.

“If that were to pass, the state would ultimately have the authority to decide on a child’s upbringing,” he said. “Our concern is twofold: Not only that the federal government would be making decisions instead of parents, but also because a ratified treaty has been held by the Supreme Court as superior to any state law. That means the federal government would oversee all of the family rights and childrearing issues that are currently under the jurisdiction of the individual states.”

According to Ramey, the proposed Parental Rights Amendment had 140 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives when it went before the 111th Congress. “In the 112th Congress, we didn’t have as many sponsors because it was very late, but we were granted a hearing last summer by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution” he said. “We’re hoping to repeat our success in getting a large number of co-sponsors and really get it moving forward in the months ahead.”

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By Ralph Forbes

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in late April released a chilling video of a gunman openly admitting his motivation for wanting to murder innocent men and women, a hate crime, because of “information” published by a law enforcement-training organization on its website. But curiously, the mainstream media buried this under its avalanche of reporting on the Boston Marathon bombing.

Armed with a 9-mm handgun and nearly 100 rounds of ammunition, the crazed gunman stormed into the offices of the Family Research Council (FRC) on August 15, 2012, shouting: “I don’t like your politics”—and shot a security guard as his first victim. One would think this would be a dream scenario for anti-gun hysteria. So why haven’t President Barack Obama, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others in the national press made this front-page news?

The ministry of truth buried the story in the memory hole because Floyd Corkins II, the hate-crazed terrorist and would-be mass murderer, was a black homosexual, whose intended victims were pro-family Christians. Corkins told FBI agents that he had planned to kill as many people as possible and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces. His attack came just after the owner of the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain had announced his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Corkins said he wanted to kill them all because the FRC opposes gay marriage. Even worse for the propaganda agenda, Corkins targeted the FRC due to the scurrilous ravings of the media’s darling, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), run by greedy hatemonger Morris Seligman Dees. Over the years, the SPLC has smeared constitutionalists, patriots, nationalists, populists and other “extremists.” Dees’s hate machine has gone after Judge Andrew Napolitano, journalist Eric Margolis, “9-11 truthers” and, of course, AMERICAN FREE PRESS.

In one recent SPLC fiasco, Dees’s henchman and conspiracy theorist Mark Potok appeared all over the mass media as an “expert” to “incite a lynch mob” to raise money for SPLC by casting innuendos against “white supremacist” bogeymen for murdering two Texas prosecutors. The real killers, however, turned out to be a corrupt judge from Texas and his wife, who drove the getaway car.

The list of Americans who have been targeted by the SPLC’s spy machine is nearly endless. If you aren’t on their marked-for-hate list, you must be doing something wrong.

Ralph Forbes is a freelance writer based in Arkansas. He is also a member of AFP’s Southern Bureau. Contact him at rforbes@centurytel.net.

By Victor Thorn

Despite an initial blackout in the press, news of a real-life Hannibal Lecter abortion clinic in Philadelphia shocked Americans. Due to the truly abhorrent practices conducted inside this slaughterhouse, AMERICAN FREE PRESS will refrain from providing the gory details.

Instead, the grisly trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell forced social analysts to conclude that such a cesspool would never be allowed to operate for 17 unregulated years in white suburban neighborhoods, especially with the full knowledge of Planned Parenthood, politicians, and state health agencies.

More troublesome, it appears that Gosnell’s house of horrors functions more as a rule than an exception in inner cities. During an April 26 interview, Ann Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League told AMERICAN FREE PRESS, “Last year at a Chicago Planned Parenthood clinic, a 24-year-old black woman died during a late-term abortion because attendants waited two hours to call an ambulance. Afterward, there was no investigation and no outrage among residents. Everyone simply tried to distance themselves from it.”

As attorney Donald McClarey, president of a crisis pregnancy center, noted in an April 16 article, “Poor black women are treated like cattle.”

Indeed, while black females comprise only 6% of the United States population, they constitute 36% of all abortions. Sadly, Gosnell-style barbarism exists in many ghetto locales around the country. In Delaware, five patients have been rushed from a Planned Parenthood clinic this year alone.

Making matters worse, hypocrisy and neglect can be found on both sides of the political aisle. In Pennsylvania, since Gosnell opened his doors in 1979, five GOP governors—supposedly the pro-life party—and two Democratic administrations all turned a blind-eye to his barbarism.

Why is the black community so accepting of such inhumane atrocities within their midst? As black columnist Charles Ellison wrote on April 19, “One can only imagine the vein-popping outrage if a Gosnell-like clinic was found further out beyond Philadelphia’s city limits.”

Why is the ‘Hood’ So Much More Different Than the Rest of America?

Considering atrocities such as Kermit Gosnell’s back-alley extermination clinic, why has much of America’s inner city devolved into little more than open-air concrete jungles ruled by ghetto Darwinism? Those unable or unwilling to escape can expect a future of broken families, multi-generational welfare dependence, drug-trafficking thugs, constant police supervision, or sentencing inside the prison-industrial complex.

Much of the blame for this situation can be directed at “ghetto pimp” politicians such as Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, career-minded community organizers like Barack Obama, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Congressional Black Congress. Rather than teaching self-reliance and the benefits of honest employment, these victimization peddlers have become fabulously wealthy by extinguishing all hope inside these realms of urban apartheid.

To get further insights, on April 26 AFP spoke with one of the Internet’s top-rated bloggers. As a mainstream figure touting multiple appearances on primetime shows such as Chris Matthews’ Hardball, this man protects his alter-identity by writing under the pseudonym Angry White Dude (AWD).

When asked why many ghettos are so vastly different than the rest of America, AWD replied, “Inner cities today are in chaos. They’re disaster zones where, as one black teacher told me, the kids act more like domestic street terrorists. There’s no empathy, kindness or decency. Nothing is sacred or pure. Young men have no problem walking up to someone and shooting them in the head. The only comparison I can make would be to La Raza or Mexican drug gangs. They hold no value whatsoever for human life.”

AWD next turned his attention to a primary source of this problem. “What we have in the ghettos is a victimization mentality. If whites completely went away tomorrow, life still wouldn’t get any better for these people. Take Detroit for example: it’s 88% black . . . a black utopia. But half the high school graduates are illiterate. The only ones that can help blacks are blacks themselves. But they refuse to take responsibility. Even when someone like Bill Cosby offers valid criticisms, he’s called an Uncle Tom by black leaders.”

On this note, AWD cited one of these well-known race pimps. “Reverend Al Sharpton is a professional racist. It’s his gig. He doesn’t live in the ghettos, and he won’t demand that black kids act like humans. I don’t know about you, but I expect people to act like human beings. If they refuse to, then the only way to maintain and protect society is by incarcerating them.”

Rather than merely pointing a finger, AFP requested suggestions from AWD about how to improve these forsaken blights on the cultural landscape. “The law of consequences doesn’t recognize skin color,” he began. “If you do stupid things, it leads to stupid results. The black community needs a real leader that will say: don’t drop-out of school, don’t get pregnant at 13, and don’t act like a rapper.”

He also provided some other constructive advice. “Disingenuous white liberals have created a welfare system for blacks that has sapped their pride, stolen their respectability, and destroyed their families. If they really wanted to help these people, they’d offer positive messages about taking responsibility for their own lives. Making more babies so you can collect more welfare is a system for disaster.”

Indentured Servants of Wall Street & the Welfare State

During a March 26 address at the National Press Club, Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson told attendees, “This nation would never tolerate white unemployment at 14 or 15%.” Yet in many cities young black male unemployment now surpasses the 40-50 percentile mark, whereas overall black unemployment has been double that of whites ever since Martin Luther King led his March on Washington in 1963. In fact, no demographic has fared worse under Obamanomics than blacks.

Still, after 96% of blacks voted for Obama in 2008, that figure only dropped three percentage points in the 2012 election. As a reflection of this quandary, one illustrator drew a cartoon of Obama smugly asking, “Poverty? Joblessness? No matter. Where else are they gonna go?”

The point is clear. The Democratic Party has so monopolized the black vote for decades that they’ve been completely forsaken as inconsequential. Frustrated by the hollow promises of hope and change, on December 5, 2012, Detroit councilwoman JoAnn Watson offered an insight into the mindset of those who feel betrayed. “Obama should bring home the bacon,” Watson complained. “Our people in an overwhelming way supported the reelection of this president, and there ought to be a quid pro quo.” In other words, now they want more “free stuff.”

But instead of gainful employment that provides an escape from the slums, the title of black author Star Parker’s 2003 book says it all: Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor. With billions devoted annually to various social programs, Parker asserted that inner city blacks have become literal slaves. “Thirty-five years of Great Society social engineering have forced the disadvantaged to live under the control of the federal government.”

Lashing out even more vehemently, Parker described how taxpayers and those crippled by the welfare state suffer under this broken philosophy. “Uncle Sam has developed a sophisticated poverty plantation, operated by a federal government, overseen by bureaucrats, protected by media elite, and financed by the taxpayers. The only difference between this plantation and the slave plantations of the antebellum South is perception.”

As a final mockery, on January 28, financial analyst Max Keiser revealed who else profits from this feeding frenzy of dependency. “JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. [They have] contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes.”

Life in the War Zone: Live by the Gun, Die by the Gun

• “The [homicide] offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites.”

With cutthroat gangsta rap stars serving as their role models, it’s no surprise that inner city black males represent over 50% of all violent crime in America. According to a November 2011 Department of Justice report, “The [homicide] offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites.”

Provocative author Ann Coulter framed it in another context. “If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium. So, perhaps it’s not a gun problem, it’s a demographic problem.”

Coulter is correct in her assertion. From 2000-2008, Belgium’s average murder rate stood at 2.2 per 100,000, whereas “whites only” murder in America during this same time-frame was 2.6 per 100,000.

Placing this phenomenon in even starker terms, Erick Erickson, editor-in-chief of a conservative blog named Red State, noted on January 9: “The profile of the typical murderer with a gun is a black male in a city under the age of 25.” Erickson added, “Between 1980 and 2008, young adult black males had the highest homicide offending rate compared to offenders in other racial and sex categories.”

Inexplicably, Barack Obama has waged a vendetta against not only law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights (i.e., “those clinging to their guns and Bibles”), but also assault weapons instead of handguns. In 2011, U.S. murders committed with rifles totaled 323, while those with handguns equaled 6,220. Also, intensive background checks won’t stop gang-bangers from purchasing Saturday night specials [i.e., cheap handguns] on the black market.

If Obama genuinely wanted to decrease gun violence, he could look to a January 15 article by freelance speechwriter Stephanie Slade as a starting point. Slade wrote, “Most of the nonsuicide gun deaths in this country happen in densely populated, lower-income urban environments like New Orleans, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. Here, gangs and poverty are the proximate causes of the violence, not a lack of access to counseling.” Regrettably, Slade forgot to mention the worst culprit of all, Obama’s hometown of Chicago, which recorded more homicides than any American metropolitan area last year as drug and gang-wars continue to rage unabated.

Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and author of over 40 books.

Jacob G. Hornberger, the founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, discusses the case of Lynne Stewart, who, as an attorney, like Edgar J. Steele, represented controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants.

Mrs. Stewart, who is now dying of Stage 4 cancer behind bars, was convicted of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005, sentenced to 28 months in prison, and re-sentenced to 10 years in prison because she mocked her original sentence, in this interesting interview (17:42).

Dave Gahary, a former submariner in the U.S. Navy, is the host of AFP’s ‘Underground Interview’ series.

Be sure to check out all of AFP’s free podcasts. You’ll find them on the HOME PAGE, in the ARCHIVES & in the PODCAST section.

‘War on Terror’ Early Casualty May Get Compassionate Release

• Lynne Stewart, another attorney for the damned, languishes in prison with Stage 4 lung cancer

Lynne Irene Stewart, who, like framed, famed and unjustly-imprisoned First Amendment attorney Edgar J. Steele, “represented controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants,” may get a reprieve, as the warden of the prison where she is housed has recommended an immediate compassionate release for the disbarred and imprisoned attorney, whose health has deteriorated following a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Stewart, 73, has been rotting behind bars at Federal Medical Center, Carswell (FMC Carswell), a United States federal prison located on Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth “for female inmates of all security levels with special medical and mental health needs,” since she surrendered to federal marshals on November 19, 2009, to begin her 28-month sentence, following her 2005 conviction on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists for her involvement in the defense of ate Omar Abdel-Rahman, the accused leader of a “militant Islamist movement in Egypt that is considered a terrorist organization” by America and Egypt, said to be “responsible for many acts of violence, including the November 1997 Luxor massacre, in which 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were killed.” Her sentence was callously and capriciously increased to 10 years for commenting on the sentence that “As my clients say to me, ‘I could do that standing on my head,’” which clearly angered U.S. prosecutors and judges.

Stewart was diagnosed with breast cancer during her trial and it returned following imprisonment, but she was forced to wait a year-and-a-half for surgery, which her attending physician said “was the worst case he ever saw because of the delay.” Currently, the cancer has metastasized to both her lungs and back, and, while she is receiving chemotherapy, “her condition is feared to be terminal.” A petition to grant her compassionate release has been signed by human rights activists Dick Gregory and Desmond Tutu, while American conservative blogger, political commentator and author Michelle Malkin has advocated for her death behind bars.

Jacob G. Hornberger, the founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF), whose mission has been since 1989 “to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government,” “with the aim of establishing an educational foundation that would advance an uncompromising case for libertarianism in the context of both foreign and domestic policy,” recently penned an article on FFF’s website entitled The Fascinating Case of Lynne Stewart, where he pointed out the hypocritical ludicrousness of her conviction and sentence.

AMERICAN FREE PRESS conducted an exclusive interview with Mr. Hornberger, a Texas native, U.S. Army veteran, and 12-year trial attorney, to gain a further understanding of the Stewart case. He began by explaining what makes Lynne Stewart tick.

“Lynne Stewart… has had a long and distinguished career representing underdogs…not very sympathetic clients and she takes that position that everybody’s entitled to an attorney, even the person that’s accused of the most despicable crime. And all of a sudden she’s asked to represent this guy, Abdel-Rahman, by Ramsey Clark, who served as the attorney general under Lyndon Johnson. And she reluctantly takes on the case, and in the process she signed this agreement…that she will not divulge any communication from him to his group in Egypt. Well, she violates that regulation, and at a press conference reads a press release from this guy. And as a result of reading that press release, the feds come after her, for violating the prison regulations and more important, for what they said was ‘material support of terrorism,’ by virtue of the words that were in this press release.”

Mr. Hornberger explained that Ms. Stewart’s attorney has appealed her extended conviction, which was denied after AFP conducted the interview, and AFP asked if she will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and what her chances of being heard are.

“I would say that her chances that the Supreme Court will take up the case are slim and none. Obviously she’s got a slim case anyway because all this war on terrorism nonsense with the federal courts have so often just submitted and deferred to the national security state.”

In his article, Mr. Hornberger compared the current security state in the U.S. to Egypt under Hosni Mubarak.

“Ironically, here in the United States, the bastion of freedom, where the President now has the same powers that Mubarak was wielding; incredible…that we live in a country where those kind of powers are being held and exercised.”

By Keith Johnson

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently nabbed a hapless Aurora, Illinois teenager who allegedly planned to join a Syrian resistance group that just so happens to receive millions of dollars in military aid from American taxpayers. Apparently, the United States government is setting out to prove that they really can have their cake and eat it too. At the same time they’re funding terrorist activities abroad, they’re busting people here at home for volunteering to lend a helping hand.

On April 19, 18-year-old Abdella Ahmed Tounisi was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport just before he was about to board a plane for Turkey. Authorities claim that Tounisi’s final destination was Syria, where he hoped to train with the Jabhat al-Nusrah terrorist organization, described as an “alias for al-Qaida in Iraq,” according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

Aside from the fact that Jabhat al-Nusrah is also a covert U.S. ally in the fight against the Syrian regime, another particularly disturbing aspect about Tounisi’s case is that his aspirations to join the terrorist group were nurtured by the same federal agency credited for his capture. In the days leading up to Tounisi’s arrest, the FBI put up a bogus Jabhat al-Nusrah website for the express purpose of luring wannabe “freedom fighters” into joining up. According to AP, “It had the trappings of an actual extremist website: Photos of gun-toting fighters and a flowery exhortation to, ‘Come and join your lion brothers … fighting under the true banner of Islam.’”

Those words and images proved to be a substantial source of inspiration for the impressionable youth. As the Chicago Tribune reports: “On March 28, Tounisi made contact with a person he believed to be a recruiter for Jabhat al-Nusrah but who was really an undercover FBI agent, the complaint says. After several emails, Tounisi allegedly wrote that he planned to get to Syria through Turkey.

“On April 10, Tounisi purchased an airplane ticket to Istanbul and was given instructions by the undercover agent about how to meet up with ‘brothers’ from Jabhat al-Nusrah who would take Tounisi to a training camp in Syria, officials said.”

Tousini has now been charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and faces up to 15 years in federal prison if convicted.

“This is particularly ironic because U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has just announced an additional $123M in military aid that is headed directly to this very same foreign terrorist organization,” wrote geopolitical researcher Tony Cartalucci. “And unlike Tounisi, Kerry and his collaborators are not being charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.”

Toppling the Syrian regime is one of the U.S. government’s main foreign policy objectives. And using foreign terrorists as their proxy has been standard operating procedure for some time now. Even The New York Times has recently admitted that “[n]owhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of…Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government…Among the most extreme groups is the notorious Al Nusra Front, the Qaeda-aligned force declared a terrorist organization by the United States, but other groups share aspects of its Islamist ideology in varying degrees.”

According to Cartalucci: “From the beginning, it was clear to geopolitical analysts that the conflict in Syria was not ‘ pro-democracy” protestors rising up, but rather the fruition of a well-documented conspiracy between the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia to arm and direct sectarian extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda against the Syrian government.”

This kind of collaboration goes back a long way. In fact, Al-Qaeda itself is an outgrowth of the U.S.-backed Mujahideen resistance that fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. In 2005, Reagan-era National Security Agency director William Ellridge Odom admitted that, “terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today’s war on terrorism merely make the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.”

In the same manner in which the U.S. has earned its bad reputation for funding the very terror groups it claims to be at war with, so too is the FBI becoming notorious for duping the immature and mentally ill into participating in fake terror plots.

One of the more recent examples occurred on February 7, when the FBI arrested 28-year-old Matthew Aaron Llaneza, who supposedly attempted to blow up a Bank of America building with a fake bomb they helped him create. As it turns out, not only did the FBI engineer the entire plot, but, according to court documents, “the one-time window washer suffered from bipolar disease and substance abuse, along with being paranoid that people were out to get him.”

Similarly, in October of 2012, “federal agents convinced a naive 21-year-old Bangladeshi that he was a member of al-Qaeda, giving the alleged entrapment victim fake bombs to blow up the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank of New York before swarming in and arresting him,” wrote Alex Newman for The New American. “In reality, there was no al-Qaeda, there was no threat, there were no bombs, and the only alleged ‘plot’ the FBI ‘foiled’ was the one it hatched with its stooge, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis.”

Another gullible young dupe, 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was hyped as being the mastermind behind the attempted bombing of a 2010 Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. However, once again, it was the FBI that provided the suspect with all the fake explosives and instructions on how to carry out the attack. “An undercover FBI agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat,” The New York Times reported. “To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.”

Former United States Marine and Vietnam veteran Fred Goger served his country and did more than his fair share in that faraway part of the world.

But when he returned and began suffering from the side-effects of exposure to Agent Orange, he never expected his offspring would have to deal with his 1960s exposure to the poisonous herbicide.

Fred discusses his kids’ cancers and more in this candid and revealing interview (30:56).

Dave Gahary, a former submariner in the U.S. Navy, is the host of AFP’s ‘Underground Interview’ series.

Be sure to check out all of AFP’s free podcasts. You’ll find them on the HOME PAGE, in the ARCHIVES & in the PODCAST section.

A push for intervention in Syria by Israel and its lackeys in Washington risks inviting disaster and creating another violent and chaotic country.

In a mirror image of the lead-up to the wars in Iraq and Libya, there has been an ongoing propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the American public the Syrian government has not only been committing mass murder but has been using chemical weapons against rebels. The argument is that it poses a threat to the Middle East region and beyond. In the opinion of neocons and liberals alike, the Syrian regime has crossed a red line.

Missing in all of this is the fact that mainstream media reports of massacres by government forces have come almost exclusively from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been exposed as a one-man show operated by a Syrian exile Rami Abdul Rahman in Coventry, England.

The campaign for direct United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) involvement in Syria was recently given impetus by claims government forces led by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime were using sarin gas against its enemies. Those enemies include anti-Western militias determined to create a new Syria under radical Islamic law. Such a state would not only pose a major threat to the Christian population but also to Alawites, whom the Sunnis regard as heretics.

Pro-Israel legislators on Capitol Hill were quick to seize on reports of sarin gas use even though Israeli Brigadier General Itai Brun, who originally promoted the claims, was unable to provide any proof that this actually occurred. But that did not stop Secretary of State John Kerry from heading to Europe to state that it was time for NATO to have a plan in place to deal with Syria.

Brun’s evidence was flimsy at best, but he pointed to the fact that the British and French agreed with him. He neglected to mention the British and French have been at the forefront of trying to get rid of Assad and have armed anti-Assad militias and helped train them in Jordan and Turkey. The last time the Assad regime was charged with using chemical weapons, it turned out it was militias employing a homemade weapon comprised of a readily available industrial chlorine-based agent.

The Assad government has denied using sarin gas, and Russia made it clear to D.C. it believes the denial. Russia has also expressed dismay that America has been supporting radical and violent Islamic groups in Syria—some of the same groups the U.S. has been battling in Iraq. If these zealous fighters were to seize power, they could get their hands on some real chemical weapons.

An intelligence source in Moscow, who did not want to be named, told this newspaper, the obvious danger in Syria can be seen in light of what happened when Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s administration collapsed: Many of the regime’s weapons fell into the hands of thugs inside and outside of Libya. Syria has much more advanced weapons.

One of the notable things about the calls for intervention is that liberals, in going after Assad, are copying the playbook of the neocons, who lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Ten years later, Iraq is still a mess, plagued by violence and mass bombings.

Richard Walker is the pen name of a former N.Y. news producer.