Thursday, December 17, 2009

What Must Obama do about the Lie of the Century?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Obama should get off his butt and insist upon war crimes trials of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condo Rice. That Iraq had WMD was a bald faced lie to justify the seizure of Middle East oil fields! Ergo --every Iraqi death following is one count in a WAR CRIMES INDICTMENT on the scale of those charged to Adolph Hitler and high mucky mucks in the murderous Third Reich.
TITLE 18 >(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

-- PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441, War crimes
I say let the trials begin with George W. Bush who believed himself above the law and that the US Constitution was just a 'goddamned piece of paper'!
The government official who wrote the first draft of the "dodgy dossier" that helped propel Britain into war in Iraq today admits, "We were wrong."

John Williams, a former Foreign Office aide, said last night that publication of his document would expose how members of Tony Blair's team were locked in a mindset that made military action inevitable.

On Wednesday, ministers will hit a deadline for publishing the 2002 document, after years of resistance.

The Williams draft was written in September 2002, only days after Mr Blair, then Prime Minister, announced that the Government would publish a dossier of intelligence showing that Saddam Hussein threatened the world with his weapons.

The draft was not disclosed at the Hutton inquiry into the death in 2003 of the former Iraq arms inspector David Kelly. The scientist had suggested the dossier was exaggerated to justify the UK joining the 2003 invasion.

--'Dodgy dossier' was 'wrong', its author says, The Independant
According to the Times of London, Ministers had been warned in July 2002 that it "had no choice but to find a way" of making the American-led invasion of Iraq legal. In other words, the government in Britain KNEW that what Bush was doing in and to Iraq was a prosecutable war crime but, instead of doing the right thing, Britain sought to 'make it legal'. The very phrase --'to make it legal' --speaks to guilt and pre-meditation of both the US government of George W. Bush and the British government of Tony Blair in whom so many hopes had been invested, later dashed by the corrupting influences of the worst and most criminal White House in US history.


Damn Liars and War Criminals!

If the nation had wanted another eight years of war, a total of some twenty years of quagmire, war crimes and other atrocities. it might have put two idiots in the White House --John McCain and the even stupider Sarah Palin.

Rather, the nation wanted change and expressed that hope by electing an articulate man of substance. Committing the nation to an quaqmire well underway is NOT what the nation voted for. Another eight years of Bush's war crime is NOT the path the US should be on if it wishes to restore its blackened image throughout the world.


Nope! No WMD under the podium!
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Monday, December 14, 2009

Tucker Carlson: Was George W. Bush Preparing to Wage War on Space Aliens?

An excerpt from Tucker Carlson's show:
And speaking of aliens, is President Bush preparing for intergalactic war with our comrades in outer space? Former Canadian defense minister and deputy prime minister, Paul Hellyer, says, “Oh, yes.” He‘ll join us in just a few minutes to explain.

But we start tonight with the new RNC ad that blasts Democrats for having a, quote, “retreat and defeat plan for Iraq.” It also includes recent comments about the war from some prominent Democrats.

--'The Situation with Tucker Carlson'


Was George W. Bush Preparing to Wage War on Space Aliens?
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Friday, December 11, 2009

Official Lies about 911 Exposed

Guest Columnist, Dr. David Ray Griffin
Although John Farmer's "The Ground Truth" has attracted a lot of favorable attention, it is a deeply flawed book, containing misleading claims and providing an extremely one-sided account of 9/11.

Much of the attention received by the book has been prompted by misleading claims made by Farmer and his publisher. The book's dust-jacket calls it the "definitive account" of 9/11, but it actually deals almost entirely with only one question about that day: why the airliners were not intercepted.

Also, the book's subtitle calls it "the untold story" of 9/11 and its dust-jacket says that it "breathtakingly revises" our understanding of that day. In reality, however, it simply provides new support for the story told about the planes in "The 9/11 Commission Report," which appeared in 2004, and in two publications that appeared in 2006: Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton's book "Without Precedent," and Michael Bronner's essay in "Vanity Fair."

Most provocatively, Farmer presents his book as a rejection of the "official" account of 9/11, which was given by "the government," by which he means primarily the FAA and the Pentagon. But this rhetoric is misleading for three reasons.

First, Farmer's book is a defense of the 9/11 Commission's report, which he calls "accurate, and true" (2), and the Commission was itself a governmental body: its chairman, Thomas Kean, was appointed by Bush; the other members were appointed by Congress; and the executive director, Philip Zelikow, was essentially a member of the Bush White House.

Second, the "official account of 9/11," as generally understood, is the Bush-Cheney administration's conspiracy theory, according to which the 9/11 attacks resulted from a conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and some members of al-Qaeda, and Farmer supports this theory.

Third, in rejecting the "official version," Farmer is referring only to the first version of the official account. It was replaced in 2004 by the 9/11 Commission's version, which since then has been the official version of the official account. In spite of his rhetoric, therefore, Farmer is defending the official account of 9/11 produced by the government in 2004, so the book is far less radical than it has been promoted as being.

Even more serious than the book's misleading rhetoric is its one-sidedness. Rather than containing an impartial examination of various types of relevant evidence, this book by Farmer - a former prosecuting attorney - reads like a lawyer's brief: Besides citing a large number of facts that appear to support the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory and trying to undermine some of the contrary evidence (which supports the alternative theory, according to which 9/11 was an inside job), it seeks to suppress, by simply ignoring, the enormous bulk of this contrary evidence.

This one-sided approach is acceptable within an adversarial law court, given the presence of an opposing lawyer, but it does not result in a book that is acceptable by scholarly standards.

The one-sidedness of Farmer's book is manifest in his endnotes, which include no reference to any writings aimed at exposing serious problems with the 9/11 Commission: Besides not referring to any of my own books, one of which is entitled "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Farmer does not even mention "The Commission" by former New York Times writer Philip Shenon - who pointed out, among other things, that Zelikow had secretly written a detailed outline of the Commission's report before his research staff had even begun its work.

This bibliographic one-sidedness is important because it is reflected in substantive one-sidedness, one form of which is the ignoring of a great number of relevant facts. I will mention 15.

1. Claiming that the military did not have information about AA 77 in time to prevent it from striking the Pentagon, Farmer strongly attacks the claim (in the first version of the official account) that the FAA had notified the military about this flight at 9:24 AM. In doing so, he ignores a memo - even though it was discussed and read into the Commission's record in May 2003 - that was sent by the FAA's Laura Brown, explaining that 9:24 was only the time of the "formal notification" - that the FAA had set up phone bridges with the Pentagon and that "real-time information . . . about . . . Flight 77 . . . was conveyed continuously during the phone bridges before the formal notification" (Griffin, "The New Pearl Harbor Revisited" [NPHR] Chs. 1 & 2).

2. Simply assuming that Osama bin Laden authorized the 9/11 attacks, Farmer fails to mention that the FBI has admitted that "no hard evidence" supports this assumption (Griffin, "9/11 Contradictions" [9/11Contra] Ch. 18).

3. While mentioning that some of the alleged hijackers spent time in Las Vegas (62), Farmer fails to point out that, while there and in other places, they drank, went to strip clubs, and did other things that contradicted the Commission's portrayal of them as devout Muslims ready to die for their faith (9/11Contra Ch. 15).

4. Farmer calls Hani Hanjour, who allegedly flew AA 77 (a Boeing 757) through an extremely difficult trajectory to crash into the Pentagon, a "trained pilot" (45), failing to mention the much-documented fact that Hanjour could not even safely fly a single-engine plane (9/11Contra Ch. 19).

5. While claiming that "American 77 crashed into the Pentagon at a speed of 530 miles per hour" (186), Farmer does not point out that, according to the official seismic report, no station, including one only 63 km away, recorded the impact. He also fails to mention that many witnesses at the scene, both inside and outside, reported seeing no crashed airliner (NPHR Ch. 2).

6. Claiming that the alleged hijackers purchased tickets and boarded planes (62, 106), Farmer fails to mention that none of their names - indeed, no Arab names whatsoever - were on the passenger manifests of the flights released by the airlines or on the Pentagon autopsy report (NPHR Ch. 6).

7. Repeating the Commission's claim that Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari took an early morning flight from Portland (Maine) to Boston to catch American Flight 11 (103-05), Farmer does not point out that this story was a late invention, created after authorities learned that Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, originally said to have taken that flight, had not died on 9/11 (9/11Contra Ch. 16).

8. Writing as if the alleged phone calls from the airliners actually happened, Farmer does not point out that, after originally supporting the view that many of the reported calls were made on cell phones, the FBI in 2004 - after members of the 9/11 Truth Movement showed that cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners would have been impossible - quietly withdrew its support for such calls. The FBI thereby contradicted, among others, Deena Burnett, who was positive that she had been called by her husband, Tom Burnett (whom Farmer mentions), because she recognized his cell phone number on her Caller ID (9/11Contra Ch. 17).

9. Farmer repeats the claim, supported in 2004 by "The 9/11 Commission Report," that CNN commentator Barbara Olson had twice called from AA 77 to talk to her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson (163, 166). But Farmer fails to point out that in 2006, after members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had reported that American's 757s did not have onboard phones, the FBI - in its report for the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (the so-called 20th hijacker) - said that Barbara Olson's (one) attempted call did not go through and therefore lasted "0 seconds" (9/11Contra Ch. 8).

10. Farmer endorses the claim that the hijackers had box-cutters (161, 163), not mentioning the fact that this claim had been made only in the reported calls from Barbara Olson, which the FBI now says never happened (9/11Contra Ch 8).

11. While repeating the Commission's claim that al-Qaeda hijackers finally succeeded in breaking into UA 93's cockpit 30 seconds after they started trying (189), Farmer fails to ask why, in all that time, the pilots did not use the transponder to squawk the hijack code - a procedure that takes about 2 seconds (NPHR Ch. 6).

12. While claiming, like the Commission, that "Vice President Cheney learned that the Pentagon had been hit while he was in the tunnel under the White House leading to the shelter" (207), Farmer does not point out that Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told the Commission that Cheney had been in the shelter (the Presidential Emergency Operations Center) at least since 9:20 AM, hence about 20 minutes before the reported time of the Pentagon attack - an observation that was supported by other witnesses, including counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke (9/11Contra Ch. 2).

13. While acknowledging that Richard Clarke's account of his White House videoconference contradicts the 9/11 Commission's claims about the whereabouts of not only Cheney but also Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Farmer simply asserts that Clarke's account "does not square in any significant respect with what occurred that morning" (184), failing to point out that the question of who told the truth could be cleared up simply by looking at the videotape.

14. Suggesting that the Twin Towers came down because each one was "fragile at its core" (28), Farmer implicitly denies the fact that each tower was supported by 47 massive core columns and ignores the question of why several scientific studies, including one by the US Geological Survey, showed that the dust at Ground Zero contained various elements that, unless explosives had been used to bring down the buildings, should not have been there (Griffin, "The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7," Ch. 4).

15. Although Farmer's entire case for the 9/11 Commission's version of the official account, which involves his accusing a remarkable number of people of lying, rests entirely on logs and audiotapes not examined by the Commission until several years after 9/11, he fails to consider reasons that have been provided for believing that these tapes and logs had been doctored (NPHR Chs 1-3, 10).

There would be much more to say in a complete review, but the above points suffice to suggest that Farmer's book is deeply flawed, providing an account that is far from the "ground truth" about 9/11.

--David Ray Griffin, PhD

If 911 had not been an inside job, it would have been investigated! The cover up that followed has only one purpose: the protection of the guilty! It is not only the absurd, alleged conspiracy of 19 Arab hijackers, a cover story for which there is absolutely no convincing or admissible evidence, it is the fact that the events that day were deliberately covered up and access to evidence denied investigators.
It was odd to me that I was dispatched to go to New York even before the second plane hit the South Tower, while the media was still reporting only that a “small plane” had collided with the North Tower — far too small of a catastrophe at that point to involve FEMA . FEMA was mobilized within minutes, whereas it took ten days for it to deploy to New Orleans to respond to Hurricane Katrina, even with abundant advance warning! It was odd to me that all cameras were so fiercely prohibited within the secured perimeter of Ground Zero, that the entire area was declared a crime scene and yet the “evidence” within that crime scene was so rapidly removed and destroyed. And then it was very odd to me when I learned that FEMA and several other federal agencies had already moved into position at their command center at Pier 92 on September 10th, one day before the attacks! ...

We are asked to believe that all four of the “indestructible” black boxes of the two jets that struck the twin towers were never found because they were completely vaporized, yet I have footage of the rubber wheels of the landing gear nearly undamaged, as well as the seats, parts of the fuselage and a jet turbine that were absolutely not vaporized. This being said, I do find it rather odd that such objects could have survived fairly intact the type of destruction that turned most of the Twin Towers into thin dust. And I definitely harbor some doubts about the authenticity of the “jet” turbine, far too small to have come from one of the Boeings!

--Kurt Sonnenfeld, 9/11 FEMA videographer at Ground Zero goes public
Among the many lies about 911, the most egregious are the 'official ones' put forward by the Bush administration and Bush personally. Make no mistake about it: the story of 19 Arab hijackers co-ordinated from a cave in Afghanistan by a man who was most certainly already dead of kidney failure, is the most absurd lie among them. If Bush had taken his 'case' to court, a 'burden of proof' would have been imposed. It would have been interesting to see the government prosecutor attempt to 'prove' a case against a man that that could not have been proven to have been alive let alone co-ordinate multiple hijackings with cell phones from inside a remote cave in Afghanistan!

The many lies about 911 are evidence of guilt. The guilty are most always most motivated to cover up their crimes and only an idiot would suppress evidence if it would exonerate him!

Bush ordered the destruction of evidence, in fact, the cover up of 911. He and his administration shut down every investigation. Bush hid the truth. At the very least, the Bush administration obstructed justice because it is fully culpable for the inside job we call 911. And the lot of them should be indicted and put on trial for the crimes of high treason and mass murder.


911: An Inside Job
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CIA Efforts to Control World Distribution of 'Illicit' Drugs

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

DEA agents were photographed among first responders on 911. That's curious. What interest have drug enforcement agents in this alleged act of 'terrorism'?

Connect some dots: upon the 911 pretext, the US invaded Afghanistan whose 'cash crop' of 'poppies' was under threat. Without poppies, US drug dealers may be hard pressed to stay in business. That applies, as well, to the CIA which most certainly financed Iran-Contra almost entirely 'off the books'.

If the US/CIA hoped to control this lucrative trade, the Taliban had to go. I wonder how many CIA 'black ops' have been financed 'off the books' (as was Iran/Contra) with the proceeds of its various drug sales?
An August, 1996, series in the San Jose Mercury News by reporter Gary Webb linked the origins of crack cocaine in California to the contras, a guerrilla force backed by the Reagan administration that attacked Nicaragua's Sandinista government during the 1980s. Webb's series, "The Dark Alliance," has been the subject of intense media debate, and has focused attention on a foreign policy drug scandal that leaves many questions unanswered.

This electronic briefing book is compiled from declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, including the notebooks kept by NSC aide and Iran-contra figure Oliver North, electronic mail messages written by high-ranking Reagan administration officials, memos detailing the contra war effort, and FBI and DEA reports. The documents demonstrate official knowledge of drug operations, and collaboration with and protection of known drug traffickers. Court and hearing transcripts are also included.

--The Contras, Cocaine, and Cover Operations
U.S. govt 'Dirty Tricks' are bankrolled 'off the books', primarily drug sales. It should be clear by now --drug revenues are the source of US/CIA interest in Afghanistan and its antipathy to the Taliban which had insisted upon upon control of its own cash crop --poppies.
“Given the global context of the war on drugs-coupled with growing recognition since September 11, 2001 (9/11), of the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism-the mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and efforts to forge effective interagency partnerships and coordination are increasingly important. the Government Accountability Office was asked to examine, in the context of the post-9/11 environment, DEA’s priorities, interagency partnerships and coordination mechanisms, and strategic plan and performance measures. GAO reviewed DEA policy, planning, and budget documents and visited 7 of DEA’s 21 domestic field offices and 3 of its 7 regional offices abroad-sites selected to reflect diverse drug-trafficking threats, among other factors. GAO also contacted other relevant federal agencies-including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)-and various state and local partner agencies.

-GAO Report on DEA’s Post-9/11 Drug Control Responsibilities
Let's cut to the chase: that 'nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism' is called the CIA. The CIA finances 'black ops' and 'secret operations' off the books by trafficking in drugs. Is there any doubt that Bush Sr's sudden disillusionment with Manuel Noriega had to do with Noriega either demanding a bigger cut or daring to control the supply?
He [Bush Sr] ordered the invasion of Panama, which began just after midnight on December 20, 1989. It was the twelfth U.S. invasion of that country since 1903. The mission of U.S. forces was to depose long-time CIA asset General Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug trafficker. It was the largest airborne assault since World War II. When it was over, the Army excluded the press and Red Cross from entering heavily bombed areas for three days while soldiers incinerated some civilian casualties and buried others in mass graves.

Bush’s Defense Secretary, Richard Cheney claimed a death toll of between 500 and 600. But independent human rights groups put the death toll between 3,000 and 5,000 with about 25,000 left homeless. This military operation turned out to be practice for even greater press censorship, propaganda and human rights violations during and after Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. air and ground attack that failed to depose Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, in 1990. That failure eventually eroded public confidence in Bush and contributed to his defeat by Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election.

--Famous Texans, George H.W. Bush
In Afghanistan, a similar motive may be ascribed to US 'interests' but, certainly, a different modus operandi. The Taliban had, in fact, threatened to wipe out the poppy fields and end the traffic. Could the CIA tolerate this affrontery? Would the CIA tolerate the loss of revenue?
CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: "We'll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us." The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy).

--Steve Kangas, A Timeline of CIA Atrocities

Pakistan is a case in point.
Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been propping up Musharraf's military regime with $3.6 billion in economic aid from the US and a US-sponsored consortium, not to mention $900 million in military aid and the postponement of overdue debt repayments totaling $13.5 billion. But now the administration is debating whether Musharraf has become too dependent on Islamic extremist political parties in Pakistan to further US interests, and whether he should be pressured to permit the return of two exiled former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who have formed an electoral alliance to challenge him in presidential elections scheduled for next year.

--Pakistan: Friend or Foe? The US shouldn't prop up President Musharraf's military regime, Selig S. Harrison

The late Benazir Bhutto revealed the truth before she was brutally gunned down in the streets of Karachi: US policy causes world terrorism. She died before she could tell the rest of the story.
When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Benazir Bhutto, A False Choice for Pakistan

--Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
The amount of monies involved is not chicken feed.
Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies.

--Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban

US/CIA Terrorism Financed by Drugs and Oil
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Thursday, December 10, 2009

The Banality of Evil Applies to Everyone

by Guest Columnist, Jacob G. Hornberger

One of the aspects of the Iraq War that has fascinated me the most is how CIA agents and U.S. soldiers could actually bring themselves to kill, torture, and sexually abuse Iraqis. After all, don’t forget that neither the Iraqi people nor their government participated in the 9/11 attacks. The worst “crime” that any Iraqi committed against any American was resisting an unlawful invasion of his country.

Nonetheless, even though the Iraqi people were innocent of any attacks on the United States, many CIA agents and most U.S. soldiers have been able to bring themselves to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in an invasion and occupation of a country that never attacked the United States, and murder, torture, and sexually abuse dozens of Iraqis detainees and prisoners.

How is a government able to bring men and women to do such things to people who never did anything to harm the United States?

I’m currently reading a fascinating book entitled Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. It’s about a police unit from Hamburg, Germany, which was assigned the task of rounding up hundreds of Jews in villages in Poland and shooting them at point-blank range.
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Praise the Lord and Pull My Finger

And a big tip of the cowboy hat to Mike Finnegan of Crooks and Liars. He was kind enough to share this with facebook.


Pull My Finger and Say hallelujah

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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Limbaugh Commits Prosecutable Treason

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Rush Limbaugh has urged that a military coup overthrow the current government in Washington. That is a prosecutable crime called 'seditious treason' and there is probable cause to indict Rush Limbaugh and put him on trial.
Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government;

or Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence;

or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof - Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms "organizes" and "organize", with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include
the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units
of such society, group, or assembly of persons.

--18 U.S.C. § 2385 : US Code - Section 2385: Advocating overthrow of Government
Sedition refers to any overt conduct deemed by the legal authority as encouraging or supporting an insurrection against the established law and order. Limbaugh has advocated military insurrection, that the United States Military Academy detain and/or other wise 'arrest' Barack Obama, the legal and fairly elected President of the United States. Limbaugh is on record supporting a military coup. Given the price of 'air time' his support is material! It is an open and shut case of sedition.

Limbaugh's remarks should be placed in context --his record of bigotry, hate, and demagoguery. It has poisoned political debate, exploited the abandonment of the 'Fairness Doctrine' which previously guaranteed access to opposing views.

Limbaugh has made similar remarks before. Speaking of the Honduran coup Rush had this to say: "The coup was what many of you wish would happen here, without the military"; and, "If we had any good luck, Honduras would send some people here and help us get our government back".

Recently Newsmax columnist John L. Perry was disgraced and humiliated after making a similar suggestion. Newsmax immediately removed the column and distanced their publication from any affiliation with Perry
Unfair and unbalanced, both Fox and Limbaugh have exploited positions of privilege. The fact is: media access is denied every one but the very, very, very rich and the very, very, very privileged. This will only change when an indictment for treason makes the point very clear to the right wing: with freedom of speech comes responsibility and there is, in fact, no freedom of speech in a nation that has denied that right to everyone but an increasingly tiny elite that is rich enough to own Clear Channel or FOX! Freedom of speech in America? Sure --but only if you happen to be rich!

Also see: Politics or sedition?, Rush Limbaugh calls for military coup

Following are some of the comments this article got on facebook:
Patricia Mangan
When is everyone going to say Enough is Enough?
Yesterday at 10:57pm · Delete

Patricia Mangan
He is sickening!
Yesterday at 10:58pm · Delete

David Richland
This prick needs to be thrown in jail. The fact that he walks free after spouting this treason is not just offensive - it hurts the credibility of the government. If someone had said this during the Bush administration they would have gone right to jail, no questions asked... and Bush would have been within his rights to incarcerate them. This kind of talk is just going to escalate until all traitors are held accountable.
Yesterday at 11:56pm · Delete

Ronald E Carson
What David said!!
12 hours ago · Delete

Madison Bradshaw
Rush never fails to amaze me. He constantly raises the bar for stupidity and also is truly an enemy of our country when he starts spouting out a call for a military coup. Absolutely, ditto what David said. NO ONE could get away with that if spoken during the Bush years even though he truly became guilty - and while in office - of committing ... See Morecrimes against humanity. Will we ever see justice done to Bush and his followers who are the cause of so many deaths - for a LIE! Then there's the issue about practically destroying our country economically, the list goes on. And the right - full of certified crazy ideas - get away with vocalizing this kind of spin. Joke? He may make it seem like he's joking - we know it's a subliminal message to agitate people in the hope of his sick ramblings becoming a reality.
11 hours ago · Delete

Billy Regan
I second time to prosecute Limbaugh. Put the sorry B
in jail and throw the key away. He needs to grab his
ears & snatch his head out of his A. How can who ever
he works for keep supporting him?
11 hours ago · Delete

Patricia Mangan
They all try to out do themselves by their stupidity and their hate!
7 hours ago ·
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Thursday, November 26, 2009

Living Standards Declining in America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The US used to boast the highest standard of living in the world. Those days are long past. Today --the US is among the most inequitable nations on earth where is also found those nations enduring the very worst standards of living. The US --once number one --is not even in the top ten.
According the ranking, the country with the best living conditions is the Scandinavian country of Norway. Helped by a relatively small population of only five million people, combined with an abundance of energy resources such as oil and natural gas, the people of Norway also live in one of the most democratic countries in the world. Further contributing to Norway holding the top ranking in the report has been the ability of the socialist government to continue to provide the generous social benefits the government provides due in large part from its massive sovereign wealth fund, which is the second largest in the world at approximately 330 billion dollars.

--The richest country in the world does not have the highest living standards
About the current crisis begun in the Bush years, some have said that the stiumli were/are 'too small'. The real problem is that the wrong people got the 'stimuli'. Those getting the stimuli were the banksters who had created this mess to begin with! Much of the 'stimuli' wound up in offshore tax havens in which may be found much of US 'wealth'! Much of the 'stimuli' never stimulated anything but the greed of those getting the windfalls. Is there any evidence that the 'stimuli' ever created a single job? Were any industries in any way 'stimulated'? Were any 'stimuli' given those who might have used the money to get out of poverty, buy a home or get an education?

'Trickle down' stimuli did not work because 'trickle down theory' is bullshit!

Wealth nor 'stimuli' trickle down! Wealth did not trickle down for Ronald Reagan, whose tax cuts began the current trend, and wealth has not trickled-down nor stimulated a recovery. Alas! Nothing is learned from the lessons of history. The lesson to be learned from the Ronald Reagan debacle, the sad effects of which we still live with, is that 'stimuli' are mere windfalls for elites and, in fact, began the trend in which the wealthy got richer and the those just getting by fell off the bottom rung.

Now --this is not a hit job on Obama. The current situation are simply the result of trends begun with the ascension of Ronald Reagan to the White House. It was Reagan's tax cut, benefiting only the upper quintile, which resulted in the long term trend in which just one percent of the total US population now owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined. Only coincidence theorists believe that it is only coincidental that those nation's having the highest living standards are, likewise, those nations boasting the more egalitarian socieities.

But nothing will change in America, however, until attitudes are changed. Tragically, attitudes change slowly. A significant change may require a major depression, perhaps a generation or two before the reality of it all seeps in.
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Wingnuts: 'Rogue', Rouge or Irrelevant?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Wingnuttery gets more absurd with each passing day. The wingnut la-la land has come un-glued and completely out of touch with reality. Found on Facebook a poignant reminder of the state of the economy, fact apparently lost on wingnuts!
Here's where I get my stamina and keep my sanity to:
  • - Apply for 30 jobs a week for 12 weeks and never hear back
  • - Spend 3 hours weekly with the bank to keep my home
  • after 4 months and 4 mortgage applications, send in the 5th mortgage application for the 5th month.

--Anonymous, Found on Facebook
Now --the right wing has derided Barack Obama's plan to put millions to work in a new industry --green energy! The right wing is in no position to deride anyone. This is the US right wing that put millions out of work with idiotic tax cuts and other windfalls for Wall Street banksters, buddies, cronies, stall buddies and privileged elites. To these idiots and elites, I have an appropriate epithet that begins with the letter 'F' and ends with 'you'!

Realistically, 'green energy' has a future. A world without it doesn't! It is a better, a brighter future than, say, a lifetime career in government run pits in which are dug out dollar bills made worthless by GOP 'sellouts' to China and Japan. What if the plan should put millions back to work and re-stimulated the economy?

What if it should fail? So what! We'll be no worse off! We we would be no worse off if it failed to create a single job! We will be considerably better off if it should put a million or more back to work! And infinitely better off if, by exploiting this new resource, America should find its better self again, a new industry, a future for millions now without hope!

It is not surprising that the geniuses of the utterly failed 'right wing' have the derided the idea. Keep in mind that these are the same folk that think 'privatization' of Social Security, letting the big banks who have brought us to the brink of utter economic collapse, administrate your retirement is a brilliant idea!

IDIOTS!!

These are the idiots who lambaste an Obama plan to create millions of productive jobs in green industries! I say Obama's plan is infinitely superior to the idiots' plan to turn over the only government program to have ever run a surplus to robber barons, speculators and fast buck artists on Wall Street!

The US economy collapsed because it contracted. It contracted because it produces very little that the rest of the world wants to buy. Check The CIA's World Fact Book for proof of this. The US is at the bottom of the list with the World's largest trade deficit, now called the Negative Current Account Balance. China, which props up the dollar as per agreements with the Bush crime family, is on top of the CIA's list with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance.

There was never a real opposition, i.e, a 'left wing' in America. The US system is just two wings of one party and there was, therefore, no restraint, no balance, no moderating influence as a result of 'compromise'.

$ 150 billion spent on windmills, solar panels and 'energy efficiency' is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions squandered and lost forever as a result of the overt criminality of the big banks in cahoots with the Fed. That's money lost forever, a contraction of the economy that caused the current depression! Obama's plan will create some 5 million jobs and promote economic growth. Obama could not do worse and, most certainly, will do better than a plan first proposed by John Maynard Keynes.
. . . fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is [italics added]. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

--John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Macmillan, St Martin’s Press for the Royal Economic Society, 1973, p. 129).
It's time the US went back to work after having been told by the Reagan/Bush regimes that the US could survive by exporting its 'expertise'! Uh huh! Expertise in what?? The US is now paying the price for having abandoned its industries, having sold out to China, having stabbed labor in the back! The US never had a viable 'labor movement' that, in Poland, resulted in the fall of the communist regime. In America, by contrast, labor was derided as 'communist' and, under Ronald Reagan, made 'irrelevant'. Reagan cannot be 'credited' with having single handedly neutered the movement. The many professional murders by Pinkerton's, the Jihad waged by Gen. Harrison Grey Otis (Los Angeles), the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lesser known atrocities paved the way.

Having marginalized dissent, Reagan tax cuts enriched only the upper quintile, the nation's richest twenty percent. The trend was clearly visible in charts prepared by the Brookings Institution, BEA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics et al. Just as clearly was the brief reversal in Bill Clinton's second term. Alas, all 'gains' were lost under Bush Jr. Today --just one percent of the US population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined. The time has come to take another look at Keynes. Obama's plan is, at least, a start.
In the 1920s Keynes visited Russia, where he was able to meet some of his wife's impoverished relatives. Unlike his friends Beatrice and Sidney Webb, or the dramatist George Bernard Shaw, Keynes wasn't impressed by Stalin's Russia. "How can I accept a doctrine," he asked, "which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world?" But Keynes was barely more enthusiastic about capitalism as it was practised in the contemporary world. "Such a system," he wrote, "has to be immensely, not just moderately successful to survive." The Great Slump made it clear that capitalism was neither.

--John Maynard Keynes: Can the great economist save the world?
The current 'crisis' was a long time in making. Compounding the problem are several factors; 1) the 'elite' one percent are joined at the hip to the Military/Industrial complex. Like Rome, the US makes its 'living' killing people in those foreign nations rich in the resources needed by the US, 2) under Ronald Reagan, the US had begun an 'export' of jobs, most notably Japan and China; 3) education is neglected in America, the best example being Texas where the percentage graduating high school slipped to last in the nation --the result of back to back incompetent regimes: Bush and Perry. Texas now beats out Mississippi for dead last in education. Concurrently, the state's prison population is burgeoning, enriching the corporations to whom was awarded the contracts in which they house the thousands (millions nationwide) for whom the only career left them is crime.

In the meantime, there is secessionist talk and not just among rednecks, death row inmates in Texas, or tea bagging imbeciles down south.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.

That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.

"We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity," said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South.

Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga.

BILL POOVEY, Secessionists Meeting in Tennessee
I submit that the Southern Secessionists are still nuts! The economy of the south is in no better shape that it was when it was based almost entirely upon slave labor. What does the South export now except bigots, bullshit and tours of Plantation homes where the great grandfathers of bigots convinced themselves that they were 'aristocrats'! As the Rude Pundit put it so eloquently --fuck the South!
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Monday, November 23, 2009

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Albert Einstein said: "the men who possess real power in this country have no intention of ending the cold war." It is one of the most incredible 'coincidences' in history that as the Berlin Wall fell and communism ceased to be the global threat we had been told it was, a new 'bogey man' would arise, as if on cue, to take its place. World terrorism', like a good steward, is now on the job, keeping the crooks on K-street and the Pentagon in firm control of one of the largest, most dangerous empires since Rome.

Like the U.S. today, the Roman economy was 'militarized', the empire over-extended, the battles fought by mercenaries. The currency might get you into the Coliseum for the 'games' but little else. Thus --bread and circuses were popular. When the Praetorian Guard auctioned the Roman Empire to Didius Julianus the sale was completed in Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman Sesterces.

Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:

1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.

2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies.
The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle.

Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension.

I have talked to so many economists and when asked what is the crux of the present financial problem, they all respond in unison, “it is the global imbalances… the West consumes too much while the East saves too much and consumes not enough”. This is exemplified by the huge US trade deficits on the one part and China’s massive surpluses on the other.

--Red Alert: The Second Wave of The Financial Tsunami
The U. S. is routinely pimped on K-Street and, like Rome's sesterces and denarius, the dollar is all but worthless; China boasts the Worlds largest POSITIVE current account balance; the US the largest trade deficit. China props up the US dollar but only because it has to. This Faustian bargain was first cut by Bush Sr who paved the way for Nixon's famous trip to China's Forbidden City.
In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”

Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more.

--Paul Krugman, The Phantom Menace
Some have said that the stiumli were not enough, in other words, 'too small'. It was not that the stimuli were too small but that those getting the stimuli were the banksters who had created this mess to begin with. Alas --nothing is learned from the lessons of history.

Most economists agree: the West consumes too much and the East, primarily China does not consume enough. Compounding the problem --China props up the dollar but only because it had to dump cheap product upon the American market via Wal-Mart, it's retail 'arm' in the U.S.


Rome


The Rise and Fall of an Empire
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