Monday, January 04, 2010

How China Partnered with the GOP to Screw America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Chinese rulers and the US elites partnered to enslave US workers and consumers. As a result, the US became a vassal state of China, a huge population which props up the buck so that it can sell us junk via Wal-Mart.

These deals were all worked out with China by Bush Sr et al in the years following Nixon's infamous visit to the forbidden city. In these talks, US leaders, primarily the right wing/GOP, the US consumer and laborer was sold out. The US would become a vassal state, a slave state, a consumer society whose raison d'etre was to buy Chinese junk. The big losers are US workers and consumers.
I work at Wal-Mart (I'm involved in the UFCW's effort to organize W-M). One day, right after I was hired, I went around on my lunch break and just sort of randomly looked at where a whole bunch of products were made.

I think I found a blender that had been made in Malaysia. EVERYTHING else had been made in China.

I wonder how the typical US consumer would feel about Wal-Mart if it were named, say, US Corporate Capital & Chinese Slave Labor Coooperative?

--John Carter, on Facebook
The US used to make some of the products --appliances, electronic gear et al --that are now dumped on the US via an economic blight called Wal-Mart! The US ruling elite resented the high wages paid to unionized workers in affluent America. Nixon, Reagan et al solved the US labor 'problem'!

The solution: EXPORT US JOBS TO CHINA!

China pays slave wages and dumps the resulting cheap product on a US which produces very little these days. Concurrently, there are fewer futures, fewer opportunities, declining hope, rising despair --all the result of some thirty or forty years of right wing bullshit, lies, crookery and outright fraud. The GOP, for example, is not a political party. It is a crime syndicate and a kooky cult to boot!

The tragic truth can be found in black and white at the CIA's World Fact Book which lists the US at the bottom of the list with the world's largest negative current account balance, formerly called the balance of trade deficit.
While the US was spending time, resources and personnel in running 'elections' for its corrupt clients in Afghanistan and Iraq, and participating in pointless mediations between its intransigent Israeli partner and its impotent Palestinian client, the South Korean government backed a consortium headed by the Korea Electric Power Corporation in its successful bid on the $20.4 billion dollar nuclear power deal, opening the way for other billion-dollar contracts in the region (FT - page 13).

...

In contrast, the US is a declining world power with a deteriorating society resulting from its military-driven empire building and its financial-speculative centered economy:

  1. Washington pursues minor military clients in Asia; while China expands its trading and investment agreements with major economic partners - Russia, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.

    Washington drains the domestic economy to finance overseas wars. China extracts minerals and energy resources to create its domestic job market in manufacturing.

  2. The US invests in military technology to target local insurgents challenging US client regimes; China invests in civilian technology to create competitive exports.

  3. China begins to restructure its economy toward developing the country's interior and allocates greater social spending to redress its gross imbalances and inequalities while the US rescues and reinforces the parasitical financial sector, which plundered industries (strips assets via mergers and acquisitions) and speculates on financial objectives with no impact on employment, productivity or competitiveness.

  4. The US multiplies wars and troop build-ups in the Middle East, South Asia, the Horn of Africa and Caribbean; China provides investments and loans of over $25 billion dollars in building infrastructure, mineral extraction, energy production and assembly plants in Africa.

  5. China signs multi-billion dollar trade and investment agreements with Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, securing access to strategic energy, mineral and agricultural resources; Washington provides $6 billion in military aid to Colombia, secures seven military bases from President Uribe (to threaten Venezuela), backs a military coup in tiny Honduras and denounces Brazil and Bolivia for diversifying its economic ties with Iran.
  6. China increases economic relations with dynamic Latin American economies, incorporating over 80% of the continent's population; the US partners with the failed state of Mexico, which has the worst economic performance in the hemisphere and where powerful drug cartels control wide regions and penetrate deep into the state apparatus.

--Information Clearing House, The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning, James Petras
The US right wing robbed the US population with "trickle down theory" and other nonsense utterly unsupported with fact or evidence:

  • In the late 1970s, the top one percent of the US population held 13 percent of the wealth; in 1995 it held 38 percent. [Source: Source: Levy, Frank. The New Dollars and Dreams ].
  • The top ten percent of the US population owns 81.8 percent of the real estate, 81.2 percent of the stock, and 88 percent of the bonds. [Source: Federal Reserve Bank data in Left Business Observer, No. 72, Apr. 3, 1996, p. 5].
  • One percent of the US population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. [Source: Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: Harper Business, 1993].
  • The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
  • Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
  • Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...
    Rebecca Blank, who recently left the President's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out, ‘We've gone back to levels of income and wealth inequality that this country hasn't seen since the teens and 1920s.’" [Source: Merrill Goozner, Crash of '99?, Salon.com, Oct. 1, 1999; addendum: since 1999, the date the source was published, the situation is much, much worse. Today --just ONE PERCENT own more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. GOP incompetence and criminality moves so fast these days, it's hard to keep up!].
  • The top one percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 40 percent. [Source: Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World, p. 108].
  • Federal Reserve median family net worth by percentile for 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001 (Federal Reserve Bulletin January 2003, pp. 1-36). Note the small gains for the bottom 75% of the population and larger gains for the upper 25% and that the 1998 to 2001 gains were largest.

    --US Wealth Distributions 1989-2001

Republicans bought the scam because it made them feel good about being greedy, shallow bastards. The appeal is obvious: trickle down rationalized greed but only after the fact; it made one feel good about one's worst impulses, motives, and elitist bigotry.
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Sunday, January 03, 2010

BBC: Al Qaeda NEVER Existed!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The BBC had revealed that Al Qaeda is a creation of US propaganda, in fact, a term never used by Bin Laden until after 911. The implications of the BBC documentary are enormous. It means that the US government of George W. Bush is guilty of the crimes of mass murder, high treason with respect to 911 and war crimes with respect to the mass murder of Iraqi civilians who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. The specific crimes are violations of U.S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 which prescribes the penalty of death for violations thereof!

Bush --you and your administration are in deep shit! An ever angrier American population will --one day --bring you and your CIA co-conspirators to justice. In the meantime, I suggest that all members of the Bush administration look up the relevent federal laws, some of which prescribe death. Start with US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

(a) Offense. - Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--U.S.C. § 2441 : US Code - Section 2441: War crimes
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Friday, January 01, 2010

Demand that Obama End Bush's Policies and War Crimes

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

I did not support Obama so that the US could continue Bush's criminal policies! I most certainly did not and do not support the commission of new war crimes, aggression, or atrocities!
US President Barack Obama personally issued the order for US air strikes in Yemen last Thursday which killed scores of civilians, including women and children.

US warplanes used cruise missiles against alleged Al Qaeda camps in the Abyan village of al Maajala, some 480 kilometers southeast of the capital Sana’a, and in the Arhab district, 60 kilometers to the northeast of Sana’a. The US strikes were apparently coordinated with the US-backed dictatorship of Yemen President Ali Abdallah Saleh, whose military forces attacked the bombed towns as well as a third village, resulting in the deaths of some 120 people, according to Yemen opposition spokesmen.

Local officials and witnesses in the area of Mahsad, the site of the heaviest US bombardment, put the number of those killed at more than 60 and said the dead were mostly civilians. They denied that the target was an al Qaeda stronghold.

--Obama ordered US air strikes on Yemen By Barry Grey
When one's own country is wrong, it is one's patriotic duty to protest. I had hoped Obama would not become the new LBJ --stuck with and blamed for GOP wars of aggression accompanied by heinous war crimes by the US military and the world's largest and best financed terrorist organization --THE CIA! [See: Kangas, A Timeline of CIA Atrocities]
Three of the seven--George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden--were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: "There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused."

When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory "respect" for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, "I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build."

That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that "nobody is above the law," there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs--no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further "preliminary investigation." What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA's destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of "high-value detainees."

--Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?
US 'Presidents' have reason to be afraid of the CIA. The last President to threaten the CIA with being smashed 'into a thousand pieces' was JFK. He was murdered in downtown Dallas and a 'lone scapegoat' had been set up to take the fall.
Without a bullet that can be proven to have been at the scene of the crime, the government would have had no case against Lee Harvey Oswald, tried in absentia in the media because he was murdered and murdered before he could talk. Conveniently! The government needed a piece of hard evidence --a magic bullet'!

They got one! Conveniently!

The government needed a truly magical bullet that did magical things --the work of six or seven other bullets most which got beat up and deformed in the line of duty.

Arlen Specter must be credited with concocting the theory that a single 'magical' bullet could smash bone and cartilage and emerge with nary a scratch! Arlen Specter would pull a pull a 'magical theory' out of thin air while a friendly shill would pull an equally 'magic bullet' out of his ass.

The government had a problem! Lee Harvey Oswald would have to be tried for the crime of murdering the President. For quite some time in our history, those charged with crimes were given trials. The government had not yet figured out that if you just call them a bad name (terrorist) you can dispense with all those niceties. Someone, somewhere was alarmed! What if Lee Harvey Oswald should get a good lawyer and mount a strong defense! What if Lee Harvey Oswald proved his charge that he was just a patsy!

--Why Lee Harvey Oswald Had to Die!
As things 'went down', the government was left with a live patsy against whom it could NOT have made a case. There was a bullet --a 'magic' bullet --that would have been thrown out of court for lacking 'bona fides'. The fall guy had to die!

Like the fatal flaws in the official conspiracy theory of 911, the holes in the government's JFK story are fatal.

  • No competent or sane sniper/hit man would choose to shoot anyone from the TSBD. The 'view to a kill' was obscured by branches and leaves as photos taken that day prove! It was and remains the worst of several possible locations!
  • Zapruder frame 313 proves conclusively that the fatal shot came from the front, the so-called Grassy Knoll
  • No sniper in his right mind would choose a kill spot providing no possibility of egress or escape! Oswald would have had to have ditched his rifle and run down some six flights! No 'hit man' would have tried it! It's stupid! The place would have been 'sealed'!
  • I have visited Dealy Plaza! The picket fence afforded cover, egress and a clear unobstructed shot of the 'target' from a distance about one third that of a site in TSBD.
  • From TSBD, the motorcade is moving laterally and then away; from the picket fence, the target's lateral motion relative to the 'shooter' is minimal. A non-expert could have made the shot but, in fact, it was an expert who did!

I interviewed a witness to the JFK murder many years after the fact. Rosemary Willis was but a child on that fateful day and her story has been ignored by the mainstream media. When we met, she produced several boxes of color slides that had been taken by her father --Phillip Willis --that fateful day in Dealy Plaza.

--Exposing Lies About the FED, the CIA, the Murder of JFK
The story of these slides is a complicated one. The bottom line is this: the slides were tampered with while in the possession of the FBI. Before the slides were seized by the FBI, Look Magazine published one of the slides on a double-page spread. During my interview with Rosemary Willis, I compared the slides with a double-page spread that had run in Look Magazine before the slides were taken.

Over a double-page spread in Look Magazine, a train on the railroad tracks is clearly visible beyond the infamous pergola atop the grassy knoll. But --in the slides that were returned by the FBI, there are no train cars to be seen!

The railroad tracks figure prominently in the assassination. It was amid freight cars on those same tracks that several 'tramps' --dead ringers for Jeb MaGruder, Frank Sturgis and Howard Hunt --had been arrested before the assassination.

Only the FBI had possession of the slides and only the FBI could have removed the train from the photos! And only the FBI might have had motive to do so!

And what was it the FBI hoped to conceal? Simply, the tramps had not been tramps at all but assassins having connections to the CIA. The slides slipped through the cracks just long enough to have been published by Look. The 'train' was not intended to be seen. Otherwise, why would the FBI have removed the train from the slides? The FBI would not have bothered to tamper with slides that did not incriminate them in some way. A train and box cars are incriminating if and only if they were of some use to the assassins of JFK.
"I didn't have anything to do with the assassination, didn't know anything about it," he said during one of them. "I did my time for Watergate. I shouldn't have to do additional time and suffer additional losses for something I had nothing to do with."

But now, in August 2003, propped up in his sickbed, paper on his lap, pen in hand and son sitting next to him, he began to write down the names of men who had indeed participated in a plot to kill the president. He had lied during those two federal investigations. He knew something after all. He told St. John about his own involvement, too. It was explosive stuff, with the potential to reconfigure the JFK-assassination-theory landscape. And then he got better and went on to live for four more years.

--ERIK HEDEGAARD, The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt, Rolling Stone
Those assassins, I believe, were supervised that day by E. Howard Hunt assisted by George H.W. Bush who was photographed hanging around the front entrance of the TSBD, perhaps making sure that his 'men' were in their places, awaiting their cues. 'All the world's a stage'!

Later this man's near moronic son would preside over traumas perhaps equal to an assassination of a legitimate and duly elected President. Bush Jr would become complict in a stolen US election and the felonious attack upon ballot re-counters in the 'banana republic' of Florida, controlled by yet another Bush, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who signed Executive Order 01-261 on September 7, 2001 just four days before the WTC tragedy of 911. J. Bush's order paved the way for a declaration of martial law in the state of Florida, delegating to '...the Adjutant General of the state of Florida all necessary authority....to order members of the Florida National Guard into Active Service.'
“I hereby declare that a state of emergency exists in the state of Florida...The Authority to suspend the effect of any statute or rule governing the conduct of state business, and further authority to suspend the effect of any order or rule of any government entity...The authority to seize and utilize any and all real or personal property as needed to meet this emergency...The authority to order the evacuation of any or all persons from any location in the State...The authority to regulate the return of the evacuees to their home comunities...I hereby order the Adjutant General to activate the Florida National Guard for the duration of this emergency.”

--Florida Governor Jeb Bush, September 11, 2001
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