Gen. Smedley Butler: 'War is a Racket'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

This is a well-known classic but cannot be repeated or posted often enough as millions still seem not have to 'gotten' the message: WAR IS A RACKET!

The author --Gen. Smedly Butler --should know. This is essential reading as was Former President Dwight Eisenhower's famous farewell warning of the growing power of the Military-Industrial Complex.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the many.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

--Gen. Smedley Butler, War is a Racket

General Butler was eminently qualified to write and speak as he did. He was the most decorated U.S. Marine in history '... and very nearly became Commandant of the Marine Corps.' By the time of his retirement, he had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He received the Brevet Medal and TWO Medals of Honor (April 22, 1914 – Mexican Campaign in Veracruz Mexico; and November 17, 1915 – Haiti Campaign), all for separate actions.

Smedley Butler: War is a Racket

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Wiki 'Leaks' the Truth About U.S. War Crimes Against Iraq

Wiki 'Leaks' New Pentagon Papers, Reveals CIA Plans to Destroy Wikileaks

By Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Brass hats and ass hats are not happy about what is called one of the biggest 'leaks in military history', certainly the biggest expose since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. Wikileaks has blown the lid off Pentagon cover, exposing the truth about U.S. wars of aggression in the Middle East, primarily Afghanistan with the Pentagon's own documents. The 'leaks' reveal 'chilling details' about the US occupation and war in Afghanistan and numerous civilians deaths at the hands of US occupying forces.

• The U.S. Military (Pentagon) had plans to destroy Wiki-Leaks
• The CIA tried to shore up support in Europe for U.S. middle east wars

The fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan demonstrates the fragility of European support for the NATO-led ISAF mission. Some NATO states, notably France and Germany, have counted on public apathy about Afghanistan to increase their contributions to the mission, but indifference might turn into active hostility if spring and summer fighting results in an upsurge in military or Afghan civilian casualties and if a Dutch-style debate spills over into other states contributing troops. The Red Cell invited a CIA expert on strategic communication and analysts following public opinion at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to consider information approaches that might better link the Afghan mission to the priorities of French, German, and other Western European publics.
Leaked 'New Pentagon Papers'

• Pakistan has been 'double-crossing the U.S.

WikiLeaks has released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.
The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers, and mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail.
The document collection is available on a dedicated webpage.
The reports cover most units from the US Army with the exception of most US Special Forces' activities. The reports do not generally cover top secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations.
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.
--Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010; also see: Afghan War Logs

More report highlights from Katherine Faulkner of the Daily Mail:

• Special forces 'black' unit hunts down Taliban leaders
• French troops shot at a bus full of school children
• Polish troops killed wedding party in mortar attack
• Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles
--The Daily Mail

This 'massive file of secret military documents' reveals 'chilling details' about the U.S. civilian casualties and deaths by the U.S. Military occupation in Afghanistan.

The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.

Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.

Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non-combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary - an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.

--WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.

The CIA had plans to 'destroy Wikileaks'.

This document is a classified (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. ``The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to WikiLeaks.org cannot be ruled out. It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses ``trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers, the report recommends ``The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the WikiLeaks.org Web site. [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective]. As an odd justification for the plan, the report claims that ``Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the WikiLeaks.org website. The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks---U.S. equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable U.S. violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay.
--U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks

Truth hurts. The White House and the Pentagon are said to be 'enraged'. I say --so what? I am enraged by the war of naked aggression, fought solely for the benefit of America's increasingly rich but tiny 'ruling elite'and the shills and pimps on K-street who conceived it and assisted Pentagon militarists waging that war on behalf of venal interests throughout America.
The report linked to above is not the only revelation. A 'classified' CIA analysis from March outlines PR strategies that were designed to shore up public support in Germany and France for 'a continued war in Afghanistan'.

After the Dutch government fell on the issue of Dutch troops in Afghanistan last month, the CIA became worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF mission. The proposed PR strategies focus on pressure points that have been identified within these countries. For France it is the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it is the fear of the consequences of defeat (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany's standing in NATO. The memo is a recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries, written by the CIA. It is classified as Confidential/No Foreign Nationals.

--CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, 11 Mar 2010

Wikileaks provided additional information from 'media partners'

• Der Spiegel
• The Guardian
• The New York Times

Mike Gravel on The Pentagon Papers

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Viet Nam Redux

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It may be too late for America to avoid falling into a trap like the one that embroiled several U.S. administrations in Southeast Asia for decades. The parallels are frightening. Just as JFK/LBJ had inherited what had been given the Orwellian name 'presence' in S.E. Asia, President Barack Obama risks getting stuck in an Afghanistan quagmire.

President Obama has received a military report requesting as many as forty thousand additional troops in Afghanistan though the objectives are increasingly vague, perhaps because both the Pentagon and the 'hawks' wish to avoid calling it what it is: nation building!

Since 911, the U.S. has bogged down in this new 'Viet Nam', failing every stated objective because: 1) objectives may be framed for 'public consumption' for the P.R. value; 2) because the Pentagon prefers to hide the fact that it is almost always wrong about anything more complex than lobbing a big bomb on a little village! The Pentagon is filled with gung ho grunts!

Again, the U.S. fights the wrong war, in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons. Nothing was learned from Viet Nam, the war crime from which Viet Nam did not begin to rebuild until we were gone! Clearly --the Military-Industrial Complex is unconcerned. The M.I.C is simply doing what it seemed intended to do and that is enrich the defense contractors who make up the Military-Industrial complex.

It seems that every Democratic president gets stuck with the false paradigm: be tough or be wimp! I submit that it is a 'tough' President who repudiates the bullshit left him by predecessors. It is the 'tough' President who levels with the American people. It is the 'tough' President who exposes the heinous nature of the war left him by George W. Bush who lied about 911 in order to start it. It is a 'tough' President who just says 'no': we will no longer compound the many crimes of George W. Bush!

Vietnam became a war of attrition. Johnson would regularly characterize his decisions as taking the middle ground. He would not "pull out" as the "doves" and "nervous Nellies" suggested nor would he go "all out" as the "hawkish" military advisors recommended.

Fighting a war with limited and political objectives had an added liability. It was difficult to define and convey the idea of "progress" to the public. There were few set piece or conventional battles and American objectives were not defined in geographical terms (e.g., Berlin and Tokyo). Instead, the administration was forced to create and essentially sell indicators of progress to the public. Herein lies the origin of such commonly used terms as "pacification zones" and "kill ratios.

Questioners, critics, and opponents to Johnson quickly arose. Perhaps the most prominent establishment figure was J. William Fulbright, the Democrat from Arkansas, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Fulbright was a one-time friend and ally of Lyndon Johnson and had, ironically, served as floor manager of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. He broke with Lyndon Johnson over the war in Vietnam and, in February 1966, led the Foreign Relations Committee through six days of televised hearings on the conduct of the war. To divert public attention from the hearings, Lyndon Johnson traveled to Honolulu to meet with South Vietnamese President Thieu. The Senate Committee would again hold hearings in August 1966 and in October-November of 1967.

--Conventional 'Warfare' in the Nuclear Age

Rory Stewart is the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights. My first exposure to his thinking dates to his BBC interview of about two years ago. Stewart does not merely think outside the box, he denies its existence. The first conclusion is that the U.S. is in Afghanistan for all the wrong reasons; secondly, the recent military report given Obama has effectively changed the original U.S. objective. Instead of the eradication al Qaeda, the U.S. is now committed to defeating the Taliban and rebuilding a nation in 'our' image. Once again, the U.S. is suckered with stated 'goals' that are vague, imperial, grandiose, ill-framed and ill-considered.

At last, any intelligent 'enemy' should be expected to resist a foreign power, a foreign enemy. An enemy in Afghanistan knows the 'lay of the land'. We are fighting on their turf. We are the newbies. For all our flashy, high-tech, game-boy tech, we are just city slickers in the back country. We will never know Afghanistan as it is known by the Afghans.

This crisis for Obama is literally a dangerous opportunity. He can be suckered down a long road for which he will be remembered as LBJ is most often remembered --NOT for his 'Great Society' but for the escalation of hostilities in Viet Nam; or Obama can be remembered for having refused to be suckered by the merchants of death--the Military-Industrial complex and the sycophantic blood suckers on K-Street! We can bog America down in a long and ruinous war or we can break out of the trap that the seems always laid for Democrats by wars already begun and screwed up but left to a Democrat to clean up, a Democrat whose name will inevitably be stuck on it as LBJ's name is forever stuck on Viet Nam!

Rory Stewart on Bill Moyers Journal

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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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

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites

_________________________________________________________________________________

Failed State Update with Krugman and Roberts

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In theory, a near worthless dollar is great for American manufacturers, American jobs. Lower costs for American goods means US exports should rise, reducing our trade deficit and helping pay off the national debt! That's the theory, the rationale behind Richard Nixon's decision to take the US off the so-called 'gold standard' back in the 70s.

The reality is this: despite the right wing's subversion of the dollar, despite the deals Nixon and subsequent GOP regimes cut with China, US exports have decreased, US jobs have decreased, the US standard of living has decreased as just one percent of the population has prospered at everyone else's expense. That has been the case at least since Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982, a tax cut which benefited only this rich base of GOP/right wing supporters. These downward trends have defined US history since the 1970s despite temporary gains made during the Carter and Clinton years. I have previously posted the key 'stats' which prove this to have been the case.

Check out the CIA's World Fact Book which lists the US at the very bottom of the list with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. China, which pegs the Yuan to the dollar, is at the top of the list with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance. If the GOP had been correct, US exports should have risen! The 'balance of trade deficit' i.e, the NEGATIVE Current Account Balance would have been reduced! If the GOP had been correct, the US could have paid off huge amounts of national debt run up in incompetent and dishonest GOP regimes. The US might have survived decades of conservative budgets which forced the US to borrow from other countries. But --not surprisingly --things have not worked out as the GOP would have you believe.

Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.

Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable. America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it’s getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere.
But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar — which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.

--Palin vs Krugman On The Dollar -- Who Is Right?

Foreign Policy magazine goes on to say that, as dismal as the effects of Chinese policy on the US and US consumers, 'It's the rest of the world -- particularly Europe and the Pacific Rim -- that are getting royally screwed by China's policy.' FB claims these countries now suffer because their products are 'less comptetive' in the US vis a vis Chinese exports.

Keep in mind, that it was Nixon who took the dollar off the gold standard because of 'pressures' on the value of the dollar. Simply, had there been a run on the buck, the gold in Fort Knox would not have covered it. The question is: is there any gold in Fort Knox?

Secondly, it was hoped that by removing the dollar from an unrealistic standard, US products would enjoy greater sales abroad. So what happened? Someone please tell me what the US produces? Cars? Nope, it imports them! Take a look at Flint Michigan if you are interested in knowing the effects this has had! Electronics? Nope! Since the early 1960s, it is Japan that has flooded the US market with transistor radios, calculators, etc! Aerospace? Nope! Ask a Californian! The Aerospace industry which had driven the SOCAL boom, is but a shadow of its former glory. What of 'Silicon Valley'. What of it? IT is outsourced to India!

The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.

Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.

Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.

--Paul Craig Roberts, "The US as Failed State"   

If the US is a 'failed state', it is because it has been impoverished by at least two trends: 1) the transfer of US wealth upward to just one percent of the US population which now owns more than 95 percent of the rest of the nation combined; 2) the decline of the US dollar, a trend begun when Richard Nixon eschewed the Bretton-Woods agreement.

Richard Nixon Takes U.S. Off Gold Standard

The United States now no longer controls many of its domestic industries. Over the last 10 years alone foreigners have spent $1.2 trillion to acquire more than 8,000 key US companies. As of 2002, foreigners owned fully 20 percent of American manufacturing. In many high-tech and defense-related industries, the proportion is far higher. Such US industries as mining, cement, publishing, engine and power transmission equipment, rubber and plastics, and sound recording and motion pictures are now largely foreign owned. Even in industries like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, industrial machinery, transportation equipment, electronics, metal industries, and coal and petroleum industries, foreign ownership has recently become very high.
Increasingly therefore profits and technological secrets in such industries accrue to foreign owners. Moreover many of the key jobs (in research and development, for instance) go to foreign workers, while the profits that accrue to foreign holding companies boost the tax revenues of foreign governments. We are no longer capable of producing many critical components needed in our high-tech and defense industries. 

--Foreign Ownership of U.S. Industries

I tried to learn the truth about those GOP/China deals back in the late seventies when I had a rare opportunity to put a microphone in front of George H.W. Bush in the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt-Regency in downtown Houston. Had I known then, what I know now, it might have been a much, much better interview. I left unhappy with getting Bush's goofy story about eating "aeromatic meats" (dog lip) in the Forbidden City.
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Obama's Honeymoon is Over

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Barack Obama has had his 100 days! The honeymoon is over! The gloves are off! Mr. Obama, tear down those illegal prisons!

Two thousand pictures of Americans performing acts of savage torture on prisoners will not be released to the general public if Mr. Obama gets his way. Military commissions will continue to try prisoners outside the scope of American law, and will be free to use brazen hearsay as "hard" evidence against defendants. Mr. Obama continues to cleave to the most abhorrent aspects of Bush-era secrecy policies, and has moved to block a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, who was outed by Bush administration officials in order to silence her Iraq whistle blower husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

--William Rivers Pitt, Truthout

It was not merely the stolen elections in Florida and later Ohio that made Bush illegitimate; it was his declaration in both word and deeds: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!" Under the cover given him by 'war' (however illegal), Bush claimed to be above the law, beyond responsibility to the people, in effect, a dictator!

The sooner that the United States dissociates itself from the crimes of the Bush administration, the sooner will it regain its role as leader of the world's democracies. Indicting the Bush administration now for its promotion of torture as US policy is the first, and most important, step in that direction.

Unfortunately, there is no way to impeach George Bush retroactively for leading us into the illegal and disastrous Iraq war. Nevertheless, Barack Obama should realize that victory over terrorism depends critically on the United States emphatically denouncing its ties to Bush's failed policies of unilateralism, militarism and torture.

--Sweep Bush policies into dustbin, John F. Bellantoni, Sarasota

No, we cannot impeach Bush now! We blew an opportunity to make the statement that OUTLAW PRESIDENTS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED! Instead, we bent over and allowed a war criminal to get away with murder.

Here's the bad news for Obama: if Bush is guilty of war crimes for his attack and subsequent war crimes in Iraq, so, too, is Obama for continuing them. I have yet to see active, good faith efforts by Obama to end the illegal, military occupations in the Middle East.

That fact most certainly makes Obama prosecutable for continuing violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by both houses of Congress without dissent. The act covers every crime that may be charged to Bush as of this moment and as of the moment Bush exited the 'cover' given him by his occupation of the Oval Office.

The act deals specifically with his deliberate "killing, torture or inhumane treatment" of 'detainees' at Abu Ghraib, GITMO and the gulag archipelago of 'detention centers' throughout Eastern Europe. Violations of the War Crimes Act that result in the death of a detainee carry the death penalty and there is no statute of limitations.

(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.

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441 § 2441. War crimes

Ironically, it was the GOP congress which passed the War Crimes Act in 1996 without a dissenting vote. It was said that they wished to 'rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein'.

But this was the era of 'wag the dog'. The GOP had hoped make Clinton prosecutable in the Hague. Significantly, when it was feared that it would be Bush who would wind up in the dock, the GOP did a transparent about face, a cowardly and disingenuous move that we have come to expect from the GOP. Tom DeLay sponsored legislation authorizing the US military to invade the Hague should Bush find his sorry ass in the dock! DeLay was reacting to legislation that defined a "war crime" as any "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions.

I want to know: what is the frickin' point of passing legislation if it is routinely ignored by 'Presidents' be they Clinton, Bush, Obama?

What is the point?

Either we will insist upon the rule of law --or our governments hereinafter will be illegitimate. People of the US, I put it to you: you are NOT represented by a legitimate government. Nor have you been for some time now!

It did not help his case that Bush was (and, presumably remains) an idiot, a waste of human DNA, a cancer on mankind, a slimy liar of no talent and less wit or intelligence.

Obama seemed to be everything that Bush was not: literate, intelligent, perhaps even moral! But Obama has been given his 100 days and more! By now it is clear: Obama has no intention of righting the fatal harms inflicted by Bush upon the 'rule of law' or that 'goddamned piece of paper', the US Constitution. Obama has no intention of ending the illegal occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq!

These so-called 'Military Commission' are kangaroo courts and have no legitimacy whatsoever. Verdicts handed down by them are invalid, bogus, unlawful, and because the US occupations are illegal, the verdicts themselves may violate treaties and international laws. Surely the arbitrary assumption of powers not granted by a 'sovereign' is illegal! Any death resulting is murder! Any illegal US tribunal ordering 'death' is, itself, a murderer!

The presence of US troops anywhere in the world not supported by a declaration of war is illegal, a war crime. If death results to any person in those US occupied territories, the penalty is death! Clearly --the Obama administration has, heretofore, shown no interest in restoring legitimacy or the rule of law.

It appears, however, that the rule of law no longer applies to Presidents or, for that matter, the 'elected' idiots in Congress who write them. Clearly --everything enacted by Congress with regard to war, prisoners of war, or war crimes has failed to impress those occupying the Oval Office! Is this the reason the US has NOT won a war since War II?. Does this have something to do with the fact that the US --now a third world economy with the world's largest negative current account balance --has not paid for any war since World War II? Come to think of it, I am not quite sure we paid for WWII!

It is ludicrous to expect other nations to respect our sovereignty if we do not respect theirs.

The US remains a rogue and criminal nation, an oil thief, a pathetic, idiotic bully boy whose presence abroad still threatens its own economic underpinnings. What is the origin of this idiotic idea that because we covet another nation's oil or other resources, we may dictate to them with threats of bombs and/or invasion?

The US has nukes! But cannot use them! What would result if there should be another Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

The people of the US have been treasonously betrayed by both parties, by the Congress and in the unkindest cut of all, by the courts --the same judiciary that was intended to be the remedy of last resort. Thanks to the pin head Antonin Scalia and like minded, slit-tongued, slit-eyed reptilians, the courts are compromised and corrupt --sell-outs to the various elite interests that long ago 'invested' their money in the Congress and the White House. The best politicians money could buy??

How absurd the US has become! While the MIC murders for the sake of death, America, like a moronic, drooling, lumbering leviathan on steroids, wages war for the sake of war, bleats bullshit that it might hear its own pathetic, whining voice amid a wailing chorus awaiting Armegeddon!

Wake up, Mr. Obama! You are what you do! Have you become Bush?

---

Another Inconvenient Truth: Bin Laden is Dead

If Benazir Bhutto was correct then Bin Laden is dead. If Bin Laden is dead, he can't make tapes. If Bin Laden is dead, everything the US government has said about bin Laden is either wrong, mistaken, or, most probably, a bald-faced lie. If Bin Laden is dead, then everything Bush has been telling you about the war on terrorism over several years is either wrong or a lie or both. In any case, there was never any hard evidence linking Bin Laden to the events of 911!

If Binny can't make tapes, Bush cannot exploit them to wage a "war" about which he has never told the truth.

A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects". CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan ``multiple attacks with little or no warning.'' Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks "an act of war" and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at "state sponsorship," implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, "I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution."

Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra has approved the launching of "punitive actions" directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: "When we reasonably determine our attackers' bases and camps, we must pulverize them -- minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage" -- and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror's national hosts".

-- Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, Who Is Osama Bin Laden?

The news that Bin Laden is dead is an inconvenient truth. The Bush administration had much more than money invested in Bin Laden. Bushco had built around Osama an "evil empire" worthy of a James Bond film --The World is Not Enough, the story of oil, intrigue and pipelines.

Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and close friend of M, is killed by a bomb attack inside MI6 Headquarters. The assassin was working under orders from Renard, an international terrorist who survived an assassination attempt by 009 and is continually gaining strength as the bullet eliminates his senses of pain and touch before inevitably killing him. James Bond uses an unfinished Q Boat created by his ally Q and chases the killer until she commits suicide.

M assigns to protect King's daughter, Elektra; Renard previously abducted and held Elektra for ransom, and it is believed that he has once again targeted her. Elektra assumes control of her father's business at a pivotal time, overseeing construction of an oil pipeline that would travel through the Caucasus, from the Caspian Sea to Turkey.

--The World Is Not Enough, 1999, Synopsis by Wikipedia

The non-fiction version was already afoot even as the motion picture moguls were writing the script for The World is Not Enough.

Despite complex geopolitics and considerable risks, major oil companies have been acquiring development rights and preparing for production since the early 1990s. Offshore drilling operations are underway in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and are set to commence elsewhere.

The majors have also invested significantly in the future construction of oil and gas pipelines to distant ports and refineries. By 2010, they expect to invest at least $50 billion in production and transportation.

The first big move was a joint venture between Chevron and Kazakhstan, signed in 1993 to develop the huge Tenzig oil field on the Caspian coast. Three years later, ExxonMobil purchased a 25 percent share. Another consortium focused on Azerbaijan’s offshore fields, with estimated reserves of 32 billion barrels of oil and 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the third largest potential regional source.

In 1994, BP Amoco, Lukoil, Unocal, Penzoil, Statoil, and others joined with Azerbaijan’s state oil company to form the Azerbaijan International Operating Company. Bush family adviser James A. Baker III, who spearheaded George W. Bush’s victory in the Florida election dispute, headed the law firm representing this consortium and sat on the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce advisory council, as did Vice Pres. Dick Cheney before him. But before their investments could produce profits, roadblocks would have to be removed. The biggest was how to get the fuel to markets.

Prior to 9/11, the U.S. government’s preferred future route, known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) project, went from Azerbaijan through Georgia and then south to the Turkish coast. The goal was to reduce reliance on Russia and bring the southern Caucasus into the U.S. fold. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former director of Chevron, a lynchpin of the BTC consortium with extensive operations in Azerbaijan. Until 2000, Cheney was chief executive at Halliburton Co., named a finalist in 2001 to bid on engineering work in the Turkish sector.

--Toward Freedom, Oily footprints on the path to 9/11

Early on, it was easy to conclude that the real beneficiaries of a US adventure in Afghanistan would be the big oil consortium that had planned the pipeline across Afghanistan. In 1995, UNOCAL had apparently concluded a deal with Turkmenistan. Members of the Taliban met in the Houston suburb of Sugarland.

A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.

Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.

[ image: The Afghan economy has been devasted by 20 years of civil war] The Afghan economy has been devasted by 20 years of civil war

But, despite the civil war in Afghanistan, Unocal has been in competition with an Argentinian firm, Bridas, to actually construct the pipeline.

Last month, the Argentinian firm, Bridas, announced that it was close to signing a two-billion dollar deal to build the pipeline, which would carry gas 1,300 kilometres from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, across Afghanistan.

In May, Taleban-controlled radio in Kabul said a visiting delegation from an Argentinian company had announced that pipeline construction would start "soon".

--BBC, Thursday, December 4, 1997 Published at 19:27 GMT

All would not go smoothly; Pakistan and Ahmed Shah Massoud's government in Afghanistan, meanwhile, had already signed a pipeline deal with an Argentinean company.

BBC - American government told other governments about Afghan invasion IN JULY 2001.

The wider objective was to oust the Taleban

By the BBC's George Arney

A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin. Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.

The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.

He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby. Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.

He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks. And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban.

--US 'planned attack on Taleban', BBC

By July, 2001, the US State Department was reported to have been threatening the Taliban with carpet bombs.

U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil

By Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service

PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) - Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.

In the book ''Bin Laden, la verité interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.

Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''. [emphasis mine, EC]

The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.

They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.

But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.

''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

According to the book, the government of Bush began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in February. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.

To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

--US Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil

The negotiations with the Taliban broke down. In that summer of 2001, the American people were distracted by the American media noise machine. See: All Condit All The Time". The US Government was informing other governments that the US would be at war in Afghanistan no later than October. The US timetable for war was set before 911 would conveniently provide the pretext. Pure luck? I don't think so.

Thoughtful folk were demonized for daring to raise the issue: how fortuitous, how convenient for Bush that Bin Laden would organize one of the most outrageous, the most unbelievable conspiracies in world history! Bin Laden would recruit and arrange to train a rag tag bunch of "terrorists". They would all but flunk lessons in how to fly puddle jumpers but would hone their airliner skills in a coin-operated simulator.

Nevermind the question of how they got on board airliners without showing up on flight manifests! Let's give the liar in the White House the benefit of the doubt. Nevermind that wreckage from four planes completely disappeared --the first and only time in history that such an improbable and incredible thing had ever happened outside David Copperfield's magic show. Nevermind that the space shuttle, by contrast, entered the stratosphere at speeds up to 10,000 miles per hour yet failed to pop through a wormhole into another dimension. Unlike Flight 77 which left not a trace, the Space Shuttle Columbia left wreckage and identifiable human body parts strewn over three states.

The only time in history that four planes completely vanished was on 911. How convenient for Bush!

How convenient for Bush that just when he is planning to invade and/or carpet bomb another country, he is given a pretext on a plate! How convenient for Bush that a "terrorist" attack occurs that could be pinned on Bin Laden!

How inconvenient it is for Bush now that Bin Laden has been dead for several years! How inconvenient for Bush that he cannot credibly roll out another fake tape with which to scare the beejeebers out of gullible Americans!

An essential resource: Election 2004: The Urban Legend by Michael Collins

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