"TerrorPatriot"

"Why Wikileaks Is Important To Our Freedom" (4 Parts)

2010-12-26T11:09:00.004-06:00

"Those Who Close Their Eyes And Ears To These Revelations Are Nothing Less Than Ignorant Accomplices In The Loss Of Freedom For All Mankind"

2010-12-26T08:59:00.002-06:00

http://wikileaksmirrorlist.blogspot.com/

"Christmas Past"

2010-12-24T18:16:00.000-06:00

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, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

"It Could Be Anyone Of Us Who Dares To Speak Out"

2010-12-24T05:36:00.000-06:00

"The Right to Ignore the State"

2010-12-14T23:42:00.002-06:00

§1. As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the State,—to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one, and, whilst passive, he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said, except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment,—a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.

§2. "No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature: and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time,—and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is, at the best, borrowed.
Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or, as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty—that is, less government—as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters,—are instruments for inflicting pain; and all infliction of pain is, in the abstract, wrong. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognise it; for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law. Wherefore legislative authority can never be ethical—must always be conventional merely.
Hence there is a certain inconsistency in the attempt to determine the right position, structure, and conduct of a government by appeal to the first principles of rectitude. For, as just pointed out, the acts of an institution which is, in both nature and origin, imperfect cannot be made to square with the perfect law. All that we can do is to ascertain, firstly, in what attitude a legislature must stand to the community to avoid being by its mere existence an embodied wrong; secondly, in what manner it must be constituted so as to exhibit the least incongruity with the moral law; and, thirdly, to what sphere its actions must be limited to prevent it from multiplying those breaches of equity it is set up to prevent.
The first condition to be conformed to before a legislature can be established without violating the law of equal freedom is the acknowledgment of the right now under discussion—the right to ignore the State.

§3. Upholders of pure despotism may fitly believe State-control to be unlimited and unconditional. They who assert that men are made for governments and not governments for men may consistently hold that no one can remove himself beyond the pale of political organisation. But they who maintain that the people are the only legitimate source of power—that legislative authority is not original, but deputed—cannot deny the right to ignore the State without entangling themselves in an absurdity.
For, if legislative authority is deputed, it follows that those from whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is conferred: it follows further that as masters they confer the said authority voluntarily: and this implies that they may give or withhold it as they please. To call that deputed which is wrenched from men whether they will or not is nonsense. But what is here true of all collectively is equally true of each separately. As a government can rightly act for the people only when empowered by them, so also can it rightly act for the individual only when empowered by him. If A, B, and C debate whether they shall employ an agent to perform for them a certain service, and if, whilst A and B agree to do so, C dissents, C cannot equitably be made a party to the agreement in spite of himself. And this must be equally true of thirty as of three: and, if of thirty, why not of three hundred, or three thousand, or three millions?

§4. Of the political superstitions lately alluded to, none is so universally diffused as the notion that majorities are omnipotent. Under the impression that the preservation of order will ever require power to be wielded by some party, the moral sense of our time feels that such power cannot rightly be conferred on any but the largest moiety of society. It interprets literally the saying that "the voice of the people is the voice of God," and, transferring to the one the sacredness attached to the other, it concludes that from the will of the people—that is, of the majority—there can be no appeal. Yet is this belief entirely erroneous.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion were to enact that all children born during the next ten years should be drowned. Does any one think such an enactment would be warrantable? If not, there is evidently a limit to the power of a majority. Suppose, again, that of two races living together—Celts and Saxons, for example—the most numerous determined to make the others their slaves. Would the authority of the greatest number be in such case valid? If not, there is something to which its authority must be subordinate. Suppose, once more, that all men having incomes under £50 a year were to resolve upon reducing every income above that amount to their own standard, and appropriating the excess for public purposes. Could their resolution be justified? If not, it must be a third time confessed that there is a law to which the popular voice must defer. What, then, is that law, if not the law of pure equity—the law of equal freedom? These restraints, which all would put to the will of the majority, are exactly the restraints set up by that law. We deny the right of a majority to murder, to enslave, or to rob, simply because murder, enslaving, and robbery are violations of that law—violations too gross to be overlooked. But, if great violations of it are wrong, so also are smaller ones. If the will of the many cannot supersede the first principle of morality in these cases, neither can it in any. So that, however insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.

When we have made our constitution purely democratic, thinks to himself the earnest reformer, we shall have brought government into harmony with absolute justice. Such a faith, though perhaps needful for the age, is a very erroneous one. By no process can coercion be made equitable. The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also, only of a less intense kind. "You shall do as we will, and not as you will," is in either case the declaration; and, if the hundred make it to ninety-nine, instead of the ninety-nine to the hundred, it is only a fraction less immoral. Of two such parties, whichever fulfils this declaration necessarily breaks the law of equal freedom: the only difference being that by the one it is broken in the persons of ninety-nine, whilst by the other it is broken in the persons of a hundred. And the merit of the democratic form of government consists solely in this,—that it trespasses against the smallest number.
The very existence of majorities and minorities is indicative of an immoral state. The man whose character harmonises with the moral law, we found to be one who can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the happiness of his fellows. But the enactment of public arrangements by vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise constituted—implies that the desires of some cannot be satisfied without sacrificing the desires of others—implies that in the pursuit of their happiness the majority inflict a certain amount of unhappiness on the minority—implies, therefore, organic immorality. Thus, from another point of view, we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil; and further, that, unless the right to ignore the State is recognised, its acts must be essentially criminal.

§5. That a man is free to abandon the benefits and throw off the burdens of citizenship, may indeed be inferred from the admissions of existing authorities and of current opinion. Unprepared as they probably are for so extreme a doctrine as the one here maintained, the Radicals of our day yet unwittingly profess their belief in a maxim which obviously embodies this doctrine. Do we not continually hear them quote Blackstone's assertion that "no subject of England can be constrained to pay any aids or taxes even for the defence of the realm or the support of government, but such as are imposed by his own consent, or that of his representative in Parliament"? And what does this mean? It means, say they, that every man should have a vote. True: but it means much more. If there is any sense in words, it is a distinct enunciation of the very right now contended for. In affirming that a man may not be taxed unless he has directly or indirectly given his consent, it affirms that he may refuse to be so taxed; and to refuse to be taxed is to cut all connection with the State. Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a specific, but a general, one, and that the citizen is understood to have assented to every thing his representative may do, when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him; and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected some one holding opposite views—what then? The reply will probably be that by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he did not vote at all? Why then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted—whether he said "Yes," whether he said "No," or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine, this. Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain proffered advantage; and, whether he employs the only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically agrees, if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number of those who dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle that A's consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what B may happen to say!
It is for those who quote Blackstone to choose between this absurdity and the doctrine above set forth. Either his maxim implies the right to ignore the State, or it is sheer nonsense.

§6. There is a strange heterogeneity in our political faiths. Systems that have had their day, and are beginning here and there to let the daylight through, are patched with modern notions utterly unlike in quality and colour; and men gravely display these systems, wear them, and walk about in them, quite unconscious of their grotesqueness. This transition state of ours, partaking as it does equally of the past and the future, breeds hybrid theories exhibiting the oddest union of bygone despotism and coming freedom. Here are types of the old organisation curiously disguised by germs of the new—peculiarities showing adaptation to a preceding state modified by rudiments that prophesy of something to come—making altogether so chaotic a mixture of relationships that there is no saying to what class these births of the age should be referred.
As ideas must of necessity bear the stamp of the time, it is useless to lament the contentment with which these incongruous beliefs are held. Otherwise it would seem unfortunate that men do not pursue to the end the trains of reasoning which have led to these partial modifications. In the present case, for example, consistency would force them to admit that, on other points besides the one just noticed, they hold opinions and use arguments in which the right to ignore the State is involved.
For what is the meaning of Dissent? The time was when a man's faith and his mode of worship were as much determinable by law as his secular acts; and, according to provisions extant in our statute-book, are so still. Thanks to the growth of a Protestant spirit, however, we have ignored the State in this matter—wholly in theory, and partly in practice. But how have we done so? By assuming an attitude which, if consistently maintained, implies a right to ignore the State entirely. Observe the positions of the two parties. "This is your creed," says the legislator; "you must believe and openly profess what is here set down for you." "I shall not do anything of the kind," answers the Nonconformist; "I will go to prison rather." "Your religious ordinances," pursues the legislator, "shall be such as we have prescribed. You shall attend the churches we have endowed, and adopt the ceremonies used in them." "Nothing shall induce me to do so," is the reply; "I altogether deny your power to dictate to me in such matters, and mean to resist to the uttermost." "Lastly," adds the legislator, "we shall require you to pay such sums of money toward the support of these religious institutions as we may see fit to ask." "Not a farthing will you have from me," exclaims our sturdy Independent; "even did I believe in the doctrines of your church (which I do not), I should still rebel against your interference; and, if you take my property, it shall be by force and under protest."
What now does this proceeding amount to when regarded in the abstract? It amounts to an assertion by the individual of the right to exercise one of his faculties—the religious sentiment—without let or hindrance, and with no limit save that set up by the equal claims of others. And what is meant by ignoring the State? Simply an assertion of the right similarly to exercise all the faculties. The one is just an expansion of the other—rests on the same footing with the other—must stand or fall with the other. Men do indeed speak of civil and religious liberty as different things: but the distinction is quite arbitrary. They are parts of the same whole, and cannot philosophically be separated.
"Yes they can," interposes an objector; "assertion of the one is imperative as being a religious duty. The liberty to worship God in the way that seems to him right, is a liberty without which a man cannot fulfil what he believes to be divine commands, and therefore conscience requires him to maintain it." True enough; but how if the same can be asserted of all other liberty? How if maintenance of this also turns out to be a matter of conscience? Have we not seen that human happiness is the divine will—that only by exercising our faculties is this happiness obtainable—and that it is impossible to exercise them without freedom? And, if this freedom for the exercise of faculties is a condition without which the divine will cannot be fulfilled, the preservation of it is, by our objector's own showing, a duty. Or, in other words, it appears not only that the maintenance of liberty of action may be a point of conscience, but that it ought to be one. And thus we are clearly shown that the claims to ignore the State in religious and in secular matters are in essence identical.
The other reason commonly assigned for nonconformity admits of similar treatment. Besides resisting State dictation in the abstract, the Dissenter resists it from disapprobation of the doctrines taught. No legislative injunction will make him adopt what he considers an erroneous belief; and, bearing in mind his duty toward his fellow-men, he refuses to help through the medium of his purse in disseminating this erroneous belief. The position is perfectly intelligible. But it is one which either commits its adherents to civil nonconformity also, or leaves them in a dilemma. For why do they refuse to be instrumental in spreading error? Because error is adverse to human happiness. And on what ground is any piece of secular legislation disapproved? For the same reason—because thought adverse to human happiness. How then can it be shown that the State ought to be resisted in the one case and not in the other? Will any one deliberately assert that, if a government demands money from us to aid in teaching what we think ill produce evil, we ought to refuse it, but that, if the money is for the purpose of doing what we think will produce evil, we ought not to refuse it? Yet such is the hopeful proposition which those have to maintain who recognise the right to ignore the State in religious matters, but deny it in civil matters.

§7. The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the incongruity between a perfect law and an imperfect State. The practicability of the principle here laid down varies directly as social morality. In a thoroughly vicious community its admission would be productive of anarchy.[1] In a completely virtuous one its admission will be both innocuous and inevitable. Progress toward a condition of social health—a condition, that is, in which the remedial measures of legislation will no longer be needed—is progress toward a condition in which those remedial measures will be cast aside, and the authority prescribing them disregarded. The two changes are of necessity co-ordinate. That moral sense whose supremacy will make society harmonious and government unnecessary is the same moral sense which will then make each man assert his freedom even to the extent of ignoring the State—is the same moral sense which, by deterring the majority from coercing the minority, will eventually render government impossible. And, as what are merely different manifestations of the same sentiment must bear a constant ratio to each other, the tendency to repudiate governments will increase only at the same rate that governments become needless.
Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through before it can begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will elapse before the right to ignore the State will be generally admitted, even in theory. It will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition. And even then there will be plenty of checks upon the premature exercise of it. A sharp experience will sufficiently instruct those who may too soon abandon legal protection. Whilst, in the majority of men, there is such a love of tried arrangements, and so great a dread of experiments, that they will probably not act upon this right until long after it is safe to do so.

"Our Freedom Threatened"

2010-12-13T00:47:00.004-06:00

Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States
By Naomi Wolf

Huffington Post, December 11, 2010

This week, Senators Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein engaged in acts of serious aggression against their own constituents, and the American people in general. They both invoked the 1917 Espionage Act and urged its use in going after Julian Assange. For good measure, Lieberman extended his invocation of the Espionage Act to include a call to use it to investigate the New York Times, which published WikiLeaks' diplomatic cables. Reports yesterday suggest that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder may seek to invoke the Espionage Act against Assange.

These two Senators, and the rest of the Congressional and White House leadership who are coming forward in support of this appalling development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own history -- an ignorance that is stoked and manipulated by those who wish to strip rights and freedoms from the American people. They are manipulatively counting on Americans to have no knowledge or memory of the dark history of the Espionage Act -- a history that should alert us all at once to the fact that this Act has only ever been used -- was designed deliberately to be used -- specifically and viciously to silence people like you and me.

The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.

Presidential candidate Eugene Debs received a ten-year prison sentence in 1918 under the Espionage Act for daring to read the First Amendment in public. The roundup of ordinary citizens -- charged with the Espionage Act -- who were jailed for daring to criticize the government was so effective in deterring others from speaking up that the Act silenced dissent in this country for a decade. In the wake of this traumatic history, it was left untouched -- until those who wish the same outcome began to try to reanimate it again starting five years ago, and once again, now. Seeing the Espionage Act rise up again is, for anyone who knows a thing about it, like seeing the end of a horror movie in which the zombie that has enslaved the village just won't die.

I predicted in 2006 that the forces that wish to strip American citizens of their freedoms, so as to benefit from a profitable and endless state of war -- forces that are still powerful in the Obama years, and even more powerful now that the Supreme Court decision striking down limits on corporate contributions to our leaders has taken effect -- would pressure Congress and the White House to try to breathe new life yet again into the terrifying Espionage Act in order to silence dissent. In 2005, Bush tried this when the New York Times ran its exposé of Bush's illegal surveillance of banking records -- the SWIFT program. This report was based, as is the WikiLeaks publication, on classified information. Then, as now, White House officials tried to invoke the Espionage Act against the New York Times. Talking heads on the right used language such as 'espioinage' and 'treason' to describe the Times' release of the story, and urged that Bill Keller be tried for treason and, if found guilty, executed. It didn't stick the first time; but, as I warned, since this tactic is such a standard part of the tool-kit for closing an open society -- 'Step Ten' of the 'Ten Steps' to a closed society: 'Rename Dissent 'Espionage' and Criticism of Government, 'Treason' -- I knew, based on my study of closing societies, that this tactic would resurface.

Let me explain clearly why activating -- rather than abolishing -- the Espionage Act is an act of profound aggression against the American people. We are all Julian Assange. Serious reporters discuss classified information every day -- go to any Washington or New York dinner party where real journalists are present, and you will hear discussion of leaked or classified information. That is journalists' job in a free society. The White House, too, is continually classifying and declassifying information.

As I noted in The End of America, if you prosecute journalists -- and Assange, let us remember, is the New York Times in the parallel case of the Pentagon Papers, not Daniel Ellsberg; he is the publisher, not the one who revealed the classified information -- then any outlet, any citizen, who discusses or addresses 'classified' information can be arrested on 'national security' grounds. If Assange can be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, then so can the New York Times; and the producers of Parker Spitzer, who discussed the WikiLeaks material two nights ago; and the people who posted a mirror WikiLeaks site on my Facebook 'fan' page; and Fox News producers, who addressed the leak and summarized the content of the classified information; and every one of you who may have downloaded information about it; and so on. That is why prosecution via the Espionage Act is so dangerous -- not for Assange alone, but for every one of us, regardless of our political views.

This is far from a feverish projection: if you study the history of closing societies, as I have, you see that every closing society creates a kind of 'third rail' of material, with legislation that proliferates around it. The goal of the legislation is to call those who criticize the government 'spies', 'traitors', enemies of the state' and so on. Always the issue of national security is invoked as the reason for this proliferating legislation. The outcome? A hydra that breeds fear. Under similar laws in Germany in the early thirties, it became a form of 'espionage' and 'treason' to criticize the Nazi party, to listen to British radio programs, to joke about the fuhrer, or to read cartoons that mocked the government. Communist Russia in the 30's, East Germany in the 50's, and China today all use parallel legislation to call criticism of the government -- or whistleblowing -- 'espionage' and 'treason', and 'legally' imprison or even execute journalists, editors, and human rights activists accordingly.

I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste. The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten journalists, editors and news outlets with. I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman;s campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers of those Senators that the funds will only be released if they drop their traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act. I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you.

Those calling for Julian Assange's criminalization include:

1. Rep. Candice Miller
2. Jonah Goldberg, Journalist
3. Christian Whiton, Journalist
4. Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Journalist
5. Sarah Palin, Member of the Republican Party, former candidate
6. Mike Huckabee, Politician
8. Prof. Tom Flanagan
9. Rep. Peter King
10. Tony Shaffer
11. Rick Santorum
12. Rep. Dan Lugren
13. Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Journalist The Washington Times
14. Rep. Virginia Foxx
15. Sen. Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
16. Sen. Joe Liberman
17. Sen. Charles Schumer
18. Marc Thiessen, Columnist

Injustice in the age of Obama - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

2010-10-16T19:58:00.000-05:00

Injustice in the age of Obama - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Self Help in Hard Times

2010-10-06T10:25:00.001-05:00

Self Help in Hard Times: "... I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek- And finding only the same old stupid plan. Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak... . O, let America be America again- The land that never has been yet- And yet must be-the land where every man is free. The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, All, Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! . . ." Langston Hughes. 1938.

Facebook (13) | Glenn Nunley

2010-09-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

Facebook (13) Glenn Nunley:
"From birth until death is as a whisper. From our
first breath until the last is an incredibly short journey even for those who
live a full life span.

We come into this world with nothing and when we
leave this world, 'The only thing we get to keep is what we give
away."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2011/1/

2010-08-30T00:36:00.000-05:00

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2011/1/

"We are Family"

2010-08-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

2010-07-27T04:36:00.000-05:00

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

Click Link Below---A Must Read!!

2010-07-13T19:16:00.001-05:00

War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler, 1935: "War Is A Racket
By Major General Smedley Butler

General Smedley Butler, The most highly decorated marine general In history has presented us with a horrendous truth about The United States Government and a simple solution whereby the American people can forever put a stop to the senseless killing and war profiteering which is perpetuated in cycle after cycle and always to enrich the guilty few at the expense of the innocent many. TerPa.

Contents
Chapter 1: War Is A Racket
Chapter 2: Who Makes The Profits?
Chapter 3: Who Pays The Bills?
Chapter 4: How To Smash This Racket!
Chapter 5: To Hell With War!"

"One Man's Perspective On The Tea Party Movement"

2010-07-10T22:19:00.001-05:00

Max Blumenthal goes inside the Tea Party from Ram Bam on Vimeo.

" And You Think You Matter? You Don't"

2010-06-25T09:24:00.001-05:00

"Let Us Not Forget Them"

2010-06-05T21:31:00.000-05:00

No amount of criminal prosecution can compensate for the intolerable and painful suffering of our seabirds and the many animals becoming ensnared by oil each day, and in the months and years ahead. That their beauty and innocence are but a memory — as they lay dying, soaked in oil, immobilized and gasping for breath — should be with us all every time we fill our gas tanks and through all the air-conditioned miles we drive, until we become part of the solution. I agree. TP.

" Are We Destined To Kill Ourselves? "

2010-06-05T14:28:00.001-05:00

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Thomas Jefferson

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excluded) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.

"AN INTERESTING E-MAIL"

2010-06-01T14:11:00.001-05:00

To: Wall Street chief executives

From: Your man in Washington

Re: Embracing the status quo

Our earnings are robust, our compensation has returned to its naturally high levels and, as a result, we have very nearly regained our grip on the imaginations of the most ambitious students at the finest universities — and from that single fact many desirable outcomes follow.

Thus, we have almost fully recovered from what we have agreed to call The Great Misfortune. In the next few weeks, however, ill-informed senators will meet with ill-paid representatives to reconcile their ill-conceived financial reform bills. This process cannot and should not be stopped. The American people require at least the illusion of change. But it can be rendered harmless to our interests.

Our World---"Gone With The Wind"

2010-05-26T09:41:00.001-05:00

AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN

2010-05-21T09:21:00.002-05:00

"BEHOLD A TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT"

Wikileaks leaked video of Civilians killed in Baghdad - Full video

2010-05-14T14:02:00.004-05:00

THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT THAT WILL ENSURE OUR COUNTRY WILL REMAIN UNDER ATTACK. DOES ANYONE NOT UNDERSTAND THIS?

NOTE TO THE SHOOTERS: TerrorPatriot

As unlikely as it is, if I were to ever cross paths with any of you chicken shit shooters involved in this incident it would be my pleasure to put you out of your misery "with extreme prejudice" You are nothing less than serial killers who would piss your pants in a fair battle. Hopefully you caught a direct hit from an RPG before you left Araq. It is less than you deserve scumbags!

NOTE TO ALL HONORABLE MILITARY PERSONEL:
To all those who served with honor in our armed services in any American conflict, this is not an inditement of you. You command the complete respect of this writer.

President Obama, No One in Arizona is Laughing

2010-05-11T00:08:00.000-05:00

"Happy Mother"s Day---Not"

2010-05-09T14:35:00.001-05:00

"FOR THE MONEY AND THE POWER"

"Only those who are dead know the end of war" -Plato

"Dick Cheney's Mentor?" "Not A Happy Day For Some Mothers"

2010-05-09T13:38:00.008-05:00

"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy" -Henry Kissinger

2010-05-07T05:02:00.000-05:00

"Big Bother Comes Knocking In Pennsylvania"

2010-05-05T15:47:00.004-05:00

TerrorPatriot say's "Fuck Pennsylvania And The Horse They Rode In On" "Lock And Load...Rock And Roll" Everybody gotta die sometime Tom.

"Armageddon Can Come From Many Different Angles"

2010-05-05T08:19:00.002-05:00

Inside the U.S. biodefense program

Lynn Klotz ’65 and Edward Sylvester ’65 say that government labs make us more vulnerable

By W. Barksdale Maynard ’88

Published in the February 24, 2010, issue

Courtesy The University of Chicago Press

Lynn Klotz ’65, top, and Edward Sylvester ’65 take readers inside laboratories where mistakes occur.

Two former Lockhart Hall roommates have written a book to make you lie awake at night. Breeding Bio Insecurity: How U.S. Biodefense Is Exporting Fear, Globalizing Risk, and Making Us All Less Secure argues that $60 billion in taxpayer funding that has been spent combating bioweapons since Sept. 11 has failed to protect us. On the contrary, they say, we are paying scientists to tinker with deadly substances in our own backyards.

The bioterror threat is overhyped, believes biodefense expert Lynn Klotz ’65, and the U.S. response — in terms of funds invested and the number of labs conducting research — has been disproportionate. He foresees no major attack on U.S. soil — these are hard to pull off except by foreign states that would face massive retaliation.

Yet the tinkering that goes on in government labs, Klotz writes in Breeding Bio Insecurity, is making us less secure. He was inspired to begin writing this book when he saw that Bostonians were ignorant about a proposed high-security laboratory, now complete but not fully operational, in the heart of their city, at Boston University. He was active in protesting against its opening. Klotz and his co-author, science journalist Edward Sylvester ’65, paint chilling scenarios: Suppose a researcher unknowingly infected with the SARS virus takes the subway home at the end of the day, sneezing as she goes.

Published by the University of Chicago Press, Breeding Bio Insecurity warns of the hazards inherent in spreading bioterror research across hundreds of laboratories nationwide and cloaking each one in secrecy. In a survey of recent snafus, Klotz and Sylvester take readers inside sloppy facilities that, they say, employ inexperienced workers. Anthrax has spilled onto scientists’ desks. And in 2005, mice infected with bubonic plague disappeared from a lab in Newark, N.J., perhaps having scurried out into the surrounding neighborhood. The authors argue that scientists probe Pandora’s box: sequencing smallpox DNA, then posting the results on the Internet; bringing the 1918 flu virus back to life by exhuming a corpse in Alaska. Such data in the wrong hands could be used to produce a catastrophe, Klotz says. Scientists “don’t see that they might be creating the next Nagasaki.”

A math major at Princeton, Klotz earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. He taught biochemistry at Harvard and Princeton but left academia to launch a biotech startup in the 1980s. Eventually he became a consultant on disarmament and today is a senior science fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Sylvester, a philosophy major at Princeton, has written several books on cutting-edge medical research and The Gene Age (1983) with Klotz about the then-emerging biotechnology revolution.

Breeding Bio Insecurity calls on the United States to abandon its secretive approach, scale back its numerous laboratories, and partner with global allies for a more effective war on bioterror. A more likely threat than a major bioterror attack, says Klotz, is pandemic disease, which deserves additional research dollars.

"Yea!! Idiots... "Drill Baby Drill"

2010-05-03T05:10:00.001-05:00

On Gulf Coast, Nervous Wait for Oil Arrival

2010-04-30T13:05:00.000-05:00

"The Hard Truth Is...Our Worst Fears Are Now Unfolding."

2010-04-30T04:59:00.002-05:00

Deepwater Horizon Incident, Gulf of Mexico

This is not the time for finger pointing or casting stones. That time will surely come. Now is the time for all of us on the Gulf Coast to unite in a herculean effort. Our local officials must now lead by acting quickly and thinking outside the box on this one if we are to mitigate the impact of what we can not avoid.
    The hard truth and reality of this catastrophe; We have opened an artery in Mother Earth and she is bleeding all over us from an ocean depth of over a mile deep.
     The worst part is there is no way to stem the flow. The technology does not exist. We have unleashed Armageddon in the Gulf Of Mexico and our lives are forever changed in drastic ways that all will soon comprehend.     TP.


                                                                                                                                                                          Situation: Thursday 29 April

Today the Deepwater Horizon incident declared a Spill of National Significance (SONS). A SONS is defined as, "a spill that, due to its severity, size, location, actual or potential impact on the public health and welfare or the environment, or the necessary response effort, is so complex that it requires extraordinary coordination of federal, state, local, and responsible party resources to contain and clean up the discharge" and allows greater federal involvement. Estimates of the release rate increased to 5000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day based on surface observations and reports of a newly discovered leak in the damaged piping on the sea floor.

NOAA is assisting the Unified Command in evaluating a new technique to apply dispersants to oil at the source - 5000’ below the surface, if successful this would keep plumes and sheens from forming. Work continues on a piping system designed to take oil from a collection dome at the sea floor to tankers on the surface; this technique has never been tried at 5000’. Drilling of a relief or cut-off well is still planned, but will not be complete for several months.

Campaign for Liberty - Audit the Fed

2010-04-29T14:08:00.001-05:00

Campaign for Liberty - Audit the Fed: "'Audit the Federal Reserve'
Petition to my U.S. Senators

Whereas: The Federal Reserve refuses to give a public accounting of the TRILLIONS in recent taxpayer-backed loans; and

Whereas: Congress has the responsibility to force a public audit of the Federal Reserve, and the American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent; and

Whereas: Allowing the Fed to remain out of control and shrouded in secrecy clearly allows for abuse and the continued stealing of our tax dollars through inflation and unaccounted electronic bank 'loans'; and

Whereas: The Federal Reserve's abuses lead to constant economic crises like the current housing crisis, international banking crisis and the resulting chaos; and

Whereas: The Federal Reserve System forces fuel, food, housing, medical care and education costs upward, meaning that everyone who is NOT on the government dole is forced to make do with less as the value of money slowly decreases; and

Whereas: History shows us that riots, violence and full-scale police states can result when people finally realize fiat money isn't worth the paper it's printed on and REFUSE to accept it;

Therefore: I urge you to cosponsor and make every effort to seek roll call votes on the Audit the Fed Bill, S 604."

"The Earth Bleeding To Death"

2010-04-29T10:18:00.000-05:00

2010-04-29T10:03:00.001-05:00

2010-04-27T07:41:00.000-05:00

"ARIZONA HAS OPENED A BIG CAN OF ILLEGAL WORMS"

To Whom It May Concern,

I am deeply concerned about how the media is portraying and handling the new law in Arizona , regarding illegal immigration in our state.

It seems that for whatever reason , The media seems to broadcast the protesters and opponents views much closer , rather than the mainstream citizens view , and the Federal Laws that have been in place for years.

Why isn't this being treated fairly ? Why is Arizona ,and the supporters of this bill being compared to " Nazis" and "Racists" ? No civil human being is wanting , or calling for the extermination of illegals. We just want ALL people to come here legally , just as the millions before them did. How does the word " Nazi" or "Racist " come into play for simply pleading with the government to stop the illegal flooding?

This isn't a " Racial " issue . It's an " Illegal " issue . And I'm offended when I turn on my television , or open up my newspaper to see words like that . And whenever opponents use the " White People " words I cringe . Do people not understand that what they call " Whites " are people that are actually made up of of other nationalities too ? Are the opponents of this law themselves " racially profiling " ?

As a citizen of the USA , and living here in Arizona , I have had first hand experience of being victimized by an illegal aliens criminal activity. A couple years ago we had found out that my 15 year old daughters social security number was stolen and being used by an illegal immigrant for employment . Nothing ever came of it because the police could not find her . And it was a real pain when trying to get it straight with social security .Where were the cameras and media to broadcast and make a stand for my teenage daughter ? Where were HER rights then? I know there are thousands more like my daughter that have been victimized . Where are our rights ?

Many years ago I lived in Texas , and had the privilege to meet and work alongside an Iranian man named Zeke . We became very good friends , and we often spoke about our families with each other . I can't tell you how many times his eyes would tear up when he talked about his wife . You see , his wife was a citizen of Iran at the time , And Zeke was doing everything in his power to get her here to the USA so that they could start their new life here in the United States together . The problem was , he was doing everything the RIGHT way , and was waiting on the governments paperwork to be completed . So while he went about it the correct way , he suffered greatly each and every day.

With that being said , I wonder how my friend Zeke , or his wife would feel now. After all , He and his wife only wanted a better way of life too.

Is amnesty for all illegals really the answer ? Is it really even plausible ? And if so wouldn't America simply be creating a bigger monster if this was done ? How can the US give amnesty to all the illegal aliens that are currently here , but in the same breath , turn away every other nationality that wants to come too ,simply because they aren't on american soil ? To me , and probably millions of other americans , that would be the true definition of " Racist" . What do we tell our friends , and relatives that are currently citizens of other countries , But want so much to come live here as a citizen too ?

And if ever amnesty is mentioned , How many more illegal immigrants would come into the USA then ? Just to beat the deadline before the bill is passed . Do we dare say millions more? Who's to determine who was here , and who wasn't . And with all due respect , we can definately expect the " Race " card to played then on each and every single immigrant that was turned away because he was thought not to have been here in time.

When did the flooding of the United States by illegals become okay ? Why did Janet Napolitano and our Government waste tax payers money for border patrol , and construction of a border fence then if she, and the government refused to enforce it in the first place ?

911 was a changing point in the history of the United States . Homeland security told us each and every day that they were protecting us . They were spending millions to secure our safety . Please , Someone , Mr Obama , tell us . How is our country secure when we don't even know who's coming or going into our country ? And with all due respect what does a terrorists look like ?

So some believe that by the police having the power to question ones citizenship , is simply racial profiling . And that it infringes on their civil rights . To those people , and to Mr Obama , and to you in the media I ask , when was the last time you went through security at the airport , either locally , or nationally ? Take of your shoes , take off your belt , empty your pockets, place your purse in here , " Oh , and by the way could you please step over here sir I have a few questions for you ".

That's okay , But asking your citizenship isn't ? With all due respect If it wasn't for 911 and other illegal activities , the American citizens would never be going through this in the first place.

As a legal citizen of the United States I recently had to purchase passports for my family . I spent hundreds of hard earned dollars so that they could enter other countries , including Mexico .How ironic is it that the same government that seems to allow free flowing entrance into America , would charge my family to go out of it ? Sounds hypocritical .

Let me make a statement for all the people who say "Mexicans are only taking the jobs that nobody else wants " . First of all lets be correct here , that's simply NOT the truth . And to the people that state " Mexicans work harder " , all I'd like to say to you is this are you "racially profiling"?

But if one TRULY believes that ignorant statement , I ask you to take a look at Mexico as a whole and then look me in the eyes the next time you say that .

The simple truth of the matter is this . Both the American citizens AND the illegal aliens are getting the short end of the stick here . And the culprit is the businesses that hire the illegals . That's right , Our own companies and businesses are giving the american citizens the finger here. The companies and businesses want undocumented, cheap labor and rather than pay the typical american certain wages , along with insurance , they opt for an illegal so that the company can save thousands of dollars in cash and benefits. And we America , support them ? If amnesty ever does come into affect , these businesses and companies will be kicking themselves . They'll now have to pay better wages , and pay benefits to those illegals that they previously hired . Something they had avoided doing in the first place by hiring an american. Way to go. How many Americans are currently unemployed now ? How much money would the government save if they didn't have to keep extending unemployment benefits ? 11 million illegals in our country , and how many unemployed americans ?

" Well if you get rid of the illegals , then some businesses will pack up and leave ",,,,,,,,,Really ? News flash , read the paragraph above . THAT'S why they'll leave. Besides it happens all the time NOW. Companies pack up and move overseas all the time Next time you call your credit card company you'll see for yourself . Don't fool yourselves into thinking that companies will simply move in defense of the illegals rights movement .They do it to SAVE THEMSELVES MONEY.

I watch the news each and every day , and I see people like Felipe Calderon ,Salvador Reza,Raul Grijalva , and Mexico President President Felipe Calderon all demanding the rights of illegal aliens . With all due respect , what nationality are these people ? and where are the chinese figures , or the cubans , the iranians etc etc ? How is it wrong for anyone else to say " illegal mexicans " or " Illegal Hispanics" , when thats all you see but self proclaimed hispanics on tv or in the paper demanding special rights FOR THEIR PEOPLE ? Why aren't they on the docks in Florida helping out the cuban immigrants that are trying to get here from overseas?

The simple truth is , we know why they aren't . And that my friend looks ,smells and sounds selfish and racist to me.

I'm all for anyone in the world living here, regardless of race or religion . I understand wanting to have a better life , a better education . As long as it's done the right way like millions of others before you had to do . You don't just get to cut to the front of the line because it's not quick enough for you .

We simply cannot open the door just for our neighbors , and yet close it on our friends . For that itself would be racist , and unfair treatment for millions of others.

So unless we open up the United States to ANYONE and EVERYONE. no one should receive preferential treatment . NO ONE !!

U.S Citizen

PAY OFF THE NATIONAL DEBT-----LEGALIZE FREEDOM AGAIN.

2010-04-26T17:16:00.001-05:00

2010-04-25T15:13:00.001-05:00

             Just Add Hyperinflation: Its Armageddon

As I stand upon the mountain top, over looking the huddling masses of the peasants of humanity. My long beard and shanks rippling in the wind, my grizzled staff raised high, pointing at the dark mass of rolling darkness, darkness broken only rarely by the crackle of lightening. It is a darkness like no other, a mass of despair, a malice that is palatable and pungent in its hostility. My voice booms like the thunder of that storm, pummeling the gathered, clutching masses of frightened humanity: rich and poor, high and low, man and woman."Behold! Your Lord High Economist, the godling Keynes, through his priests the Interventionist Central Bankers have declared!" I pause for dramatic effect, fear and mysticism in the eyes of the masses. Mysticism at the mention of the shadowy man, nah godling John Maynard Keynes, fear at the coming of his Central Bankers. "Thou, sinners, thou thrifters, thou who have questioned his eternal Wisdom...now fear the fires of Inflation! Thou wilest be purged of your doubt and your consumer debt through the fires of Inflation! And since you voiced your doubt! Since you questioned the Will! It will be no simple inflation BUT...(more dramatic pause)...DEPRESSIONARY-HYPERINFLATION! You will eat grass and choke on weeds as you fondly remember steak dinners and red wine!"Gasps come from the huddle masses. Women cry out in shock and dismay. Babies wale, their cries mixing with the howling of the wind that brings the storm of Depressionary-Hyperinflation. The gnashing of teeth is heard over all. The End is neigh, thy punishment severe. I laugh the laughter of the mad, my eyes sparkling in the coming darkness."But how will this be worse then just Hyperinflation or a Great Depression?" comes a brave voice from the masses and suddenly the people's fear is abetted. Hope once more arises in their eyes that maybe, just maybe, this all is not as bad as they had but moments before feared. Even the storm seems to pause, rolling and pulsing but some how less menacing and stationary."Hmmm, this will not do, not do at all!" I think. "I will have to explain myself so that these fools will once more tremble." I pull up my robes around my knees and settle down upon the rock, perching over the masses, a wicked wisdom covering my face."To find this answer, let us examine, oh huddled masses, the difference between Hyperinflation and Depression and how both would normally effect your lives." They listen attentively."In a hyperinflationary situation, one usually created by a hyper expansionary government, a debt loaded economy or some catastrophe such as a major war, the money supply is rapidly expanded. The economy continues to roll along, jobs continue to exist as demand also continues to exist. At first, the workers are freed from their debts, as the amounts owned literally melt away in the face of larger and larger pay checks. Of course, as is usual, salaries rarely stay up to date with prices, which are much more agile and elastic. Soon the worker finds that while debt free, he can afford less and less to buy with his ever more worthless money, but at least, ground under the heel of hyperinflation, he is still employed and remains fed, even if on bread and processed meat rather then on croissants and steak."They bob their heads in understanding. Many of these peoples of the world have lived all their lives with inflations of one level or another and quite a few with hyperinflation. It is, after all, the order of the century, as the godling Keynes dictated to the interventionist fiat monetary systems. I go on."Then there is depression, something that most of you know little about. First spending falls, then output falls to match the new lower demand levels. Of course excess employees are laid off. These in turn spend little if anything and their employed brethren also spend much less, in fear of losing their jobs. Less spent means less produced and the cycle repeats. Debt become overwhelming and crushing, as the value of the dollar becomes greater, again, adding to the cycle. Of course, for those tens of millions unemployed, at least what few savings they have and what little money they get from their governments, will now buy them more then it did before.The pricing levels of the system are reset and will be kinder to future generations, but like most such things, it is painful and a nasty, if not necessary a long, process.""But how does this link back to Depressionary-Hyperinflation?" again that doubting Thomas. Enough of this, time to learn fear."Well," I begin, in an quite, almost gentle voice, "you see, the people fear this painful process of depression and they call upon their betters, their masters to do something, anything about it. Of course the Monetary Interventionists know only one thing to do: lower interest rates and print money. At first, this makes the pain less so and easier to bare. The problem is, especially for you millions and millions of unemployed, it is rather hard to propagate. Each easing requires more and more cash, sorta like a drug addiction. But once the cash hits the system it propagates inflation. This of course takes time to appear, so it is rather hard to guess when to much is to much and out of fear of not being enough, that gut feeling is ignored. Then comes the Hyperinflation!" I feel satisfied in my explanation, but still there is hope in their eyes!"So..." again that voice, though this time a bit more hesitantly."So!" I begin, "for those 15 to 30% of you without jobs, on meager fixed government monies, on pensions and savings...hahahaa....it's over, in days and weeks, your money buys nothing as the fires of Depressionary-Hyperinflation burn it all away! You will beg, you will steal, you will burn in rage and hunger and as the living dead, you will fall upon those who still have jobs but are to poor themselves to help you and you will consume them to! Fire and flame, hunger and despair! Then you will, in your orgy of despair and destruction, turn to the saviors who will come to you, the demagogues who will enslave you! Then and only then, will you truly know suffering!" My voice rings in stark laughter. I am on my feet again, waving my staff...the dark clouds booming and rolling forth.Now they understand, now they know, there is no hope, no salvation, not from this one. Some throw themselves at my feet, begging for salvation, others throw themselves from the nearby cliffs...but there is no salvation, no...only the Fires of Depressionary-Hyperinflation.My laughter is swallowed by the rolls of thunder.

"Concerning Finance Reform"

2010-04-25T14:46:00.002-05:00

"Play The Damn Race Card"

"I urge the President to play the race card--the human race card. The Founding Fathers sought to protect the Republic from this tyranny of private interests. This was meant to be a place where all members of the human race have a fair opportunity to thrive."

2010-04-24T16:57:00.003-05:00

"OPEN YOUR MIND"

"Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. His latest book is called Between "Barack and a Hard Place."

"Stolen By An Assassin's Bullet"

2010-04-24T11:33:00.000-05:00

We, The People Can Fix Our Country.

2010-04-23T13:52:00.000-05:00

The federal government did not come into existence in order to right every wrong. The feds are obliged to recognize our natural rights. When the government behaves with no self-recognized limitations, when its only restraint is whatever it can get away with, when it actively attacks rather than forcefully protects our natural rights, then, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and as federal law still states, “it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.” Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

"THOSE WHO FORGET HISTORY ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT" Sarah Palin = "Neo-Nazism"

2010-04-23T06:21:00.003-05:00

"Sarah Palin has been an exercise in Pygmalionism gone wrong. The most famous female politician in the world today is a vain and sanctimonious woman of boundless ambition and no vision." She is a dangerous work in progress. This begs the question, "who are her sculptors and mentors?"

Given the right political circumstances coupled with the acute economic conditions that are being experienced in the country Sarah Palin has opportunistically amassed a sufficient following of the "herd mentality"to catapult her into power. All that would be needed is a cataclysmic event whether real or contrived to stampede her conformist inherited electorate to run this country off a cliff. She has and continues to gain a position of undefined prominence simply by parading around the country, wrapping herself in the flag and parroting the customary patriotic/religious party lines and pretending to represent freedom.

If the sain and educated free thinking people of this country fail to recognize this clear and present danger to our country, there is the real possibility that we will once again witness political history repeat itself in tyrannical proportions not yet imagined by the people of the present time. Glenn Nunley North Florida.

Obama Continues To Fight Against "The Coalition Of The Ignorant" The Republican Party And The Uninformed Who Support Them.

2010-04-18T02:09:00.001-05:00

"Let Us Not Forget Them"

2010-04-16T01:45:00.002-05:00

"Sewing A Bitter Crop"

2009-06-06T12:47:00.005-05:00

I have watched over the last couple of years as our government and it's agencies have been enlisted and utilized by the greedy bankers and wall street thugs. They have diligently worked hand in hand to craft the rules of the game in a way to reap a bountiful harvest off the backs of millions of honest working and middle class people and in the process have sewn the seeds of despair and anger throughout the lengths and depths of our country.

What has been over looked by these pilgrims is that while they gathered in their ill gotten gains they could not harvest our spirits. The American people are for the most part good and decent folks just like you and me given to fair play and live and let live attitudes, but they also possess a deep rooted spirit of independence and a strong dislike of being bamboozled by the very people who are sworn and obligated to run our institutions in a way that is fair with equal opportunities for all.

When the evidence is laid bare and there is no doubt that we have been railroaded by these groups then it will not be long until there will be hell to pay. So when the facilitators of all this mischief becomes more clear everyday and with each function of our lives that is disrupted only serves to bring the day of reckoning closer. You had better know that if you are not with us you are against us and that sooner or later you will be called to answer for the devious and greedy behavior that has resulted in so much unnecessary suffering and disruption of our lives.

The retribution that will be exacted could take many forms and the methods will vary but in the end the seeds that have been sewn will produce a bitter crop for all those malevolent planters and harvesters. Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

Who Are The Fools Fighting Healthcare Reform?

2009-05-31T09:11:00.003-05:00

You think health care is expensive now, wait until it's 'free.'

Guaranteeing affordable health care choices for all will require some tax revenues—$50 to 100 billion per year depending on the plan—plus modest contributions from companies and individuals. But it will save us $1 trillion in health care spending.We'll be able to slash administrative costs, emphasize preventative care, reduce emergency room visits and cut down on unnecessary procedures with electronic medical records.

What they are talking about is nothing but socialized medicine.

Conservatives opposed great reforms like Social Security and Medicare by screaming socialism. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now.Guaranteed affordable health insurance would not make doctors and other health care professionals work for the government. The progressive plan is about making sure you have good health insurance you can afford and the ability to go to the doctors you want.
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Water Boarding Our Constitution

2009-05-31T08:05:00.003-05:00

We watched Christopher Hitchens and Erich "Mancow" Muller spend a few seconds on a waterboard and emerge convinced that waterboarding is torture. While I welcome their conversions, their stunts really did not teach us anything new. Though the initial panic of having water come at them was suffering enough, they both quit before the real effects of waterboarding kicked in: they have no idea what would come if the torture did not stop when they cried "uncle.

Torture is the systematic use of trauma to provoke a change in consciousness: the only goal of torture is to drive a person to unbearable madness. The purpose of the torture -- interrogation, extortion -- immaterial. Mancow and Hitchens spent a short time on the waterboard and saw that rabbithole in the distance. They bailed before any of the real terror kicked in... But what if ending the torture at will was not an option? What if they would have undergone waterboarding as Bybee prescribed?

The Bush administration deliberately deceived the American people about its enhanced interrogation program. In doing so, they depended on the fact that Americans have a Rambo understanding about torture. In particular, they counted on people and policy makers to miss the fact that it is systematic trauma -- not necessarily acute pain -- that creates torture and drives people to break. We have television and movie images of electric shocks and red-hot pokers that lead us to miss the fact that damaging visible human flesh only makes up small class in the larger set of ways torturers use suffering to drive a person to madness. Torture works by attacking the emotional centers of the brain -- it breaks down the limbic system and triggers the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Trauma damages an essential part of the limbic system called the hippocampus; the head breaks down when the limbic system is compromised.

There is much noise from apologists that water never gets through the cloth to actually drown the prisoner. What they do not tell you is that this does not matter. When normal breathing gets interrupted, so does normal swallowing. During waterboarding, the prisoner's head is tilted back so that any liquid -- including saliva or nasal fluid -- will build up at the back of the throat. This creates a constant aspiration threat. It is the fight to control this liquid at the back of the throat that sometimes results in the prisoner swallowing his own tongue and suffocating to death -- hence the need for a trachiotomy kit in the interrogation room.As carbon dioxide builds in the blood, the body becomes locked in the fight to keep from aspirating at the same time that it fights to take in air. As the waterboarding continues, the prisoner is slowly dying. After forty seconds or so, he gets a few breaths. But he still has to fight to keep from aspirating the liquid at the back of his throat when he gets that short break -- and then they start over with a new cycle of water.This is not a "little dunk." It is a controlled execution that is systematically interrupted each time it starts to become lethal -- a grisly hypoxic/anoxic torture.

NOT IN MY NAME. NO TORTURE. PROSECUTE NOW.

2009-05-31T07:19:00.002-05:00

ILLEGAL ALIENS IN AMERICA

2009-05-22T11:33:00.006-05:00

There are now said to be 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally.
Border Patrol vets offer tips on curbing illegal immigration
One day in 1954, Border Patrol agent Walt Edwards picked up a newspaper in Big Spring, Texas, and saw some startling news. The government was launching an all-out drive to oust illegal aliens from the United States.
The orders came straight from the top, where the new president, Dwight Eisenhower, had put a former West Point classmate, Gen. Joseph Swing, in charge of immigration enforcement.
General Swing's fast-moving campaign soon secured America's borders - an accomplishment no other president has since equaled. Illegal migration had dropped 95 percent by the late 1950s.
Several retired Border Patrol agents who took part in the 1950s effort, including Mr. Edwards, say much of what Swing did could be repeated today.
"Some say we cannot send 12 million illegals now in the United States back where they came from. Of course we can!" Edwards says.
Donald Coppock, who headed the Patrol from 1960 to 1973, says that if Swing and Ike were still running immigration enforcement, "they'd be on top of this in a minute."
William Chambers, another '50s veteran, agrees. "They could do a pretty good job" sealing the border.
Edwards says: "When we start enforcing the law, these various businesses are, on their own, going to replace their [illegal] workforce with a legal workforce."
While Congress debates building a fence on the border, these veterans say other actions should have higher priority.
1. End the current practice of taking captured Mexican aliens to the border and releasing them. Instead, deport them deep into Mexico, where return to the US would be more costly.
2. Crack down hard on employers who hire illegals. Without jobs, the aliens won't come.
3. End "catch and release" for non-Mexican aliens. It is common for illegal migrants not from Mexico to be set free after their arrest if they promise to appear later before a judge. Few show up.
The Patrol veterans say enforcement could also be aided by a legalized guest- worker program that permits Mexicans to register in their country for temporary jobs in the US. Eisenhower's team ran such a program. It permitted up to 400,000 Mexicans a year to enter the US for various agriculture jobs that lasted for 12 to 52 weeks.

DEATH OF AMERICA. "The Good The Bad And The Ugly"

2009-05-19T11:52:00.005-05:00

Apocalypse has always held a special fascination for me. Even as a small child I can remember being simultaneously compelled and repulsed by the idea of annihilation; formerly bustling cities gone empty and silent, bands of survivors moving through scorched barren landscapes towards a perilous future; nature in the absence of man’s relentless industry reclaiming what is hers.
As we witness the downward spiral and visceral gurgling of the greatest country/state the world has yet produced I am reminded that all things must and will end.
While death is sometimes quick and almost painless it is more often slow and agonizingly painful. My fear is the latter for the United States. The rest of the world have in the last few years become increasingly hostile to this country as more and more people have begun to realize that our "American Dream" was only made possible by others "Enduring Nightmare." Other age old factors are the many political ideologies and religious intolerance's of all the world. America is now crippled and weakened and the lions and hyenas are circling and moving in for the kill.
Perhaps now although to late to save our country a sufficient number of enlightened people will be able to unite in a common cause to fight back against the beast that approaches and to begin to roll back the darkness. This is always the prelude to any rebirth. Will noble ideas such as "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" OR "WE ARE ALL ENDOWED BY OUR MAKER WITH CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS SUCH AS LIFE LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" ever be presented on the world stage again? Will these lofty beliefs ever produce a population sufficiently strong, honest, and resolute enough to fight and die for each others rights to these things? If we look to history for that answer it would be not likely if ever.The reason being is that these ideas have been as rare as fine jewels or gold in the lineage of mankind and once pondered or dreamed of they always would meet opposition from the powers that be at that time. So take a moment to reflect or whisper a silent prayer for that band of survivors because they are after all our children and grand children. GLENN NUNLEY. Sept. 20, 2008. Re-posted May 18, 2009.
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HOW TO CURTAIL THE FEDERAL BEAST

2009-05-18T11:53:00.002-05:00

1.) The Scope of the Problem.

The Constitution gives the Congress only 17 discrete powers. One of them is the power to regulate interstate commerce and another is the power to tax incomes. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, almost from the time the first Congress sat, it used its Commerce Clause power to tax goods, to control private behavior, and even to prohibit items in interstate commerce. Subsequent Congresses used that power to control the conditions for production and sale of goods that eventually made their way into interstate commerce. And modern Congresses have used that power to regulate any human behavior they wish, so long as the behavior, when combined with other similar behavior, might conceivably affect the movement of goods or persons in interstate commerce. Thus, today, the water you drink, the air you breathe, the size of the toilet bowl in your bathroom, the number of legs on your desk chair, the strength of the water pressure in your shower in your home, the amount of wheat you can grow in your yard, the amount of sugar manufacturers can put into ketchup, the words you can utter in public or private, are all regulated by the Congress, claiming power under the Commerce Clause. And the feds, as well, use their enormous horde of cash from our income taxes to bribe the states by paying them to regulate in areas that the Constitution prohibits Congress from regulating.

2.) How to address this?

We need an amendment to the Constitution that expressly limits Congress to exercising only the 17 specific powers that are delegated to it in the Constitution and defines and limits the regulation of interstate commerce to its original meaning of keeping commerce regular by preventing all governments, state and federal, from interfering with it. We also need to rescind the 16th Amendment and affirmatively prohibit any federal tax on persons, as individuals or as groups. These two measures will starve the federal government back down to the footprint established for it by the Constitution. The Constitution can only be amended by enactment of an amendment by three-quarters of the legislatures of the states. In order to get to the state legislatures, an amendment can only come from an affirmative vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress, or from a constitutional convention which Congress must call if asked to do so by two-thirds of the state legislatures.

3.) What should freedom lovers do?

Here are a few simple steps. First, agree on the wording of two amendments addressing commerce and income taxes. Next persuade the state legislatures of 34 states to enact a resolution by a simple majority vote of each house of the states’ legislatures instructing Congress to convene a constitutional convention for the express and sole purpose of considering these two amendments. I don’t know if 34 states will agree to this; but I firmly believe that as the number of agreeing states approaches 34, Congress will become terrified, and will begin to curtail its regulation of our behavior and lower our taxes. If the convention does come to pass and sends the two proposed amendments to the states, the goal is then to get 38 states to adopt the amendments. Note, the state legislative process of demanding a convention and the state legislative process of approving an amendment only requires a simple majority in each house of a state legislature, and neither is subject to a governor’s veto.

4.) What else can freedom lovers do?

They can elect state legislators who are intelligent and courageous enough to challenge and defy the federal government. Montana, Texas, and Oklahoma have many legislators who are prepared to direct their law enforcement to refrain from enforcing any federal laws; to authorize that products that originate and remain within their borders not be subject to any federal regulation; and even to begin the process of seceding from the Union. Even states with more liberal attitudes can be recruited into this effort by persuading them to save money and enhance freedom by prohibiting state and local law enforcement from prosecuting persons for possessing small amounts of controlled substances. The federal government simply cannot enforce all its criminal laws (there are over 4,000 of them) without the active assistance of state and local law enforcement. Secession, even under the biggest of Big Government theories, is perfectly lawful and can lawfully be accomplished by the consent of three-quarters of the remaining state legislatures.

5.) Congress is not a general legislature.

The federal government did not come into existence in order to right every wrong. The feds are obliged to recognize our natural rights. When the government behaves with no self-recognized limitations, when its only restraint is whatever it can get away with, when it actively attacks rather than forcefully protects our natural rights, then, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and as federal law still states, “it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.”

CLICK ON COMMENTS BELOW TO EXPRESS YOUR OPINION. THANKS; GLENN.

A QUICK FIRST 100 DAYS REVIEW

2009-05-18T02:48:00.001-05:00

BARAK OBAMA'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

2009-05-14T14:20:00.006-05:00

I find this article indicative of our condition in a reverse course of political events and our National direction as is always determined by whatever power cabal is at the controls in Washington. It serves to reinforce my convictions toward the complete necessity of "Secession,by a coalition of a majority, or at least , a determined minorty of the fifty states." as the means to correct the emperial nature of the Federal Government and it's over-reaching influence in all our lives.
The Central Government cannot by it's very nature effect fair and equitable laws or guidance to such a large and diversified population as now exist in our country.
The only corrective political device that is available to the states and thus to the people is an "Ultimatum Of Secession" from this most corrupt and "Nation Shattering" power yoke, "The United States Federal Government" A Government; "OF THE ELITE, BY THE ELITE, FOR THE ELITE. Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one Messiah to dissolve the historic bonds that have connected his subjects with the fundamental beliefs of a bunch of dead white guys, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Marx entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that I should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, women, transgendered and questioning individuals deserve equal division of goods, that they are endowed by Me with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the right to abort life, servitude to the state, and the pursuit of taxpayer-supported benefits.

That to secure these rights, government is instituted in Me, deriving my just powers from the consent of a Democrat Congress, ACORN, and Universal Voluntary Public Service. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of Me to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Big Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing (with the help of the groups previously named) My powers in such form, as to Me shall seem most likely to effect My subjects' safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that My government short established should be changed for causes I deem appropriate; and accordingly all my inexperience hath shown that personkind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the oppressive regime instituted by dead white men to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce my subjects under absolute Evil Capitalism, it is My right, it is My duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future Social Security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these downtrodden victims of Evil Capitalists; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. This history of the present Representative Republic is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute freedom for these victims. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a slavering mainstream media.

This Representative Republic was founded on the principles of limited government, and does not allow Me to make all decisions without impunity.

This Representative Republic allows for too many States' rights.

This Representative Republic allows Me to serve only two terms in the highest office in the land.

This Representative Republic allows for too much personal freedom, assuming that individuals know best how to spend the money that they earn and how best to live their lives.

This Representative Republic allows for the free market, not all-knowing bureaucrats, to right any wrongs in the economy.

This Representative Republic expects judges to uphold, not enact, law.

This Representative Republic allows private citizens to own firearms, thus allowing them to protect themselves and their family from all intrusions (including those from government).

This Representative Republic does not guarantee electoral outcomes for any one particular party - namely, My party.

This Representative Republic guarantees citizens equality before the law - not social justice as defined by activist judges and legislators.

In every stage of these oppressions, I have petitioned for redress in the least humble terms: My repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Representative Republic, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define oppressive Evil Capitalism, is unfit to be the government of a people yearning for Hope and Change.
Nor have I been wanting in attention to my Global Citizen brethren. I have warned them from time to time of their attempts by their elected leaders to follow in the footsteps of the United States. I have reminded them of the circumstances of America's many mistakes. I have appealed to their systems of justice and social programs, which I hope to emulate. I have also appealed to our enemies, as I have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow the usurpations of America, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. I must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces America's sovereignty, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, superiors in war, in peace superiors.

I, therefore, the Messiah of the United States of America, acting of my own volition, appealing to Myself for the rectitude of my intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of Myself, solemnly publish and declare:

That the United States ought to be dependent states; that they are absolved from the Tenth Amendment, and that all political connection between them and the Federal Government, is and ought to be of a dependent nature; and that as subservient and dependent states and citizens thereof, they have no power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, or do any other acts and things without express permission from Federal Government thus represented by Me. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Nanny State, I pledge to oversee your lives, your fortunes, and what is left of your sacred honor.
Signed,
Barak Obama.
No other signatories needed.

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GET THESE CHAINS OFF OF ME... BIG BRO!

2009-05-12T14:23:00.006-05:00

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds... [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our mis-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." Thomas Jefferson.

Many Americans make light of the fact that we now work half of each year to meet our tax burdens. But it is no laughing matter. Our local, state and federal governments now tax us so heavily that it takes two adults in each household working full-time to pay for necessities and taxes. Despite this heavy taxation, our federal government acquires ever-increasing debt, mortgaging our independence and our future. "We the People" now pay huge interest payments every year to Communist China. Most households are so burdened with debts and taxes that we have no energy or time to hold our representatives responsible - or as Jefferson phrased it - "calling our mis-managers to account." The solution is surprisingly simple - require our federal government to confine itself to taxing and spending only on those subjects that We the People delegated to it in our written Constitution. That is the form of government we established - a constitutional republic limited by our Constitution. Since our federal government has proven that it cannot confine itself, we also need to repeal the 16th Amendment. We should NOT replace it with another form of taxation. Our federal government, if it were acting within its legal bounds, could operate quite nicely on all the tariffs, excise taxes, import and export taxes that it presently collects.In addition to eliminating our currently oppressive tax burdens, many of our social ills would disappear as well. Since our federal government has no authority to "redistribute the wealth," our current problems with illegal immigration would end. If the federal government did not illegally offer food, housing, education and health care, only those who wanted to work in freedom would come to or stay in America. We should want those yearning to be free, not those wanting to be slaves of a State.
Let's roll, Patriots!

Click on comments below to express your opinion. TP.

HYPING TERROR FOR PROFIT AND POWER

2009-05-05T04:12:00.005-05:00

For those who want to understand the truth about the state of political corruption in America. You will want to read this.

What if there really was no need for much - or even most - of the Cold War? What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats? What if, similarly, the War On Terror was largely a scam, and the administration was hyping it to seem larger-than-life? What if our "enemy" represented a real but relatively small threat posed by rogue and criminal groups well outside the mainstream of Islam? What if that hype was done largely to enhance the power, electability, and stature of George W. Bush and Tony Blair? And what if the world was to discover the most shocking dimensions of these twin deceits - that the same men promulgated them in the 1970s and today?

It happened.

The myth-shattering event took place in England the first three weeks of October, when the BBC aired a three-hour documentary written and produced by Adam Curtis, titled "The Power of Nightmares." If the emails and phone calls many of us in the US received from friends in the UK - and debate in the pages of publications like The Guardian are any indicator, this was a seismic event, one that may have even provoked a hasty meeting between Blair and Bush a few weeks later. According to this carefully researched and well-vetted BBC documentary, Richard Nixon, following in the steps of his mentor and former boss Dwight D. Eisenhower, believed it was possible to end the Cold War and eliminate fear from the national psyche. The nation need no longer be afraid of communism or the Soviet Union. Nixon worked out a truce with the Soviets, meeting their demands for safety as well as the US needs for security, and then announced to Americans that they need no longer be afraid. In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called "détente." On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said, "Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world."
But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War. And these two men - 1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney - did this by claiming that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work. "The Soviet Union has been busy," Defense Secretary Rumsfeld explained to America in 1976. "They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they ’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing." The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good. According to Curtis' BBC documentary, Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology.
The BBC's documentarians asked Dr. Anne Cahn of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during that time, her thoughts on Rumsfeld's, Cheney's, and Wolfowitz's 1976 story of the secret Soviet WMDs. Here's a clip from a transcript of that BBC documentary:

Dr ANNE CAHN, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-80: They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, 'we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'

"INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.
"CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

"INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist…
"CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it."

The moderator of the BBC documentary then notes: " What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn’t found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet régime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world." Nonetheless, as Melvin Goodman, head of the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs, 1976-87, noted in the BBC documentary, " Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war."

Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new Soviet WMDs were unproven - they said the lack of proof proved that undetectable weapons existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration.
But, trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet WMDs.

Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that they were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did - just as the CIA (and anybody who visited Soviet states - as I had - during that time could easily predict). The Soviet economic and political system wasn't working, and their military was disintegrating. As arms-control expert Cahn noted in the documentary of those 1970s claims by Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld: "I would say that all of it was fantasy. I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, 'This is a laser beam weapon,' when in fact it was nothing of the sort. ... And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong."

"INTERVIEWER: All of them? "CAHN: All of them. "INTERVIEWER: Nothing true?
"CAHN: I don’t believe anything in [Wolfowitz's 1977] Team B was really true."

But the neocons said it was true, and organized a group - The Committee on the Present Danger - to promote their worldview. The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom neocons would later become lobbyists. And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world.

The Cold War was good for business, and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Reagan. Similarly, according to this documentary, the War On Terror is the same sort of scam, run for many of the same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it - and then invading Iraq - we may well be bringing into reality terrors and forces that previously existed only on the margins and with very little power to harm us.

Curtis' documentary suggests that the War On Terror is just as much a fiction as were the super-WMDs this same group of neocons said the Soviets had in the 70s. He suggests we've done more to create terror than to fight it. That the risk was really quite minimal (at least until we invaded Iraq), and the terrorists are - like most terrorist groups - simply people on the fringes, rather easily dispatched by their own people. He even points out that Al Qaeda itself was a brand we invented, later adopted by bin Laden because we'd put so many millions into creating worldwide name recognition for it. Watching "The Terror of Nightmares" is like taking the Red Pill in the movie The Matrix. It's the story of idealism gone wrong, of ideologies promoted in the US by Leo Strauss and his followers (principally Wolfowitz, Feith, and Pearle), and in the Muslim world by bin Laden's mentor, Ayman Zawahiri. Both sought to create a utopian world through world domination; both believe that the ends justify the means; both are convinced that "the people" must be frightened into embracing religion and nationalism for the greater good of morality and a stable state. Each needs the other in order to hold power. Whatever your plans are for tonight or tomorrow, clip three hours out of them and take the Red Pill. Get a pair of headphones (the audio is faint), plug them into your computer, and visit an unofficial archive of the Curtis' BBC documentary at the Information Clearing House website. (The third hour of the program, in a more viewable format, is also available here.) For those who prefer to read things online, an unofficial but complete transcript is on this Belgian site. But be forewarned: You'll never see political reality - and certainly never hear the words of the Bush or Blair administrations - the same again. Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," The Edison Gene, and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."

Your comments are appreciated. Click on comments below. TP.

HOW SOME RICH PEOPLE STOLE IRAQ USING THE AMERICAN MILITARY.

2009-05-04T02:24:00.002-05:00

CITIZEN SOLDIERS HAVE ALWAYS KEPT US FREE.

2009-05-03T14:14:00.002-05:00

3 Doors Down - Citizen Soldier - watch more videos

THEY DID NOT ASK US TO WAIT

2009-05-03T13:54:00.002-05:00

400" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" id="ordie_player_0762fd3e87">

Wounded Minds Veterans and PTSD - watch more videos

GREAT AMERICANS

2009-04-30T02:45:00.005-05:00

Wounded And Waiting - watch more videos

YouTube - American torture

2009-04-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

YouTube - American torture

AMERICA LOSES AND IT WAS PREDICTED

2009-04-25T16:34:00.002-05:00

http://www.mrfeature.com/media.php?name=3143-amazing-predictions-from-1958-that-came-true.-will-blow-your-mind

George Walker Bush's Iraq and Mid-East Debacle and Associated War Crimes.

2009-04-22T17:21:00.004-05:00

War Crimes. "The edge... is hard to define because the ones who have crossed it have gone over it.

One Million Post-Invasion Excess Deaths As we approach the Fourth Anniversary of the illegal Anglo-American-Australian-Coalition invasion of Iraq, we must again ask the question what is the total number of post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) after 4 years of violent US-Coalition occupation?

In October 2006 an estimate of “655,000 post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq as of July 2006” came from a top medical epidemiology research team in America's (and the World's) top Public Health Department at a top US university (Johns Hopkins) and was published peer-reviewed in a top medical journal (The Lancet) and endorsed by 27 top Australian medical experts in the area.Consider the following estimate from the Johns Hopkins medical scientists of "annual death rate per 1,000 of population" of 13.3 (post-invasion Iraq) as compared to (a) 5.5 (for pre-invasion Iraq after 12 years of crippling Sanctions) and (b) 4.0 (for Iraq's resource-poor but peaceful neighbours Syria and Jordan; UN Population Division data: 6).The "post-invasion excess death rate/1000 of population" was 13.3 - 5.5 = 7.8 (Comparison A) or 13.3 - 4.0 = 9.3 (Comparison B).
Assuming an average population of 27 million, the "post-invasion excess deaths" total (over 4 years i.e. as of February 2007) (A) 7.8 x 2,700 x 4 = 842,000 and (B) 9.3 x 2,700 x 4 = 1,004,400 i.e. ONE MILLION.The number of Iraqi refugees now total 3.7 million - 2.0 million outside Iraq and 1.7 million inside Iraq – and UNHCR predicts that there will be up to 2.3 million internally displaced people within Iraq by the end of this year. (see: 7).

Excess deaths in Iraq during the Sanctions War totalled 1.7 million (from UN Population Division data: 6 ). The carnage in Iraq constitutes a US-driven Iraqi Genocide (Genocide as clearly defined by Article II subsections (a) -(d) of the Internationally-agreed UN Genocide Convention: 8)....

After 4 years of illegal, violent Occupation the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq total ONE MILLION (UN Population Division and medical literature data). Taken together with 1.7 million excess deaths in the 1990-2003 Sanctions War (UN Population Division) and 3.7 million Iraqi refugees (UNHCR), this constitutes an Iraqi Genocide (as defined by the UN Genocide Convention) and an Iraqi Holocaust in comparison with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million victims).

The Iraqi under-5 infant deaths (1990-2007) now total 1.8 million, 90% having been avoidable and due to Western war crimes. Total Iraqi excess deaths (1990-2007) total 2.7 million. The post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan now total 2.2 million (see MWC News: 5 ).

Three quarters of the people of Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan are Women and Children.The Bush War on Terror is in horrible reality a cowardly War on Women and Children, a War on Asian Women and Children and a War on Muslim Women and Children.

"This war was premeditated by criminal elements embedded at the highest levels of the United States Government which includes the then acting American President George Walker Bush. Instrumental in this historic crime was his associate, acting Vice president at the time, *Dick Cheney and a handful of other appointed suspects"
The prime motive in their efforts was for massive profits and consolidation of power and not to defend the country from terrorist attacks as they have led the ignorant and uninformed masses to believe.

They should be tried in a public forum in order to educate these same dissolutioned people and held to account for their crimes. For many of them the punishment should warrant the death penalty.

The death penalty for the most horrendous crimes in our society is one thing that I wholly agree on with the conservatives of this country. Glenn Nunley. North Florida. aka TP.

WATCH AN UGLY DUCKLING TRANSFORM INTO A BEAUTIFUL SWAN RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES.

2009-04-18T18:42:00.005-05:00

Click the link below: The people laughed at her and cynically shook their heads when she said her dream had always been to be a famous singing star. 10 seconds later the laughter stopped and the world stared in awe as a magnificent star was born.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

SECESSION IS OUR RIGHT AND OUR DUTY.

2009-04-17T14:21:00.010-05:00

FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY

Whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive to the collective will and well being of the people, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness (Thomas Jefferson)

As Americans, We the People are now extremely vulnerable.We need the basis of our well-being, the benefits of our work, returned to us.

Unless we take back the basis of our well-being, the work that we do and make sure that it once again serves us and not monopoly or cartels, we are slaves.

Here’s the key:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,
a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"This ultimatum must be backed up by the people's willingness to use force of arms if rejected
Another key is that we all have to act together. And soon.
Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

NO THANKS WASHINGTON I'D RATHER DO IT MYSELF.

2009-04-17T13:35:00.004-05:00

If you’re waiting for Washington to save your home, income, savings, investments or retirement, you’re going to be waiting until Hell freezes over.

After all; Washington CREATED this crisis — the greatest debt bubble in history — with artificially low interest rates and lax regulation of bankers and brokers.

Now, for the past year, Washington has used nearly $3 TRILLION of our tax dollars to bail out guilty corporations and irresponsible borrowers, and this crisis is only growing worse.

And now, to add insult to injury, failed companies like AIG are using OUR MONEY to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to the very executives who pushed them to the brink of disaster.

Worse: Despite the facts that …

The Bush and Obama administrations’ bail-outs and hand-outs are creating a massive $1.7 TRILLION deficit in 2009 …

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just reported that President Obama’s new budget will add a staggering $9.3 to the National Debt over the next seven years, and … The U.S. Federal Reserve just announced it will ALSO print up to $1 TRILLION out of thin air to buy bad debt from dying banks …

The mortgage, credit card and auto loan defaults that caused this crisis are still skyrocketing, sending the clear signal that this great recession is about to become The Second Great Depression in less than 100 years.

This is worse than outrageous. It’s outright theft: A crime against future generations who will be handed the bill for bailing out guilty corporations and irresponsible borrowers.

More than that: It’s the greatest threat to our families’ financial survival in 80 years.

Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

DANGEROUS PROPAGANDA KILLS!!

2009-04-17T12:27:00.002-05:00

HARD TIME DOING HARD TIME

2009-04-14T23:28:00.001-05:00

Prison Economy Spirals As Price Of Pack Of Cigarettes Surpasses Two Hand Jobs

DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN FIAT EMPIRE

2009-04-12T10:32:00.003-05:00

We enter a time of upheaval, when the foundations of the world political and economic order are deeply fractured, to the point that no one can imagine any restoration of the political-economic order of the recent past. The future promises economic chaos, political upheavals and mass impoverishment. Once again, the specter of socialism hovers over the ruins of the former giants of finance. As free market capital collapses, its ideological advocates jump ship, abandon their line and verse of the virtues of the market and sing a new chorus: the State as Savior of the System - a dubious proposition, whose only outcome will be to prolong the pillage of the public treasury and postpone the death agony of capitalism as we have known it. "it is way past time for American Revolution II."

Facts About Goldman Sachs: Volunteer Information - Exposing Goldman Sachs

2009-04-11T21:39:00.000-05:00

Facts About Goldman Sachs: Volunteer Information - Exposing Goldman Sachs

http://www.goldmansachs666.com/

2009-04-11T20:11:00.001-05:00

This Blogger Has Been Threatened By Goldman Sachs: For daring to tell the truth!! Click Here to see why. Outrageous!!! http://www.goldmansachs666.com/

"WE, THE DIVIDED AND CONQUERED PEOPLE"

2009-04-11T19:27:00.006-05:00

Death Of The American Dream.
We were never free and independent in 1776 as we have all been led to believe. Our lofty assertions espoused in our Preamble to our Declaration Of Independence must have provided amusing parlor chat for the stake holders of the American colonies.
The stakeholders being the Money Masters and International Banker's and descendants who had perfected their system of economic control hundreds of years before The United States was even born. Way back then they would have been having a good chuckle at how well the economic chains were already working as their agents in our midst maneuvered the rules and laws which prevented or abolished any legislation and all monetary policy which would not be favorable to their continued economic choke hold, that they maintain to this day.

What "WE THE PEOPLE" are witnessing once again, just as it happens in all business cycles, is another bountiful harvest from the most successful Plantation to ever evolve on the planet. That harvest includes much of the money in all our pockets, savings, investments, and home equity. Yes it never belonged to us in the first place. We are only allowed to live and work here as long as we work hard and cause no trouble on the row.
Our "Massa's must be so very proud of a "Golden Goose" such as America and the well disciplined slaves who maintain it. These slaves, these American workers quaintly call themselves Democrats and Republicans for the moment. The American worker is no more capable of understanding this now than was "Old Uncle Tom" back a hundred and fifty years ago. That is not to say that all Americans are this ignorant of their plight, far from it. One has only to use their imagination to see around them the few, who by obeying the massa's orders are allowed to receive a better cut of the pork occasionally.

If you accept what I have written as having any merit at all. I would just encourage all of you to be very careful of allowing the trouble makers, of which I admit to being, causing you to endure the whip or noose of corrective compliance which will swiftly visit all who dare to disturb the peace on this plantation. Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

TIME FOR AMERICAN ECONOMIC LIBERATION

2009-04-11T19:08:00.004-05:00

SOWING A BITTER CROP
I have watched over the last couple of years as our government and it's agencies have been enlisted and utilized by the greedy bankers and wall street thugs. They have diligently worked hand in hand to craft the rules of the game in a way to reap a bountiful harvest off the backs of millions of honest working and middle class people and in the process have sewn the seeds of despair and anger throughout the lengths and depths of our country. What has been over looked by these pilgrims is that while they gathered in their ill gotten gains they could not harvest our spirits. The American people are for the most part good and decent folks just like you and me given to fair play and live and let live attitudes, but they also possess a deep rooted spirit of independence and a strong dislike of being bamboozled by the very people who are sworn and obligated to run our institutions in a way that is fair with equal opportunities for all. When the evidence is laid bare and there is no doubt that we have been railroaded by these groups then it will not be long until there will be hell to pay. So when the facilitators of all this mischief becomes more clear everyday and with each function of our lives that is disrupted only serves to bring the day of reckoning closer. You had better know that if you are not with us you are against us and that sooner or later you will be called to answer for the devious and greedy behavior that has resulted in so much unnecessary suffering and disruption of our lives. The retribution that will be exacted could take many forms and the methods will vary but in the end the seeds that have been sewn will produce a bitter crop for all those malevolent planters and harvesters. Glenn Nunley. North Florida.

Facts About Goldman Sachs

2009-04-11T16:50:00.002-05:00

Facts About Goldman Sachs

Bonuses an 1.2B Outrage But Bailouts of AIG's Trading Partners 100 Times Bigger: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

2009-04-09T06:09:00.000-05:00

Distract the stupid tax payers with the "AIG BONUSES" while they slide $100 billion dollars out the "AIG BACKDOOR"

Bonuses an 1.2B Outrage But Bailouts of AIG's Trading Partners 100 Times Bigger: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

THE UNITED STATES OF ISRAEL---AMERICA ABOLISHED

2009-04-09T05:33:00.001-05:00

World Depression Regional Wars and the Decline of the US Empire.

“Information Clearing House” — All the idols of capitalism over the past three decades crashed. The assumptions and presumptions, paradigm and prognosis of indefinite progress under liberal free market capitalism have been tested and have failed.

We are living the end of an entire epoch: Experts everywhere witness the collapse of the US and world financial system, the absence of credit for trade and the lack of financing for investment. A world depression, in which upward of a quarter of the world’s labor force will be unemployed, is looming. The biggest decline in trade in recent world history – down 40% year to year – defines the future. The immanent bankruptcies of the biggest manufacturing companies in the capitalist world haunt Western political leaders. The ‘market’ as a mechanism for allocating resources and the government of the US as the ‘leader’ of the global economy have been discredited. (Financial Times, March 9, 2009) All the assumptions about ‘self-stabilizing markets’ are demonstrably false and outmoded. The rejection of public intervention in the market and the advocacy of supply-side economics have been discredited even in the eyes of their practitioners. Even official circles recognize that ‘inequality of income’ contributed to the onset of the economic crash and should be corrected. Planning, public ownership, nationalization are on the agenda while socialist alternatives have become almost respectable.
With the onset of the depression, all the shibboleths of the past decade are discarded: As export-oriented growth strategies fail, import substitution policies emerge. As the world economy ‘de-globalizes’ and capital is ‘repatriated’ to save near bankrupt head offices – national ownership is proposed. As trillions of dollars/Euros/yen in assets are destroyed and devalued, massive layoffs extend unemployment everywhere. Fear, anxiety and uncertainty stalk the offices of state, financial directorships, the office suites the factories, and the streets…

We enter a time of upheaval, when the foundations of the world political and economic order are deeply fractured, to the point that no one can imagine any restoration of the political-economic order of the recent past. The future promises economic chaos, political upheavals and mass impoverishment. Once again, the specter of socialism hovers over the ruins of the former giants of finance. As free market capital collapses, its ideological advocates jump ship, abandon their line and verse of the virtues of the market and sing a new chorus: the State as Savior of the System - a dubious proposition, whose only outcome will be to prolong the pillage of the public treasury and postpone the death agony of capitalism as we have known it.

Theory of Capital Crisis: The Demise of the Economic Expert
The failed economic policies of political and economic leaders are rooted in the operation of markets – capitalism. To avoid a critique of the capitalist system, writers are blaming the leaders and financial experts for their incompetence, ‘greed’ and individual defects.
Psychobabble has replaced reasoned analysis of structures, material forces and objective reality, which drive, motivate and provide incentives to investors, policy makers and bankers. When capitalist economies collapse, the gods drive the politicians and editorial columnists crazy, depriving them of any capacity to reason about objective processes and sending them into the wilderness of subjective speculation.
Instead of examining the opportunity structures created by enormous surplus capital and the real existing profit margins, which in drive capitalists into financial activity, we are told it was ‘the failure of leadership’. Instead of examining the power and influence of the capitalist class over the state, in particular the selection of economic policy-makers and regulators who would maximize their profits, we are told there was a ‘lack of understanding’ or ‘willful ignorance of what markets need’. Instead of looking at the real social classes and class relations – specifically the historically existing capitalist classes operating in real existing markets - the psycho-babblers posit an abstract ‘market’ populated by imaginary (‘rational’) capitalists. Instead of examining how rising profits, expanding markets, cheap credit, docile labor, and control over state policies and budgets, create ‘investor confidence’, and, in their absence, destroy ‘confidence’, the psychobabblers claim that the ‘loss of confidence’ is a cause for the economic debacle. The objective problem of loss of specific conditions, which produce profits, as leading to the crisis, is turned into a ‘perception’ of this loss.
Confidence, faith, hope, trust in capitalist economies derive from economic relations and structures which produce profits. These psychological states are derivative from successful outcomes: Economic transactions, investments and market shares that raise value, multiply present and future gains. When investments go sour, firms lose money, enterprises go bankrupt, and those prejudiced ‘lose confidence’ in the owners and brokers. When entire economic sectors severely prejudice the entire class of investors, depositors and borrowers, there is a loss of ‘systemic confidence.’
Psychobabble is the last resort of capitalist ideologues, academics, experts and financial page editorialists. Unwilling to face the breakdown of real existing capitalist markets, they write and resort to vague utopias such as ‘proper markets’ distorted by ‘certain mindsets’. In other words, to save their failed ideology based on capitalist markets, they invent a moral ideal the ‘proper capitalist mind and market’, divorced from real behavior, economic imperatives and contradictions embedded in class warfare.
The inadequate and shoddy economic arguments, which pervade the writing of capitalist ideologues parallels the bankruptcy of the social system in which they are embedded. The intellectual and moral failures of the capitalist class and their political followers are not personal defects; they reflect the economic failure of the capitalist market.
The crash of the US financial system is symptomatic of a deeper and more profound collapse of the capitalist system that has its roots in the dynamic development of capitalism in the previous three decades. In its broadest terms, the current world depression results from the classic formulation outlined by Karl Marx over 150 years ago: the contradiction between the development of the forces and relations of production.
Contrary to the theorists who argue that ‘finance’ and ‘post-industrial’ capitalism have ‘destroyed’ or de-industrialized the world economy and put in its place a kind of “casino” or speculative capital, in fact, we have witnessed the most spectacular long-term growth of industrial capital employing more industrial and salaried workers than ever in history. Driven by rising rates of profit, large scale and long-term investments have been the motor force for the penetration by industrial and related capital of the most remote underdeveloped regions of the world. New and old capitalist countries spawned enormous economic empires, breaking down political and cultural barriers to incorporating and exploiting billions of new and old workers in a relentless process. As competition from the newly industrialized countries intensified, and as the rising mass of profits exceeded the capacity to reinvest them most profitably in the older capitalist centers, masses of capital migrated to Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and to a lesser degree, into the Middle East, Southern Africa.
Huge surplus profits spilled over into services, including finance, real estate, insurance, large-scale real estate and urban lands.
The dynamic growth of capitalism’s technological innovations found expression in greater social and political power – dwarfing the organization of labor, limiting its bargaining power and multiplying its profits. With the growth of world markets, workers were seen merely as ‘costs of production’ not as final consumers. Wages stagnated; social benefits were limited, curtailed or shifted onto workers. Under conditions of dynamic capitalist growth, the state and state policy became their absolute instrument: restrictions, controls, regulation were weakened. What was dubbed “neo-liberalism” opened new areas for investment of surplus profits: public enterprises, land, resources and banks were privatized.
As competition intensified, as new industrial powers emerged in Asia, US capital increasingly invested in financial activity. Within the financial circuits it elaborated a whole series of financial instruments, which drew on the growing wealth and profits from the productive sectors.
US capital did not ‘de-industrialize’ – it relocated to China, Korea and other centers of growth, not because of “falling profits” but because of surplus profits and greater profits overseas.
Capital’s opening in China provided hundreds of millions of workers with jobs subject to the most brutal exploitation at subsistence wages, no social benefits, little or no organized social power. A new class of Asian capitalist collaborators, nurtured and facilitated by Asian state capitalism, increased the enormous volume of profits. Rates of investments reached dizzying proportions, given the vast inequalities between income/property owning class and wageworkers. Huge surpluses accrued but internal demand was sharply constrained. Exports, export growth and overseas consumers became the driving force of the Asian economies. US and European manufacturers invested in Asia to export back to their home markets – shifting the structure of internal capital toward commerce and finance. Diminished wages paid to the workers led to a vast expansion in credit. Financial activity grew in proportion to the entrance of commodities from the dynamic, newly industrialized countries. Industrial profits were re-invested in financial services. Profits and liquidity grew in proportion to the relative decline in real value generated by the shift from industrial to financial/commercial capital.
Super profits from world production, trade, finances and the recycling of overseas earnings back to the US through both state and private financial circuits created enormous liquidity. It was far beyond the historical capacity of the US and European economies to absorb such profits in productive sectors.
The dynamic and voracious exploitation of the huge surplus labor forces in China, India, and elsewhere and the absolute pillage and transfer of hundreds of billions from ex-communist Russia and ‘neo-liberalized’ Latin America filled the coffers of new and old financial institutions.
Over-exploitation of labor in Asia, and the over-accumulation of financial liquidity in the US led to the magnification of the paper economy and what liberal economist later called “global disequilibrium” between savers/industrial investors/ exporters (in Asia) and consumers/financiers/importers(in the US). Huge trade surpluses in the East were papered over by the purchase of US T-notes. The US economy was precariously backed by an increasingly inflated paper economy.
The expansion of the financial sector resulted from the high rates of return, taking advantage of the ‘liberalized’ economy imposed by the power of diversified investment capital in previous decades. The internationalization of capital, its dynamic growth and the enormous growth of trade outran the stagnant wages, declining social payments, the huge surplus labor force. Temporarily, capital sought to bolster its profits via inflated real estate based on expanded credit, highly leveraged debt and outright massive fraudulent ‘financial instruments’ (invisible assets without value). The collapse of the paper economy exposed the overdeveloped financial system and forced its demise. The loss of finance, credit and markets, reverberated to all the export-oriented industrial manufacturing powers. The lack of social consumption, the weakness of the internal market and the huge inequalities denied the industrial countries any compensatory markets to stabilize or limit their fall into recession and depression. The dynamic growth of the productive forces based on the over-exploitation of labor, led to the overdevelopment of the financial circuits, which set in motion the process of ‘feeding off’ industry and subordinating and undermining the accumulation process to highly speculative capital.
Cheap labor, the source of profits, investment, trade and export growth on a world scale, could no longer sustain both the pillage by finance capital and provide a market for the dynamic industrial sector. What was erroneously dubbed a financial crisis or even more narrowly a “mortgage” or housing crisis, was merely the “trigger” for the collapse of the overdeveloped financial sector. The financial sector, which grew out of the dynamic expansion of ‘productive’ capitalism, later ‘rebounded’ against it. The historic links and global ties between industry and financial capital led inevitably to a systemic capitalist crisis, embedded in the contradiction between impoverished labor and concentrated capital. The current world depression is a product of the ‘over-accumulation’ process of the capitalist system in which the crash of the financial system was the ‘detonator’ but not the structural determinant. This is demonstrated by the fact that industrial Japan and Germany experienced a bigger fall in exports, investments and growth than ‘financial’ US and England.
The capitalist system in crisis destroys capital in order to ‘purge itself’ of the least efficient, least competitive and most indebted enterprises and sectors, in order to re-concentrate capital and reconstruct the powers of accumulation – political conditions permitting. The re-composition of capital grows out of the pillage of state resources – so-called bailouts and other massive transfers from the public treasury (read ‘taxpayers’), which results from the savage reduction of social transfers (read ‘public services’) and the cheapening of labor through firings, massive unemployment, wage, pension and health reductions and the general reduction of living standards in order to increase the rate of profit.

The World Depression: Class Analysis
The aggregate economic indicators of the rise and fall of the world capitalist system are of limited value in understanding the causes, trajectory and impact of the world depression. At best, they describe the economic carnage; at worst, they obfuscate the leading (ruling) social classes, with their complex networks and transformations, which directed the expansion and economic collapse and the wage and salaried (working) classes, which produced the wealth to fuel the expansive phase and now pay the cost of the economic collapse.
It is a well-known truism that those who caused the crisis are also the greatest beneficiaries of government largesse. The crude and simple everyday observations that the ruling class ‘made’ the crisis and the working class ‘pays’ the cost, at a minimum, is a recognition of the utility of class analyses in deciphering the social reality behind the aggregate economic data. Following the recession of the early 1970s, the Western industrial capitalist class secured financing to launch a period of extensive and deep growth covering the entire globe. German, Japanese and Southeast Asian capitalists flourished, competed and collaborated with their US counterpart. Throughout this period the social power, organization and political influence of the working class witnessed a relative and absolute decline in their share of material income. Technological innovations, including the re-organization of work, compensated for wage increases by reducing the ‘mass of workers’ and in, particular, their capacity to pressure the prerogatives of management. The capitalist strategic position in production was strengthened: they were able to exercise near absolute control over the location and movements of capital.
The established capitalist powers – especially in England and the US — with large accumulations of capital and facing increasing competition from the fully recovered German and Japanese capitalists, sought to expand their rates of return by moving capital investments into finance and services. At first, this move was linked and directed towards promoting the sale of their manufactured products by providing credit and financing toward the purchases of automobiles or ‘white goods’. Less dynamic industrial capitalists relocated their assembly plants to low-wage regions and countries. The results were that industrial capitalists took on more the appearance of ‘financiers’ in the US even as they retained their industrial character in the operation of their overseas manufacturing subsidiaries and satellite suppliers. Both overseas manufacturing and local financial returns swelled the aggregate profits of the capitalist class. While capital accumulation expanded in the ‘home country’, domestic wages and social costs were under pressure as capitalists imposed the costs of competition on the backs of wage earners via the collaboration of the trade unions in the US and social democratic political parties in Europe. Wage constraints, tying wages to productivity in an asymmetrical way and labor-capital pacts increased profits. US workers were ‘compensated’ by the cheap consumer imports produced by the low-wage labor force in the newly industrializing countries and access to easy credit at home.
The Western pillage of the former-USSR, with the collaboration of gangster-oligarchs, led to the massive flow of looted capital into Western banks throughout the 1990s. The Chinese transition to capitalism in the 1980s, which accelerated in the 1990s, expanded the accumulation of industrial profits via the intensive exploitation of tens of millions of wageworkers employed at subsistence levels. While the trillion-dollar pillage of Russia and the entire former Soviet Union bloated the West European and US financial sector, the massive growth of billions of dollars in illegal transfers and money laundering toward US and UK banks added to the overdevelopment of the financial sector. The rise in oil prices and ‘rents’ among ‘rentier’ capitalists added a vast new source of financial profits and liquidity. Pillage, rents, and contraband capital provided a vast accumulation of financial wealth disconnected from industrial production. On the other hand, the rapid industrialization of China and other Asian countries provided a vast market for German and Japanese high-end manufacturers: they supplied the high quality machines and technology to the Chinese and Vietnamese factories.

US capitalists did not ‘de-industrialize’ – the country did.
By relocating production overseas and importing finished products and focusing on credit and financing, the US capitalist class and its members became diversified and multi-sectoral. They multiplied their profits and intensified the accumulation of capital.
On the other hand, workers were subject to multiple forms of exploitation: wages stagnated, creditors squeezed interest, and the conversion from high wage/high skill manufacturing jobs to lower-paid service jobs steadily reduced living standards.
The basic process leading up to the breakdown was clearly present: the dynamic growth of western capitalist wealth was based, in part, on the brutal pillage of the USSR and Latin America, which profoundly lowered living standards throughout the 1990s. The intensified and savage exploitation of hundreds of millions of low-paid Chinese, Mexican, Indonesian and Indochinese workers, and the forced exodus of former peasants as migrant laborers to manufacturing centers led to high rates of accumulation. The relative decline of wages in the US and Western Europe also added to the accumulation of capital. The German, Chinese, Japanese, Latin American and Eastern European emphasis on export-driven growth added to the mounting ‘imbalance’ or contradiction between concentrated capitalist wealth and ownership and the growing mass of low-paid workers. Inequalities on a world scale grew geometrically. The dynamic accumulation process exceeded the capacity of the highly polarized capitalist system to absorb capital in productive activity at existing high rates of profit. This led to the large scale and multiform growth of speculator capital inflating prices and investing in real estate, commodities, hedge funds, securities, debt-financing, mergers and acquisitions — all divorced from real value-producing activity. The industrial boom and the class constraints imposed on workers wages undermined domestic demand and intensified competition in world markets. Speculator-financial activity with massive liquidity offered a ‘short-term solution’: profits based on debt financing. Competition among lenders fueled the availability of cheap credit. Real estate speculation was extended into the working class, as wage and salaried workers, without personal savings or assets, took advantage of their access to easy loans to join the speculator-induced frenzy - based on an ideology of irreversible rising home values. The inevitable collapse reverberated throughout the system – detonated at the bottom of the speculative chain. From the latest entrants to the real estate sub-prime mortgage holders, the crisis moved up the ladder affecting the biggest banks and corporations, who engaged in leveraged buyouts and acquisitions. All ‘sectors’, which had ‘diversified’ from manufacturing to finance, trade and commodities speculation, were downgraded. The entire panoply of capitalists faced bankruptcy. German, Japanese and Chinese industrial exporters who exploited labor witnessed the collapse of their export markets.
The ‘bursting’ financial bubble was the product of the ‘over-accumulation’ of industrial capital and the pillage of wealth on a world scale. Over-accumulation is rooted in the most fundamental capitalist relation: the contradictions between private ownership and social production, the simultaneous concentration of capital and sharp decline of living standards.

Obama and the Capitalist Crisis: A Class Analysis
Indicators of the deepening depression in 2009 are found everywhere:
Bankruptcies rose by 14% in 2008 and are set to rise another 20% in 2009 (Financial Times, Feb. 25, 2009; p27).
The write-down of the Western big banks is running at 1 Trillion dollars and growing (according to the Institute for International Financing, the banking groups Washington lobby). (Financial Times , March 10, 2009 p.9).
And according to the Financial Times (ibid) the losses arising from banks having to mark their investments down to market prices stand at 3 Trillion dollars – equivalent to a year’s worth of British economic production. In the same report, the Asian Development Bank is quoted as having estimated that financial assets worldwide have fallen by more than $50 trillion – a figure of the same order as annual global output. For 2009, the US will run a budget deficit of 12.3% of gross domestic product…giant fiscal deficits…that will ultimately ruin public finances.
The world markets have been in a vertical fall:
The TOPIX has fallen from 1800 in mid-2007 to 700 in early 2009;
Standard and Poor from 1380 in early 2008 to below 700 in 2009;
FTSE 100 from 6600 to 3600 in early 2009;
Hang Seng from 32,000 in early 2008 to 13,000 at the start of 2009 (Financial Times, Feb 25, 2009; p27).
In the fourth quarter of 2008, GDP shrank at annualized rate of 20.8% in South Korea, 12.7% in Japan, 8.2% in Germany, 2.9% in the UK and 3.8% in the US (FT, Feb.25, 2009; p9).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has declined from 14,164 in October 2007 to 6500 in March 2009.
Year on year declines in industrial output were 21% in Japan, 19% in South Korea, 12% in Germany, 10% in the US, and 9% in the UK (Financial Times, Feb.25, 2009; p.9.)
Net private capital flows to less developed capitalist countries from the imperial countries were predicted to shrink by 82% and credit flows by $30 billion USD (Financial Times, Feb. 25, 2009; p9).
The US economy declined by 6.2% in the last three months of 2008 and fell further in the first quarter of 2009 as a result of a sharp decline in exports (23.6%) and consumer spending (4.3%) in the final quarter of 2008 (British Broadcasting Corporation, Feb. 27, 2009).
With over 600,000 workers losing their jobs monthly in the first three months of 2009, and many more on short hours and scheduled for axing throughout 2009, real and disguised unemployment may reach 25% by the end of the year. All of the signs point to a deep and prolonged depression:
Automobile sales of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford were down nearly 50% year to year (2007-2008). The first quarter of 2009 saw a further decline of 50%.
Foreign markets are drying up as the depression spreads overseas.
In the US domestic market, durable goods sales are declining by 22% (BBC, Feb. 27, 2009).
Residential investments fell by 23.6% and business investment was down 19.1%, led by a 27.8% drop in equipment and software.
The rising tide of depression is driven by private business led disinvestment. Rising business inventories, declining investment, bankruptcies, foreclosures, insolvent banks, massive accumulative losses, restricted access to credit, falling asset values and a 20% reduction in household wealth (over 3 trillion dollars) are cause and consequence of the depression. As a result of collapse of the industrial, mining, real estate and trade sectors, there are at least $2.2 trillion USD of “toxic” (defaulting) bank debt worldwide, far beyond the bailout funds allocated by the White House in October 2008 and February and March 2009.
The depression is diminishing the worldwide economic presence of imperial countries and undermining the foreign capital-financed export strategies of Latin American, Eastern European, Asian and African regions.
Among almost all conventional economists, pundits, investment advisors and various and sundry experts and economic historians, there is a common faith that “in the long-run”, the stock market will recover, the recession will end and the government will withdraw from the economy. Fixed on notions of past cyclical patterns, historical ‘trends’, these analysts lose sight of the present realities which have no precedent: the world nature of the economic depression, the unprecedented speed of the fall, and the levels of debt incurred by governments to sustain insolvent banks and industries and the unprecedented public deficits, which will drain resources for many generations to come.
The academic prophets of ‘long-term developments” arbitrarily select trend markers from the past, which were established on the basis of a political-economic context radically different from today. The idle chatter of ‘post crisis’ economists overlooks the open-ended and constantly shifting parameters therefore missing the true ‘trend markers’ of the current depression. As one analyst noted, “any starting conditions we select in the historical data cannot replicate the starting conditions at any other moment because the preceding events in the two cases are never identical” (Financial Times, Feb. 26, 2009; p24). The current US depression takes place in the context of a de-industrialized economy, an insolvent financial system, record fiscal deficits, record trade deficits, unprecedented public debt, multi-trillion dollar foreign debt and well over $800 billion dollars committed in military expenditures for several ongoing wars and occupations. All of these variables defy the contexts in which previous depressions occurred. Nothing in previous contexts leading up to a crisis of capitalism resembles the present situation. The present configuration of economic, political and social structures of capitalism include astronomical levels of state pillage of the public treasury in order to prop up insolvent banks and factories, involving unprecedented transfers of income from wage and salaried taxpayers to non-productive ‘rent earners’ and to failed industrial capitalists, dividend collectors and creditors. The rate and levels of appropriation and reduction of savings, pensions and health plans, all without any compensation, has led to the most rapid and widespread reduction of living standards and mass impoverishment in recent US history.
Never in the history of capitalism has a deep economic crisis occurred without any alternative socialist movement, party or state present to pose an alternative. Never have states and regimes been under such absolute control by the capitalist class — especially in the allocation of public resources. Never in the history of an economic depression has so much of government expenditures been so one-sidedly directed towards compensating a failed capitalist class with so little going to wage and salaried workers.
The Obama regime’s economic appointments and policies clearly reflect the total control by the capitalist class over state expenditures and economic planning.
Obama and the Capitalist Crisis: A Class Analysis
The programs put forth by the US and West Europeans and other capitalist regions do not even begin to recognize the structural bases of the depression.
First, Obama is allocating $1 trillion dollars to buy worthless bank assets and over 40% of his $787 billion stimulus package to insolvent banks and tax breaks, rather than to the productive sector, in order to save stock and bond holders, while over 600,000 workers lose their jobs monthly.
Secondly, the Obama regime is channeling over $800 billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to sustain military-driven empire building. This constitutes a massive transfer of public funds from the civilian economy to the military sector forcing tens of thousands of unemployed young people to enlist in the military (Boston Globe, March 1, 2009).
Thirdly, Obama’s commission to oversee the “restructuring” of the US auto industry has backed their plans to close scores of factories, eliminate company-financed health plans for retirees and force tens of thousands of workers to accept brutal reductions in employee health care and pensions. The entire burden for returning the privately owned auto industry to profits is placed on the shoulders of the wage, salaried and retired workers, and the US taxpayers.
The entire economic strategy of the Obama regime is to save the bondholders by pouring endless trillions of dollars into insolvent corporations and buying the worthless debts and failed assets of financial enterprises. At the same time his regime avoids any direct state investments in publicly owned productive enterprises, which would provide employment for the 10 million unemployed workers. While Obama’s budget allocates over 40% to military expenditures and debt payments, 1 out of every 10 Americans have been evicted from their homes, the number of Americans without jobs is rising to double digits, and the number of Americans on ‘food stamps’ to provide basic food needs is rising by the millions throughout 2009.
Obama’s ‘job creation’ scheme channels billions toward the privately owned telecommunication, construction, environmental and energy corporations, where the bulk of the government funds go to senior management and staff and provide profits to stock holders, while a lesser part will go to wage workers. Moreover, the bulk of the unemployed workers in the manufacturing and service areas are not remotely employable in the ‘recipient’ sectors. Only a fraction of the ‘stimulus package’ will be allocated in 2009. Its purpose and impact will be to sustain the income of the financial and industrial ruling class and to postpone their long-overdue demise. Its effect will be to heighten the socioeconomic inequalities between the ruling class and the wage and salaried workers. The tax increases on the rich are incremental, while the massive debts resulting from the fiscal deficits are imposed on present and future wage and salaried taxpayers.
Obama’s wholehearted embrace and promotion of military-driven empire building even in the midst of record-breaking budget deficits, huge trade deficits and an advancing depression defines a militarist without peer in modern history. Despite promises to the contrary, the military budget for 2009-2010 exceeds the Bush Administration by at least 4%. The numbers of US military forces will increase by several hundred thousands. The number of US troops in Iraq will remain close to its peak and increase by tens of thousands in Afghanistan, at least through 2009 (despite promises to the contrary). US-based miliary air and ground attacks in Pakistan have multiplied geometrically. Obama’s top foreign policy appointees in the State Department, Pentagon, Treasury and the National Security Council, especially in any capacity involving the Middle East, are predominantly militarist Zionists with a long history of advocacy of war against Iran and with close ties with the Israeli high command.
In summary, the highest priorities of the Obama regime are evidenced by his allocation of financial and material resources, his appointments of top economic and foreign policy-makers and in terms of which classes benefit and which lose under his administration. Obama’s policies demonstrate that his regime is totally committed to saving the capitalist class and the US empire. To do so, he is willing to sacrifice the most basic immediate needs and future interests, as well as the living standards, of the vast majority of working and home-owning Americans who are most directly affected by the domestic economic depression. Obama has increased the scope of military-driven empire building and enhanced the power position of the pro-Israeli warmongers in his administration. Obama’s ‘economic recovery’ and military escalation strategies are financially and fiscally incompatible; the cost of one undermines the impact of the other and leaves a tremendous hole in any efforts to counteract the collapse of social services, rising home foreclosures, business bankruptcies and massive layoffs.
The horizontal transfers of public wealth from the Obama governing elite to the economic ruling class does not “trickle down” into jobs, credit and social services. Attempting to turn insolvent banks into credit-lending, profitable enterprises is an oxymoron. The central dilemma for Obama is how to create conditions to restore profitability to the failed sectors of the existing US economy.
There are several fundamental problems with his strategy:
First, the US economic structure, which once generated employment, profits and growth, no longer exists. It has been dismantled in the course of diverting capital overseas and into financial instruments and other non-productive economic sectors.
Secondly, the Obama ‘stimulus’ policies reinforce the financial stranglehold over the economy by channeling great resources to that sector instead of ‘rebalancing’ the economy toward the productive sector. Even within the ‘productive sector’ state resources are directed toward subsiding capitalist elites who have demonstrated their incapacity to generate sustained employment, foster market competitiveness and innovate in line with consumer preferences and interests.
Thirdly, the Obama economic strategy of ‘top-down’ recovery squanders most of its impact in subsidizing failed capitalists instead of raising working class income by doubling the minimum wage and unemployment benefits, which is the only real basis for increasing demand and stimulating economic recovery. Given the declining living standards resulting from domestic decay and the expansion of military-driven empire, both embedded in the institutional foundation of the state, there are no chances for the kind of structural transformation that can reverse the ‘top-down’, empire-absorbing policies promoted by the Obama regime.
Recovery from the deepening depression does not reside in running a multi-trillion dollar printing operation, which only creates conditions for hyperinflation and the debasement of the dollar. The root cause is the over-accumulation of capital resulting from over-exploitation of labor, leading to rising rates of profit and the collapse of demand. The vast disparity between capital expansion and decline of worker consumption set the stage for the financial bubble.
The ‘rebalancing’ of the economy means creating demand (not from an utterly prostrate private productive sector or an insolvent financial system) via direct state ownership and long-term, large-scale investment in the production of goods and social services. The entire speculative ‘superstructure’, which grew to enormous proportions by feeding off of the value created by labor, multiplied itself in a myriad of ‘paper instruments’ divorced from any use value. The entire paper economy needs to be dismantled in order to free the productive forces from the shackles and constraints of unproductive capitalists and their entourage. A vast re-training program needs to be established to convert stockbrokers into engineers and productive workers. The reconstruction of the domestic market and the invention and the application of innovations to raise productivity require the massive dismantling of the worldwide empire. Costly and unproductive military bases, the essential elements for military-driven empire building, should be closed and replaced by overseas trade networks, markets, and economic transactions linked to producers operating out of their home markets. Reversing domestic decay requires the end of empire and the construction of a democratic socialist republic. Fundamental to the dismantling of empire is the end of political alliances with overseas militarist powers, in particular with the state of Israel and uprooting its entire domestic power configuration, which undermine efforts to create an open democratic society serving the interests of the American people.

Regional Impact of the Global Crisis
The worldwide depression has both common and different causes, affected by the interconnections between economies and specific socio-economic structures. At the most general-global level the rising rate of profits and the over-accumulation of capital leading to the financial-real estate-speculative frenzy and crash affected most countries either directly or indirectly. At the same time, while all regional economies suffered the consequences of the onset of the depression, regions were situated in the world economy differently and subsequently the effects varied substantially.

Latin America
Brazil with its free market policies in disarray and huge class divisions undermining any domestic recovery, its high velocity fall in exports and industrial production is heading toward a deep recession despite the boasts and claims of Wall Street and the White House favorite, President Lula da Silva.
In January 2009, industrial production fell 17.2% year to year. Gross domestic product contracted 3.6% in the last quarter of 2008 (Financial Times, March 11, 2009). All indications are that negative growth will persist and deepen during the rest of 2009. Foreign direct investment and export markets, the driving forces of past growth are in sharp retrenchment. Lula’s privatization policies have led to extensive foreign takeover of the financial sector, which has transmitted the crises from the US and EU. His ‘globalization’ policies increase Brazil’s vulnerability to the collapse of foreign trade. Capital flows are strongly negative. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs between December 2008 and April 2009. The 5 million impoverished landless rural workers and the 10 million families living on a one dollar a day food-basket handout from the government are excluded from effective domestic demand as are the tens of millions of minimum wage workers living on $250 dollars a month. The purchasing power of highly indebted family farmers is no substitute for shrinking external demand. All sectors, rural and urban, of the capitalist class are freezing new investments as private credit evaporates, overseas investors flee and local consumer spending declines in the face of the deepening recession. Lula’s claims of ‘decoupling’ and his growth projections of 4% are seen as ‘seeding illusions’ to cover up the onset of a severe economic recession. Lula’s blind support for globalization and the ‘free market’ is a central determinant of Brazil’s deepening recession.
Brazil descent into negative GDP is the pattern throughout the region. Argentina is headed for minus 2% growth, Mexico –minus 3% and Chile 0% or less. Central America and the Caribbean, which are highly ‘integrated’ with the US and world economy are experiencing the full force of the world depression in skyrocketing unemployment resulting from the collapse of tourism, declining demand for primary commodities and a serious drop in remittances from overseas workers. There will be a sharp rise in extreme poverty, crime and a potential for popular social upheavals against the incumbent right and center-left governments.
The spread of imperial capital throughout the world, dubbed ‘globalization’ by its defenders (and imperialism by its critics), led to the rapid spread of the financial crisis and breakdown among those countries most closely linked to the US and European financial circuits. Globalization tied Latin American economies to world markets, at the expense of domestic markets, and increased their vulnerability to the vertical fall in demand, prices and credit witnessed today. Globalization, which earlier promoted the inflow of capital, now, with the onset of the depression, facilitates massive capital outflow. US, which is absorbing 70% of the world’s savings in its desperate effort to borrow and finance its monstrous trade and budget deficits, has squeezed out its Latin American trading partners from the global credit market. The depression demonstrates with crystal clarity the pitfalls of imperial-centered globalization and the stark absence of any remedies for its collaborators in Latin America. The disintegration of the imperial-centered global economy is evident amidst rising protectionism and billions of dollars in state subsidies to prop up the imperial states’ own capitalists in the banking, insurance, real estate and manufacturing sectors. The world depression not only reveals the intrinsic fault lines of the globalized economy, but ensures its ultimate demise into a multiplicity of competing units: nations, each depending on their own treasuries and state sectors to pull them out of the deepening depression at the expense of their former partners. The world depression is spurring the return of the nation-state, as ‘de-globalization’ accelerates.
Parallel and intimately related to the demise of the world market is the rise of the capitalist state as the center-piece for salvaging the national treasury and exacting an exorbitant tribute from the pension, health and wage funds of billions of workers, pensioners and tax-payers. Growing ‘state capitalism’ in times of capitalist collapse only emerges to ‘save the capitalist system from capitalist failures’ as its promoters argue. In order to do so it exploits the collective wealth of the entire people. ‘Nationalization’ or ‘statification’ of insolvent banks and industries is the culmination of predator capitalism. Instead of individual enterprises or even sectoral exploitation of wage and salaried workers, it is the capitalist state that preys on the entire class of the producers of wealth.
Latin America’s options revolve around recognizing and accepting that globalization is dead, that only under popular democratic control can nationalization serve to generate wealth and create employment, instead of serving to channel and redistribute resources upward and outward to the failed, bankrupt capitalist class.

Eastern Europe and the ex-communist countries
The conversion from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe followed a process of privatization, in many cases based on widespread pillage, the illegal seizures of public resources and the precipitous fall in domestic living standards and production during the first half of the 1990’s. Taking advantage of cheap labor, easy access to lucrative opportunities in all economic sectors, Western European and US capitalists took control of the manufacturing, mining, financial and communication sectors. At the same time as the barriers between East and West fell, there was a massive flow of skilled workers to Western Europe. The economic recovery and subsequent growth in Eastern Europe and the ex-communist countries was based on its dependency on the expansion of investment and credit from Western capitalism: The relocation of manufacturing, the influx of speculative capital in finance and real estate, the access to expanding Western markets and especially debt financing of consumer expenditures spurred Eastern growth. As a consequence, the region has been hit from two sides during the economic crisis: A collapse engendered by unsustainable internal speculation and the impact of its dependency on a depressed Western Europe for capital, credit and markets. The capitalist economies of the Baltic States, Eastern Europe and Russia collapsed rapidly. As Western European credit markets shriveled and large-scale multi-national disinvestment set in, the local currencies were devalued and overseas markets disappeared. The entire pattern of ‘dependent development’ rooted in the disarticulation of local markets and inflows of capital undermined local efforts to counter the collapse. Their only choice was to seek massive infusions of financial aid from the IMF and banks on onerous terms, which limited options for any national fiscal stimulus plans.
The regions linkages with world markets, based on subordinate-dependent relations with Western capitalists, meant that first they lacked the internal markets and capital to cushion the fall and, secondly, that the drying up of external flows would deepen and extend the depression. From the Baltic to the Balkan states, from Eastern Europe to Russia the full force of the depression has led to large-scale, long-term unemployment, widespread bankruptcies of local satellite and subsidiary industries, services and banks. Popular movements have emerged calling into question the free market policies of governments, and, in some cases, rejecting the export-dependent capitalist model.

Asia:
The End of the Illusions of De-coupling and Autonomous Growth
The Great Depression of 2009 has adversely affected every economy in Asia, dependent on the international, financial and commodity markets. Even the most dynamic countries, like Japan, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam have not escaped the consequences of drastic declines in trade, employment, investment and living standards. Two decades of dynamic expansion, high growth and rising profit margins, based on export markets and intense exploitation of labor, led to the over-accumulation of capital. Many Asian and Western pundits argued for a ‘new world order’, led and directed by the emerging Asian economic powers, especially China, where power would be increasingly based on their ‘regional autonomy’. In reality, China’s dynamic industrial growth was deeply embedded in a world commodity chain in which advanced industrial countries, like Germany, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, provided precision tools, machinery and parts to China for assembly and subsequent export to US, European and Asian markets. ‘Decoupling’ was a myth.
Export-driven growth was fueled by savage exploitation of labor, the dismantling of vast areas of social services (namely free health care, pensions, subsidized food and lodging and education) and the vast concentration of wealth in a tiny elite of newly rich billionaires (Economic and Political Weekly – Mumbai, December 27, 2008 page 27-102). China and the rest of Asia’s growth was based on the contradiction between the dynamic expansion of the forces of production and the increasing polarization of the class relations of production. The high rates of profit led to the over-accumulation of capital – high rates of investment – leading into huge budget and trade surpluses, which spilled over into the financial sectors, overseas expansion (or money-laundering) and real estate speculation.
Asia’s economic edifice was precariously situated on the backs of hundreds of millions of laborers with virtually no consumer power and an increasing dependence on overseas export markets. The world crisis especially deflated the export markets, exposing the Asian economies’ vulnerabilities and causing a massive fall in trade, production and massive growth in unemployment. China and the other Asian countries’ efforts to counteract the collapse of the export markets by massive injections of public capital to stimulate financial liquidity and infrastructure development has been insufficient to stem the growth of unemployment and the bankruptcy of millions of export-linked enterprises.
The Asian capitalist class and its government elite are entirely incapable of ‘restructuring’ the economy and social structure toward substituting domestic demand as the external market collapses. To do so would mean several profound transformations in the class structure. These include the shift from investments based on high profitability toward low margin productive and social services for the hundreds of millions of low-income workers and peasants. It would require the transfer of capital from private real estate, stock markets and overseas bond purchases (like US Treasury Notes) to finance universal health care, education and pensions and the restoration of land to productive use rather than to dispossession and real estate speculation.
The entire dynamic growth of Asia, built around capital concentration, high profits and low wages, is trying to survive based on deepening the impoverishment of labor via massive firing of workers, huge reverse flows of migrant labor back to the devastated countryside and the growth of the surplus labor force. The expulsion of labor, the usual capitalist solution, merely re-located and intensifies the contradiction – heightening the conflict between urban-based industrial/finance capital and hundreds of millions of impoverished, unemployed and underemployed workers and peasants. The state’s injections of capital to stimulate the economy passes through the ‘filter’ of regional state elites and the capitalist class, which absorbs and uses the bulk of this capital to buttress faltering enterprises – with negligible impact on the mass of unemployed workers.
Private ownership and capitalist control over the state precludes the kind of social transformation, which can restart growth by expanding the domestic economy.
China’s ‘engine of growth-in-reverse’ has, by necessity, undermined its trading partners who depend on industrial and raw material exports to China. The collapse of demand from its Euro-American markets undermines the entire architecture of China’s export industries. The savage exploitation of labor and the power of China’s new bourgeoisie ensure that there are limited possibilities for any revival of domestic demand from the ‘interior’.
China’s economic recovery is dependent on a new socialist transformation, which makes mass domestic demand the real engine of growth.

The Middle East:
Depression and Regional Wars
The key to the crisis and breakdown of the Middle East is rooted in the imperial-Zionist regional wars and the collapse of commodity prices.
The oil producing countries accumulated vast ‘rents’, which they re-cycled into large-scale finance, real estate and military purchases in and out of the region. Profits concentrated in the hands of billionaire absolutist rulers led to highly polarized class relationships: super-wealthy rentiers and low-paid immigrant laborers limited the size and scope of the domestic markets. To break out of the crisis of over-accumulation and falling profits, the ruling elites adopted two strategies that temporarily avoided the crisis: Dependence on large-scale export of capital to rent, interest and dividend-yielding sites throughout the world – first to the US and Europe and later to Asia and Africa. The second strategy was to recycle profits into pharaonic real estate, tourist and banking centers in the Gulf States…leading to an enormous real estate bubble.
The collapse of the Middle East ‘rentier (or non-productive) oligarchies’ was detonated by the frenzied commodity oil boom, between 2004-2008, which heightened the process of over-accumulation – and the over-extension of debt and labor importation. The result was the onset of a regional economic crisis, in which budget and trade surpluses are replaced by mounting deficits. At no point did the Middle East economies diversify from their foundation based on ‘rents’ and create a diversified economy centered on production and the creation of a dynamic mass-based regional market. The rentier ruling classes face a growing mass of unemployed immigrant and domestic workers, the massive flight of thousands of expatriate European financiers, real estate professionals and other non-productive hangers-on.
No longer the beneficiaries of the petro-dollar boom – as prices, profits and rents collapsed - and no longer the powerful bankers and holders of debt, the Gulf Arab ruling class has few external and internal resources and outlets to project a ‘recovery program.’
Worse still, in the midst of this emerging economic collapse, the militarist state of Israel serves as a regional destabilizing force projecting its power and colonial ambitions throughout the region. Through one of world history’s most unique configuration of power, the economically insignificant state of Israel, operating through the activity of several tens of thousands of strategically-placed, highly organized, disciplined and ideologically committed loyalists in the Diaspora, control key levels of political power in the US government.

The Obama Regime, Zionist Power Configuration and the Middle East
In the worst economic crisis since the 1930’s ‘Great Depression’ and facing a $1.7 Trillion Dollar budget deficit and over 8.1 million unemployed workers in March 2009 (BBC News, March 6, 2009), numbers, which are expected to double by the end of the year, the Obama Administration has increased the open and hidden military expenditures to $800 billion-plus dollars, a 4% increase over the previous war-mongering regime of George W. Bush. The key target of US military expansion is the Middle East and South Asia, with a population that includes hundreds of millions of mostly Muslims, who are pro-Palestinian, oppose the colonial policies of Israel and the current US military occupation of Muslim countries in the region. The driving force behind US militarism in the Middle East is found in the Zionist/Jewish officials and advisers occupying strategic government positions. They are aided and encouraged by a multiplicity of major American Jewish political action and ‘civic’ organizations, an army of editors, academics, publishers, journalists and propagandists embedded in all the mass media who systematically promote the interests of the state of Israel.
A careful analysis of the Obama regime demonstrates the high level of Zionist penetration and provides an empirical basis for understanding US military escalation in the Middle East, despite the catastrophic condition of the domestic economy. Fighting Israel’s crusades against the Muslims takes precedence over the mass impoverishment of the US population. Nothing speaks to the overweening stranglehold of the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) than their ability to escalate a war agenda in the Middle East over the needs of 350 million Americans, the bankruptcy of its 500 Blue Chip corporations and its 5 leading banks, not to mention the over 50 million working Americans without access to health care.

Israel/Zionist Power Configuration and Regional Wars
The Israeli-Zionist stranglehold over Obama’s foreign policy, especially with regard to Middle East issues affecting Israel’s hegemonic ambitions, is evident in the run-up to his taking office and in the first months of power. An empirical survey of major Israeli positions and actions and the Obama regime’s response demonstrates the power of the US Zionist power configuration:
Israel’s savage invasion of Gaza, slaughtering well over a thousand civilians, mostly women and children and destroying a large proportion of the civilian infrastructure, as well as the brutal starvation blockade of the entire imprisoned population of over 1.5 million and the US response is a case in point. Obama’s regime and the entire Democratic Party leadership wholeheartedly endorsed the ongoing slaughter and refused to hold the military and civilian leadership of Israel to a minimal level of responsibility for its crimes. It refused to call for an end to the murderous Israeli land and sea blockade, which prevented the entry of basic foodstuffs, like rice, and critical items for any reconstruction. The Israeli leadership arrogantly dismissed US Secretary of State Clinton’s suggestion for a minor easing up of the blockade, without the least response from Obama. Israel’s continued military attacks on the people of Gaza have been supported by the Obama-Clinton-Gates regime.
Israel’s expansion of its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and the massive expropriation of homes and property in Arab East Jerusalem, as well as the ongoing destruction of Palestinian homes is another case. The US has merely reiterated its position for a ‘two-state’ solution.’ Clinton’s earlier very mild questioning of the expansion of colonial settlements in Israeli-occupied land met with the same dismissal from the Jewish State with no consequences to US-Israeli relation.
Israel condemned the international anti-racist conference in Durban, South Africa because of its critique of Israeli-Zionism as a brutal form of racism. When a sector of the Obama regime proposed sending an American delegation to the preparatory meeting to discuss the agenda, the ZPC immediately mobilized its activists and Obama capitulated. The US and several other European states withdrew their participants and condemned the Durban meeting as ‘anti-Semitic’, all parroting the Israeli position.
Israel and its American followers insisted that Obama appoint leading Zionists as his closest advisers and policymakers in strategic positions dealing with US negotiations with Syria and Iran, to ensure that the Israeli state’s own position was pursued. To this end they scuppered the announced appointment of retired Marine General Anthony Zinni because of his known independence from Israeli dictates. The grotesque casting aside of General Zinni and the Administration’s appointment of Israel’s most ‘loyal’ US-Middle East agent, Dennis Ross, as US ‘negotiator’ with Iran, means that the Israeli war agenda of blockading and attacking Iran will dominate any decisions. Ross, also know as ‘Israel’s lawyer’ is highly distrusted by the governments of the Middle East and Iran because of his past position as a blatant partisan of Israel under the previous Clinton administration. Even the fact that Ross had been working for an Israeli think-tank directed and funded by the Israeli government, and which made him an un-declared agent of the Jewish state, did not deter his appointment. Among the group of Zionists who inhabit the foreign polity apparatus of the Obama regime, Secretary of State Clinton has appointed Jeffery Feltman, Acting Secretary of State for Near East Affairs and Daniel Shapiro of the White House’s National Security Council to head up negotiations with Syria (BBC News, March 7, 2009). Appointments of Zionists to top negotiating positions will ensure that very few moves necessary for reciprocal exchanges and concessions, which might conflict with Israel’s hegemonic regional ambitions, will ever happen under Obama. The Obama regime’s appointment of prominent pro-Israel Zionists and well known non-Jewish Israel-Firsters to all major policy and analysis positions, with the fleeting exception of Charles Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council (see below) – guarantees that US-Middle East policy will continue to be formulated in Tel Aviv.

Israeli policy in the Middle East has two vectors:
leverage its agents leading the 51 Major Jewish American Organizations to shape US policy toward militarily destroying Israel’s adversaries (like Iran), providing diplomatic and propaganda cover and military aid in its invasions and attacks on Syria, Lebanon and occupied Palestine (Gaza/West Bank), authoring and pursuing economic sanctions – amounting to deliberate acts of war – against Israel’s targets including Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Sudan and Somalia.
Dividing and conquering its adversaries via negotiations and diplomatic feints. In recent years, Israel, with US backing, has successfully split the Lebanese (the Beirut elite versus Hezbollah), Palestinians (PLO/PA versus Hamas), Iraqi (Kurds versus Arabs), Sudanese (Darfur secessionists versus Khartoum) and, not least of all, in the US (Israel-Firster elites versus the American people).
Unable to precipitate an American air strike against Iran or its collaboration with an Israeli first-strike, the Israeli government, directly and via its US supporters, has promoted a new policy, which involves a break-up of the Syria-Iran alliance. The Obama-Clinton regime, following Israel’s lead, has proceeded to talks with Damascus. The purpose of the US negotiators is to offer greater diplomatic recognition and economic concessions to Syria, in exchange for a Syrian break with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. To ensure that Israeli interests would be defended and no territorial concession (like Israel’s illegal colonial occupation of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights) would be addressed, the Obama regime appointed two prominent US Zionists, Feltman and Shapiro, to conduct the US ‘negotiations’. The Syrian diplomatic gambit, intermittently pursued ‘covertly’ by Israel, and now taken up by its US protégé, Secretary Clinton, has thus far failed – because of Israel’s unwillingness to make any territorial concessions in the face of its colonial settlers’ political power and its inability to open Western trade and investment opportunities. The Obama regime will pursue Israel’s goals of ‘neutralizing’ Syria as a political base of support for Hamas leaders and a logistical link between Iran and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon.
The centerpiece for the most sustained large-scale political, mass media and military campaign, involving all the major Jewish organizations, Zionist lobbies, front groups, legislators and top official in the government has been and continues to be the weakening and destruction of Iran. The opposition to the Zionist power configuration’s confrontational policy is located in sectors of the government – including the intelligence services, the US military, career officials in the State Department and many former top officials. The Zionists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The right-wing Zionist David Frum, (who wrote the most bellicose speeches for the former President Bush and included Iran as a leading member of the ‘Axis of Evil’), and fanatical Zionist Treasury official Stuart Levey have been and continue to be in the forefront of those enforcing and extending the economic sanctions and secondary boycotts against Iranian banking, trading and investment. Every aspect of US policy and legislation pertaining to Iran is closely overseen and often formulated by the Jewish pro-Israel lobby. As a result, efforts by US policy makers seeking to reach agreements with Iran on matters of strategic interest have been sabotaged exclusively by the Israel Firsters. The following is a case in point.
Right after September 11, 2001, Iran supported the US attack on the Taliban and played an important role in stabilizing the eastern half of Afghanistan, especially Herat; it supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, even as it opposed any long-term US military occupation of Iraq. Influential Zionist agents, inside and outside the Bush regime, rejected and effectively blocked any consideration in Washington of Iran’s offer for a mutual-security agreement. Despite statements from elements in the US military high command recognizing Iran’s critical role in facilitating the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, there was not a single reciprocal concession offered to Iran. Instead, the entire Zionist ‘State’ within the US State launched a series of punitive measures, echoing Israeli hostility to Iran, including the setting up and training of cross-border death squads to murder Iranian officials on both the Iraqi and Afghan-Pakistani borders. Israel called for harsh sanctions: the AIPAC authored legislation for severe sanctions and their puppets in the Congress co-signed and secured Congressional approval. Zionists in the Treasury implemented the measures and Israel-First officials in the US State Department pressured European governments to do the same. The Israeli regime, through its worldwide network launched a successful campaign against Iran’s entirely legal and closely monitored nuclear energy program. The hysterical Zionist propaganda campaign was pursued with an intensity, which surpassed even its earlier aggressive blitz against Iraq. The entire Jewish-Zionist apparatus was hell bent on putting the US on a path toward another Middle East war by conflating Iran’s long-stated opposition to Israeli colonial massacres against the Palestinians and Lebanese with a threat to the very survival of the Jewish state and the security of US against an Iranian nuclear attack.
Sixteen US intelligence agencies published a report in November 2007 - the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which carefully and systematically refuted Israeli and Zionist charges against Iran’s nuclear power program. The report completely dismissed any allegation of ongoing, let alone advanced, Iranian nuclear weapon development. In response to the ‘heresy’ of the US intelligence establishment, the Zionist power configuration went into overdrive and, by the time of Obama’s election, had managed to convince the incoming administration into accepting Israeli fabrications on Iran’s ‘nuclear threat’ and created their own ‘revised’ National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to fit their policy goals.
The Obama regime, facing an unsuccessful counter insurgency war in Afghanistan has, once again had to turn to Iran for support. To ensure that no meaningful negotiations involving reciprocal concessions take place, the lobby secured the appointment of pro-Israel fanatic Dennis Ross to head the team. In the summer of 2007, Ross co-authored an extraordinary ‘policy’ report on Iran, which advocated the harshest sanctions, including a total naval blockade, escalating into a land and air embargo and inevitable military attack. Under Zionist tutelage Obama extended severe economic sanctions against Iran on February 2009, ensuring that his highly publicized offer in March 2009 to open a new chapter in US-Iranian relations would not be taken seriously by Tehran (Financial Times, March 23, 2009). Whatever takes place (if anything) pro-forma between the US and Iran will automatically be conveyed, filtered, censored and subject for final Israeli approval.
Israel and its US policymakers and Congressional followers have been at the cutting edge of ferocious anti-Muslim and anti-Arab propaganda, ‘diplomacy’ and military aggression. The Obama regime reflects their pervasive influence. Despite the failed war in Afghanistan and increasing mass opposition in the region, despite a catastrophic domestic crisis, Obama has increased the military budget, increased the number of US troops (without any European support), and extended the war into Pakistani territory, with daily bombing of anti-US/ Pashtun villages in Pakistan. The ZPC and its Congressional delegation of fellow-travelers have blindsided millions of American citizens, especially Democrats, who voted for Obama as a ‘peace candidate’, and now face a prolonged large-scale presence of US troops in Iraq, an escalation in Afghanistan, US bombing inside Pakistan and US warships, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines off the coast of Iran. Zionist power over-rode the entire US National Intelligence apparatus and the American voters on the issue of Iran and promises even greater confrontations with Dennis Ross in charge.
Israel is forcibly evicting thousands of Palestinians, generations-long residents, from Jerusalem in their drive to ‘Judanize’, ethnically cleanse and annex the entire city, contrary to the demands of the European Union, world opinion, international law and any ‘two-state solution’ proposed by every US President, including Obama, in the last three decades (The Guardian (London), March 7, 2009). Jewish wrecking crews were actively bulldozing the homes of Palestinian families while Secretary of State Hilary Clinton pledged unconditional support for Israel and, in passing, commented that ethnic cleansing and evictions were ‘not helpful’ (ibid). Obama/Clinton blatantly ignore the strong objections made by the leaders of Muslim and Christian religious congregations, representing many hundreds of millions of faithful. The major American Jewish organizations and the entire Congressional Zionist leadership, including the uber-Israel Firster Senator Joseph Lieberman, enthusiastically back the Obama regime’s endorsement of Israeli ethnic cleansing (Boston Globe, March 9, 2009).
Seeking total control over all possible or potential appointees who can enhance Israel’s positions, the Zionist Power Configuration successfully launched a massive, slanderous national campaign to block the appointment of veteran US diplomatic and intelligence official, Charles Freeman, one of the few non-Zionist (or Gentile, for that matter) to the position of head of the National Intelligence Council. From the first moment that Zionist ‘insiders’ leaked the proposed appointment of Freeman, the ZPC launched a frontal attack: scurrilous articles were written attacking Freeman, a veteran officer who served successive US Administrations dating back to Richard Nixon, which were published in the major newspapers and magazines and broadcast by the main TV and radio programs. AIPAC approached its stable of Zionist Congress-people led by Congressman Eric Cantor to round up the usual herd of elected shills beholden to Zionist campaign financing. Ten US Representatives demanded that the Director of National Intelligence Inspector General, “Fully investigate Mr. Freeman’s past relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and look into the contributors to the Middle East Policy Council (a Washington think-tank headed by Freeman)” (Financial Times (London), March 7, 2009 p. 3). The entire Republican leadership led by the House ‘whip’ Cantor carried the ball for the ZPC in trashing Freeman and his supporters, who they also demanded be punished for their endorsement. Obama, faced with the Zionist onslaught, crumbled without even a whimper. “The White House made no comment.”(ibid) Zionist Power worked through both political parties. “Steve Israel (appropriately named!), a Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, wrote to Mr. Maguire (the Inspector General) about the seemingly prejudicial public statements made by the proposed NIC Chairman (Charles Freeman)” (Financial Times, ibid). The ‘prejudicial public statement’ in question was Freeman’s criticism of Israel’s savage bombing of Lebanon during the summer of 2007 and their unending repression of Palestinians under their occupation. Not a single area of government, not a single appointment, escapes the censorious eye of the Jewish pro-Israeli power structure in the US and its stable of compliant non-Jewish members of Congress. The Zionist success in purging Freeman from the appointment to head the National Intelligence Council is an effort to avoid a repeat of the major intelligence setback their anti-Iran propaganda in 2007. Back then sixteen US intelligence agencies published their National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, completely undermining Israeli and US-ZPC claims that Iran was producing weapon-grade nuclear material and was ‘months’ away from producing a nuclear weapon. The NIE forced the ZPC to launch a furious assault on the findings and the professional intelligence agencies in order to sustain Israel’s campaign to push the US into a war with Iran. The central purpose of the Zionist-led Congressional campaign against Freeman was to use the ‘investigation’ to harass and undermine his independent, professional expertise and advocacy of an ‘even-handed’ approach to the Middle East. By labeling him as pro-Arab, pro-Hamas (with the implication of links to terrorism) they forced the withdrawal of his appointment in favor of an official willing to manipulate intelligence to fit Israeli objectives.

The Culture of Calumny and the Degradation of Democratic Values.
The ZPC’s successful blacklisting and purge of Charles Freeman from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council illustrates the stranglehold that it has on all appointments within the US Government. The Freeman purge reveals the ZPC tactics and methods, its web of power among different branches of government and their links with the leading Zionist Jewish American organization. The purge highlights the fact that loyalty to the state of Israel has become a condition for holding any significant office in the US government and that, conversely, any candidate for high office, no matter what their qualifications, who has criticized Israeli policy, is automatically banished. The application of the loyalty oath to Israel, which occurred in the purge of Charles Freeman, is a clear act of intimidation directed against the entire US political class: Criticize Israel, in any context, and write off your career forever! The purge of Freeman has vast present and future consequences for US politics, public debate and democratic freedom in America.
As is almost always the case when any issue or political appointment of interest to the state of Israel arises in the US, AIPAC seizes the initiative. In the case of the Freeman Purge, once the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, announced his appointment of Charles Freeman, AIPAC circulated a ‘dossier’ of lies, slanders and fabrications about the man and his positions, centered on his criticism of specific Israeli actions, namely their brutality in Gaza and Lebanon and their violations of human rights. The Zionist-Jewish onslaught was led by (none-other-than) Steve Rosen, the long-time AIPAC hatchet man and indicted felon, currently on trial for espionage – handing over classified US documents related to Iran policy to Israeli government agents. Under AIPAC’s promotion, a tsunami of articles and commentaries attacking Freeman appeared in the major media, painting him as an ‘Arab tool’, ‘anti-Israel’ and worse. Parallel to the media campaign, the leading Jewish-Zionist Senators Schumer and Leiberman and Representative Cantor launched a virulent campaign in Congress, even though his nomination did not require Congressional approval. Schumer ensured White House complicity in the purge through direct communication with White House Chief of Staff and fellow Zionist Rahm Emmanuel who likely passed on the ‘line’ to fellow Zionist Axelrod, Obama’s chief adviser. Not a single official in the entire Obama regime at any time voiced a single word in support of Blair’s appointment of Freeman nor refute the lies and character assassination harangues by the likes of Lieberman, Schumer and their fellow travelers. Where the Obama regime was not openly complicit, the Zionist purge machinery cowed it into silent acquiescence.
The deep and insidious authoritarian and partisan character of the Zionist congressional leadership evident in the purge of Charles Freeman is consistent with Schumer and Lieberman’s support for Michael Hayden as Obama’s CIA Director, the key agent in implementing Bush’s illegal domestic espionage program and their support for the ultra-Zionist Michael Mukasey as Bush’s Attorney General, who condoned the use by American agents of water-torture on ‘suspects’.
What is striking about the Zionist-led Congressional purge of Freeman is the fact that its leaders openly stated that they killed his nomination in order to stifle any criticism of Israeli policy. New York Senator Schumer said: “Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him and I am glad they (sic) did the right thing.” (quoted by Glen Greenwald in “Charles Freeman Fails the Loyalty Test”, http://www.salon.com/ March 10, 2009)
The power and arrogance of the ZPC is such that Schumer openly boasted on how he brought the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair to capitulate and force the resignation of his own appointee. In his widely published withdrawal statement, Freeman eloquently described the destructive power and operations of the Zionist Power Configuration:
“The libels on me and their easily traceable e-mail trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired.”
“The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.”
“The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.” ( quoted in Aljazeera, March 10, 2009)
By purging Freeman, the ZPC is in a position to influence future US intelligence directors and ensure that their reports do not contradict Israeli ‘intelligence’, especially its fabrications about Iran’s nuclear program. Schumer, Lieberman, AIPAC and the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations have gained another vital lever of power in forcing US policy into a military confrontation with Iran in line with the dictates of Israel.
The power of the ZPC over the Obama regime has major consequences for US foreign policy, especially war policy in the Middle East and throughout the world where countries, regions, movements and people reject Israel’s militarist-colonialist state and racist Zionist ideology. The same politicians who ‘stand with Israel’ are also the ones who follow the line of military confrontation with Iran unless it capitulates to Israeli-US ultimatums to surrender their nuclear-energy policies and links to anti-colonial Muslim/Arab and other independent movements and governments.
‘Negotiations’ with Iran, Syria and Palestine, as proposed by Obama and with his Zionist appointees and the conditions, which they demand, are non-starters: They become automatic set-ups for resorting to a military confrontation, escalation of sanctions and for condoning Israeli land grabbing. The result is the Obama regime’s continued massive military build-up and expenditure in a time of catastrophic economic recession. The apparent irrationality of diverting scarce economic resources toward endless wars and military confrontations in which no US security interests are at stake can only be explained by the militarist interest of the state of Israel and the power of its US supporters to impose its definition of ‘security’ on the US government.
To empirically test our hypothesis about the scope and depth of the influence of the Zionist Power Configuration and its ability to subordinate Obama Administration’s policies to Israeli interest, we have examined 10 important issue areas. We stated Israeli positions and actions, particularly on vital issues of war and peace affecting US interests, key appointments and strategic relations. We have found that in almost all issue areas, the Israeli position was translated into US policy. This high level correlation in turn was explained by the intense activity of the Zionist Power Configuration and the high level of penetration of pro-Israeli functionaries of all relevant policy-making positions and their veto power over appointments exercised by the ZPC and its Congressional leaders.
The Zionist Power configuration
The Jewish Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) openly organized and masterminded the withdrawal of veteran diplomat, Charles Freeman, from the leadership of the President’s National Intelligence Council. It is one of Israel’s biggest victories in its effort to control US foreign policy in the Middle East. The NIC is a worldwide apparatus, made up of 16 intelligence agencies with 100,000 employees and a $50 billion dollar budget. It is the ‘brains’ and ‘hands’ collecting the most confidential and important information used to analyze and formulate US policy and in running the clandestine operations of the entire US global empire. By their brazen purge of the top choice of Obama’s Intelligence Chief Admiral Blair, the ZPC has announced to the entire US political establishment, its allies and enemies, that the next appointment must have their vetting and approval, which means loyalty to Israeli policies. Together with their dominant presence in the Executive branch, including the White House and the President’s closest advisers, their public display of total dominance over both houses of the legislature and their growing penetration into the civilian-military command in the Pentagon, their effective takeover of the top intelligence positions closes the circle of Zionist control, or better – stranglehold, over the entire US state. The result is the subordination of US national interests and policies to the militarist aims of Israel, including support for Israeli conquests and hegemony in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Zionists in Power
The ‘coincidence’ or correlation between Israel’s illegal, militarist policies and the Obama regime’s approval and compliance, even when it involves sacrificing electoral promises, national economic and security interests and world public opinion, can in large part be explained by the appointment of veteran Israel Firsters to decisive foreign policy and advisory positions. At the very center of the Obama regimes, in the most influential policy-making position is David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to the president, who was recently described in the New York Times as: “carrying more weight than most anyone else on the president’s payroll…There are few words that come across the president’s lips that have not been blessed Mr. Axelrod. He reviews every speech, studies every major policy position and works…to prepare responses to the crisis of the day.” (New York Times, March 9, 2009). Axelrod’s longtime friend and fellow Zionist, the White House Chief of Staff, Israeli-American Rahm Emmanuel, meet every morning to coordinate their agendas for the White House. The Zionist duet, the pizza-munching, herbal tea drinking Rasputins from Chicago, are the most direct and influential political Zionists ensuring the primacy of Israel’s interests in setting US-Middle East policy – from starving Gaza to attacking Iran. No doubt, Axelrod and Emmanuel had their ‘input’ on the Obama-Clinton appointment of fellow-Zionist Jeffery Feltman and Daniel Shapiro as chief negotiators with Syria (BBC, March 7, 2009). Their agenda, Israel’s priorities, are certain to preclude any comprehensive settlement. The Zionist White House duet was strikingly silent, as their fellow Zionists skewered Charles Freeman’s appointment to lead Obama’s National Intelligence Council and ignored Israel’s humiliation of Secretary of State Clinton during her visit to Israel when the Jewish state bulldozed the homes of Palestinian families in Arab East Jerusalem on the very day of her arrival, repudiating Obama’s ‘two-state’ solution.
With the advise and consent of Zionist chief economic adviser, Laurence Summers, the Obama regime appointed fellow Zionist and ex-Clintonite crony David Cohen to the top job of monitoring ‘terrorist financing’ (Financial Times, March 9, 2009 p.2). Cohen will be in a position to pursue several crucial tasks for the Israeli state, including persecuting any and all Muslim charities and Palestinian humanitarian organizations and pressuring US and overseas financial, export and investment funds to disinvest from Arab and Muslim countries critical of Israel. He can be expected to aggressively pressure European and Asian banks and exporters to cease trade and investment with Iran. While on paper a ‘secondary appointment’, in reality Cohen will play a key role in promoting the hard-line Israeli-Zionist economic sanctions against Iran and maintaining the blockade on Gaza. The head of Obama’s nuclear non-proliferation agency is Gary Samore, who clearly established his Israel-First credentials in a speech in Israel on December 18, 2008 when he declared that he favored bombing Iran if it failed to shut down its uranium enrichment program – a program, which is legal under the International Non-Proliferation Treaty (Financial Times, February 24, 2009 p. 9). On February 24, 2009 the Obama regime appointed Dennis Ross as special adviser to Hilary Clinton for the Gulf Region. Ross in one of Israel’s top operatives in the Washington political establishment with long-term working relations with Israeli and US policy institutes linked to Israeli military, intelligence and foreign policy establishment. In November 2008, Ross signed off on a document advocating a military assault on Iran. Ross, as President Clinton’s envoy to the Israel-Palestine negotiations, contributed to the break down by embracing Israel’s non-negotiable positions and vilifying Yassar Arafat as the ‘stumbling block’.
The Zionist power configuration dominate all the key foreign policy committees in Congress, either directly through Jewish Zionists or elected representative who are in tow via financial contributions or threats of electoral retaliation and mass media smear campaigns. In the first weeks in office, the Zionist political machine has successfully blocked initiatives by some Obama advisers to attend the Durban anti-racism conference, and has deflected criticism of Israel’s starvation blockade against Gaza by two Congressmen who visited Gaza to view the destruction themselves. The ZPC has slandered and forced the withdrawal of Charles Freeman’s nomination as chief of the Intelligence Advisory Committee. It has openly endorsed Israel’s massive land grab in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Obama regime, in line with Israel, has effectively buried any pretence of peace negotiations with the Palestinians by shifting focus to a ‘regional settlement/negotiations’, in which Zionist envoys are directed to pressure Syria, Lebanon and Iran to isolate all Palestinian leaders who opposed Israel’s annexation of their land and expulsion of people.
The ZPC’s deep and extensive penetration of the Obama regime represents the greatest national security threat by a foreign-directed power since the founding of the American Republic. The scope and destructive consequences will be further detailed in the text (see: “Israel Asserting Middle East Supremacy: From Gaza to Tehran.”).
The ZPC’s power is manifested in the judicial branch and best illustrated in the spy trial of two prominent leaders of AIPAC - the principle pro-Israel ‘lobby’. Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Both were arrested and indicted after they admittedly took classified US documents relating to US policy toward Iran and handed them over to an Israeli Mossad Intelligence operative assigned to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. The Federal Judge in the case, T.S, Ellis has made several rulings in favor of the spies – strengthening their contention that the act of handing classified documents to a foreign power is a ‘common practice’ in Washington and not espionage. The ZPC has been successful in mobilizing its entire mass media apparatus, Congressional followers and a broad swath of Jewish and Gentile progressives in defense of Rosen and Weissman in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ –perversely equating the stealing of classified official US documents relating to security matters and secretly passing them to an agent of a foreign government with investigative journalism’s use of government sources. The numerous FBI arrests and quiet deportations of scores of Israeli spies without charge or trials, and the frequent complaint of former US officials that ‘orders from above’ blocked their prosecution attests to the power of highly placed Zionists or authorities under their control in securing impunity to Israeli-Jewish operative committing illegal and hostile acts against the security and economic interest of the United States. The presence of so many Zionists in positions of power in the Obama regime ensures that Israeli espionage operations in the US may now be suspended because Israel can obtain any documents or deliberations directly from officials in the Obama Administration. Even better Israelis can co-author some White House and US intelligence position papers themselves!

Zionists in power, means that the US empire will continue to energetically and aggressively pursue military confrontations and regional wars in the Middle East at the behest of Israel. At no point has the Zionist-dominated White House or Congress questioned the exorbitant costs of serving Israeli interests – even in the midst of a major economic depression. Virtually the entire major media establishment and all 51 Major American Jewish Organizations, which are pressing for blockades, sanctions and preemptive war against Iran, are free to ignore the tremendous loss and suffering that this diversion of billions of US tax dollars from domestic investment to wars for Israel has caused to the American people. Zionist control over White House Middle East policy ensures that the US will be mired in endless wars in the Persian Gulf and South Asia because Israel has an open-ended military agenda encompassing the entire region and an army of agents willing and able to impose this agenda on the American government.

MORE STUPIDITY FROM RUSH LIMBAUGH

2009-04-08T20:24:00.000-05:00

Think Progress » Caller who identifies as a veteran and McCain supporter takes Limbaugh to task for supporting torture.

Radioactive Right-Wing Propaganda

2009-04-08T20:01:00.001-05:00

Know who they are. Rip them out by the roots.

Think Progress ( Click Here to know the people who seek to restore injustice to the American people.)

Think Progress » THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

2009-04-08T19:35:00.001-05:00

War Criminals: Wanted Dead or Alive: Dead is preferable.

Those who forget history are
condemned to repeat it.

Think Progress » THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

ELITIST DO NOT IMPRESS INTELLIGENT PEOPLE

2009-04-05T02:22:00.004-05:00

Wall St. Bailout proves Orwell right: Financial Elite, you are OBSOLETE!
Or a vestigial limb that evolution will eventually remove.

As we have seen in the myriad scams and schemes that led to the bailout, they do nothing productive but instead, drain wealth from those who know how to make things and provide services, and even from taxpayers with wars to seize assets for them and subsidies to prop up their poorly run businesses.
Orwell goes even farther and says that modern technology has the means to produce enough wealth to give a comfortable lifestyle to everyone on earth with fairly minimal work. But that would endanger the elite, who would begin to look superfluous, so the excess wealth must be destroyed--spent on weapons that make no one's life easier and used to destroy other weapons, people, and things, which in turn absorbs more wealth to repair.

We see this most clearly in the United States. We can't afford to pay decent salaries to workers because the money must all go to execs and dividends. We can't afford to have decent government run schools or health care because the rich must not be taxed more than they want to be and more must be spent on our military than all other countries combined--never mind that all the yahoos with hunting rifles and shotguns would be more than enough to give anyone stupid enough to invade us a serious headache.

America and the world are at a cross-roads: do we continue to run our world into the ground and kill each other so that a handful of people can control more money than their family could spend in twenty generations or do we tell those people ENOUGH? Would it really hurt them to only have enough excess wealth for three or four generations?Would it hurt them to make them treat the rest of us like members of the human family instead of like cattle they can milk, slaughter, or sell for their own enrichment?

This is what Orwell said about the wealthy in the modern world in 1984:

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.
Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work.
The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly, and efficient -- a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete -- was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there.
From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared.
If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process -- by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute -- the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction -- indeed, in some sense was the destruction -- of a hierarchical society.
In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. 1984. TP.

SOMEBODY IS FUCKING US OVER BIG TIME!!

2009-04-04T04:56:00.004-05:00

Re: Check this out: My response is over 40 too with no apologies!!
posted at 4/4/2009 4:44 AM CDT on newsherald.com

terrorpatriot
First post: 10/16/2008Last post: 4/4/2009Total posts: 477
Replying to:
USGS Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota ; western South Dakota ; and extreme eastern Montana ....... check THIS out: The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels.. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion. 'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst. 'This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years.' reports, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S... oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL! That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight. 2. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO! U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World! Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006 Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this mother load of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling? They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates: - 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia - 18-times as much oil as Iraq - 21-times as much oil as Kuwait - 22-times as much oil as Iran - 500-times as much oil as Yemen - and it's all right here in the Western United States . HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy....WHY? James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post. Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists? Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so! Now, while you're thinking about it .... and hopefully P.O'd, do this: 3. Pass this along. If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you want to complain about gas prices ... because by doing NOTHING, you've forfeited your right to complain. -------- Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to every one in your address book. By the way...this is all true. Check it out at the link below!!! GOOGLE it or follow this link. It will blow your mind. http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 < http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 >Posted by irscottyo

Scottyo; May I commend you on your extra effort to not only point out this important story on this forum but for also attempting to agitate the people to act on it in an intelligent concerted way to try to make a difference. You even suggested a simple and easy way of doing it. And the favorite excuse that it was rambling dribble can not be used about your presentation here. Your passion and urgency did not escape me and I could feel your disenchantment as I read on through the following inane responses that actually fell on deaf and dumb ears. ( no real offence intended to anyone in particular)( It is my intention to offend every damn* one of us) I have felt it myself on this forum many times along with ruthless ridicule to boot in my numerous attempts to stir folks to action. ( However I do not post as accurately as you and others) I don't quite get it when we are facing probably the most dire set of circumstances our Country has faced since our founding. We may just be witnessing our National Death. and most of the people on here, rather than expending just a little extra effort when things of this magnitude are brought forward revert so quickly back to their soap operas, shoe shopping, jerking off in the park, or whatever other outrageous daily distraction that pops up in the mass comedia!! and last but certainly not least, the endless " My Party Is Bigger than your Party" *Bullshit!! All the while failing to grasp that there is not a dimes worth of difference in either of these Scavenger *Bastard clubs. Not a Dimes worth!!! This is not the first time I have caught you passionately stirred either. I recall a night just before Christmas that you let your light shine beyond your enlightening art work. You have been associated with this forum longer than I and I have not gone back to the beginning to see if you might have flamed out after perceiving the hopelessness of trying to unite probably any group of people and not just this group. It holds true of most groups unfortunately. I did e-mail every person on my list and with your permission I will post this entire exchange on my blog and tag it heavy and send off into the blogosphere. This kind of effort on anyone's part is never wasted. And thanks for your attempts at intervention in the past but brother I don't believe you can save me. I'm too far gone. TP.
"TerrorPatriot" " I know not what course others may choose but as for me GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH" Patrick Henry ( As for me this is a domestic as well as a political statement )
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Petition for Florida Sovereignty

2009-03-28T08:19:00.000-05:00

Petition for Florida Sovereignty

EXPLAINING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THE PC. FORUM

2009-03-28T06:37:00.003-05:00

A Little Tweaking On My Part Is Called For To Define Me.
posted at 3/21/2009 3:36 PM CDT on newsherald.com

terrapatriot
First post: 12/11/2008
Last post: 3/26/2009
Total posts: 1011 Replying to:

I can't say I have had a good view of any president myself.( my wife is the Dem ) but I hold respect for the office. Regardless of what party holds it.
Posted by lector

Lector, I state once again for the record and to clarify that I am opposed to the over reaching and repressive power of the Central Government and the entire Federal Reserve System/bank that controls it. OBAMA has only slightly distracted me from my continued efforts and avowed purpose of dethroning and limiting that power and returning it to the States where it belongs. So far Obama has not let me down although his actions and directions are tenuous at best. I believe he has Our Country's best interest at heart and is forced to act unnaturally in many instances due to the mess he has inherited. He got my vote and my support largely due to the complete absurdity of the alternative. My distrust of Washington and the trash that run it has not declined and no matter what, Obama will not endure beyond two terms. We know not what vermin is set to rule this Kingdom afterwards. I am willing to accept a degree of Socialistic policy in order to improve health care and living standards among this Countries disenfranchised and disadvantaged. This can happen while allowing a Democratically elected majority of educated people to participate in these decisions. Individual liberty should be enhanced and not infringed in this effort. There are finer points that are different in everybody's interpretation of our Constitution. We as Citizens should read this document as earnestly as a Christian reads his Bible. If all else fails and Secession has to occur It had better be with all or most of our 50 States. TP.
" I know not what course others may choose but as for me GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH" Patrick Henry.

My brain is the key that sets my mind free.

Report Abuse Ignore terrapatriot CLICK ON IGNORE TERRAPATRIOT IN BLUE TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE PAGE ON THE LIVE FORUM. TRY IT.

A WOMAN IS BEATEN EVERY 15 SECONDS

2009-03-28T06:16:00.002-05:00

RESCUE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

2009-03-28T05:41:00.001-05:00

Digg - Why Smoking a Joint in the Park Is Completely Acceptable

2009-03-27T20:27:00.000-05:00

Digg - Why Smoking a Joint in the Park Is Completely Acceptable: "'The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.'
-Carl Sagan"

THE ONE THING

2009-03-24T02:16:00.003-05:00

Does Glenn Beck Finally Get It? He Sounds Like He Does.

OBAMA IS NOT SUPERMAN

2009-03-23T01:45:00.003-05:00

This is not about Democrat Vs. Republican. This is about saving our Country.

Lector's Lectures On The Squall Live Forum

2009-03-21T15:47:00.001-05:00

One man standing up and fighting back against tyranny is often the needed catalyst to effect change. TP.
posted at 3/21/2009 12:47 PM CDT on newsherald.com
terrapatriot
First post: 12/11/2008Last post: 3/21/2009Total posts: 952

Replying to:
HEY SKINS and others who say the Dems. are the big spenders :-) Just read the facts on the following web site Posted by lector http://www.lafn.org/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html

Thank you for this link. After checking out it's accuracy and finding it to be appallingly true and accurate I will as quickly as possible be putting this graph up on a prominent State Road Bill Board for all to contemplate leading up to the 2010 Congressional and the 2012 Congressional and Presidential elections. You are always accomplishing more than you know when engaging the various people on this very important public forum where even the moderator is one of our neighbors who wields the important power of the pen. TP.

Lector; As the latest election has proven, there is across this Country a slight majority of enlightened American voters that have had enough of the theft and degradation to our Country wrought by the past Republican Party's solely to benefit the 10% wealthiest elite at the expense of the 90% of the hard working middle class. Unfortunately 80% of the voters of North Florida are not part of this awakening, so it is incumbent on the rest of us to do our best to educate them. They must come to realize that they are not in the 10% club nor are they or their children ever likely to be. I am not a Nationalist or a member of either of the two dominant party's, but until we can throw off the yoke of the repressive and over reaching power of the Central Government, returning that power to to the States, I will work towards the continued success and re-election of this President and hope the people are wise enough to oust the thieves of both party's who now soil our Federal and State Houses of Congress.

People like yourself are so very important to this effort and few are able or willing to stand up to the uninformed and informed bigotry of too many of our neighbors. I have said many times, the failure of Government is a failure of education. And this condition is either contrived by the Central Government or is a result of their failure. Either way we need them out of our schools to allow local and State control and management. Civics classes and true versions of American History must be reintroduced in order to have informed Citizens. Thank you again for your Civic Service to our Country. PatrioticPatriot.Lector; I intend to publish this thread on my blog at http://www.terrorpatriot.blogspot.com/

This is a must read to understand the conundrum we are involved in !!!

CLICK THIS LINK. THEN HOLD ON TO YOUR CHAIR!!!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/1 It just got another new home lector. I will tag and bag it and send it off into the blogosphere. TP.
" I know not what course others may choose but as for me GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH" Patrick Henry.

Buccaroo Battling The Baffled On The Forum

2009-03-21T14:44:00.002-05:00

Re: Talking Turkey Squall
posted at 3/21/2009 2:43 PM CDT on newsherald.com

terrapatriot
First post: 12/11/2008Last post: 3/21/2009Total posts: 950
Replying to:
Robert, You know, you like most Washington Republicans can only lash out with criticism over everything being done to save the country from total disaster. Everyone from the right is pissing and moaning, pointing fingers, paying for media coverage, and running their mouths. Yet, there are ZERO ideas coming from the right, including you. Wassup with that?

If the Republicans have better ideas then let the President hear them, rather than just playing politics as usual. The Republican party has no leaders, no direction, no sense, and no clue! The country needs your help and not your ridicule. If the Republican Party is (like you all say) the true patriotic party then you all need to jump in and help out. Everything the party is doing is destructive to the nation and themselves. It's time to stop shouting and crying about everything being done! It's time for action, and the Republicans need to get off the grandstand podiums and help out! Are we not all Americans? Posted by buckaroo.

Hello Comrade!! Just kidding. Thank you for your continued efforts on this forum buccaroo. You consistently post truths with a clarity I can only envy. TP.

" I know not what course others may choose but as for me GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH" Patrick Henry.
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MEDIA PROSTITUTE UGLY WHORE

2009-03-21T02:57:00.002-05:00

Ann Coulter sells her soul to the devil and her ass to the media, all for more book sales. She is a consumate liar and traitor to America.

BYE BYE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK.

2009-03-20T13:00:00.000-05:00

DEFECTIVE BULLETS SOLD ALL ACROSS AMERICA

2009-03-17T15:11:00.001-05:00

Manufacturer Recalls Hollow Point Bullets That Fail To Explode Inside Targets

FATE OF AMERICA HANGS IN THE BALANCE.

2009-03-17T10:25:00.003-05:00

Replying to:
Is this why you support Obama? Do you think he is pushing us towards this confrontation and you want it sooner rather than later? Posted by blackwalk

No. The rational decision I made to vote for President Obama Does not lesson my disdain for the dangers of an all powerful Central Government. President Obama may be our last best hope of avoiding such a confrontation. Although many of his policies are being dictated by circumstances not of his making and therefore alienating a sizable number of our citizens.

The choke hold of the FRS/CENTRALGOV. has been growing like a cancer for years and has metastasized once again. This is serious and the treatments being applied are less than ideal and seem to be killing the patient. But no matter, Obama will pass and be replaced. The overbearing powers of the Central Authority will either be reversed by the combined actions of the people who reside in the 50 States and the territories or the Independence that was once enjoyed by the States will disappear for ever.

( Just finished reading a good portion of the history of the American Revolution by " Julian Hawthorne" in "History Of The United States" Vol. 2. Not many of us possess a true understanding of the years of very vicious battles and sacrifice our forefathers endured to give us such a precious gift as freedom and Independence. Battles and death so atrocious as to exceed all the other wars we have endured since.

We, The People have once again accepted the yoke of tyranny from exactly the place our founders so fervently tried to resist and prevent with our Constitution, which by the way is complete with the path to be taken in the event this should occur. An all powerful and over reaching Central Power is the reality today. The outcome of our condition once again hangs in the balance as we all look towards Washington for our daily direction.

This should not be. The people should be looking to themselves and the locally elected officials Of the separate states. The failures of the few should be assisted by the strength of the many rather than chancing a cataclysmic collapse of all, such as we seem to be witnessing.

A pride and independent heart still beats within thousands of our citizens who have been adequately educated to understand my meanings here, but is there enough, that also possess the courage and are willing to endure the sacrifice that would be called for at this juncture of our history? This is the question by which the answer will determine the fate of America. Glenn Nunley. North Florida. RamblingTerraPatriot. (Sorry) My time is up. Adios Amigos.
" I know not what course others may choose but as for me GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH" Patrick Henry

REPUBLICANS HAVE BECOME THE PARTY OF BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD

2009-03-14T11:31:00.003-05:00

NOT CONTENT OR OPOLIGETIC FOR NEARLY DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY THESE PEOPLE ARE INTENT ON FINISHING THE JOB. SHUT UP AND GO AWAY.

For weeks, the news media have been buzzing about earmarks in the recently signed omnibus spending bill. We've been told over and over that the bill is "loaded," "filled," and "stuffed" with earmarks. Since earmarks made up less than 2 percent of the bill's total spending, this is a little like saying Alaska is "filled" with people.
But John McCain doesn't like earmarks, so that's where the media have focused their attention. (OK, there's more to it than that, but not much.) Unfortunately, they've done so in the most juvenile way possible. Following McCain's lead, the media's assessment of the earmarks consists of nothing more than sarcastically listing them, as though they are self-evidently a waste of money. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently described the approach McCain and the Republicans have adopted:
The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.
And the media have gone right along with it, producing news reports about the spending bill that are no more substantive than an adolescent chortle: Heh, heh, he said "pig waste." Heh.
Consider, for example, the honeybee. If you have watched television news or picked up a newspaper in the past several weeks, you've probably heard about federal funding for honeybees.
The assault on the honeybee began with the stimulus package, when CNN and other news organizations dutifully repeated GOP attacks on the inclusion of $150 million for "honeybee insurance." Columnist Charles Krauthammer went so far as to call the bill an "abomination" for including the honeybee insurance.
Now, there are a few things you need to know about the honeybee insurance. First, there was no such funding, according to Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik. Second, if the funding did exist, it would have amounted to somewhere around two one-hundredths of 1 percent of the stimulus package. Third, if the funding existed, it might well have been a wise use of money. We'll come back to that part.
Having had some success ridiculing bee-related spending in the stimulus, Republicans went back to the well during debate over the omnibus spending bill, attacking the inclusion of $1.7 million in funding for honeybee research. And the news media were quick to join in, eagerly repeating the attacks -- and, in many cases, adopting them as their own.
This time, the funding the media ridicules does exist. Progress! Still, there are a couple of important points that the national media left out.
First, the honeybee funding amounted to 0.00041 percent of the bill, or one-half of one penny per American. All earmarks combined represented less than 2 percent of the bill -- crucial facts that were almost never mentioned by the media. Los Angeles Times reporter (and former Laura Bush press secretary) Andrew Malcolm actually defended the media's disproportionate focus on a tiny fraction of spending: "Defenders defensively point out that's 'only' 1 or 2 percent of the total bill. So? To 99.89% of Americans, $7.7 billion is a manure-load of money."
But that's one of the key purposes of government: paying for things collectively that 99.89 percent of us couldn't afford to pay for individually. Not to mention the fact that in focusing on the 1 or 2 percent of the bill that constitutes a "manure-load of money," Malcolm and his ilk are ignoring the 98 or 99 percent of the bill that constitutes 49 or 99 manure-loads of money. See, when people point out that earmarks make up only 1 or 2 percent of the bill, they aren't saying earmarks don't matter, they're saying earmarks don't matter as much as things that make up a significantly larger part of the bill. Malcolm thinks he's serving as vigilant defender of the public purse; in fact, he's distracting attention from things that really cost money. He fails even on his own questionable terms.
Back to the honeybees, and to the other point that has been absent from media coverage of earmarks: Honeybees are pretty important. See, humans need food. Without it, we die. And bees not only produce honey, they pollinate all kinds of crops -- onions, cashews, celery, strawberries, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, apples ... you get the picture. Honeybees play an important role in our food supply, and our economy. And honeybees have been disappearing at an alarming rate in recent years, for reasons that are not fully known.
Here's how the state of Pennsylvania described the problem last May:
Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff today said the commonwealth will increase funding to continue research on the potentially devastating "Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder."
"Honey bees are critical to Pennsylvania agriculture and to our state's economy," said Wolff. "Pollination from the honey bees determines fruit set and increases fruit quality at an estimated value of $80 million. We can't afford to be lax in dealing with this problem."
According to a study by two Cornell University professors, honeybee pollination accounted for $14.6 billion worth of crops annually between 1996 and 1998.
Honeybee research doesn't sound so funny now, does it?
Now, you can't expect most Americans to know this. Most Americans don't give much thought to bees beyond hoping they don't get stung by one. And that's fine: The life cycle and migratory patterns of bees, and their resultant effects on avocado and cucumber growth, are fairly obscure subjects. We can't, and shouldn't, expect the typical American to know about or act upon these things. After all, there are a lot of obscure but important things that, as a nation, we need to know about and act upon. We can't know about and act upon them all individually; it's literally impossible.
That's another of the reasons we have a government: to know about and act upon the things we cannot know about and act upon individually. It's one of the reasons we watch television and read newspapers, too: They have the resources that we lack to learn about important but obscure things, and the ability to educate us. (This is where some defenders -- and critics -- of the news media will remind me that the media's job isn't to educate the public, much as I might wish it was; their job is to make money. To that I say: How's that working out? Maybe it's time to try a more serious approach.)
Instead, they treat it all like one big joke. Why? Because John McCain told them to -- and the national news media have long served as Ed McMahon to McCain's Johnny Carson. McCain posted a few uninformed wisecracks about earmarks on his Twitter account, and the nation's political reporters unquestioningly repeated his cheap shots verbatim, as though their role in life is to simply bellow "HA! You are correct, sir!" whenever Johnny makes a joke.
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, for example, claimed, "It was hard to fault McCain on the merits as he described contents of the $410 billion spending bill," pointing to the honeybee funding as an example. But how would Milbank know? Neither he nor McCain bothered to actually assess the merits. Simply listing "$1.7 million for a honeybee factory in Weslaco, Tex." is not considering the merits. It's pretty much the opposite of considering the merits. But it is as close as Milbank would come.
Milbank went on to quote McCain: " 'What does that mean?' McCain demanded. 'What does "sustainable Las Vegas" mean?' " That's where a serious journalist would have pointed out that it's John McCain's job to know what "sustainable Las Vegas" means, that he has an entire staff to help him find out, and that a few seconds of online research quickly yields an answer: the funding is for an initiative at UNLV that involves "research on water, energy, health care and transportation challenges facing the city and the region, including Arizona and California" and is modeled on a program based in McCain's own state.
A serious journalist might even have pointed out that John McCain pays his Senate staff more than the amount of the earmark in question. Might even have asked which is the bigger waste of taxpayer money -- a program designed to help a rapidly growing region meet its energy, health-care, and transportation needs, or a senator who spends more money paying his staff, but doesn't ask them to find out the purpose of the program he is criticizing?
Dana Milbank did none of those things.
Then there's CNN. The cable channel has cited the honeybee funding several times, never bothering to explain it. Last Saturday, for example, CNN's Josh Levs offered examples of earmarks in the bill -- John McCain's examples, of course: "Take a look. John McCain named some. We're going to show you some examples, $1.7 million for a honeybee factory in Texas, another $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa. There's a million dollars in there for cricket control in Utah."
Then four days later, Levs was back on the air -- and again talking about honeybees and crickets. Asked directly about the cricket control, Levs answered, "Maybe people there have problems with crickets."
Poor Levs, four days after his first report, he was still talking about those crickets -- and still didn't have a clue. I know the nation's newsrooms are facing cutbacks, but they still have Google at CNN, don't they? Type Utah cricket control into the online search engine and the second result is a U.S. Geological Survey report that begins, "Grasshopper and Mormon cricket (Orthoptera) populations periodically build to extremely high numbers and can cause significant economic damage in rangelands and agricultural fields of the Great Plains and Intermountain West."
If you doubt that the news media have been playing Butt-head to the GOP's Beavis, just watch this video of MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell interviewing Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Here's O'Donnell describing the stimulus bill:
O'DONNELL: It is filled with pork. ... Six-point-six million dollars for termite research. Two-point-two million dollars for the center for grape genetics. One-point-eight million dollars for pig-odor research in Iowa? I mean, come on, Governor. I know you're not in Congress, but this has got to make governors like you mad. You think the people in your state want to pay for $108 million [sic] in taxpayer money going to pig-odor research?
You really have to watch the video to hear how O'Donnell's voice is just dripping with scorn. She doesn't spend so much as a second assessing, or asking about, the merits of the programs. Instead, she just dramatically emphasizes the words "pig-odor research." Heh. Heh. Federal funding to study pig crap! Heh. Heh.
Then Doyle explained that pig odor is actually a pretty big problem for Midwestern agricultural states like his, at which point O'Donnell pretended that her objection all along had been the way the funding came to be -- via earmark -- rather than what it was for. Bull. If her objection had been with the funding mechanism, there would have been no reason to mention what the funding was for, certainly no reason to do so sarcastically. She wasn't commenting on the mechanism, she was behaving like a 12-year-old -- and not a particularly mature 12-year-old, either.
Now, I don't know if the honeybee funding or the cricket funding or the pig-odor research or any of the other earmarks are good ways to spend federal funds. Maybe they're well-run, effective programs that meet an important need, and maybe they aren't. What I do know is that simply cracking jokes about crickets and bees and pig waste rather than taking even 20 seconds to determine what the funding is intended to do is a spectacularly bad way to find out.
America faces great challenges. We are unlikely to meet those challenges through deliberate stupidity. From MediaMatters.

THIS IS NOT EASY TO WATCH. HELP TO STOP IT.

2009-03-11T08:40:00.002-05:00

BEFORE YOU BUY FUR CONSIDER THE SUFFERING YOU ARE CONTRIBUTING TO ONE OF GOD'S CREATIONS. AND THEN DON'T BUY IT!!!

Pledge to go fur-free at PETA.org.

WE LIVE IN AN ASSININE WORLD WHERE CRUELTY THRIVES.

2009-03-11T08:34:00.001-05:00

Help Stop the Cruel Fur Industry.

LIMBAUGH MAKES MILLIONS OFF STUPID PEOPLE

2009-03-07T08:35:00.002-06:00

Marketing deception to the intellectually starved "Riechwing masses" is very profitable. But it gets in the way of intelligent national debate.

Limbaugh takes complex issues, simplifies them, and sells his position with rhetoric. He, like many radio personalities, constantly employs logical fallacies– It is not too difficult to choose a topic whereby he can then simplify another’s argument and then easily “prove” it’s wrong.

There are two problems:
One, there’s a market for it. Many people on the left and the right want to hear this kind of stuff. They tune into their favorite station or pick up the latest book filled with nonsense written by political opportunists such as Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, or Michelle Malkin to name a few. People want to reinforce their own distorted beliefs. They have a need to believe they are the guardians of American values which these media prostitutes are happy to define for them.

Two, most people are not intellectual enough to think for themselves. They allow people like Limbaugh to think for them. Limbaugh makes the issues he talks about digestible for them. It’s the same thing with political adds. They distort the facts slightly and simplify them to make their argument digestible to stupid people. The fact is, most people are not intellectual enough to understand complex issues.
I think the problem is with the masses, not necessarily Limbaugh. Glenn Nunley. North Florida.