(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - We have interviewed Scott Rickard, former American Intelligence linguist, Orlando about the relationship between politicians, the US banking cartel and influential groups such as AIPAC and others as main causes of problems the US is facing with regard especially to their economy.
The program also offers the opinions of two other guests: Iraq war veteran, Mike Prysner and Mark Dankof, a political commentator from San Antonio. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Q: Job creation and unemployment, it’s three months to go and it’s pretty dismal reading based on the most recent data coming out. Of course, the US has been struggling with this since the financial crisis four years ago.
Based on this latest report unemployment rates have actually risen in 44 US states as of this record being taken last month in July. That’s the most states to show a monthly increase in more than three years. Do you think that the 2012 election is going to hinge on something like this, which is overall under the umbrella of the economy?
Rickard: I believe they are going to try and focus on economy and they’re going to try to focus on unemployment and obviously those are problems that are systemic with our system as Michael (Prysner) has put out and also as Mike Dankof has said.
We live in a society that’s been completely robbed by the banks. And these banks have gone overboard on cheating us with the Libor scandal; cheating us with the bailouts and they’re continuing to pay off our politicians, take us to wars, use the lobbyists just as Mark Dankof mentioned.
AIPAC is leading us into more wars and breaking the bank in this country to where again we are having to take out trillions of dollars of loans again and print up new money and there is a 100 percent chance of that happening either right after the election or right before the election…
So, we’re looking at a society that is highly disappointed in their government, but they don’t do anything. The reason they don’t do anything is that they’re fed a lot of information that is completely misinformed.
The Gallup Poll for example - it’s not a good measure of American Society. These polls are actually run by the same banks and the same lobbying groups - they are the clients of these polls and they are no representation of what is going on in this country. They’ve been in place since the 1930s and they’ve been taking polls are basically leading the media to ‘describe’ what’s going on in the society for the society.
But when you take a look at what the people are saying; when you take a look at the masses and what they’re saying outside of the polls. The people outside of the polls are actually very disappointed, they don’t know what to do and frankly they don’t rise up against the government because they’ve been taught not to.
They are not in a position to rise up and the fact is that they need to take a better stance and they need to rise up against the government because the government is cheating them and it’s cheating them with the corporate banking and the lobbying groups and all of the military industrial complex that’s making money every day as Michael said, 700 million dollars a day in Afghanistan, it’s unreal.
Q: Obviously it has thrown this current administration into sort of a scramble or maybe you could use a better word to describe it when you have security apparatus whether it’s the FBI or even the CIA involved in going through the houses of Occupy protest movement activists, getting information off of their laptop.
And look at some of the executive orders that have been signed - the National Emergency Order for example or Mark Dankof mentioned the NDAA Act, I mean, these are pretty much in line somewhat in terms of its time line when the Occupy movement occurred.
They are concerned aren’t they?
Rickard: Of course they’re concerned I mean you’re talking about a media industry that’s dominated - you had Hilary Clinton last year whining about America losing the information war. Well, the fact is that America has been dominating the information war for decades.
And for the first time you have the opportunity to speak out as individuals like Michael and myself and Mark, we have a voice, we have a voice on the internet, we have a voice at Occupy events, there are great speakers and they’ve done a great job getting the messages out and obviously it’s mis-portrayed by the media, I mean, they are very disrespectful to the Occupy movement on all sides of the media.
But when you look at the influences of some of these lobbying groups and Michael’s right, it’s not just AIPAC, I mean there’s many of them out there, but AIPAC is a very influential group.
How many groups got coverage during the presidential debates where people were calling back in to the AIPAC Conference? How many conferences have presidential debates calling back into them? So, to say that AIPAC isn’t a highly influential group on foreign policy is an absolute mistake. They are very influential, not the only one, but they are very influential.
Most of the legislation in front of our government if it has anything to do with Israel there are several people that sponsor it and if you don’t get on board and support that piece of legislation you got a chance of not getting a dime the next time you run for political office. It is a highly influential group against the American Congress, the Senate and obviously the presidential.
So if you’re looking at trying to control what’s going on in our society when it comes down to people that are going to make an influence, Michael’s right - we are the only people that can make an influence.
If we rise up and if we talk about this and we get the kind of stations to compete with the CNN, to compete with the FOX, we have to fight fire with fire and get in front of people on their televisions because people aren’t being fed the right information. They’re being misled every day they turn on their television.
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