LiberalPro

Gingrich in South Carolina...Where Up is Down

2012-01-22T01:47:00.002-05:00

I live in South Carolina and during this Republican primary I believe I’ve heard just about all the bulls**t I can handle. Listening to what South Carolinians believe and why they do what they do is truly the height of ignorance. I’ve lived here six years and the only thing I can testify about is that South Carolinians like their privacy. You can work a South Carolinian crowd by telling them that the government is going to invade that privacy. The reason that the poor working stiffs in this State didn’t support the healthcare bill Obama proposed is because people like Senator Jim DeMint told them that the Federal government would be managing their healthcare and would be making the decisions on treatment, not their doctors. DeMint actually said that at a town hall meeting.

What floored me was the CNN Debate when John King asked Newt Gingrich about the “open marriage” that Gingrich proposed to his wife, according to an interview she gave the evening before. I was transported to a surreal world where up was down, and in was out. Gingrich castigated John King before millions of people for asking such a tawdry, negative question during the opening of a Presidential debate. I couldn’t believe the feigned outrage Gingrich displayed. In fact, I couldn’t believe his hypocrisy in front of Americans that can certainly remember his behavior as Speaker of the House during the time he desperately tried to impeach Bill Clinton for a brief affair while at the time he was cheating on his second wife with his present wife! What kind of a man could feign outrage over something that he himself had also engaged in? In fact, where is the mainstream media on this? Why do some people get a free pass while others are crucified?

The mainstream press constantly brings up “the fact” that South Carolinians don’t really care about an old affair because they are more concerned about the economy. In reality, if the press brought up the facts about what Gingrich was doing while he was trying to impeach Clinton, maybe then South Carolinians would care just a little more about his hypocritical behavior. The evangelical Christians here are forgiving, but hypocrisy isn’t tolerated well in this State. For someone who attacks the media on a constant basis, they sure dis a good job at hiding certain facts for him. In fact, John King should hang his head in shame for taking such a blistering attack by Gingrich without bringing up the facts of his hypocrisy during the Clinton Impeachment. Is it because John King is a wimp, or is there something more going on?
One thing that I heard over and over was the strength of the Tea Party in South Carolina. I just don’t believe it. I’m politically active and the only real presence I see down here are the Ron Paul supporters, the Occupy movements in many cities and towns, and recently, organizing efforts by the AFL-CIO.

For all of the Ron Paul supporters that are hoping for an eventual victory for their candidate don’t hold your breath. Of all the States that have run caucuses and primaries, South Carolina was a perfect atmosphere for a Ron Paul victory. If he couldn’t do better than last place here, I can’t see him winning anywhere.

This is not America

2011-12-28T22:16:00.000-05:00

David Duke on The People's Voice and My Stance

2011-12-26T14:37:00.002-05:00

Dear Editor,

As a significant contributor to The People's Voice, I am dumbstruck by the article you featured on the Christmas Day page of The People's Voice. While I am an adamant supporter of Palestinian Rights and I decry Israel's violent actions against the Palestinian People, putting a rant by David Duke on the same website that I also put my articles on is obscene to me. If you persist on putting David Duke's articles on your website, I will have no other option but to discontinue submitting my own articles to The Peoples Voice. David Duke is radical anti-semite and as such, he should be ignored.

Sincerely,

Timothy V. Gatto

Recipe for Revolution

2011-12-25T21:51:00.001-05:00

Ron Paul on "Battlefield America"

2011-12-25T21:48:00.001-05:00

The Homeland Battlefield

2011-12-25T02:57:00.001-05:00

Re-posted from Information Clearing House

By Lawrence Davidson

Part I – Congress Attacks the Constitution

December 23, 2011 "Information Clearing House" The U.S. Congress has ended the year 2011 by assaulting the Constitution. The attack came in the form of the 2012 National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) which passed both the House (December 14) and the Senate (December 15) by large margins despite having an attached provision (the “Homeland Battlefield Bill”) that allows the United States military to take into custody and hold indefinitely without trial, any American citizen designated a “terrorist suspect.”

As if to make sure that everyone knew just what they were voting for, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina who supports the legislation, said on the Senate floor, “the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as a battlefield, including the homeland.” That means U.S. citizens designated terrorist suspects are stripped of their protections under the Constitution. They simply fall into a judicial black hole. Ironically, Congress did this to the country on the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights.　

At first it seemed that President Obama was prepared to veto the bill so as to prevent this attack on citizen rights. But this proved to be untrue. What Obama was really interested in was language that prevents the military from interfering with the work of the FBI in cases of suspected terrorism. Actually, this should add to our worries because the FBI has a disturbing record of manufacturing terrorists out of poor and disgruntled U.S. citizens. Given the numerous scams and entrapment scenarios the Bureau runs, we will probably see a macaberesque two-step dance where the FBI makes the terrorists and the military takes them away, never to be seen again outside of Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay has become Washington’s version of Devil’s Island.

Here are some reactions to the Homeland Battlefield Bill:

1. Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch: “It’s something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration. It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries to drop.”　

2. Senator Rand Paul: “Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts.”

In addition Paul points out that the present definition of a terrorist in U.S. law is broad to the point of meaninglessness. “There are laws on the books that characterize who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands….Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist.”　

3. Professor Jonathan Turley, legal scholar: “How did we come to this place? Well, it took the joint efforts of both parties and a country that has been lured into a dangerous passivity by years of war rhetoric.”　

The odd thing about President Obama’s willingness to sign this bill and, as Human Rights Watch notes, “go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law,” is that the FBI, the CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Defense, among others, all oppose it. The military in particular appears to have no wish to destroy a 200 year tradition of non-interference in domestic affairs. In fact, according to Heather Huburt, the executive director of The National Security Network, a non-profit organization focusing on national security, “you can’t find any national security experts in favor of these provisions.”　

Yet the President, faced with a large bi-partisan Congressional majority anxious to prove to the American people that it is as willing as they to “give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety,” and also having been assured of a cooperative legal arrangement between the military and the FBI, quickly jumped on the bandwagon. One can only assume that nothing in the Homeland Battlefield Bill goes against Barack Obama’s principles–whatever they may be.　

Part II – The Historical Context　

Before we are overrun by doom and gloom, it is best to put this situation in historical context. Throughout U.S. history there have been episodes when the Constitution was disregarded and citizens rights trampled on. For instance:

a) As early as 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Acts.

b) In 1830 when President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court and illegally evicted the Cherokee of Georgia.

c) When the otherwise revered Abraham Lincoln started to ignore due process and arrest and hold people thought to be a danger to the Union cause during the Civil War.

d) Woodrow Wilson, otherwise seen as making the “world safe for democracy” instituted the questionable Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918.

e) Followed by President Harding’s mostly illegal deportations during the Red Scare of the early 1920s.

f) Then, of course, there was the illegal incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II

g) And, in the 1950s under Truman and Eisenhower, the U.S. went through a second Red Scare entailing blacklists, loyalty oaths and the McCarthy hearings.　

There are a number of lessons we can drew from these episodes:　

First -

The party leaders and administrations that initiated these illegal policies have been both “conservative” and “liberal.” Many considered Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln to be quite progressive for their time. The Federalists of 1798 and the McCarthyite Republicans of the 1950s were seen by many of their contemporaries as opportunistic reactionaries.

Second -

Most of the historical attacks on Constitutional protections were situation specific. That is, they were responses to particular conditions such as war and amorphous fears of foreign threats. These conditions allowed for the draconian actions of the government. However, when the crisis (real or imagined) ended, policy swung back toward a more centrist political orientation and rights were restored. One might argue that this is what is happening now, that we are in one of these crises modes, and the government is reacting in character by trashing Constitutional rights. I think that this could be a reasonable interpretation, but for one troubling aspect of the present situation that we will get to at the conclusion of this essay.　

Third -

The “average”citizen is comfortable with (and indeed sometimes enthusiastic about) the unconstitutional behavior of the government. Thus, as Jonathan Turley put it, “While the Framers [of the Constitution] would have likely expected citizens [to be] in the streets defending their freedoms, this measure [the Homeland Battlefield Bill] was greeted with a shrug and a yawn by most citizens and reporters.”Why would this be so? Keep in mind that the average citizen does not often use his or her rights and sometimes is unaware of what they are. The majority is also normally under the influence of the government and its allied media. To wit, Turley’s “years of war rhetoric.” Even when the claims of these influential sources are exaggerated and distorted, the majority has no way to know this.

The population is in need of fact-checkers, a role once, but no longer played by the press. Today’s fact-checkers are a stand alone vocal minority who contest the exaggerated claims of the government and media, and the abuse of power that often goes along with them. Yet the majority is uncomfortable with fact-checkers and their negative revelations, particularly when they appear outside of traditional contexts (like the press). It is easy for the government to isolate the nay sayers and persuade people that the critics are part of the problem, allied with the enemy, and in need of suppression. Therefore, it is fact-checkers who are in great need of the protection of the Bill of Rights. The truth is that in many places, including the U.S., it is dangerous to tell the truth. Just look at the cases of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.　

Part III – Conclusion (The Troubling Aspect)　

Unfortunately, there may be something historically different about the present crisis. It is potentially endless. Terrorism is the poor man’s form of revenge to prevailing economic, political and military domination (direct or by proxy) that is global and on-going. Anyone with a little technical skill and a lot of determination can exact this kind of revenge. And, as long as that happens there will be opportunistic and/or paranoid domestic elements that will use such incidents to isolate, harass and persecute critics of government war-on-terror policies.　

If this prognosis is accurate, the only thing that can be expected to end this struggle is a revolutionary change in relations between the West, and particularly the United States, and the non-Western world, particularly the Middle East. No one should be holding their breath as far as this prospect goes. As it stands now, the best one can hope for are pauses in this struggle.　

This is a depressing prospect, but it does not relieve anyone interested in the maintenance of political and civil rights from carrying on a determined resistance to their erosion. It is only by vigorously defending and using such rights as free speech that we can hope to sustain the space necessary for critical voices. Think of such rights as muscles. If you don’t want them to atrophy, you have to use them. So, if you want to keep your rights, get out there and use them.

Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history. - http://www.tothepointanalyses.com

NY, NY

2011-12-16T23:49:00.002-05:00

Going to NY. I'll be writing again in a week. Until then, don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.

NAT DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT CONFIRMS BATTLEFIELD USA

2011-12-12T17:49:00.001-05:00

With the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), America takes another giant step toward tyranny. It was the White House that wanted this bill applied to U.S. Citizens with minor modifications as America slides towards fascism as well as the Israelification of a militarized Police force: Allen L Roland

The Defense Authorization Act was passed by both the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R.1540) and the U.S. Senate (S.1867), and now lacks only the signature of President Obama to become law. If he signs it, the corporate fascist takeover of America initially exposed and delayed by USMC General Smedley Butler in the 1930s will be complete. Read War is a racket ~
http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/racket.html

Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, calls the National Defense Authorization Act a draconian violation of our civil rights. See seven minute video interview on Real News;
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7688

Section 1031 of the NDAA as currently worded authorizes the President to use Military Force to detain indefinitely based on suspicion alone and without trial American citizens on American soil, effectively making the United States a Police State similar to Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s. You can read the wording here:
http://tinyurl.com/c4w2wdh

This is in direct conflict with and an overt attempt to override the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments to the Constitution:

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings. Ratified 12/15/1791.

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Amendment 6 - Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses. Ratified 12/15/1791.

“ In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
See ratified amendments: http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am4

While we continue our illegal wars, occupations and economic rape of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as justifing torture and curtailed freedoms as a means to this criminal end ~ I immediately think of Milton Mayer’s classic THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE (The Germans 1933 – 1945) ~ for German exceptionalism in the 1930’s was really not too different, in many ways, than American exceptionalism now and we are very likely headed for the same disastrous fate.
Pg. 166 / 167 THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE
But Then It Was Too Late ~ "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it … this separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”
Apathy increases with each measured step, as it most certainly has in America, and Mayer knowingly describes the consequences for Germany in the early 1930’s ~ when the burden of self deception becomes so heavy, as it is now, that suddenly you realize that your whole world has changed and you have accepted things (out of fear) that you would never have accepted before the War on Terror.
Pg 171 THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE
“In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D ~ and one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in ~ your nation, your people ~ are not the world you were born in at all. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way… You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined … Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing).” Read article ~ http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World_Order/TheyThoughtTheyWereFree.html
And that is Mayer’s main point ~ it is the spirit that dramatically changes when we accept if not condone the disintegration of our national moral values and civil liberties through illegal wars and occupations as well as our crimes against humanity such as torture, secret renditions as well as intrusive full body scans and pat downs, which will continue to be extended under the pretext of national security and the so called War on Terror.
So here we are in 2011 and the next ominous step ~ the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867) will officially confirm that America is a battlefield state ~ with the continued shredding of our constitution and Bill of Rights which started under the Cheney/Bush administration.

Make no mistake about it ~ NDAA confirms Battlefield USA as well as the Israelification of our militarized police force. Max Blumenthal, writing fellow of the Nation Institute, confirms this sad reality that American civilians will increasingly be treated as the terrorist enemy. The Posse Comitatus Act was meant to limit the powers of local governments and law enforcement agencies from using federal military personnel to enforce the laws of the land ~ which poses this question;
How does our government get around that without an act of congress?
It's simple, turn the 'domestic' police force into an Israelified standing army ~
8 minute must see Video:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/6080.html

Also note that this week, KBR (the security corporation which handles FEMA emergency camps) put out a call to staff their FEMA camps ~ and to be ready on a 72 hour notice. Here is the link to KBR security corporation needing to staff FEMA camps along with the 72 hour notice:
static.infowars.com/2011/12/i/general/kbr-doc.pdf

This web page identifies the 93 Senate Traitors who voted YEA for NDAA and the 7 Patriots who voted NEA against it, those being Senators Coburn (R-OK), Harkin (D-IA), Lee (R-UT), Merkley (D-OR), Paul (R-KY), Sanders (I-VT) and Wyden (D-OR) - 3 Democrats, 3 Republicans, 1 Independent:
http://tinyurl.com/7v6zlq3

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued this warning regarding NDAA:

"'The bill is an historic threat to American citizens and others because it expands and makes permanent the authority of the president to order the military to imprison without charge or trial American citizens,' said Christopher Anders, ACLU senior legislative counsel. 'The final amendment to preserve current detention restrictions could turn out to be meaningless and Senators Levin and Graham made clear that they believe this power to use the military against American citizens will not be affected by the new language. This bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent. If it becomes law, American citizens and others are at real risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial.'"
http://tinyurl.com/d8vyg38

And Representative and Presidential candidate Ron Paul (who voted against the bill) warns that its passage is the last nail in the coffin of an American Republic ~ that has mistakenly ruled that the sacrifice of civil liberty is essential for freedom.
5 minute must see Video~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG8rhNEuVJw

Once signed into law by President Barack Obama, this bill will officially make America a police state, wherein United States citizens can be arrested solely on suspicion of wrongdoing and held indefinitely without trial. Or as the Associated Press put it, the legislation would "deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the nation's borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention."

“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.” George Orwell

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/nat-defense-authorization-act-confirms.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

Wall Street is at it Again! This Time its France!

2011-12-11T09:24:00.000-05:00

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Now I’m no economist, but I’ve learned enough in the past few years that convince me that we are all getting screwed royally. The other day I wrote an article about Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who was introducing a Bill in the Senate to amend the Constitution. Now I was happy that someone was paying attention to where the problems in this country are really coming from.

Now it is a few days later and I am realizing that Bernie Sanders’ introduction of an amendment to the Constitution will probably be received as well as all the bills that Dennis Kucinich (d-Oh.) introduces. In other words this Bill will go absolutely nowhere. Other people in Congress will treat this Bill like people in the middle Ages treated plague victims. Taking person hood away from corporations with a Senate like we have now will go absolutely nowhere.

Now the banks in United States are inundating France with credit default swaps. France has more credit default swaps was than it ever had in its history. This is being caused by investors from America and the UK. According to Max Keiser from RT the Americans and the Brits know exactly where the bodies are buried in France, and know just what assets their betting against. This is a type of financial warfare that these two countries are waging against France. The trouble with this is that they are extracting the wealth from France the same way they extracted it from America. Is Wall Street betting against all European toxic assets? I imagine they are. This is the same casino game that they played here in America with CDS.

When France goes down the euro goes down or is entirely eliminated as a as a currency. If this happens, the EU goes down and a Global meltdown starts.

“The raging European monetary collapse will ripple through America’s banking system, completing the 2008 meltdown that never ended because Wall Street fought all reforms. But now, a bigger meltdown as history repeats a dangerous cycle like the 1929 Crash and Great Depression. History will also deal a fatal blow to Wall Street. Martin Weiss adds a key warning: No bank bailouts. America’s banking system is bankrupt, structurally and morally. Washington is broken. And thanks to the Occupiers Revolution the masses will never accept new bank bailouts. Never. They’ll toss politicians and overthrow government first. No new bailouts will be the stake in the heart of Wall Street, ending the ‘greed is good’ power of America’s ‘bloodsucking vampire squid,’ handing the Occupiers new political power in Washington.” – Market Watch.

This will bring us to a catastrophic meltdown that will eventually bring this whole house of cards down. The question I have, is the government propagating this by keeping the interest rate down at 0% to let the big investment houses continue to suck the wealth out of France to the detriment of its own citizens? Is this why they added the provisions to the NDAA to make the U.S. a “battlefield” and have the Army arrest “terrorists” and try them by a military judge? Is the nation readying us for an economic collapse that they are fostering by allowing cheap money to be available for the elite? Are we to take another economic hit while the rich in this country get richer?

This is nothing short of criminal. Ben Bernake should be removed at once for allowing cheap money to be available to his banking friend’s in the investment houses. This is just another reason he should be removed. He should have been removed a long time ago. Ben Bernake and Timothy Geitner continue to use the Federal Government as a crutch for Wall Street hooliganism. When Europe collapses, in the aftermath, how will life be for American citizens? When this becomes common knowledge and Americans realize that the government was in league with the investment houses, how will they take that information? Most Americans have no idea of what is happening in the World financial sector. Even common investors that know the market have no idea of what the big investment houses are doing overseas. Our ignorance will be our downfall. Americans are asleep and have been for a long time. It’s about time that they awaken and smell the coffee. The time for a little critical thinking is now.

The truth is that at this point, even if this country woke up and saw the games that they continue to play on Wall Street, it’s probably too late. They are sucking out the last drops of wealth from France as you read this. When the economy goes belly up, you will know who was responsible. When that happens and the people get wise, what do you think they’ll do? Who do you think that they will blame? What do you think will happen? Again they will be suffering as the wealthy get wealthier and the economy goes to shit. Is this the basic reason they declared the US a “battle zone” in the NDAA?

Everyone has to figure this out by themselves. I’m just telling you what they are doing. I’m going to my Occupy meeting tomorrow. I figure it’s the only chance we have of getting this country right. It’s high time we eliminated the Fed and had our own national no-interest or low-interest banking system. They are dragging us down to grease the skids for the elite. I don’t know about you, but this really ticks me off, and I’m putting that mildly.

Timgatto@hotmail.com Read Tim's Books, Kimchee Days and From Complicity to Contempt at all online Book-dealers.

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wall Street Money Machine

2011-12-08T10:26:00.000-05:00

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wall Street Money Machine

Ellen Brown
December 7, 2011
http://WebofDebt.com/articles

On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Federal Reserve to reveal the lending details of its 2008-09 bank bailout. Bloomberg reported that by March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached.

The Fed insisted that the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, but the Bloomberg report said the banks reaped a $13 billion windfall in profits; and “details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.”

The revelations provoked shock and outrage among commentators. But in a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Committees focused on the financial services industry, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke responded on December 6th that the figures were greatly exaggerated. He said the loans were being double-counted: short-term loans rolled over from day to day were counted as separate cumulative loans rather than as a single extended loan.

The Fed, it seems, was doing only what banks and the money market do for each other every day: making “liquidity” available at very low interest rates. In 2008, bank liquidity dried up after Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the banks could not get the cheap, ready credit on which their lending scheme depends. The Fed then stepped in as “lender of last resort,” doing what it had to do to keep the banking scheme going.

Keeping the banking system afloat is all well and good. What is wrong with the existing scheme is that it allows the Fed to play favorites. As Alan Grayson observed in a December 5th editorial:

The main, if not the sole, qualification for getting help from the Fed was to have lost huge amounts of money. The Fed bailouts rewarded failure, and penalized success. . . .
During all the time that the Fed was stuffing money into the pockets of failed banks, many Americans couldn't borrow a dime for a home, a car, or anything else. If the Fed had extended $26 trillion in credit to the American people instead of Wall Street, would there be 24 million Americans today who can't find a full-time job?
All in the Name of Liquidity

What is this need for “liquidity” that justifies such extraordinary measures on behalf of the banks? Why do banks need cheap and ready access to funds? Aren’t they the lenders rather than the borrowers of funds? Don’t they simply take in deposits and lend them out?

The answer is no. Today when banks make loans, they extend credit FIRST, then fund the loans by borrowing from the cheapest available source. If deposits are not available, they borrow from another bank, the money market, or the Federal Reserve.

Rather than loans being created from deposits, loans actually CREATE deposits. They create deposits when checks are drawn on the borrower’s account and deposited in another bank. These deposits can then be borrowed back at the Fed funds rate—currently a very low 0.25%. A bank can thus create money in the form of “bank credit,” lend it to a customer at high interest, and borrow it back at very low interest, pocketing the difference as its profit.

If all this looks like sleight of hand, it is. The process has been compared to “check kiting,” defined in Barron’s Business Dictionary as:

[An] illegal scheme that establishes a false line of credit by the exchange of worthless checks between two banks. For instance, a check kiter might have empty checking accounts at two different banks, A and B. The kiter writes a check for $50,000 on the bank A account and deposits it in the bank B account. If the kiter has good credit at bank B, he will be able to draw funds against the deposited check before it clears, that is, is forwarded to bank A for payment and paid by bank A. Since the clearing process usually takes a few days, the kiter can use the $50,000 for a few days and then deposit it in the bank A account before the $50,000 check drawn on that account clears.

Setting Things Right
As suspicious as all this appears, the economy actually needs an expandable credit system, and an expandable credit system needs a lender of last resort. What is wrong with the current scheme is that it discriminates against Main Street in favor of Wall Street. Banks can borrow very cheaply, while individuals, corporations and governments pay “whatever the market will bear.” The banker middlemen take their cut in a scheme in which money is actually manufactured in the process of lending it. The profits are siphoned off to the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

To fix the system, the profits need to be returned to the 99%. How that could be done was suggested by Thom Hartmann in a recent editorial:

Have the central bank owned by the US government and run by the Treasury Department, so all the profits . . . go directly into the Treasury and you and I pay less in taxes . . . .

For a model on the local level, he pointed to the Bank of North Dakota:

The good people of North Dakota . . . established something very much like this—the Bank of North Dakota—and it's kept the state in the black, and kept its farmers, manufacturers and students protected from the predations of New York banksters for nearly a century. It's time for every state to charter their own state bank, just like North Dakota did, and for the Treasury Department to either buy the Fed from the for-profit banks that own it, or simply nationalize it.

We have been distracted here and in Europe by a sudden panic over our “sovereign debt” crises, when the real crisis is that our debt is NOT sovereign. We are indentured to a Wall Street money machine that creates our money and lends it back to us at interest, money our sovereign government could be creating itself, with full democratic oversight and accountability to the people. We have forgotten our roots, when the American colonists thrived on a system of money created by the people themselves, debt-free and interest-free. The continued dominance of the Wall Street money machine depends on that collective amnesia. The fact that this memory is surfacing again may be the machine’s greatest threat—and our greatest hope as a nation.

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

S 1867: Killing The Bill of Rights and Declaring War on Americans

2011-12-02T18:22:00.001-05:00

This is an article that I MUST write about. If I don’t write this article than I have no right to ever write another. The reason is because the most despicable and damaging piece of legislation ever passed was passed in the Senate late last night without hardly a whimper in the morning from the American mainstream press. Under the cover of darkness, the United States Senate virtually declared war on the people of this nation by passing the darkest piece of legislation ever passed in America.
If the House of Representatives passes its version and the President then puts his signature on it and turning it into law, almost every right under the Bill of Rights will be stripped away from the people of the United States. This will be the final nail in the coffin of democracy in America. We will become a military police state and cease to be a democracy or a representative republic or whatever else it has been called. According to the definition under this amendment to the military appropriations bill, the nation will become a part of a world-wide “battle zone”.” If this is signed into law, it will shred the remaining tenants of the Bill of Rights and unleash upon America a total military dictatorship, complete with secret arrests, secret prisons, unlawful interrogations and indefinite detainment without people ever being charged with a crime. It will cause the torture of Americans and even the "legitimate assassination" of U.S. citizens overseas and also right here on American soil!

If you have not yet woken up to the reality of this looming police state we've been morphing into, the police state that so many have warning about, I sincerely hope that most of you realize that we are fast running out of time. Once this becomes law, you will be living in a different kind of America, one that no longer guarantees certain inalienable rights. Americans will have no rights whatsoever in America -- no due process, no First Amendment speech rights, no right to remain silent or to be tried by a jury of your peers. You will only have the right to a military tribunal with a military judge and a military lawyer. In other words, Americans will be afforded the same rights as an enemy combatant in the “battlefield” of America.

Some of you may be wondering why you haven’t been told about this by the major news networks? That is a legitimate question. The information about this bill, S.1867, is conflicting. According to “Wired”

“Here’s the best thing that can be said about the new detention powers the Senate has tucked into next year’s defense bill: They don’t force the military to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial. They just let the military do that. And even though the leaders of the military and the spy community have said they want no such power, the Senate is poised to pass its bill as early as tonight. There are still changes swirling around the Senate, but this looks like the basic shape of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Someone the government says is “a member of, or part of, al-Qaida or an associated force” can be held in military custody “without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” Those hostilities are currently scheduled to end the Wednesday after never. The move would shut down criminal trials for terror suspects”.

The language of the bill is ambiguous. Also from “Wired” “So despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to trial, the Senate bill would let the government lock up any citizen it swears is a terrorist, without the burden of proving its case to an independent judge, and for the lifespan of an amorphous war that conceivably will never end. And because the Senate is using the bill that authorizes funding for the military as its vehicle for this dramatic constitutional claim, it’s pretty likely to pass.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus both say that they are opposed to the bill. Why then is it being written into the Defense Budget that is very likely to pass? Who is behind this most brazen attack on the rights of Americans in history? Senator Carl Levin is the architect of this bill but the two men that are really behind this savaging of American’s basic rights are Senators John McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham along with Joe Liebermann according to InfoWar’s Alex Jones. Levin defends the bill by claiming that “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.” Still, while the bill would not force the government to try American citizens by military tribunal, it nevertheless would allow them to do so.
Civil libertarians aren’t so sure. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said it “denigrates the very foundations of this country.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) added, “it puts every single American citizen at risk.”

Battlefield US: Americans face arrest as war criminals under Army state law

2011-12-01T08:57:00.000-05:00

From RT

America is opening up a new war front and it’s in your own backyard. It’s in your neighbor’s house, it’s three states over and it’s on the other side of the Mississippi.

That’s what a new legislation could lead to and the consequences are dire and constitutionally damning.

The United States Senate is set to vote this week on a bill that would categorize the entire USA as a “battlefield,” allowing law enforcement duties to be dished out by the American Military, who in turn could detain any US citizen as a war criminal — even coming into their own homes to issue arrests.

The National Defense Authorization Act regularly comes before Congress for changes and additions, but the latest provision, S. 1867, proves to be the most powerful one yet in raping constitutional freedoms from Americans. Move over, Patriot Act. Should S. 1867 pass, lawmakers could conjure the text to keep even regular citizens detained indefinitely by their own military.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a supporter of the bill, has explicitly stated that the passing of S. 1867 would “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and could lead to the detention of citizens without charge or trial, writes Chris Anders of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H) sits on the same side of the aisle and agrees wholeheartedly. “America is part of the battlefield,” says the lawmaker.

America’s Military is already operating in roughly 200 countries, dishing out detention and executions to citizens of other nations. As unrest erupts on the country’s own soil amid a recession, economic collapse and protests in hundreds of cities from coast-to-coast, is it that much of a surprise that lawmakers finally want to declare the US a war zone?

Maybe not, but if the Senate has their way, the consequential could be detrimental to the US Constitution.

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president — and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world,” adds Anders. “The power is so broad that even US citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.”

“American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?” asks Anders.

Just like its supporters, the provision has attracted its share of critics as well. The Obama administration has threatened to veto the bill if it makes its way through Congress, but given the president’s poor standing among the American public (his disapproval rating is at its highest ever in recent polling), a hawkish Republican could usurp Obama as commander-in-chief as the 2012 election is less than a year away and the unemployment level stays stagnant and sad. With the exception of Congressman Ron Paul, the frontrunners currently vying for the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency have remained outspoken in their support for not just increasing American military presence overseas at a time when the Pentagon’s budget dwarfs many governmental sectors, but in adding provisions to the Patriot Act itself to further remove freedoms from the people.

During last week’s GOP debate televised on CNN, former House speaker Newt Gingrich said that the country must “try to find that balancing act between our individual liberties and security.” That same night, pizzaman Herman Cain said suspected terrorists should be killed before identified and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum suggested that Muslims should be profiled by the American government because, “obviously,” they are the group “that are most likely to be committing these crimes,” speaking broadly of his assumption of those that construct terrorist attacks.

“I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights,” responded Rep. Paul. “You can prevent crimes by becoming a police state . . . So if you advocate the police state, yes, you can have safety and security and you might prevent a crime, but the crime then will be against the American people and against our freedoms.”

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) has already aligned himself as an opponent of the legislation, but needs to garner the backing of others if he wants to keep Congress from enacting the provision. “One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on US soil,” the Senator said in a speech last month. “Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the US military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.”

Udall isn’t the only one on Capitol Hill that has seen a problem with the provision, which was developed under shady circumstances. The text itself was drafted in secrecy in a closed-door meeting by US Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, two of the biggest names in Washington. No hearing was held to discuss the details and it was passed in a closed-door committee meeting, reports Infowar’s Paul Joseph Watson.

Watson continues to conjure up a list of characteristics that the Department of Homeland Security have identified as traits of domestic terrorism, calling into question past maneuvers from the government that led to those owning guns, buying gold and even donating to charity being considered America’s enemy. At last week’s debate, Ron Paul added that “It’s anybody associated with organizations, which means almost anybody can be loosely associated,” referring to how the government can use its discretion — or lack thereof — to bring terrorism charges against its own people. Calling into question the recent execution of two Americans with alleged ties to Al-Qaeda, Paul added, “So, that makes all Americans vulnerable, and now we know American citizens are vulnerable to assassination.”

The provision itself passed in the House all the way back in May, and only now is going before the Senate. Justin Amash, a Republican representative from Cascade Township, was one of the five House Republicans that voted against it. “It is destructive of our Constitution,” he writes on his Facebook page. It would “permit the federal government to indefinitely detain American citizens on American soil, without charge or trial, at the discretion of the president.”

Given that the passing of the provision would allow for legally lengthy and questionable detention, it becomes bizarre why Sen. McCain, a former prisoner of war, would pen such a bill. McCain was imprisoned in North Vietnam for over five years in a camp where he was detained and tortured before entering American politics.

“The president should not have the authority to determine whether the Constitution applies to you, no matter what the allegations,” adds Amash, who also writes, “Note that it does not preclude US citizens from being detained indefinitely, without charge or trial, it simply makes such detention discretionary.

“Please urge your Senators to oppose these outrageous provisions.”

As a solution, Sen. Udall has offered a counter act, being dubbed the Udall Amendment, that would keep S. 1867 from its critical consequences and would instead require lawmakers to examine the necessity of detaining citizens domestically, and instead would make Congress consider whether any detention legislation is needed at all.

In the meantime, Anders and ACLU are calling on Americans to voice their concerns to the US Senate. As political posturing keeps the country divided and the branches of government fight to find a solution to the crumbling economy, infrastructure — and now the Constitution — a solution to this problem is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the assaults on Americans that is underway.

We'll Occupy (A Song)

2011-12-01T07:07:00.000-05:00

The E.C.B. Fiddles While Rome Burns

2011-11-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

Ellen Brown
November 28, 2011

“To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches.”

So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week. He went on:

“The E.C.B. has a fire hose — its ability to print money. But the bank is refusing to train it on the euro zone’s debt crisis.

“The flames climbed higher Friday after the Italian Treasury had to pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent on a new issue of six-month bills . . . the highest interest rate Italy has had to pay to sell such debt since August 1997 . . . .
“But there is no sign the E.C.B. plans a major response, like buying large quantities of the country’s bonds to bring down its borrowing costs.”
Why not? According to the November 28th Wall Street Journal, “The ECB has long worried that buying government bonds in big enough amounts to bring down countries' borrowing costs would make it easier for national politicians to delay the budget austerity and economic overhauls that are needed.”
As with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis in the United States, the E.C.B. is withholding relief in order to extort austerity measures from member governments—and the threat seems to be working. The same authors write:
“Euro-zone leaders are negotiating a potentially groundbreaking fiscal pact . . . [that] would make budget discipline legally binding and enforceable by European authorities. . . . European officials hope a new agreement, which would aim to shrink the excessive public debt that helped spark the crisis, would persuade the European Central Bank to undertake more drastic action to reverse the recent selloff in euro-zone debt markets.”
The Eurozone appears to be in the process of being “structurally readjusted” – the same process imposed earlier by the IMF on Third World countries. Structural demands routinely include harsh austerity measures, government cutbacks, privatization, and the disempowerment of national central banks, so that there is no national entity capable of creating and controlling the money supply on behalf of the people. The latter result has officially been achieved in the Eurozone, which is now dependent on the E.C.B. as the sole lender of last resort and printer of new euros.
The E.C.B. Serves Banks, Not Governments
The legal justification for the E.C.B.’s inaction in the sovereign debt crisis is Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty, signed by EU members in 2007. As Jens Eidmann, President of the Bundesbank and a member of the E.C.B. Governing Council, stated in a November 14 interview:
“The eurosystem is a lender of last resort for solvent but illiquid banks. It must not be a lender of last resort for sovereigns because this would violate Article 123 of the EU treaty.”
The language of Article 123 is rather obscure, but basically it says that the European central bank is the lender of last resort for banks, not for governments. It provides:
“1. Overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility with the European Central Bank or with the central banks of the Member States (hereinafter referred to as ‘national central banks’) in favour of Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of Member States shall be prohibited, as shall the purchase directly from them by the European Central Bank or national central banks of debt instruments.
“2. Paragraph 1 shall not apply to publicly owned credit institutions which, in the context of the supply of reserves by central banks, shall be given the same treatment by national central banks and the European Central Bank as private credit institutions.”
Banks can borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, the minimum rate available for banks. Member governments, on the other hand, must put themselves at the mercy of the markets, which can squeeze them for “whatever the market will bear”—in Italy’s case, 6.5%.
The Real Reason Eurozone Countries Are Drowning in Debt

Why should banks be able to borrow at 1.25% from the E.C.B.’s unlimited fountain of euros, while the tap is closed for governments? The conventional argument is that for governments to borrow money created by their own central banks would be “inflationary.” But private banks create the money they lend just as government-owned central banks do. Private banks issue money in the form of “bank credit” on their books, and they often do this before they have the liquidity to back the loans. Then they borrow from wherever they can get funds most cheaply. When banks borrow from the E.C.B. as lender of last resort, the E.C.B. “prints money” just as it would if it were lending to governments directly.
The burgeoning debts of the Eurozone countries are being blamed on their large welfare states, but these social systems were set up before the 1970s, when European governments had very little national debt. Their national debts shot up, not because they spent on social services, but because they switched bankers. Before the 1970s, European governments borrowed from their own central banks. The money was effectively interest-free, since they owned the banks and got the profits back as dividends. After the European Monetary Union was established, member countries had to borrow from private banks at interest—often substantial interest.
And the result? Interest totals for Eurozone countries are not readily accessible; but for France, at least, the total sum paid in interest since the 1970s appears to be as great as the French federal debt itself. That means that if the French government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it could have been debt-free today.
The figures are nearly as bad for Canada, and they may actually be worse for the United States. The Federal Reserve’s website lists the sums paid in interest on the U.S. federal debt for the last 24 years. During that period, taxpayers paid a total of $8.2 trillion in interest. That’s more than half the total $15 trillion debt, in just 24 years. The U.S. federal debt has not been paid off since 1835, so taxpayers could well have paid more than $15 trillion by now in interest. That means our entire federal debt could have been avoided if we had been borrowing from our own government-owned central bank all along, effectively interest-free. And that is probably true for other countries as well.
To avoid an overwhelming national debt and the forced austerity measures destined to follow, the Eurozone’s citizens need to get the fire hose of money creation out of the hands of private banks and back into the hands of the people. But how?
Governments Cannot Borrow from the E.C.B., but Government-owned Banks Can

Interestingly, Paragraph 2 of Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty carves out an exception to the rule that governments cannot borrow from the E.C.B. It says that government-owned banks can borrow on the same terms as privately-owned banks. Many Eurozone countries have publicly-owned banks; and as nationalization of insolvent banks looms, they could soon find themselves with many more.

One solution might be for the publicly-owned banks of Eurozone governments to exercise their right to borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, then use that liquidity to buy up the country's debt, or as much of it as does not sell at auction. (The Federal Reserve does this routinely in open market operations in the U.S.) The government’s securities would be stabilized, keeping speculators at bay; and the government would get the interest spread, since it would own the banks and would get the profits back as dividends.
Taking a Stand in the Class War
In a November 25th article titled “Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over,” Paul Craig Roberts writes:
“The European Union, just like everything else, is merely another scheme to concentrate wealth in a few hands at the expense of European citizens, who are destined, like Americans, to be the serfs of the 21st century.”

He observes that Mario Draghi, the new president of the European Central Bank, was Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International, a member of Goldman Sachs’ Management Committee, a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank, a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board. Italy’s new prime minister Mario Monti, who was appointed rather than elected, was a member of Goldman Sachs’ Board of International Advisers, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (“a US organization that advances American hegemony over the world”), and a member of the Bilderberg group. And Lucas Papademos, an unelected banker who was installed as prime minister of Greece, was Vice President of the European Central Bank and a member of America’s Trilateral Commission.
Roberts points to the suspicious fact that the German government was unable to sell 35% of its 10-year bonds at its last auction; yet Germany’s economy is in far better shape than that of Italy, which managed to sell all its bonds. Why? Roberts suspects an orchestrated scheme to pressure Germany to back off from its demands to make the banks pay a share of their bailout.
Europe is in the process of being “structurally readjusted” by a private banking cartel. If its people are to resist this silent conquest, they need to rise up and, using the ballot box and public banks, throw out the new banking hegemony before it is too late.

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

Mike Gravel Nails it Again!

2011-11-29T07:40:00.001-05:00

Don't Forget About Us

2011-11-29T05:44:00.001-05:00

Don't Forget About Us

By Tim Gatto

Let me start this by explaining how I came to the realization of how the American political system works. Like many other Americans, I had certain beliefs and perceptions about this country and its history. During the end of the ‘60’s and the beginning of the ‘70’s, I realized that we were engaged in an unjust war. I say unjust because it was a war that was fought by young men on the lower end of the economic spectrum. Most young men from wealthy families skirted the draft with college deferments and letters from doctors and psychiatrists claiming that they were unfit for military duty. Those that had the money went to Canada. It was a racket. Since I wasn’t from a well-connected family, I enlisted for four years in a specialty that gave me a good chance of not being sent to ‘Nam.

During the Vietnam War, from 1968 to 1973, I demonstrated against that war. Luckily, I was never arrested and the Army never knew what I was doing. One time however, I wrote to a lady whose son was killed in Hue. She wrote back to me and invited me to join a peace group made up of military people. My battalion Commander got wind of it and flew into my base in Korea and had a chat with me. He told me that even though we had a democracy, the Army wasn’t a democratic institution. I learned to keep my mouth shut after that.

During the run up to the war in Iraq, I became disgusted with both political parties and the media. I decided to start a political party. This was the big awakening. I started writing on different websites and was contacted by people that believed we really did need a new political party. We called it The Liberal Party of America. The term liberal wasn’t very popular at the time but it gathered attention, and that’s what we wanted. I met a computer guru and he designed a very professional eight page website with speeches from JFK and other notable liberals. Soon we had small organizations in eight states. I was thrilled to death as the party was really catching on.

That’s when I found out how difficult it was to put someone on the ballot. Some States had relatively easy requirements, but other States made it mission impossible. It was then that I found out that you could hire a company to get voting petitions signed and the average signature was about a dollar a pop. Since some States required 60,000 signatures, I realized that we were out of our league. It was then that I started looking at ways that other political parties used to raise money. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. I started researching campaign financing and I saw how corporations cajoled their people to donate to political campaigns, sometimes giving them a bonus and having them use it as a campaign donation.

So for about 15 years I have been looking at campaign financing. I’ve written almost 50 articles about how corrupt the practice is. I called for campaign finance reform calling it “The reform that enables all other reforms”. It really is. Then recently the Supreme Court ruled on the “Citizen’s United” suit. That just about killed any faith I had in the American political system. When some write that our political system is an “Oligarchy” or a “Plutocracy” or a “Corporacracy” they are all right. In most Federal (and State) elections, you get to vote for the people that are backed by big money. Most of the time most people vote for the lesser of two evils for President. Oh yeah, you could vote for a Green candidate or a Libertarian or an Independent, just don’t hold your breath waiting for a win. The mass media won’t cover their campaigns and few people know who they are or what they stand for.

Since I served almost 21 years in the military (Army), I am acutely aware of when they are pumping us full of hot air. When Bush and Cheney and their Neo-Con minions claimed that Hussein had “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, I knew that they were lying through their teeth. How could he have amassed those weapons when we had control over his airspace and draconian sanctions on him for almost a decade? Meanwhile, I saw most Americans playing along, like it was some kind of sporting event. It disgusted me. I was seriously considering leaving the country (maybe I should have).

Year after year I saw our government (if you could seriously call it “our” government) pass draconian laws that tore the Constitution to shreds. The Patriot Acts, The John Warner Defense Bill (That eliminated Posse Comitatus), The Military Commissions Act and many more (like those that guarantee “Freedom of Speech” under the 1st Amendment by providing pens far away from what you are demonstrating against). These are laws that are supposed to make us “safe”, but in reality they are meant to control us. I’ll put in footnotes so that you can read these laws for yourselves.

Then there was the economic collapse of 2008. Corporations (including Obama’s largest campaign donor Goldman Sacks) started going belly-up because they had rigged the system and were betting on everything under the sun like it was a giant casino. A bail-out was proposed and the American people went ballistic, writing their Congress critters telling them not to give these crooks anything. The outcry was so great that they voted against the bail-out. Then, in a closed door session, and after the Senate voted for the bill, the spineless dogs of Congress were told that if the economy went down the tubes, martial law would be declared. Sure enough, the dogs that caused the meltdown got their money and its coming out of the people’s pockets.

Still, the U.S. hasn’t stopped spending like drunken sailors on its military. The basic budget for our own “Weapons of Mass Destruction” is $800 Billion dollars. That doesn’t count the extra appropriations for our wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and parts of Pakistan and other lesser known skirmishes. We have over 900 military bases overseas and are building more. It’s called “Full Spectrum Dominance” which translates in English to “Boss of the World”. Meanwhile, just because we have a military that cost more than the next twenty countries combined; don’t think they want us to last. We have a government that wants to draw the curtain of the United States of America. A strong U.S. isn’t in the bankers plans for this “New World Order”. They are just about done exporting our manufacturing base. Our schools are second rate. Most Americans are incapable of critical thinking. If they were they would realize that we are victims of the largest con-job in history.

Still, there is hope. It’s called the Occupy Movement. Somewhere in all of this government scheming to turn us into serfs, the people started putting two and two together. All of a sudden the curtain was pulled back and there was the guy with the microphone trying to grab the curtain, but it was too late, the ruse was exposed, the cat was out of the bag. All of the lies and maneuvering that our government was engaged in fell like the proverbial house of cards.

People descended on to Wall Street demanding their money back. They showed up in DC and camped out. Oakland, Philly, L.A. and other cities saw occupations by Americans that were finally seeing the light. First they ignored us, then they vilified us and tried to make us look like comic book characters, then, last week, they attacked us. Even journalists trying to cover what was going on in Zuccotti Park were detained and abused until they ran into a church for sanctuary. This is what passes for Democracy in 21st Century America. This is what they do to homegrown protestors, they throw nets over them, they shoot tear-gas canisters at their heads, they throw women and senior citizens on the ground and while they bleed, they handcuff them while they are being pepper sprayed and haul them off to jail.

Meanwhile, peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in other nations are applauded, but not here. Here they treat us like the scum of the Earth, doing the bidding of their corporate masters. All of the laws that they passed to watch for “terrorists” were really designed to watch us, the American people. We live in a modern-day “security state”, just another way to say fascism. The cops made a big show of taking an oath to protect American citizens. Well these “oath keepers” seem to have fallen a bit short. Maybe it’s the excitement of suiting up in their riot gear that makes them look like black clad paratroopers. Who knows, maybe they just don’t understand that they are part of the 99% too. They’ll learn when their pay and benefits are cut like the rest of us.

For all of you oligarch’s out there with your billions of dollars, fine automobiles and trophy wives, don’t think for a minute that this thing is over. Slap each other on the back and get back to business as usual. Just remember what went on this autumn. Spring is right around the corner. Enjoy your winter, but don’t forget about us. We make up 99% of the nation you live in, and we’re really pissed off.

timgatto@hotmail.com Tim's books "Complicity to Contempt" and "Kimchee Days" Are available at Oliver Arts and Open Press and all online book dealers.

Senate To Vote On Legislation That Allows U.S. Military to Detain Americans Without Charge or Trial

2011-11-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

Mac Slavo
November 25th, 2011
SHTFplan.com
Comments (258)

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Remember that debate between Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, where Mr. Gingrich suggested we should expand and strengthen the Patriot Act in the name of protecting US citizens from terrorists? Mr. Gingrich indicated that there exists a line between criminal law and the war on terror, and that we need not worry the government will overstep its bounds.

While Americans enjoy the Thanksgiving weekend and join the annual running of the bulls celebration at malls and retail outlets, something sinister is taking place in Congress – and it should scare the hell out of you. If the President and Senate have their way, your front lawn will soon become a battlefield, and you’ll be subjected to military, not criminal, law.

From the ACLU Via The Daily Sheeple:

The Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

…

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn’t anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?

This is happening right now – IN AMERICA! A law that is designed to specifically bypass Constitutional protections and one that will undoubtedly be used against the American people to further advance and expand the national police state.

Once signed into law the President (or anyone of his minions within the Justice Department or Homeland Security acting on his behalf) can issue orders to arrest, detain and imprison an American citizen in the United States without due process. Since most terror arrests fall into the realm of national security, and therefore are secret, no evidence would ever need to be presented for the permanent detainment (and who knows what else) of an American imprisoned under this law.

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Author: Mac Slavo
Date: November 25th, 2011
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.

We have Lost Repect-Sen. Mike Gravel

2011-11-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

The US is like a drunkard who charges to war with anyone who might pose a threat, ex-Senator and former US presidential candidate Mike Gravel says.ut at the same time I think my country is an imperial country that is going downhill, and our leadership does not even acknowledge the problem,” confesses Gravel.

“Phony triumphalism has turned into a device to make Americans live in fear of a terrorist attack, yet you are a thousand times more likely to catch cancer than ever be hurt by that,” he points out.

“All I can say about what the US is doing – it‘s immoral,” Gravel says, explaining that “as a result of 9/11, we have altered our moral compass. And people began to get used to brutalizing each other.”

“We Americans used to think ‘oh, what happened in Germany could never happen with us!’ Well, it is happening with us. And it is happening to the detriment of our global position.”

“In Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Vietnam at the era, all American soldiers died in vain,” Gravel claims, recalling the millions of war victims in Vietnam, which is now developing along its own path, regardless. http://rt.com/news/us-wars-corporations-gravel-925/

The Many not the Few

2011-11-22T11:04:00.001-05:00

Journalists Protest Occupy "Handling"

2011-11-22T10:05:00.001-05:00

Check this link.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45394612/#.Tsu5-vLNm4Y

We are not Broke-Story of Stuff Part II

2011-11-20T02:26:00.001-05:00

Batshit Crazy Stuff

2011-11-20T02:08:00.001-05:00

Super Committee Deadlock: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

2011-11-18T15:49:00.001-05:00

Ellen Brown

November 17, 2011

It is no great surprise that with only days to go, the congressional “super committee,” given the herculean task of carving an additional $1.2 trillion out of the federal budget, has failed to reach agreement. Why should six Republicans and six Democrats with diametrically opposed views agree in a few weeks, when Congress couldn’t shake hands on it after months of wrangling, despite the guillotine blade of a federal default hanging over their heads?

Whether the super committee reaches agreement or not, however, the deficit hawks win. If they agree, either $1.2 trillion gets cut from the budget or taxes go up by that amount; and the committee co-chair has categorically stated taxes are not going up, so that means the budget will be cut. If agreement is not reached, $1.2 trillion in cuts automatically kick in, split evenly between domestic and military spending. Either way, the economy will wind up with $1.2 trillion less in the way purchasing power. The result will be to reduce demand, kill jobs, and put more people on the streets.

For the deficit hawks, however, it all seems to be going according to plan. The super committee is characterized as an emergency measure that was rushed through to avoid an arbitrarily imposed August deadline for freezing the debt ceiling, but it has actually been in the works for years. In 2009, it was called the “Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action”. That plan died when its Senate sponsors, Judd Gregg and Kent Conrad, failed to secure 60 votes for passage in the Senate. The Gregg-Conrad bill was criticized as railroading through legislation that would unconstitutionally slash domestic services without congressional debate, but its task force would actually have been LESS autocratic than the super committee, which has sweeping powers and needs only a simple majority among its 12 members to prevail.

What has been forced out of the debate is whether cutting the budget is a good idea at all. The Peter Peterson Foundation, which has been pushing “austerity” for years, has finally gotten its way. Hedge fund magnate Peter G. Peterson was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations until 2007 and head of the New York Federal Reserve between 2000 and 2004. He made his fortune with the controversial Blackstone Group, which he co-founded and chaired for many years. The Peter Peterson Foundation was established in 2008 with a $1 billion endowment to raise public awareness about U.S. fiscal-sustainability issues related to federal deficits, entitlement programs, and tax policies. The money was used to spearhead a massive campaign to reduce the runaway federal debt. Hysteria over the debt then prompted Tea Party newbies in Congress to hold a gun to Congress’ head by arbitrarily capping the debt.

In the campaign to educate us to the debt’s perils, we were repeatedly warned that when foreign lenders decided to pull the plug, the U.S. would have to declare bankruptcy; that we were mortgaging our grandchildren’s futures and selling them into debt-slavery; and that all this was the fault of the citizenry for borrowing and spending too much. The American people, who are already suffering massive unemployment and cutbacks in government services, would have to sacrifice more and pay the piper more, just as in those debt-strapped countries forced into austerity measures by the IMF.

The fear-mongering, however, is a red herring. A sovereign nation can always find the money to pay debts owed in its own currency. The Federal Reserve can buy the debt itself – just as it has been doing. That alternative would effectively eliminate the problem of interest, since the Fed returns its profits to the government after deducting its costs.

Alternatively, Congress could reclaim the power to issue money from the banks and fund its budget directly. The U.S. could pay its bills using debt-free U.S. Notes or Greenbacks, just as President Lincoln did to avoid a crippling debt during the Civil War. Congress could do this without changing any laws. Congress is empowered to “coin money,” and the Constitution sets no limit on the face amount of the coins. It could issue a few one-trillion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.

Neither option need inflate prices. As long as the money is used to purchase goods and services, the result will simply be to increase demand, increasing production. Prices will not increase until the economy reaches full employment, and at that point any excess in the money supply can be taxed back to the government, keeping prices stable.

The key to all this is that our debt is owed in our own currency – U.S. dollars. Our government has the power to fix its solvency problems itself, by simply issuing the money it needs to pay off or refinance its debt. The U.S. federal debt has been carried on the books since 1835. It has NEVER been paid off during that time but just continues to grow. This has not hurt the economy, which for most of that period has been among the most vibrant in the world. The federal debt IS the money supply. All of our money except coins is created as bank debt. Historically, when the deficit has been reduced, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession.

The real problem with a growing federal debt is the interest on it, which WILL become an insurmountable burden if allowed to grow exponentially. Interest paid on the federal debt in 2010 was $414 billion, or about one-half of personal income tax receipts. That’s about as high as we dare let it go. But this problem can be eliminated either by funding the debt through the nation’s own central bank, effectively interest-free; or by the Treasury issuing the money outright, interest-free.

The burgeoning debt has been blamed on reckless government and consumer spending; but the debt crisis was created, not by a social safety net bought and paid for by the taxpayers, but by a banking system taken over by Wall Street gamblers. The banking debacle of 2008 caused credit to collapse, businesses to go bankrupt, and unemployment to soar, drastically reducing the federal tax base. If anyone should be held to account, it is Wall Street; but the bankers were bailed rather than jailed, and the taxpayers got billed for the crime.

We have been deluded into thinking that “fiscal responsibility” is something for our benefit, something we actually need in order to save the country from bankruptcy. In fact, it has simply been an excuse to impose radical austerity measures on the people, measures that benefit the 1% while locking the 99% in a dungeon of debt peonage.
_____________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

The Democratic Minefield

2011-11-18T12:27:00.001-05:00

Today I received yet another e-mail from Progressive Democrats that supposedly “know better” than mainstream Democrats. Normally I wouldn’t bother commenting on things like this but I’m really getting tired of being taken for a fool. This particular e-mail is from the supposedly progressive group “Credo”.

This is what they sent to me;

“Dear Friend,

As the clock counts down to the deadline for the Super Committee to pass a deficit reduction deal, the Democrats have followed the tragic but all too common pattern of responding to Republican intransigence by caving on core issues.
The Democrats seem to think the Republicans really want a compromise on deficit reduction.

But the Republicans aren't primarily concerned about the deficit at all. What they want is to give tax cuts to the rich and pay for it by dismantling the social safety net.

Yet in a display of shocking naivety, the Democrats have tried to meet the Republicans halfway by agreeing to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.”

The rest of this correspondence asks me to sign a petition to prevent these deluded Democrats from selling us out.

It all looks very simple and above board, right?

Wrong.

First of all, the Democrats in Congress aren’t naive about anything. They haven’t managed to keep their political jobs by being stupid. These people are politically savvy and probably know more than I ever will about politics. I’d say that those that sent me this e-mail are the ones that are naive, but that isn’t true either.
The truth is that they really believe that the people who receive these e-mails live their lives in a dark closet. They actually think that because they say so, we’ll believe the Democrats in the House and Senate just don’t know any better. The reality is that the Democrats understand exactly what is going on and they are willing accomplices to the fraud perpetrated upon the American people.
Check this statement out:

“The Democrats seem to think the Republicans really want a compromise on deficit reduction, but the Republicans aren't primarily concerned about the deficit at all. What they want is to give tax cuts to the rich and pay for it by dismantling the social safety net.”

Gee, ya think?

All I am saying here is that they are all trying to pull our chain. The group CREDO goes on to say;

“Two of the Democratic Senators on the Super Committee, Max Baucus and John Kerry, have a history of cutting bad deals in the name of "bipartisanship". Kerry crippled climate change legislation and Max Baucus killed the public option and was the Democratic Senator most responsible for the Bush tax cuts.”

Come on guys… say it ain’t so!

These Democratic shills will go along with the Republicans, and not because they have been “tricked” into doing it or because they are searching for that elusive thing called “bipartisanship”. They will vote with the GOP because they want to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy because they ARE wealthy.

This is what’s behind the uproar on the streets. The people have lost their representation. Don’t try to convince me that the Democrats are just trying to compromise… it’s not true. These lawmakers are just watching out for themselves. You can take that to the bank (or rather, THEY can take that to the bank).

Maybe, just maybe, CREDO actually believes its own propaganda. Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe CREDO is doing the best it can, and maybe pigs can fly.

So you want to be an Investigative Reporter?

2011-11-18T02:46:00.002-05:00

Have you ever wonder how reporters find the time to research political malfeasance day in and day out? Did you ever wonder where they find the time to dig up all the facts and figures on so many different scandals and put all of the pieces together? When I see the same investigative reporters knock out four or five political pieces on intricate scandals that were meant to deceive the public, I used to wonder how they did it. How they managed to report on so many facts in such a small amount of time is truly mind-boggling. I can remember a time when some pundits made their entire reputations on just one expose alone. Now it seems as if these men and women are on permanent overdrive.

Well, I have finally figured it out, and for those that have a desire to be one of these political muckrakers, I’m going to share my knowledge with you as a public service. This short lesson could save you years of hard work and training. I believe that it will also shed light on the very heart of our political system. Don’t worry about this subject being difficult to understand, because you don’t need to be an experienced professional to understand the course. Anyone that has a basic understanding of our political system and a modicum of understanding of human nature should be able to breeze through this lesson.

First of all, I said that this particular course will be easy, but I didn’t say it would be pleasant. There are a few things you must do in order to make this information “work” for you. Here is the secret that veteran reporters have kept from the public.

First of all, you will need “inside knowledge”. A simple AM radio and a television will suffice. At one time newspapers were required, but unless you need to understand what ground chuck is selling for at the grocery store, it will be unnecessary. An internet connection will be helpful, but it isn’t an absolute necessity.

The second thing you need to do is to have a notebook and a writing instrument. It would help if there was nothing to interrupt your “research”, so being alone while you work is a good idea. It will also be advantageous; you don’t want anyone watching you pulling out your hair.

Next, tune into a national network. Stay away from local TV and radio stations; they just repeat what they have heard on the big networks. They don’t really have their own reporters and investigators. When they mention their “new bureaus”, they do this just to deceive you, no small local channel has a real “news bureau, unless you consider the cameraman as an investigator.

The fourth step requires a little thought. If you are writing about a scandal involving a Republican politician, turn into MSNBC. Make sure that you tune in in the early evening or at night. It really doesn’t matter who you listen to. If the usual talking head is on vacation or off on “assignment”, the substitute will do. Most of the story is written by someone else anyway.

If you have a Democrat in your sights, the best place to do your research is at FOX News. (I told you that this course would be easy, I also said it wouldn’t be pleasant). If you really want to get in-depth, this is when your AM radio comes in handy. Democratic wrong-doing can be found almost 24 hours a day. It is imperative that you listen to more than one radio personality talking about the same story. The content there is notorious for the lack of real facts. This is why these radio entertainers are called entertainers. (The personalities that report for FOX are also entertainers).

There is one crucial thing that you must understand in order to become a successful investigator. That is that you must learn to be impartial. I’m not suggesting that impartiality is something that will help you to report on a story. It’s important for your own piece of mind and your sanity. To actually incorporate the content from any of these political pundits could kill brain cells by the trillion. There is a term that we use for this; it’s called drinking the Kool-Aid. It must be remembered that after a few hours of watching FOX News, MSNBC actually appears to have intelligent and unbiased reporting. This is because after two or three hours of watching FOX News, your bulls**t detector is usually out of whack from being pegged on high. (See the bulls**t detector at the top of this piece).

I’d like to illustrate this by mentioning some FOX content that I heard today. In one segment, reporter Greta VanSusteren brought up the subject of “Capitalistic Cronyism”. She was taking about the Soylndra story where the Administration lent a half billion dollars to an energy company that failed. I almost fell off my chair to hear FOX decrying the term. Earlier, I heard a reporter suggest that the people at “Occupy Wall Street” should demonstrate against that evil “Capitalistic Cronyism”. Imagine that! Those devilish Democrats! Maybe the OWS movement SHOULD demonstrate against that evil side of capitalism! The shame of it all, watching the government wasting half-billion dollars is sickening. That money could have been used to purchase a drone or to pay the military chop to off fingers and ears of families in Afghanistan! The military only has a bare-bones budget of $800 Billion dollars (not counting funding each war we are involved in). What were they thinking?

You can imagine the relief that you will experience when you change the channel from FOX to MSNBC. There, you can dig up the dirt on all the Republicans. Not only can you watch them dig up the dirt on all of those wild and crazy GOP’ers, you can also see how our absolutely wonderful our Commander-in-Chief is, and hear about him keeping us safe from rouge states like Iran. On their website, they say this;
Obama said his strong preference was to resolve the Iran issue diplomatically, but he added: "We are not taking any options off the table. Iran with nuclear weapons would pose a threat not only to the region but also to the United States."
Isn’t that wonderful? We are taking a stand against other countries besides Great Britain, France, Russia, China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, America and Israel possessing nukes. It is truly admirable that Israel is against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I have heard rumors that someday Israel may actually sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty! Thankfully we have MSNBC to alert us to the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

I hope that I have helped you in your desire to become an investigative reporter. The only thing you must remember to do is to periodically check the bulls**t detector. I don’t know of any television network in America that is free from bulls**t. So write on!

A True Hero

2011-11-17T17:59:00.001-05:00

Hero's can be found in the most unlikely places. I salute this man... A true Hero.

Think the Occupy movement is Dead? Think Again.

2011-11-16T01:55:00.001-05:00

Today was the day that the powers that are fought back. As Gandhi told us in the last century; "First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win." We are now fast approaching the end stage. It may not feel like it now, but consider that the Occupy Movement is scarcely two months old. We are now receiving major headlines in the mainstream media, and the frightened pawns of the corporate world are fighting back.

When you reflect on this, it seems totally surrealistic. Many of us had been aware of what the true nature of things was. Many of us watched as that purveyor of propaganda in our living room spewed out its lies and its agenda. Then a funny thing happened as we were just ready to throw a nearby object at the talking head on the screen, a few of us got up and turned the goddamned thing off. That was the start, it may have been a very small thing to do, but almost every historical movement starts with a small act of protest.

People from all political persuasions started to see exactly what was happening. Most of America watched as the politicians forecast a catastrophic economic collapse just days away. Those in Congress that questioned these dire predictions were told that if they didn’t shore up our crumbling economic system, martial law would have to be imposed to ward off the impending result of this economic failure.

Still, the people resisted. Phone calls, letters and e-mails went out to members of Congress imploring them not to give those on Wall Street the people’s money to stave off failure of the largest banks and brokerages in the financial sector. In one of the biggest flip-flops Congress had ever seen, the politicians saw the anger coming from their constituents. They voted to reject the largest transfer of wealth in history and voted to reject the bi-partisan plan offered up by Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson. The people breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Then, while most people were breathing that sigh of relief, after the failure in the House, the Senate acted, amending the bill and passing it by a 74 to 25 margin on Wednesday, October 1 2008. The bill was amended to include over $150 billion in tax breaks to individuals and businesses. These additions were designed to help win the twelve additional votes needed to get the bailout plan through the House of Representatives. Other additions included a temporary increase in the amount of bank deposits covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), to $250,000 from $100,000, and legislation requiring insurers to treat mental health conditions more like general health problems. In fact, it was the Democrats that carried the day, with 173 voting for and only 63 voting against. The GOP voted 91 for and 108 against. The Democrats gave the Republican President what he wanted, while the Presidents own party voted against it.

That was just the beginning. An economic stimulus bill was passed, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Again, the taxpayers were charged billions for an economic stimulus package. While the government was coming up with new and more creative ways to separate the taxpayers from their money, the House Oversight Committee tried to find out exactly who got bailout funds. Just a short time ago, we learned that the U.S. financial market was not the only recipient of the TARP program.

An example: Major French and German banks were among the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S. rescue of American International Group Inc., yet the American government shouldered the entire $70 billion risk of pumping capital into the crippled insurance titan. The report compares that with the $35 billion that France spent on its overall financial rescue program and the $133 billion that Germany spent. (Huffington Post 8/12/10)

So where was the outrage from our elected officials? The answer, unfortunately, was that there was no rage. Our elected officials seem to be either sleeping on the job, or they turned a blind eye to the rape of the American taxpayer.

Unfortunately for them, this time the American taxpayers seemed to finally understand just exactly where their political priorities seem to be. In the last year, the House of Representatives has engaged in partisan politics at the expense of the American people. At a time where American citizens are losing their homes to foreclosures while watching wages drop and the job market shrinking faster than the Polar icecap, they find nothing better to do than attack members of the opposing political party. This type of mentality is perfectly represented by the Republican candidates for President. The GOP consistently tries to lay all the economic woes of this nation on the president. While he too is not entirely blameless, putting the blame on his shoulders exclusively is not going to solve any of our economic woes.
For years the American people have seen its manufacturing jobs sent to nations that can provide cheap labor. As the factories in the United States close, so do our exports. The nation’s trade now shows more imports than exports. While manufacturing jobs are lost people are resigned to finding work in the highly touted “service industry” that our leaders are so fond of touting. This “service industry” usually translates into a job flipping burgers or working two part-time jobs with no benefits at places like Wal-Mart. There has been no cost of living raises for Social Security recipients or retired government workers or for retired military for the last two years, even though gasoline and food prices have risen steadily.
I could go on and tell you that at this present time 15% of Americans are now receiving food stamps but the majority of you already know what is happening. The days where one could reasonably expect to do as well as their parents economically are fast coming to a close. The economy is so bad that students graduating with a degree are finding themselves keeping the part-time jobs that helped fund their education.

Today we watched as Occupy movements in Oakland and New York and many other cities that have Occupy groups finally moved on the encampments. Most of these cities had their Mayors participate in a conference call on Tuesday. They seem to have come up with a unified response to the Occupy Movement. All I can say is that these measures are pointless. The Occupy encampments being broken up will not slow this movement down at all. In fact, the arrival of winter in the northern cities probably would have made their numbers dwindle anyway. Even Asheville was broken up.
These tactics by city officials that equip their police with riot gear that make them look like combat troops will not help. There have been too many instances of police departments acting more like storm troopers than peace-keepers, and these instances of outright violence against peaceful people exercising their First Amendment rights of assembly to address their grievances are etched in the minds of our citizenry.

The Occupy movement is just not going to fade away. The Mayors of these cities may believe that they have “solved” their problem, but all they have done is escalate the situation. Tomorrow they will see more people in their city centers than they had when they enacted their “solution”. In Zucotti Park in New York City, there will be more protestors on Wall Street than they had before. The same goes for Oakland, Asheville, Charlotte and Portland and hundreds of other cities around the country. There is a simple reason for this. People are disgusted with their leaders in Washington and elsewhere.

The two-party system in the United States is on life-support and the men and women that participate in that system don’t even know it. In Occupy General Assemblies all over the nation nobody brings up political party affiliation. There is a very simple reason for this; both parties have been co-opted by the 1% that has led us to this point in history. The two political parties have allowed the majority of people in this nation to finally wake-up and see what is really going on. The greed that is the by-product of this corporate duopoly has become pervasive throughout. Predatory capitalism has finally reached the tipping point. When people lose their homes, their jobs and their self-respect, it must be replaced by something else. In this case, the American people are regaining something the oligarchy thought that only they possessed, and that is their dignity.

The years of watching this nation use war as an economic weapon are just about over. People that are struggling just to feed their families are not enchanted when they understand that their nation has eleven aircraft carriers worth an average of 30 billion dollars and operating costs of 15 billion dollars a year and find that our nearest competitor only has two. We are not impressed when we learn that this country has 1,100 military bases overseas. We are not impressed when we see that the military budget is $800 Billion before additional funds are added for each new military invasion of other nations. We are angered to learn that this nation spends six times the amount on its military than its nearest competitor (China).
Meanwhile, what has this nation received for its people? Well for one thing we have the largest inmate population on the planet. The United States incarcerates more people per 100,000 than any other nation on Earth. (That also begs the question of why haven’t we prosecuted any of the people who, by their fraudulent casino operations in the financial markets, been prosecuted?) We spend more on healthcare than any other industrialized nation, yet, almost one-third of our countrymen have no health insurance. The infant mortality rate in this nation is 6.06 per thousand. Higher than any European nation, in comparison, Cuba has an infant mortality rate of 4.90.

As far as wealth distribution, since 1979 the average pre-tax income for the bottom 90% of households has decreased by $900, while that of the top 1% increased by over $700,000, as federal taxation became less progressive. From 1992-2007 the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.[7] In 2009, the average income of the top 1% was $960,000 with a minimum income of $343,927.

In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%. Thus, the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%. Financial inequality was greater than inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning 42.7%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50.3%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%.[11] However, after the Great Recession which started in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 34.6% to 37.1%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 85% to 87.7%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36.1% in median household wealth but a drop of only 11.1% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the 1% and the 99%.(Wikipedia)
This is NOT a nice picture; the top 1% owns 42.7% of the nation’s wealth! The bottom 80% own 7%! So for those that consider the American economic system to be fair, think again. This is primary reason that people have taken to the streets. So is this a “class war”? You can answer that question for yourself.

These are just a few reasons for the dissatisfaction that has led people to take to the streets. This is not a passing fancy or a fad. All across the planet, people are just tired of the way things are. They are tired of seeing corporations and the rich buying their lawmakers. Our government has become corrupt, from the top down. Our Representatives, Senators and yes, even our President are corrupt. Why don’t we deliver a list of demands to the government? Why should we do that? The fact is that they won’t do anything for us. They don’t represent us. They work for the 1% and nothing is going to change that. They enable them to pay for their political campaigns and make them rich. Can we compete with the 1%? The simple answer is no.
The solution is simple. Stay on the streets. Teach other Americans about the racket the 1% has. Tell them the truth and they will join us. Above all, refuse to vote for the corporately-controlled oligarchy that is out two-party system. Vote for the candidate of your choice, but don’t vote for the people that will abuse you, because they will, it’s their nature. Most of these people were born into wealth. They have no idea what it’s like to live from day to day, paycheck to paycheck, hoping that no sickness or injury will cause them to lose everything.
These people that make up the top 1% are not inherently evil (at least not all of them), but they just don’t care about us. We must care for ourselves and each other. That is our responsibility and our strength. Let the 1% do what they must and we will do what we must do to survive and even to prosper. Nothing has ever proclaimed that we should lick the boots that kick us. Our strength is in our numbers. The 1% are the ones that caused our numbers to rise. This is their undoing. Their actions have caused our burgeoning population. The 99% could have been the 55%, but no, greed is infectious at the top. Maybe we wouldn’t have noticed the disparity between the haves and have-nots, but the facts are glaring.

We are the ones we have been waiting for. No knight in shining armor is coming from either corporate party to save us. We must save ourselves. This is our destiny and just simple common sense. George Carlin said that there is a reason that they call it the “American Dream”… you have to be asleep to believe it.

Where's The Love and Where'd Dat Money Go?

2011-11-14T16:13:00.001-05:00

Occupy America for Change

2011-11-14T08:02:00.000-05:00

by Stephen Lendman

Good ideas spread fast. This one's long overdue. Real grievances launched it.

They include out-of-control corporate power, complicit politicians, systemic corruption, predatory finance capital, capitalism itself, frustration turned to rage and activism, growing poverty, depravation, unemployment, imperial wars, environmental destruction, unprecedented inequality, rigged elections, and a nation no longer fit to live in for most in it.

There's no turning back now. A sign in New York's Liberty Plaza read, "The Beginning Is Near!" Struggling for change just began. Expect years before it ends. This fight's the mother of them all. Committed activists are putting their bodies on the line, facing off against brutal cops.

It's activist class struggle, pitting organized people against entrenched power.

Nothing short of changing America is needed. One OWS statement said:

"We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments."

Another said:

"The beauty of this new formula....is simplicity: we talk to each other (in) physical gatherings (and) people's assemblies. We zero in on what our one demand will be (that) awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would (achieve) radical democracy....and then we go out and seize a square....and put our asses on the line to make it happen."

Participants are independent, multi-racial and ethnic, and in the streets. They include many religions and age groups, kids and grannies, men and women, workers and unemployed, professionals, veterans, rich and poor together to change America.

They're a cross-pollination for a new nation, united in the fight of their lives too important to lose.

Rebuild the Dream.com posted a "Contract for the American Dream," saying:

"Today, the American Dream is under threat. Our veterans are coming home to few jobs and little hope on the home front. Our young people are graduating off a cliff, burdened by heavy debt, into the worst job market in half a century."

America's the world's richest nation. They want its resources used responsibly for everyone. They want jobs, not cuts. They listed "10 critical steps" to address, including:

rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure;

create clean energy jobs;

support public education;

provide universal healthcare;

mandate living wage security;

secure Social Security;

implement progressive taxes;

end imperial wars;

tax Wall Street speculation; and

restore lost democratic values and principles.

In mid-October, a Quinnipiac University poll showed three-fourths of New York City's registered voters support OWS rage against bankers and social injustice.

UCLA Professor Nina Elisoph said OWS "started to change the debate in the country (and has) pried open some questions people hadn't been asking."

Bloomberg News said their message "may be resonating. Sixty-one percent of (in new ABC News/Washington Post poll) said the US wealth gap is larger now than it has been (before, and) six in 10 said they support government efforts to reduce the disparity."

Tacitly, that's majority OWS support. Expect greater momentum growing across America and Europe.

Last month, Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters encamped around St. Paul's Cathedral. On November 9, they rallied against huge tuition hikes, putting higher education out of reach for thousands. Months ago, they protested earlier hikes and other social injustice issues.

Others erected tents outside the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany. Days earlier, thousands demonstrated there. Protests were held outside Amsterdam's stock exchange.

Tens of thousands raged in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, and, of course, Greece against painful austerity cuts to pay bankers, using public revenues for it.

Athens is the struggle's epicenter against financial terrorism. On and off general strikes shut down the country. More will follow. Prime Minister George Papandreou resigned.

Former ECB vice president Lucas Papademos replaced him. Troika power rules the country - the EU, IMF and ECB.

It runs all 17 Eurozone countries. They're trapped in the euro straightjacket with no control over their monetary or fiscal policies.

Sovereign Greece no longer exists. Will other troubled sovereigns follow? Several now approach the abyss.

Will millions more across Europe lose jobs, welfare and futures? Will tear gas, rubber bullets, baton power, and mass arrests restrain them?

Is America too big to fail? Whether it is or isn't won't help ordinary people losing jobs, homes and futures. It's happening in plain sight, strip mining the country's human capital.

In mid-September, protests erupted, first on Wall Street, then elsewhere nationwide, in big cities and small. America's media ignored them, then trivialized, marginalized and mocked them. They became the issue, not legitimate grievances needing addressed.

Reactionary politicians like Republican Eric Cantor criticized "growing mobs." Presidential aspirant Herman Cain called them "anti-Semitic." Fox News calls them a "fringe" group," "petulant little children," "useful idiots," and "deluded" with "absolutely no purpose or focus in life."

Protests, in fact, represent direct democracy in action. They highlight long ignored issues, ones political Washington and media scoundrels don't discuss. Somebody has to, and they're doing it.

They're spreading the word one-on-one, in small and larger groups, online, through social networks, assemblies, teach-ins, and other ways to enlist support city by city for something too important not to grow and sustain.

So far, police brutality energized more resistance. Rage against the system continues. Much more must follow. Key is formalizing demands and solutions, not just grievances.

Central is putting money power back in public hands where it belongs. Otherwise little else will change. Hopefully that message will spread.

People must be saved, not banks. Too-big-to-fail ones must be shut, broken up or nationalized. Central bank authority must also shift to public hands. Sustained general city, state and national strikes must be used strategically.

America's system is too broken and corrupted to fix. Tearing it down and starting over is vital, including a new Constitution put to a national referendum for an up or down vote.

Egalitarian America must replace it's wealth and power system, benefitting few at the expense of most others. The biggest of all battles lie ahead. Dark forces lurk to co-opt and subvert them.

Staying the course is key. Obstacles exist to be overcome. So is knowing IF Stone's advice that:

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins...."

Gandhi said it his way, saying:

"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win."

We're in the ridiculing/fighting stage. It'll continue years longer, maybe decades. Nothing's guaranteed, of course, especially in the mother of all struggles.

If activists and those after them don't quit, winning's indeed possible, but not without great pain, sacrifice, and struggles often looking futile.

It's how all great battles are won, none easily, quickly or without great cost.

No matter. Liberate your minds. Join the 99%. Stay the course, and find out! We're all in this together!

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Dylan Radigan Goes Off About THE REAL PROBLEM

2011-11-14T07:54:00.001-05:00

Thoughts on the role of veterans in the Occupy movement

2011-11-14T00:10:00.001-05:00

By Ross Caputi

November 08, 2011

I did not serve my country in Iraq; I served the 1%. It was on their
behalf that I helped lay siege to Fallujah, helped kill thousands of
civilians, helped displace hundreds of thousands of innocent people,
and helped destroy an entire city. My "service" served Exxon-Mobil,
Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, and other multinational corporations in
Iraq.

My family in Massachusetts is not safer because of my service, and
Iraqis are not freer. I helped oppress Iraqis in a manner far more
brutal than what has been experienced by the Occupy movement at the
hands of the New York and Oakland police departments.

I was an occupier and am now an #occupier. I once served the 1%, but
now try to serve the 99%. That is why I must speak up when I see the
Occupy movement being led astray by the same nationalism and
“Ameri-centrism,” the same thoughtless praises for U.S. troops and
veterans, and the same hypocrisy that led us into the so-called “War
On Terror” and the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many of us have joined the Occupy movement, because we identify as
members of the 99%, but the media only began to highlight our
participation after Cpl. Scott Olsen was shot in the head by the
Oakland police with a projectile on Oct. 25. Olsen was immediately
rushed to the emergency room, and his name soon became a rallying cry.
A nationwide call was put out for vigils in solidarity with Olsen.

Going to war is not "serving our country"

The Occupy movement was quick to highlight Olsen's "service" and his
two deployments to Iraq. The New York Times noted that "his injury—and
the oddity of a Marine who faced enemy fire only to be attacked at
home—has prompted an outpouring of sympathy, as well as calls for
solidarity."

Although Olsen appears to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—he
is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans For
Peace,—the Occupy movement's response to his attack has revealed
ambivalence on these issues.

The Occupy movement has glossed over the irony that Olsen was put in
the hospital by some of the same tactics that his Marine Corps has
used against Iraqis. It has not drawn a connection between what
happened to Olsen and what happened to Iraqis who peacefully protested
against the U.S. occupation of their country—like in Fallujah on April
28, 2003, when the U.S. fired into a crowd of protesters and killed 13
civilians. Countless other identical incidents have taken place, even
today as Iraqis also protest unemployment, corruption and lack of
services.

When the Occupy movement mentions Olsen's "service" without clarifying
who he served, they hide the lies of the 1% and ignore the more than 1
million dead Iraqis, the millions of refugees and orphans, and the
dramatic rise in cancers and birth defects in Iraq.

We must stand for the most affected victims of Wall Street

I watched a Youtube video the other day of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt.
Shamar Thomas shouting at the NYPD: "If you want to go kill or hurt
people, go to Iraq. Why are you hurting U.S. citizens?" as a crowd of
Occupy Wall Street protesters cheered him on.

Over 2.5 million people have watched this video, and Thomas appeared
on Rosie O'Donnell's television show and made several appearances on
Keith Olbermann. Everyone championed his "service" and decried police
brutality against U.S. citizens. Nobody questioned the dismissal of
the value of Iraqi lives.

We should all decry police brutality wherever it rears its ugly head.
Yet police brutality and the murder of innocent civilians in foreign
countries in service of the 1% are both moral issues, and to decry one
without decrying the other suggests a serious disconnect.

These attitudes in our movement are deeply troubling to me. We decry
economic injustice at home, but stay silent about the unjust
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. We decry police brutality at
home, while the U.S. war machine brutalizes innocent people abroad. We
need to understand that Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, Libyans and
everyone else who has fallen victim to the 1% and its war machine are
part of the 99%, too.

We can love our country, but we should not value American lives more
than any other. We can set up a Scott Olsen Support Fund, but we
should not ignore the rise in cancers and birth defects that U.S.
weapons have caused in Iraq.

Veterans have an important role to play in this movement, but we are
not heroes because of our participation in the wars, and it is
shameful for anyone to use us to appeal to patriotism; that only
serves the 1%. What we have to offer this movement is a first-hand
account of what the 1% has done all over the world at the expense of
the 99%. We as veterans are in a better position than anyone else to
fight against the dangerous beliefs that put veterans on a pedestal.
It is our responsibility to speak out against injustice, no matter
where it occurs in this world.

The author is a Marine Corps veteran of the second siege of Fallujah
and a member of March Forward!. He is the founder of the 'Justice for
Fallujah Project' which will host various events during the second
annual 'Remember Fallujah Week,' Nov. 16-19. Click here for more
information.

Ten Ways The Occupy Movement Changes Everything

2011-11-13T20:32:00.000-05:00

By Sarah van Gelder, David Korten & Steve Piersanti

13 November, 2011
YES! Magazine

Before the Occupy Wall Street movement, there was little discussion of the outsized power of Wall Street and the diminishing fortunes of the middle class.

The media blackout was especially remarkable given that issues like jobs and corporate influence on elections topped the list of concerns for most Americans.

Occupy Wall Street changed that. In fact, it may represent the best hope in years that “we the people” will step up to take on the critical challenges of our time. Here’s how the Occupy movement is already changing everything:

1. It names the source of the crisis.
Political insiders have avoided this simple reality: The problems of the 99% are caused in large part by Wall Street greed, perverse financial incentives, and a corporate takeover of the political system. Now that this is understood, the genie is out of the bottle and it can’t be put back in.

2. It provides a clear vision of the world we want.
We can create a world that works for everyone, not just the wealthiest 1%. And we, the 99%, are using the spaces opened up by the Occupy movement to conduct a dialogue about the world we want.

3. It sets a new standard for public debate.
Those advocating policies and proposals must now demonstrate that their ideas will benefit the 99%. Serving only the 1% will not suffice, nor will claims that the subsidies and policies that benefit the 1% will eventually “trickle down.”

4. It presents a new narrative.
The solution is not to starve government or impose harsh austerity measures that further harm middle-class and poor people already reeling from a bad economy. Instead, the solution is to free society and government from corporate dominance. A functioning democracy is our best shot at addressing critical social, environmental, and economic crises.

5. It creates a big tent.
We, the 99%, are people of all ages, races, occupations, and political beliefs. We will resist being divided or marginalized. We are learning to work together with respect.

6. It offers everyone a chance to create change.
No one is in charge; no organization or political party calls the shots. Anyone can get involved, offer proposals, support the occupations, and build the movement. Because leadership is everywhere and new supporters keep turning up, there is a flowering of creativity and a resilience that makes the movement nearly impossible to shut down.

7. It is a movement, not a list of demands.
The call for deep change—not temporary fixes and single-issue reforms—is the movement’s sustaining power. The movement is sometimes criticized for failing to issue a list of demands, but doing so could keep it tied to status quo power relationships and policy options. The occupiers and their supporters will not be boxed in.

8. It combines the local and the global.
People in cities and towns around the world are setting their own local agendas, tactics, and aims. What they share in common is a critique of corporate power and an identification with the 99%, creating an extraordinary wave of global solidarity.

9. It offers an ethic and practice of deep democracy and community.
Slow, patient decision-making in which every voice is heard translates into wisdom, common commitment, and power. Occupy sites are set up as communities in which anyone can discuss grievances, hopes, and dreams, and where all can experiment with living in a space built around mutual support.

10. We have reclaimed our power.
Instead of looking to politicians and leaders to bring about change, we can see now that the power rests with us. Instead of being victims to the forces upending our lives, we are claiming our sovereign right to remake the world.

Like all human endeavors, Occupy Wall Street and its thousands of variations and spin-offs will be imperfect. There have already been setbacks and divisions, hardships and injury. But as our world faces extraordinary challenges—from climate change to soaring inequality—our best hope is the ordinary people, gathered in imperfect democracies, who are finding ways to fix a broken world.

This article is adapted from the book, This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement edited by Sarah van Gelder and the staff of YES! Magazine and published November 2011 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Sarah van Gelder and David Korten are co-founders of YES! Magazine; Steve Piersanti is publisher of Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This article is available under a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) license, which allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the original publication of this book (photos not included). More on the book and other resources can be found at www.yesmagazine.org/owsbook.

Occupy and the AFL-CIO at the Republican Debate in Spartanburg, SC

2011-11-13T01:23:00.001-05:00

The Story: The Spartanburg and Greenville Occupy groups met up with the AFL-CIO organizers outside of the Republican debate this evening. At about 5pm we walked from the 1st Amendment area (a pretty little square of park about a half-mile from the auditorium where the debate was being held) to Morgan Square in Spartanburg (Named after Daniel Morgan, one of the heroes of the American Revolution). There the 99%’ers joined up with the union people from the AFL-CIO.

The union people and the Occupy group marched together to the entrance of the college where we had started from. This time however, there were about 125 of us. One of the organizers wanted us to chant something about the GOP but most of the people didn’t understand the significance of “Yucca Mountain”. Instead, after a weak chant when we started out, it changed to a robust “We are the 99%”. It was heaven for this former New Yorker to be walking down the Main Street of Spartanburg in the heart of Republican territory with all of these people with me. Other chants were “This is what democracy looks like!” and “The banks got bailed out, we got sold out!”
After marching for a half-mile with a nice police escort, we got to our destination. It was hard for the marchers to understand that the rear of the march kept falling behind. Since I spent over 20 years in the military, I knew that those in the back had to almost run to keep up. (So, for any of you thinking of going into the military, and I don’t advise it at the present time, make sure that when they run you, get into the front of the formation).

After we had picketed for a while, the union people held a meeting and proclaimed that a “Right to Work” state was a “Right to Slavery” state, and that they were organizing in North and South Carolina. All of the union people (except three) that spoke were from North Carolina. The President of South Carolina’s AFL-CIO was there, but I didn’t get her name. It was a boisterous meeting directed toward union organizing in South Carolina.

An Opinion: The Occupy people really didn’t need or ask help from the union people. It was real nice of them to join us and walk with us, but I was just a little pissed-off that they attempted to co-opt the protest. They didn’t ask any of the Occupy people to speak at their meeting and that was kind of a slap in the face. They mentioned that the movements in Ohio and Wisconsin have motivated their

President, Richard Trumka, to start organizing in the “Right to Work” states in the South. That’s admirable and it’s about time. They should have started here long ago.
Still, I resent them using the Occupy Movement to advance their agenda. They should have told us that the meeting at the end of the march was going to be about union matters only. While I fully support union organizing, especially here in South Carolina, most of the people in the crowd had nothing to do with the union. They were there to protest as part of the Occupy movement. I would urge President Trumka to keep us posted about your organizing efforts and I’m sure that many of us in the movement could split our time to help you people out.

This doesn’t mean that you can march with us and hold a union rally afterwards. That isn’t the way things work. There are many politicians and causes that are trying to co-opt this movement. We would ask you sincerely to not be a part of that. We could have held our own meeting after the march. While we may support and sympathize with your efforts, the Occupy movement has its own agenda, as you have yours.

Still, it was an experience. It remains to be seen how successful the AL-CIO will be in South Carolina. This could get interesting.

Bahrain: Nailing the Lie in Washington’s Rhetoric on "The Arab Spring"

2011-11-12T14:15:00.001-05:00

By Finian Cunningham

Global Research, November 10, 2011

US ally Bahrain continued its crackdown against popular calls for democratic rights with the illegal arrest and detention this week of prominent journalist and commentator Jaffar Al Alawy.

To date, nearly 100 journalists, poets, bloggers and media figures have been targeted for detention by the Persian Gulf oil kingdom since pro-democracy protests erupted there last February, according to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. The detainees have claimed gross ill-treatment and torture while in custody – independently verified by several international human rights groups. Two respected media figures, Zakariya Al Aushayri and Karim Fakhrawi, have died during detention, their bodies showing undeniable signs of brutality.

In the latest arrest, Al Alawy was hauled into prison after security forces smashed their way into his home without a warrant. Well-known for his radio and television appearances, he is also a published poet, who has been mildly critical of the US-backed Al Khalifa regime.

Ironically, the arrest of Al Alawy followed only hours after US secretary of state Hillary Clinton claimed in a major speech in Washington that the Bahraini government “has recognized the need for dialogue, reconciliation, and concrete reforms. And they have committed to provide access to human rights groups, to allow peaceful protest”.

The detention and torture of nearly 100 media figures in Bahrain is hardly a sign of “allowing peaceful protest”.

Clinton’s speech on US policy and the Arab Spring was spellbinding in its hypocrisy and sophistry. She glorified the US-backed illegal war to overthrow Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and denounced Syria for its “brutal” crackdown on protests. Syrian President Bashar Al Asad, warned Clinton, “must step down; and until he does, America and the international community will continue to increase pressure on him and his brutal regime”.

There were no such bristling sanctions for Washington’s ally in Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based. Indeed, the US government recently signed a military arms deal worth $53 million with the Al Khalifa monarchy.

Yet on many counts, Bahrain’s human rights violations put it way out in front for urgent international sanctions against its rulers. In Syria, the death toll from violence is estimated at 3,500. But perhaps a third of this total are casualties among the state forces which are combating in some cases an armed insurrection supplied by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel (with obviously US oversight).

By contrast in Bahrain, protesters are unarmed and have invariably conducted peaceful demonstrations of civic disobedience. Proportionate to their populations, Bahrain’s death toll of civilians is easily comparable to that of Syria’s. Furthermore, the persecution of dissenting public voices is equivalent to 3,660 journalists being detained; the figure for the detention of all protesters since February rising to 55,000.

Among those hauled into Bahraini prisons, tortured and sentenced are doctors and nurses who did nothing more than treat civilians injured by American-equipped and Saudi-backed state forces. The proportionate figure for these medics subjected to crimes against humanity amounts to over 3,300.

On so many measures therefore, Bahrain is a clear case of outrageous human rights violations and atrocities that deserves urgent international intervention. But Washington is not only tolerating these crimes, it is actively supporting them while doing its rhetorical best to conceal.

The British and Canadian governments are also complicit in this US hypocrisy and twisted manipulation of international law. The former is another major supplier of military weapons that can have no other purpose than internal repression; meanwhile Ottawa maintains a stoic silence over the illegal detention, torture and sentencing of Canadian citizen Naser Al Raas. Al Raas was arrested while trying to leave Bahrain after visiting his family and fiancée during March.

He was tortured during illegal detention in the notorious Ministry of Interior headquarters in the capital, Manama. Al Raas told Global Research that he believes the reason why he is now facing a five-year sentence for allegedly participating in “illegal public protests” was because he happened to be held in a cell adjacent to the journalist Karim Kakhrawi. During the 12 days that Fakhrawi was tortured to death, Al Raas heard the screams from his companion prisoner, whose identity he later found out. And he can recall the horrible moment when the screams suddenly stopped. For this reason, Al Raas believes the Bahraini regime wants to suppress his potential testimony to a damning state killing.

Helping the Bahraini regime do its dirty work are the governments of the US, Britain and Canada, which otherwise take every opportunity to moralise, sanction and militarily attack any state that they happen to disprove of.

In her speech at the National Democratic Institute in Washington, Clinton said: “Americans believe that the desire for dignity and self-determination is universal—and we do try to act on that belief around the world. Americans have fought and died for these ideals. And when freedom gains ground anywhere, Americans are inspired.”

In fending off criticism of “inconsistent” US policy on the Arab Spring, Clinton let the cat out of the bag when she referred to “close allies” Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and the need to “a secure supply of energy”. She added pointedly: “There will be times when not all our interests align... that is just reality.”

Other realities could be mentioned for why the US and its allies are participating in arresting and torturing citizens calling for democracy in Bahrain – such as the fear that the long-overdue franchise for the Shia majority in the Persian Gulf state would boost Iran’s regional role and give the Islamic Republic a degree of respite from Washington’s recently cranked-up campaign to lynch the government in Tehran.

But the bottom-line and truly remarkable reality that Clinton did not mention – which Bahrain clearly demonstrates – is this: Washington stands implacably against democratic progress in the Middle East. Its highly selective invocation of democratic rights and freedoms is nothing but a cynical, self-serving lie.

Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa correspondent

Time for an Economic Bill of Rights

2011-11-11T14:52:00.000-05:00

Time for an Economic Bill of Rights

Ellen Brown
November 9, 2011
http://WebofDebt.com

Henry Ford said, “It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

We are beginning to understand, and Occupy Wall Street looks like the beginning of the revolution.

We are beginning to understand that our money is created, not by the government, but by banks. Many authorities have confirmed this, including the Federal Reserve itself. The only money the government creates today are coins, which compose less than one ten-thousandth of the money supply. Federal Reserve Notes, or dollar bills, are issued by Federal Reserve Banks, all twelve of which are owned by the private banks in their district. Most of our money comes into circulation as bank loans, and it comes with an interest charge attached.

According to Margrit Kennedy, a German researcher who has studied this issue extensively, interest now composes 40% of the cost of everything we buy. We don’t see it on the sales slips, but interest is exacted at every stage of production. Suppliers need to take out loans to pay for labor and materials, before they have a product to sell.

For government projects, Kennedy found that the average cost of interest is 50%. If the government owned the banks, it could keep the interest and get these projects at half price. That means governments—state and federal—could double the number of projects they could afford, without costing the taxpayers a single penny more than we are paying now.

This opens up exciting possibilities. Federal and state governments could fund all sorts of things we think we can’t afford now, simply by owning their own banks. They could fund something Franklin D. Roosevelt and Martin Luther King dreamt of—an Economic Bill of Rights.

A Vision for Tomorrow

In his first inaugural address in 1933, Roosevelt criticized the sort of near-sighted Wall Street greed that precipitated the Great Depression. He said, “They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and where there is no vision the people perish.”

Roosevelt’s own vision reached its sharpest focus in 1944, when he called for a Second Bill of Rights. He said:
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights . . . . They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
He then enumerated the economic rights he thought needed to be added to the Bill of Rights. They included:
The right to a job;
The right to earn enough to pay for food and clothing;
The right of businessmen to be free of unfair competition and domination by monopolies;
The right to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
Times have changed since the first Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution in 1791. When the country was founded, people could stake out some land, build a house on it, farm it, and be self-sufficient. The Great Depression saw people turned out of their homes and living in the streets—a phenomenon we are seeing again today. Few people now own their own homes. Even if you have signed a mortgage, you will be in debt peonage to the bank for 30 years or so before you can claim the home as your own.

Health needs have changed too. In 1791, foods were natural and nutrient-rich, and outdoor exercise was built into the lifestyle. Degenerative diseases such as cancer and heart disease were rare. Today, health insurance for some people can cost as much as rent.

Then there are college loans, which collectively now exceed a trillion dollars, more even than credit card debt. Students are coming out of universities not just without jobs but carrying a debt of $20,000 or so on their backs. For medical students and other post-graduate students, it can be $100,000 or more. Again, that’s as much as a mortgage, with no house to show for it. The justification for incurring these debts was supposed to be that the students would get better jobs when they graduated, but now jobs are scarce.

After World War II, the G.I. Bill provided returning servicemen with free college tuition, as well as cheap home loans and business loans. It was called “the G.I. Bill of Rights.” Studies have shown that the G.I. Bill paid for itself seven times over and is one of the most lucrative investments the government ever made.

The government could do that again—without increasing taxes or the federal debt. It could do it by recovering the power to create money from Wall Street and the financial services industry, which now claim a whopping 40% of everything we buy.

An Updated Constitution for a New Millennium

Banks acquired the power to create money by default, when Congress declined to claim it at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Constitution says only that “Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the power thereof.” The Founders left out not just paper money but checkbook money, credit card money, money market funds, and other forms of exchange that make up the money supply today. All of them are created by private financial institutions, and they all come into the economy as loans with interest attached.

Governments—state and federal—could bypass the interest tab by setting up their own publicly-owned banks. Banking would become a public utility, a tool for promoting productivity and trade rather than for extracting wealth from the debtor class.

Congress could go further: it could reclaim the power to issue money from the banks and fund its budget directly. It could do this, in fact, without changing any laws. Congress is empowered to “coin money,” and the Constitution sets no limit on the face amount of the coins. Congress could issue a few one-trillion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.

The Fed’s own figures show that the money supply has shrunk by $3 trillion since 2008. That sum could be spent into the economy without inflating prices. Three trillion dollars could go a long way toward providing the jobs and social services necessary to fulfill an Economic Bill of Rights. Guaranteeing employment to anyone willing and able to work would increase GDP, allowing the money supply to expand even further without inflating prices, since supply and demand would increase together.

Modernizing the Bill of Rights

As Bob Dylan said, “The times they are a’changin’.” Revolutionary times call for revolutionary solutions and an updated social contract. Apple and Microsoft update their programs every year. We are trying to fit a highly complex modern monetary scheme into a constitutional framework that is 200 years old.

After President Roosevelt died in 1945, his vision for an Economic Bill of Rights was kept alive by Martin Luther King. “True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

MLK too has now passed away, but his vision has been carried on by a variety of money reform groups. The government as “employer of last resort,” guaranteeing a living wage to anyone who wants to work, is a basic platform of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). An MMT website declares that by “[e]nding the enormous unearned profits acquired by the means of the privatization of our sovereign currency. . . [i]t is possible to have truly full employment without causing inflation.”

What was sufficient for a simple agrarian economy does not provide an adequate framework for freedom and democracy today. We need an Economic Bill of Rights, and we need to end the privatization of the national currency. Only when the privilege of creating the national money supply is returned to the people can we have a government that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people.

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

Sole Military Super-Bloc: NATO Issues Daily Reprieves To The World

2011-11-08T15:26:00.000-05:00

Sole Military Super-Bloc: NATO Issues Daily Reprieves To The World

By Rick Rozoff

November 05, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- - On October 31 North Atlantic Treaty Organization chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived in the Libyan capital of Tripoli at the end of seven full months of the military bloc’s war in the country and effused: “It’s great to be in Libya, free Libya.”

Like Scipio Africanus the Younger almost twenty-two centuries earlier in what is now Libya’s western neighbor Tunisia, then Carthage, Rasmussen planted the banner of a conquering power on the soil of North Africa. Perhaps NATO will grant Rasmussen, too, the honorific agnomen Africanus after the military bloc’s first war and first conquest on the continent.

While basking in the triumph of what Western commentators have celebrated as NATO’s first complete and uncontested military victory – “the most successful in Nato history” in Rasmussen’s words – in the Libyan capital, the secretary general was questioned by a reporter about plans to replicate the Libyan model in Syria and stated: “My answer is very short. NATO has no intention (to intervene) whatsoever. I can completely rule that out.”

However, to belie his claim he immediately added: “Having said that, I strongly condemn the crackdown on the civilian population in Syria. What has happened in Libya sends a clear signal. You cannot neglect the will of the people.”

The 227-day war against Libya waged first by U.S. Africa Command from March 19-31 and thereafter by NATO is, according to the NATO chieftain, “a clear signal” to Syria, but “NATO has no intention” to commence military actions against Syria. Scant assurance to the nation’s government and populace alike, to be sure.

On the day Muammar Gaddafi was brutally killed, Senator John McCain, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and presidential candidate in 2008, threatened the president of Syria, the prime minister of Russia and unnamed Chinese leaders with the less than eloquent admonition that they “got a reason to be uneasy” according to one account. He told the BBC on October 20: “I think dictators all over the world, including Bashar al-Assad, maybe even Mr. Putin, maybe some Chinese, maybe all of them, may be a little bit more nervous.” He repeated the parallel between Libya and Syria three days later while in Jordan.

Had Rasmussen been someone other than who he is, which is to say an honest individual, his comments in the Libyan capital would have been limited to the line of Tacitus about a Roman campaign in the century following the Third Punic War: Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. (They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.) Libya has been destroyed. What is left of the city of Sirte presents a vivid image that suits all too well the Roman historian’s words.

Back at home in NATO Headquarters in Brussels three days later, Rasmussen gave his latest monthly press briefing, in which he stated:

“Let me stress that NATO has no intention whatsoever to intervene in Iran, and NATO is not engaged as an alliance in the Iran question.”

He began his comments with this account: “This week I had the privilege to visit Tripoli, the capital of free Libya. It was the first time ever that a NATO Secretary General set foot in the country and something none of us could have imagined only a year ago.”

During the question and answer period which succeeded his presentation he responded to a question on Libya by stating:

“We would be prepared to offer the same kind of assistance as we have offered to other partners within defence and security sector reforms. That is, overall to help put defence and security agencies under civilian and democratic control. We can also help in organizing a modern defence, modern structures. In more specific terms we can help when it comes to institution-building like the building of a defence ministry, how to organize General Staff of the Armed Forces, just to mention some examples.

“NATO has a lot of expertise within defence and security sector reform, and actually a number of our Allies have gone through a similar transition from dictatorship into democracy, so they have a very valuable experience to offer. And I talked with Chairman Jalil and made clear that we are ready to assist Libya within such reform efforts if requested…”

Given the alliance’s history over the past twenty years, what he in fact pledged was that NATO will train – from scratch and in English – the armed forces of the new Libyan proxy regime as it has done previously and is still engaged in doing in other nations and provinces it has invaded and in other manners subjugated: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Libya, which until now has been the only North African nation not to be pulled into NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership – Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria are members as are Israel, Jordan and Mauritania – will become the eighth member and a joint asset of NATO and U.S. Africa Command.

The chief of what is not only the sole extant military bloc in the world but the largest and longest-lived multinational armed alliance in history may have taken to issuing regular disclaimers concerning attacking new nations well outside the so-called Euro-Atlantic zone, but how much credence the secretary general’s pronouncements should be given is best indicated by how unconscionably NATO lied its way into full-fledged wars in three continents over the past twelve years.

With 28 full members at present, after a 75 per cent increase between 1999-2009, and over 40 partners around the world, the North Atlantic bloc has integrated the militaries of a third of the world’s nations for deployments to war and post-war zones in the Balkans and South Asia, with Africa the next destination.

Its latest trophy is the battered, bloodied and brutalized body of Muammar Gaddafi, murdered after a U.S. Hellfire missile and French laser-guided bombs struck his convoy outside Sirte on October 20, eight months before what would have been his seventieth birthday. So bereft of the most elementary notions of decency and values, moral and aesthetic, are the governments of the West and the people they deserve (as a British writer a century ago reversed the well-known dictum of Joseph de Maistre), that the only stimulants left to awaken their satiated and dehumanized sensibilities are – as they are inured to violence, even on a mass scale – necrophilia and fiendish, ghoulish Grand Guignol. The lower tier of American culture, mass-market escapist entertainment, is consumed by a fascination with vampires, flesh-eating zombies and the like and graphic depictions of foreign leaders and former leaders being mauled and murdered are simply more lurid diversions for jaded ennuyés.

In reference to the murder of Gaddafi and his son Muatassim, the public display of their corpses and the sports enthusiast-like celebration of those gruesome acts by the likes of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian representative to NATO Dmitry Rogozin lambasted them as emblematic of sadistic triumphalism, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denounced them as disgusting and Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Ivan Melnikov characterized the first as “a striking illustration of American and their NATO allies’ policy in the North-African country,” according to Interfax in the third instance.

They are in fact grotesque, in the sense that Hegel defined the word, as the idealization of the ugly.

In his own words, the last-cited Russian official warned: “I think that the entire world should watch today the published photographs and video records of Gaddafi’s murder. It is not just a dead former leader of Libya. It’s the symbol of the sovereignty of an independent country that was torn to pieces by Americans.”

The day after Gaddafi’s murder the same news agency cited another deputy of the lower house of parliament of the same, Communist, party, Vadim Solovyov, as affirming: “The American economy is in need of inexpensive oil, so the U.S. government is even ready to wage wars, if only oil arrives…Any country with large reserves of energy resources – Iran, Syria, Venezuela or Nigeria – could come next.”

NATO ground, air and naval forces continue their murderous rampages in Afghanistan, across the border into Pakistan, in Kosovska Mitrovica, in Libya and off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and adjoining waters (where NATO killed the captain of a Taiwanese fishing vessel and wounded two Iranian fishermen in separate attacks earlier this year).

A Stop NATO feature in August provided an, admittedly incomplete, list of nations that NATO, actuated by its first Strategic Concept for the 21st century adopted at the bloc’s summit in Lisbon last November and its initial implementation in Libya this year, could attack or otherwise intervene in next: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Chad, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cyprus, Ecuador, Eritrea, Iran, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Moldova-Transdniester, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, the South Caucasus (Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia), Sudan-South Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Uganda, Venezuela, Western Sahara, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

In the interim the Obama administration announced the deployment of special forces to four of the above nations and on the day of Gaddafi’s murder the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on African affairs, Senator Chris Coons, was reported by Associated Press as asserting that “Moammar Gadhafi’s death and the promise of a new Libyan regime are arguments for the measured U.S. military response in central Africa where the U.S. has sent roughly 100 troops” to Uganda, Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

That the nations of the world require almost daily assurances, however untrustworthy, that they will not be attacked by the mightiest multinational military formation in history is an indictment of the age that submits to living under such ongoing and ubiquitous threats. The time is ripe and in fact long overdue for issuing a call for an international anti-NATO initiative addressed to individuals, organizations, political parties and governments to convene an extraordinary session of the United Nations General Assembly to demand the disbanding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a – as the gravest – threat to world peace.

Rick Rozoff can be contacted at: rwrozoff@yahoo.com - http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/

Nukes (Yes Virginia, We Use Them)

2011-11-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

The Logical Outcome of the occupy Movement

2011-10-31T22:32:00.001-05:00

The Logical Outcome of the Occupy Movement

By Timothy V. Gatto

When the media asks people in the Occupy Movement what it is they want, the answer given by those that understand what the movement is all about, give their reasons for being there but add that they are not speaking for the movement, only for themselves. This is the purest form of democracy. Claiming to represent anyone else besides you is the correct way to respond. Most of us have many of the same goals, but it would be presumptuous to say that anyone represents the movement.

One thing has become abundantly clear, and this is probably the most important part of the movement; most of the 99%’ers are not asking the United States government to do a thing. This is the part that the mainstream media cannot comprehend. Where is the list of demands from the protesting people? If you ask any one of the 99%’ers, they will give you many reasons why they are there, but they won’t tell you that they demand anything from anyone.

There are reasons for this. There are reasons why we are not asking Barack Obama to do anything. One reason is because many don’t want this movement to become hijacked by any political party as the Tea Party was by the right wing, most notably the Koch brothers. We don’t want an Occupation express bus financed by George Soros or the Democratic Party. The time for party politics has come and gone. We did all of that and we elected “Hope and Change” in the personage of Obama. What we got was a clone of the Bush Administration. We got more war, an expanded Patriot Act, a President that empowered himself to assassinate anyone he deemed to be a threat (including American citizens), the shameful destruction of a society in Libya and the murder of it’s symbolic leader, bailouts for the richest and largest financial institutions in America, and so much more that we protested and campaigned against.

The rich got richer and they openly showered themselves with unimaginable bonuses for stealing from the American Taxpayer for Banks and financial entities that were deemed “Too big to fail”. We have since learned that much of the bailout money was used to prop up financial institutions and corporations in other countries, most notable, countries in the EU. When the oversight committee, represented by Elizabeth Warren, asked where the money from the bailout went to, the banksters refused to answer. This is indicative of the so-called democracy now in power in Washington.

I could go on and on, but I believe that most of us have realized what is really happening in the United States. One of the best explanations of how things work in America is presented in Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story”. The current state of affairs in the U.S. is untenable. This is precisely why ordinary Americans have decided to take to the streets in protest. The way we describe ourselves says it all: “We are the 99%”. Today on the MSM they reported that Barack Obama has finally reached the 1%. I don’t believe he could have been pleased to be represented in this light. To be portrayed as a 1%’er is to be portrayed as a selfish vulture.

If the movement is not demanding a laundry list of demands to the government in Washington, than what are they attempting to achieve? This is the quandary the media is facing. They are trying to portray the Occupy movement as a disorganized, disgruntled group of people on the fringe of society. Yes we are disgruntled, but we are not disorganized, nor do we represent the “fringe” of America’s society. We are mostly average American who have had to bear the brunt of the burden for the rich and powerful that played a form of reckless “casino economics” where anything went because there was no oversight or regulations to stop them. Glass-Steagal had been rescinded and banks teamed up with insurance companies to bet the economic future of America away with economic voodoo like credit default swaps and derivatives. Nobody stopped them because they virtually owned most of the politicians in Washington. They still do. With the Supreme Court’s decision from the case brought by “Citizen’s United”, corporate money can now flow into the campaign coffers with hardly any meaningful restrictions.

This means that Representatives and Senators can now be bought in the same way as buying a puppy from a puppy farm. We have always had mutts in Congress, but now Congress will look more like a kennel than a functioning part of our democracy. Early on in 2008, when I disclosed that Barack Obama’s largest private campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs, few bothered to think anything about it. In fact, I was kicked off many Democratic websites for calling Obama a liar when he vowed that he would take no corporate campaign donations. Looking back, I can understand how desperately people wanted the “Hope and Change” that he was promising and the anger directed towards me for trying to spoil the party.

These

are just a few of the reasons that the Occupy movement refuses to demand anything from the government in Washington. It’s almost insanity to expect them to stand up for people that don’t have the money that will enable them to keep their jobs and their power. They will actually spit in our face and believe that nobody will notice like the day when President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize and in his acceptance speech he ratcheted up the war in Afghanistan. How naive do they think we are?

So how will the movement achieve its goals of having a government in Washington that represents the 99% and turns away from the 1% that now owns Washington? Can we accomplish this through the ballot box? The answer is no, because what kind of people will be presented to the electorate? I can say without reservation that the candidates will be virtual employees of the 1% that now run this country, corporate candidates. These candidates will not give a damn about the 99%. The kicker in this is, after years and years of seeing this nation ship its industry (and the jobs it brought to Americans) overseas to make larger profits for the 1%, after seeing wars fought without a declaration of war by Congress based on lies and propaganda and watching our civil liberties become eroded by the Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act and the John Warner Defense bill that allows the President unlimited use of any State’s National Guard for police purposes in the event of a declaration of Martial Law that the President can now declare without any authorization from Congress, why should we believe the way our government now does business will change by voting for any of the 1%’ers employees?

Where am I going with this? Hopefully many of you are realizing exactly what options remain. If we can’t change American politics through the ballot box, what alternative is left?

timgatto@hotmail.com

This Time It's For Real

2011-10-29T22:10:00.001-05:00

This Time It’s for Real
Timothy V. Gatto

The occupy movement is not just a passing fancy. People are pissed. When interviewed for the mainstream news they give relatively mild answers to why they are there. Out of the camera view, there is real anger toward the 1% that controls everything. George Carlin said it best when he proclaimed that “The country is run by one big club “And you ain’t in it!” he also told us “They own you. The corporations and the rich own this country and they don’t give a shit about you. They don’t care. They don’t give a shit about you!” and everyone laughed. Now they aren’t laughing anymore.

It just isn’t funny anymore. People are hurting. Yesterday I saw a young man with his wife and baby shopping at the local Bi-Lo here. They had a list and went down the list and put what was on the list in their cart. I thought to myself that the couple were good shoppers, buying only what they decided they needed before going shopping. When I went to check out the young couple was before my wife and I. I saw them separate items into two groups. The first small group of goods was then paid by food stamps. The second group of goods was paid with cash. It really bothered me. This was a young strapping man of about 19 with a young wife and a year old baby.
Apparently he wasn’t working, and if he was, his job wasn’t paying him as living wage because the qualified for food stamps. Believe me; I have nothing against people that use food stamps. This economic climate makes food stamps something indispensable for some people. A woman I knew most of my life confided in me when she came down to South Carolina from New York. She said “Timmy, I’m on food stamps. I’m so embarrassed to tell you this. I have to apply for HEAP too (Heating Energy Assistance Program). She is on Social Security and I know she worked all of her life as a practical nurse at a local hospital on Long Island. She has a small pension, but even after moving off Long Island to cheaper digs in the Upstate She still is at the poverty level.

I’m sure that anyone reading this can share stories worse than this. People in the U.S. are losing everything. We used to be the World’s top producer of steel. We don’t make it here anymore. We stopped producing many things in the United States. In fact we’ve shipped out just about every type of industry overseas except for Earth moving vehicles, automobiles (but they are outsourcing much of that too), and the Industrial Military Complex. We make weapons of mass destruction on a massive scale. We are the World’s largest arms merchant and our military budget is six times as large as our nearest competitor.

This list is based on the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database for 2010 (in constant 2009 US$). It also includes military expenditure data as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009.[1]
The world's top 7 largest military budgets in 2010. Figures sourced from SIPRI[1]
Military spending
Military spending as percentage of GDP
Rank Country Military expenditure, 2010[2] % of GDP, 2009
1 United States 698,105,000,000 4.7%
2 China 114,000,000,000 2.2%
3 France 61,285,000,000 2.5%
4 United Kingdom 57,424,000,000 2.7%
5 Russia 52,586,000,000 4.3%
6 Japan 51,420,000,000 1.0%
7 Germany 46,848,000,000 1.4%
8 Saudi Arabia 39,200,000,000 11.2%
9 Italy 38,303,000,000 1.8%
10 India 36,030,000,000 1.8%
11 Brazil 27,120,000,000 1.6%
12 Australia 26,900,000,000 1.9%
13 South Korea 26,550,000,000 2.9%
14 Spain 25,507,470,000 1.1%
15 Canada 21,800,000,000 1.5%
16 Israel 16,000,000,000 6.3%
17 United Arab Emirates 15,749,000,000 7.3%
18 Turkey 15,634,000,000 2.7%
19 Netherlands 11,604,000,000 1.5%
20 Afghanistan 11,600,000,000j 1.8%
The fact is that the United States spends 42.8% of the entire Worlds military spending. Is that figure OK with any of you? Why do we have a military budget that is six times the amount of China’s? Why are we in wars all over the globe? Was Libya a threat to national security?

This government we have today is totally out of control. The President has had four people killed without any judicial presence. It was by executive order. This President has killed two American citizens in Yemen without any legal charges against them. If they had committed crimes that could be proved, they could have been tried in absentia and if convicted, could have gotten the death penalty. Instead, the President declares them a menace to the State and orders their execution. Is this the democracy our founding fathers envisioned? I think not.
The occupy movement in Oakland saw the police in riot gear shooting tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and concussion grenades at the protesters that were exercising their First Amendment rights. They hit a former Marine that had served two combat tours in the Middle East. His brain swelled and they put him in a medical coma. We can only hope that Scott Wilson will recover. This hasn’t stopped the occupy movement in Oakland; they are back larger than before. We should all salute them.

I have over 400 articles on Op-Ed. I’ve been trying to explain what’s happening to as many people as I possibly can. Now I feel a bit useless. So many people now know the truth about this country. The government is a sham. Congress and The President have been bought and paid for by Wall Street and the corporations. When the primaries went on in 2008 I warned everyone about Obama. I did a little research at OpenSecrets.org. I found out that Obama’s largest campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs. Now the cabinet and other parts of the Administration are filled with Goldman Sachs alumni. Is this ridiculous or what?

I don’t write much anymore. It’s because the majority of the people “Get it” and there is really not much more for me to say. Every time I think of an article that should be written, I see an article on the subject, and I have nothing else to add. It really makes me happy though. Everything I’ve written about is now being said and written about by others. By no means do I believe I started this, there were many others writing about the same things as me. Now we are so successful we are really unnecessary at this particular junction. Everyone is on the same sheet of paper.

This is why I hope that this movement succeeds. There is absolutely no chance of changing the status quo by electoral politics. The game is rigged and we can’t win. We need these war criminals and power brokers out of Washington. I believe that the people are speaking. This won’t go away. It will only get larger with each decision by the government to wage more wars and cut down our civil liberties. We don’t want to live under a fascist “security state”. We want to live in a free society where laws are passed for the peoples benefit and not just for the rich and powerful.

Tomorrow I’ll be at Occupy Greenville, yeah it’s here too. If you live around Greenville, SC, maybe you should come too. I’m making preparations to go to Wall Street in the next couple of weeks; maybe I’ll find something I will want to write about. Meanwhile, I hope you all will keep this movement going. It’s the only chance we have.

Fascism in Ten Easy Steps

2011-10-28T00:31:00.001-05:00

Just a reminder, I know many have seen this. It's worth watching again, especially the way they are treating the occupy folks.

Occupy Oakland-Who are They Protecting?

2011-10-27T09:12:00.000-05:00

The Destruction of Libya and the Murder of Muammar Gaddafi

2011-10-26T20:44:00.000-05:00

by P. Ngigi Njoroge, 24 October, 2011.

I get terribly affected by the kind of things that are happening today, and confess to not being able to be dispassionate.

But some important facts we should keep in view if we want to remain sane and work out a saving response to European and American criminal aggression against us are the following.

Muammar Gaddafi came from an Arab tribe living in Libya. He belonged to a culture completely different from American and European culture. He therefore did not—and never pretended to—champion Western values of so-called “democracy” and “freedom”. This, however, did not prevent him from being a force for good for his people and for some other African peoples. When 42 years ago he took over power through a BLOODLESS coup—mark this: he did not have to slaughter his own people to overthrow King Idriss’s government (a lethargic government that allowed the Libyan people to live in poverty and underdevelopment—he took measures to ensure that Libya’s oil wealth was used for the benefit of the Libyan people. Over the decades he created a genuine welfare state with state-of the-art medical facilities accessible to all Libyans, with state funded educational facilities, initiated afforestation of large areas of Libya, and lifted the status of Libya to a middle-income economy. Non-Libyan black Africans flocked to Libya to seek employment. One Kenyan who was working in a Libya-based company when the Europeans started the troubles in March this year was distraught: he spoke of the high standards of living in Libya and his comfortable life, where you’d buy petrol for 10 Kenya Shillings a litre!

Gaddafi was not a modern European or American to believe arrogantly and foolishly that good governance consists only in regular elections and the limited term of a ruler. Like a Ghanaian commentator wrote the other day, Gaddafi believed he had devoted those 42 years of his rule taking care of the welfare of his people.The ridiculous thing is that Westerners believe only systems of governance developed by themselves are to be adopted. People forget that there are good alternative systems indigenously developed by others. For example, the Agikuyu practised democracy before they had the misfortune of being conquered by the white predators, and had 35-year cycles of ruling generations handing over power peacefully to another generation.

Gaddafi assisted freedom movements in other countries of Africa, notably South Africa. He armed and financed the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela when the western powers were doing normal business with the white-dominated apartheid (race-separation) regime. When Bill Clinton visited newly independent South Africa and criticized Libya under Gaddafi, Nelson Mandela rebuked him using the following words: “We cannot join you in criticizing the people who helped us in our darkest hour.”

It is an absolute shame to see the mainstream media, including the Kenyan media, join in mouthing cliches about “dictator Gaddafi”, “despot Gaddafi”, and the “tyranny” suffered under Gaddafi. The other day a local newspaper published a tasteless, highly offensive cartoon about Gaddafi. This is all due to ignorance and brainwashing by the Western Media Juggernaut. We have many Africans who are quite incapable of thinking as themselves and for themselves. You can call such people mental and spiritual slaves. These people miss one aspect of Gaddafi’s character and ideals. Gaddafi believed that the Arabs were the descendants of Black Africans and taught his people that they owed special respect to blacks. (One of his sons, Hannibal, was named after a famous black African general who used elephant-mounted soldiers to fight the Roman army around the time of Christ; Hannibal served the state of Carthage which was geographically situated in Libya.) And Gaddafi put in place a policy where black Africans were welcomed into Libya as employees and even members of the Libyan army. Gaddafi further championed the idea of the African Union, housing the Arabs of his country and the vast black population of sub-Saharan Africa. It is said that by the time he died, he had conceived the idea of an African Bank which would compete against the white-dominated World Bank.

Of course the so-called mainstream media wouldn’t appreciate such things; and neither would they be horrified by what the “revolutionaries” have been doing—including the rounding up and massacring of black people while putting others in concentration camps.

Neither are these mental slaves capable of grasping the enormous shame, horror and deceit of the campaign of the West against Gaddafi. The Great Lie is that there was a popular uprising against Gaddafi. Rather it was an armed rebellion, engineered in Paris and other western capitals, and its success guaranteed by the use of the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction by America, France and Britain. ONE THING IS CLEAR: GADDAFI HAD MASSIVE POPULAR AND LOCAL ARMED SUPPORT and would have defeated the rebels if massive missile rocket and air bombardment had not been used by the American, French and British murderers. He lasted more than six months, a man leading a country of only 6.5 million people against an alliance of countries housing close to 500 million people. To my mind Gaddafi was a lion-like figure fighting against shameless bullies, men absolutely devoid of honour: Barrack Obama, David Cameron, and Nicholas Sarkozy. These assassins have entered the pages of history for their brutal and ignominious acts.

The lesson for us self-respecting Africans? We can expect more horrors from these people who wield enormous military power. But we have a mighty weapon against them: building awareness about their intentions, crying out loudly against their grotesqueness and unfitness to claim the right to lead the world. We can call them their real names: bullies, greedy predators, robbers of other people’s resources, deceivers and tellers of great lies. And, of course, I can see the rest of the world grouping together for mutual self defence: Africa, India, Brazil and other South American countries, Russia and China. The days of these mis-rulers are numbered.

Yeah, I just said that!

Let Them Worry About Us

2011-10-19T08:42:00.000-05:00

Let Them Worry About Us

By Timothy V. Gatto

I’ve been silent as these Occupy protests have been taking place, not only at Wall Street (the root of it all), but around the country including Greenville, SC, my adopted hometown. The reason I’ve been silent is because everything I’ve heard people say is what I have been writing about for the last seven years. I really don’t have much to add. I was planning to go to DC but my family was dead set against it. I take over 12 medications a day and can’t afford a hotel room at this time. They were afraid I’d get too caught up in what was happening there and forget to take my medicine and end up as a casualty. Probably in my heart of hearts I believe they were right. Knowing myself, I probably would have left in a stretcher. 60 isn’t that old, but with a heart bypass and being a recovering Cancer patient, maybe I erred on the right side for once.

I’m 60 years old and I feel just as proud of the people at the barricades as if they were my own children or Grandchildren. This is their time and I don’t wish to steal their thunder. The reason I’m writing today is because of what I see happening to this idealistic movement. There are very powerful and intelligent people that want to stop us. They don’t wish to just stop us, but as the movement gets larger, they want to control us. Just as the Tea-Party was co-opted by the right side of the GOP, the Occupy movement is fair game for the pseudo-liberals within the Democratic Party. Move-On, political leaders and others have already made overtures towards the Occupy movement. Like we really need them, like Jesse James needed that picture hung on the living room wall.

The media, after ignoring Occupy Wall Street for a week, was keen to break their silence and ask what it was that we believe in. When they received a plethora of answers, they regaled in in the different answers they received. They laughed at the protestors, telling the MSM that they “had no real agenda”. To those that know nothing, it could very well appear that people indeed had no unified cause.

Even so, that is their strength, not their weakness. Their prime motivations for taking to the streets are not just political issues. They are practical and moral issues. The demonstrators have many issues. When a reporter asks a group of protestors why they are protesting, odds are that ten different people will give them ten different answers Here is but a few reasons they have given:

1. The top 1% holds more wealth than the bottom 95%.

2. We bailed out the banks and Wall Street with anywhere from 800 billion dollars to over 14 trillion dollars depending what figures are used.

3. Banks are STILL NOT Lending to small businesses.

4. The infrastructure is still not being rebuilt.

5. The Federal Reserve is still printing money and providing loans to foreign banks, with no Congressional oversight.

6. Unions are being dismantled piece by piece.

7. Student loans are increasingly hard to come by and are loaded with skyrocketing interest.

8. The Middle-Class is still seeing its yearly income drop while the bankers and those that work for the largest financial institutions are seeing marked increases in their yearly income (including bonuses).

9. We are fighting wars for resources all over the World for profits. The Defense budget is exploding.

10. We are assassinating Americans abroad along with foreigners suspected of working with “Terrorist’s” without due process.

11. We are supporting the worst kind of regimes on the planet providing that they work in our interests.

12. We are killing civilians with unmanned aircraft without any kind of congressional or moral oversight.

13. We are fomenting a war between Iran and the U.S. based on circumstantial “hearsay” evidence.

14. We still don’t know how 9/11 happened and who was involved.

15. Republicans and Democrats are calling for the end of entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

16. Republicans (and some Democrats) want to lower taxes on the top 1% in spite of huge disparities between the rich and the poor.

17. Universal health care is being compared to a totalitarian form of government, even though the majority of industrial nations have it.

18. The U.S. is the leader in the incarceration of it's own citizens.

19. We continue to use depleted Uranium, napalm and cluster bombs on our enemies despite the fact that these weapons are clearly in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

20. We have a political system that allows the top 1% of the people being allowed to dictate who will be the candidates in upcoming elections.

These are just a few of the problems we face in America. I have been writing about these problems for almost ten years. It is only lately that people are finally starting to understand what this nation is facing. Writers such as Noam Chomsky, Stephen Lendman, David Swanson and others, just to name a few, have been regularly sounding the clarion for years.

There is only one way to change the current political paradigm in this nation. Going to the polls and electing the candidate of their choice will accomplish nothing. With the recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporation and investment houses to provide unfettered money into the political campaigns spelled the death of our democracy (whatever was left of it, I’m loath to report.

I’m heartsick, but I feel a stirring of hope that I haven’t felt for many years. I sincerely believe that sanity is gradually creeping into our consciousness. For so long I felt that when I wrote an article I was “preaching to the choir” and said as much. I felt Paul Craig Robert’s pain when he wrote that he could no longer keep writing about the loss of our American experiment in a different way of governance because people were no longer interested. I’m glad he didn’t give up.

We can’t give up either. We have no choice. This is not America, at least not the America that they taught us to believe in so long ago. I don’t remember the debate that gave the Federal government or the President the power to take a human life without any legal justification. Killing someone for what they believe in, as long as they don’t take a life themselves, isn’t something that’s written into any law that I’ve ever read. Sending aircraft into a sovereign nation to destroy a nation’s infrastructure while snuffing out the lives of others sounds like something out of a bad horror movie.

That’s just the half of it. While killing people in cold blood and calling it “collateral damage” as we have done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Central and Latin America is barbaric, so is cutting the wages of ordinary citizens of our own country especially when Mothers and Fathers can’t keep their children fed and properly clothed because something called “Free Enterprise” has reduced them to paupers.

These useless eaters that drain the economy and take the American dream out of the hands of those that are accustomed to “the good life” seems to be the real crime in America today. Taxing those that make over $250,000 a year seems to be the most terrible thing this nation has ever proposed. Over and over we hear that taxing the rich will mean that those that hire average Americans won’t be able to provide good jobs for working families (as if they are providing those jobs now). The great Republican hope, Ron Paul is desperately trying to convince us that we all have “A right to work”. That sounds great until you realize that “right to work” States are the ones that allow anyone to work in a Union shop, breaking the backs of the Unions. Right to work States are among the poorest States in America.

He doesn’t care much for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security either. The Department of Education is another “Federal monstrosity”. I wonder what kind of schools Mississippi and Alabama would come up with on their own. Maybe they could get credit helping Daddy fix the tractor. Maybe the whole family could get job training at the local flea market or at yard sales.

The Democrats seem to believe that these occupy events are good for Democratic ideals. Nothing could be further from the truth. After the phony blustering in the halls of Congress, when they meet up with their Republican friends and the lobbyists at the local watering hole, we can see that they all have the same agenda. There are very few Democratic lawmakers that don’t belong to the much touted 1%. Just ask Senator Frank Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank about their “good deal” Countrywide cut-rate mortgages after they worked on those banking regulations.

When the Banks and investment houses took their bail-outs without any disclosure and Elizabeth Warren raised hell about the secrecy on who got what, was it any wonder why she wasn’t nominated to be the Federal Consumer Watchdog? There ARE some good people in Washington, but they are difficult to find. It would be a blessing to see her elected Senator in Massachusetts.

I think we are all a little bit tired of those that say they are acting in our best interests. Maybe they don’t have our best interests at heart, but they are definitely acting. The Supreme Court is another great bunch of actors. Citizens United pulled off a financial Coup D’état. Now the richest of the rich can buy their own Senator or Congressman…legally. For that matter, foreign governments can get representation for a price. Israel has been doing it for years.

Occupy Wall Street is a Godsend (if you believe in that sort of thing). I live in South Carolina. It’s a State full of good people, hardworking, but not the richest people in the nation. That’s why I’m astounded to see my neighbors vote against their best interests. I went to a town hall meeting with that intellectual giant Sen. Jim DeMint. South Carolina is the thirty-seventh richest state in the United States of America, with a per capita income of $18,795 (2000). Yet I stood and watched him launch a tirade against Medicare and Social Security that had the good people of Greenville giving him a standing ovation. One of my favorite things to do is to count the right-wing bumper stickers on the back of a 25 year old pickup truck through the smoke bellowing out of the exhaust pipe.

On January 6, 2007 I wrote Clean Money and Democracy . In this article I wrote;

“The things that turn me off about the Democrats are that they are deep into the corporaracy that is now the form of government that rules our country. The United States is hardly a democracy, not that it really ever was. Our country now has politicians that are responsible to their corporate masters and not to the people that elect them”.

For those that made it to NY, or to an occupy near their home like I did, I salute you. You did the right thing. This is probably the single most important thing we could be doing. I’m convinced that once we realize just how much impact these protests have, it will empower us to change this country. The thing that scares the powers that be the most is to see the people empowered.

The proverbial worm has turned. This is just the beginning. We have demonstrated that we can and will act. This won’t stop here. There is a way to make our voices heard. We don’t need the same people that have abused us to lead us. This is our time. This isn’t the Democrats time, and it sure isn’t the Republican’s time. This is the people’s time and our voice will be heard. We really are the 99%. Let them worry about us.

timgatto@hotmail.com Read Tim's Books "Complicity to Contempt" and "Kimchee Days" at Oliver Arts and Open Press. Read Tims blog "Liberalpro" on Kindle.

Democrats Try to Co-Opt OWS

2011-10-15T22:07:00.000-05:00

From: Lorna Salzman
Date: Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 10:17 AM
Subject: Fwd: MoveOn. Democrats attempting to co-opt Occupy Wall Street Movement (surprised?)
To: lsalzman2@verizon.net

THIS IS A MUST-READ FOR ALL OF YOU. IT WAS PREDICTABLE AND THE THREAT IS REAL. BUT AT LEAST WE CAN IDENTIFY OUR ADVERSARIES CLEARLY.

The Occupy Wall St. protest is one of the best and most relevant protests in recent times. Its relevance needs to be compared to the recent Washington DC protest against the Keystone tar sands pipeline orchestrated by Rev. Bill McKibben. The difference between these two is striking in one key respect:
OWS is addressing the ROOT CAUSES of our problems, not the symptoms. It is shouting out the names of the people and institutions who are responsible. But the McKibben demo, like all of his futile flabby flops, refused to address root causes. McKibben is the Van Jones of the anti-OWS movement.

McKibben, 350.org, 1Sky, and its allies have yet to target anything but the energy industry. They have nothing to say about the political and economic forces that control national energy policy or the array of forces that drive American overconsumption and its fixation on economic growth. The same capitalism that drives Wall St. drives our national energy policy. And the same liberals that Steve Horn attacks below - note the prominence of Grist's Dave Roberts yet again as well as Van Jones - are the same ones who refuse to address the root causes of global warming or develop a sane energy policy moving us off fossil fuels.

The OWS protest is therefore an incredibly significant event and, one hopes, the first of many. But as Horn points out, those who understand what it is really about - the liberal establishment and the Democratic Party - will not rest easy. They are probably chewing their nails and plotting on how to infiltrate, subvert or eventually discredit this movement.

Fortunately some of the leaders on the left have joined the protest movement (which they did not do with regard to climate change), so they are fully aware of what the Democrats will do. But the Dems, Van Jones and the Center for American Progress and MoveOn have been outed. Whatever they do now will clearly be seen as authored by them, not by the OWS protest movement. The confrontation will not be far off. The Dems and CAP will get anxious and fearful and this will lead them to get down and dirty, attacking and discrediting the "radicals". And just remember the last time they tried this was their squashing of Ralph Nader's Green Party candidacy in 2000 (they succeeded with the help of Dems like Medea Benjamin....now with OWS it's deja vu all over again).

However, they will have a hard time because 1)the public supports the protest and 2)the Democrats are the ones chiefly responsible, in their bailout of and protection of Wall St. The comparison to the Vietnam protests and the Johnson administration is apt. The Democrats were in the hot seat for the war, as Obama and the Dems are now. This is undeniable and clear to all. All the Dems can do, short of arresting the protesters or acting as provocateurs to violate the law, is to infiltrate and subvert the movement, using their "credible" vehicles like MoveOn and CAP. In this case they decided to set up a separate organization with Jones (see below) to deflect attention and perhaps attract supporters away from OWS.

The defection of Van Jones, if indeed it is a defection since Jones was clearly an establishment figure chosen by Obama to lend some "color" to his administration, is not surprising in the least. Jones' role in being the token minority pseudo=leftist in the Democratic administration was of course cut short, but now they have found another means of using his image, reputation and talents. But now he has been outed too. Their cards are on the table. But I think they are going to be unpleasantly surprised at the aces their opponents have in the hole.

LS

A 'beware' item:
======
MoveOn.Org and Democrat Friends Attempt to Co-Opt Occupy Wall Street Movement
Tuesday 11 October 2011
by: Steve Horn, Truthout | News Analysis

Demonstrators with the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zucotti Park in New York, October 7, 2011. Protests in Wall Street section of New York enter their third week, with similar efforts springing up in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle. (Photo: Michael Appleton / The New York Times)

Gandhi once said of growing movements of social protestation, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." The trajectory of the ever-evolving and growing Occupy Wall Street movement follows the same pattern almost to a "T," with slight variation.

Now, apply that model to the most recent public relations and marketing ploys of organizations like MoveOn.org, the ascendant "Reclaim the American Dream Movement" and the general segment of society author and journalist Chris Hedges calls the "Liberal Class" in his most recent book titled "The Death of the Liberal Class" (of which the former two are both a part).

In so doing, one can observe a perfect case study of the liberal class in action, in four distinct acts, with one exception: "then they fight you" can be replaced with "then they attempt to co-opt your movement."

Act One - Getting Ignored: In the early planning stages of Occupy Wall Street, few eyes were on those working behind the scenes to make this vision a reality. With little funding backing their cause, the activists calling for this action, to those even paying any attention to them at all (few and far between), seemed quixotic or at the very least, overly optimistic. This was the case even to those highly sympathetic to the cause and its accompanying ideology.
How in the world does a rag-tag bunch of activists take on the financial power center of the world that calls the shots politically in statehouses around the country, on a federal level and around the world? Because the task was such a monumental undertaking, these activists were essentially ignored all throughout the planning stages and into the opening days of the occupation itself.

The liberal class, predictably, was nowhere to be seen in the planning stages of Occupy Wall Street, wholeheartedly ignoring the fact, or simply not even knowing the fact, that this occupation was in the works.

Act Two - Getting Laughed at: Once it was seen that, while not yet a movement, the people occupying Wall Street had, at the very least, legitimate grievances, the liberal class resorted to scornful tactics like mockery of the type of people in the movement - ad hominem attacks, if you will.

The scorn was well-depicted by liberal environmental blogger, Grist's David Roberts, who tweeted, "I've been reading about #occupywallstreet for the last hour or two & it's just horrific. Practically designed to discredit leftist protest." It was also on perfect display with liberal blogger David Atkins, who mockingly tweeted, "If you want to #occupywallstreet, 1) shave 2) wear some decent clothes 3) coordinate signs about inequality 4) get a media spokesperson." The diatribe proceeded for multiple tweets, Atkins having listed ten points.

In a post titled, "What's behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?" Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald aptly explained their behavior and tactics, writing, "Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives ... are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke."

The liberal class, though, quickly realized that Occupy Wall Street was gaining traction, with leaders of the left like Francis Fox Piven, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein,Cornel West and Joseph Stiglitz joining the cause in solidarity, and its leaders realized that it must co-opt the movement while time is still on its side.

Act Three - Co-Option: With Occupy Wall Street off the ground, but its longevity still in flux, MoveOn.org and its cousin, the Center For American Progress, and Van Jones' Reclaim the American Dream Movement, were nowhere to be found. Instead, they were busy planning the Take Back The American Dream Conference, which took place from October 3 through October 5.

"Taking back the American Dream," Jones said in an interview appearing on AlterNet, will be a three-step process.

First, the planned November 17 "Rising Tide of Protest," a protest, led by the Reclaim the American Dream Movement, will be held in a network of cities throughout the United States. As FireDogLake's David Dayen explained, "[The] November 17 protests announced by the American Dream Movement ... [are] a one-day protest across multiple cities across the country that organizers hope will be a massive activation of their supporters."

Second, an amalgamation of coordinated house meetings and online teach-ins. "We're going to try to get a million leaders in America online and talking with each other. And that's going to be a major piece," said Jones.

Third and most importantly to an organization "powered by," (aka a project of) MoveOn.org, which among other things, is an organization that raises campaign money for Democratic Party candidates, Jones said the 2012 elections are a vital piece of the puzzle. "And then there's a third piece and it's new - and it seems to have escaped people's notice - and that's that we've said we're going to run 2012 people for office in 2012. Now, that's a big deal," Jones stated.

"We're talking about U.S. senators who want to run as American Dream candidates - soon to be announced. We've reached out to the House Democratic Caucus; there are House members who want to run as American Dream candidates," he continued.

What this translates to, in layman's terms, is the very process of co-opting a growing movement of democratic resistance and trying to replace it with a sales pitch to go out in 2012 and vote Democrat. Jones and the Democratic Party operations in disguise, namely the likes of MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress, are taking a page out of the Dick Armey and Koch brothers' Tea Party co-option playbook with this one.

Indeed, many forget that before the Tea Party was an Astroturf movement funded by Armey and the Koch brothers, it was an enraged grassroots movement, led mostly by Ron Paul libertarians. Then it got co-opted and now it is a rotten pawn of corporate elites.
If Occupy Wall Street organizers are not careful, this could also be their destiny.

Act Four - Win or Be Co-Opted? That Is the Question: Occupy Wall Street, now three weeks into the occupation, now finds itself in a pivotal moment. Will the nonpartisan, anti-establishment movement allow itself to be co-opted by the Democratic Party serving powers that be, i.e. by the MoveOn.orgs and Center for American Progresses of the world, or will it remain a strong, left, independent force that grows with each passing day and strikes fear into what the late sociologist C. Wright Mills calls the power elite?

One thing is for certain - the liberal class is working overtime to co-opt a burgeoning social justice movement.

Exhibit A: On October 5, Day 19 of Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn.org sent out an email calling on clicktivists (as opposed to activists) to "Join the Virtual March on Wall Street." "The 99% are both an inspiration and a call that needs to be answered. So we're answering it today, in a nationwide Virtual March on Wall Street to support their demand for an economy that serves the many, not the few ... Join in the virtual march by doing what hundreds have done spontaneously across the web: Take your picture holding a sign that tells your story, along with the words 'I am the 99%,'" wrote Daniel Mintz of MoveOn.org.

John Stauber is a longtime critic of organizations like MoveOn.org and Center for American Progress, and founder and former executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy as well as co-author of "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You," a book that exposes how corporations and vested interests work to co-opt movements for change. In an interview, he stated, "Don't be fooled. This will primarily be an effort to co-opt the language and energy to salvage Obama and the Dem Party. This is how you co-opt movements. The Occupy Wall Streeters are not leader oriented. Van Jones will become the voice of this in the mainstream,"

"The same thing happened to anti-war in 2007. MoveOn.org was, to the mainstream, the voice of that movement," Stauber continued. "It is easy to read between the lines. For one thing, there is no criticism of Obama in the 'Reclaim the Dream' messaging and marketing. No one with a national reputation is going to do anything to undermine his re-election efforts. There is huge money in supporting Obama and nothing but pain and punishment in not - both desperation and self interest are driving this at this point in time."

As Stauber alluded to, one only has to look a few years down the memory hole to see that, as William Faulkner wrote in "Requiem for a Nun," "The past is never dead. It's not even past!"

In an article about how the Democratic Party, teaming up with MoveOn.org and other like-minded apparatchiks, viewed the Iraq war as a "gift" to wield for electoral purposes in the 2006 elections, Stauber wrote, "And how have the Democrats treated their gift now that they control Congress? The Democratic House and Senate have continued to fund the war while posturing against it ..."

Later, in that same piece, Stauber juxtaposed the operatives with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), an organization that is against imperialistic foreign policy no matter who is in office, writing, "[IVAW] are not the concoction of a liberal think tank or PR firm; they have very little funding; they are not avoiding criticism of Democrats; and they are not playing political games trying to bank-shot Democratic candidates into the White House and Congress in 2008. They are in open non-violent revolt against US foreign policy, criticizing politicians of all stripes who would exploit the war for political gain."

Fast forward five years and a nearly parallel situation exists. An independent and democratic economic justice movement, ground zero of which exists at the power center of economic injustice, namely Wall Street, has now spread to every corner of the country in some form or fashion within the framework of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Democratic Party vultures are waiting to swoop in, steal the thunder and then make sure the focus is on electing Democrats, who are just as much to blame as Republicans for the ascendancy of Wall Street. If anything, they are even more to blame for the pacification role they play in co-opting the overwhelming swath of the left time and time again, no matter what horrible policies they pass.

Will Occupy Wall Street of 2011 be a repeat of the Iraq war of 2006? Similar forces are at bay, that is for certain.
It will all depend on activists deciding whether they choose to be used as a "gift," or if they choose to remain independent of the forces of co-option.
Act four, to say the least, should be interesting.
Creative Commons License

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Steve Horn
Steve Horn is a researcher and writer at DeSmogBlog. He is also a freelance investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter at @Steve_Horn1022.

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George Stephanopoulos: " So, Hugh, it sounds as if the left is going to give Obama a lot of leeway."

Hugh Hewitt: "Oh, the left is going to ride that bus no matter where it goes, no matter how sharply right it turns."

Worse than the Cold War or Vietnam - America Today

2011-09-30T11:20:00.001-05:00

I have to admit that I'm really pissed off. It's no longer just being angry about the situation in Washington; it's about what's happening to America. This country is failing. People are unemployed, and we are neglecting the poor and homeless. What's happening here? Where is the government when it comes to protecting the welfare of the people? Why are so many crazies in the House and Senate? I’m talking about my Senators; Jim DeMint and Bang-Bang Lindsey Graham who used to be sane. The South Carolina Senators do not represent me. I talk to a lot of people who used to be Republicans. They are ashamed of their party. Don't count on South Carolina voters to vote for another crazy Republican.

They won't vote for Democrats either. Most people are sick to death of all partisan crap that comes out of Washington. The federal government doesn't understand what's happening in this country they only care about who feeds them. Both parties are supported by corporate contributions. The days of representative democracy are over in America. We the people who don't live in the upper 10% of the income bracket don't stand a chance. We have nobody who really can do anything in Washington when most of the legislators are wards of the corporate world.

Voting in America is a bad joke. Maybe local elections are legit, but Federal elections are a set-up sham to put in the best person that can provide corporate income. A corporation is not a person and does not deserve personhood. If you examine the corporate model of any large corporation, most could be diagnosed as sociopaths, with interest not in community or the people working for them (except those at the top), with no other interest but the bottom line. That is no way to run a country. Some of these despicable psychopathic Defense Industries would love to have a big war with Russia or China? WTF?

Sorry about the language but I’m extremely irate right now. I think that the mess in this country is coming to a head. There are so many people that are confused and angry in this country as they watch the wealthiest 10% make windfall profits while the middle class lost an average of $2,000 a year in wages.

States are trying to bust up unions like that shark Walker who is a puppy hound of the Koch Brothers. The Postal Service is defying its Union and attempting to lay off 35,000 workers. Sorry, but they won’t beat that union. This too could get ugly. Remember the phrase “Going Postal”? Just watch the fireworks from that union. They won’t surrender quietly; you can take that to the bank.

Where is the media coverage of the Wall Street protest? That in itself shows that the mass media is government controlled. Wait until October 6th, a million or more people will be there and they will have to cover the event. I’ll be there to take video for Op-Ed News, Dandelion Salad and The Real News Network. I’ll ask Rob Kall for a press pass. Watch me get arrested, press pass or not. This is just a screed, but I really feel that this country is ready to blow. There are so many issues that need addressing. We need to stop all of these wars. We really need to stop killing people in other (Muslim) countries. We need to stop executing people on bogus evidence that was engineered by the District Attorney that paid people to testify against Troy Davis who was executed in Georgia.

Not only executions, but incarceration has gone from 87,369 to 129,336 from 2000 to 2009. That’s incredible. The private corporate prison system is making big bucks on inmates. We have more of our population incarcerated than any other country on Earth!

Rank Country/Entity Prisoners per 100,000

1 United States 743

2 Russia 577

3 U.S. Virgin Islands 561

4 Saint Kitts and Nevis 551

5 Rwanda 545

6 Georgia 537

7 Palau 478

8 British Virgin Islands 468

9 Belize 449

10 Bermuda 428

(Wikipedia)

It’s a F**King Gulag! I’ve heard stories of doing medical experiments on prisoners and harvesting organs from the executed. What kind of country is this? We have torture sites in other countries? We have bases in over 177 countries. Why? Where are they getting that money? They’re getting it from us, the taxpayer and selling debt to the Chinese so they can go to war with them, if this isn’t an odd little world than I must be seriously deluded.

I don’t believe I’m deluded. I see the crap that they throw at us and brand it as “foreign policy”. What a load of shit. “We are still chasing the enemies of democracy that mean to harm us”. We’re making America safe by bombing the crap out of the Middle East, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and God knows where else. I’m a little tired of it, aren’t you?

Who set us up as “Director of the World” anyway? Just who the hell are we to tell other countries how to live? We can’t even solve our own problems. This damn country is falling apart around our ears and we’re busy out conquering other nations. What a load of shit. We’re growing poppies in Afghanistan and stealing Iraq’s oil. That’s not the half of it. In Libya we destroyed their infrastructure so that they will have to go to the IMF and the World Bank to get loans they can’t repay so the Rothschild’s can foreclose on their country. The first thing that the provisional government in Libya wanted was a central bank. Who gave them that idea? When do revolutionaries ask for a central bank as one of their first demands? Libya was one of a handful of nations that didn’t have a Rothschild central bank. Syria is another, so is Cuba. We’ll make sure the evil bastards get in there too.

Everyone needs to wake the hell up and see what’s happening. We are all being taken for a big ride and we’re not going to like the outcome. Selling war and making arms and munitions just isn’t going to sustain us, it will cripple us and make us the target of every nation that we have screwed over. We are a target because we are causing most of the problems with our interference. The entire world is starting to hate us. The world was bamboozled by Obama as most of the “progressives” in America. Look at how he’s turning out.

We have a country that is in the hands of scoundrels. There is no honor in our Federal Government and its policies. We have become a nation of thieves and murderers. The only way we will change it is for the people to stand up to this government and make a statement that they can’t ignore.

I was in West Potomac Park when the worm turned in 1972. Almost a million people settled in Washington DC for three days. Nixon was flown out of the White House to Camp David for his safety. That was when John Kerry was still a thinking human being instead of a corporate pansy. We changed the direction of the nation for a moment. We stopped a War that killed 56,000 American boys. I was in the active Army at the time and was still in my fatigues. When they came on their horses with their white helmets and clubs, Kerry asked me if I was active duty. I said yes. He then asked me if I had a clearance and I told him “Top Secret”. The Vietnam Vets against the War had me out of Washington in about 20 minutes. At every intersection they had a guy in fatigues directing traffic with walkie-talkies to let me through. It was a moment in my life I’ll never forget.

We need to be in Washington on October 6th. If you can possibly be there, go. Go to David Swanson’s site http://warisacrime.org/ and get a ride or make accommodations to stay to change our government. It’s up to us to do it… nobody else will do it for us. Think about the future of your country. Think about how your kids will be living in a corporate controlled police state (The polite word is “Security State”). Think of jackbooted Homeland Security people banging down your door for writing an article like this in a few years, or maybe now.

We are living George Orwell’s 1984. The mujahedeen are Oceania or Eurasia. It’s all a lie. These are wars for resources. Don’t kid yourself anymore. We are in deep shit. This is worse than the Cold War or Vietnam. I’ve lived through it all and I have never seen things as bad as they are now. We are living in a dream world brought to you by the controlled mass media. Everything is not “all right”. There is no “American Exceptionalism” it’s just naked power. Try to understand that and get your butt to Washington DC and be prepared to get arrested. This is the time to take back America and make it into what it was supposed to be, “The land of the free” and be peace loving people. It’s up to us to make this change. We need the government to respond to the people, not the corporations and the military-industrial-complex. This is the real world we live in. This is our chance. Please excuse me for this rant.

War Crimes: From Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq The Role of General Sir Michael Jackson

2011-09-27T05:57:00.000-05:00

War Crimes: From Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq
The Role of General Sir Michael Jackson

By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26750

Global Research, September 23, 2011

Almost forty years later: The 5000 page Saville Commission Report into the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland, while calling for compensation to the victims' families, fails to identify who were the perpetrators, both within H.M government and the British Army.

"The North's Public Prosecution Service (PPS) is continuing to scrutinise the Saville report to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bring charges against British soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday on January 30th, 1972. While progress has been made on the issue of compensation there have been no substantial developments in relation to the possibility of British soldiers being charged. The PPS confirmed yesterday that the 5,000-page report by Lord Saville into Bloody Sunday remains under examination but that it is not yet in a position to rule on whether or not criminal cases can be taken against British soldiers involved in the shootings over 39 years ago." (Irish Times, September 22, 2011)

The payment of compensation is intended to whitewash Her Majesty's government.

Were these spontaneous killings or were members of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment obeying orders from higher up?

While the possibility of bringing criminal charges against British soldiers has been raised, the broader issue of "Who" within the British military and intelligence apparatus ordered the 1972 killings in Derry has never been addressed.

What was the underlying command structure of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment which carried out the massacre?

General Sir Robert Ford was the Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland in 1972. The First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment was under his jurisdiction.

Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford was commander of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 PARA), which constituted an elite special force unit of the British Army.
Wilford described by the BBC as "a well-respected high-flying officer" was exonerated by the 1972 Widgery Tribunal.

While attention has been placed on the role of Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, the role of his adjutant, Captain Michael Jackson (who at the time had links to the Army's Intelligence Corps) has been obfuscated since the outset of the investigation in 1972. Jackson was allegedly also instrumental in the cover-up.

Captain Michael Jackson was second in command (Adjutant) of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment. He started his military career in 1963 with the Intelligence Corps. The Int Corps is a unit of military intelligence and counter-intelligence attached to the British Army, which played a key role in Northern Ireland. The so-called "14 Intelligence Company" also referred to as "14 INT" or 'The Det" "was a British Army special forces unit, established during the Troubles, which carried out surveillance operations in Northern Ireland". ( http://www.eliteukforces.info/the-det/).

The head and shoulders of a white man in a dark suit and tie with dark, greying hair.
General Sir Michael Jackson

Under the orders of Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford, Captain Michael Jackson and thirteen other soldiers of the parachute regiment opened fire "on a peaceful protest by the Northern Ireland civil rights association opposing discrimination against Catholics. In just 30 minutes, 13 people were shot dead and a further 13 injured. Those who died were killed by a single bullet to the head or body, indicating that they had been deliberately targeted. No weapons were found on any of the deceased." (Julie Hyland, "Head of NATO Force in Kosovo was Second-in-command at "Bloody Sunday" Massacre in Ireland", World Socialist Website, 19 June 1999).

Both Wilford and Jackson were rewarded rather than prosecuted for their role in the 1972 massacre.

Wilford, who subsequently retired from the Armed Services, was awarded the Order of the British Empire by H.M. Government in October of 1972, less than a year following the January 1972 massacre.

Michael Jackson's role in Bloody Sunday did not hinder his military career. In fact quite the opposite. He ascended to the highest rank of the British military, before retiring in 2006 from the rank of Commander of the General Staff (CGS).

In 1982 he became Commander of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, and Brigade Commander in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s.

From his stint in Northern Ireland, he was reassigned under United Nations auspices to the theatre of ethnic warfare, first in Bosnia and Croatia and then in Kosovo.

In the immediate wake of the 1995 ethnic massacres in the Krajina region of Croatia largely inhabited by Serbs, General Michael Jackson was put in charge as IFOR commander, for organising the return of Serbs "to lands taken by Croatian HVO forces in the 1995 Krajina offensive". (Jane Defense Weekly, Vol 23, No. 7, 14 February 1996).

And in this capacity Jackson "urged that the resettlement [of Krajina Serbs] not [be] rushed to avoid tension [with the Croatians]" while also warning returning Serbs "of the extent of the [land] mine threat."(Ibid)

Following his stint in Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia, Lieutenant General Mike Jackson led the June 1999 land invasion of Yugoslavia and was posted to Kosovo as KFOR Commander.

In Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, General Michael Jackson applied the counter-insurgency skills acquired in Northern Ireland. In Kosovo he actively collaborated with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) headed by Commander Agim Ceku.

Ceku and Jackson had worked together in Croatia in the mid-1990s. Agim Ceku was Commander of the Croatian forces which conducted the Krajina massacre under "Operation Storm". Meanwhile, Jackson was responsible for the repatriation of Krajina Serbs, under UN auspices.

In turn, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), a mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon was responsible for advising the Croatian HVO forces in the planning of "Operation Storm". The same mercenary outfit was subsequently put in charge of the military training of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) largely integrated by former KLA operatives.

1999 War Criminals Join Hands (Kosovo 1999).

From Left to Right:

Hashim Thaci, Head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with links to Al Qaeda and Italian organized crime. Hashim Thaci had ordered political assassinations directed against the Party of Ibrahim Rugova. Thaci was a protégé of Madeleine Albright.

Bernard Kouchner, Head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in Kosovo (July 1999- January 2001), instrumental in elevating the KLA to UN status through the formation of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC).

General Michael Jackson, Commander of KFOR Troops in Kosovo.

General Agim Ceku, Military Commander of the KLA and the KPC, investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) "for alleged war crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in Croatia between 1993 and 1995." ( AFP 13 Oct 1999)

General Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Commander.

While General Michael Jackson during his tenure as KFOR Commander in Kosovo (1999-2000) displayed token efforts to protect Serb and Roma civilians; those who fled Kosovo during his mandate were not encouraged to return under UN protection. In post-war Kosovo, the massacres of civilians was carried out by the KLA (and subsequently by the KPC). Both NATO and the UN turned a blind eye to the KLA's targeted assassinations.

Upon completing his term in Kosovo, General Sir Michael Jackson was appointed Commander in Chief, U.K. Land Command (2000-2003).

And in February 2003, barely one month before the onslaught of the Iraq war, he was promoted to Chief of the General Staff (CGS)

As Chief of General Staff General Michael Jackson played a central role in the 2003 Iraq military campaign in close liaison with his US counterparts. He also played a key role in the military occupation of Southern Iraq, led by British forces based in Basra.

"Bloody Monday", September 19, 2005 in Basra, Iraq

On Monday September 19, 2005, two British undercover "soldiers" dressed in traditional Arab garb, were arrested by the Occupation's Iraqi police driving a car loaded with weapons, ammunition and explosives. Several media reports and eyewitness accounts suggested that the SAS operatives were disguised as Al Qaeda "terrorists" and were planning to set off the bombs in Basra's central square during a major religious event.

The two SAS soldiers were "rescued" by British forces in a major military assault on the building where they were being detained:

"British forces used up to 10 tanks " supported by helicopters " to smash through the walls of the jail and free the two British servicemen."

The incident resulted in 7 Iraqi deaths and 43 injured.

(The Times, 20 Oct 2005 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1788850,00.html)

"Compensation" to the Families of the Victims

Instead of investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the Basra massacre led by British forces. the British government confirmed that it "will pay compensation for injuries and damage caused during the storming by the army of a police station in Basra in the operation to release two SAS soldiers" (The Scotsman, 15 Oct 2005).

The wording was reminiscent of the Bloody Sunday massacre: no prosecution, no investigation, no justice, but "compensation" as a cover-up to war crimes.

Captain Ken Masters of The Royal Military Police (RMP) in Basra had the mandate to investigate the circumstances of the "rescue" operation. To this effect, he also indicated that he would cooperate in his investigations, with the civilian Iraqi authorities.
The Royal Military Police (RMP) is the corps of the British Army responsible for the policing of service personnel, both in the U.K. and overseas.

As part of his RMP mandate, Captain Masters was to investigate "allegations that British soldiers killed or mistreated Iraqi civilians". Specifically in this case, the inquiry pertained to the British attack on the prison on 19 September, where the 2 SAS soldiers were being detained. The attack had been authorized by CGS General Sir Michael Jackson and British Defence Secretary John Reid.

"Compensation to the families of alleged Iraqi victims who died during the fracas depended on the official investigation being carried out by Captain Masters [of the Royal Military Police in Basra] and his team."

That investigation was never carried out. Captain Ken Masters of the RMP allegedly "committed suicide" in Basra on the 15th of October 2005.

According to the MoD "the circumstances [of his death ] were not regarded as suspicious." [emphasis added] The MoD report suggested that Captain Masters was suffering from "stress", which could have driven him to commit suicide. In the words of a Defense analyst quoted by the BBC:.

"Capt Masters was part of quite a small outfit and his job would have been quite stressful. It's quite an onerous job..... I think, [there is] quite a lot of stress involved" (BBC, 16 October 2005, emphasis added).

There were apparent disagreements between the MoD and Captain Masters who was responsible for investigating "the actions and behavior of military personnel". (The Independent 17 Oct 2005).

The attack on the 19th of September to "rescue" the two SAS men was launched under the command of Brig John Lorimer. In a statement, Lorimer said that the purpose of the raid was to ensure the safety of the two SAS men.

On October 12, CGS General Sir Michael Jackson was in Basra for consultations with Brigadier John Lorimer.

CGS General Michael Jackson, had previously approved the rescue operation of the elite SAS men: "Let me make it clear that it was important to retrieve those two soldiers." (quoted in The Times, 12 Oct 2005).

Three days later, following General Jackson visit to Basra, Captain Master was dead:

"Captain Ken Masters, the top British military police investigator working in Iraq, was found hanged at his barracks in Basra [on October 15]."

No subsequent RMP investigation into the Basra "rescue" following Captain's Masters untimely death was undertaken.

No police investigation was carried out into the unusual circumstances surrounding the death of Captain Masters.

It was an open and closed case.

The matter passed virtually unnoticed in the British media. Nonetheless, the Daily Mail (17 Oct 2005), dismissed the suicide thesis: "Little is known of his private life and it is said to be unlikely that the pressures of work would have led him to commit suicide."
Apologizing for War Crimes

From Bloody Sunday in January 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Basra, Iraq in September 2005.

Last year in June 2010, General Sir Michael Jackson "apologised for Bloody Sunday" in a TV interview broadcast by the BBC.

(Click link to hear Jackson's statement http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8742373.stm )

"The former head of the British Army, General Sir Mike Jackson, has offered a ''fulsome apology'' for the events of Bloody Sunday, following the publication of the Saville report into the events of 30 January 1972 in Londonderry. The findings called the fatal shootings of civilians by British soldiers a ''catastrophe'' for Northern Ireland. Prime Minister David Cameron has said the killings of 13 marchers was ''unjustified and unjustifiable''.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8742373.stm

Prime Minister David Cameron said "He was "Sorry".

Apologizing for War Crimes? What are the legal implications? Indictment or "Self-indictment"?
.

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Looming Tragedy: Vision of the “New Libya”: Visit the “New Iraq.”

2011-09-06T07:22:00.000-05:00

Another “Liberation”, another Unimaginable International Criminal Tragedy

By Felicity Arbuthnot

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26353

Global Research, September 3, 2011

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. (Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900.)

As Eid, the great post Ramadan celebration of that month of abstinence, self sacrifice and reflection, dawned on Libya, marked there this year on August 31st, the NATO “liberated” country, after seven months, looks a lot like “liberated” Iraq after eight years.

Queues of cars now wait for petrol in another oil rich country; other queues form, carrying containers for water. The multibillion dollar development of Libya’s vast underground aquifers had been dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world. Libya`s water supply infrastructure has been been systematically bombed throught the country.

Shops are without food.

The all is: “absolute disaster”, according to an eminent legal observer, very familiar with the country.

And with electricity largely off, those seeking knowledge as to whether friends and relatives are alive, injured, fled, dead, find internet, and phones dead.

As the terribly injured overwhelm hospitals, many are bombed, damaged or without power and pharmaceuticals.

No power: no incubators, life support machines or surgery.

Another country with a modern, developed infrastructure reduced to a pre-industrial age – with the rebuilding contracts reportedly already being divvied out – in the West.

NATO Members, however, eat, as their bombs destroy humanity and vital necessities for the living. Over a “working lunch”, on the 14th of April, they “deplored violence” and underlined the: “need ... to restore water, gas, electricity and other services ...”

Still depriving others of the means to cook, or of any semblance of normality, at another “working lunch” (June 8, 2011) they further discussed their: “clear mandate to protect civilians (and) populated areas ...taking the utmost care to avoid civilian casualties.” This as: “Tripoli experienced what were perhaps the heaviest daylight bombardments by NATO since the air strikes began in March.” (Guardian, 8 June 2011)

As they masticated and munched, they vowed to bring “a speedy resolution ... to put an end to the violence”, under “Operation Unified Protector.” They are delusional and arguably psychotic.

Just twenty four hours later, on the 9th of June, the decade long destruction of Afghanistan eclipsed Libya. NATO Defence Ministers met to declare it: “NATO’s top operational priority.” General David Petraeus, returned from the ruins and about to be confirmed as CIA Head: “explained ... progress.”

“A working lunch commenced at 13.00 hours.”

A number of lunches later, on the 23rd August, NATO spokeswoman, Oana Lungesco, re-affirmed their “mandate to protect civilians.”

How this squares with hitting: “over five thousand [official figures] legitimate targets [in a] 24/7 operation [with] over twenty thousand sorties”, is confusing.

The actual number of strikes has not been reported. Its in the tens of thousands.

Equally so is how destruction of services essential to maintaining life, State institutions, schools, hospitals, archeological sites and treasures, attacking of all which is illegal under swathes of international law, are included in this “legitimacy.”

By September 1st, NATO operations from 31st March had reached: “a total of 21,090, including 7,920 strike sorties.” (1)

In context, this latest “shock and awe” brigandage is being rained down by a twenty eight country alliance, on a country of 7 million. The population of Tripoli is over 1 million (or was, until unknown numbers of souls were liberated from their lives in a bombardment which, started with the unleashing of one hundred and ten Cruise missiles, on March 20th, eight years to the day - GMT- of the start of the Iraq invasion.)

Coincidentally, the considerably Western backed and funded “uprising” in Benghazi, which preceded the bombing, began on the 15th of February, the eighth anniversary of millions, in the largest global peace rally in history, from Manchester to Melbourne, Hong Kong to Honolulu, rallying against an attack on Iraq.

The invaders though, have “learned from past mistakes.” The “New Libya”, will not be like the “New Iraq.” It is surely beginning to look chillingly like it. A legitimate head of State again has a million dollar bounty on his head and is “wanted dead or alive.” Since “boots are on the ground” only unofficially, the pack of playing cards with the “most wanted” on, has not yet been printed. But times are hard, and in 2003, the United States Playing Card Company, commissioned by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, received orders for 750,000 of the packs within a week. (2)

Further, if the US and UK were blindly ignorant of Iraq’s social and tribal complexities, those of Libya are more so in orders of magnitude. (3)

Just prior to the Iraq invasion, General Colin Powell was quoted as telling George W. Bush, that after the onslaught: “You will own twenty seven million people, Mr President.”

At the “Friends of Libya” gathering in Paris on 1st September, hosted by Prime Minister Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy, a gloating, unnamed British official is quoted in The Economist as saying that: “NATO’s involvement in the Libyan uprising means that now we own it.”

(For the omen-prone, watching Western threats to an ever rising number of countries, Syrian and Iran currently topping the list, 1st September marks the 62nd anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, and the Second World War.)

Sarkozy – recipient, claims Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, of his family’s funding for his 2007 French Presidential election campaign (4) - is widely reported to have been promised one third of Libya’s oil by the insurgents, the “National Transitional Council”, prior to NATO involvement. With “Friends” like these, Libya certainly needs no enemies.

“The international community will be watching and supporting” Libya, said Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, adding requirements to the new Libyan constitution. There is a “clear road map to democracy.” Afghan and Iraqi puppets, now joined by Libyan ones.

When it comes to the rebuilding of Libya, “investors can’t call the tune”, was one theme, it must be “Libyan led.”

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague blew that lie. Britain, he said: “would not be left behind.” Much focus was on rebuilding the oil industry. Heaven forbid that too, follows the Iraq model, with the bereaved, dispossessed and invaded blowing up the pipelines – and contractors.

It also transpires that the UK’s surely mis-titled “International Development Minister”, former oil trader, Alan Duncan, allegedly, had a hand in, and connections to Swiss based energy giant Vitol, which established links with the NTC rebels, whilst starving Qaddafi’s troops of transportation fuels.

Vitol President, Ian Taylor, has allegedly donated very large sums to Cameron’s Tory Party. Opposition MPs are citing a possible covert “Libyan Oil Cell”, an allegedly billion dollar deal, questioning whether Mr Duncan’s fingerprints are on it.

As to the Conference, there was one dissenting voice. Bertrand Badie, an expert on international relations, told Xinhua: "I think this conference is a very bad sign, because [it consists in] starting a process of state building by an international conference dominated by western powers ... "

But even he did not mention mind-bending illegalities.

The half day carve up (sorry, “Meeting”) regarding assets of another sovereign land, was followed by “a dinner”, according to a US State Department spokeswoman.

Incidentally, the Paris Cabal took place on the fortysecond anniversary of the Free Officers Movement bringing Qaddafi to power on the 1st of September 1969.

“You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists", said George W. Bush on 1st November 2002. Ten years is certainly a long time in politics. There are many who would say they are now funded by the same US and protected by the might of NATO.

Activist Sandra Barr, has compiled just a small snapshot of a vast tragedy. A few incidents amongst uncounted others, “collateral” humanity, to add to a pitiless twenty year rampage through mortality, legality, basic values and all the normal hold precious:

“13 May 2011: The murder of 11 Muslim Imams in Brega.

30 April 2011: The bombing of the Downs Syndrome School in Tripoli

30 April 2011: The bombing of a Gaddafi residence, murdering Saif Gaddafi, his friend and 3 Gaddafi children.

12 June 2011: The bombing of the University of Tripoli. Death toll not yet established.

22 July 2011: The bombing of the Great Man made Waterway irrigation system, which supplies most Libyans with their drinking water.

23 July 2011: The bombing of the factory which makes the pipes for the water system, and the murder of 6 of its employees.

8th August 2011: The bombing of the Hospital at Zliten. Resulting in the murder of a minimum, of 50 human beings, many of them children. The bombing of hospitals is against all international laws, and a most grievous crime.

9 August 2011: The bombing of the village of Majer, resulting in the murder of 85 civilians. 33 Children, 32 women and 20 men.

The persistent ongoing bombing of the civilian population in Zliten and Tripoli, death toll not yet established.

David Cameron has admitted that UK special services have assisted the terrorists on the ground, in defiance of the UN mandate.”

Today, Cameron has gone further, admitting that British forces played a: “key role.”

Ms Barr demands that the ICC take a stance. Sadly, it would amaze if they did.

On the 1st of May, Muammar Qaddafi’s youngest son, Saif al-Arab, and three grandchildren were reported killed in an allied air strike on Tripoli. Another nauseating anniversary: George W. Bush, declaring: “Mission Accomplished” - the destruction of Iraq.

One can only fervently pray that we do not hear another sickening, “Viceroy” Paul Bremer wannabe, declaring: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got ‘im.” With accompanying kangaroo court and lynchings.

The “New Libya”, it seems, with its formerly free, high quality health care, is in serious trouble.

This full page advertisement by Médicins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) appeared in the Mail and Guardian (South Africa (September 1st, 2011):

‘Tripoli, Libya: Months of conflict have put extreme strain on the Libyan health system.

We desperately need more staff" - Jonathan Whittal, MSF Emergency Coordinator Tripoli, August 23.

MSF URGENTLY NEEDS:

-Trauma surgeons

-Orthopaedic Surgeons

-ER Doctors

-OT Nurses

-Obstetricians and Midwives.

Available for short term contracts (3-4 weeks) - able to leave IMMEDIATELY.

MSF has been working in eastern Libya since February.” ‘

Another “Liberation” another unimaginable, international, Criminal Tragedy.

Felicity Arbuthnot is Global Research`s Human Rights Correspondent based in London

Notes

FONT size=2>1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26332

2. http://www.enotes.com/company-histories/united-states-playing-card-company

3 http://www.temehu.com/Libyan-People.htm

4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/sarkozy-election-campaign-libya-claim

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.

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www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.

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© Copyright Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, 2011

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26353

Media Manipulation of 9/11 Truth - by Stephen Lendman

2011-09-06T07:06:00.000-05:00

Media Manipulation of 9/11 Truth - by Stephen Lendman

In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously ruled for Fox News, saying no rule or law prohibits distorting or falsifying news.

Just as Wall Street, war profiteers, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and other corporate favorites steal with impunity, it's OK for America's media to lie.

The ruling pertained to a 1996 Jane Akre/Steve Wilson Fox affiliate WTVT, Tampa reports on bovine growth hormone (BGH) dangers, Monsanto's hazardous to human health genetically engineered milk additive.

At first, the station loved them. Later, however, Fox executives and their attorneys ordered its reporters to admit falsifying evidence and produce bogus reports on BGH safety.

They refused, threatened to inform the FCC, were fired, and sued. A district court jury decided on their behalf, awarding Acre alone $425,000 in damages.

Fox appealed and won, the Appellate Court saying Acre wasn't protected under Florida's whistleblower statute, loosely interpreting it to mean employers must violate an adopted "law, rule, or regulation."

In other words, Fox simply followed "policy" entitling its stations to lie - whether on product safety or falsifying facts about anything, including 9/11 truth.

In 2005, Project Censored chose this story among its top 25 most important, titled "The Media Can Legally Lie," and lie they've done about 9/11 from that day to the present.

Those old enough to remember won't forget, including how media distortions turned it into perhaps the most hyped ever spectacle, especially on television.

For days, images of planes hitting the twin towers and their collapse were aired repeatedly.

A personal note. I was in a doctor's waiting room with others watching events on television. When the South Tower collapsed, everyone audibly gasped, unaware as I was how or why, let alone what lay next.

When the North Tower collapsed 30 minutes later, unsettling thoughts crystallized enough to make me sense much more was involved than met the eye or what news reports claimed.

It was almost anti-climactic when WTC 7 collapsed at 5:21PM. Notably, BBC's Jane Standley reported the event at 4:54PM New York time, 27 minutes in advance.

Later she claimed she didn't "remember minute-by-minute what she saw," or perhaps (like BBC's management) doesn't want to explain how she could report an event before it happened without advance knowledge.

Earlier in the afternoon, I smelled a rat and wrote my brother, saying: "They're drinking champagne in the White House tonight," precise words I'll never forgot. Yet they failed to imagine the horror-filled decade to come.

Back then, the whole world watched the horrific spectacle, including planes hitting the towers, both bursting into flames, desperate people jumping out of windows to avoid incineration, and then collapse at near free-fall speed, later proved (but unreported) by controlled demolitions.

A 2002 HBO film titled, "In Memoriam" called 9/11 "the most documented event in history," stopping short of revealing what really happened or why.

It provided a collage of images produced by news crews, filmmakers, amateur videographers and photographers, some of them risking their lives by so doing.

For three or more days, US television covered the event and its aftermath nonstop commercial free. In the process, they hyped war hysteria belligerently.

On October 7, 26 days later, it began against a nation having nothing to do with the attack. However, falsified reports held Osama bin Laden responsible. Later, the FBI admitted no evidence linked him to the incident.

Nonetheless, Washington demanded Taliban authorities extradite him. They, in turn, rightly wanted proof of his culpability.

None, of course, was provided to let the Bush administration go to war on false pretenses. March 2003 against Iraq followed.

Both wars rage today, besides Obama's naked aggression, notably against Libya - another nonbelligerent country America and its NATO allies systematically destroyed, butchering tens of thousands of Libyans on the pretext of protecting them.

America's post-9/11 decade is best called its visible fall from grace, waging permanent wars on humanity for wealth and power, never for falsified hyped reasons everyone needs to understand and condemn.

But don't expect America's media to explain. They're, in fact, complicit by regurgitating official lies, vilifying Islam, and resonating war fever discourse for intervention, featuring one-sided reports and commentaries.

Absent was critical debate. Vital questions weren't asked. Militarism instead was promoted as the solution to "global terrorism."

For days, political and military officials and spokespersons shared air time with so-called national security state experts and various crackpots, ranging from right-wing to hard-right to the lunatic fringe.

The common theme argued was that America was at war with Islam, Samuel Huntington's racist "clash of civilizations" notion, "good v. evil," "freedom (and our) way of life" against "forces of darkness."

Bush administration officials used cowboy metaphors, including wanting bin Laden "dead or alive," calling its campaign a "crusade" until criticism forced its change to "Operation Enduring Freedom," and vowing to "smoke out and pursue" barbaric evil doers.

Their underlying theme was fear because it sells, even when cause for it doesn't exist.

At the same time, Bush's "war on terrorism" didn't mention democracy, instead emphasizing his fighting for "freedom" mantra, no matter the human toll or illegitimacy of the Big (9/11) Lie, permitting America's war on the world to follow.

Inaugurated on January 20, 2001, his nationally televised address to Congress declared war on terrorism, describing a conflict between "those governed by fear (who) want to destroy our wealth and freedoms" and others wanting to defend it.

Thereafter, the major media hyped fear, promoted revenge, and defended falsified notions that Washington wages wars for freedom and democratic values by ridding nations of dangerous tyrants, especially ones threatening Americans.

In other words, wars of aggression are liberating ones. Civil and human rights are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with lawless governments, committing crimes of war and against humanity against one country after another.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda replaced "the evil empire." Terrorism became the new mantra. Manichean good v. evil notions were hyped. Fear and hate overwhelmed sanity and defending right over wrong, as well as holding venal politicians accountable for acting lawlessly with impunity.

An earlier article explained that when America goes to war, managed news follows, spreading rumors, half-truths, misinformation, and willful deception about targeted nations, regimes, leaders, and other enemies, whether despots of democrats.

John Pilger said "Journalism is the first casualty" of war. "Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship (and willful misreporting) that goes unrecognized in the United States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission (makes all) the difference between life and death for people in (targeted) countries...."

It suppresses debate, substitutes fiction for facts, filters out truth, and cheerleads in lockstep with government policy, right or wrong.

As a result, it supports America's right to be judge, jury and executioner, as well as get victor's spoils because that's why all wars are fought, never for falsified reasons, regurgitated on air and in print ad nauseam.

Because America's business is war, supported by its major media, war profiteering is a growth industry, and as famed comedian Jimmy Durante used to say:

"Everybody wants ta get inta da act," and they do.

In addition, not telling the truth and holding venal politicians accountable for taking America to war on false pretenses lets them do it again with impunity.

At best, damage control tactics follow, including Bush officials relying on 9/11 Commission liars to let them off the hook by sanitizing policy and concealing facts.

David Ray Griffin brilliantly exposed them in his book titled, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions." He explained that Bush officials "deliberately" failed to prevent the attacks or, in fact, were "actively involved in (their) planning and execution...."

His introduction calls his book important because of the significant consequences of 9/11, taking America to war on false pretenses, and its major media lying about it supportively.

His reasons for wanting to examine the 9/11 Commission's report included:

-- to determine if Bush's "war on terrorism" response to 9/11 was appropriate;

-- to learn if the Commission's account was "definitive;" and

-- "whether the success of the attacks would have been less likely if the recommended structural changes had already been in place."

A fourth reason was the "possibility of a cover-up," and indeed that's precisely what happened. Instead of "provid(ing) the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11," damage control suppressed them.

The Commission, of course, was hardly "nonpartisan," "impartial," or "thorough," especially with Philip Zelikow as executive director, a Republican Bush administration member at the time, appointed to assure whitewash, not full disclosure.

In his exhaustive account, Griffin brilliantly, "painstaking(ly) and devasting(ly) demoli(shed)" the Commissions findings, according to Peter Dale Scott.

Though Griffin didn't address America's media, he nonetheless exposed its complicit role. They regurgitated Commission lies as truth, the way they always represent powerful interests at the expense of good journalism, commentaries and full disclosure.

To this day, 9/11 mythology remains official dogma on air and in print. As a result, most Americans remain unaware of the biggest lie of our time and its horrific consequences, touching their lives directly.

A Final Comment

Sunday marks the 10th 9/11 anniversary. This writer plans two more articles about the big lie and its aftermath to be published on or about the date.

On September 10 and 11, the Progressive Radio News Hour will feature more discussion on it, especially its horrific consequences.

Expect America's media also to react. The Washington Post already features "Full coverage: Remembering 9/11," with features headlined:

"After 9/11, security guard on high alert," against what wasn't explained.

"Brought together by catastrophe," focusing on marriage vows exchanged, not 9/11 truth.

"Twin misses his other half," killed in the attack on the Pentagon, instead of explaining the toll on millions of dead Afghans, Iraqis, and their families, their countries destroyed by US lawlessness.

"Trying to find the new normal," about a wife coping in the aftermath of her military husband's death, again ignoring a global catastrophe because of America's post-9/11 wars.

On September 4, New York Times writers Jeremy Peters and Brian Stelter headlined, "Media Strive to Cover 9/11 Without Seeming to Exploit a Tragedy," saying:

Coverage of its 10th anniversary will walk "a fine line between commemoration and exploitation. Mindful of this, television networks and magazines and others planning special coverage....are approaching it differently," some commercial free.

Unfortunately, freedom from truth already is featured. Neither writer explained, instead saying news outlets will vary in their approach with special print and on air specials.

As on previous anniversaries, they'll cover everything except what Americans most need to know - the truth.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Labor, GM and Libya

2011-09-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

It’s Labor Day. Of course the holiday is meaningless due to the fact that labor has lost most of its clout. The death of organized labor started the day Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers who were striking for better working conditions mainly because the enforced overtime they were subject to were leaving air traffic controllers exhausted and falling asleep on the job and putting the public in danger. So today we still celebrate Labor Day, even though labor is almost totally controlled by the corporate state. It looks good on paper though.

The labor union (UAW) now owns shares of GM corporate stock. They also run the union’s pension plan. The wage for new workers went from $27.00 an hour to $14.00. Now union members must ask themselves the question; When the union makes a decision on where the company should be heading, are they making the decision as the head of the worker’s labor union or as an investor of the company? You can see that GM is off-shoring many manufacturing jobs to China and Brazil. I’d say that the question has been pretty well answered.

It is a crime that our representatives in Washington have neglected labor. Not only have they turned a blind eye to the shenanigans of GM, they have also turned their backs on labor in the state of Wisconsin. Obama, the standard-bear for the Democratic Party and had the endorsements of labor across the nation, stayed silent as the GOP in Wisconsin stripped the public employees’ unions of their right to bargain collectively. Some model for the Democratic Party.

I can’t help but to weigh in on the situation in Libya. While Gaddafi wasn’t a perfect ruler, he did more for his country than most rulers do for theirs. I’d like to mention that most of the rhetoric mentioned by the mainstream media, and some progressives writing in the alternative press that seemed to swallow government propaganda hook, line and sinker, neglected to point out.

1. Literacy rates have risen from 10% of the nation to around 90% of the population. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_literacy_rate_in_Libya)

2. Women have the right to go to school and hold down a job.

3. The life expectancy of Libyans has risen by twenty years and the infant mortality rate has dropped dramatically.

4. Libya had the highest Human Development Index ranking in Africa. This is a U.N. measurement of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income. (http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/)

5. Most basic necessities: food, housing, fuel, healthcare and education were either heavily subsidized or became entirely free. Subsidies were considered the most effective way to redistribute the national wealth.

6. Libya had a lower incarceration rate than the Czech Republic (or the United States)The nation of Libya ranked 61st in the world while the US has been number one in incarceration for years. (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?area=all&category=wb_poprate)

7. Libya has the third highest GDP on the African continent, South Africa has the highest, and Algeria is second. (http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/)

There are other questions regarding this “spontaneous” Libyan uprising. Here is a revealing fact: The insurgents have recovered the old flag of Libya - black, red, green. This flag has disappeared from Libya for the last 40 years, yet there were thousands of flags in the demonstrations from day one. So it was prepared! Flags had to be given, to be prepared. Did these flags “spontaneously” appear too?

Obama rushed into yet another military conflict, this time with no authorization from Congress. It seems that the legislative branch of the government has forfeited its responsibility under the Constitution and given the executive branch a free hand to engage the U.S. in any war of its choosing.

I believe that this entire episode in Libya will come back to haunt us. The interim government has already adopted Sharia (Islamic) law and declared Libya to be a “Muslim State”. Maybe when a real government is elected (if the elections are not manipulated) it will be a secular state. Don’t hold your breath.

So we find that two pillars of this country have been re-designated. The role of labor has been redefined. Labor has become part of management at GM, and the President of the United States has gained absolute power over our military.

Somehow, I don’t feel like celebrating.

Tim Gatto is the author of "Complicity to Contempt" and "Kimchee Days" published by Oliver Arts and Open Press. You can reach Tim at timgatto@hotmail.com.

William Blum's Anti-Empire Report

2011-09-01T21:51:00.000-05:00

The Anti-Empire Report

September 1st, 2011
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
Libya and the world we live in

"Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?"
– Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011

A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.

In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.

Well, let's see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.

The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like "humanitarian".

If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.

If the Triumvirate decides that it wants to overthrow the government of Libya, though that government is secular and has used its oil wealth for the benefit of the people of Libya and Africa perhaps more than any government in all of Africa and the Middle East, but keeps insisting over the years on challenging the Triumvirate's imperial ambitions in Africa and raising its demands on the Triumvirate's oil companies, then the Triumvirate will simply overthrow the government of Libya.

If the Triumvirate wants to punish Gaddafi and his sons it will arrange with the Triumvirate's friends at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for them.

If the Triumvirate doesn't want to punish the leaders of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan it will simply not ask the ICC to issue arrest warrants for them. Ever since the Court first formed in 1998, the United States has refused to ratify it and has done its best to denigrate it and throw barriers in its way because Washington is concerned that American officials might one day be indicted for their many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, said to the world in 1998 that the United States should be exempt from the court's prosecution because it has "special global responsibilities". But this doesn't stop the United States from using the Court when it suits the purposes of American foreign policy.

If the Triumvirate wants to support a rebel military force to overthrow the government of Libya then it does not matter how fanatically religious, al-Qaeda-related,1 executing-beheading-torturing, monarchist, or factionally split various groups of that rebel force are at times, the Triumvirate will support it, as it did certain forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope that after victory the Libyan force will not turn out as jihadist as it did in Afghanistan, or as fratricidal as in Iraq. One potential source of conflict within the rebels, and within the country if ruled by them, is that a constitutional declaration made by the rebel council states that, while guaranteeing democracy and the rights of non-Muslims, "Islam is the religion of the state and the principle source of legislation in Islamic Jurisprudence."2

Adding to the list of the rebels' charming qualities we have the Amnesty International report that the rebels have been conducting mass arrests of black people across the nation, terming all of them "foreign mercenaries" but with growing evidence that a large number were simply migrant workers. Reported Reuters (August 29): "On Saturday, reporters saw the putrefying bodies of 22 men of African origin on a Tripoli beach. Volunteers who had come to bury them said they were mercenaries whom rebels had shot dead." To complete this portrait of the West's newest darlings we have this report from The Independent of London (August 27): "The killings were pitiless. They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came."

If the Triumvirate's propaganda is clever enough and deceptive enough and paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi-initiated high tragedy in Libya, many American and European progressives will insist that though they never, ever support imperialism they're making an exception this time because ...

The Libyan people are being saved from a "massacre", both actual and potential. This massacre, however, seems to have been grossly exaggerated by the Triumvirate, al Jazeera TV, and that station's owner, the government of Qatar; and nothing approaching reputable evidence of a massacre has been offered, neither a mass grave or anything else; the massacre stories appear to be on a par with the Viagra-rape stories spread by al Jazeera (the Fox News of the Libyan uprising). Qatar, it should be noted, has played an active military role in the civil war on the side of NATO. It should be further noted that the main massacre in Libya has been six months of daily Triumvirate bombing, killing an unknown number of people and ruining much of the infrastructure. Michigan U. Prof. Juan Cole, the quintessential true-believer in the good intentions of American foreign policy who nevertheless manages to have a regular voice in progressive media, recently wrote that "Qaddafi was not a man to compromise ... his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to." Is that clear, class? We all know of course that Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron made compromises without end in their devastation of Libya; they didn't, for example, use any nuclear weapons.
The United Nations gave its approval for military intervention; i.e., the leading members of the Triumvirate gave their approval, after Russia and China cowardly abstained instead of exercising their veto power; (perhaps hoping to receive the same courtesy from the US, UK and France when Russia or China is the aggressor nation).
The people of Libya are being "liberated", whatever in the world that means, now or in the future. Gaddafi is a "dictator" they insist. That may indeed be the proper term to use for the man, but it must still be asked: Is he a relatively benevolent dictator or is he the other kind so favored by Washington? It must also be asked: Since the United States has habitually supported dictators for the entire past century, why not this one?

The Triumvirate, and its fawning media, would have the world believe that what's happened in Libya is just another example of the Arab Spring, a popular uprising by non-violent protestors against a dictator for the proverbial freedom and democracy, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt, which sandwich Libya. But there are several reasons to question this analysis in favor of seeing the Libyan rebels' uprising as a planned and violent attempt to take power in behalf of their own political movement, however heterogeneous that movement might appear to be in its early stage. For example:

They soon began flying the flag of the monarchy that Gaddafi had overthrown
They were an armed and violent rebellion almost from the beginning; within a few days, we could read of "citizens armed with weapons seized from army bases"3 and of "the policemen who had participated in the clash were caught and hanged by protesters"4
Their revolt took place not in the capital but in the heart of the country's oil region; they then began oil production and declared that foreign countries would be rewarded oil-wise in relation to how much each country aided their cause
They soon set up a Central Bank, a rather bizarre thing for a protest movement
International support came quickly, even beforehand, from Qatar and al Jazeera to the CIA and French intelligence

The notion that a leader does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state is too absurd to discuss.

Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region. Then the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. As to Why? Take your pick of the following:

Gaddafi's plans to conduct Libya's trading in Africa in raw materials and oil in a new currency — the gold African dinar, a change that could have delivered a serious blow to the US's dominant position in the world economy. (In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars; sanctions and an invasion followed.) For further discussion see here.
A host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: "We've got a big image problem down there. ... Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don't trust the US."5
An American military base to replace the one closed down by Gaddafi after he took power in 1969. There's only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It'll perhaps be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.
Another example of NATO desperate to find a raison d'être for its existence since the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact.
Gaddafi's role in creating the African Union. The corporate bosses never like it when their wage slaves set up a union. The Libyan leader has also supported a United States of Africa for he knows that an Africa of 54 independent states will continue to be picked off one by one and abused and exploited by the members of the Triumvirate. Gaddafi has moreover demanded greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations.
The claim by Gaddafi's son, Saif el Islam, that Libya had helped to fund Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign6 could have humiliated the French president and explain his obsessiveness and haste in wanting to be seen as playing the major role in implementing the "no fly zone" and other measures against Gaddafi. A contributing factor may have been the fact that France has been weakened in its former colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and the Middle East, due in part to Gaddafi's influence.
Gaddafi has been an outstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policies; and on occasion has taken other African and Arab countries, as well as the West, to task for their not matching his policies or rhetoric; one more reason for his lack of popularity amongst world leaders of all stripes.
In January, 2009, Gaddafi made known that he was considering nationalizing the foreign oil companies in Libya.7 He also has another bargaining chip: the prospect of utilizing Russian, Chinese and Indian oil companies. During the current period of hostilities, he invited these countries to make up for lost production. But such scenarios will now not take place. The Triumvirate will instead seek to privatize the National Oil Corporation, transferring Libya's oil wealth into foreign hands.
The American Empire is troubled by any threat to its hegemony. In the present historical period the empire is concerned mainly with Russia and China. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The average American neither knows nor cares about this. The average American imperialist cares greatly, if for no other reason than in this time of rising demands for cuts to the military budget it's vital that powerful "enemies" be named and maintained.
For yet more reasons, see the article "Why Regime Change in Libya?" by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, and the US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks — Wikileaks reference 07TRIPOLI967 11-15-07 (includes a complaint about Libyan "resource nationalism")

A word from the man the world's mightiest military powers have been trying to kill

"Recollections of My Life", written by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, April 8, 2011, excerpts:

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us ... I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. ... In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy". They know the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip.

The state of our beloved capitalist system, early 21st century

I pay attention to the fat content of my food, so I was pleased to find a can of Pam canola oil cooking spray that had 0 grams fat per serving. Great, can't do better than zero fat, can you? I used it often for a few months ... until one day I took a closer look at the "Nutrition Facts" ... Yes, it said 0 grams fat per serving. A serving. How big was that? Let's see ... "Serving Size about 1/4 second spray" ... Hmmm, how does one press down on a button for 1/4 second? Is it humanly possible? Even the manufacturer had to say "about". I had been taken. My hat is off to you Capitalist Robber Barons — You're good!

The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks fell 635 points on Monday August 8.

On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.

Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fall again; this time by 520 points.

And on Thursday ... yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.

The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions.

Upon such marvels of mankind countless people build careers, others wager their life savings, philanthropic foundations and universities risk much of their endowments, and conservative sages deliver sermons to the world on the wisdom and sacredness of the free market.

Main Street is the climax of civilization.
That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton store, Hannibal invaded Rome
and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.
– Sinclair Lewis, "Main Street", 1920

Do the economic fundamentals really change dramatically overnight? Or is our economic system as psycho as our foreign policy? The Washington Post's senior economic columnist, Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14th of the four days described above: "I suppose there are some schnooks who actually believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don't radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the market averages last week were gyrating out of control."

Last month "Pope Benedict XVI denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality that he says is behind Europe's economic crisis" as he arrived in hard-hit Spain. "The economy doesn't function with market self-regulation but needs an ethical reason to work for mankind," he declared. "Man must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of profit but rather according to the common good."8

"I am a Marxist," said the Dalai Lama last year. Marxism has "moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits."9

"I don't believe in anything," said Barack Obama. "At least not really strongly." (No, I made that one up.)

Perhaps the worst outcome of the United States "winning the Cold War" is that countless progressive people think there's no alternative to the capitalist system. Seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how awful that is.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.10

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
– Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author

Notes

For example, see: The Telegraph (London), August 30, 2011: "Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime." There is a plethora of other reports detailing the ties between the rebels and radical Islamist groups. ↩
Washington Post, August 31, 2011
McClatchy Newspapers, February 20, 2011 ↩
Wikipedia, Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war, February 19, 2011 ↩
The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007 ↩
The Guardian (London), March 16, 2011 ↩
Reuters, January 21, 2009 ↩
Associated Press, August 11, 2011 ↩
Agence France Presse, May 21, 2010↩
"Yikes! Look who just endorsed Obama for 4 more years", WorldNetDaily, August 3 2011↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

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Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

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A Government Out of Control

2011-08-30T14:40:00.001-05:00

A Government Out of Control

By Timothy V. Gatto

Lately I've been wondering about good and evil and right and wrong. I guess that I think about these things because of what I see on all in the news reports. The announcers on television don't seem to blink an eye when they talk about the cities that we bomb and the resulting carnage. It's almost as if these things are just natural occurrences in the daily life of the people planet Earth. What I really can't wrap my head around is that the most war loving segment of America seems to be the Christian right.

I know that throughout history, Christians have been responsible the majority of wars in the last 500 years. I also know that the rulers used religion to obtain public support for their military adventures. This is no secret, not by any means. Most of the history textbooks have no problem revealing the use of religion as a pretext for war. I can remember how my fellow students in college shook their heads and talked about the stupidity of the people that believed in the propaganda that their rulers were using at the time.

Now these same students 30 or 40 years later are still sucking up that tired old crap that kings and queens used hundreds of years ago. Even though we have written, recorded history that people in the Middle Ages didn't have access to, we still fall for the same redundant rhetoric. You would think that by now we’d have a little better understanding of what's happening in the world now and what happened in the past. When I mention this to people, they all tell me the same thing…people know what's happening but they don't think there's anything they can do about it. What I ascertain from this is that people feel powerless to control their own government.

This then, seems to be the crux of America's biggest problem… people feel powerless to control their government. In any civilization that has ever existed anywhere, at any time, this is probably the worst possible situation that could possibly exist in any society.

No matter what the problem is, the first step in solving any problem, is acknowledging the problem in the first place. Unless people understand that there is a problem, nothing will be done to solve it. This is what's happening in the United States today. Sure, many people write about it and talk about it, but when all is said and done, the majority of people refuse to talk about it. The majority of people don’t see that having a government that is beyond the control of its citizens as a problem.

Well I would like to state for the record that we have a problem, and this problem is causing the United States of America to crumble before our eyes. Years from now, students will shake their heads in some college classroom and ask each other how any society could be so stupid. People still question how a modern European culture could fall under the spell of a madman. When I was in Germany, I asked people that survived the war how they let it happen. Everyone told me the same thing… by the time they realized what was happening; they were powerless to stop it. You can say the very same thing about the Italians. They eventually stopped Mussolini, but only when they had no other choice.

In America today we have no other choice. Unless we can get control over our government, this nation will cease to exist as a representative republic. We will either destroy ourselves from within, or we will be destroyed by others. We may not be destroyed militarily, but we will be destroyed financially. It may be too late to stop our destruction. The Soviet Union was not destroyed militarily, but today, it ceases to exist. Stalin’s birthplace of Georgia actually attacked Russia. The Ukraine, quite conceivably the most fertile farmland on the planet and the “breadbasket” of the USSR is considering becoming part of NATO. Sevastopol, the largest naval facility Russia possesses could become the home of a NATO fleet. Do you think anyone saw that coming in Moscow?

I can say with certainty that they did. Most people in the former USSR could see the nation imploding. The historical fact is that the Soviet defense budget bankrupted them. Sound familiar? At least the USSR had a reason to put so much of their GDP into defense, we don’t. When we go down the tubes, we will only have ourselves and our megalomania to blame. We can blame the government, but when all is said and done, we ARE the government. So when we sell this nation at a worldwide fire sale, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Mexico may be building a fence soon to keep Americans out, same thing for Canada.

So when you ask someone to help get this government under control and they answer you with something like “There’s not a damned thing I can do about it.” Or “I’m powerless!” ask them how powerless the people sitting in the Duma building in the early 90’s felt when tanks stated lobbing shells at it. Better yet, ask them how they thought that the people walking aimlessly in shattered burned out cities in Germany felt as they watched their daughters pairing off with Soviet or Allied soldiers so that they could help feed their families. That’s powerlessness, the kind of powerlessness that changes people forever, like when people that survived Hiroshima opened their eyes and found that their city had disappeared.

This isn’t a game. Maybe it’s a game to Michelle Bachmann or Rick Perry. Maybe it’s a game to people watching the story of “Seal Team Six” on the military channel. It probably felt like a big game to the Germans until the second winter of the Stalingrad siege. This isn’t a game. There are no do-overs. We can either get it right now and fix this overwhelming problem of a government out of control, or make plans for when it crumbles, it’s up to us. It always has been… today isn’t any different than yesterday.

Tim Gatto is the author of "Complicity to Contempt" and "Kimchee Days" from Oliver Arts and open Press. He can be reached at timgatto@hotmail.com

Manufacturing Opinion, Today's Mainstream News

2011-08-28T04:17:00.001-05:00

Since 9/11 the United States has been under a constant barrage of lies, misinformation and propaganda put out by the United States government in order to advance its global agenda. There have been many in the alternative media that have attempted to tell the truth in order that American citizens have access to facts and information that they normally would never have received from the American mainstream media. These people have been maligned and impugned and called conspiracy theorists and political radicals.

This has not deterred these truth tellers from trying to deliver the truth to as many Americans as possible under circumstances that can only be called “draconian”. One reason that the American public seems to be so gullible is because of its long history of journalists that once operated with an extraordinary amount of integrity. Because of the fourth estate's sense of responsibility to the truth, the act of deception by the government of the United States seems unfathomable. Americans have become dependent on the media and throughout its history, especially the print media. The New York Times for example has been a beacon of enlightenment over the last century. This is not the case in 21st-century America however. The New York Times, even though it claims to print the truth, has become the very symbol of propaganda not unlike Russia's Pravda during the last century.

Things have changed so radically since the middle of the last century that many Americans are getting their news from the former Soviet Union and media outlets such as Russia Today. RT is becoming a beacon of truth in a world filled with slanted news and propaganda. The same can be said of Press TV which is the overseas media outlet for the supposedly oppressed people of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Between RT and Press TV and alternative news outlets such as the real news network (TRNN) that operates worldwide and has offices in Canada and in Washington DC, that still allow Americans the luxury of receiving news that isn't slanted and propagandized like so many outlets in the American mainstream media.

There is a silver lining in this however; many people have become journalists out of necessity and a desire that people know the truth. For many, what started out as a way to register their discontent in the way that news has been presented to Americans, many Americans have found themselves becoming full-time reporters. The rise of the American alternative media has been nothing short of amazing. Websites that started out as simple blogs, have become online media giant's. A case in point is the Huffington Post which was recently sold to AOL for hundreds of millions of dollars.

While talk radio has seen to become the new stomping grounds of the American right, online print media seems to be where the American left, the liberal and progressive side of the American political scene gets its point across to the American people. There seems to be two distinctive dynamics in the American political scene. There seems to be two ways of looking at American political discourse. One is the traditional mindset of the American mainstream media. This is where politicians like Barack Obama and John Kerry can be described as progressive liberals. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If the only criterion used is what's written in the mainstream media, then Barack Obama and John Kerry could actually be liberals. This is because the views presented by the mainstream media are so skewed, that president Obama has actually been described as a centrist. In reality, it's very hard to believe that someone who has involved this country in wars across the globe for resources, and someone who has supported the corporate oligarchy at every turn at the expense of the American middle class could actually be considered part of the American left.

I talked about two distinctive dynamics in a new American political scene. The second segment is what I believe to be the true nature of American politics. This is the political arena where a middle-of-the-road politician is not one that wages war against nations that don't measure up to American political standards. This is the dynamic where politicians are judged by what they do and not what they claim to be. One cannot be considered a leftist because he happens belong to the Democratic Party. In reality the truth is most American politicians at the federal level have political views that are very much right of center. This can be ascertained by the actions of the President when in Wisconsin the Republican state government tried to break the back of the public sector unions. A real progressive would not have looked at this nonchalantly from the Oval Office. If Obama were a true progressive he would've used his office and his influence to stop Gov. Walker's brutal attack on the public sector unions. If we had an honest mainstream media, his political obituary would have been written.

If one only had the mainstream media to judge political discourse in the United States, it would appear that most politicians basically are cut from the same cloth. The fact is, most politicians at the federal level are indeed cut from the same cloth. It’s the people however, that are separated in their views and this rift is growing exponentially by the day. America has entered into an era of naked class warfare. It is not only the Republicans that refuse to tax the rich and their corporate masters. The Democrats are also to blame for the widening disparity between the rich and the poor.

When historians look back at this time in America's history, how will they be able to justify our actions across the globe? How can we defend the decision to wage war against the government of Libya under the guise of protecting the civilian population from an evil dictator while we turn a blind eye to the situation in Bahrain where the minority Sunni monarchy tortures and imprisons their people for demonstrating peacefully for more democratic government? How can we justify the adversarial stance against the Islamic Republic of Iran? It was not so long ago when we used Saddam Hussein to fight a proxy war against Iran. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran and installed the brutal regime of the Shah. The mainstream media impugns the nation of Iran with every chance it gets. Meanwhile, Iran is a nation that has not fought a belligerent war against its neighbors in over 300 years. We also vilify Hugo Chavez in Venezuela because he refuses to kowtow to the American Empire.

In conclusion, the prime reason that the American government can operate the way it does is because the media in this country refuses to report the truth about what is really happening in the world and America's role in the international community. There are very few good journalists in today's mainstream media. There are very few journalists that are willing to ask today's leaders in Washington the hard questions. The old journalistic standard of who, what, where, when and how is not part of the journalist’s toolkit. The media today explains very little about what is really happening across the world. Today's reporters have a habit of disregarding many of the facts about a story but will go to great lengths to tell you what it all means. Reporting the news today is less important than manufacturing public opinion.

First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin

2011-08-22T16:26:00.001-05:00

(With apologies to Leonard Cohen)
By Timothy V. Gatto

“They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom,
for trying to change the system from within.
I’m coming now; I’m coming to reward them,
First we take Manhattan, and then we take Berlin.”

It started in Tunisia and then spread to Algeria and eventually to Egypt. It’s still going on in Bahrain, Syria and other nations in North Africa and the Middle East. It’s also happening in Greece, Spain and most recently Great Britain. It won’t be long until it happens here. The writing is on the wall for all those that wish to see it.
All the money the Koch brothers have, all the profits that GE and other defense contractors and oil companies have will be able to stop it. Democracy is coming to the USA. It’s coming through a crack in the wall. It’s coming from the silence on the dock of the bay to the brave and bold and battered heart of Chevrolet. From the wells of disappointment where the women knell to pray, it’s coming from the deserts here and the deserts far away. Democracy is coming…to the USA.

While the leaders in Washington fight, for things that they know are not exactly right. While the poor end up with less and the rich end up with more, there are no words of wisdom from the Congressional floor. When the country is split and we fight amongst ourselves and the corporations turn their backs on this fundamental hell, we all sit and wonder where the next threat will come, while we support a war in Libya by providing all the guns.

Most people in this nation understand that what we do is wrong. To promote the death of people that haven’t caused us any harm is tragic. While the people of Bahrain continue to resist while we turn our backs on their fight for democracy is a tragedy that exemplifies the best of the worst in us. We stand up for rebels in Libya that have taken up arms against a government that provided free education health care and housing by bombing cities indiscriminately and causing a great many deaths to non-combatants while we turn a blind eye to the invasion of Bahrain. There we have Saudi Arabia, an undemocratic absolute monarchy sending in troops to keep another undemocratic monarchy from falling. Where is the morality in this?

In fact, where is there a semblance of morality anywhere that U.S. troops fight? Just who are we supporting in Afghanistan, a nation that has seen its opium production rise by over 400% since we sent troops there ostensibly to “punish” al Qaeda, an organization that was the brainchild of the CIA in Langley? Where is the morality in sending predator drones to fire hellfire missiles at anything that moves in Pakistan, Somalia and other nations?

There is a general discontent brewing right here at home. While Americans clip coupons, count their change and apply for food stamps, we watch billions of dollars being spent by a regime hell-bent on causing the most damage and death to anyone that oppose us.
Americans aren’t stupid. We see what is happening, even if the mainstream media sanitizes it on their nightly news. The people in Washington that claim to be looking out for our interests had better take a good long look at what they are actually accomplishing. What they are really doing is alienating their own citizens.

How do I know that is what they are accomplishing? It’s because the American people are reading what I write along with others that are basically telling them the same thing albeit in different ways. There is going to be a demonstration in Washington this October that will bring out hundreds of thousands if not millions of people that are fed up with wars over jobs. They are fed up with military appropriations over social programs to feed the poor and stop foreclosures on their homes. They are tired of our government propping up the bankers while ignoring the people.

They are frightened too. They are taken aback when police departments possess armored vehicles and body armor that make them appear more like combat soldiers than policemen. They are wary of being spied on by their government due to the Patriots Acts and the enhanced FISA Laws. People in the United States are becoming fearful of their own government. It has to stop.

I’m sentimental if you know what I mean,
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene,
And I’m neither left or right, but I’m staying home tonight,
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet,
Democracy is coming…to the USA
“Democracy” by Leonard Cohen

Charlie Reese's Last Column

2011-08-18T16:45:00.000-05:00

A very interesting column. COMPLETELY NEUTRAL

Charley Reese's final column for the Orlando Sentinel.
He has been a journalist for 49 years.
He is retiring and this is HIS LAST COLUMN.
Be sure to read the Tax List at the end.

This is about as clear and easy to understand as it can be. The article below is completely neutral, neither anti-republican or democrat. Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. It's a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering!

545 vs. 300,000,000 People
- By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess.

What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you. This might be funny if it weren't so true. Please read all the way to the end.

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What in the heck happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'

I hope this goes around THE USA at least 545 times! YOU can help it get there!!!

William Blum-Anti-Empire Report

2011-08-14T20:33:00.000-05:00

The Anti-Empire Report
August 9th, 2011

By William Blum

Arguing Libya

On July 9 I took part in a demonstration in front of the White House, the theme of which was "Stop Bombing Libya". The last time I had taken part in a protest against US bombing of a foreign country, which the White House was selling as "humanitarian intervention", as they are now, was in 1999 during the 78-day bombing of Serbia. At that time I went to a couple of such demonstrations and both times I was virtually the only American there. The rest, maybe two dozen, were almost all Serbs. "Humanitarian intervention" is a great selling device for imperialism, particularly in the American market. Americans are desperate to renew their precious faith that the United States means well, that we are still "the good guys".

This time there were about 100 taking part in the protest. I don't know if any were Libyans, but there was a new element — almost half of the protesters were black, marching with signs saying: "Stop Bombing Africa".

There was another new element — people supporting the bombing of Libya, facing us from their side of Pennsylvania Avenue about 40 feet away. They were made up largely of Libyans, probably living in the area, who had only praise and love for the United States and NATO. Their theme was that Gaddafi was so bad that they would support anything to get rid of him, even daily bombing of their homeland, which now exceeds Serbia's 78 days. I of course crossed the road and got into arguments with some of them. I kept asking: "I hate that man there [pointing to the White House] just as much as you hate Gaddafi. Do you think I should therefore support the bombing of Washington? Destroying the beautiful monuments and buildings of this city, as well as killing people?"

None of the Libyans even tried to answer my question. They only repeated their anti-Gaddafi vitriol. "You don't understand. We have to get rid of Gaddafi. He's very brutal." (See the CNN video of the July 1 mammoth rally in Tripoli for an indication that these Libyans' views are far from universal at home.)

"But you at least get free education and medical care," I pointed out. "That's a lot more than we get here. And Libya has the highest standard of living in the entire region, at least it did before the NATO and US bombing. If Gaddafi is brutal, what do you call all the other leaders of the region, whom Washington has long supported?"

One retorted that there had been free education under the king, whom Gaddafi had overthrown. I was skeptical of this but I didn't know for sure that it was incorrect, so I replied: "So what? Gaddafi at least didn't get rid of the free education like the leaders in England did in recent years."

A police officer suddenly appeared and forced me to return to my side of the road. I'm sure if pressed for an explanation, the officer would justify this as a means of preventing violence from breaking out. But there was never any danger of that at all; another example of the American police-state mentality — order and control come before civil liberties, before anything.

Most Americans overhearing my argument with the Libyans would probably have interjected something like: "Well, no matter how much you hate the president you can still get rid of him with an election. The Libyans can't do that."

And I would have come back with: "Right. I have the freedom to replace George W. Bush with Barack H. Obama. Oh joy. As long as our elections are overwhelmingly determined by money, nothing of any significance will change."

Postscript: Amidst all the sadness and horror surrounding the massacre in Norway, we should not lose sight of the fact that "peaceful little Norway" participated in the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999; has deployed troops in Iraq; has troops in Afghanistan; and has supplied warplanes for NATO's bombing of Libya. The teenagers of those countries who lost their lives to the US/NATO killing machine wanted to live to adulthood and old age as much as the teenagers in Norway. With all the condemnation of "extremism" we now hear in Norway and around the world we must ask if this behavior of the Norwegian government, as well as that of the United States and NATO, is not "extremist".

The Berlin Wall — Another Cold War Myth

The Western media will soon be revving up their propaganda motors to solemnize the 50th anniversary of the erecting of the Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don't like people to be free, to learn the "truth". What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returning to the East in the evening; many others went back and forth for shopping or other reasons. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. Why then was the wall built? There were two major reasons:

1) The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: "West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin." 1

In 1999, USA Today reported: "When the Berlin Wall crumbled [1989], East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism." 2 Earlier polls would likely have shown even more than 51% expressing such a sentiment, for in the ten years many of those who remembered life in East Germany with some fondness had passed away; although even 10 years later, in 2009, the Washington Post could report: "Westerners say they are fed up with the tendency of their eastern counterparts to wax nostalgic about communist times." 3

It was in the post-unification period that a new Russian and eastern Europe proverb was born: "Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth." It should also be noted that the division of Germany into two states in 1949 — setting the stage for 40 years of Cold War hostility — was an American decision, not a Soviet one. 4

2) During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country's economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions ... all this and much more. 5

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, of Washington, DC, conservative coldwarriors, in one of their Cold War International History Project Working Papers (#58, p.9) states: "The open border in Berlin exposed the GDR [East Germany] to massive espionage and subversion and, as the two documents in the appendices show, its closure gave the Communist state greater security."

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets' erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West, leading eventually to the infamous Wall. However, even after the wall was built there was regular, albeit limited, legal emigration from east to west. In 1984, for example, East Germany allowed 40,000 people to leave. In 1985, East German newspapers claimed that more than 20,000 former citizens who had settled in the West wanted to return home after becoming disillusioned with the capitalist system. The West German government said that 14,300 East Germans had gone back over the previous 10 years. 6

Let's also not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union to wipe out Bolshevism forever, and that the Russians in World War I and II, lost about 40 million people because the West had used this highway to invade Russia. It should not be surprising that after World War II the Soviet Union was determined to close down the highway.

We came, we saw, we destroyed, we forgot

An updated summary of the charming record of US foreign policy. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States of America has ...

Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected. 7
Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries. 8
Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. 9
Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries. 10
Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. 11

In total: Since 1945, the United States has carried out one or more of the above actions, on one or more occasions, in the following 69 countries (more than one-third of the countries of the world):

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Australia
Bolivia
Bosnia
Brazil
British Guiana (now Guyana)
Bulgaria
Cambodia
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo (also as Zaire)
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Fiji
France
Germany (plus East Germany)
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Honduras
India
Indonesia
Iran

Iraq
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Kuwait
Laos
Lebanon
Libya
Mongolia
Morocco
Nepal
Nicaragua
North Korea
Pakistan
Palestine
Panama
Peru
Philippines
Portugal
Russia
Seychelles
Slovakia
Somalia
South Africa
Soviet Union
Sudan
Suriname
Syria
Thailand
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam (plus North Vietnam)
Yemen (plus South Yemen)
Yugoslavia

(See a world map of US interventions.)

The occult world of economics

When you read about economic issues in the news, like the crisis in Greece or the Wall Street/banking mortgage shambles are you sometimes left befuddled by the seeming complexity, which no one appears able to untangle or explain to your satisfaction in simple English? Well, I certainly can't explain it all myself, but I do know that the problem is not necessarily that you and I are economic illiterates. The problem is often that the "experts" discuss these issues as if we're dealing with hard and fast rules or laws, not to be violated, scientifically based, mathematically sound and rational; when, in fact, a great deal of what takes place in the real world of economics and in the arena of "expert" analysis of that world, is based significantly on partisan party politics, ideology, news headlines, speculation, manipulation, psychology (see the utter meaninglessness and absurdity of the daily rise or fall of stock prices), backroom deals of the powerful, and the excessive power given to and reliance upon thoroughly corrupt credit-rating agencies and insurers of various kinds. The agencies like Moody's and Standard and Poor's are protection rackets — pay our exorbitant fees or we give you a bad rating, which investors and governments then bow down to as if it's the result of completely objective and impressive analytical study.

Then there's the exceptions made for powerful countries to get away with things that lesser countries, like Greece, are not allowed to get away with, but all still explained in terms of the unforgiving laws of economics.

And when all other explanations fail to sound plausible, the experts fall back on "the law of supply and demand". But that law was repealed years ago; just try and explain the cost of gasoline based on it, as but one example.

So there's a lot to cover up, many reasons why the financial-world players can't be as open as they should be, as forthright as the public and investors may assume they are.

Consider the US budget deficit, about which we hear a great deal of scare talk. What we don't hear is that the most prosperous period in American history occurred in the decades following the Second World War — from 1946 to 1973. And guess what? We had a budget deficit in the large majority of those years. Clearly such a deficit was not an impediment to growth and increasing prosperity in the United States — a prosperity much more widely shared than it is now. Yet we're often fed the idea of the sanctity of a balanced budget. This and other "crises" are typically overblown for political reasons; the current "crisis" about the debt ceiling for example. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, now an independent columnist, points out that "regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised the US government is not going to go out of business. ... If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, certainly, the US government is."

In economic issues that occupy the media greatly, such as the debt ceiling, one of the hidden keys to understanding what's going on is often the conservatives' perennial hunger to privatize Social Security and Medicare. If you understand that, certain things become much clearer. Naomi Klein points out that "the pseudo debate about the debt ceiling ... is naked class war, waged by the ultra rich against everyone else, and it's well past time for Americans to draw the line."

Consider, too, the relative value of international currencies. Logically, reasonably, if the British pound is exchangeable for two dollars, one should be able to purchase in Washington goods and services for two dollars which would cost one pound in London. In real life, this of course is the very infrequent exception to the rule. Instead, at places called "exchanges" in New York and Chicago and London and Zurich and Frankfurt a bunch of guys who don't do anything socially useful get together each day in a large room, and amidst lots of raised voices, busy computers, and numerous pieces of paper, they arrive at a value for the pound, as well as for a barrel of oil, for a pound of porkbellies, and for various other commodities that affect our daily lives. Why should these speculators and parasites have so much influence over the real world, the real economy, and our real lives?

As a general rule of thumb, comrades, as an all-purpose solution to our economic ills, remember this: We'll keep going around in crisis circles forever until the large financial institutions are nationalized or otherwise placed under democratic control. We hear a lot about "austerity". Well, austerity has to, finally, visit the super-rich. There are millions (sic) of millionaires and billionaires in the United States and Europe. As governments go bust, the trillions of dollars of these people must be heavily taxed or confiscated to end the unending suffering of the other 95% of humanity. My god, do I sound like a (choke, gasp) socialist?

Fidel Castro's October 15, 2010 Message on the Dangers of Nuclear War

2011-08-13T22:06:00.000-05:00

(Taken from Global Research)

The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity. This was candidly foreseen by scientist Albert Einstein who was able to measure their destructive capability to generate millions of degrees of heat, which would vaporize everything within a wide radius of action. This brilliant researcher had promoted the development of this weapon so that it would not become available to the genocidal Nazi regime.

Each and every government in the world has the obligation to respect the right to life of each and every nation and of the totality of all the peoples on the planet.

Today there is an imminent risk of war with the use of that kind of weapon and I don’t harbour the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.

The World’s peoples have an obligation to demand of their political leaders their Right to Live. When the life of humankind, of your people and your most beloved human beings run such a risk, nobody can afford to be indifferent; not one minute can be lost in demanding respect for that right; tomorrow will be too late.

Albert Einstein himself stated unmistakably: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. We fully comprehend what he wanted to convey, and he was absolutely right, yet in the wake of a global nuclear war, there wouldn’t be anybody around to make use of those sticks and stones.

There would be “collateral damage”, as the American political and military leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people.

In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.

Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 15, 2010

Riots in UK Could Forshadow Riots in US

2011-08-13T18:25:00.002-05:00

The British government has charged that the riots are being caused by an increase in “criminality”. This is patently ridiculous. What is the difference in London or Manchester now than last year? If these riots are presumed to be the act of “criminals”, then what triggered these “criminals” to riot? If “criminality” is the reason why people are on the streets destroying neighborhoods and looting shops, why is it happening all over the country? Did the “criminals” all get together and decide to stage a riot in different cities so that they could hone their “criminal” skills?
There must be some underlying reason why people feel that they need to go out on the streets and break things and to steal from shopkeepers, or was this week just a moment where all the “criminals” decided to act out all at once? This is the supposition that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron is making. This is a situation that shows just how preposterous politicians can be.

When you analyze the situation, what you see is people filing the streets and displaying very anti-social behavior. What the British government is asking the people of Britain and also the rest of the world to do is to assume that there are very many “criminals” in England. While I can agree that the people on the streets are committing criminal acts, I don’t believe that all of them decided to be “criminals”, and moreover, all on the same day. There must be an underlying reason why this happened in England. There is also a reason why the British government is using such a ridiculous assumption as to the cause of the riots.

I would like to point out a few things and also ask a few questions of the British Prime Minister;

1. Why is there such a disparity between the rich and the poor? Why has income risen for the upper classes while the lower classes have seen a reduction in theirs?

2. Why is Great Britain waging wars in Afghanistan, Libya and other countries under the guise of delivering “democracy” while they are part of a culture that worships class structure?

3. Why is it that “people of color” are living in neighborhoods that are substandard while the richest neighborhoods have very few minorities especially when you consider that the practice of slavery ended so long ago in Britain? Are the minorities just racially inferior to the white people?

4. Why is it that people of every race are rioting in the streets? Ihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giff you take PM Cameron at his word, it’s probably so that they can steal a wide-screen TV.

5. Could it possibly be that corporations are purchasing influence from members of Parliament at the expense of the common people in England?

6. Could it be the possibility that their former Prime Minister, Tonhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gify Blair, who is now facing extradition to The Hague for war crimes stemming out of the Iraq War, make citizens feel deceived about the war? http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/57361,news-comment,news-politics,war-crime-case-against-tony-blair-is-now-rock-solid

7. Are people rioting because the standard of living gotten has plummhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeted? The recession has pushed living standards in Britain to below the 2005 general election level. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/31/economic-growth-recession-uk

8. Are people more than just a little bit angry when they are informed that the U.K. faces the sharpest spending cuts since WWII while cutting over half a million jobs? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39754325/ns/world_news-europe/t/uk-faces-sharpest-spending-cuts-wwii/#.TkbxUYJvCZY

9. Are the people angry because many colleges and universities are being forced to close due to British spending cuts while at the same time London is spending millions on foreign wars?

10. Are the lower classes angry because the budget for new social housing would be cut by 60% over four years?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11579979

These are just a few reasons why people in the U.K. might be more than just a little bit angry. I sincerely doubt that people in London, Manchester and other cities in Britain have all decided to become “criminals”.

The riots on the other side of the pond should be a wake-up call to the United States. Of the 10 reasons I remarked on, most of them apply equally to the United States. I can already picture Barack Obama and other politicians blaming future riots on our streets as being perpetrated by “criminals”. Our politicians will probably use the term “economic terrorists”.

Trying to Communicate with the Right

2011-08-12T22:59:00.001-05:00

This was a letter I sent to the webmaster of "The Free Republic" I guess the republic is free if you belong to the wacky right.Here's a link to ask them why they only run articles that agree with their viewpoint. http://www.freerepublic.com

Dear Webmaster,

I would like to know why my posting privileges were revoked. My belief is that logical, unemotional and intelligent discourse in a democracy is a good thing. The article I wrote "An Open Letter to the
Tea Party from a Concerned Liberal" was an honest attempt at discourse with those that are on the opposite side of the political fence. Sorry, but this decision to banish me from this website reminds me of getting banned by Daily Kos for suggesting that those that hold dual citizenship (American/Israeli) should not advise the president or make policy decisions on Israel because there is certainly a conflict of interest. I was called an anti-Semite. I think that websites that only cater to those with similar beliefs make the site boring when everyone is "preaching to the choir" so to speak. As a retired military person (21 years in the Army), I was hoping that this country would have grasped the concept of free exchange of information by now.

I don't wish to believe the hype that the Tea Party has engendered but this decision to revoke my posting privileges definitely shows me that this site is nervous about publishing another opinion that doesn't quite follow the party line.

Sincerely,

Timothy V. Gatto

Author of "Kimchee Days" and the political book "From Complicity to Contempt" available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers.

October in Washington

2011-07-21T23:24:00.001-05:00

Propaganda

2011-07-19T17:35:00.000-05:00

A Revolution Has Begun

2011-07-19T16:45:00.000-05:00

Revolution is A Viable Option

2011-07-09T03:11:00.003-05:00

The current state of affairs in America is untenable. The government that the American people put into power has turned its back on the majority of Americans. Both major political parties are sustained by corporate dollars for their political campaigns and by out and out bribery. There are fundamental ills that are destroying the United States that must be addressed. These are;

1. Unpopular wars in the Middle East, North Africa and in the Horn of Africa, some that have been waged by the President without consulting Congress, which is the law of the land, as spelled out in Section 1, Article 8 of the U.S. Constitution. We are spending far too much on the military and the American “security state”, ignoring the general welfare of the citizens of the United States.

2. Laws which were imposed on the American people that usurp the Bill of Rights and therefore limit our civil liberties. These include the Patriot Acts (in all forms), The Military Commissions Act, The new FISA Laws and other draconian laws and Presidential Directives including the PD that authorizes the assassination of American citizens under orders from the President with no oversight.

3. The budget, which contains the repayment of bail-outs to certain entities in the financial world to pull this nation out of a recession caused by the very same entities that caused the crises. This crisis was caused by “Fractional Reserve Lending”, casino economics i.e.: credit default swaps and other usurious practices by the biggest financial companies in this nation of which would have been illegal if not for the rescission of “The Glass-Segal Act”. The root of the worldwide economic collapse has yet to see any charges brought by this government, of wrongdoing by any individuals that committed massive fraud.

4. The continuing practice of allowing the Federal Reserve to conduct this nation’s monetary policies in violation of Section 1, Article 8 of the U.S. Constitution. This private banking cartel charges interest for every dollar printed in this nation. Our currency starts as debt and continued borrowing from the Federal Reserve will only put this nation further into debt. We are throwing good money after bad. This nation should reassert its sovereign right spelled out in our Constitution to issue its own money free of debt.

5. Finally, social programs that were paid into by the American people during their working years should not be offered up to trim the national debt. Taxing corporations and those individuals that make an inordinate amount of money, stopping these continuing wars that we have been involved in since 1991, and cutting foreign aid along with the dissolution of the Fed, will be enough to balance the budget.

Most Americans will probably agree with me that there is a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing this government, or any government offered up by this corrupt corporate-controlled two-party system, adopting any of these measures. I propose then, that it is The People’s right, under The Declaration of Independence and the U.S.
Constitution, to change this government. There is a major demonstration coming to Washington DC in October called Seize DC! We can use this event to start a non-violent Revolution not unlike those in Egypt and Tunisia.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

I believe that as a nation, we have entered into a situation where the above passage from The Declaration of Independence applies. Unless this government is willing to come to terms and look for other ways out of this financial crisis such as stopping these wars of aggression and holding corporations to the same standard it holds its citizens insofar as taxation, I believe that the government is not looking out for the welfare of the people. We have a right to act accordingly.

I speak for nobody but myself, but I would hope that the fundamental ills I have listed will be considered by the people that read this. We used commonsense in the eighteenth century; maybe it is time we used it in the twenty first century.

Taking Us for Fools

2011-07-07T02:00:00.002-05:00

Taking Us for Fools

By Timothy V. Gatto

I’ve been seeing more and more hope floating around. One enlightening video I’ve seen is this;

Fuel- Change your Fuel, Change your World, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3CBOdgBlk8&feature=player_embedded#at=4462.

While it may not solve every energy need, it sure does give alternatives to what we have now. Now that I’ve said that, why do you think we haven’t heard about all of these alternative fuels? It isn’t just fuels we don’t hear about, it’s just about anything that might be introduced that would change the status quo. Now that the mainstream media has been co-opted by the corporate plutocracy, I doubt that we’ll hear anything on the MSM that interferes with corporate profits.

When I’m out and about, talking with family and friends, I am astonished at what most people don’t know. It isn’t because they are dull, stupid people, it’s because they don’t have the luxury of spending their time in the way that I do. I read and watch videos on the internet. I’m retired and my time is my own.Most Americans are working and raising a family. They don't have the luxury of free time. The way events are unfolding, the rapid pace at which knowledge is flooding the planet; the restrictions placed on the MSN are almost criminal. If we as a nation, or even more importantly, if we as a species are going to survive the changes coming at us from every quarter, we can’t use our greatest method of communication on inane content.

So-called “information” outlets like the History Channel and other outlets like it (Discovery, National Geographic, etc.) are spending more and more time on reality shows and other mindless drivel. It’s not that the people who run these outlets don’t believe that the average American won’t watch informational programming, they know they will; they just don’t want to educate the public. An educated public is a demanding public. These corporations don’t want people asking too many questions.

Could you imagine if everyone knew that this country can’t even print its own money, that the government must borrow every dollar printed from private bankers? That every dollar comes with debt attached? What would the majority of people do if they understood that the same money we bailed out the banks with had to be borrowed from bankers? It seems that this country has been through this before. In fact, just about every 40 years we kick out the central bank and twenty years later we let them set up another central bank. (See The American Dream by the Provocateur Network, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPWH5TlbloU&feature=player_embedded#at=15.) If you have the time, and I highly recommend you find it, watch “The Secret of Oz” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI

How many times will we continue to make the same mistakes? When will we finally put an end to the bankers that insist on controlling the American currency? Will we be forced into a revolution to stop the spiral of debt that they put us under, or will the corporate-controlled politicians see the handwriting on the wall and do the people’s will before we revolt? It is only a matter of time.

I have only discussed two of our most pressing problems. Both of these problems, our dependence on oil (and the oil companies supported by the government and its military), and the theft of America’s wealth by the private banking cartel called the Federal Reserve. These problems could be faced and solved simply by educating the public. Most people are ignorant but not by choice, but when they are confronted by the Royal Corporate Elite stealing from them with their own government’s assistance, how long will people put up with it? That kind of knowledge is what is known as a game-changer.

Change is coming, you can bet on that. We are at the tipping point. It won’t be long until the majority of American’s understand exactly what kind of game is being played on them. Barack Obama and every politician at the Federal level know what is going on. Every economist and banker knows what’s going on. Every oil company executive and all their paid-for politicians know about the promise of alternative energy. Every one of us that understands the con that is taking place should be explaining it to those that don’t know.

This isn’t an altruistic endeavor; it’s our survival that’s at stake.

Oh, and one more thing, doesn’t it just make you feel like ripping someone’s throat out when you consider that they are taking us for fools?

timgatto@hotmail.com

"If We Only Had a Bank"

2011-07-06T01:38:00.002-05:00

Food for Thought

2011-07-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3CBOdgBlk8&feature=player_embedded#at=4462

The Death of American Democracy or The Crap Israel Spews

2011-07-01T05:38:00.001-05:00