Thursday, October 01, 2009

David Griffin's New Book Exposes a 'New Leviathan'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

There is probable cause to indict and charge top government officials, George W. Bush himself, for the capital crimes we call '911', specifically the crimes of mass murder, high treason, or the war crimes 'justified' upon the pretext of a great 'war on terrorism'. [see: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] or high treason!
(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.

--US Codes, TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441. War crimes
Now --Prof Griffin may or may not share my conviction with regard to the probable cause to indict high level members of Bush's administration, his new book most certainly strikes deep into a conspiracy to defraud the American people even as it waged treasonous war against it.

Therefore, we should not be surprised that the government of the United States is 'pimped out' to huge multi-national corporations and foreign nations (Israel?) who take a proprietary interest in it. Why would they not? They own it; they own us; they own you, having bought the US and with it the awesome power of the Military/Industrial Complex. While the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the Roman Empire to one Didius Julianus, the United States has since perfected, 'improved' upon Julianus' one-time sale. The US government is an on-going auction in which the US is routinely 'pimped' on 'K-street, sold to the highest bidders the services of Congress, the White House and even the US Supreme Court.

'K-Street' should have red lights

This is the essential 'deep background' that one must understand if one is to understand the crime of '911' in which the government of the United States, having sold out the people to special interests and foreign entities like the Jewish Lobby, may have exploited the manpower and equipment necessary to stage a phony terrorist attack by which it would later justify the attack and invasion of a sovereign nation for its oil and its strategic position in the middle east!

Hitler required, doubtless planned and pulled off the Reichstag Fire [See: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer]; Bushco would exploit a 'catalyzing event' which the radical Project for the New American Century compared to Pearl Harbor. [See Rebuilding America's Defenses; toward the end of this PDF document you will find a picture of the US Global Hawk which, I believe was 'the missile', as Rumsfeld called it, that hit the Pentagon --'this building' as Rumsfeld called it!]

Only the terminally disingenuous dare feign shock or surprise upon learning that the crime of 911 was the work of the US government, specifically the CIA in cahoots with Mossad. The Jewish lobby is among the well-heeled patrons of K-Street!

The prostitution of the US government is documented and against that background. For thousands of years, every government has found it necessary to raise the specter of a 'foreign threat' in order to repeal a people's ancient liberties, rights, and even its property. At least since the fall of Rome, governments have sold themselves out and/or operated elaborate 'protection rackets'. Presaging the many ways in which the US government has betrayed the American people, The Praetorian Guard auctioned off the Roman Empire to a nobleman. That Didius Julianus did not long survive his treachery is either tragic or deserved depending upon your view of history and the depths of depravity associated with the Roman ruling classes. The same is written about America now!

In Iraq, the Bush regime would act on behalf of the huge oil companies to whom the Bush family had owed its livelihood for several generations. The result: a 'shocking' terrorist attack on US soil, the pretext Bush needed to attack, invade and steal the petroleum resources of another nation. It did not matter that the target nation had been an ally of the US and posed no 'imminent threat' to the US. The eventual attack and invasion of this nation is a war crime punishable by death.

The Leviathan Re-visited

We are too often overwhelmed by the Leviathan that oppresses us and threatens the world. We have on our side the most powerful weapon of them all: truth. 'They' have only lies. The truth explains everything. Lies explain nothing. Lies betray those who tell them, those who live by them, those who depend upon them for their very livelihood. It is the lies told about 911 which have betrayed the perpetrators. 911 was covered up with a most pernicious lie: the destruction of evidence.

The absence of evidence is not probable cause to indict George W. Bush or any member of his administration. However, when the criminals who pulled off 911 are brought to jail, you can be sure that a skilled prosecutor may ask a jury: what motivates a man to cover up the crimes of mass murder and treason if not guilt? What motivation has an innocent man to order the destruction of evidence if it might clear him of all charges? Certainly --no rational man would order the destruction of evidence that would clear him of all charges leveled against him.

There are those who believe that Bush, Cheney and a gang of NEOCON crooks representing the new ruling Leviathan of just one percent of the US population conspired to attack and invade Iraq for its oil! If Bushco were innocent, would it have destroyed the evidence that would clear them? It will not help the defense that surviving documents prove that Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force' literally carved up the oil fields of Iraq before Bush would have the pretext he needed to attack, invade, and loot oil!
Earlier this year a BBC Newsnight report claimed to have uncovered documents showing the Bush administration made plans to secure Iraqi oil even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. Based on its analysis of PSAs in seven countries, it said multinationals would seek rates of return on their investment from 42 to 162 per cent, far in excess of typical 12 per cent rates.

--American And British Oil Companies Ready To Carve Up Iraqi Oil Fields
As Hitler needed a Reichstag Fire, Bushco needed a pretext --a 'catalyzing event' that the Project for the New American Century would compare to Pearl Harbor. [See Rebuilding America's Defenses; toward the end of this PDF document you will find a picture of the US Global Hawk which, I believe was 'the missile', as Rumsfeld called it, that hit 'this building' as Rumsfeld referred to the Pentagon!]

It is telling that this document, prepared as it was by a cadre of 'neoconservatives', had designs upon a Clinton surplus though it is 'conservatives' who are always most vocal with regard to 'big spending liberals'.
New circumstances make us think that the report might have a more receptive audience now than in recent years. For the first time since the late 1960s the federal government is running a surplus. For most of the 1990s, Congress and the White House gave balancing the federal budget a higher priority than funding national security. In fact, to a significant degree, the budget was balanced by a combination of increased tax revenues and cuts in defense spending. The surplus expected in federal revenues over the next decade, however, removes any need to hold defense spending to some preconceived low level.

--PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses
This paragraph is revealing for its sheer hypocrisy. It was Ronald Reagan who doubled the federal bureaucracy and tripled the national debt though he cut taxes but ONLY for the upper quintile if not the mere one percent who, in fact, have benefited from GOP policies in the regimes of Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr. , Because of inequitable tax cuts for an increasingly tiny, ruling elite, Ronald Reagan presided over a depression of some two years, the deepest and longest since Herbert Hoover's 'Great Depression'.

It was Ronald Reagan who dismissed the complaints of the poor that were left behind during his dreary years. Mentally ill, he called them. Reagan lied about a Cadillac driving 'welfare queen' in Detroit (as I recall). There was no such person. Ronald Reagan lied. Clearly --the GOP is more interested in waging wars for Israel than it is in representing responsibly the needs of US citizens, Americans who were deceived throughout the Twentieth Century.

As the work of Professor David Ray Griffin over the greater part of a decade has proven: 911 may be the most evil deception yet issuing from the whorehouses on K-Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. The most obvious fraud --the collapse of WTC 7 not even struck by aircraft of any sort --is Griffin's most recent salvo. His book is a both a history and the utter refutation of a series of interim NIST studies. Under Griffin's bright light, the NIST assertion that WTC7 was the first steel-frame building in history to be structurally demolished by fire alone is utterly collapsed.

It was at 5:20 PM, September 11th, that WTC 7, a skyscraper of some 40 stories, suddenly collapsed. Building 7 had not been struck by aircraft of any sort! Nevertheless, a BBC correspondent reported that it had collapsed some 15 or 20 minutes before the event! How would she have known so much detail in advance of an unexpected event? How does a reporter report an event before it happens unless the event is planned? And by whom was it planned?

Tales Told by 'Symmetricality'

The collapse of WTC is memorable for its 'text book' symmetry, its near seamless fall into its own footprint hours after the larger building had already collapsed.
Amazing, incredible, pick your word. For the third time today --it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before, where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.

--Dan Rather, CBS News
Rather's comments were supported by photographs and video depicting horizontal squibs and windows blowing out as the collapse began. It was this appearance of a 'controlled demolition' at WTC 7 that inspired my own doubts about the official theories. Even if what had been said about airliners striking the 'twins' had been true, none of that was relevant at WTC 7. It became clear to me that officialdom would need a new theory --and fast! Subsequently, officialdom still has not come up with a credible explanation that connects WTC with the fall of the twins that does not implicate very 'important' people.

Offialdom, eventually represented by the NIST, was stuck, having committed to a 'fire theory'.
Some of the evidence ignored by NIST is physical evidence that explosives were used to bring down WTC 7. Swiss-Cheese Steel: I will begin with the piece of steel from WTC 7 that had been melted so severely that it looked like Swiss cheese. Explaining why it called this “the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation,” James Glanz wrote: “The steel apparently melted away, but no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.” [15] Glanz’s statement was, in fact, quite an understatement. The full truth is that the fires in the building could not have brought the steel anywhere close to the temperature – about 1,482°C (2,700°F) – needed for it to melt. [16]

The professors who reported this piece of steel in the appendix to the FEMA report said: “A detailed study into the mechanisms [that caused] this phenomenon is needed.”[17] Arden Bement, who was the director of NIST when it took on the WTC project, said that NIST’s report would address “all major recommendations contained in the [FEMA] report.” [18]

But when NIST issued its report on WTC 7, it did not mention this piece of steel with the Swiss-cheese appearance. Indeed, NIST even claimed that not a single piece of steel from WTC 7 had been recovered. [19]

This piece of steel, moreover, was only a small portion of the evidence, ignored by NIST, that steel had melted.

--Prof. David Ray Griffin, Why NIST’s Final 9/11 Report is Unscientific and False
Thus, from the outset, the NIST was compromised! Commiting to a 'theory' a priori is not how science is done. Scientific conclusions are, by definition, a posteriori, resulting only from empirical evidence and/or verified fact. For about seven years, NIST gnomes tried to shoe-horn facts into a pre-conceived lie. They sweat blood over computer simulations in search of the Holy Grail of officialdom: a fire theory that would explain the utter collapses of three monumental buildings. The NIST, having already committed, could not afford the luxury of a dispassionate inquiry, a scientific approach. Because it had to, the NIST would settle for smoke and mirrors to which the Wizard of Oz could only aspire. The NIST tried to re-write science to please Bush and a gang of guilty mass murderers, traitors, liars and usurpers.

It is much easier now to write a single sentence that is completely consistent with Occam's Razor: 'WTC 7 looks like a controlled demolition because it was a controlled demolition'. It is my hope that the truth of that statement will result in bringing the truly guilty to justice as it liberates a nation that was lost on 911! On the other hand, it is my fear that the only lesson culprits will have learned is that next time, they will rig a much less symmetrical treason, a less 'tidy'' mass murder!

Following --Michel Chossudovsky interviews David Ray Griffin on the Global Research News Hour in which Prof Griffin refutes the 'official narrative', the so-called 'official conspircy theory'. Griffen's new book is about WTC 7.

Prof Griffin's new book is: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False

This just in:
RNC Tied To Website That Promoted Military Coup Against Obama

September 30, 2009 4:25 pm ET by Matt Finkelstein

Yesterday, Newsmax columnist John L. Perry brought up the possibility of a military coup against President Obama. Most chilling, perhaps, was the fact that Perry seemed to offer tepid support for the idea. "A coup is not an ideal option," he acknowledged, "but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible."

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic. [...]

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

Newsmax eventually unpublished the column, but only after receiving several reader complaints. Additionally, a spokeswoman for Newsmax tried to downplay the website's relationship with Perry.

But more significant than a radical opinion piece is the fact that the Republican National Committee appears to provide financial support to the website that published it. Indeed, the RNC has recently borrowed Newsmax's email list (presumably for a fee) so Michael Steele could fear-monger about the Democrats' "desire for socialist control over our lives."


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Brecht: Truth as Weapon

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy/Bertolt Brecht excerpts

Huge corporations and foreign nations take a proprietary interest in the government of the United States because they own it. They bought it at the on-going auction called 'K-street' where is sold to the highest bidders the services of Congress, the White House and even the US Supreme Court.

Our capital is a whore house.

Those intrepid bloggers, progressives, activists who oppose this new Leviathan are understandably frustrated by the impressive 'arsenal' that is summoned against us. Nevertheless, we have among our weapons, the most powerful and it is one that the PR flacks and spin-doctors will never have access to. It is --simply --the truth. Against a multitude of lies, spin, distractions and bullshit, the truth must always triumph. It may be our only weapon. But it is the most powerful.

Below the ruled line follows an except from Bertolt Brecht's essential essay on 'truth'. Readers of the Existentialist Cowboy have often read my quote of Brecht:
A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!
Following --Bertolt Brecht:
The truth must be spoken with a view to the results it will produce in the sphere of action. As a specimen of a truth from which no results, or the wrong ones, follow, we can cite the widespread view that bad conditions prevail in a number of countries as a result of barbarism. In this view, Fascism is a wave of barbarism which has descended upon some countries with the elemental force of a natural phenomenon. According to this view, Fascism is a new, third power beside (and above) capitalism and socialism; not only the socialist movement but capitalism as well might have survived without the intervention of Fascism. And so on. This is, of course, a Fascist claim; to accede to it is a capitulation to Fascism.

Fascism is a historic phase of capitalism; in this sense it is something new and at the same time old. In Fascist countries capitalism continues to exist, but only in the form of Fascism; and Fascism can be combated as capitalism alone, as the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive, and most treacherous form of capitalism. But how can anyone tell the truth about Fascism, unless he is willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it forth? What will be the practical results of such truth?

Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties

Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.

Outcries against barbarous measures may be effective as long as the listeners believe that such measures are out of the question in their own countries. Certain countries are still able to maintain their property relations by methods that appear less violent than those used in other countries.

Democracy still serves in these countries to achieve the results for which violence is needed in others, namely, to guarantee private ownership of the means of production. The private monopoly of factories, mines, and land creates barbarous conditions everywhere, but in some places these conditions do not so forcibly strike the eye. Barbarism strikes the eye only when it happens that monopoly can be protected only by open violence.

Some countries, which do not yet find it necessary to defend their barbarous monopolies by dispensing with the formal guarantees of a constitutional state, as well as with such amenities as art, philosophy, and literature, are particularly eager to listen to visitors who abuse their native lands because those amenities are denied there. They gladly listen because they hope to derive from what they hear advantages in future wars. Shall we say that they have recognized the truth who, for example, loudly demand an unrelenting struggle against Germany “because that country is now the true home of Evil in our day, the partner of hell, the abode of the Antichrist”? We should rather say that these are foolish and dangerous people. For the conclusion to be drawn from this nonsense is that since poison gas and bombs do not pick out the guilty, Germany must be exterminated—the whole country and all its people.

The man who does not know the truth expresses himself in lofty, general, and imprecise terms. He shouts about “the” German, he complains about Evil in general, and whoever hears him cannot make out what to do. Shall he decide not to be a German? Will hell vanish if he himself is good? The silly talk about the barbarism that comes out of barbarism is also of this kind. The source of barbarism is barbarism, and it is combated by culture, which comes from education. All this is put in general terms; it is not meant to be a guide to action and is in reality addressed to no one.

Such vague descriptions point to only a few links in the chain of causes. Their obscurantism conceals the real forces making for disaster. If light be thrown on the matter it promptly appears that disasters are caused by certain men. For we live in a time when the fate of man is determined by men.

Fascism is not a natural disaster which can be understood simply in terms of “human nature.” But even when we are dealing with natural catastrophes, there are ways to portray them which are worthy of human beings because they appeal to man’s fighting spirit. After a great earthquake that destroyed Yokohama, many American magazines published photographs showing a heap of ruins. The captions read: STEEL STOOD. And, to be sure, though one might see only ruins at first glance, the eye swiftly discerned, after noting the caption, that a few tall buildings had remained standing. Among the multitudinous descriptions that can be given of an earthquake, those drawn up by construction engineers concerning the shifts in the ground, the force of stresses, the best developed, etc., are of the greatest importance, for they lead to future construction which will withstand earthquakes.

If anyone wishes to describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must show that these disasters are launched by the possessing classes to control the vast numbers of workers who do not own the means of production. If one wishes successfully to write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be identified, the evil conditions can be fought

--Bertolt Brecht, The Skill to Manipulate the Truth as a Weapon
It is easy enough to identify the lies told by Bush Jr, but cloaked by passing time and various revisions of history it is more difficult to learn the truth about previous regimes, primarily Ronald Reagan whose bankruptcy of the US was --literally --papered over with new debt and old propaganda. Paul Craig Roberts, who should know a thing or two about the Reagan years, must surely understand that the US economy has been a magician's illusion at least since the Reagan years.
Consumer spending is 70% of the US economy. It is the driving force, and it has been shut down. Except for the super rich, there has been no growth in consumer incomes in the 21st century. Statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com reports that real household income has never recovered its pre-2001 peak.

The US economy has been kept going by substituting growth in consumer debt for growth in consumer income. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan encouraged consumer debt with low interest rates. The low interest rates pushed up home prices, enabling Americans to refinance their homes and spend the equity. Credit cards were maxed out in expectations of rising real estate and equity values to pay the accumulated debt. The binge was halted when the real estate and equity bubbles burst.

As consumers no longer can expand their indebtedness and their incomes are not rising, there is no basis for a growing consumer economy. Indeed, statistics indicate that consumers are paying down debt in their efforts to survive financially. In an economy in which the consumer is the driving force, that is bad news.

The banks, now investment banks thanks to greed-driven deregulation that repealed the learned lessons of the past, were even more reckless than consumers and took speculative leverage to new heights. At the urging of Larry Summers and Goldman Sachs’ CEO Henry Paulson, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bush administration went along with removing restrictions on debt leverage.

When the bubble burst, the extraordinary leverage threatened the financial system with collapse. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve stepped forward with no one knows how many trillions of dollars to “save the financial system,” which, of course, meant to save the greed-driven financial institutions that had caused the economic crisis that dispossessed ordinary Americans of half of their life savings.
--Paul Craig Roberts, The Economy is a Lie, Too


Sunday, September 20, 2009

Why the 911 Truth Movement 'Cannot be Stopped'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

There remains probable cause to indict and charge top officials, George W. Bush himself, for the crimes we call '911'. And, last time I checked, there was no 'statute of limitation' on mass murder, war crimes [see: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] or high treason!

The evidence against Bush, Cheney and a gang of NEOCON crooks will prove in court that Bushco conspired to attack and invade Iraq for its oil! It will not help the defense that documents of Cheney's meeting of his 'Energy Task Force' survive and prove that the Cheney and 'big oil' literally carved up the oil fields of Iraq before Bush would have the pretext he needed to attack, invade, and loot oil!
Earlier this year a BBC Newsnight report claimed to have uncovered documents showing the Bush administration made plans to secure Iraqi oil even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. Based on its analysis of PSAs in seven countries, it said multinationals would seek rates of return on their investment from 42 to 162 per cent, far in excess of typical 12 per cent rates.

--American And British Oil Companies Ready To Carve Up Iraqi Oil Fields
As Hitler needed a Reichstag Fire, Bushco needed a pretext --a 'catalyzing event' that the Project for the New American Century would compare to Pearl Harbor. [See Rebuilding America's Defenses; toward the end of this PDF document you will find a picutre of the US Global Hawk which, I believe was 'the missile', as Rumsfeld called it, that hit 'this building' as Rumsfeld referred to the Pentagon!]

Bush conspired with 'rich men' --his elite base --in order to perpetrate the capital crimes of aggressive war, mass murder and high treason!
On this eighth anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11. the movement of concerned citizens who do not believe the U.S. government’s official explanation of those events (the clear majority in poll after poll after poll) only continues to grow, emboldened by breathrough after breakthrough in their efforts to bring the glaring inaccuracies of that official explanation to the attention of the general public.

Perhaps no greater sign of the success of the 9/11 Truth movement can be found than the fact that the discredited corporate media has begun another round of ferocious and transparent hit pieces designed to sling mud at those seeking real answers to the still-unanswered questions of the victims’ family members and real justice for the first responders who are dying as a direct result of government lies. From Psychology Todays ridiculous hit piece insisting that skepticism about government explanations is a form of insanity to National Geographic firing explosives into a fiberglass chicken coop, it seems that the corporate media is becoming more and more desperate (and even downright comical) in their attempts to stop people from questioning the very 9/11 commission that has been called a fraud by six of its own commissioners.

Most of these attacks on 9/11 end up focusing not on the evidence itself, but on one inevitable question: “Why do ‘conspiracy theorists’ believe what they believe?” Of course, this question is coming from the self-same media conglomerates who speak in unanimity against 9/11 Truth and then wonder why newspapers are going the way of the dodo and people are turning off the TV in droves, so we can assume the question is either disingenous or that the corporate media bigwigs are, shall we say, intellectually challenged.

--James Corbett, The Corbett Report
The biggest hole in the official theories is the fact that there is absolutely no forensic evidence supporting the Bush conspiracy theory. Certainly --no airliner wreckage was recovered in New York and the surviving steel was ordered destroyed by Bush but not before traces of thermate were recovered and subsequently tested, analyzed and confirmed. The presence of thermate is very nearly the smoking gun. Without thermate, the steel girders of WTC would never have weakened, collapsed or melted as they were, in fact, photographed.

WTC 7 is another fatal flaw, a nail in the Bushco coffin. WTC 7 was not struck by any airliner of any size. It was seen standing behind a BBC correspondent even as she reported its collapse. Clearly --she had gotten the official 'release' but screwed up by reporting this planned event before it, in fact, occurred. The fall of WTC 7, never struck by airliners, is a classic example of a controlled demolition.

At the Pentagon, only one engine rotor was found --not the two that would have survived to be recovered had an airliner struck the Pentagon. Moreover, the only rotor found was about one third the size of two rotors that would have been recovered had a 757 struck the Pentagon. There was no fuselage, no airliner wreckage! Unless the laws of the conservation of matter and energy have been repealed, a 757 weighing some 80 tons or more would have left behind just that much debris. Certainly, the small of amount of debris might have been carried off in wheelbarrows.

Desperate 'officialists' concede that no airliner fuselage was found. It 'vaporized', they 'explain'. Nonsense! The fuselage is of aluminum and according to every scientific, official or university source I have found, aluminum will not 'vaporize' at temperatures less than 11000 degrees F. According to NASA, 11000 degrees F is 1000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun. So --you can rule that out!

Officialists also claim that DNA testing confirmed both passenger and 'hijacker' IDs. There are at least two things wrong with that assertion: 1) there are NO Arab names on the official autopsy report released to Dr. Olmsted in response to his FOIA; 2) if the fuselage vaporized as is claimed, then no DNA IDs would have been possible. DNA is often said to decompose when heated but, in fact, the effect is even worse: it literally melts. As heat is applied, bonds that join the two nucleotide strands may break.
The two molecules [nucleotides] are stabilized in this structure due to noncovalent bonds, mostly hydrogen bonds and vanderWaals forces. These bonds are not strong; accordingly, when the temperature rises sufficiently, the double helix is said to "melt" into its two component molecules, and will reassociate upon slow cooling under appropriate salt conditions. So, the issue is not decomposition so much as disassociation upon exposure to too high a temperature; and the reason for the disassociation is that the energy input of the heat overcomes the ability of the noncovalent bonds to keep the molecules together.

--US Energy Department, Molecular Biology Archive, DNA Decomposition
At the 11000 degrees F required to 'vaporize' the fuselage, I dare say no DNA would have survived, no DNA ids would have been possible at all. So --which is it? Did the fuselage vaporize or not? Were the DNA ids performed or not? The officialists simply cannot have it both ways.

The truth, however, explains everything. Lies explain nothing. The truth is: no airliner struck the Pentagon. The only 'official autopsy report' known to exist was released to Dr. Olmsted via his FOIA request. There were NO ARABS on the list!

Take the case of Flight 93. Saeed Alghamdi has been protesting his innocence of 911 since the event. If Saeed were guilty, he would be dead! If Saeed were guilty he would have been blown to smithereens over PA. A dead Saeed might be evidence of Bush's theory. Alive, he is living proof that Bush's official conspiracy theory is a pack of black hearted lies that have harmed the American people, the world and, most certainly, the cause of peace.

Bush is the primary suspect for several reasons:
  • Those who lie about crimes do so to cover up guilt. Bush has never told the truth about 911.
  • Bush has not merely lied; he has actively, consistently and deliberately tried to cover up the crime of 911 with overt and identifiable instances of obstruction of justice, lies, and overt intimidation. This --I believe --is persuasive evidence of his guilt and/or complicity.
Tim Roemer let the cat out of the bag when, like Donald Rumsfeld, he referred to a 'missile' that struck the Pentagon. And that, I believe, is the truth that Bush would cover up and lie about.

If Bush had been innocent of the crime, he would have ordered every scrap to be placed in evidence. Instead, he obstructed justice by ordering destroyed the evidence of mass murder an high treason. If Bush had been innocent, why would he have ordered the destruction of evidence that might have proved his innocence in court? Within months of WTC collapse, tons of metal from the collapsed towers were sold to scrap yards in New Jersey where it was then sold to recyclers in the US and overseas. As the recent discovery of thermate proves, every shred, every scrap of 911 metal was evidence which, if examined, might have explained the collapse or pointed an accusing, indicting finger! Perhaps it is that last fact that explains the haste with which this 'evidence' was destroyed.

If Bush were innocent, then why would he have ordered the destruction of evidence that might have exonerated him? The only answer is that Bush is not innocent and ordered the destruction of evidence that would, in fact, prove his guilt of the crimes of mass murder and high treason against the sovereign people of the United States, the Constitution, US Criminal Codes and every moral code known to mankind since leaving the caves and savannahs.

Let's get on with the trials. Let's bring the guilty bastards to justice! There is no future until the demons of the past are dealt with, resolved and put to rest. No future is promising that is built upon a foundation of lies, high treason and the mass murder of US citizens by its own government.

See also: A Challenge to American Journalism

This just in:
[US officials, Congressmen, State and Defense Dept. officials Bribed for Nuclear Secrets! Can you say wide spread high treason in the US Government? ]
Broke the news on air tonight. 4,000 word cover story on FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds in The American Conservative to hit stands and web tomorrow, by former CIA agent Phil Giraldi.

We'll pick this up tomorrow after I get a look at it. You East Coasters will likely beat me to it. But here's the teaser from TAC...:
There’s a new issue of The American Conservative going to press today, and it includes a story that will make more than a few congressmen and foreign lobbyists intensely uncomfortable: an in-depth interview between Phil Giraldi and FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. She tells us exactly how Turkish intelligence have penetrated national secrets, suborned government officials, and blackmailed Congress. It’s going to be explosive.

Good. Rightwingers are covering it. So hopefully that means the "liberal media" will now pay attention!

UPDATE 9/18/09 1:15pm PT: Sibel posted the cover over at her site, and I've added it above. She also notes that the story is currently online available online to subscribers only until Monday when they'll release "a major press release" along with the print version out the same day. The story should then be available to all online on Tuesday.

The cover title: "Whose Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?: The gagged FBI whistleblower on espionage, al-Qaeda, and secrets for sale"

In an email she just sent me just now, she notes: "We've been getting foreign
MSM inquiries; tons. Zilch here; so far..."

Not much of a surprise by now. After all, what U.S. media would possibly care about members of the U.S. Congress and high-ranking State and Defense Dept. officials taking bribes, being blackmailed, and enabling the theft and sale of U.S. nuclear secrets? Even if the allegations came under sworn and video-taped deposition by a former FBI translator who overheard such things first hand. Non-story, apparently.

--Explosive' Sibel Edmonds Cover Story at 'The American Conservative'


911, War, and Paul O'Neill

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Tea Bagger Bigotry Exposed

The GOP has either allied themselves with the bigot-based 'tea bagger' movement or it is the instigator of it. Just when I had come to believe that the GOP could not possibly sink lower, it is now clear to me that this endemically bigoted party is positioned to exceed all previous lies, idiocy and hate talk spewed on that party's behalf by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and a legion of venom filled wannabes. Indeed, the GOP --apres Bush --is a deluge, a jack-booted army of right wing hate mongers.

Now --let's clear up another issue. A heavily-trafficked site [What Really Happened] which often links to my articles has referenced my article with the following lines:
Yeah, they are really desperate to sell this idea that anyone unhappy with the government must be a racist. [emphasis mine, LH]
Let me make this clear: NO ONE TELLS ME WHAT TO WRITE! There is no 'they' who dictated any content to me whatsoever! There is no 'they' and I resent the implication that my thoughts and my opinions were dictated to me in any way whatsoever by some mysterious and unidentified 'they' !!

Is that clear?

No one else is responsible for the content of this blog and no one tells me what I can post and what I cannot! I reserve the right to cite sources, quote other writers and/or politicians and analysts as well as numerous official, government sources.

More than three decades later we have Sherri Goforth, an aide to a Republican state senator in Tennessee sending out a mass e-mail of a cartoon showing dignified portraits of the first 43 presidents, and then representing the 44th — President Obama — as a spook, a cartoonish pair of white eyes against a black background.

When a gorilla escaped from a zoo in Columbia, S.C., a longtime Republican activist, Rusty DePass, described it on his Facebook page as one of Michelle Obama’s ancestors.

Among the posters at last weekend’s gathering of conservative protesters in Washington was one that said, “The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African.”

These are bits and pieces of an increasingly unrestrained manifestation of racism directed toward Mr. Obama that is being fed by hate-mongers on talk radio and is widely tolerated, if not encouraged, by Republican Party leaders. It’s disgusting, and it’s dangerous. But it’s the same old filthy racism that has been there all along and that has been exploited by the G.O.P. since the 1960s.

I have no patience with those who want to pretend that racism is not an out-and-out big deal in the United States, as it always has been. We may have made progress, and we may have a black president, but the scourge is still with us. And if you needed Jimmy Carter to remind you of that, then you’ve been wandering around with your eyes closed.

Glenn Beck, one of the moronic maestros of right-wing radio and TV, assures us that President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Some years ago, as the watchdog group Media Matters for America points out on its Web site, Beck said he’d like to beat Representative Charles Rangel “to death with a shovel.”

--The Scourge Persists, Bob Herbert, New York Times
The conclusions stated on this blog are mine and mine alone. And there is no denying --except by idiots and/or bigots --that bigotry underlies much of the criticism that is leveled by the right wing fanatics inside the 'tea bagger' movement.
Another racist photo [seen above right] showing Obama as a witch doctor is making the rounds with Tea Party activists.

Republicans accuse Speaker Pelosi of inciting racism with her health care comments.

Democrats are unhappy with proposed tax in the Baucus health care bill.

Rep. Pelosi said:
I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco.

This kind of rhetoric was very frightening" and created a climate in which violence took place.

I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.

She said some of the people hearing the message "are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume.

Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe.

But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.

--Nancy Pelosi, Statement
Mob scenes are now the GOP modus operandi. Paul Krugman asks: "What's behind it?" The answer to that is as clear and present as is the danger to the American republic and every freedom loving American: the leadership of the GOP, the GOP in Congress, the GOP at large:

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.

So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.

--Paul Krugman, The Town Hall Mob
Like pre-war Nazis, the American GOP exploited the mob mentality most prominently in the so-called 'White Riot' --in fact and by law a treasonous 'coup d'etat' which stole the election for George W. Bush. In fairness to mere rank and file extremists, however, it is clear that in the year 2000, it was the GOP leadership that bussed to Florida a white-shirted, button-down mob of right wing radical extremists whose purpose and assignment was to disrupt the election process, to stop the vote count while Bush was still ahead.

Typically, Antonin Scalia would issue the absurdity of the decade: "Count first and rule upon legality afterward is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires." Robert Novak was just as stupid but more succinct: "The democrats are trying to steal this election by counting votes!" 'Logic' of the same fallacious form was heard even earlier from Barbara Olson who said that Gary Condit was guilty of murder not because there was evidence against him but because there was none! That, she said, was proof he covered it up!

Just words
from an idiot

The 'recipe' is how every election had worked since the invention of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Voting and then counting the votes is how elections, indeed, Democracy itself, is done. Scalia is a not an intellectual. Scalia is a dumb-ass who has learned a 'trick'. The American west was peopled with itinerant 'snake oil salesmen' who had learned a few big words and how to impress the yokels with them.

GOP mob mentality was again in vogue when Sarah 'Wolf Murderer' Palin purposefully appealed to a 'base' which revealed itself to be most responsive to messages of hate and prejudice.

Democrats have a right NOT to be intimidated!

Certainly, the GOP has resorted to form --exploiting ugly mobs, encouraging them to disrupt legal democratic town hall meetings. I urge that legal town hall meetings be defended by arms and armor. Enough is enough. The Democrats have a right to meet and they have a right to defend themselves against felony violence. They have a right to oppose and defend against a gang of would-be felons!

Why do Republicans make such good l'il Nazis?

The answer lies in research that shows how GOP-types are naturally inclined to conspiracies. That's why they would prefer you believe that conspiracies don't exist. Read Carl Jung and some of the more recent research surveyed in John Dean's book "Conservatives Without Consciences". Conservatives are 'authoritarian' types and tend to sort themselves into strong leaders (fuhrers) and eager, non-questioning followers (good l'il Nazis).

Liberals and progressives are often independent, creative, original. An 'ENTP' type is one of several types identified by the Jung Personality Test, similar to the Myers/Brigg test. ENTP, specifically, is described thus: "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative."

This kind of personality does not make good, unquestioning follower-conspirators! This kind of person does NOT make a good LI'L NAZI. The GOP, by contrast, is over run by good li'l Nazis.


The 'tea bagger' movement is the 'enemy within', the anti-democratic, pro-fascist brownshirts who may have already destroyed the US ideal of a free and democratic republic --something that we have most certainly NOT seen since the rise of Ronald Reagan.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, however, came to Carter’s defense on Wednesday. “Jimmy Carter tells the truth about some, not all, but some of the rabid rage against President Obama,” Olbermann stated, “and is thus the recipient of the automatic blowback from those whose livelihoods depend on enabling the ragers to tell themselves it is not racism that they feel.”

In introducing the segment, Olbermann claimed that he could offer “at least 37″ cases that he believes “prove President Carter to be correct.” He also noted that Rush Limbaugh had attacked Carter’s statements by saying “Jimmy Carter is the nation‘s hemorrhoid” — and retorted, “”Well, I got to defer to him here, the nation‘s asshole would know about the nation‘s hemorrhoid.”

Some of Olbermann’s examples seem fairly indisputable, like a poster used at tea party demonstrations that depicts Obama as an Africa witch doctor, or Limbaugh’s claim that Obama has made it okay for black kids to beat up a white kid on a school bus.

--Olbermann: 37 racist incidents prove Carter is right
Already losers, a now desperate GOP has made a Faustian bargain with bigots. It is significant that the so-called GOP 'leadership' has yet to issue a tepid reproach, let alone a strongly worded condemnation of a movement that is 1) un-American 2) bigoted 3) made of liars to a person!

Until the GOP leadership steps forward and condemns the 'tea bagger movement', I remain confirmed that the 'tea bagger' movement is encouraged by the highest ranking members of the GOP embittered by the legion of failures chalked up by their party since the inauguration of Ronald Reagan.

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

It's the Hypocrisy, the Financial Collapse, the War Crimes

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Nixon was selling us out to China to whom we are now but a vassal state?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan's incompetent policies would plunge the nation into the greatest depression since Hoover's 'Great Depression' of '29.

Where were the 'tea baggers' when it has since become clear that the US has not really ever recovered from the Reagan 'recession' in which were lost several major US industries to Japan and, most recently, China!

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan sold us out to both Iran and the Contras?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Sr lied about raising taxes?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan called 'crazy' those made jobless by his idiotic, right wing policies?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Jr was bankrupting the nation with wars of naked aggression, lying about 911, covering it up, and money-laundering booty to his 'base' via 'tax cuts' and whopping defense contracts?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Jr waged war on what he called a 'goddamned piece of paper' known to the rest of us as 'The Constitution'.

Where were the 'tea baggers'? The Carvellian quick response: 'they were bent over with their heads squarely up their asses!

The Tea Party Express has hit Washington and while there are many sincere people involved in the Tea Party protests and they have valid points to make about government spending, the entire movement is stained by the fact that its organized by conservatives who are the ones responsible for the mess in the first place and who haven't to this day, taken responsibility for their own mistakes and the economic mess they created by letting George W Bush get away with his disastrous policies.

--The hypocrisy of tea party conservatives
I grew up listening to windbag conservatives denounce 'big spending librul's' and DC bureaucrats. So --what do these windbags do? They support Ronald Reagan who DOUBLED the Federal Bureaucracy and TRIPLED the national deficit. But this idiot ilk will still talk about 'big spending libruls'. Give it a frickin' rest or get a new comedy writer!

Enough already!

My suggestion to the GOP: unless you can come up with more creative lies, more entertaining bullshit, just do us all a favor and just shut the fuck up!

The same policies, under a Democrat, might have been redeemed by the 'Keynesian' increase in jobs which even Nixon would have embraced. But during the Reagan regime, NONE of the moneys spent so profligately 'trickled down'. Following Reagan's tax cut, called a 'red herring' by his own Budget Director David Stockman, the nation plunged into a depression of two years, the deepest and longest since the Great Depression during the Hoover years.

Now --after another INCOMPETENT GOP President bankrupts the nation, plunges it into yet another financial crisis, a war of naked aggression, commits war crimes for which he is culpable and prosecutable, so-called 'tea baggers' are protesting GOVERNMENT WASTE.

Where were these scumbaggers four years ago?
It was the conservatives who, after 8 years of the greatest economic expansion in history during the Clinton years, came to power and intentionally undid everything Clinton did, reversing all of Clinton's policies. And anyone with half a brain knows that if you do the opposite of anything you will get the opposite results. And that's what the Republicans did. And that's what the country got. Now the conservatives are shaking their baby rattles and complaining.

It was a conservative Republican administration and a conservative Republican congress who blew a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus. They destroyed the balanced budget they inherited, and after Clinton had eliminated the deficit, they exploded the deficit to record levels with their war and tax policies.

It was a conservative Republican government that took the country from the greatest economic expansion in history, lowest unemployment in 40 years, a balanced budget and record surpluses to deficits, unemployment and the greatest economic crisis since the 1930's.

So during these Tea Party protests conservatives are showing why the word "hypocrite" should be part of the dictionary definition of conservative.

The hypocrisy of tea party conservatives
I know where these lying hypocrites were eight years ago. They were in Florida busily violating Federal Laws, attacking vote re-counters, stealing an election! They were trying mightily to effect Antonin Scalia's prescription for a GOP win: stop the recount while Bush was still ahead! Or as Robert Novak put it: 'the Democrats are trying to steal the election by counting votes!'

Eight years ago, this ilk was trying mightily to sandbag a continuation of Clinton's policies which --in fact --had reversed previous declines in jobs and GDP, another legacy of two failed GOP regimes: Reagan and Bush Sr.

Here are some facts I wish the GOP would choke on:
Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents8
Johnson   3.8%
Carter 3.1
Clinton 2.4
Kennedy 2.3
Nixon 2.3
Reagan 2.1
Bush 0.6

--
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey
The GOP prezzes are at the bottom because that's where their policies have taken the US vis a vis the rest of the world. Those official figures shatter the carefully cultivated GOP myth, in fact, an Orwellian re-write of history, a bald-face lie! Fortunately, enough patriotic liberals have survived the wave of murders and assassination to set the record straight after so many GOP-types have worked so mightily, so assiduously to set it crooked.
Reagan inherited many of those economic problems, but once he cut taxes, America's entrepreneurial spirit was unshackled. We experienced the greatest peacetime expansion in postwar history - the so-called 'Seven Fat Years' from 1983 to 1989. Then George Bush broke his 'Read my lips: no new taxes' pledge, and sent the economy back into recession."

There are several problems with this story. First, Carter actually began many of the policies that Reagan would later become known for; Carter gave the rich a capital gains tax cut, massively deregulated key industries like trucking and airlines, and even increased defense spending. This was also the period that corporate PACs began compelling Congress to pass pro-business legislation.

According to supply-side theory, these actions should have nudged the economy in the right direction, not plunged it into the worst recession in 40 years. Other problems involve timing: Reagan's first tax cuts went into effect in 1982, but this was also the summer that the Federal Reserve Board slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply. Most economists believe the Fed, not Reagan, was responsible for the following recovery. Finally, the recession of 1990 began four months before Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge. The recession began in July 1990; Bush signed his tax increases into law in November 1990.

And supply-siders are careful to note that Reagan's was the longest peacetime expansion since World War II. In truth, the Kennedy-Johnson expansion was longer: 106 months compared to Reagan's 92.1 Of course, there was a war in Vietnam, which gives supply-siders an excuse to dismiss it because wars are beneficial to the economy. But they are beneficial because governments engage in Keynesian borrowing and spending during them (which could be directed to social services as well as war). Unfortunately for supply-siders, it was really Keynesianism that produced the longest economic boom since World War II.

--Steve Kangas, Economic Performance, The Reagan Years
Such GOP success as was enjoyed by the 'White Rioters' in Florida is a failure, a tragedy in fact, for the nation as a whole. I no longer expect the GOP to see past the end of its crooked nose, to perceive the fact that what is good for the GOP's increasingly tiny elite gang of oligopolists is not good for those of us who have refused to sell out to the special interests.

I am frankly not interested in defending Obama. If Obama did little more than just show up and punch a clock, he beats any GOP regime since WWII.

Anything but Joe, the idiot beats another disastrous GOP regime of lies, incompetence, cronyism, and rampant felony crimes at the highest levels of government. An unemployed paper hanger could have done a better job than Bush Jr ...a dumb ass if there ever was one!

DOWN WITH THE GOP!

There is a growing body of scientific research to the effect that 'Republicanism' is a mental illness! Earlier, Stanford Univ psychologists published the results of their studies concluding that Republicans have more nightmares and night terrors than do normal folk!

Earlier, Dr. Gustav Gilbert ascribed to Nazi 'war criminals' at Nuremberg a 'lack of empathy' and implied that it was the source of evil itself. Hanah Arendt, a founder of the distinguished New School for Sociological Studies in New York wrote of the 'banality of evil'. Anyone who has acquired and read the 'minutes' of the Nazi meeting at Wannsee conducted by Reinhard Heydrich will discover such 'banality', i.e, Nazi bureaucrats discussing disspasionately the the mass murder of an entire race over a gourmet lunch amid witty conversation and 'banal' quips.

Certainly --anyone who can look at Reagan's abysmal record after some four years in office and blame CARTER for it is either 1) nuts, or 2) stupid, or 3) both!

Hey, GOP! Live with this: Carter beats any GOP President since WWII.

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Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Impotent Empire

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Two wars against Iraq have not brought democracy, freedom or security to the people. Yet --both wars may have accomplished what their most vociferous advocates had hoped, that is, the enrichment of the US 'ruling elite' of just one percent of the total population, the US oligarchy. The peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer still under an imperial yoke! Terrorism --a transparent 'cover' --was not unaffected! In fact, terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes, as if by design. [See also: Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization]
It was part of a historic pattern in US foreign policy to tell the American people that war was necessary to defend the United States against a threat, or to bring liberty and democracy to other countries, while the real motives for war - the profits of corporations, the control of vital raw materials, the expansion of the US empire - were concealed.

--Howard Zinn, The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency
According to Zinn, The fall of the American empire may be more precipitous than that of Rome which, in retrospect seems to have taken place in slow motion. A date of 478, the date the last 'emperor' was driven from the throne, is often said to have been the official fall. But it was a long process and it is conceivable that it was little noticed at the time. It was not an electronic age.

At home, the US PATRIOT Act granted sweeping state powers to intercept communications and conduct searches without warrants! The right wing monopoly media never bothers to ask: how does one wage war for freedom abroad while subverting it at home? How does a dictatorship bring 'freedom' to conquered peoples?

During the Bush regime, Dick Cheney lobbied the Senate to defeat a bill that would have banned torture. He succeeded! In 2006, Congress passed and sent to Bush a bill that allows the CIA to continue torturing people 'suspected' of being terrorist. The practice is conducted in an American gulag of secret CIA prisons abroad.

Citizens living within the US were no better off. The bill --unconstitutionally --ended the right of habeas corpus for anyone, including US citizens, whom the President or the secretary of defense may deem to be `unlawful enemy combatants'.

In 2006 Congress passed a military budget of $500 billion and arms and oil firms got huge profits, while education and medical care were cut. Chief Executive Officers got 400 times the wage of the average worker, while the minimum wage stayed where it was ten years ago, at $5.15 an hour.

As this blog has pointed out: terrorism is always worse Under GOP regimes. Zinn characterizes American foreign policy in a phrase: "an old way of thinking!". Zinn is right to term it a 'destructive script' repeated at Wounded Knee, the invasion of Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Central American nations such as El Salvador and Nicaragua. According to the US State Department, the US intervened militarily 103 times in foreign countries between 1798 and 1895. Zinn also connects "internal" imperialism with the "external" variety in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe's "sole superpower" is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an "empire lite" has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster. The Iraq government's recent offensive in Basra is but the latest example with -- we can be sure -- more to come. ... It's called A People's History of American Empire. It's a gem and it's being published today.

--Tomgram: Howard Zinn, The End of Empire?
In the twilight of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Valens could not raise an army. The battle of Adrianople was fought between barbarians for and against Rome! The US, most noticeably under Bush Jr, recruited among those who are consistently 'left behind' by GOP regimes. These people are found throughout a GOP waste-land economy.

The real 'dirty work' is outsourced to mercenaries --just like Rome! There is a 'living' in 'killing' as Blackwater will testify, hopefully, at the war crimes trial of US war criminals.

Many writers blame the rise of Christianity for the fall of Rome. Many found it impossible to render unto both Caesar and God. Cultism was as rampant throughout the latter empire as wingnuts in America. 'Christians' were one of many strange cults and still are, stranger still in the US specifically. All are symptomatic of needs not met by empire.

Nothing has changed. It is a subtle argument that Rome did not fall but was supplanted from within and yet survives in the form of the Roman Catholic Church.

The many who saw in Bush the new Richard Coeur de Lion may still be suffering from the shock as well as the humiliation this would-be 'Richard' has brought upon America. So humiliating his downfall, the GOP did not even bother to steal the election for McCain. Better to let Obama preside over what may be this 'empire's' inevitable fall!

Gore Vidal dates the end of the American empire to a time during the Reagan administration when the US became a net debtor nation. But for a brief turnaround under Clinton, the tend lines begun with Reagan resumed and, as a result, we have become a vassal state of China which boasts the world's largest positive current account balance; the US is on bottom with the world's largest negative current account balance. [Source: the CIA's 'World Fact Book'] Even so, America is a different case. Unlike Rome, the US rise to empire was rapid, the result of allied victory in WWII. Unlike the slow fall of Rome, our fall will be as rapid as was our rise to power and global prominance. Gore Vidal believes our fall was begun the day the US became a net debtor nation and that, I believe, occurred in the RR administration. By that criterion, we are like hold-outs in Rome, living among the shadows of ruins.

The American empire began with two acts of needless savagery which equal or surpass even the genocide of the Native American, and that is, the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The lives of some 200,000 civilians were taken in a flash because imperial Washington wanted to make a point!

But what point? The surrender terms offered before the nukes were dropped are verbatim those signed later on the Battleship Missouri. For what noble principle were the lives of some 200,000 civilians sacrificed?
Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. "Japan was essentially defeated," he said, and "it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon." In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

--Mark Weber, Was Hiroshima Necessary?
It's never too late to do the right thing!

Gibbon, in his monumental 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' identified major developments leading to the fall of empire, most prominently a 'loss of civic virtue' and a series of disastrous barbarian incursions.

The 'Praetorian Guard' assumed power. And, if history is any guide, we should not be surprised if our own Military/Industrial complex, already the 'enforcement arm' of the nation's ruling elite of just one percent of the total population, should decide to cut out the middle man. Should this happen, the office of 'President' may remain but 'appointed' by the Pentagon as Roman Emperors were 'selected' by the Praetorian Guard.

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.