Tag Archives: Lobbyists

The Wall Street crisis was an inside job

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911 was an outside jobWHO’S LIKENING THE WALL STREET CRISIS TO 9/11?! One was perpetrated by insiders, with the collusion of the US government, to exploit citizen’s fears, and restructure our representational Democracy into an authoritarian oligarchy. Which act of state terror against the American people does this describe?

And OH MY GOODNESS, would it be anti-Zionist to notice the same cast of characters? Religion has nothing to do with it, at least I’m not about to suggest greed and avarice are inherent to one spiritual belief. We’re expected to ignore that high finance shares a common, unfairly maligned thus protected preemptively against defamation, tribal membership.

There’s an alternative solution to the emergency on Wall Street which I’ve heard floating around. Considering we’re being advised to put out the fire by enlisting the employment of a high priced bucket brigade consisting entirely of the arsonists themselves.

I favor rounding up the guilty parties, those whose pockets are bulging with the profits made from the missing leverage, and have them bail out their precious system. Their collected wealth should amount to a pretty penny.

(Not even close? Who has any idea what a billion or a trillion dollars looks like? Except maybe those who absconded with the $13B missing in Iraq. In any case, late night talk show hosts should quit joking that Barack Obama could raise the needed trillions in a month’s worth of fundraisers.)

Where was I, line them up, empty their pockets and shoot them? Naw. ASK the bankers to ante up. If they don’t want to keep their game afloat, why should we?

No really. Was this an attack on our economic system, on par with the 9/11 strike against US secular trade exploitation of the Third World? Then by their own definition it’s terrorism. These ruthless bankers are terrorists. Lock them away with their lawyers and accountants and lobbyists. Anyone who gives material support to terrorists is guilty, by their own rules.

In Money We Trust

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For decades, Republicans cried that Democrats were the problem. If only the voters would give the GOP control over the White House and Congress, they would fix everything. End pork-barrel spending, balance the budget, get the gov’t out of our private lives. In 2002, the voters took them up on it, and today the country is on the verge of collapse. And the Republicans have the nerve to try and blame the Democrats for it. Are Americans really that stupid? I guess we’ll find out in November.

NBC News exposes Palin’s lies. I guess they probably shouldn’t have demonized the “liberal” media at the convention, huh?

AP refuses to comply with SS demand that they turn over all copies of emails hacked from Palin’s hacked email account. The last I heard, this was still the USA, where Bush’s thugs don’t get to censor news they don’t like.

John McCain knows that lobbyists are what’s wrong with Washington. That’s why he hired EIGHTY THREE to run his campaign!

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 18 notes, thomasmc.com.

DHS and AIPAC implant fear cancer CELL, a house of horrors in Denver museum circuit (Photos) (Spoiler)

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the-CELL-center-for-empowered-living-and-learning
DENVER, COLORADO- Just in time for this year’s 9/11 commemoration, and in the spirit of deepening America’s public commitment to the self- described endless Global War On Terror, comes THE CELL, a permanent museum exhibit to keep US citizens vigilant to the treat of terrorism. The DHS has provided funds to AIPAC and erstwhile Jewish lobbyists to build this display at the Mizel Museum next to the Denver Art Museum. You might well ask, WHAT are Israeli/Jewish interests doing fanning the flames of the so-called GWOT?

From ML:

collaborators are Rand, MIPT, Lawson Terrorism Information Center, AIC, Melanie Pearlman, regional director of AIPAC, Toby Dershowitz, Courtney Green (Mizel’s daughter) Mark Dubowitz, David Grey, Michael Inlander, Jonathan Schanzer, David Heyman, Brian Michael Jenkins, spook, mercenary, and false flag agent with Kroll Associates, who was in charge of WTC security and hired John O’Neill, who fingered the US ambassador to Yemen in the USS Cole bombing, and who was killed on 9/11, and Clifford May, of the RMN, NY Times, Committee on the Present Danger, and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, ngo CIA fronts.

The CELL is an acronym for Center for Empowered Living and Learning, but in a political world where a reference to “lipstick” is automatically taken to refer to the Ugly American fundamentalist/ bigot/ corrupt/ simpleton/ sow running for GOP VP, the word “cell” is incredibly unsubtle. It’s the dreaded “sleeper cell” of dormant terrorists, meant to allude to the malignant cancer cell poised to spread until its host is dead. Fighting cancer of course means excising every single trace of an inclination of a tumor. While “cell” also describes a small organization, it has another definition certainly inconvenient to our would-be DHS fear-mongering jailers.

It’s a prison cell to which we confine ourselves for the sake of “security.” This hysterical fear spreads like a cancer throughout our nation, seeded by 9/11 and apparently folks who think we need regular inoculations of fear cells.

the-cell-anyone-anytime-anywhereThe display at the CELL is called ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE: UNDERSTANDING THE THREAT OF TERRORISM. It teaches people to join Neighborhood Watch programs, etc, and to keep in touch with the Department of Homeland Security.

When FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was encouraging Americans to overcome their fear. Like a parent’s bedside advice: there’s no bogeyman in the closet, it’s all in your head. How far have we fallen when our own leaders pervert FDR’s axiom to mean the only thing you have to fear is terror (fear itself). Never mind what you have to fear, just fear.

What then do AIPAC and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have to do with scaring Americans into serving the GWOT? Does Israel think that unless Americans are reminded to fear Islam, they might begin to question white man’s incursion into the Middle East? Are Israel’s atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon likely to come into question unless the American public is kept mesmerized by Muslim Terror?

To refer to terrorism as an ideology is already an adolescent fallacy. The term is even inappropriate to isolate a particular means of warfare. Terrorism may be a tactic, but you cannot differentiate between suicide bombers and aerial bombing, between beheadings and extra-judicial preemptive assassination, between kidnappings and extraordinary rendition and torture.
the-cell-doors
We’re making a visit to THE CELL today, by coincidence on 9/11.
I can’t wait to see how an entire exhibit is going to riff on the never forget always remember TO FEAR illogic. A little knowledge can plant the seed of fear, sufficient knowledge can weed it out.

UPDATE:
The good news is that THE CELL looks like a low-rent Sharper Image meets espionage store. What is the graphic on the front door, a sniper’s crosshairs? All the windows are mirrored except where neon text is scrolling cautionary warnings. In other windows silhouettes of crowds huddle together beneath illuminated shards of falling structures. Another window glamorizes rack after rack of data processing electronics.

denver-civic-center-cultural-complexThe main logo (photo at top of article) features a map of the world overlaid on a fingerprint. I had to laugh at the forced acronym. Center for Empowered Living and Learning. Isn’t to “Live and Learn” an expression for wisdom gained by experience, basically at the expense of mistakes made?

Most distressing however was to see this sign, an indication that the C.E.L.L. is not a temporary exhibit but an integral component of the Denver museum-scape. Does fear-mongering propaganda belong in the CULTURAL COMPLEX? Between Art, History and Library, a House of Horrors?

WE GO INSIDE!
THE CELL passcardThe visitor brochure explains that THE C.E.L.L. exhibit SHATTERED LIVES is “designed to encourage critical thinking.” But a step through its doors proves it intends everything but. With a patronizing audacity beyond Orwell, these A.G.E.N.T.S. lurk with sensory trauma to infect your personal American idyll with fear.

To my mind, they’re Alarmist Goons Elevating a Nonsensical Terrorism Scare.

Picture-taking is forbidden beyond the lobby doors, but after the collage assemblage in the atrium, there’s nothing to photograph. The ticketed portion of the ride consists of crooked halls filled simply with video screens, projections, and blurbs of text on the walls; self-described “sophisticated multimedia techniques.” Monitors and kiosks are peppered throughout in multiples, as if the installation were anticipating subway-strength traffic making a beeline through; or large school groups with no freedom to move laterally.

Of course, the omniscient repetition also indoctrinates us subliminally. The TV news clips sample a half dozen terrorism incidents, Munich, Lockerbie, Nairobi, et EL AL. Remote voices accompany still photos of bloodied carnage. Fear falling shards Amidst the intonations of observers and analysts ring two repeated motifs: JFK’s mocking condemnation of terrorists, and Edmund Burke’s admonition “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Someone can’t resist that adage. I wonder if it’s true.

PUTS YOU AT THE SCENE
Before I relate the plenty creepy details, I’ll jump straight to the orchestration’s third movement. Perhaps someone else can compare the programming of THE CELL according to known indoctrination stratagems. I’ll call the third chamber the climax. Automatically-timed doors enforce a six-minute collective “immersion.” Signs warn away anyone with a weak heart, etc, although I didn’t see an alternate passage around. Neither do the doors allow anyone to pass quickly through. They release the previous group before locking to entrap the next.

( S P O I L E R – A L E R T )
Inside, a video-surround chamber simulates a camera obscura viewpoint, first we’re at a summer fair in Denver’s Civic Center Park, then outside the DAM, then a sunny morning on the 16th Street Mall. The movement of bystanders and passersby around us sometimes slows or accelerates. Until SUDDENLY –OF COURSE– we’re at the epicenter of a FURIOUS EXPLOSION and our mid-west urban tranquility is engulfed in fire. Soon enough, floating in the flames come images of urban battlefields, destruction and carnage. Eventually we can recognize the iconic photographs of Pan Am Flight 103, and the rescue of embassy employees in Kenya, about which we were just reminded in the previous chamber. Then we’re treated to a large text message which reminds us that a terrorist attack can strike “anyone, anytime, anywhere,” and we’re released into an antechamber of analysis.

Actually, claustrophobes might want to know that every segment of THE CELL is time-released. But there will be intrusive control elements to offend everyone.

PERSONALIZED ID
For starters, the entrance fee is $8, or $6 to Coloradans. Can you think of why the cost of admission would be more expensive for out-of-state visitors? I can’t. But the discount means patrons must show their ID to buy a ticket. The clerk issues a computer receipt.

Along with your ticket you get a magnetic passcard which you’re instructed to use at progressive kiosks along your route. You swipe your card to gain access to biographical information about a particular victim of terror. The first row of kiosks will reveal a first page of info, a later pod will reveal a second page, etc. No matter which kiosk, your card will only access a single bio, meaning passcards are keyed to the visitor. Mine brought up a middle aged professor whose life was shattered by terrorism. Perhaps a younger visitor would be given a passcard corresponding to a like-aged victim of “Shattered Lives.” Learning, as their own immersion into THE CELL progressed, how their adopted personage fared in THEIR brush with terrorism.

INDOCTRINATION
Let’s see. First chamber: Kennedy, Burke and multimedia barrage. Second chamber: news clips, kiosks with bio part one. Third chamber: BOOM. Fourth chamber: Rand Corporation analysts, so-called experts sitting beneath bookshelves of law books. Dershowitz and the usual talking heads that you see as FOX advisers. One important meme is the accusation that the internet is increasingly being used as a propaganda tool of the Islamists. Websites, blogs, chat rooms are suspect. Trust only the credentialed media apparently…

Two of videos in the last chamber are timed so that you have to watch one, then the other. They include snippets of the videos available at the interactive displays, in case you had chosen not to watch them. There are numerous clips from Islamic television which purport to demonstrate how Muslim children are being indoctrinated against the west.

No forewarningPHOTOGRAPHS:
Here is what greets us at the entrance of THE CELL, before we even get to the exhibit. First, flashing images of violence and victims. Next, a collage of the FACES OF TERROR. Already we are able to recognize faces from the video sequences on the first wall. (Are there so few victims of terrorism? Or are the show’s makers deliberately limiting the selection of iconic fear-triggers?)

Faces of Terror
Faces of fear. Isn’t that what “terror” means? We can project ourselves in those images. Faces forever fearful.

Bright dark future for terrorismNext a map with cross-hairs roaming at seemingly random locations “anywhere.” The text explains that acts of terrorism began in the latter 20th century, and apparently EL AL airline was its principle early target.

Definition of Terrorism
What young scholar’s essay does not begin with a “definition?” In this case the word, even more typically, is “for various political, social and cultural reasons” defies definition. How extraordinary! (It reminds me of the www.thecell.org website, which by any standard is written for under-sophisticated readers.)

Terrorism shatters lives
Here’s the exhibit’s theme, SHATTERED LIVES, adjacent the reception desk ticket counter. The wall is papered with names, resembling the black marble of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, probably these are names from the WTC.

I was directed to take no pictures of the main installation, but I pulled my camera out again right before the exit door.

Mayor Hickenlooper says thanks
There I found Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper thanking everyone for visiting the C.E.L.L. and urging us to become active eyes and ears against the terrorist threat.

Giuliani says helloOf course, could there be any official statement about 9/11 without ex New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighing in? Etc, etc, and so it goes.

But I loved one of the parting shots, TV footage of Giuliani at Ground Zero in 2001 showed him wearing a mask. There’s the brave mayor making a quick round of handshakes, with workers notably not wearing any protection. Every one of those workers is now most famously dead, or suffering respiratory ailments in NYC hospices. While Giuliani still tramps around as 911 hero.

Wears mask at Ground Zero

Documentation of Sarah Palin’s rise

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While you burnish your peace buttons in anticipation of the McCain Shit-talking Express visit to Colorado Springs, check out Mark Lewis’ links on John McCain’s adopted pit-bull Sarah Palin. For example:
McCain camp announces Palin will do no interviews before election, only scripted speeches. See you tomorrow morning!

– Video of Palin pronouncement of a jihadist “holy war” against Muslims

– Entire video of sermon to church: Palin asks them to pray for $30 Billion gas pipeline

– History of her rise to power in Wasilla with her husband, father in law, mother in law, and state GOP

– Tried to fire librarian four days after she refused to remove books Palin didn’t like from library

– Letter from her main opponent at Wasilla city council on her lies and corruption

– Wants independent “TrooperGate” investigation called off and decided by state personnel board, 3 of which she appointed

– Top cop, fired for not firing sister’s ex, releases emails including from Todd Palin wanting him fired

– Staffer sent to get trooper fired delays investigation by not giving deposition and claiming legislature has no power

– State Trooper union says she and staff got into personnel files to dig for dirt on him

– Her personal lawyer is also on state payroll, so can make salary AND charge state $95,000 for her defense

– Family of 7, like hers, will get $22,400 in oil rebates this year from windfall profits tax like Obama proposed

– got $13,000 from Big Oil lobbyists for campaigns (above the table)

– asked for $197 million in earmarks, more, per capita, than any other state

– got $27 million in earmarks for Wasilla (pop: 6,700) using a lobbying firm tied to Jack abramoff

– supported “Bridge to Nowhere” pork, then turned against it and used the money for other projects

– 3 times McCain criticized earmarks from Alaskan Governor, Palin

– campaigned for Ted Stevens (7 felony indictments) before betraying him

– undeclared car wash business and one called “Rouge Cou” (Red Neck) found, and car wash ran afoul of the law

– Claims foreign policy experience in trip to Ireland, which was just a stop over at the airport

– Claims she visited the troops a year before Obama, but actually 1.5 years after Obama

– Alaska National Guard top leader complained to Palin about “crises” of “missions at risk” from lack of recruits

– Palin “commander in chief” experience consists of never issuing an order to the National Guard

– Conservative pundits, noonan and murphy, caught by mic left on, saying “it’s over” “not gonna work”, “political bullshit”

– Compendium of news reports of illegal, corrupt, unethical behavior in office and in campaigns

– Compendium of news reports: Palin’s history in Alaskan politics

– Fact check of Palin / McCain’s bullshit in speeches at the convention

– From another source, on bullshit and lies in Palin’s speech

Business unionism’s dead end

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laborers
Each year in the US, the labor unions get smaller and weaker. What is the cause of this since life is certainly not getting easier for the working class of our country?

Will the unions finally just evaporate into thin air? At this time they are providing about ZERO protection for the population from the corporations and their corporate run government.

In this blog we have talked at some length about the problems of ‘Peace’ organizations run as small businesses rather than as democratic community organizations opposed to war. We have the same phenomena in the Labor Movement and with the same results which are the demobilization of people rather than their mobilization. Organizations with small paid office staffs that separate themselves from the people they supposedly are serving lead to organizations that do not inspire people to move themselves. Why should they? They have no control over the organizations they are in. Apathy, disinterest, and demobilization results.

We also have to factor in the corporate control over trade unions themselves, which is achieved through the Democratic Party. Once again, this process parallels what happens with the “peace’ groups run by paid office types. In both types of organizations, trade union and ‘Peace’, the Conservatives office milieu that is cultivated by business models of organization see themselves a lobbyists, and lobbyists to the politicians. That becomes their principle focus. These types often talk about ‘speaking truth to power’, but what they mean is that they should spend all their time in some form of lobbying of Democratic Party politicians.

As a result, demonstrations and independent organizing are deliberately kept from happening, and excess value is given to hobnobbing with the corporate press currying ‘reporting’ and visiting the offices of political insiders with pleas in hand. This is activity that is seen as needing paid organizers separate from community control, whose folk are only seen as potentially messing up this lobbying effort.

This method of using business models inside community organizations has paralyzed the antiwar movement, and has beaten down the Labor Movement into non-existence. Ads a result, unions can hardly be found any where actually engaging in organizing. In fact, they can hardly be found in actually hanging on to the membership that is left. What it will take is a completely different model of organization to ever be able to rebuild these organizations. That is not presently on the scene and it will not occur in an easy manner, but will require much sacrifice and effort.

BTW, that foto of workers at the head of this column is taken from a day labor company site. These are some of the many workers abandoned by business unionism’s failed model of unionism.

Mary McFate Sapone aka non-profit spy

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Aka Mary Sapone McFateWhile Dennis Kucinich begins to shed light on the intelligence infiltration of civic and community groups, Mother Jones has tracked down a non-profit for-profit snoop. She’s volunteer over-achiever Mary McFate to her gun control do-gooder colleagues, and Mary Jo Sapone to her do-much-badder private security firm and its client the NRA. Here’s a prophetic snapshot of a running SolutionGal from her blogspot site.

Before gun control advocates, Sapone infiltrated animal rights groups, once urging a reluctant activist to plant a bomb. An co-worker infiltrator/provocateur drove the would-be bomber to the site.

The whole Sapone family was in on the spying business, her daughter-in-law Montgomery advertised these skills: “Collect and analyze intelligence on European activities of major international environmental organization for a company specializing in domestic and internal opposition research, special investigations, issues management and threat assessment. Write weekly intelligence update on European animal rights and eco-terrorist activity. Assist in confidential litigation support research.”

While her son Sean takes credit for organizing “the first major legal arms shipment to Liberia in 15 years.” Daughter Shelley helped to develop political strategies against the social reform groups. All of the Sapones were pro-war. I’d have thought that would be a giveaway.

Now Montgomery and Sean Sapone have adopted the last name McFate, and advise DC think tanks and the Pentagon on “Mercenary Anthropology.”

Is your hate of Hillary all your own?

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Stuart RisdenIf you’re indulging yourself gloating about Hillary’s dashed presidential aspirations, you might consider who’s cheering with you. As the battle for the nomination dragged on, Ms. Clinton faced near universal scorn, whipped up gleefully by all of media-dom. When has the media reported anything that you’ve discovered was truthful? Anything?
 
(Man’s traditional response to threatening women, midwives or healers? They’re witches!)

Unless you have been keeping in touch with Hillary Clinton personally, I would hesitate to say you don’t know if she has been represented objectively. Unless you’ve seen her in person, can you really say if her head’s the size of a pumpkin? Have you seen, heard, felt pangs of intuition that weren’t spun by the waves of an electronic transmission fashioned over an editor’s desk?

I’ve become rather suspicious that Ms. Clinton may have posed the biggest threat to the powers that be, to the beltway and the corporate media, and that’s why she was painted with such dastard derision.

Maybe?

The unanimity and height of disrespect shown in the catty ridicule made of Hillary has an identical scent really of an earlier smear campaign, the ulterior motives now well documented, against the embarrassment “beyond words” of Hillary’s First Husband, Bill.

President Clinton was too centrist for my taste, but it turns out he made some inroads for the people even despite being mostly thwarted by the corporate multinationals and the bankers.

Was the combined Clinton battle experience going to be crucial facing the still predominantly neoconservative-crony Washington establishment? The DC heavyweights are criminals and profiteers to the last, do we expect them to invite a reformer into the White House?

As much as they hated the Clintons, and Hillary Clinton in her own right, the power brokers appear to be smitten by Barack Obama. What does that say to you?

Some think it’s a sign that everyone’s ready for change. Some think the Republicans are content to let a Democrat be left to pick up Bush’s pieces. A friend of mine quotes T. S. Eliot:

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”

I think the vociferous appetite the Neocons have shown in devouring America’s treasury at the expense of the middle class indicates they don’t intend to leave even a piece until it’s in their bank account. The bad guys are not through. In these days of irradiation, they do not need their poultry kept live.

The media favoritism of Barack over Hillary says to me, they’ll abide a black man on their porch because they have no intention of letting him inside. They can serenade him even, confident they can excuse their ultimate inhospitality on the Appalachian problem. If American voters prove more progressive than they want, Diebold’s blackboxes will smite our great last hope.

Republican McCain has been criticized by none of the press. With Hillary out of the way, the press has already started to unleash on Obama, and will now be now free to lavish the erstwhile witch with the affection they now display for her term-limited husband.

America’s masters needed one heck of a ringer to face the Bush blow-back. A presumptive presumptuous first black president will prove just the straw man they need. Even the most cynical voter will not be surprised that white America is not ready to elect a black president.

All that hoopla about Obama needing to distance himself from his pastor’s unpatriotic rants was very telling. Do you remember Reverend Wright’s chief focus? God Damn America, yes, but his chief refrain? America’s racism. White America doesn’t want to believe it is racist, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

Apparently racism is gone if we want it gone. To decry its persistence is to break the self-hypnotic spell and bring racism back. Blame the messenger apparently.

It is not racist to predict that Obama faces entrenched racism. It would be swell to think America is otherwise, and the media would love for us to believe it. But they and the lobbyists and their owners Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Oil, the financiers and the war machine are banking on McCain.

An American Socialism?

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In the current housing bankruptcy “crisis” which was in fact created by the privately owned Fed through interest rates that reached 1% in 2003 combined with lax oversight of the banks, the bail out now being talked about in Congress will help… no surprise… the banks by and large. It is meant to deceive the public again by using words such as “helping” the homeowners, or “saving” peoples homes. NOTE: When you save a mortgage you save the bank’s payments by insuring they keep coming in. Besides the fact that people don’t own their homes, the banks do!

Regardless, in a socialist system this kind of gross manipulation would never have happened in the first place. And the half honest sensible solution by these charlatans in Congress should be to refi these homes to these homebuyers at the new lesser value. Because the value is lost anyway. And these homes were wildly overvalued by an out of control speculatory financial cabal. Besides, the bundled debt obligations and structured investment vehicles are worthless. Adding misery, the value of these homes will keep crashing. The rub? The banks and Investors made millions off these paper schemes and walked away… and probably paid little or no taxes. And now, the home buyers who were preyed upon by these lenders, owe money on a devalued home that was used only as a commodity by the “gentlemen” on Wall St. to manipulate, through the creation of CDO’s and SIVs? Sure! That’s capitalism. Systemic political and corporate corruption. And it’s going to get worse.

Congress desperately needs this property tax, interest payment, revenue stream to keep flowing to the banks and the states. But the reason this is a problem for Congress of “what is the best poison” to cure this, is that to bail out the home buyer who got screwed, is using tax money to keep receiving tax money. It’s double taxation!! And a zero sum game… besides rewarding the crooks. More deficit spending. But the Fed doesn’t care about homeowners and thusly told Congress as much by introducing Paulson’s new scheme to have the Fed take over the duties of the SEC and oversight of the big investment banks and their financial debauchery and chicanery. To keep the graft and secret deals going. The “dark trades” as they’re called. And spineless Congress cannot protest. They are owned by the Fed. In fact they are linked in responsibility by their repealing of the Glass-Steagall act with Greenspan’s urging (which Clinton didn’t veto) and attaching the Commodities Reauthorization Act attached to an appropriations bill in 2000. Ahhh the rewards for the capitalist elite are sweet indeed. No accountability, no worries, no chance of getting the blame. The yellow press at their beckon call.

Socialism would put all properties under the ownership of the people with all rents going to the citizens public fund and distributed to each social association for necessary services, loans, needs. There is no reason for housing or land to have any kind of increased value over the years. NONE. Ask yourself why your car then, doesn’t appreciate in value? Or your furniture? Real estate has been another way to oppress and exploit people by putting them into massive debt and making them pay banks twice the value of the home over the term of the loan. Besides the fleecing by the middlemen realtors and speculators using homes as commodities,(thus the current death spiral in housing). Have you ever looked at your amortization schedule? On a fixed rate 30 year loan? You pay twice or more of purchase price, if you paid off your loan! And you’re paying the bank first. We are insane for agreeing to this but that’s why the banks are the most powerful sector of capitalism. Which include the privately owned Federal Reserve. Oh you say, I made thousands when the market was good! No, you made the banks richer and more powerful by putting the next person into new debt for 30 years at 1 1/2 to 2 times the mortgage payment. Now your house increasing in value, puts upward pricing pressure on all homes and finally drives them out of reach of buyers. Thus the 1% housing bubble. For every person who “wins” in the capitalist system, 8 people lose (and those who depend on them). Otherwise you wouldn’t have a system where 10% of the population own 85% of the household wealth and property. The trick is to keep you thinking you’re winning when you’re really just up to your neck in debt in this American Casino Land.

Capitalism is a constant barrage of fairy tales and propaganda aimed at deluding the masses into believing there is no other way a social/economic system can be run. And that to be rich (or at least have the opportunity-possibility to be) is the ultimate goal because that is the genuine expression of self freedom and self worth! Or the lie that mercantilism and worker owned production could not work alone… without the corporate structure or Wall St. But the facts on the ground show us the truth, that capitalism is a fascist system designed to concentrate wealth at the top, steal our productive gains, and by doing so, makes those at the top the most powerful, privileged members of a society. It’s Monarchical. A plutocracy. Oligarchs rule. Fascism! Congress, the court system and state/city regulatory systems are subservient in every way to maintaining the fascist construct. Question: Ever taken part in an organization by volunteering to help change one of the many injustices in this country? You know what I’m talking about then. Wall after wall after obstacle after pot hole after bought off politician …all lined up to trip you, slip you and flip you upside down. New rules to increase petition signatures required for public ballots. Electronic vote stealing and manipulation. Redistricting. Third parties crushed. City council and board meetings held during weekdays. Hundreds of fees and licenses required to run business. Lobbyists at every turn. Zoning codes that dis-allow creative housing solutions and energy use. State insurance commissions. Mineral rights sold for pennies on the dollar… On and on and on… Unless of course your organization/church is involved in taking up the slack for capitalisms failures… then you’re a Mother Theresa! What’s that saying? “I work to feed the poor, they call me a saint. I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

Many people I talk to, on all fronts, are frustrated. And many realize that it is the corporate structure, their power to manipulate policy, to move jobs overseas, encourage wars, and the massive deregulated profit taking and currency manipulation that is at the center core of this American milieu. Besides the fact that no one I talk to has make a thin dime or dollar on Wall St. But the thing I keep running into are differences on how to solve the problem without changing the system drastically. A hypothesis that can be presented is that there is much delusion and neurosis in this land. The idea that we can somehow keep the system we have and make it work for the masses of productive working people, is the delusion as repeatedly, the corrupt one party system consistently proves otherwise. The neurosis is contained within this same idea that is the crux of the delusion. Knowing that something needs to change drastically and on the other hand knowing (by experience or observation) that it is irrational and impossible within the corrupt fascist matrix that will not allow drastic change that is needed. This creates neurosis. The constant tension of this negative psychic entrapment, is energy that has to be released and is finally. Usually negatively in some way. But it could be positive and productive IF there were a real alternative to work toward. Democratic socialism.

Socialists are realists. They are objective creative intelligent humanitarians who know that this delusion and neurosis is not healthy and requires a clean break from the causation. Often I am scoffed at by others for this view. Where? Where would – could this happen? I think that if it’s possible anywhere it would be in a state that seceded from the nation. Vermont’s trying and testing the water. Though even then, there would be no consensus for a socialist form of citizen led, decentralized government. No, until the public is re-educated as to the true intent and purpose of democratic socialism and its platform, and can be persuaded that exploitation of man by man is unacceptable, they will forever bicker and fight among themselves, as children who fight for a place in the lunch line or over possessions. Seemingly without the skills to reassess, re-strategise, and break away from the malignancy present all around us. Socialism takes a deep commitment and concentration to assess the situation on the ground (objectivism) and rationalize, then actualize the alternatives that will then benefit the real producers of capital (us) and replace the owners of the means of production and pushers of propaganda. It’s time to consider socialism as the correct answer to our dilemma.

Who is going to win Election 2008?

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Usual suspects
Who’s going to win in 2008? It’s a tough question to face. As sure as election year is upon us, someone in the current lineup is going to be elected. Who do I think it will be? I don’t want to separate who I want to predict as winner with who I’d like to see win. So who is that?

Much as I root for Kucinich, he’s been successfully ignored by the media. Kucinich will fold into the party as per usual to endorse whoever will be the Democratic nominee. In the end having accomplished what? Did Kucinich truly expand the dialog among Democrats or just pander to the disenchanted across the window of opportunity they might have had to mount a third party?

Who does that leave among the contenders who are not agents of corporate rule? I’m rather inclined to agree with Ralph Nader that John Edwards might be the least beholden to corporate interests, hence the most promising candidate. Michael Moore think so too. So he’s my pick. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for him.

The Democrats promise nothing and deliver it. While at the grassroots level it’s hard to argue that Democrats aren’t being responsive to their constituents, in the Colorado legislature as an example, further up the party it would seem to make no difference. Democratic governor Ritter vetoed our progressive labor bill. Our Democrat representatives in DC are but handservants to the Republicans and their lobbyists.

Cynthia McKinney for PresidentIt’s time to vote for a third party candidate, no matter who is saying it won’t work. Throw your vote away sooner than throw in with corporate rule!

On not inciting a lynch mob

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Do you know about the atrocities being committed in Darfur? Is the extent of your reaction being weighed as evidence about how much you know (ie. not enough)? If you are not calling for UN peacekeeper intervention, does it mean you have not exposed yourself sufficiently to the suffering of the Sudanese?
 
This would appear to be the logic of those advocating action/intervention. Surely you are a heartless do-nothing if you are not urging the tugging of every heartstring until a collective decision can prompt swift action. Cool heads might not prevail against a revenge-driven mob mentality, but why split hairs, they are hairs on the necks of Arabs.

When agitators urge action, if even they caution it to be non-violent action, the challenging endeavor of creating non-violent dialog and diplomacy can easily appear to stagnate in the “inaction” category.

The bigger picture about Sudan is that Europe and the US now face an eastern power vying for Africa’s remaining resources. To continue to dominate Africa, they have to mobilize opinion to favor a reversal of what has been a de-colonization consensus granting indigenous peoples their regional autonomy. To this end, grassroots activist mechanisms are being co-opted to manufacture public consent for re-shouldering the white man’s burden. A critical distinction for those concerned for the Sudanese is that western intervention is not the only solution. TO SAY NO TO MILITARY INTERVENTION IS NOT TO ADVOCATE DOING NOTHING. It is fine to raise awareness about the suffering in Darfur but maybe not if the common denominator response is an agitated public crying for blood.

You’d be the odd man out, trying to talk a lynch mob out of meting out justice to the Jesse James Gang. Where would you stand as you saw tempers becoming raised in response to heightened emotional manipulation? No one wants to deny the crimes committed, but what of the mechanisms of a civil society meant to preempt our baser compulsion to vigilante justice?

What if as well, the James Gang members the crowd was after were only the small fry? What if incredibly, the chief mob rouser was Jesse James himself? Perhaps even Jesse James would not have such gall, he would have to work through deputies like think-tank and media mouthpieces, or more insidiously through funding-starved non-profits, and tragically through unknowing surrogates with the best of intentions.

Ideologically it shouldn’t make a difference who is behind justice or before it. No one should be victim to a mob’s wrath. That’s not the point. What if you were working the crowd, trying to build an awareness that the Jesse James Gang was in their midst wreaking disaster of unfathomable consequence? Meanwhile the attention of that populace was being diverted to a humanitarian crisis which was in fact entirely a symptom and not a cause.

The Darfur crisis, begun in 2003, far from being ignored by our media, has successfully been used to obscure the million people killed by the US in Iraq, and the Israeli incursions into Lebanon and Palestine, both of which have been labeled genocides. Neither the ethnic cleansing in Lebanon nor in Palestine have drawn criticism from the lobbyists behind Save Darfur or the Genocide Intervention Network. What outlaws!

Military takeover of Southeast Colorado

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It was a disappointment to read about a potential betrayal of the rural folk who cherish their family farms and ranches and don’t wish to sell to the Army at Fort Carson, and again last week in Colorado Springs when only pro-military leaders and the Chamber of Commerce expounded on the need for expansion. What a terrible hoax to think anything connected with war business could be considered a “crown jewel” and “national security keystone.”

It is ironic that an area in Colorado, one of the most scenic and naturally beautiful states in the U.S., is being taken over by the military-industrial complex. Even though there was no chance to be heard last week, there are many folks, including former military, who question why a Fort Carson expansion should be considered necessary at all, much less for the health of our local and state economy.

What happened to tourism, health, fitness and agribusiness for which Colorado is a natural, and the great potential for jobs in the needed alternative-energy fields?

A moratorium on military expansion makes sense because of the growing sentiment that U.S. involvement in the Iraq war needs to end. With more taxpayers and legislators agreeing that we need to pull out of Iraq, isn’t there a possibility Fort Carson could be reduced in size, rather than enlarged? Instead of more battleground experience, we need to have people trained in renovation, rehabilitation of infrastructure and individuals, health and human services and educational endeavors.

If fear of terrorism is predominate, have you thought of telling the war-machine lobbyists in Washington that you don’t want your state to become a terrorist target by having so many of our strategic war components in such close proximity?

(Printed in Letters to the Editor in The Independent, Sept. 6)

Democrat John Morse new blood but bad

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I had a chance to hear newly elected John Morse tell some of his constituents the other evening about what it’s like to be a state senator. A number of us were there to confront him on his outspoken support for a very unpopular expansion of military training grounds. Literally the whole southeast corner of the state.

Shall I tell you how he came off? Affable, likeable, so there wasn’t the chance to parse his words.

Number one, state senators are paid a quite small salary and per diem, something around $30,000/yr, meaning he’s agreed to quite a sacrifice for the time he’ll be serving at the capitol. It’s true there aren’t too many who can make this sacrifice, and perhaps I’ll leave to your judgment, would.

John Morse told us that many legislators avoid having lunch with lobbyists as a matter of principle. Our Morse feels no such compulsion. Why not, he asks? He’s found that all sides have their lobbyists and as long as he courts them all, he’ll get all sides. And when he needs to know the other side, our freshman senator tells us he bluntly asks the lobbyist in fairness, to please lay out the counter-arguments.

Morse didn’t differentiate between special interests and un-special interests, which comprise most of us, who are not represented by any lobbyist there to buy his lunch.

Colorado Springs IQ ranking

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This weekend’s Gazette reported that Colorado Springs ranked 16th among America’s brainiest cities.
 
Although that may not be saying much in light of the US intelligence quotient these days, I still find the story hard to believe.

Other indicators: driving aptitude
According to local traffic systems professionals, the traffic lights at Colorado Springs intersections are adjusted by CDOT to a very slow rate. This setting provides for longer yellow lights in general as well as a longer gap between stop and go. They do not call this a remedial measure, but it is the lapse from when one direction is given red to when the perpendicular direction is given green, basically the space of time during which both directions sit simultaneously before a red light. Engineers set the timing according to local driving proficiency. Perhaps it’s just me linking that factor to IQ.

Colorado Springs level of idiocy is reflected in other local regulatory agencies. Although the area receives considerable revenue from Pikes Peak or Bust tourism, residents oversee everyday the ongoing destruction of their mountain view, their single natural resource.

Visual reflex impairment
The Snake Canyon Quarry continues to deepen and widen, within everyone’s focal range of their famous single peak. The Springs even has an older depleted mine, a similarly shaved mountain a couple foothills north which is tersely called “the scar.” It’s supposed to be a reminder of what we don’t want to do again. But Snake Canyon continues to dust our furniture and pit our windshields yet we refuse to seek our simple aggregate elsewhere. Other cities don’t have mountains to appropriate to sand their streets in the winter. They have to dig discrete pits at the outskirts of town instead. Apparently we don’t mind looking at our open pits. It’s more expensive to dig than it is to shave.

Likewise, El Paso is the only county in Colorado which permits building on mountain ridgetops. Ridgetop homes create erosion problems for everyone beneath, from the silting of the creeks to landslides to flash floods to lost vegetation. And it spoils the Pikes Peak viewshed. Within plain sight.

Foresight
Colorado Springs residents have also accepted recent cuts to their parks services. Park toilet facilities have been boarded or demolished and replaced with Port-a-let plastic outhouses because they’re cheaper to maintain. So are latrine trenches, but would we abide them? Well, maybe.

City officials have also decided they cannot afford to maintain the boulevard medians. They are selling the opportunity to local businesses in exchange for a posting “maintained by” advertisement. This at the same time the city utility overpays its executives and installs televisions in their elevators.

Impaired empathy
Colorado Springs has demonstrated its simplemindedness to the nation at large. We’re famous for our idiocy, though your judgement might depend on your politics. Our city was the epicenter of the Amendment Two debacle. This was where religious extremists attempted to deprive homosexuals of their right to minority protection. The measure was overturned in state court, but it got its healthy start here.

We are home to Dobson’s child spanking doctrine, Ted Haggard’s military-theocracy incubator, and multiple christian fundamentalist publishing houses. Anyone can open these books or tune into the TV broadcasts to sample our inanity. Again I’m equating inanity to IQ.

Cuckoldry
Colorado Springs is also staunchly Republican. We excuse this to mean Conservative, but Bush’s run of things in DC has put the lie to that claim. Colorado Springs’ Republican representatives have supported the most cockeye, transparently thieving policies that our corporate lobbyists have concocted. Colorado Springs voters are dumb, perhaps the percent that vote are not the percent winning accolades for being brainy.

To be accurate, I should admit that by “brainiest,” the Gazette meant the most educated. They were citing a CNN Money Magazine study based on census records which ranked cities of over 250,000 by the percentage of their populations which held Bachelors Degrees. Maybe this doesn’t indict Colorado Springs exactly. Maybe this says something more about the accreditation of our colleges, I’d guess the Colorado party schools. Go in dumb, come out dumb too. Of that, Colorado Springs is proof.

Real partisan lines

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Many people who I’ve tried to enlist in this or that effort talk about not wanting to appear “political.” This is such a regretful argument because it reflects I think their ignorance of what all of us are up against. Anyone who is seeking to tackle societal problems at the source has to recognize that the causes are certainly political.
 
As opposed to “partisan.” Political activism has nothing to do with partisanship. Trying to improve our representation in government is not a liberal issue, nor progressive. Those who consider themselves conservative have the same need for representation and voice than anyone, especially it seems if you are a fiscal conservative!

And partisan lines drawn as between Democrats and Republicans are also hardly applicable. As the divide between have and have nots increases, both major parties have proven themselves champions of a single side: the tax-break class.

Not until we have congress people who are not multimillionaires, who have relatives facing employment and health insurance woes, who have children in the public school system, who do not owe their reelection to corporate lobbyists, will our interests have a chance in Washington.

Is this the old harang about class warfare? It most certainly is. People think perhaps that the different between the haves and have-nots is largely academic. It is not.

Do you have enough money that you can live off the interest without having to do a lick of work? No? Then you have not.

Is your neighborhood and family protected from the rising incidence of crime and drugs addiction? Then you have not.

Are you secure that you will always have a job, health insurance, retirement, education, leasure? Then you have not.

If you have twenty, fifty, one hunded, one thousand, one million times the annual income of your fellow man, then you are a have.

And you didn’t get it by robbing it from someone else who had too much. You took it from those twenty, fifty, hundred, thousand, or million persons who now have to make do with less.