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http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/02/24/of-high-treason-and-economic-incompetenc
Of High Treason and Economic Incompetence: The Reagan Years Revisited!
February 24th, 2010 3:39 AM
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Ronald Reagan was already a 'grandfather' figure when he came to office in 1981. It may be unfair to say that he won the election with a single phrase: 'Well....there ya' go again!' In retrospect, it is all that one remembers of Reagan's empty promises and equally empty platitudes! Those and a head nod won him the White House. It is this surface veneer we remember --not his cowardly refusal to assent to Mikhail Gorbachev's offer of complete nuclear disarmament, not his two year long 'depression' which left millions homeless, not the act of 'high treason' called Iran/Contra.
Reagan was no friend of the poor, the working class, the cities. On numerous occasions, Reagan would offer up his own version of 'let them eat cake'. Reagan implied that the poor were lazy and welfare recipients 'crazy'. He invented --full cloth --a 'welfare Grandma' who drove a Cadillac and had ripped off $150,000 from the government using 80 aliases, 30 addresses, a dozen social security cards and four fictional dead husbands. Many reputable journalists tried to find this 'welfare cheat'! None succeeded! At last, they were forced to admit that this infamous 'welfare cheat' did not exist. She was either one Reagan's bald-faced lies or one of his many psychotic delusions. I will be charitable to Reagan's memory. She did not exist! Reagan was not nuts, he was just a common, goddamned liar! Tragically, the image stuck. Reagan might have known it would. The lasting image of the 'Cadillac driving' cheat was behind the 1996 'welfare reform law' which the GOP stuck on Clinton who, to his same, signed. It demonstrate the power of the 'big lie' technique which the GOP clearly learned from Hitler.
Of aids victims, he might as well have said what he really believed: 'let them die and decrease the surplus population!'. Reagan is evidence if not proof that evil is what Nuremberg psychologist Dr. Gustav Gilbert said it was: 'the utter lack of empathy!'.Later, Reagan would pay tribute to Nazi SS, saying of them that they, likewise, 'sacrificed'. Yeah --but for what? Nazism, genocide and enslavement, that's what!
Recessions, like the one following Ronald Reagan's improvident tax cut of 1982, harmed workers. American recessions, like periods of prosperity, are inequitable in their effects, harming wage earners at the outset and paying off an increasingly tiny elite on tax day. The conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter confirmed as much when he compared recessions to a "cleansing douche", a characterization that lifelong goppers must surely apply to everyone but themselves and their country club cronies.
"When you think about what Ronald Reagan did to the American people, to the middle class to the working people," former Sen. John Edwards shot back at an event in Henderson, Nevada.
"He was openly -- openly-- intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country...He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment."Edwards added, "I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."
Washington Post, Obama's Reagan Comparison Sparks Debate
When I think about what Ronald Reagan did to this nation, I think of how he struck at and perhaps killed-off a viable labor movement. I think about how middle class families --made homeless --lived under bridges and overpasses in boomtown Houston. I think about how Reagan, like Bush, waged a phony war on terrorism during which terrorist attacks increased some three fold. I think about how Ed Meese waged a war on porn even as a gay prostitution ring operated right out of the White House. I think about how Ronald Reagan neutered affirmative action, the fairness doctrine, and the industries that had kept the middle class in the middle class. I remember how Ronald Reagan was worshipped by the gullible who remembered Reagan's reign at the Republican National convention of 1992: "Reagan made us feel good about ourselves", they swooned.
Reagan was both a liar and hypocrite. He occupied the White House with a mandate to cut federal spending. It was his raison d'etre. Conservatives bought it. Reagan became the biggest spending 'President' in U.S. history, doubling the size of the Federal Bureaucracy, tripling the deficit! He would escalate the military budget, enriching his crones on K-street and the Military/Industrial Complex. It was a laundered payoff for their unswerving support.
Reagan can be given no credit for restoring the nation's prosperity. It was not enough that he destroyed the labor movement by he would cut off its raison d'etre by exporting jobs and industry abroad. Whatever economic growth occurred benefited only the upper quintile, a fact easily proven by cold, hard stats available to the public at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. His tax cut of 1982 benefited only the upper quintile and, inevitably, the chasm between the rich and everyone else widened. To be expected, wages declined; home ownership declined; infrastructure declined. The rich remember Reagan fondly. They alone prospered. Everyone else lost ground. In fairness, that trend was reversed briefly in Clinton's second term but --to be expected --resumed with Bush Jr. Today --just one percent of the U.S. population owns more than 95 percent of the remaining population combined. The Reagan years were heady boom times for the idle rich, offshore banks and the Military-Industrial complex. But in real America, only poverty and crime increase.
Why does the GOP insist upon repeating failed strategies? Reaganites promised that the stimulated economy would outgrow the deficit. The budget, they said, would be balanced "...within three years, maybe even two." It didn't! Reagan tripled the deficit and, on the way, he doubled the size of the federal bureaucracy. Reagan's tax cuts were followed promptly by the longest and worst recession since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. As Robert Freeman correctly points out: "...Jimmy Carter's last budget deficit was $77 billion. Reagan's first deficit was $128 billion. His second deficit exploded to $208 billion. By the time the "Reagan Revolution" was over, George H.W. Bush was running an annual deficit of $290 billion per year."
How will Bush compare to Reagan? By the year 2002, Citizens for Tax Justice were already writing:
Over the ten-year period, the richest Americans—the best-off one percent—are slated to receive tax cuts totalling almost half a trillion dollars. The $477 billion in tax breaks the Bush administration has targeted to this elite group will average $342,000 each over the decade.
By 2010, when (and if) the Bush tax reductions are fully in place, an astonishing 52 percent of the total tax cuts will go to the richest one percent—whose average 2010 income will be $1.5 million. Their tax-cut windfall in that year alone will average $85,000 each. Put another way, of the estimated $234 billion in tax cuts scheduled for the year 2010, $121 billion will go just 1.4 million taxpayers.
Although the rich have already received a hefty down payment on their Bush tax cuts—averaging just under $12,000 each this year—80 percent of their windfall is scheduled to come from tax changes that won’t take effect until after this year, mostly from items that phase in after 2005.
1968 was the year in which measured postwar income was at its most equal for families. The Gini index for households indicates that there has been growing income inequality over the past quarter-century. Inequality grew slowly in the 1970's and rapidly during the early 1980's. ...Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459.
—Income Inequality, Census Bureau
The trend began then has continued: October 2003 figures from the US Census Bureau make stark reading:
Median household incomes are falling The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 5.7 percent to 43.6 million individuals.
The number of people living below the poverty line ($18,392 for a family of four) climbed to 12.1 percent — 34.6 million people.
Wages make up the majority of income for most American families. As "Downward Mobility," NOW's report on workers and wages illustrates, many American workers are facing corporate efforts to cut pay and benefits, which could lead to more American families struggling to stay out of poverty.
The results in black and white:
Twenty percent of the population owns 84% of our private assets, leaving the other 80 percent of the population with 15.6 percent of the assets.
In 1960, the wealth gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of Americans was thirty fold. Four decades later it’s more than seventy-five-fold.
Either way -- wealth or income – America is more unequal, economists generally agree, than at any time since the start of the Great Depression…
And more unequal than any other developed nation today.
—Inequality.org
The most pernicious effect of GOP economic policy is the effect of declining opportunity, a corollary of declining in wealth among all but the very rich.
It is merely rhetorical to ask: why does the GOP seem to repeat ad nauseum utterly failed strategies that have never been shown to work?The answer is simple: the GOP sales pitch is what David Stockman called a 'Trojan Horse'. The purpose of the tax is not to trickle down. The tax cuts always do precisely what the GOP insiders know they will do: they enrich the GOP base! It's a payoff for their support. Here is how someone who lived through the Reagan nightmare remembers it:
I was in the automotive field at the time, and dozens and dozens of established tool manufacturers, unionized shops, producing high quality tools, small companies with deep roots and real a commitment to the towns they were in all across the Midwest and the local communities, went out of business.
Why? Because with deregulation any hustler could get virtually unlimited financing and set up manufacturing plants overseas producing exact copies of American made tools and flood the US market with them with no fear of the Reagan administration enforcing any laws against them.
It also became easier, and far less risky, to get financing to set up a thousand junky identical chain outlets than it did for small local businesses to get credit or tax relief - restaurants, auto parts stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, florists - thousands and thousands of small businesses chewed up and destroyed.
We have a younger generation of people who have no personal experience with so many things - local businesses and tight knit communities, affordable, convenient and efficient public transportation, wages that allowed one person in a household enough income to support the family, homes that were homes, not investments, easy access to public recreation, confidence in the safety of food and other consumer items, all regulated and inspected for the public welfare, freedom from the relentless intrusion of corporations into our lives, and on and on and on.
Reagan destroyed the country, and if we try to gloss over that (which at the very least Obama's remarks have done) or if we buy into the dishonest rationales and excuses and obfuscations that the Reagan administration used to disguise their agenda and to sell it to the public, we surrender any chance at real change, we bury the coffin forever into which the right wingers have put the left - and by extension, the majority of the American people, and we condemn ourselves to living in this ongoing nightmare of destruction and human suffering.
It is not time to make nice with the Reagan legacy propagandists, even by implication or omission. It is time to relentlessly and fearlessly point out that the crisis the country is in is best described and analyzed as the chickens coming home to roost from the Reagan era.
It is time to fight. It is not time to heal or move on—no matter how attractive and appealing this may be—it is not time to paper over the profound divide in the country, it is not time to accommodate or apologize for
--Found on the Democratic Underground
Paul Krugman can always be depended upon to put this kind of thing in perspective.
Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”
Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?
For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.
When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.
Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.
--Paul Krugman, Debunking the Reagan Myth
Reagan/Bush tax cuts are payoffs to the already rich for their support. The GOP prescription is simple: just take another dose of what's making you sick.
Reagan was clearly aloof, indifferent to anyone's plight but his base of ultra rich robber barons, idle rich boys and the war mongers of the Military/Industrial complex. Reagan cared nothing for 'urban voters' which for him meant: 'black people' or 'brown folk'. There was only one black face in his cabinet, that of (HUD) Secretary Samuel Pierce. At a reception, he asked him: "How are things in your city!" Unfortunately, I don't have the reply. I hope it was: "Fuck you, Mr. President!" Reagan got away with a housing scandal because no one knew anything about it until Reagan had left office. How convenient!
It was during the Savings and Loan Scandal, often described as an 'orgy of commercial real estate speculation', that Reagan managed to rise above it all by closing his eyes to 'widespread corruption, mismanagement and the collapse of hundreds of thrift institutions' across the nation. As we have seen recently, the Savings and Loan scandal preceded a huge bailout which stuck the tax payer for $billions$ The Reagan administration was a racket!
Widespread, endemic, institutionalized racial discrimination by banks, real estate agents and landlords, went unrestrained and un-monitored. Big banks exploited what was called 'red lining', openly violating the Community Re-investment Act, to deprive minority and poor neighborhoods of capital. Only eight of some 40,000 applications from banks seeking to expand their operations were denied by the Reagan administration because they had violated CRA regulations.
Reagan cut federal assistance to local governments by some 60 percent. His administration eliminated general revenue sharing, slashed public service jobs and job training, and all but dismantled federally funded legal services for poor people. Other targets: the anti-poverty Community Development Block Grant program and any program having to do with public transit. It was primarily the 'inner cities', which Reaganites considered to be 'black', which suffered. Reagan's favorite 'urban' program' provided aid to highways and that was favored only because it benefited 'white suburbs' not 'black' inner cities.
I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
--Barack Obama, Washington Post
Following is a very brief checklist of a variety of Reagan abuses that defy easy categorization.
During the Reagan years, federal aid to cities dropped from 22 percent to six. Causalities included urban clinics, hospitals, and police.
In early 1984 on Good Morning America, Reagan defended himself against charges of callousness toward the poor in a classic blaming-the-victim statement saying that “people who are sleeping on the grates…the homeless…are homeless, you might say, by choice.' And to that, I say: bullshit! Prove it!
Various groups, community organizations et al, fought to limit the damage. Some victories were won including, during the Clinton years, the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and stronger enforcement of the CRA. But funding for low-income housing, legal services, job training and other programs are still lost and may never be restored short of a revolution that will undo Reagan's very worst legacy: the fact that the rich have gotten exponentially richer as everyone else, including the middle class, have lost gains. I will repeat this until someone gets it: today, just one percent owns more than some 95 percent combine. That is Reagan's most horrible legacy and the one from which almost every other evil springs.
Reagan was called the 'great communicator' but used his talent to divide the nation, perhaps, irreparably! Obama inherited a nation in which there is extreme wealth among the very, very, very few but obscene poverty and deteriorating conditions among the many. The middle class is no longer smug but threatened and the increase in foreclosures throughout suburbia will attest.
Iran-Contra: A Case of Treason!
In 1986, the Reagan administration was implicated in two illegal and secret U.S. Government stemming from the Reagan administration's support for Nicaraguan 'contra' rebels. At the time, U.S. law prohibited aid and/or the sale of arms as had transpired in Iran/Contra. The scandal called 'Iran/Contra' came to light Reagan administration officials announced that government had sold arms to Iran. Iran was, at the time, an avowed enemy of the United States. It was not so long ago, that U.S. embassy personnel had been recently released by the 'revolutionary' government in Iran. Proceeds from the arms sales to Iran were diverted --of the books --to the 'contra' rebels in Nicaragua.
As the 'scandal' came to light, Attorney General Ed Meese sought the appointment of a 'special prosecutor', a position in which Lawrence E. Walsh would assume the role of 'independent counsel' to investigate and prosecute possible crimes arising from what was already called 'Iran/Contra'.
It was alleged that Director Casey's 'unswerving support of President Reagan's contra policies' encouraged the CIA officials to exceed legal restrictions in both operations, though it cannot be said that Iran/Contra was the origin of CIA 'off the book' operations. The Boland Amendment of October 1984 had sought to prohibit and prevent the CIA from aiding the 'contras' either directly or indirectly. As the 'scandal' came to light, it became increasingly clearly that Casey had made an end run around Boland and was, in fact, the architect of North's role in a so-called 'contra-support team'.
North's role --described as 'dove-tailing' CIA activities --violated the Boland restrictions even as Casey either ordered or supported arms sales to Iran. 'Operatives' Alan Fier and Claire E. George lied to Congress for the purpose of keeping 'the spotlight off the White House'. When the arms ales were made public in November, 1986, it was clear that Congress had been lied to, the people, the nation had been misled.
Four CIA officials were charged with crimes. George, the third highest-ranking CIA official, was convicted of two felony counts of false statements and perjury, i.e, 'lying' to Congress. Two CIA 'operatives' were awaiting trial when they were pardoned by Reagan whom Special Prosecutor Walsh clearly implicated in his 'Final Report' on Iran/Contra matters.
The Iran/contra investigation will not end the kind of abuse of power that it addressed any more than the Watergate investigation did. The criminality in both affairs did not arise primarily out of ordinary venality or greed, although some of those charged were driven by both. Instead, the crimes committed in Iran/contra were motivated by the desire of persons in high office to pursue controversial policies and goals even when the pursuit of those policies and goals was inhibited or restricted by executive orders, statutes or the constitutional system of checks and balances.
The tone in Iran/contra was set by President Reagan. He directed that the contras be supported, despite a ban on contra aid imposed on him by Congress. And he was willing to trade arms to Iran for the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East, even if doing so was contrary to the nation's stated policy and possibly in violation of the law.
The lesson of Iran/contra is that if our system of government is to function properly, the branches of government must deal with one another honestly and cooperatively. When disputes arise between the Executive and Legislative branches, as they surely will, the laws that emerge from such disputes must be obeyed. When a President, even with good motive and intent, chooses to skirt the laws or to circumvent them, it is incumbent upon his subordinates to resist, not join in. Their oath and fealty are to the Constitution and the rule of law, not to the man temporarily occupying the Oval Office. Congress has the duty and the power under our system of checks and balances to ensure that the President and his Cabinet officers are faithful to their oaths.
Lawrence Walsh, Concluding Observations, FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS
Pulling Back the Wizards' Curtains
Friday, February 26, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
'Conspiracies of Rich Men' to Commit War Crimes and Aggression
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2010/02/conspiracies-of-rich-men-to-commit-war.html
FEBRUARY 02, 2010
'Conspiracies of Rich Men' to Commit War Crimes and Aggression
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The establishment derides conspiracies and, for awhile, it was fashionable to deny the existence of 'conspiracies'. In fact, conspiracies are how things get done. Very little is accomplished by one person working alone. If what is to be accomplished is illegal, the 'conspiracy' is called a 'crime syndicate' or 'orgnized crime'.
If the 'conspiracy' in question is legal, however questionable, it is called a corporation or a business enterprise. Theorists on the high court have said corporations are people! But, should you call five idiots who have thus conspired to subvert the U.S. Constitution by the term 'conspirators', you are likely to be called a nut job! But SCOTUS believes mere words on paper is a real, living breathing person if it happens to have a seal on it supplied to you by the Delaware Secreatary of State! So --I ask you --who is nuts?
The government often cites the specter of 'organized crime' in order to rally voters to a 'right wing' cause like 'law and order', a big issue in the 1960s. In order to fully exploit this 'threat', this 'clear and present danger' to the lives of middle America who seemed to have been cowering in fear, it was necessary to promote all manner of fears --hippies, black people, rock n' rolll, and crime syndicates. Law and order' was, therefore, a big issue among the GOP hoping to exploit the fears of 'hippies' and 'black people' --both of whom were unhappy with increasing poverty, denial of rights, the seemingly endless, mindless and destructive war in Viet Nam. It was a war fought on behalf of a 'conspiracy of rich men' --ITT, Honeywell et al --all of whom hoped to make a killing with defense contracts.
George H. W. Bush, otherwise called Sr now, had hoped to achieve high office by exploiting those fears. It is no stretch to conclude that George H. W. Bush had made a Faustian bargain with the leadership of GOP. George H. W. Bush --by the time I met him --has already sold his soul to what St. Thomas More has already described as a 'conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodites'.
The Senior Bush won two elections for a seat in the House of Representatives, but lost two bids for a Senate seat. It was in during one of his Senate races that I first met the Senior Bush who was not so well known when I interviewed Bush Sr with regard to this very issue. I was a very young reporter, somewhat naive, learning the ropes and had not yet made it to a major market or a network. Honestly --I did not know what to make of Bush's 'non'-answer. It consisted of slogans, buzzwords, and meaningless gobbledy gook. Little has changed. The Bush family still talks like that!
After Bush's second race for the Senate, President Nixon appointed him U.S. delegate to the United Nations. He later became Republican National Committee chairman. He headed the U.S. liaison office in Beijing. It was years later, in Houston, that the Senior Bush would regale me with a story about how he was 'duped' into eating 'dog lips' --apparently a Chinese delicacy --at a formal, diplomatic dinner in the Forbidden City.
Bush would eventually become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. At the time, many wondered what, precisely, was it that qualified Bush to head up the CIA, an agency that I have called 'World's Number One Terrorist Organization'. Despite his criticism of Reagan's “voodoo economics" , Bush became Reagan's running mate in 1980; by 1984, Bush had won acclaim for his devotion to Reagan's conservative agenda. Thus would espouse an utterly failed policy and one that he himself has opposed. Reagan's 'voodoo economics' caused a two year long recession, the deepest and most severe depression since Hoover's great depression of 1929. But that clearly did not matter to Bush Sr. He would hitch his wagon to whatever star was ascendant and, at the time, it was the ascendant Ronald Reagan who would preside over a 'conspiracy' to sell arms to Iran, which was, at the time, an officially declared enemy of the United States, a sponsor of world wide terrorism. This 'conspiracy' on behalf of rich men would then funnel the proceeds of those sales to the so-called Contras in Nicaragua. There is a word for this: high treason:
The Iran/contra investigation will not end the kind of abuse of power that it addressed any more than the Watergate investigation did. The criminality in both affairs did not arise primarily out of ordinary venality or greed, although some of those charged were driven by both. Instead, the crimes committed in Iran/contra were motivated by the desire of persons in high office to pursue controversial policies and goals even when the pursuit of those policies and goals was inhibited or restricted by executive orders, statutes or the constitutional system of checks and balances.
The tone in Iran/contra was set by President Reagan. He directed that the contras be supported, despite a ban on contra aid imposed on him by Congress. And he was willing to trade arms to Iran for the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East, even if doing so was contrary to the nation's stated policy and possibly in violation of the law.
The lesson of Iran/contra is that if our system of government is to function properly, the branches of government must deal with one another honestly and cooperatively. When disputes arise between the Executive and Legislative branches, as they surely will, the laws that emerge from such disputes must be obeyed. When a President, even with good motive and intent, chooses to skirt the laws or to circumvent them, it is incumbent upon his subordinates to resist, not join in. Their oath and fealty are to the Constitution and the rule of law, not to the man temporarily occupying the Oval Office. Congress has the duty and the power under our system of checks and balances to ensure that the President and his Cabinet officers are faithful to their oaths. --Lawrence Walsh, Special Prosecutor, Concluding Observations, FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL
FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS
No one ever called Sr a 'conspiracy theorist'. That's because he was not a theorist; he was a 'conspirator' for real!
"I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth."- Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia
Last time I checked the Cornell Univ Law Library and FINDLAW, I found hundreds if not thousands of court decisions, including SCOTUS, having to do with conspiracies large and small, of one sort or another. Someone should inform SCOTUS that conspiracies do not exist, but, I suspect, the very fact that they are recognized by the higher courts, including SCOTUS, creates them if they had not existed prior.
In his 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', William Shirer described what St. Thomas More would have called a 'conspiracy of rich men' to invade the nations of Europe, steal their resources and divide up the booty.
Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2)
The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved.
Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality . . . All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen . . . We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). "Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years."
All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3) --William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Nazification of Germany: 1933–34
We are fortunate that no one 'informed' informed Shirer that conspiracies do not exist before he bothered unearthing the mountain of Nazi documents that prove the meeting, the Nazi conspiracy to wage war and genocide for the benefit of global corporations that participated. This meeting of 'industrialists' took place just as surely as did the meeting of Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force' which carved up an 'alloted' the oil fields of Iraq long before the events of 911 would give these 'conspiractors' the pre-text they would require to attack Iraq, wage war upon that nation and, in the process, steel its resources for the likes of Dick Cheney's own Halliburton and other members of an energy consortium.
The results were published in a 'National Energy Policy' report in May 2001, several months before 911 would give them the pretext to make the report come true. This is precisely the kind of of conspiracy that had been described so accurately, precisely by St. Thomas More in his "Utopia", a classic of English literature.
I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.
They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth's sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws. But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!
Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia
Another example is Heinrich Heydrich's infamous meeting at Wansee, attended by Nazi bureaucrats, and corporate kiss ups. Over a civilized lunch, this 'conspiracy of rich men' planned the extermination of the jews of Europe.
... within a few months after the meeting, the first gas chambers were installed in some of the extermination camps in Poland. These six camps, Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka were in operation in Poland.
Responsibility for the entire project was placed in the hands of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, and head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS.
The Wannsee Conference did not mark the beginning of the "Final Solution." The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the "final solution" was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated "extermination" camps in Poland. Not one of the men present at Wannsee objected to the announced policy. Never before had a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people--The Wannsee Conference, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Very little is EVER accomplished by one person working alone unless you happen to be Michelangelo. Conspiracies exist! Our own Supreme Court has said so and, by law, they have defined themselves as 'infallible'. They are, themselves, of late, a conspiracy of Republicans to subvert the Constitution.
Because conspiracy --in fact --exist, wars will continue to be fought by the poor for the benefit of the rich. The mechanism by which this is accomplished is called the military-industrial complex. It's job is to divide the spoils of war among Dick Cheney's oil buddies and other 'paid thugs' like Blackwater, who conveniently hide behind the monicker --'defense contractor'.
For eons wars have been fought for booty! That's why the US fights them today. Rome invaded Dacia for the gold. The U.S. wages war in the Middle East for oil, the booty du jour! To deny one the right to oppose those wars --as Supreme Court Justice Holmes denied Eugene Debs --is a recipe for military dictatorship. In a text-book example of the false analogy, Holmes likened Debs' opposition to U.S. entry in WWI to yelling 'fire in a crowded theater'. I ask: isn't it more dangerous NOT to shout fire if the theater really is on fire?
Today --the theater is on fire. Our government has repeatedly failed us on almost every front. We are expected to die abroad in order to enrich numerous conspiracies of rich men --oil barons, arm merchants, the very minions of the Military-Industrial Complex. Corporations, we are told, are people and the conspiracy we used to dignify with the term --Supreme Court --has said so! And I ask you: if the MIC is not a 'conspiracy of rich men', then what is? If the Supreme Court has not deteriorated into a conspiracy of right wing ideologues, then why are not the dictionaries re-written and the thousands of pages of case law burned or dumped offshore so that we cannot learn the truth for ourselves. We are expected to buy the lies and die for this wicked, venal conspiracy. Well, I won't and never will!
St. Thomas More would have called the Military-Industrial complex and their shills on K-street a "conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodities in the name and title of the commonwealth!" [See: Thomas More, Utopia] This is why wars have been waged throughout the ages! If Justice Holmes were alive, I would tell him that it is wrong NOT to yell fire in a crowded theater if the theater is, indeed, on fire! At this moment in our history, the American republic is threatened, and among those threatening it is the US Supreme Court itself!
I am yelling FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!
FEBRUARY 02, 2010
'Conspiracies of Rich Men' to Commit War Crimes and Aggression
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The establishment derides conspiracies and, for awhile, it was fashionable to deny the existence of 'conspiracies'. In fact, conspiracies are how things get done. Very little is accomplished by one person working alone. If what is to be accomplished is illegal, the 'conspiracy' is called a 'crime syndicate' or 'orgnized crime'.
If the 'conspiracy' in question is legal, however questionable, it is called a corporation or a business enterprise. Theorists on the high court have said corporations are people! But, should you call five idiots who have thus conspired to subvert the U.S. Constitution by the term 'conspirators', you are likely to be called a nut job! But SCOTUS believes mere words on paper is a real, living breathing person if it happens to have a seal on it supplied to you by the Delaware Secreatary of State! So --I ask you --who is nuts?
The government often cites the specter of 'organized crime' in order to rally voters to a 'right wing' cause like 'law and order', a big issue in the 1960s. In order to fully exploit this 'threat', this 'clear and present danger' to the lives of middle America who seemed to have been cowering in fear, it was necessary to promote all manner of fears --hippies, black people, rock n' rolll, and crime syndicates. Law and order' was, therefore, a big issue among the GOP hoping to exploit the fears of 'hippies' and 'black people' --both of whom were unhappy with increasing poverty, denial of rights, the seemingly endless, mindless and destructive war in Viet Nam. It was a war fought on behalf of a 'conspiracy of rich men' --ITT, Honeywell et al --all of whom hoped to make a killing with defense contracts.
George H. W. Bush, otherwise called Sr now, had hoped to achieve high office by exploiting those fears. It is no stretch to conclude that George H. W. Bush had made a Faustian bargain with the leadership of GOP. George H. W. Bush --by the time I met him --has already sold his soul to what St. Thomas More has already described as a 'conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodites'.
The Senior Bush won two elections for a seat in the House of Representatives, but lost two bids for a Senate seat. It was in during one of his Senate races that I first met the Senior Bush who was not so well known when I interviewed Bush Sr with regard to this very issue. I was a very young reporter, somewhat naive, learning the ropes and had not yet made it to a major market or a network. Honestly --I did not know what to make of Bush's 'non'-answer. It consisted of slogans, buzzwords, and meaningless gobbledy gook. Little has changed. The Bush family still talks like that!
After Bush's second race for the Senate, President Nixon appointed him U.S. delegate to the United Nations. He later became Republican National Committee chairman. He headed the U.S. liaison office in Beijing. It was years later, in Houston, that the Senior Bush would regale me with a story about how he was 'duped' into eating 'dog lips' --apparently a Chinese delicacy --at a formal, diplomatic dinner in the Forbidden City.
Bush would eventually become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. At the time, many wondered what, precisely, was it that qualified Bush to head up the CIA, an agency that I have called 'World's Number One Terrorist Organization'. Despite his criticism of Reagan's “voodoo economics" , Bush became Reagan's running mate in 1980; by 1984, Bush had won acclaim for his devotion to Reagan's conservative agenda. Thus would espouse an utterly failed policy and one that he himself has opposed. Reagan's 'voodoo economics' caused a two year long recession, the deepest and most severe depression since Hoover's great depression of 1929. But that clearly did not matter to Bush Sr. He would hitch his wagon to whatever star was ascendant and, at the time, it was the ascendant Ronald Reagan who would preside over a 'conspiracy' to sell arms to Iran, which was, at the time, an officially declared enemy of the United States, a sponsor of world wide terrorism. This 'conspiracy' on behalf of rich men would then funnel the proceeds of those sales to the so-called Contras in Nicaragua. There is a word for this: high treason:
The Iran/contra investigation will not end the kind of abuse of power that it addressed any more than the Watergate investigation did. The criminality in both affairs did not arise primarily out of ordinary venality or greed, although some of those charged were driven by both. Instead, the crimes committed in Iran/contra were motivated by the desire of persons in high office to pursue controversial policies and goals even when the pursuit of those policies and goals was inhibited or restricted by executive orders, statutes or the constitutional system of checks and balances.
The tone in Iran/contra was set by President Reagan. He directed that the contras be supported, despite a ban on contra aid imposed on him by Congress. And he was willing to trade arms to Iran for the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East, even if doing so was contrary to the nation's stated policy and possibly in violation of the law.
The lesson of Iran/contra is that if our system of government is to function properly, the branches of government must deal with one another honestly and cooperatively. When disputes arise between the Executive and Legislative branches, as they surely will, the laws that emerge from such disputes must be obeyed. When a President, even with good motive and intent, chooses to skirt the laws or to circumvent them, it is incumbent upon his subordinates to resist, not join in. Their oath and fealty are to the Constitution and the rule of law, not to the man temporarily occupying the Oval Office. Congress has the duty and the power under our system of checks and balances to ensure that the President and his Cabinet officers are faithful to their oaths. --Lawrence Walsh, Special Prosecutor, Concluding Observations, FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL
FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS
No one ever called Sr a 'conspiracy theorist'. That's because he was not a theorist; he was a 'conspirator' for real!
"I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth."- Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia
Last time I checked the Cornell Univ Law Library and FINDLAW, I found hundreds if not thousands of court decisions, including SCOTUS, having to do with conspiracies large and small, of one sort or another. Someone should inform SCOTUS that conspiracies do not exist, but, I suspect, the very fact that they are recognized by the higher courts, including SCOTUS, creates them if they had not existed prior.
In his 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', William Shirer described what St. Thomas More would have called a 'conspiracy of rich men' to invade the nations of Europe, steal their resources and divide up the booty.
Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2)
The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved.
Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality . . . All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen . . . We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). "Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years."
All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3) --William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Nazification of Germany: 1933–34
We are fortunate that no one 'informed' informed Shirer that conspiracies do not exist before he bothered unearthing the mountain of Nazi documents that prove the meeting, the Nazi conspiracy to wage war and genocide for the benefit of global corporations that participated. This meeting of 'industrialists' took place just as surely as did the meeting of Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force' which carved up an 'alloted' the oil fields of Iraq long before the events of 911 would give these 'conspiractors' the pre-text they would require to attack Iraq, wage war upon that nation and, in the process, steel its resources for the likes of Dick Cheney's own Halliburton and other members of an energy consortium.
The results were published in a 'National Energy Policy' report in May 2001, several months before 911 would give them the pretext to make the report come true. This is precisely the kind of of conspiracy that had been described so accurately, precisely by St. Thomas More in his "Utopia", a classic of English literature.
I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.
They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth's sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws. But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!
Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia
Another example is Heinrich Heydrich's infamous meeting at Wansee, attended by Nazi bureaucrats, and corporate kiss ups. Over a civilized lunch, this 'conspiracy of rich men' planned the extermination of the jews of Europe.
... within a few months after the meeting, the first gas chambers were installed in some of the extermination camps in Poland. These six camps, Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka were in operation in Poland.
Responsibility for the entire project was placed in the hands of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, and head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS.
The Wannsee Conference did not mark the beginning of the "Final Solution." The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the "final solution" was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated "extermination" camps in Poland. Not one of the men present at Wannsee objected to the announced policy. Never before had a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people--The Wannsee Conference, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Very little is EVER accomplished by one person working alone unless you happen to be Michelangelo. Conspiracies exist! Our own Supreme Court has said so and, by law, they have defined themselves as 'infallible'. They are, themselves, of late, a conspiracy of Republicans to subvert the Constitution.
Because conspiracy --in fact --exist, wars will continue to be fought by the poor for the benefit of the rich. The mechanism by which this is accomplished is called the military-industrial complex. It's job is to divide the spoils of war among Dick Cheney's oil buddies and other 'paid thugs' like Blackwater, who conveniently hide behind the monicker --'defense contractor'.
For eons wars have been fought for booty! That's why the US fights them today. Rome invaded Dacia for the gold. The U.S. wages war in the Middle East for oil, the booty du jour! To deny one the right to oppose those wars --as Supreme Court Justice Holmes denied Eugene Debs --is a recipe for military dictatorship. In a text-book example of the false analogy, Holmes likened Debs' opposition to U.S. entry in WWI to yelling 'fire in a crowded theater'. I ask: isn't it more dangerous NOT to shout fire if the theater really is on fire?
Today --the theater is on fire. Our government has repeatedly failed us on almost every front. We are expected to die abroad in order to enrich numerous conspiracies of rich men --oil barons, arm merchants, the very minions of the Military-Industrial Complex. Corporations, we are told, are people and the conspiracy we used to dignify with the term --Supreme Court --has said so! And I ask you: if the MIC is not a 'conspiracy of rich men', then what is? If the Supreme Court has not deteriorated into a conspiracy of right wing ideologues, then why are not the dictionaries re-written and the thousands of pages of case law burned or dumped offshore so that we cannot learn the truth for ourselves. We are expected to buy the lies and die for this wicked, venal conspiracy. Well, I won't and never will!
St. Thomas More would have called the Military-Industrial complex and their shills on K-street a "conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodities in the name and title of the commonwealth!" [See: Thomas More, Utopia] This is why wars have been waged throughout the ages! If Justice Holmes were alive, I would tell him that it is wrong NOT to yell fire in a crowded theater if the theater is, indeed, on fire! At this moment in our history, the American republic is threatened, and among those threatening it is the US Supreme Court itself!
I am yelling FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Budgets-War-and-Blind-Amb-by-Chris-Floyd-100202-167.html
February 2, 2010
Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite
By Chris Floyd
The American elite's unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance -- based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war -- is one of the defining characteristics of our age. And if you would like to see a glaring example of this attitude in action, look no further than the front page of Tuesday's New York Times, where one David Sanger gives us his penetrating "news analysis" of the Administration's just-announced $3.8 trillion budget.
Sanger focuses on the huge, continuing deficits that the budget forecasts over the next decade. Completely ignoring the plain truth that his own expert source tell him later in the story -- that "forecasts 10 years out have no credibility" -- Sanger boldly plunges forward to tell us just what it all means. You will not be surprised to hear that the upshot of these big deficits is that neither Obama nor his successors will be able to spend any money on "new domestic initiatives" for years to come. But let's let Sanger, savant and seer, tell it in his own words:
In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.
The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country's entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.
But the second number, buried deeper in the budget's projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama's own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. ...
For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country's influence around the world eroded.
What is most interesting here, of course, is not Sanger's noodle-scratching over imaginary numbers projected into an unknowable future, but his total and apparently completely unconscious adoption of the mindset of militarist empire. For as he puzzles and puzzles till his puzzler is sore on how in God's name the United States can possibly find any money at all to spend on bettering the lives of its citizens over the next 10 years, it becomes clear that Sanger -- like the rest of our political and media elite -- literally cannot conceive of an end to empire. Our elites and their courtiers literally cannot imagine life without a permanent war for global dominance, fueled by a gargantuan war machine spread across hundreds and hundreds of bases implanted in more than 100 countries.
And so this consideration, this possible outcome, does not figure in Sanger's "analysis" because it cannot: it lies far outside the scope of his consciousness. The only possible alternative he can conceive to the empire's bloody and bankrupting business as usual is some kind of divine intervention, "miraculous growth" or some "miraculous political compromise."
And make no mistake: the "miraculous political compromise" he is talking about has nothing to do with ending or even trimming the empire. A "compromise" on this issue could only be posited if there was some present conflict over it. But both parties are deeply committed to increasing spending on the wars and the war machine.
No, by "compromise" Sanger means some sort of "Grand Bargain" between the parties to cut Social Security and Medicare, along the lines of the "blue-ribbon panel" of entitlement cutters now being pushed by the Obama Administration. An effort to impose this kind of elitist, unaccountable commission failed in the Senate a few weeks ago -- although the Republicans have proposed such panels before, they didn't like this one because Obama proposed it -- but the idea will keep coming back. Sanger and the elite will doubtless get their "miracle" of slashing the remaining bits of the safety net to shreds in due time.
For these are the only possibilities for deficit-cutting that Sanger can even remotely contemplate: some whiz-bang new techno gizmo -- or maybe some hot new "financial instruments" cooked up by Wall Street -- that will goose the economy with a bright new bubble ... or else finally telling our old, sick, vulnerable and unfortunate to just crawl off and die already. That's it. That's all that our elite can envision.
Yet the ending of the imperial wars and the dismantling of America's global military empire -- and its global gulag -- would save trillions of dollars in the coming years. Not only from direct military spending, but also from the vastly reduced need for "Homeland security" funding in a world where the United States was no longer invading foreign lands, killing their people, supporting their tyrants -- and inciting revenge and resistance.
This would release a flood of money for any number of "new domestic initiatives," while also giving scope for deep tax cuts across the board. Working people would thrive, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable would be bettered, businesses would grow, opportunity would expand, the care and education of our children would be greatly enhanced, our infrastructure could be repaired and strengthened, our environment better cleansed and cared for. In short, people could keep more of their own money while government spending could be directed toward improving the quality of life of all the nation's citizens.
This is no utopian vision. Many problems, much suffering would remain. But it would be a better society -- more humane, more just, more secure, more peaceful, more prosperous than it is now. Such an alternative is entirely achievable, by ordinary humans; it would require no divine miracles, no god-like heroes to bring it about.
But such a society is precisely what our elites cannot -- or, to be more accurate, will not -- imagine. Because, yes, it would "erode" their "influence" around the world to some extent. Although they would still be comfortable, coddled and privileged, they could no longer merge their individual psyches with the larger entity of a globe-spanning, death-dealing empire -- a connection which, although itself a projection of their own brains, gives them a forever-inflated sense of worth and importance.
And on a more prosaic level, the end of empire would mean an end to the horrendous economic distortion wrought by our war-profiteering industries. Other businesses would inevitably come to the fore, economic activity would be spread more evenly across more sectors. And so, yes, those who have feasted so gluttonously for so long on blood money would not be quite as rich as they are now.
A better world -- again, not perfect, by no means perfect, but much better -- is entirely possible. We could easily dismantle the empire -- carefully, safely, with deliberation -- over the next ten years. It is a reasonable, moderate, serious option. It would not require violent revolution or vast social upheaval. But our elites do not want this. They can no longer fathom life without the exercise -- and worship -- of unrestricted power that empire entails. They will not accept -- or even contemplate -- any alternative to it.
And thus every option and policy we are offered -- whether from right-wing Republicans or "progressive" Democrats, or from "serious" news analysts on "serious" papers -- must fall within these pathetically cramped, constricted mental horizons. Empire -- the imposition of dominion by violence and threat of violence, and the financial and moral corruption this breeds, the malevolent example it sets at every level of society -- is the canker in the body politic. Until it is dealt with, there will be no healing, no hope, no change -- just more degradation and disaster all down the line.
February 2, 2010
Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite
By Chris Floyd
The American elite's unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance -- based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war -- is one of the defining characteristics of our age. And if you would like to see a glaring example of this attitude in action, look no further than the front page of Tuesday's New York Times, where one David Sanger gives us his penetrating "news analysis" of the Administration's just-announced $3.8 trillion budget.
Sanger focuses on the huge, continuing deficits that the budget forecasts over the next decade. Completely ignoring the plain truth that his own expert source tell him later in the story -- that "forecasts 10 years out have no credibility" -- Sanger boldly plunges forward to tell us just what it all means. You will not be surprised to hear that the upshot of these big deficits is that neither Obama nor his successors will be able to spend any money on "new domestic initiatives" for years to come. But let's let Sanger, savant and seer, tell it in his own words:
In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.
The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country's entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.
But the second number, buried deeper in the budget's projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama's own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. ...
For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country's influence around the world eroded.
What is most interesting here, of course, is not Sanger's noodle-scratching over imaginary numbers projected into an unknowable future, but his total and apparently completely unconscious adoption of the mindset of militarist empire. For as he puzzles and puzzles till his puzzler is sore on how in God's name the United States can possibly find any money at all to spend on bettering the lives of its citizens over the next 10 years, it becomes clear that Sanger -- like the rest of our political and media elite -- literally cannot conceive of an end to empire. Our elites and their courtiers literally cannot imagine life without a permanent war for global dominance, fueled by a gargantuan war machine spread across hundreds and hundreds of bases implanted in more than 100 countries.
And so this consideration, this possible outcome, does not figure in Sanger's "analysis" because it cannot: it lies far outside the scope of his consciousness. The only possible alternative he can conceive to the empire's bloody and bankrupting business as usual is some kind of divine intervention, "miraculous growth" or some "miraculous political compromise."
And make no mistake: the "miraculous political compromise" he is talking about has nothing to do with ending or even trimming the empire. A "compromise" on this issue could only be posited if there was some present conflict over it. But both parties are deeply committed to increasing spending on the wars and the war machine.
No, by "compromise" Sanger means some sort of "Grand Bargain" between the parties to cut Social Security and Medicare, along the lines of the "blue-ribbon panel" of entitlement cutters now being pushed by the Obama Administration. An effort to impose this kind of elitist, unaccountable commission failed in the Senate a few weeks ago -- although the Republicans have proposed such panels before, they didn't like this one because Obama proposed it -- but the idea will keep coming back. Sanger and the elite will doubtless get their "miracle" of slashing the remaining bits of the safety net to shreds in due time.
For these are the only possibilities for deficit-cutting that Sanger can even remotely contemplate: some whiz-bang new techno gizmo -- or maybe some hot new "financial instruments" cooked up by Wall Street -- that will goose the economy with a bright new bubble ... or else finally telling our old, sick, vulnerable and unfortunate to just crawl off and die already. That's it. That's all that our elite can envision.
Yet the ending of the imperial wars and the dismantling of America's global military empire -- and its global gulag -- would save trillions of dollars in the coming years. Not only from direct military spending, but also from the vastly reduced need for "Homeland security" funding in a world where the United States was no longer invading foreign lands, killing their people, supporting their tyrants -- and inciting revenge and resistance.
This would release a flood of money for any number of "new domestic initiatives," while also giving scope for deep tax cuts across the board. Working people would thrive, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable would be bettered, businesses would grow, opportunity would expand, the care and education of our children would be greatly enhanced, our infrastructure could be repaired and strengthened, our environment better cleansed and cared for. In short, people could keep more of their own money while government spending could be directed toward improving the quality of life of all the nation's citizens.
This is no utopian vision. Many problems, much suffering would remain. But it would be a better society -- more humane, more just, more secure, more peaceful, more prosperous than it is now. Such an alternative is entirely achievable, by ordinary humans; it would require no divine miracles, no god-like heroes to bring it about.
But such a society is precisely what our elites cannot -- or, to be more accurate, will not -- imagine. Because, yes, it would "erode" their "influence" around the world to some extent. Although they would still be comfortable, coddled and privileged, they could no longer merge their individual psyches with the larger entity of a globe-spanning, death-dealing empire -- a connection which, although itself a projection of their own brains, gives them a forever-inflated sense of worth and importance.
And on a more prosaic level, the end of empire would mean an end to the horrendous economic distortion wrought by our war-profiteering industries. Other businesses would inevitably come to the fore, economic activity would be spread more evenly across more sectors. And so, yes, those who have feasted so gluttonously for so long on blood money would not be quite as rich as they are now.
A better world -- again, not perfect, by no means perfect, but much better -- is entirely possible. We could easily dismantle the empire -- carefully, safely, with deliberation -- over the next ten years. It is a reasonable, moderate, serious option. It would not require violent revolution or vast social upheaval. But our elites do not want this. They can no longer fathom life without the exercise -- and worship -- of unrestricted power that empire entails. They will not accept -- or even contemplate -- any alternative to it.
And thus every option and policy we are offered -- whether from right-wing Republicans or "progressive" Democrats, or from "serious" news analysts on "serious" papers -- must fall within these pathetically cramped, constricted mental horizons. Empire -- the imposition of dominion by violence and threat of violence, and the financial and moral corruption this breeds, the malevolent example it sets at every level of society -- is the canker in the body politic. Until it is dealt with, there will be no healing, no hope, no change -- just more degradation and disaster all down the line.
The Cabal: Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/6934
The Cabal: Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand
By: Fahim A. Knight
The American people, in particular and the world in general, have no real idea that everything around them isn't what it appears. There has always been and old saying that states, “perception means everything and reality, means absolutely nothing.” Interpret to mean you have to just look good and not necessarily be of any substance. President George Bush just has to look and sound good, but in reality, all of his decisions and all of our decisions are under the dictates of some powerful hidden entitles. President George Bush appears to be one of the most powerful men in the world and yet he is under the dictates of the real and invisible decision makers. He was elevated in 2000 to the highest office in world because of a willingness to serve and carryout their well calculated agenda. Does he work for the House of Rothschild, the Carlyle Group, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Russell Group, and Bilderberger Group? (Reference: Texe Marrs: “Circle of Intrigue: The Hidden Inner Circle of the Global Illuminati Conspiracy”)
Dr. John Coleman in his book titled, “Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of the 300” stated, “It is the Committee of 300 which has established control networks and mechanisms far more binding than anything ever seen in this world. Chains and ropes are not needed to restrain us. Our fears of what is to come does that job far more efficiently than any physical means of restraint. We have been brainwashed to give up our Constitutional right to bear arms; to give up our Constitution itself; to allow the United Nations to exercise control over our foreign policies and the IMF to take control of our fiscal and monetary policies; to permit the President to break United States law with impunity and to invade a foreign country and kidnap its head of state. In short we have been brainwashed to the extent where we, as a nation, will accept each and every lawless act carried out by our government almost without question.” (Reference: Dr. John Coleman: “Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of the 300”).
How many people truly believe and know that there is an Elite Cabal of Emperors who function with autonym and world sovereignty, and are above the laws of all nations? This writer recently watched President Bush meet with King Abdullah, the Royal King of Saudi Arabia and they were so-called discussing Saudi Arabia’s possibilities of increasing Oil Production drilling (at least that is what they conveyed on camera) and what OPEC can do to so-called ease the Oil tension in the West. This writer said to himself, Wow! "How many people believe that OPEC can make that decision and fail to understand that OPEC is just a Front Organization for the Cabal and the Hidden Emperors?" The mass mediums sent their talking heads and spin doctors out to convince the American people, in particular and world the people in general, that the Oil crisis is a matter of supply and demand. The last time this writer checked, the price of crude Oil, it had risen to over $130.00 USD per Barrel. Some of the ignorant would like to blame the Arabs—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, etc., for the Oil crisis and have no idea that someone more powerful and more sinister is guiding this so-called crisis. Some would even prefer blaming Hugo Chavez the charismatic and idealist President of Venezuela for the United States Oil crises.
Andy Stern in his book titled, “Oil: From Rockefellers to Iraq and Beyond’ stated, “The freewheeling gold rush years in the US soon gave way to the all-devouring empire created by John D. Rockefeller, whose fortune was built on sharp business practices, corruption of government at the highest levels, and created of one of the most successful and enduring cartels the world has ever seen. Then as now in the US, government and Big Oil were closely interlinked. Rockefeller had agents all over the world, forming a semi-official a semi-official diplomatic structure that negotiated trade deals directly with national governments. Today, the links are even closer, with former oil executives occupying many of the top positions in the current US administration, and taking policy positions highly favourable to the industry in which they made their fortunes. As the thirst for oil, and the vast profits it offered, enticed companies beyond their national borders, British, French and US oil have sought to exploit oil resources overseas, and have not hesitated to corrupt or subvert governments, be they in Africa, Asia or Latin America, in order to gain control of these valuable assets.” (Reference: Andy Stern: “Oil: From Rockefellers to Iraq and Beyond’).
Thus, they had never heard of the Elite Dynastic Families, this inner secret Cabal that is so rich and powerful that they are hidden under many layers of deceptions. They have the ability to create international crisis—wars, economic recessions, political tension (instigating and supporting rivals on both sides), etc., for their benefits. The people have been reduced to mere pawns. This writer was having a discussion with some of the KEEPING IT REAL think tank members and the question came up, about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, in particular, but here is the top 20 billionaires of the world listed by Forbes—Carlos Slim Helu, Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, Ingvar Kamprad, KP Singh, Oleg Deripaska, Karl Albrecht, Li Ka-shing, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Arnault, Lawrence Ellison, Roman Abramovich, Theo Albrecht, Liliane Bettencourt, Alexei Mordashov, Prince Alwaleed, Mikhail Fridman, etc., being two of the most wealthiest and powerful men in the world. This writer started laughing because even some of them did not understand that these public billionaires were nothing but front men and gophers; they have no power even with all the billions of dollars, they have accrued. Gates and Buffet, as well as all the others listed on the public billionaire list are agents for the secret Cabal.
The Oil crisis has nothing to do with supply and demand, but is being driven by greed and motivated by the lust of power. They have the ability dismiss and invite whom they please. Do you remember prior the 9/11 (September 11, 2001) hoax, the Nation of Libya and the Arab Jamahiriya was considered a "Rogue Nation" and part of what Bush called the “Axis of Evil”. Muammar al- Qaddafi in 1969 after overthrowing King Idris, became the champion of a Pan-Arabism, and Pan-Islamism causes, but more importantly he supported liberation struggles around the world. For example, in Sub-Sahara Africa, Central and South America (I can recall him embracig Daniel Ortega back in the 1980s, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Maurice Bishop of Grenada, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and supported African liberation struggles in various parts of Sub-Sahara Africa from West Africa too Cape Town . He also supported the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ireland, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) against Zionist occupation of Palestinian’s land and territories; Qaddafi even back in the 1980s gave Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, a five (5) million dollar interest free loan and was cozy with the Nation of Islam’s patriarch, Elijah Muhammad. Qaddafi was considered by America and Israeli propaganda machines as public enemy number one. (Reference: Noam Chomsky: “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.”)
But after 9/11 hoax and the United States invasion of Iraq; thus, Qaddafi had seemed to soften his anti-American and anti-West political rhetoric and even submitted to an international compromise over the 1988 Lockerbie, Scotland incident, where as 270 people were killed in what was deemed as a terrorist act, which Libyan nationals were accused. Qaddafi began to gradually shake off the label of being an exponent in exporting terrorism around the world and even furthered soften his rhetoric against the West. He disbanded his aspirations of acquiring Nuclear Weapons capability as a North African Nation in order to set a military balance in the Middle East between the Muslims (Arabs) and the Israeli (Jews). The United States and the United Nations even lifted the trade embargoes and economic sanctions against Libya that were imposed almost three decades ago as a measure of rewarding Qaddafi for demonstrating good behavior. The seven OIL SISTERS—Exxon, Mobil, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil, Texaco, Gulf (As of 2005, the surviving companies are ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, now members of the "supermajors" group). and their hidden profiteers are the ones that determine the Oil Market and they have had their eyes have on Tripoli for over three decades. (Reference: William C. Chasey: “Pan AM 103: Lockerbie Cover Up”)
This writer grew to admire Muammar al- Qaddafi and was very much disappointed in his flip-flop positions and now has to question whether or no he was an agent provocateur for the Cabal all the while.
They do not give a damn about some Islamic Sheik in Saudi Arabia or some crooked rogue government in Nigeria or even the sovereignty of these nations means absolutely nothing to them. These Oil producing Nations and leaders have mortgage their people and nations, over to the Secret Cabal. Did Muammar Qaddafi, the self-proclaimed revolutionary who once had a vision to unite the nation of Libya and Egypt and advocated a United Federated States of Africa; he also chaired the Organization of African Unity (OAU), but carried out some reactionary politics in Chad and Niger; was he a pawn of the Cabal all the while? I must reference Allen and Larry Abraham's book titled, "None Dare Call it Conspiracy." They talked about how the Cabal applies pressure from the top and pressure from the bottom, which to create the political, economic and social conditions to ascertain the results they desire. Perhaps they have invited Qaddafi and the Nation of Libya to the table, which to partake in the economic crumbs.
However, Libya and Cuba had to find out the hard way and a difficult lesson because they had brought into NATO (representative of the United States and the West and WARSAW PACT nations representative of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc Nations), but in 1989 only to discover that there were no real antagonistic contradictions between Socialism and Capitalism; Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Regan were both low level operatives that was only carrying out their assignments. Soviet Union wasn't dismantled nor did it collapse.
It was reorganized and strategically set-up for the betterment of the international bankers—to access the Siberian Oil fields and using companies like LUKOIL—to grease the palms of the international bankers that sit on top of Moscow. The Cabal—the International Bankers who inspired and instigated 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and gave life to the concept of a Socialist Revolution; did it for their own political and economic interest. Moreover, by 1989, they had, had enough of Leninism, Marxism, Stalinism and this naive concept that the major means of production and distribution were owned and controlled by the State and that Communism benefited the masses of its people. Communism from its inception ultimately only benefited the Russian Elite and that small Hidden Minority that rule the world. (Reference: Gary Allen and Larry Abraham: “None Dare Call it Conspiracy”)
William Cooper who authored one of the best treatise in helping us decode these conspiracies and exposed the agenda of the Cabal stated in his monumental book titled, “Behold A Pale Horse,” stated, “Many of them, however, disagree on exactly who will rule this New World Order, and that is what causes them to sometimes pull in opposite directions while nevertheless proceeding toward the same goal. The Vatican, for instance, wants the Pope to head the world coalition. Some want Lord Maitreya to head the New World Order. Lord Maitreya is the front runner, I believe, since witnesses say he was present on the ship at Malta with Bush and Gorbachev, and the ten regional heads of the New World Order. ‘Approximately 200 dignitaries from around the world attended a major conference initiated by Maitreya in London on April 21 and 22, 1990. Representatives of governments (including the USA) members of royal families, religious leaders. . .” (Reference: William Cooper: “Behold A Pale Horse.”)
The Oil crisis is an artificial crisis—The United States and the West consumes over 70 percent of this vital commodity (the West is truly an Oil Junkie) and the international bankers and the market wizards will continue to feed them, as much as they desire to consume, at an escalated and inflated financial rate. Bush who is a masterful conman has even suggested that the Oil Crisis should be blamed in part, on the American people, because the conservation advocates and the naturalist, have put up such political opposition to Oil drilling in Alaska and not allowing Bush Government to possible destroying the sanctity of this virgin wilderness, but most of us know that Halliburton and energy tycoon, Vice President Dick Chaney is licking his chops along with Bush because the Cabal will handsomely reward them if Alaska, the last Oil Reserves in the United States is open up for drilling, as well as, for economic and mineral exploitation.
The international bankers and the Cabal always manage to get what they want. The rising fuel cost on the consumer level, is designed to create that pressure from the top and pressure from the bottom in order to foster a condition where as the masses of the people will be propelled to believe and accept that giving Bush the authority to drill for Oil in Alaska will somehow alleviate the immediate Oil crisis in the United States. No, it will only further enrich the Cabal and the international bankers to the detriment of the suffering masses.
The United States in 1991 colonized Kuwait (although up until 1947 Kuwait was a part of Iraq, but British instigation led to Kuwait succeeding from Iraq and from that perspective Saddam Hussein was absolutely correct) and March 20, 2003 Bush and the United States Government began their efforts to colonize Iraq, the second largest Oil Reserve in the world and when these reactionaries forces went into Iraq, the international cost for a barrel of Iraqi Crude Oil was $ 29.00 USD per barrel and it now stands at $130.00 USD per barrel just five years later. The bloodsuckers of the poor keep human resistance at a minimum by selling the masses and nations, unbearable debt, which consumes them and dim resistance. The Cabal set-up the European Common Market and Euro currency, which to destabilize Western European Nation's sovereignty and to compromise nationalism, all for their benefit. The one currency concept had been in the making for a very long time; just as The United States, Canada, and Mexico and perhaps all points south, will eventually convert their money over to a new money currency called Amero. This will only further empower the Rothschild’s, Rockefellers, Oppenheimers, Morgans in their enslavement over humanity.
In the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” Protocol number 24 stated, “I pass now to the method of confirming Dynastic Roots King David to the last strata of the earth. This confirmation will first and foremost be included in that in which to this day has rested the force of conservatism by our Learned Elders of the conduct of all the affairs of the world, in directing of the education of thought of all of humanity. Certain members of the seed of David will prepare the kings and their heirs, selecting not by right of heritage but by eminent capacities, inducting them into the most secret mysteries of the political, into schemes of government, but providing always that none may come to knowledge of the secrets. The object of this mode of action is that all may know that government cannot be entrusted to those who have not been inducted into the secret places of its arts.” (Reference: “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”).
Did you know that in 1967 a one world government system was organized in Geneva, Switzerland by a United Nations meeting? and on that date, they decided to dissolve the United Nations to make room for a One World Government. The One World Government will seize all possessions, savings and personal bank deposits. Every man, woman and child will receive a certain amount of money and a number from the One World Government system. The One World Government currency is already printed and ready to be put in circulation. Every dollar will be traded. You will in the near future receive one dollar for every ten dollars; the banker will handle what money you get, eventually we will not be handling any money. At that same United Nations meeting they stated that you would receive a number from the One World Government. In March of 1974, it was stated by the European economic market that they needed a leader. They initially suggested Henry Kissinger as leader of the New World Order.
Carroll Quigley in his monumental book titled, “Tragedy and Hope”, stated, “I know the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies. . .but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”
The majority of the American people and the people of the world do not understand that there is no such thing as democracy—one man, one vote, this is only an illusion designed to give the impression and to pacify the ignorant masses into believing that they matter in the political systems of the world and it is just to the contrary. The Cabal will never leave picking their high power servants and operatives up to a ballot box and at the political discretion of an electoral process. Voting is only a matter of going through the motions and placating the ignorant masses, but the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberger they are the real POWER BROKERS, it is their job to select the next United States president and your vote, popular vote count, delegates, superdelegates, etc., do not factor into their decision; thus, regardless of the outcomes that will take place at the Democrat and Republican National Conventions. Many of you will not believe that the next United States president has already been selected and decided upon and he is prepared to serve; although the general election is slated for November 2008 and you have yet to cast your ballots. (Reference: David Icke: “The Biggest Secret”).
It does not matter whether the presidential candidate is John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton; they have not ascended up the political latter on their own recognizance. They are fully aware who they owe their allegiance and it is not to the American people. Some will try to dismiss my research as mere conspiracy theories and fail to grasp the fact that these are dangerous times which we live. The next United States president has already been given a play book, script and agenda, which is not up for negotiation or deviation; for execution only. United States domestic and Foreign Policy agenda is already set for next eight (8) years and for that matter, the political agenda for the entire world has also been set. Senator McCain has made it crystal clear that if he had to, he would commit United States troops to Iraq for next 100 years; either this is a backwards decision or is McCain given us a hint of what to expect from U.S. Foreign policy the next eight years—this sounds like business as usual, and as an extension of George Bush's cowboy and wild, wild west reactionary Foreign Policy agenda.
William Cooper, “Behold A Pale Horse” goes on to state, “It is important that you know that the members of the Order take and oath that absolves them from any allegiance to a any nation or king or government or constitution, and that includes the negating of any subsequent oath of allegiance which they may be required to take. They swear allegiance only to the Order and its goal of a New World Order. George Bush is not a loyal citizen of the United States but instead is loyal only to the destruction of the United States and to the formation of the New World Order. According to the oath Bush took when he was initiated into the Skull & Bones, his oath of office as President of the United States of America means nothing.”
The Hidden Emperors have their sights on Oil and every nation and their people are considered expendable in lieu of profits, greed and accumulation of wealth. How much money is enough? The United States war machines continues to murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens in name of Oil diplomacy. They have raked up these immoral and unethical tragedies in Iraq, as the price of doing business. These are criminal acts, but who can make war with the beast other than God himself. The Hidden Emperors have Muslims fighting and debating over artificial labels and concepts—Sunni versus Shia instigating and creating sectarian tension and violence and then removing their filthy hand as though they are innocent.
But their motive is stealing Oil and they are trying to set the stage to attack and invade Iran by demonizing President Mahmoud Ahmadjindine, which to justify going into Iran an stealing more oil. The next United States President will have his marching orders and do not be surprised if U.S. Foreign policy does not lead them right into Tehran, but what can not be overlooked, is that the Israelis (Zionist Jews) influence that is driving the United States into deep international isolation, specifically in the so-called Middle East. You can not have a one-sided debate and conversation relative to the Palestinians (Arabs) and the Israelis (Jews) over the question of land rights and sovereignty. Both sides must-be held equally accountable, if you are serious about one day achieving a peaceful resolution and compromise in Palestine. Bush and the United States Government is quick to condemn and repudiate Hamas and Hezbollah for so-called using Lebanon as a terrorist haven and yet did not criticize the Israelis unprovoked attacked against Lebanon in 2006. The United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East can not be based on double standards. (Reference: Obadiah Shoher: “Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East”).
The world continues to be duped and misled by an evil Cabal who has wrapped its tentacles around the whole of humanity and controls every facet of our lives; they use their most powerful tool—the media, both electronic and print, to lure us to sleep and most of all make their thoughts our thoughts. They work out of various fronts such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger, etc., but is by no stretch of the imagination limited to these three powerful organizations. They intertwine with Freemasonry (I mean high degree Masonry and I am not referring to those who are initiated in 33rd degree; there is a Dynastic Freemasonic brotherhood—that evolves around blood lineage and wealth, which this Order is not open to rank and file Freemasons). The Cabal is the one pulling the purse strings on the Oil crisis and they are motivated by greed and power. President Bush is a loyal pawn and is only following the orders given to him by this INVISIBLE CABAL. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all have swore loyalty to continue the AGENDA.
Fahim A. Knight Chief Researcher for KEEPING IT REAL THINK TANK located in Durham, NC; our mission is to inform African Americans and all people of good will of the pending dangers that lie ahead; as well as decode the symbolisms and reinterpret the hidden meanings behind those who operate as invisible forces, but covertly rules the world. We are of the belief that an enlighten world will be better prepared to throw off the shackles of ignorance and not be willing participants for the slaughter. Our MOTTO is speaking truth to power. Fahim A. Knight can be reached at fahimknight@yahoo.com.
STAY AWAKE UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN,
Fahim A. Knight
The Cabal: Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand
By: Fahim A. Knight
The American people, in particular and the world in general, have no real idea that everything around them isn't what it appears. There has always been and old saying that states, “perception means everything and reality, means absolutely nothing.” Interpret to mean you have to just look good and not necessarily be of any substance. President George Bush just has to look and sound good, but in reality, all of his decisions and all of our decisions are under the dictates of some powerful hidden entitles. President George Bush appears to be one of the most powerful men in the world and yet he is under the dictates of the real and invisible decision makers. He was elevated in 2000 to the highest office in world because of a willingness to serve and carryout their well calculated agenda. Does he work for the House of Rothschild, the Carlyle Group, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Russell Group, and Bilderberger Group? (Reference: Texe Marrs: “Circle of Intrigue: The Hidden Inner Circle of the Global Illuminati Conspiracy”)
Dr. John Coleman in his book titled, “Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of the 300” stated, “It is the Committee of 300 which has established control networks and mechanisms far more binding than anything ever seen in this world. Chains and ropes are not needed to restrain us. Our fears of what is to come does that job far more efficiently than any physical means of restraint. We have been brainwashed to give up our Constitutional right to bear arms; to give up our Constitution itself; to allow the United Nations to exercise control over our foreign policies and the IMF to take control of our fiscal and monetary policies; to permit the President to break United States law with impunity and to invade a foreign country and kidnap its head of state. In short we have been brainwashed to the extent where we, as a nation, will accept each and every lawless act carried out by our government almost without question.” (Reference: Dr. John Coleman: “Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of the 300”).
How many people truly believe and know that there is an Elite Cabal of Emperors who function with autonym and world sovereignty, and are above the laws of all nations? This writer recently watched President Bush meet with King Abdullah, the Royal King of Saudi Arabia and they were so-called discussing Saudi Arabia’s possibilities of increasing Oil Production drilling (at least that is what they conveyed on camera) and what OPEC can do to so-called ease the Oil tension in the West. This writer said to himself, Wow! "How many people believe that OPEC can make that decision and fail to understand that OPEC is just a Front Organization for the Cabal and the Hidden Emperors?" The mass mediums sent their talking heads and spin doctors out to convince the American people, in particular and world the people in general, that the Oil crisis is a matter of supply and demand. The last time this writer checked, the price of crude Oil, it had risen to over $130.00 USD per Barrel. Some of the ignorant would like to blame the Arabs—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, etc., for the Oil crisis and have no idea that someone more powerful and more sinister is guiding this so-called crisis. Some would even prefer blaming Hugo Chavez the charismatic and idealist President of Venezuela for the United States Oil crises.
Andy Stern in his book titled, “Oil: From Rockefellers to Iraq and Beyond’ stated, “The freewheeling gold rush years in the US soon gave way to the all-devouring empire created by John D. Rockefeller, whose fortune was built on sharp business practices, corruption of government at the highest levels, and created of one of the most successful and enduring cartels the world has ever seen. Then as now in the US, government and Big Oil were closely interlinked. Rockefeller had agents all over the world, forming a semi-official a semi-official diplomatic structure that negotiated trade deals directly with national governments. Today, the links are even closer, with former oil executives occupying many of the top positions in the current US administration, and taking policy positions highly favourable to the industry in which they made their fortunes. As the thirst for oil, and the vast profits it offered, enticed companies beyond their national borders, British, French and US oil have sought to exploit oil resources overseas, and have not hesitated to corrupt or subvert governments, be they in Africa, Asia or Latin America, in order to gain control of these valuable assets.” (Reference: Andy Stern: “Oil: From Rockefellers to Iraq and Beyond’).
Thus, they had never heard of the Elite Dynastic Families, this inner secret Cabal that is so rich and powerful that they are hidden under many layers of deceptions. They have the ability to create international crisis—wars, economic recessions, political tension (instigating and supporting rivals on both sides), etc., for their benefits. The people have been reduced to mere pawns. This writer was having a discussion with some of the KEEPING IT REAL think tank members and the question came up, about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, in particular, but here is the top 20 billionaires of the world listed by Forbes—Carlos Slim Helu, Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, Ingvar Kamprad, KP Singh, Oleg Deripaska, Karl Albrecht, Li Ka-shing, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Arnault, Lawrence Ellison, Roman Abramovich, Theo Albrecht, Liliane Bettencourt, Alexei Mordashov, Prince Alwaleed, Mikhail Fridman, etc., being two of the most wealthiest and powerful men in the world. This writer started laughing because even some of them did not understand that these public billionaires were nothing but front men and gophers; they have no power even with all the billions of dollars, they have accrued. Gates and Buffet, as well as all the others listed on the public billionaire list are agents for the secret Cabal.
The Oil crisis has nothing to do with supply and demand, but is being driven by greed and motivated by the lust of power. They have the ability dismiss and invite whom they please. Do you remember prior the 9/11 (September 11, 2001) hoax, the Nation of Libya and the Arab Jamahiriya was considered a "Rogue Nation" and part of what Bush called the “Axis of Evil”. Muammar al- Qaddafi in 1969 after overthrowing King Idris, became the champion of a Pan-Arabism, and Pan-Islamism causes, but more importantly he supported liberation struggles around the world. For example, in Sub-Sahara Africa, Central and South America (I can recall him embracig Daniel Ortega back in the 1980s, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Maurice Bishop of Grenada, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and supported African liberation struggles in various parts of Sub-Sahara Africa from West Africa too Cape Town . He also supported the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ireland, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) against Zionist occupation of Palestinian’s land and territories; Qaddafi even back in the 1980s gave Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, a five (5) million dollar interest free loan and was cozy with the Nation of Islam’s patriarch, Elijah Muhammad. Qaddafi was considered by America and Israeli propaganda machines as public enemy number one. (Reference: Noam Chomsky: “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.”)
But after 9/11 hoax and the United States invasion of Iraq; thus, Qaddafi had seemed to soften his anti-American and anti-West political rhetoric and even submitted to an international compromise over the 1988 Lockerbie, Scotland incident, where as 270 people were killed in what was deemed as a terrorist act, which Libyan nationals were accused. Qaddafi began to gradually shake off the label of being an exponent in exporting terrorism around the world and even furthered soften his rhetoric against the West. He disbanded his aspirations of acquiring Nuclear Weapons capability as a North African Nation in order to set a military balance in the Middle East between the Muslims (Arabs) and the Israeli (Jews). The United States and the United Nations even lifted the trade embargoes and economic sanctions against Libya that were imposed almost three decades ago as a measure of rewarding Qaddafi for demonstrating good behavior. The seven OIL SISTERS—Exxon, Mobil, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil, Texaco, Gulf (As of 2005, the surviving companies are ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, now members of the "supermajors" group). and their hidden profiteers are the ones that determine the Oil Market and they have had their eyes have on Tripoli for over three decades. (Reference: William C. Chasey: “Pan AM 103: Lockerbie Cover Up”)
This writer grew to admire Muammar al- Qaddafi and was very much disappointed in his flip-flop positions and now has to question whether or no he was an agent provocateur for the Cabal all the while.
They do not give a damn about some Islamic Sheik in Saudi Arabia or some crooked rogue government in Nigeria or even the sovereignty of these nations means absolutely nothing to them. These Oil producing Nations and leaders have mortgage their people and nations, over to the Secret Cabal. Did Muammar Qaddafi, the self-proclaimed revolutionary who once had a vision to unite the nation of Libya and Egypt and advocated a United Federated States of Africa; he also chaired the Organization of African Unity (OAU), but carried out some reactionary politics in Chad and Niger; was he a pawn of the Cabal all the while? I must reference Allen and Larry Abraham's book titled, "None Dare Call it Conspiracy." They talked about how the Cabal applies pressure from the top and pressure from the bottom, which to create the political, economic and social conditions to ascertain the results they desire. Perhaps they have invited Qaddafi and the Nation of Libya to the table, which to partake in the economic crumbs.
However, Libya and Cuba had to find out the hard way and a difficult lesson because they had brought into NATO (representative of the United States and the West and WARSAW PACT nations representative of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc Nations), but in 1989 only to discover that there were no real antagonistic contradictions between Socialism and Capitalism; Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Regan were both low level operatives that was only carrying out their assignments. Soviet Union wasn't dismantled nor did it collapse.
It was reorganized and strategically set-up for the betterment of the international bankers—to access the Siberian Oil fields and using companies like LUKOIL—to grease the palms of the international bankers that sit on top of Moscow. The Cabal—the International Bankers who inspired and instigated 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and gave life to the concept of a Socialist Revolution; did it for their own political and economic interest. Moreover, by 1989, they had, had enough of Leninism, Marxism, Stalinism and this naive concept that the major means of production and distribution were owned and controlled by the State and that Communism benefited the masses of its people. Communism from its inception ultimately only benefited the Russian Elite and that small Hidden Minority that rule the world. (Reference: Gary Allen and Larry Abraham: “None Dare Call it Conspiracy”)
William Cooper who authored one of the best treatise in helping us decode these conspiracies and exposed the agenda of the Cabal stated in his monumental book titled, “Behold A Pale Horse,” stated, “Many of them, however, disagree on exactly who will rule this New World Order, and that is what causes them to sometimes pull in opposite directions while nevertheless proceeding toward the same goal. The Vatican, for instance, wants the Pope to head the world coalition. Some want Lord Maitreya to head the New World Order. Lord Maitreya is the front runner, I believe, since witnesses say he was present on the ship at Malta with Bush and Gorbachev, and the ten regional heads of the New World Order. ‘Approximately 200 dignitaries from around the world attended a major conference initiated by Maitreya in London on April 21 and 22, 1990. Representatives of governments (including the USA) members of royal families, religious leaders. . .” (Reference: William Cooper: “Behold A Pale Horse.”)
The Oil crisis is an artificial crisis—The United States and the West consumes over 70 percent of this vital commodity (the West is truly an Oil Junkie) and the international bankers and the market wizards will continue to feed them, as much as they desire to consume, at an escalated and inflated financial rate. Bush who is a masterful conman has even suggested that the Oil Crisis should be blamed in part, on the American people, because the conservation advocates and the naturalist, have put up such political opposition to Oil drilling in Alaska and not allowing Bush Government to possible destroying the sanctity of this virgin wilderness, but most of us know that Halliburton and energy tycoon, Vice President Dick Chaney is licking his chops along with Bush because the Cabal will handsomely reward them if Alaska, the last Oil Reserves in the United States is open up for drilling, as well as, for economic and mineral exploitation.
The international bankers and the Cabal always manage to get what they want. The rising fuel cost on the consumer level, is designed to create that pressure from the top and pressure from the bottom in order to foster a condition where as the masses of the people will be propelled to believe and accept that giving Bush the authority to drill for Oil in Alaska will somehow alleviate the immediate Oil crisis in the United States. No, it will only further enrich the Cabal and the international bankers to the detriment of the suffering masses.
The United States in 1991 colonized Kuwait (although up until 1947 Kuwait was a part of Iraq, but British instigation led to Kuwait succeeding from Iraq and from that perspective Saddam Hussein was absolutely correct) and March 20, 2003 Bush and the United States Government began their efforts to colonize Iraq, the second largest Oil Reserve in the world and when these reactionaries forces went into Iraq, the international cost for a barrel of Iraqi Crude Oil was $ 29.00 USD per barrel and it now stands at $130.00 USD per barrel just five years later. The bloodsuckers of the poor keep human resistance at a minimum by selling the masses and nations, unbearable debt, which consumes them and dim resistance. The Cabal set-up the European Common Market and Euro currency, which to destabilize Western European Nation's sovereignty and to compromise nationalism, all for their benefit. The one currency concept had been in the making for a very long time; just as The United States, Canada, and Mexico and perhaps all points south, will eventually convert their money over to a new money currency called Amero. This will only further empower the Rothschild’s, Rockefellers, Oppenheimers, Morgans in their enslavement over humanity.
In the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” Protocol number 24 stated, “I pass now to the method of confirming Dynastic Roots King David to the last strata of the earth. This confirmation will first and foremost be included in that in which to this day has rested the force of conservatism by our Learned Elders of the conduct of all the affairs of the world, in directing of the education of thought of all of humanity. Certain members of the seed of David will prepare the kings and their heirs, selecting not by right of heritage but by eminent capacities, inducting them into the most secret mysteries of the political, into schemes of government, but providing always that none may come to knowledge of the secrets. The object of this mode of action is that all may know that government cannot be entrusted to those who have not been inducted into the secret places of its arts.” (Reference: “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”).
Did you know that in 1967 a one world government system was organized in Geneva, Switzerland by a United Nations meeting? and on that date, they decided to dissolve the United Nations to make room for a One World Government. The One World Government will seize all possessions, savings and personal bank deposits. Every man, woman and child will receive a certain amount of money and a number from the One World Government system. The One World Government currency is already printed and ready to be put in circulation. Every dollar will be traded. You will in the near future receive one dollar for every ten dollars; the banker will handle what money you get, eventually we will not be handling any money. At that same United Nations meeting they stated that you would receive a number from the One World Government. In March of 1974, it was stated by the European economic market that they needed a leader. They initially suggested Henry Kissinger as leader of the New World Order.
Carroll Quigley in his monumental book titled, “Tragedy and Hope”, stated, “I know the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies. . .but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”
The majority of the American people and the people of the world do not understand that there is no such thing as democracy—one man, one vote, this is only an illusion designed to give the impression and to pacify the ignorant masses into believing that they matter in the political systems of the world and it is just to the contrary. The Cabal will never leave picking their high power servants and operatives up to a ballot box and at the political discretion of an electoral process. Voting is only a matter of going through the motions and placating the ignorant masses, but the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberger they are the real POWER BROKERS, it is their job to select the next United States president and your vote, popular vote count, delegates, superdelegates, etc., do not factor into their decision; thus, regardless of the outcomes that will take place at the Democrat and Republican National Conventions. Many of you will not believe that the next United States president has already been selected and decided upon and he is prepared to serve; although the general election is slated for November 2008 and you have yet to cast your ballots. (Reference: David Icke: “The Biggest Secret”).
It does not matter whether the presidential candidate is John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton; they have not ascended up the political latter on their own recognizance. They are fully aware who they owe their allegiance and it is not to the American people. Some will try to dismiss my research as mere conspiracy theories and fail to grasp the fact that these are dangerous times which we live. The next United States president has already been given a play book, script and agenda, which is not up for negotiation or deviation; for execution only. United States domestic and Foreign Policy agenda is already set for next eight (8) years and for that matter, the political agenda for the entire world has also been set. Senator McCain has made it crystal clear that if he had to, he would commit United States troops to Iraq for next 100 years; either this is a backwards decision or is McCain given us a hint of what to expect from U.S. Foreign policy the next eight years—this sounds like business as usual, and as an extension of George Bush's cowboy and wild, wild west reactionary Foreign Policy agenda.
William Cooper, “Behold A Pale Horse” goes on to state, “It is important that you know that the members of the Order take and oath that absolves them from any allegiance to a any nation or king or government or constitution, and that includes the negating of any subsequent oath of allegiance which they may be required to take. They swear allegiance only to the Order and its goal of a New World Order. George Bush is not a loyal citizen of the United States but instead is loyal only to the destruction of the United States and to the formation of the New World Order. According to the oath Bush took when he was initiated into the Skull & Bones, his oath of office as President of the United States of America means nothing.”
The Hidden Emperors have their sights on Oil and every nation and their people are considered expendable in lieu of profits, greed and accumulation of wealth. How much money is enough? The United States war machines continues to murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens in name of Oil diplomacy. They have raked up these immoral and unethical tragedies in Iraq, as the price of doing business. These are criminal acts, but who can make war with the beast other than God himself. The Hidden Emperors have Muslims fighting and debating over artificial labels and concepts—Sunni versus Shia instigating and creating sectarian tension and violence and then removing their filthy hand as though they are innocent.
But their motive is stealing Oil and they are trying to set the stage to attack and invade Iran by demonizing President Mahmoud Ahmadjindine, which to justify going into Iran an stealing more oil. The next United States President will have his marching orders and do not be surprised if U.S. Foreign policy does not lead them right into Tehran, but what can not be overlooked, is that the Israelis (Zionist Jews) influence that is driving the United States into deep international isolation, specifically in the so-called Middle East. You can not have a one-sided debate and conversation relative to the Palestinians (Arabs) and the Israelis (Jews) over the question of land rights and sovereignty. Both sides must-be held equally accountable, if you are serious about one day achieving a peaceful resolution and compromise in Palestine. Bush and the United States Government is quick to condemn and repudiate Hamas and Hezbollah for so-called using Lebanon as a terrorist haven and yet did not criticize the Israelis unprovoked attacked against Lebanon in 2006. The United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East can not be based on double standards. (Reference: Obadiah Shoher: “Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East”).
The world continues to be duped and misled by an evil Cabal who has wrapped its tentacles around the whole of humanity and controls every facet of our lives; they use their most powerful tool—the media, both electronic and print, to lure us to sleep and most of all make their thoughts our thoughts. They work out of various fronts such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger, etc., but is by no stretch of the imagination limited to these three powerful organizations. They intertwine with Freemasonry (I mean high degree Masonry and I am not referring to those who are initiated in 33rd degree; there is a Dynastic Freemasonic brotherhood—that evolves around blood lineage and wealth, which this Order is not open to rank and file Freemasons). The Cabal is the one pulling the purse strings on the Oil crisis and they are motivated by greed and power. President Bush is a loyal pawn and is only following the orders given to him by this INVISIBLE CABAL. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all have swore loyalty to continue the AGENDA.
Fahim A. Knight Chief Researcher for KEEPING IT REAL THINK TANK located in Durham, NC; our mission is to inform African Americans and all people of good will of the pending dangers that lie ahead; as well as decode the symbolisms and reinterpret the hidden meanings behind those who operate as invisible forces, but covertly rules the world. We are of the belief that an enlighten world will be better prepared to throw off the shackles of ignorance and not be willing participants for the slaughter. Our MOTTO is speaking truth to power. Fahim A. Knight can be reached at fahimknight@yahoo.com.
STAY AWAKE UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN,
Fahim A. Knight
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/democracy_in_america_is_a_useful_fiction_20100124/
Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction
Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:22 EST
Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d'état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
Much of the outrage expressed about the court's ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of "inverted totalitarianism."
Inverted totalitarianism represents "the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry," Wolin writes in "Democracy Incorporated." Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by "power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions," Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people's right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the "persons" agree to a "settlement." Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not "admitting any wrongdoing." There is a word for this. It is called corruption.
Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on "American Idol." Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.
Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world's largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is "conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience."
"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things," Wolin writes. "It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."
Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media's censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.
"It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today's media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism," Wolin writes. "Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of 'the left wing of the Democratic Party,' never of democrats."
Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country's foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.
The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as "soft" or "unpatriotic." The "patriotic" citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history.
The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle."
Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction
Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:22 EST
Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d'état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
Much of the outrage expressed about the court's ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of "inverted totalitarianism."
Inverted totalitarianism represents "the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry," Wolin writes in "Democracy Incorporated." Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by "power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions," Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people's right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the "persons" agree to a "settlement." Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not "admitting any wrongdoing." There is a word for this. It is called corruption.
Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on "American Idol." Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.
Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world's largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is "conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience."
"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things," Wolin writes. "It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."
Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media's censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.
"It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today's media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism," Wolin writes. "Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of 'the left wing of the Democratic Party,' never of democrats."
Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country's foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.
The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as "soft" or "unpatriotic." The "patriotic" citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history.
The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle."
Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aaIuE.W8RAuU
David Reilly
Bloomberg News
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:06 EST
The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week's congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.
Wednesday's hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.
We're talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG's bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny.
The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others. That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contracts that would have been worth far less had AIG been allowed to fail.
That move came a few weeks after the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department propped up AIG in the wake of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s own mid-September bankruptcy filing.
Saving the System
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time of the AIG moves. He maintained during Wednesday's hearing that the New York bank had to buy the insurance contracts, known as credit default swaps, to keep AIG from failing, which would have threatened the financial system.
The hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also focused on what many in Congress believe was the New York Fed's subsequent attempt to cover up buyout details and who benefited.
By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn't subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.
This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed's bailout programs. It's as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation's central bank.
Geithner's Bosses
The New York Fed is one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks that operate under the supervision of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, chaired by Ben Bernanke. Member-bank presidents are appointed by nine-member boards, who themselves are appointed largely by other bankers.
As Representative Marcy Kaptur told Geithner at the hearing: "A lot of people think that the president of the New York Fed works for the U.S. government. But in fact you work for the private banks that elected you."
And yet the New York Fed played an integral role in the government's bailout of banks, often receiving surprisingly free rein to act as it saw fit.
Consider AIG. Let's take Geithner at his word that a failure to resolve the insurer's default swaps would have led to financial Armageddon. Given the stakes, you might think Geithner would have coordinated actions with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Yet Paulson testified that he wasn't in the loop.
"I had no involvement at all, in the payment to the counterparties, no involvement whatsoever," Paulson said.
Bernanke's Denials
Fed Chairman Bernanke also wasn't involved. In a written response to questions from Representative Darrell Issa, Bernanke said he "was not directly involved in the negotiations" with AIG's counterparty banks.
You have to wonder then who really was in charge of our nation's financial future if AIG posed as grave a threat as Geithner claimed.
Questions about the New York Fed's accountability grew after Geithner on Nov. 24, 2008, was named by then-President- elect Barack Obama to be Treasury Secretary. Geither said he recused himself from the bank's day-to-day activities, even though he never actually signed a formal letter of recusal.
That left issues related to disclosures about the deal in the hands of the bank's lawyers and staff, rather than a top executive. Those staffers didn't want details of the swaps purchase to become public.
New York Fed staff and outside lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardell edited AIG communications to investors and intervened with the Securities and Exchange Commission to shield details about the buyout transactions, according to a report by Issa.
That the New York Fed, a quasi-governmental body, was able to push around the SEC, an executive-branch agency, deserves a congressional hearing all by itself.
Later, when it became clear information would be disclosed, New York Fed legal group staffer James Bergin e-mailed colleagues saying: "I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals -- too many counterparties, too many lawyers and advisors, too many people from AIG -- to keep a determined Congress from the information."
Think of the enormity of that statement. A staffer at a body with little public accountability and that exists to serve bankers is lamenting the inability to keep Congress in the dark.
This belies the culture of secrecy obviously pervasive within the New York Fed. Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns noted during the hearing that the bank initially refused to disclose even the names of other banks that benefited from its actions, arguing this information would somehow harm AIG.
'Penchant for Secrecy'
"In fact, when the information was finally released, under pressure from Congress, nothing happened," Towns said. "It had absolutely no effect on AIG's business or financial condition. But it did have an effect on the credibility of the Federal Reserve, and it called into question the Fed's penchant for secrecy."
Now, I'm not saying Congress should be meddling in interest-rate decisions, or micro-managing bank regulation. Nor do I think we should all don tin-foil hats and start ranting about the Trilateral Commission.
Yet when unelected and unaccountable agencies pick banking winners while trying to end-run Congress, even as taxpayers are forced to lend, spend and guarantee about $8 trillion to prop up the financial system, our collective blood should boil.
(David Reilly is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions express
David Reilly
Bloomberg News
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:06 EST
The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week's congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.
Wednesday's hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.
We're talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG's bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny.
The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others. That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contracts that would have been worth far less had AIG been allowed to fail.
That move came a few weeks after the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department propped up AIG in the wake of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s own mid-September bankruptcy filing.
Saving the System
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time of the AIG moves. He maintained during Wednesday's hearing that the New York bank had to buy the insurance contracts, known as credit default swaps, to keep AIG from failing, which would have threatened the financial system.
The hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also focused on what many in Congress believe was the New York Fed's subsequent attempt to cover up buyout details and who benefited.
By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn't subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.
This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed's bailout programs. It's as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation's central bank.
Geithner's Bosses
The New York Fed is one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks that operate under the supervision of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, chaired by Ben Bernanke. Member-bank presidents are appointed by nine-member boards, who themselves are appointed largely by other bankers.
As Representative Marcy Kaptur told Geithner at the hearing: "A lot of people think that the president of the New York Fed works for the U.S. government. But in fact you work for the private banks that elected you."
And yet the New York Fed played an integral role in the government's bailout of banks, often receiving surprisingly free rein to act as it saw fit.
Consider AIG. Let's take Geithner at his word that a failure to resolve the insurer's default swaps would have led to financial Armageddon. Given the stakes, you might think Geithner would have coordinated actions with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Yet Paulson testified that he wasn't in the loop.
"I had no involvement at all, in the payment to the counterparties, no involvement whatsoever," Paulson said.
Bernanke's Denials
Fed Chairman Bernanke also wasn't involved. In a written response to questions from Representative Darrell Issa, Bernanke said he "was not directly involved in the negotiations" with AIG's counterparty banks.
You have to wonder then who really was in charge of our nation's financial future if AIG posed as grave a threat as Geithner claimed.
Questions about the New York Fed's accountability grew after Geithner on Nov. 24, 2008, was named by then-President- elect Barack Obama to be Treasury Secretary. Geither said he recused himself from the bank's day-to-day activities, even though he never actually signed a formal letter of recusal.
That left issues related to disclosures about the deal in the hands of the bank's lawyers and staff, rather than a top executive. Those staffers didn't want details of the swaps purchase to become public.
New York Fed staff and outside lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardell edited AIG communications to investors and intervened with the Securities and Exchange Commission to shield details about the buyout transactions, according to a report by Issa.
That the New York Fed, a quasi-governmental body, was able to push around the SEC, an executive-branch agency, deserves a congressional hearing all by itself.
Later, when it became clear information would be disclosed, New York Fed legal group staffer James Bergin e-mailed colleagues saying: "I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals -- too many counterparties, too many lawyers and advisors, too many people from AIG -- to keep a determined Congress from the information."
Think of the enormity of that statement. A staffer at a body with little public accountability and that exists to serve bankers is lamenting the inability to keep Congress in the dark.
This belies the culture of secrecy obviously pervasive within the New York Fed. Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns noted during the hearing that the bank initially refused to disclose even the names of other banks that benefited from its actions, arguing this information would somehow harm AIG.
'Penchant for Secrecy'
"In fact, when the information was finally released, under pressure from Congress, nothing happened," Towns said. "It had absolutely no effect on AIG's business or financial condition. But it did have an effect on the credibility of the Federal Reserve, and it called into question the Fed's penchant for secrecy."
Now, I'm not saying Congress should be meddling in interest-rate decisions, or micro-managing bank regulation. Nor do I think we should all don tin-foil hats and start ranting about the Trilateral Commission.
Yet when unelected and unaccountable agencies pick banking winners while trying to end-run Congress, even as taxpayers are forced to lend, spend and guarantee about $8 trillion to prop up the financial system, our collective blood should boil.
(David Reilly is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions express
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