Showing posts with label aggression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aggression. Show all posts

Friday, January 31, 2014

Of War and Murder

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The following joke is attributed to Hermann Göring who was at the time on trial in Nuremberg, charged with conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war-crimes; and crimes against humanity:
One Englishman --an idiot; Two Englishmen --a club; Three Englishmen --an empire! One German --a scholar; Two Germans --an army; Three Germans --a war!
A mere joke, in bad taste! But consider the source. It is also a simple, if simple-minded, analysis of data. It even hints at the science of emergent properties but I seriously doubt Herr Göring had that in mind.

Across the English Channel – before Herr Göring would have the opportunity to expose the world to his brilliant wit - Lewis Fry Richardson, a brilliant theoretician and mathematician whose work inspired the science of fractals and war gaming, dared to ask: is war inevitable? can it be predicted? can it be prevented? why do we go to war? do war and murder differ? These are hard questions which resist reduction to number. Richardson himself may have had William Butler Yeats in mind when he observed that wars merge and split, or have no clear beginning or end; he said of them: “Thinginess fails.”

Nevertheless, when Richardson reduced war to data he concluded:
  1. War and murder are equivalent – differing only in magnitude.
  2. Wars may be categorized logarithmically like hurricanes and earthquakes.
  3. Arms races leading to wars may be modeled with differential equations.
  4. The occurrences of war may be plotted in a Poisson distribution –like cancer clusters and tornado touchdowns.
Richardson was not the first to explore these possibilities and mathematical models have been refined since. Arguably, however, Richardson himself developed his hypotheses much further and in many ways went off in different directions. His work is still available in journal articles, pamphlets, two posthumous volumes from 1960, and a two-volume Collected Papers of 1993. His work on arms races may be found in "Arms and Insecurity"; his statistical studies are published in "Statistics of Deadly Quarrels".

Other writers claim that Richardson's decision to lump murder and war together was deliberately provocative. Richardson's retort must be considered in the historical context: “One can find cases of homicide which one large group of people condemned as murder, while another large group condoned or praised them as legitimate war. Such things went on in Ireland in 1921 and are going on now in Palestine.” His remarks are as true today as when first uttered over 50 years ago.
Richardson categorized war logarithmically –magnitude one, two, three and so forth –as determined by total deaths. It was an idea borrowed from Astronomy. In a war of magnitude one, 100,000 people will die. Both World Wars I and II exceeded magnitude seven, recording deaths in the tens of millions. Ten or so deaths equals magnitude one; a single murder is magnitude zero. Interestingly, the two World Wars are the only magnitude seven conflicts. However, the number of conflicts of any given magnitude rises exponentially as the magnitude decreases. There are, for example, some ten million conflicts of magnitude zero and the number of deaths by murder is roughly equal to the number of deaths by world war. Richardson listed seven megadeath conflicts in tier two, i.e, magnitude six. They are, in chronological order:
  1. Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864)
  2. North AmericanCivil War (1861–1865)
  3. Great War in La Plata (1865–1870)
  4. Sequel to the Bolshevik Revolution (1918–1920)
  5. First Chinese-Communist War (1927–1936)
  6. Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)
  7. Communal riots in the Indian Peninsula (1946–1948)
Richardson had hoped that by understanding war, war might be prevented. He ultimately concluded that war –like hurricanes, tornadoes, and cancer clusters –is remarkably random and inevitable. Richardson modeled a “death spiral”, an escalating arms-race in which nations respond to one another by adding armaments to its arsenal. Such an arms race may stabilize if and only if the “fatigue and expense” becomes greater than perceived threats.

Richardson had hoped that by tracking armament expenditures, wars might one day be predicted like the weather. Other conclusions –no more optimistic –are based on statistical correlations:
  1. Richardson found evidence of “contagion”; an ongoing war increases the probability that a new war will start.
  2. Richardson drew upon Graph Theory and Topology to determine those nations most likely to go to war.
  3. He found that of 94 world conflicts, only 12 were between combatants which shared no border. The inevitable conclusion: war is a “neighborhood affair”.
  4. Religion is clearly a factor, perhaps a major one. Nations of differing religion are more likely to fight than nations sharing a single religion. In Richardson's study, Christian nations seemed more bellicose, engaging in a disproportionate number of wars.
Like John Nash (A Beautiful Mind), Richardson was nearly ignored. Others now carry on his work. Lars-Erik Cederman of Harvard University’s John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies has replicated Richardson’s results in a new computer model. (Richardson's work largely pre-dated the computer) In the new model, a state of equilibrium between nations is temporary; small disruptions may unleash a “cascading instability”. Princeton University professor Robert Gilpin is likewise studying the small events which “cascade” to chaos –the conditions in which a state of equilibrium moves to one of disequilibrium. Shades of Jurassic Park! Vanderbilt University professor John Vasquez, likewise, explains the very size of wars in terms of cascading system instability.

It must be pointed out that statistics do not govern events; they describe them. A murderer is not likely to win acquittal by pleading that his behavior is within known statistical norms.

Are nations, then, to be absolved for merely playing out a terrible fate? Are religious wars to be tolerated because both sides are convinced that God is on their side? Will neighboring nations be given leave to attack across shared borders? Are we to make war lightly because we have been wronged? Are wars of pre-emption ever justified. Perhaps those questions are unanswerable!

Consider the alternative: by Richardson's scale, a war of magnitude 9.8 will leave no one behind to ask the questions. William Butler Yeats wrote the most appropriate conclusion in 1922 –a year of great disillusionment with World War I:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Notes:
  1. International Military Tribunal, The Nudremberg War-Crimes Trial
  2. 1945/46 (Göring was found guilty on all four counts but cheated the hangman with cyanide.)
  3. Hayes, Brian, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels,
  4. American Scientist, 2001, pp. 10-15.
  5. Hayes, Brian Ibid. pp. 10-15. (Richardson's biggest problem was getting data.
"Richardson argued that theories of war could and should be evaluated on a scientific basis, by testing them against data on actual wars....Several lists of wars were drawn up in the early years of the 20th century, and two more war catalogs were compiled in the 1930s and 40s by the Russian-born sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin and by Quincy Wright of the University of Chicago. Richardson began his own collection in about 1940 and continued work on it until his death in 1953. His was not the largest data set, but it was the best suited to statistical analysis.") Forrest, David, The Edge of Chaos.

Friday, September 21, 2012

How Citizens United Subverted the Rights of Real People

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

I've often written about the detailed and vivid account of A. Htler's meeting with top German industrialists --Krupp, Thyseen, I.G. Farben et al. It was in that meeting that the German fascism was made real in terms of an agreement between the Reich and its 'fascist' sponsors, the huge corporations who would benefit from aggression, death and destruction. The meeting may not have defined the word 'fascism' but it most certainly birthed a Nazi regime in which corporations were given and promised not only privileges but, most importanly, big juicy contracts.

From a lesser known source is another detailed description of the nature of Hitler's fascist partnership with big business:
"From now on, the government in Berlin will allocate large sums to industrialists so that each can establish a secure post-war foundatin in foreign countries. Existing financial reserves in foreign countries must be placed at the disposal of the party in order that a strong German empire can be created after defeat. It is almost immediately required," he continued, "that the large factories in Germany establish small technical offices or research bureaus which will be absolutely independ and have no connection with the factory. The bureaus will receive plans and drawings of new weapons, as well as document which they will need to cotninue their researh. These special offices are to be established in large cities where security is better, although some might be formed in small villagtes nears sources of hyrdropeletric power, where these party member can pretend to be studying the development of water resources for benefit of Allied investigators."

--Martin Bormann, Nazi in Exile, Paul Manning, [http://spitfirelist.com/books/manning.pdf]
Some have said that the 'brand' of fascism now emerging in Western democracies, the U.S. in particular is a completely new phenomenon. I disagree! The odious 'Citizen-United' decision, in which SCOTUS decreed that corporations were 'persons', is an open and odious declaration that a corporation may utilize its wealth, riches and privileges to enslave a population of 'real people' whose humanity is as self-evident as Thomas Jefferson had declared of 'real' persons in our own 'Declaration of Independence":
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
Earlier, John Adams had written of the same concepts in somewhat different words:
All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.
Now, of course, we know that these rights extend to women as well. Surely --even our crooked court must understand that. Even so, the Roberts court cannot be trusted to defend the rights of persons of any color, creed or sex. Our court cannot be trusted to recognize an even older and more venerable position: that governments derive their power power, right and right of power from the peole who are ---alone --sovereign!

We must not be surprised to find among GOPPERS an obsessive fascination with all things 'German' --inclinations, interests, political philsophies. Paul Ryan, Mitt's desperate choice for running mate, now says that Ayn Rand is not his only idol; he says that in his offices, NIETZCHE is required reading, though he is accurately described with just two words: "moral Platonist". It was Neitzche who described the world as nasty and brutish and life as short.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Time has Come to Indict and Try George W. Bush/U.S War Criminals

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It has been said that George W. Bush is immune from prosecution for war crimes. I do not believe that that is the case. Treaties to which the U.S. is signatory and obliged say otherwise. I know of no act of Congress rescinding U.S. obligations to the Principles of Nuremberg.
Congressional Repeal of Treaties.—It is in respect to his contention that, when it is asked to carry a treaty into effect, Congress has the constitutional right, and indeed the duty, to determine the matter according to its own ideas of what is expedient, that Madison has been most completely vindicated by developments. This is seen in the answer which the Court has returned to the question: What happens when a treaty provision and an act of Congress conflict? The answer is, that neither has any intrinsic superiority over the other and that therefore the one of later date will prevail leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant. In short, the treaty commitments of the United States do not diminish Congress’ constitutional powers. To be sure, legislative repeal of a treaty as law of the land may amount to a violation of it as an international contract in the judgment of the other party to it. In such case, as the Court has said: “Its infraction becomes the subject of international negotiations and reclamations, so far as the injured party chooses to seek redress, which may in the end be enforced by actual war. It is obvious that with all this the judicial courts have nothing to do and can give no redress.”

Cornell University Law School, ANNOTATED CONSTITUTION, Article II, 303
In fact, the United State is credited with supporting, perhaps insisting upon the adoption of the Nuremberg Pinciples. The U.S. is obliged to Nuremberg and no clause exempts U.S. politicians of any office from prosecution should he/she violate those principles.

Nazi war criminals --likewise --thought they were 'immune' and said as much at Nuremberg where the principles were conceived and applied. High ranking Nazi war criminals were tried, sentenced and hanged.

That is the lesson of Nuremberg. Hitler himself would have been tried, found guilty and hanged had he not cheated the hang man. Immunity for Bush? If a real international tribunal were HONEST it could seek out bush, arrest him and try him.
"Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/390"
Principle I. Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.
Principle II. The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III. The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV. The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Principle V. Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
      (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in        violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
      (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War Crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave-labour or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII. Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

In addition, these principles have been spelled out over the years. For instance, since the rather “archaic” Nürnberg rules on participation in criminal conduct (Gerhard Werle, Individual Criminal Responsibility in Article 25 ICC Statute, Journal of International Criminal Justice, vol. 5, 2007, p. 953), the principles on the various modes of international criminal liability have been considerably developed. The definitions of the crimes have also evolved since Nuremberg. For instance, crimes against humanity now explicitly include the element of a “widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population” (art. 7 ICC Statute). The ICC Statute also contains four new categories of punishable acts as crimes against humanity: torture (art. 7(1) (f)), sexual crimes (art. 7(1) (g), enforced disappearance of persons (art. 7(1) (i)) and the crime of apartheid (art. 7(1) (j)).
Finally, in 1948, the General Assembly approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which confirmed that genocide is a crime under international law. Genocide was also provided for in the statutes of the ICTY, ICTR and ICC (arts. 4 ICTY Statute, 2 ICTR Statute, and 6 ICC Statute). In light of the adoption of so many treaty or quasi-treaty provisions prohibiting and punishing genocide, and of the case law on the matter, it can now safely be held that genocide is a crime proscribed by customary international law.
--Affirmation of the Principles of International Law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribuanal, General Assembly Resolution 95, New York, 11 December 1946
Interestingly, the three arguments for 'conservativism' ---tradition, religion, man's depravity --are all of an authoritarian nature. All result in decrees issued from on high --a throne, a board room, a war room. Take your pick. Depravity may exist but is most often found in the eye of the beholder. Religion is 'holy' for those already committed to it either by upbringing or social pressure. The 'war room' results from all of the above. Wars against the 'infidel' remain the norm. Bush, for example, demonized 'Islam' and apparently got away with it because fundamentalist Christians are as intolerant of Islam as fundamentalist Islam is intolerant of those who love Jesus.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Why 'Israelis' Danced on 911

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It was stated recently on Facebook that investigating 911 is a waste of time, that nothing was 'likely to be proven'. That's obvious! It is the purpose of a cover up to make of 'investigations' a 'waste of time'. On this point, whomever perpetrated 911 won when Bush made of the pursuit of justice a 'waste of time'.

The lesson learned is that if you are sufficiently rich and/or powerful, you can subvert justice, the rule of law, the truth! Our nation is lost if truth is abandoned because the pursuit of it is a 'waste of time'. In such a society, no one is free; everything is based upon a lie and, based upon a lie, is unjust. Such a society is a police state, at best a tyranny of an uninformed 'majority'! The 'establishment' is not appalled by widespread ignorance; it depends upon it and promotes it. Such a society is finished! The U.S. will fall ignominiously as did Rome of its folly, arrogance and incompetence.

Only the guilty are sufficiently motivated to cover up a crime. Just as obvious is the corollary: the innocent have nothing to cover up! If Bush covered up and/or obstructed in any way the investigation of the crime of 911, then he is guilty of acts of obstruction of justice intended to hide the truth in ways that would protect him or his 'friends' or both! 'Obstruction of justice' was one of several serious allegations against Richard Nixon, leading to articles of impeachment, eventually his ignominious resignation.

Bush personally and his administration, under his orders, covered up the crime of 911, warning 'free' Americans that they must not inquire beyond his official statements, that they must not indulge 'outrageous conspiracy theories' even as he rolled out the most outrageous, the most absurd, the most ludicrous conspiracy theory of them all. It is the pernicious legacy of 911 that it was exploited by Bush, the GOP, the U.S. right wing to justify the silencing of dissent, the silencing of America.

Certainly, the crime of 911 should have been investigated while the trail was still warm; a legitimate President would have ordered it, insisted upon it. The trail has grown cold, an outcome desired by an administration that opposed the creation of a 911 commission and put limits on it as a condition of its creation!
The evidence includes the unprecedented nature of what happened that day, the eyewitness testimonies of people present at the site, and the physical evidence demonstrated by photographs and videos. 1, 2 Evidence for explosives is also given through proof by contradiction in that seven years of ever-changing government reports could not provide a non-explosive story for destruction of the WTC buildings. 3, 4, 5 More recently, peer-reviewed scientific papers show that energetic materials were present at the WTC, as indicated by the environmental data and the dust from Ground Zero. 6, 7, 8
The forensic investigation of explosions typically aims to determine who had the means, opportunity and motive to accomplish the explosive event. 9 When that approach is taken with the WTC, we can see that those who had the greatest means and opportunity also had the greatest motive. For example, we've seen that certain tenant companies that occupied the WTC towers not only had the opportunity, but they also had the means in terms of access and expertise, to place explosives in the buildings. 10 We also know that the security companies that were responsible for planning and implementing the security plan for the towers, after the 1993 bombing, appeared to have benefited from the attacks. 11 Additionally, the companies reviewed were connected to each other through certain powerful people and organizations, and had all done major work for the Saudi Arabian government.
--KEVIN RYAN, Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part Four - Cleanup
In the days and weeks following 911, Bush ordered the destruction of 911 evidence --on its face obstruction of justice!

Other than subsection 1512(c), there are three federal statutes which expressly outlaw the destruction of evidence in order to obstruct justice: 18 U.S.C. 1519 prohibits destruction of evidence in connection with federal investigation or bankruptcy proceedings, 18 U.S.C. 1520 prohibits destruction of corporate audit records, and 18 U.S.C. 2232(a) prohibits the destruction of property to prevent the government from searching or seizing it.
None of the three are RICO or money laundering predicate offenses.334 There are no explicit statements of extraterritorial jurisdiction for any of them, but the courts are likely to conclude that overseas violation of their provisions are subject to prosecution in this country. None of them feature an individual conspiracy component, but all of them are subject to general federal law governing conspiracy, principals, accessories after the fact, and misprision.335 Obstruction of Investigations by Destruction of Evidence (18 U.S.C. 1519). Where subsection 1512(c) condemns obstruction of federal proceedings by destruction of evidence, Section 1519 outlaws obstruction of federal investigations or bankruptcy proceedings by such means. Section 1519’s language suggests that it reaches only executive branch investigations and does not extend to Congressional investigations or judicial investigations such as those conducted by a federal grand jury. It declares:
    Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Although its “relation to or contemplation of” clause may admit to more than one construction, the section’s elements might be displayed as follows:
I. Whoever II. knowingly III. A. alters, B.destroys, C. Mutilates
-- Obstruction of Justice: an Overview of Some of the Federal Statutes that Prohibit Interference with Judicial, Executive, or Legislative Activities By the time I saw 'ground zero' for myself, every scrap had been carted off! I peered into a deep and pristine hole! An individual cannot cover up his/her crimes on this scale. But Bushco --his administration of fellow crooks like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld --covered up the crime of 911 in 'full view of the world'. The American 'sheeple' bought it!

The only time in history in which such a heinous crime was perpetrated so openly was the Holocaust about which Hitler boasted "I waged war on the Jew in full view of the world!" The lesson Bush learned from Hitler was this: commit mass murder in broad daylight, order the destruction of all physical evidence, tar the opposition with a label: conspiracy theorist, and, for good measure, accuse them of being un-patriotic! How dare that cretinous murderer impugn my patriotism?! My ancestors had been on this continent for thousands of years before the likes of Bush-scum would would ever see and invade these shores.

I am of the opinion that only those guilty of crimes are sufficiently motivated to cover them up as did Bush with regard to 911. I would have entertained an innocent explanation but for the fact that the destruction itself is a crime and those ordering and complying are criminals by definition, by law!

The Bush conspiracy theory of 911 is shot-through with holes, unexplained anomalies and outright lies. Certainly, a definitive list of every falsehood, every distortion, every misstatement is beyond the scope of any article I might put on this blog. What may be done, however, is to categorize them --the three most obvious and fatal holes, the three legs without which the tripod will not stand..
  1. A 757 did NOT crash into the Pentagon! The wings and tail are huge surfaces areas --certainly bigger than the tiny hole said by official conspiracy theorists to have been the impact point! The hole would not have accommodated the fuselage, let alone the wings and tail which might have broken off to be found on the lawn. Nor was there any significant damage that might have been attributed to either wings or tail section or both. Neither was there evidence of wings or tail section! There was a 'punch out' hole in the inner ring but could not have been made by a 757!
    Even if the plane had 'shredded' --as some have claimed --'80 tons of plane is still 80 tons of debris'.
    "Wings that should have been sheared off by the impact are entirely absent. There is also substantial evidence of debris from a much smaller jet-powered aircraft inside the building. We conclude with a high degree of certainty that no Boeing 757 struck the building. We also conclude with a substantial degree of certainty that a smaller, single-engined aircraft, roughly the size and shape of an F-16, did, in fact, strike the building."
    (Source)
    Detailed analysis of the debris field, physical damage, and other factors in the alleged impact of a Boeing 757 on the Pentagon building on the morning of September 11, 2001 reveals an almost complete absence of debris expected from such an event. (Elliott 2003) The initial (pre-collapse) hole made by the alleged impact on the ground floor of Wedge One of the building is too small to admit an entire Boeing 757. In order to decide whether or not a Boeing 757 (or aircraft of comparable size) struck the Pentagon on the morning in question, a comprehensive review of all the debris and other physical evidence is hardly necessary. It turns out that a study of the wings alone suffices for the purpose.
    ...
    The analysis presented here is based entirely on standard and/or official sources, such as the engineering report issued under the auspices of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), as directed by an army engineering officer as chair. (ASCE 2003)
    --The Missing Wings, A Comparison of actual and expected wing debris resulting from the impact of a Boeing 757 on the Pentagon building (revised Dec 19, 2004), A. K. Dewdney, G. W. Longspaugh
    We are lead to believe that not only did the 757 penetrate the outer wall, but continued on to penetrate separate internal walls totaling 9 feet of reinforced concrete. The final breach of concrete was a nearly perfectly cut circular hole (see left) in a reinforced concrete wall, with no subsequent damage to the rest of the wall. (If we are to believe that somehow this aluminum aircraft did in fact reach this sixth final wall.)
    --A Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, Michael Meyer, Mechanical Engineer
  2. Johnny Cochran said: "If it does not fit, you must acquit!" Likewise, if there is no wreckage, the Bush cover story falls apart.

    When all other contingencies - official theories and cover stories -fail to hold up under scrutiny, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The truth is: Bushco lied about the events of 911. They did so deliberately, knowing that all was false. [See also: The Missing Wings]
  3. Airliners could not and did not bring down the towers of the WTC!
  4. Fires, presumably caused by airliner crashes at the Twin Towers of WTC did not melt the steel core and could not have caused the towers' collapse let alone a symmetrical collapse into the building footprint ala a controlled demolition. The fires simply were not hot enough even to have weakened steel.
    The temperatures generated by a hydrocarbon-fuelled office compartment fire are not capable of melting steel. A stoichiometric combustion of kerosene, generally regarded as dodecane, for example...
    C12H26 + 18.5O2 +69.595N2 ===> 12CO2 + 13H2O + 69.595N2 + 7518 kJ

    ...would have at best the above 7,518 kJ locked into 2.712 kg of combustion products to yield an adiabatic flame temperature (AFT) of some 2,398 K or 2,125 C (it is about 130 K less after including the inevitable endothermic dissociation reactions at these temperatures in order to reach an equilibrium state). At standard temperature and pressure, one mole of an ideal gas occupies 22.4 liters; at 2,398 K the volume would have expanded by a factor of 2398/273, i.e. nearly 9 times, to 196.8 liters/mol. The 7.518 MJ is spread amongst 94.595 moles or 18.62 cubic meters of hot gaseous products. At some 0.146 kg/m^3, these are much lighter than air at STP. In order to melt a mere 1 kg of steel that would take up a volume of only 0.127 liters, at least 1 MJ would be required. If 1/7.518 of the enthalpy (heat) in the products was directed at the kilogram of steel, the temperature rise would be reduced from 2,105 K to a little above 1,825 K which would result in a temperature of a little over 1,845 C and still potentially hot enough to melt some steel. But in real-world conditions, flame and upper layer hot gas temperatures are well below the AFT, typically barely reaching 1,000 C and certainly well below the melting point of steel.

    --WTC Molten Steel: The 911 Smoking Gun
    The following was sent to me by Michael Sanchez, Broadcaster-911 Researcher
    This Program has been permanently removed from the PBS Library.

    It goes on to explain a concrete core that was at the center of the Tower. It also mentions C-4 Plastic explosives were used to line the girders of the building (And then covered and sealed with concrete).

    As a Producer, I have edited a rather extensive (45 Minute) audio interview with Willie Rodriguez (One of the heroes and survivors of the Towers and the last man out of the Building before it fell). He explains that he heard an explosion that could NOT have been the plane hitting the tower. As he was lead out of the building through the lobby, he observed the lobby was DEMOLISHED as he stepped on several dead bodies.

    How does a plane hitting the towers cause the ground floor lobby to be COMPLETELY DESTROYED??? NO WAY does a JET PLANE cause a devastating explosion to a GROUND FLOOR LOBBY. NO WAY did a fire cause the collapse. The explosion (Rodriguez described) was done to DESTROY THE CONCRETE CORE. There have been several credible sources who have tested the remnants of steel and dust from the Towers and have found traces of Thermite.

    The thermite was more than likely planted the weekend before the demolition when there was "Maintenance" being done to the building's Security System. THE BUILDING WAS COMPLETELY OPEN. It took an average of about 18 minutes to place each of the charges via the internal phone security systems boxes (Which were NOT part of the Buildings' regular business phone systems). A BUSH Family member, Marvin Bush was a Board Member of the company in charge of the Security. There are MORE unanswered questions THAN there are "Answered Questions".

    --Michael Sanchez, Broadcaster-911 Researcher
    Also see: Muslims Suspend Laws of Physics!

  5. There is no evidence that there were Arabs on Flight 77

  6. If there were no Arabs on Flight 77, then the official theory must be completely discarded. At last, some 184 un-identified remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
    A five-sided granite marker bearing the 184 names will be placed over a shared grave at Arlington National Cemetery — the nation's most prestigious burial ground — holding the unidentified remains. [emphasis mine, LH]

    --Arlington National Cemetary
    Of the 184, sixty-four were said to have been passengers of Flight 77, the flight which is said to have crashed into the Pentagon.
    A list of names on a piece of paper is not evidence, but an autopsy by a pathologist, is. I undertook by FOIA request, to obtain that autopsy list and you are invited to view it below. Guess what? Still no Arabs on the list. In my opinion the monsters who planned this crime made a mistake by not including Arabic names on the original list to make the ruse seem more believable.
    When airline disasters occur, airlines will routinely provide a manifest list for anxious families. You may have noticed that even before Sep 11th, airlines are pretty meticulous about getting an accurate headcount before takeoff. It seems very unlikely to me, that five Arabs sneaked onto a flight with weapons. This is the list provided by American of the 56 passengers. On September 27th, the FBI published photos of the “hijackers” of Flight 77
    Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), does a miraculous job and identifies nearly all the bodies on November 16th 2001.
    The AFIP suggest these numbers; 189 killed, 125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were “passengers” on the plane. The AA list only had 56 and the list just obtained has 58. They did not explain how they were able to tell “victims” bodies from “hijacker” bodies. In fact, from the beginning NO explanation has been given for the extra five suggested in news reports except that the FBI showed us the pictures to make up the difference, and that makes it so. 
    --Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D, Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77
    The numbers will never add up. Arlington National Cemetary says it interred 184. But AFIP says there were a total of 189 bodies --125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were “passengers” on flight 77. Arlington claims that the unidentified remains of 184 victims share a grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
    A five-sided granite marker bearing the 184 names will be placed over a shared grave at Arlington National Cemetery — the nation's most prestigious burial ground — holding the unidentified remains.
    Arlington National CemeteryI interpret that to mean that this "shared grave" is the final resting place for unidentified victims from both the Pentagon and Flight 77. Five are unaccounted for --presumably the "terrorist" hijackers. But that does not account for the discrepancy for several reasons. Both Arlington and AFIP claim that there were 64 Pentagon workers. AFIP provided a list of 56 passengers of Flight 77. That''s only 120! If you exclude 5 terrorists from the AFIP's total of 189, you are still left with 64 "people" completely unaccounted for. Who the hell are they?
    No Arabs wound up on the morgue slab; however, three ADDITIONAL people not listed by American Airlines sneaked in. I have seen no explanation for these extras. I did American [Airlines] the opportunity to “revise” their original list, but they have not responded. The new names are: Robert Ploger, Zandra Ploger, and Sandra Teague. The AFIP claims that the only “passenger” body that they were not able to identify is the toddler, Dana Falkenberg, whose parents and young sister are on the list of those identified. 
    --Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D, Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77
    These are just a tiny few of the myriad of facts that Bush loyalists cannot explain away or rationalize with the official conspiracy theory. The silver bullet is this: there were no arabs on the flight manifests when "officialdom" maintains that all the said hijackers were Arab. Johnny Cochran won a famous murder trial with a single phrase which summed up his defense: "If it does not fit, you must acquit!" I rather think that a guilty party might be indicted just as simply: "No Arabs on flight! You must indict!"
These are fatal discrepancies in Bush's official conspiracy theory of 911. Any one of these glaring faults is enough to collapse the official 'theory', the official bald-faced lie.

Show me the wreckage!

'Wreckage' was carted off under a blue tarpaulin. Hardly 255,000 lbs of airliner wreckage. I doubt that white shirted government goons could have lifted 200 pounds let alone 255,000 lbs! Those believing that some 255,000 lbs of wreckage was recovered must prove their assertion but obviously cannot. If the wreckage of an airliner had been recovered, it is reasonable to expect that with a proper investigation, the aircraft would be re-assembled.

When an airliner blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland in the 1980s, leaving debris over the township and surrounding countryside, every scrap was gathered, the aircraft re-assembled in a hangar. Likewise, the Space Shuttle Columbia which left wreckage over 3 states after breaking up in the stratosphere at speeds much, much higher than those of any airliner said to have been involved on 911. If anything were going to vaporize, it would have been Columbia. Bit it did not and neither would have any flight alleged to have been involved in 911. Show me the wreckage! Until that is done and the wreckage identified by experts, 911 is a pure bullshit!

Why was flight 911 an exception?

Why was it not re-assembled?

Why was the crime of mass murder not investigated?

Why was 911, in fact, covered up and justice subverted?

Why were the crimes of felony destruction of evidence and perjury never investigated?

It was widely believed and disseminated via the internet that the fuselage of Flight 77 vaporized in the intense heat! What intense heat? Kerosene (jet fuel) fires are relatively 'cool'! I looked up the temperature at which Aluminum vaporizes. It is 11000 degrees F which NASA states is almost 1000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun.
The part of the sun that we see has a temperature of about 5500 degrees C (10,000 degrees F). Astronomers measure star temperatures in a metric unit called the Kelvin (abbreviated K). One Kelvin equals exactly 1 Celsius degree (1.8 Fahrenheit degree), but the Kelvin and Celsius scales begin at different points. The Kelvin scale starts at absolute zero, which is -273.15 degrees C (- 459.67 degrees F). Thus, the temperature of the solar surface is about 5800 K. Temperatures in the sun's core reach over 15 million K.

--The Sun, NASA
Other facts are easily verified if one is courageous enough to be honest. Most notably: Aluminum will not penetrate steel at any speed! That fact alone will rule out the many 'animations' and/or cartoons that you will see on YouTube, the most egregious is said to have been produced by Perdue University. The producers --whoever they really are --presume to call it 'accurate'. It was so 'accurate' that it entirely omitted a dense, steel core clearly depicted in construction photos.

The official cover story does not work. An aluminum fuselage will not penetrate the hard steel outer 'cladding'.

Kinetic energy is absorbed by the softer body.

Don't take my word for it. Just try hurling a marshmallow wad with a Trebouchet against either a brick wall or metal garage door. Guess which object gets 'smushed-up" into a 'splat'. Not the brick wall; NOT the garage door. Hurl the marshmallow at either at Mach 1, 2, 3 or even higher. It makes no difference. The additional kinetic energy gained by velocity is absorbed by the softer body. In this 'thought experiment', the softer body is the marshmallow. In the real world, the softer body is the largely hollow, aluminum fuselage that did not and could not have penetrated the outer steel cladding, let alone the dense steel core depicted at right during construction.

A 757 has two engines each containing a Titanium-Steel alloy rotor with a diameter of about 12 feet. Titanium-steel alloy is chosen so that it won't melt inside the engine. But this elementary fact is utterly lost upon those intent upon perverting, distorting or lying about the laws of physics in order to cover up the crimes of mass murder and high treason! Those defending the Bush theory must prove their assertions that these rotors were recovered. Where are they? Show me the wreckage!

In fact, there is no such evidence, no such proof. Had there been such evidence, had Bush been innocent of 911, he would have made that evidence public! It would have been a priority. It might have legitimized a 'war on terror' which is otherwise a mere act of imperial terrorism, an act of mass murder by a rogue nation. Had Bush been a legitimate President he would have made this information available immediately. Had he been 'innocent', above suspicion, he would have made public the evidence; he would have insisted upon it! Instead, he ordered 'evidence' covered up in a blue tarpaulin, hauled off, to be destroyed! An innocent man does not destroy evidence that would exonerate him! Bush's orders and actions in the wake of 911 are the actions of a culprit, a perpetrator, a mass murderer!

Now --there was wreckage at the Pentagon but not wreckage traceable to a 757 nor was such a trace attempted. The scant wreckage left behind is evidence of a much smaller craft --a missile --striking the Pentagon. Only one engine rotor was found; it was about one third the size of two much larger rotors that would have been found had a 757 done the damage. If an airliner of some 200 tons had crashed and burned at any temp less than that of a nuclear explosion, it will leave behind 200 tons of wreckage. Those are the laws of physics, specifically, the Law of the Conservation of Matter and Energy.

I doubt that the 'white-shirted' office schmucks who carted the wreckage off under a blue tarpaulin were capable of lifting upon their wimpy shoulders some 200 tons. Why was the wreckage not re-assembled? Was the Bush administration afraid of revealing by re-assembly what it was that actually struck the Pentagon? I am sure of it. They dare not re-assemble the meager wreckage as was, in fact, done when an airliner exploded over Lockebie, Scotland in the 1980s. In the case of Lockerbie and, much later, the Space Shuttle Columbia the wreckage, the evidence was gathered.

Only one engine rotor was found among the few scraps at the Pentagon. About one third the diameter of a 757 engine, it was most certainly left behind by the U.S. Global Hawk which uses a Rolls-Royce engine with specs consistent with what can be learned from the only photograph showing any sort of rotor on the Pentagon lawn whatsoever. The bad news for Bush partisans is that the single rotor that was found is but about one-third the size of the rotors such rotors that would have been found had a 757 crashed the pent. But the ONLY rotors that was found is about the right size of the SINGLE rotor that is used in the U.S. Global Hawk, evidence of an inside job.

Conan Doyle by way of his character Sherlock Holmes said:
When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however implausible must be the truth!
Today, the truth is reviled. At least since GWB, possibly since Ronald Reagan, the government has been controlled by a nexus of liars and self-interested opportunists and militarists. There is money to be made killing people abroad, 'death and destruction' have become America's biggest exports!

The Military-Industrial Complex is the fancy name given to the venal cooperation between Pentagon Brass and the makers of killing machines --automated drones, robots, and de-humanized 'soldiers'. The deals are cut on K-street, that on-going auction in which the 'empire' is sold or more properly pimped! The most powerful lobby is the so-called Jewish Lobby, called thus because the 'foreign' government of Israel is, we are told, prohibited by law to lobby the government of the United States. Subterfuge! The results are what counts. As long as money buys souls the government of the U.S. is 'owned' by the state of Israel. What was that I read about Israelis 'dancing' on 911?

Addendum
Adieu, Daniel Schorr, a real journalist, a CBS legend.
Most people listening to NPR the last twenty years have come to know the name Daniel Schorr as the commentator who gave sage advice and observations of an increasingly shrinking world. But if you grew up in the 1950's and 60's, Schorr was the correspondent who had first hand knowledge of the Cold War, was the first to do a live on-air interview with Nikita Khruschev and who ran afoul of Richard Nixon's White House during the Watergate era.

Schorr, like all the correspondents during that great age of reporting at CBS News, was the cool observer who reported and never spun, sought answers and shared a vast amount of knowledge. His was one of the many voices that came to be trusted in times of uncertainty.

And it was during the Cold War that Schorr had some of his greatest moments. In 1962, when tensions between the West and the Soviet Union were at their highest, Daniel Schorr reported on the newly constructed Berlin Wall, taking a crew to East Berlin in search of answers.

The result was the CBS Reports documentary Berlin: Wall of Shame, which aired on January 4, 1962. A vivid picture of just how bad relations had become between East and West.

It is doubtful we'll see or hear his kind again anytime soon. It is a tragedy that no heir apparent is on the horizon to take his place. More tragic that CBS News has become a lifeless shell of its former self. It is probably the time his words of calm and his keen observations are the most needed.

But all we can do at the moment is be reminded and perhaps strive.

RIP - Daniel Schorr.


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
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:
_________________________________________________________________________________

Thursday, September 10, 2009

How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When more and more have less and less to spend, what is an economy to do but shrink? Economists call it 'contraction' but by any term, it results in recession/depression.

When workers are not FAIRLY compensated for their labor and productivity, the income and wealth inequalities that result lower GDP and official INDICES measuring the national standard of living. This has been the case following every GOP tax cut.

GOP tax cuts either bribe or pay off the shrinking class of ruling elites that currently make up just one percent of the US population. This class of ruling oligarchs owes its existence to Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982 which initially benefited the upper quintile. Subsequent tax cuts have enriched this class even as the percentage benefiting has shrunk --from 20 percent to just one percent. Every member of this class should be asking themselves: when do I fall off the bottom rung?

Indeed, that the world's millionaire's are decreasing in number does not mean the wealth is being equitably distributed. Rather --the reverse. Millionaires are decreasing because total wealth is decreasing even as the super-super rich, the ruling elite increases their share.
The number of millionaire households in the world dropped from 11 million in 2007 to 9 million last year, a fall of almost 18%, according to The Boston Consulting Group. The figure was worse in North America where the drop was 22%.

The world’s wealthy are getting poorer and poorer at an alarming rate.

The study’s other important top-line statistic is that “Global wealth fell from $104.7 trillion in 2007, measured in assets under management, to $92.4 trillion in 2008—a decline of 11.7 percent. It was the first decline since 2001.”

The rich seem to have joined the middle class on the metaphorical bread line, which is not good news for developed economies that are counting on consumer spending to help drive GDP growth rebounds. The wealthy may buy different goods and services than the middle class do, but their share of overall purchasing power is tremendous. What has been described as a “jobless” recovery is becoming a “wealthless” recovery as well.

The erosion of personal wealth matches the erosion of wealthy pools of capital. Harvard and Yale announced that their endowments dropped by more than 25% during their fiscal years which ended June 30. These institutions are clearly no better at managing their money than people in the top tier of the economic scale are.

--The World’s Millionaires Are Disappearing
Unless trends are reversed and unless the world economy crashes and makes paupers of all us, the number of billionaires will one day decrease as a handful of trillionaires claim world ownership.

As a result of GOP largesse, this 'ruling' elite of just one percent owns more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. Clearly --everyone not a member of this class amounts for very, very little among the leadership of the GOP. The US 'ruling elite' have become oligarchs. Bush Jr said: 'You are either for us or you are agin' us'. Surely, he had his base in mind. He waged war on their behalf just as Rome waged war to benefit the nobles, as Rome had invaded Dacia for the gold! If you are not 'elite', you are, like most of us, among the ass-kissin' paupers. Revolutions have begun upon less cause! GOP inequities depress the economy.

Deficits Caused by Tax Cuts Negate Any Potential Economic Benefits

Studies by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirm the common sense conclusion that GOP deficits undermine the alleged economic benefits of GOP tax cuts. The so-called Laffer Curve is crap! Arthur Laffer drew a HYPOTHETICAL curve in which additional revenues would be derived by cutting taxes for the 'investor' class. The curve is said to have shown how by cutting taxes for an 'investor' class, the increased investment thus stimulated would increase both employement and GDP while reducing federal deficits in the bargain.

Reagan's tax cut of 1982 put Laffer to the test and his curve failed miserably. GDP did not increase; rather, a depression of some two years --the longest and most severe since the Great Depression --resulted! It was accompanied by massive job losses and homelessness. Tent cities sprang up in boomtowns like Houston.

GOP Tax Cuts For Cronies Cause Recessions

Recessions and depressions have followed every GOP tax cut.
  • In 1978, capital gains tax was cut --39% to 28%, GDP growth % fell from 5% to 2.9% in one year.
  • 1981, capital gains tax was cut from 28% to 20% and GDP growth % fell from 2.5 to -2.1% in 1982.
  • 1997, when capital gains taxes were cut from 28% back to 20%, GDP GROWTH FELL about 0.2% from 1997 to 1998.
It has been said that if you charge too much for something you will make $0 and if you charge too little --same thing. That thought process may apply to a small manufacturer; it does not describe or predict the effects of US tax policy. It is, rather, a simplistic demand curve --not the Laffer Curve which presumed to predict the effect of tax cuts. It was --in fact --a baseless rationalization for making the rich even richer. Politicians saw in it the perfect cover, a way to 'launder' a pay off to the base!

Aside from inflicting upon the US economy what may yet prove to be a mortal blow, Unca Ronnie sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy of the US. Alone, that is treason as defined by US Codes. But Reagan was not done. He funneled the proceeds to a right wing insurgency in Nicaraugua. All 'off the books'. Reagan arranged billions of dollars in unreported loans to Saddam Hussein for the purchase of military tech. [See: Lawrence Walsh, Iran-Contra Report, Concluding Observations]

Later, Bush would accuse Saddam of having WMD! Who but Reagan, the US in general, could have have armed Saddam? If WMD had been found, what are the chances that they would have come from any other nation BUT the nation that has sought to arm insurgencies all over the world --not in defense of Democracy but in defense of a US ruling elite of just one percent of the total population! Weapons for his oil was surely a part of the 'sweet deal' GOP regimes cooked up with Saddam Hussein.

Reagan removed Iraq from the list of known terrorist nations in 1982 despite objections from Congress. A bargain had been struck!

Defense contractors, the de facto enforcement arm of the GOP, shipped helicopters and howitzers to Baghdad in the 1980s, even as the U.S. Dept. of Commerce gave its stamp of approval to the shipment of weapons-grade botulin poison, anthrax, nerve agents and chemicals needed for mustard gas. If WMD had been found in Iraq (they were not), chances are, they would have been traceable to either the Senior Bush or Unca Ronnie Ray-guns, terrorists of the GOP brand!

Until Bush Jr, Reagan had been the very worst President in US history. Bush Jr was not to be outdone. Both idiot-criminals enriched just just one percent of the US population --robber barons, insiders and arms merchants who were already rich. Under both so-called 'Presidents', every one but the very, very rich got poor! The middle class was left behind and falling off the bottom rung. Surely, you figured that out when you tried to re-finance your big house recently.

OFFICIAL STATS from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labors Statistics and the US Commerce Dept et al prove conclusively that the age of US egalitarianism ended with the rise of Reagan Republicanism. It's all been downhill for America since then. You can thank the GOP.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Impeachment Won't Help; Only Revolution Will Save America

If you happen to be among the top one percent of the nation, then, Bush has done a fabulous job for you. He's has enriched you and your type. You benefited from 911 which made possible Bush's agenda of aggressive war, dismantling the Constitution, and packing the courts. You should be proud and probably are.

Bush is just a figurehead. In the words of an excellent documentary that tries to explain the inexplicable: the fix was in! Bush is 'president' because he is a Bush and because he represents you --but only if you happen to be among the top 1 percent of the population. If not, you are outta luck! Bush has done his job on his bosses behalf. Everyone else is outta luck. It's a comprehensive and deliberate program:
  • wage resource wars in the middle east --Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran specifically;
  • enrich the Military/Industrial complex which represents America's last 'export': state-sponsored terrorism;
  • dismantle the Constitution and the electoral apparatus through subversion and institutionalized vote theft;
  • establish a precedent by which the 'executive' may rewrite the laws passed by Congress;
  • pack the courts such that the rights of individuals and lower classes are disenfranchised, ignored, and, in other ways, violated with disingenuous decisions which often, of late, simply ignore several hundred years of Anglo/American jurisprudence, the precedents established by our own US Supreme Court, and the very letter of the law itself.
In Bush's words: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!" If you happen to be among the top one percent of the nation, then, Bush has, indeed, done a fabulous job on your behalf. If the revolution is to be effective, it must begin with a restoration of the 'rule of law' which Bush has subverted with signing statements, decrees, and executive orders.

Greg Palast is, once again, on the trial of a 'President' who has come out of the closet, i.e, Bush openly flouts the very source of US sovereignty: the people themselves. In a phrase: Bush doesn't give a shit about that or about you.

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Scott McClellan: Bush Misled Americans In Order to Go to War

The time has come to indict George W. Bush for murder. One suspects McClellan is setting himself up to 'cop a plea'. Certainly, Bush should be indicted for capital crimes, namely, the waging of naked aggression from which deaths resulted. Bush must have known he was subject to prosecution [See: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] Otherwise, he would not have given John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales their marching orders: make war crimes legal!
WASHINGTON — Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

McClellan, 40, includes the charges in his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode and says he was deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

He accuses former White House adviser Karl Rove of misleading him about his role in the CIA case. He describes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as being deft at deflecting blame and calls Vice President Dick Cheney "the magic man" who steered policy behind the scenes.

McClellan, who was a tight-lipped defender of administration aides and policy, stops short of saying Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that he and his subordinates were not "employing out-and-out deception" to make their case for war.

But in one chapter, "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

McClellan resigned from the White House on April 19, 2006, after nearly three years as Bush's press secretary.

Michael D. Shear, Ex-aide Scott McClellan says Bush misled the US on war
It was several years ago the so-called Lancet study estimated Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of Bush's war at about 655,000. An estimate as of this week is some 1.2 million! Under law, EACH death is one count of murder in the indictment that should be forthcoming against those who would defraud a nation, the world in order to wage a war whose true purpose was the theft of oil.

I've been saying this for years and taking the heat when idiots --inspired by Fox and Limbaugh --were burning Dixie Chick CDs and waving flags from an SUV. Chicken hawks! Lately, I've gotten a lot of support.
George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns.

Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment.

I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe.

That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

--Vincent Bugliosi, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
With all due respect, Vince, regulars to this blog know that I've been making that case for years. Welcome to the club. Now --who will take this case to a Grand Jury? An indictment now would be timely.

Critics of 'conspiracy theories', just shut up! Labeling is no substitute for critical thinking skills. We are not talking about 'conspiracy theories'. We're talking about the hard evidence --admissible in court --that will get the arch criminal George W. Bush indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced for the crime of mass murder!