OT 06-27
If you do not post comments, the terrorists will win!
Posted by b on March 29, 2006 at 8:00 UTC | Permalink
next page »Where has Tainte Aime a k a Loose Shanks been?
Sort of mother goose tails for isolated/middle aged people.
Posted by: christofay | Mar 29 2006 8:44 utc | 2
I don't like terrorists and I don't want them to win.
Thus the post.
Posted by: jonku | Mar 29 2006 8:52 utc | 3
Sounds reasonable to me:
Iran Proposes Nuclear Facility
Iran has proposed setting up a nuclear fuel production facility within its borders with international help, the Iranian Embassy said Tuesday.It would be possible to configure such a factory that no high grade enrichment can be done. If then Iran would throw out the foreign staff, they would not gain anything.The proposal is an alternative to Russia's offer to play host to Iran's nuclear fuel production to ease concern that Tehran could develop weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for generating electricity.
"Iran would welcome the creation of an international nuclear fuel center on its territory with the participation of other countries and in the framework of an international consortium," Tehran said in a statement.
The German Parliament has anounced its new budget: higher taxes (raising VAT by 3%) and more debts (interest payments make up 40 billion of the 260 billion euro budget). They claim it is necessary to do so in order to "boost the economy".
Duh.
When are they going to grasp that the economy is suffering under the burden of high debt and taxes?
Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 29 2006 9:26 utc | 5
It was mentioned on the other open thread, but the Moussouai show trial is nothing other than outrageous propaganda, giving the media endless material to show each day about the "evil Arab foreigners" in our midst who want to kill us. "Be afraid" "Hate"
What kind of lawyer would allow his client to come to court even with such prejudicial appearance of a "terrorist"? What judge would allow a defendent to come in to court wearing a "stun" belt?
Even if he was sane before 2001, he certainly has little ability to defend himself now and little chance to call witnesses in his defense.
Can you imagine the scene in the cave. "Me and Richard Reid are gonna' fly a 747 into the WH"
OBL "Yeah, right. Whatever"
Can things get more ridiculous or sadder or more corrupt?
Is there any connection between this trial and the questions increasingly emerging about 9/11?
Posted by: ww | Mar 29 2006 9:50 utc | 7
@ralphieboy - interest payments make up 40 billion of the 260 billion euro budget).
Simply wrong - it is total debt service, i.e. principle plus interests. German national debt is some 38% of GDP (2003), well within international boundries (OECD).
Government debt service in the U.S. is over $400 billion in 2006.
When are they going to grasp that the economy is suffering under the burden of high debt and taxes?
Any proof for such single factor analysis?
Well, March 2006 is nearly over. Still no sign of WWIII (or IV) - yet.
Posted by: DM | Mar 29 2006 10:45 utc | 10
anna missed. I duplicated your link (on the other thread) re Justin Raimondo. It's worth look though if anyone hasn't read it.
Posted by: DM | Mar 29 2006 10:53 utc | 11
ww:
The trial of Zacarias Moussaoui is developing a truly Kafkaesque profile.
The present regime wants to put Zacarias Moussaoui to death for not coming forward to prevent the mass murders of 9/11, yet the evidence they are bringing forth points not to Zacarias Moussaoui as the one who could have saved the lives of some 3000 Americans but to the present regime itself!
I refer you to "9/11 & Bush's 'Negligence'" by Robert Parry
' FBI agent Harry Samit, who interrogated Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, sent 70 warnings to his superiors about suspicions that the al-Qaeda operative had been taking flight training in Minnesota because he was planning to hijack a plane for a terrorist operation.
' But FBI officials in Washington showed “criminal negligence” in blocking requests for a search warrant on Moussaoui’s computer or taking other preventive action, Samit testified at Moussaoui’s death penalty hearing on March 20.
' Samit’s futile warnings matched the frustrations of other federal agents in Minnesota and Arizona who had gotten wind of al-Qaeda’s audacious scheme to train pilots for operations in the United States. But the agents couldn’t get their warnings addressed by senior officials at FBI headquarters. '
Incompetence?
' The CIA told Bush about “threat reporting” that indicated bin-Laden wanted “to hijack a US aircraft.” The CIA also cited a call that had been made to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 “saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.”...
' Bush’s Justice Department and FBI headquarters were in the loop on the CIA reporting, but didn’t reach out to their agents around the country, some of whom, it turned out, were frantically trying to get the attention of their superiors in Washington.
' Then-acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard told the 9/11 Commission that he discussed the intelligence threat reports with FBI special agents from around the country in a conference call on July 19, 2001. But Pickard said the focus was on having “evidence response teams” ready to respond quickly in the event of an attack. '
The FBI was getting ready to collect evidence after the attack... before it happened?!
Other sources seem to indicate that it was Ashcroft and not Pickard himself who "didn't want to hear" about preventing imminent terrorist attacks.
Unless and until we have a real, independent investigation of the mass murders of 9/11 and of the role the present regime played in allowing those attacks to go forward we will not know if it was "just" incompetence or purposeful, "benign neglect", to use the old neocon phrase for allowing bad things to happen for the "good" of the victim, we will not know which was the case.
I must tell you that in my view the present regime is certainly "acting guilty" indeed.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 29 2006 11:32 utc | 12
I am wondering, where did Mr. FitzPatrick's indictments go? Down the memory hole?
Whatever happened to Karl Rove?
Whatever happened to Dick Cheney?
And what of the Iranian oil bourse?
I don't know whether to believe anything any more, on any facet of the news.
Posted by: hopping madbunny | Mar 29 2006 11:33 utc | 13
I just want to say good morning. Everyday I wake up and my feet hit the floor, it's a good day. My new philosophy since I hit middle age.
On to real news, I have none because I just got up. But, I am wasting space on this thread. Well, must go to the office. Have a good day. Ha,ha.
Posted by: jdp | Mar 29 2006 12:51 utc | 14
@b,
Thanks for correcting my figures on the debt. I still find the figures too high - their debt service is money that cannot be used to strengthen the economy, improve education or aid research & development: things that truly help an economy prosper. And how is raising the VAT by 3% - effectively raising prices across the board - going to boost the economy?
Germany tried cutting corners right and left to reduce its debt, but was confounded at every corner. They cannot bring themselves to have a good long look at the size and role of government in their country.
I know it sounds a bit Reaganomical and neoliberal, but no government can buy an economic recovery except over the short term, after which it starts to pay dearly.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 29 2006 13:07 utc | 15
Thanks, John Francis Lee.
Perhaps there will be some kind of justice from this trial if people are paying attention, and as you suggest, it backfires and pinpoints their own negligence, clearly and unavoidably.
Posted by: ww | Mar 29 2006 13:09 utc | 16
hopping madbunny , here's the latest karl news. have no fear, fitzgerald is still on the march for justice!
Posted by: annie | Mar 29 2006 14:32 utc | 19
And how is raising the VAT by 3% - effectively raising prices across the board - going to boost the economy?
It is not, as it is regressive. I would opt for higher taxes, steep progressivly, on capital gain. Schröder did away with most of them and it didn´t help but to increase debt.
Reagonomics? Wasn't that the way to increase the debt from 36% of GNP to 55%?
Now please decide what you want. Germany has too much debt you say, but should apply reagonomics and thereby increase debt?
http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2006-03-29#
Mr Abramoff Goes to Washington
Now to Washington DC where a scandal involving a lobbyist, and his dodgy multimillion-dollar payments to US politicians, is beginning to engulf the Bush Administration. Many commentators are saying that the case of Jack Abramoff strikes at the very heart of representative democracy in the US where astonishingly most of what he did is not just common place, it’s perfectly legal. Here's Sophie McNeill.
Posted by: vbo | Mar 29 2006 14:48 utc | 21
The real questions for b and ralphieboy, and whoever else is in Germany, is who pays what percentage of the tax? Are corporations paying any tax, or virtually none as in the US. Is the VAT regressive or not? How is wealth being transered? From who to whom? (And what would Mrs. Fabrizi, my 8th grade English teacher, think about the last sentence?)
@hopping madbunny: good qustions. Keep hopping.
I too was wondering about Tante Aime (who did post once on the Moon future thread, I think)
************************************
My own personal recommendation for the Zacarias Moussaoui trial is that we move it to Broadway and get the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber (not serious enough for Sonheim) involved. I think what's missing is lots of flashy outfits, like 'Cats', and a few good dance numbers.
We already have 'Gangsta' chic, this whole thing is simply crying out for 'Terrorist' chic -- The Afghani pillbox hats are already in fashion in NY, but with a little diligence, 7th Avenue CAN spread this into the heartland. (Next winter's buying season is a mere three months away!) And I know that real middle Americans in the heartland would love promenading down Main and Central with the feel of an 'AK' in their hands, and a few ropes of bullets strung over their necks. Why, it could double as an exercize routine, with Richard Simmons selling videotapes! Memo to Rummy, "Think spinoff."
The sets to the musical will be tremendous. Creating a soaring backdrop of those icy mountains and training camps in Afghanistan is quite a challenge. Oh, and while we are on the training camps, I think it might be a good place for a song about 'male commeraderie', taking place, in the vast remoteness of the desert, under the icy stars, and, of course, under the loving gaze of Allah himself.
Which brings me to a potential weakness of this play: There are simply not enough roles for women! Yes, we can give Sibel Edmunds a cameo about how 'research spurned' is no research at all, but we really must get the mothers of all these terorists involved. Maybe we could do a split set, with Zacarias, alone at a table in Minnesota, composing a moving letter to his mother, and then his, and all the other, mothers standing sadly in their burkas, a kind of Greek chorus, reading tearful replies back to their 'boys.' This is the point where you introduce a little psychological drama, a little family dynamics, to explain the terrorism -- bring the brothers and sisters, oh, and definitely an old girlfriend in, to voice their parts.
After this they all break into a big dance number, circling around and around their tiny village in Afghanistan. After all, from what I've been told, terrorism IS a kind of "TRADITION" over there.
Then, when we get to the planning and training scenes, I think that the whole set should revert from technicolor to a kind of black-and-white film noir treatment. Violins should saw their way up and down the scales, almost randomly, as a menacing backdrop. This is definitely the place for the single table, the cone of light dangling fom above, a bottle of whatever rotgut they really drink, a few grizzly, determined men clustered around the table, and maybe a goat, slowly turning and roasting on a spit, over an open flame, in the background.
But the center of the musical must be the trial. Lets go whole hog (whoops, bad metaphor!) here, a little over the top. I say give the judge one of those big powdered wigs to symbolize 'Islamofascist terrorism' confronting 'English justice.' Maybe he should stand holding a scale, too, and as the lawyers make their cases, they can go up to the scale and solemly place a token, a doll, maybe, representing one of the dead, on one side, or the other, of the scale.
This is also the place for Kafka himself to make an appearance, for his role is like the jester or fool in Shakespeare. He is the modern day "deconstructionist," taking apart every role, including the falsity of the set and actors themselves, before our eyes. What we are left with is a musical hermeneutics where all values are atonal and truth is relative. By the time he exits, we, the audience, understand that right and wrong are merely symbols we assign to different placemarkers in the text.
This is a good place to insert a modern Merce-like number, where members of the cast, caught up in their internal anomie, dash frantically back and forth across the stage from various angles. Occasionally, a group forms, attempting to prop one slumping member or another up, but in the end it is hopeless, and the entire cast collapses in one huge exhausted heap, just slightly off center of the stage.
Now, we don't want to get too serious here,and the jurors are a great potential source of comic relief, as we depict their daily trials and tribulations just to get to the court on time. And we do want children to feel comfortable too. So I think that Zacarias should be portrayed as VERY ticklish, to kind of take the edge off of him. When the stun belt, or whatever it is that he wears beneath his orange jumpsuit, goes off after he answers a question, he should reflexively collapse into a fit of laughter, and roll around on the floor, holding his belly.
The verdict should be a 'space' where the entire cast can gather into one large collective song and dance, magically overcoming differences between oppressor and oppressed, with the transformative power of song.
Oh, and at the end, close with a haunting solo from Moussaoui about how his entire life has been spent "missing the plane."
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 29 2006 14:52 utc | 22
The real questions for b and ralphieboy, and whoever else is in Germany, is who pays what percentage of the tax? Are corporations paying any tax, or virtually none as in the US. Is the VAT regressive or not? How is wealth being transered? From who to whom? (And what would Mrs. Fabrizi, my 8th grade English teacher, think about the last sentence?)
@hopping madbunny: good qustions. Keep hopping.
I too was wondering about Tante Aime (who did post once on the Moon future thread, I think)
************************************
My own personal recommendation for the Zacarias Moussaoui trial is that we move it to Broadway and get the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber (not serious enough for Sonheim) involved. I think what's missing is lots of flashy outfits, like 'Cats', and a few good dance numbers.
We already have 'Gangsta' chic, this whole thing is simply crying out for 'Terrorist' chic -- The Afghani pillbox hats are already in fashion in NY, but with a little diligence, 7th Avenue CAN spread this into the heartland. (Next winter's buying season is a mere three months away!) And I know that real middle Americans in the heartland would love promenading down Main and Central with the feel of an 'AK' in their hands, and a few ropes of bullets strung over their necks. Why, it could double as an exercize routine, with Richard Simmons selling videotapes! Memo to Rummy, "Think spinoff."
The sets to the musical will be tremendous. Creating a soaring backdrop of those icy mountains and training camps in Afghanistan is quite a challenge. Oh, and while we are on the training camps, I think it might be a good place for a song about 'male commeraderie', taking place, in the vast remoteness of the desert, under the icy stars, and, of course, under the loving gaze of Allah himself.
Which brings me to a potential weakness of this play: There are simply not enough roles for women! Yes, we can give Sibel Edmunds a cameo about how 'research spurned' is no research at all, but we really must get the mothers of all these terorists involved. Maybe we could do a split set, with Zacarias, alone at a table in Minnesota, composing a moving letter to his mother, and then his, and all the other, mothers standing sadly in their burkas, a kind of Greek chorus, reading tearful replies back to their 'boys.' This is the point where you introduce a little psychological drama, a little family dynamics, to explain the terrorism -- bring the brothers and sisters, oh, and definitely an old girlfriend in, to voice their parts.
After this they all break into a big dance number, circling around and around their tiny village in Afghanistan. After all, from what I've been told, terrorism IS a kind of "TRADITION" over there.
Then, when we get to the planning and training scenes, I think that the whole set should revert from technicolor to a kind of black-and-white film noir treatment. Violins should saw their way up and down the scales, almost randomly, as a menacing backdrop. This is definitely the place for the single table, the cone of light dangling fom above, a bottle of whatever rotgut they really drink, a few grizzly, determined men clustered around the table, and maybe a goat, slowly turning and roasting on a spit, over an open flame, in the background.
But the center of the musical must be the trial. Lets go whole hog (whoops, bad metaphor!) here, a little over the top. I say give the judge one of those big powdered wigs to symbolize 'Islamofascist terrorism' confronting 'English justice.' Maybe he should stand holding a scale, too, and as the lawyers make their cases, they can go up to the scale and solemly place a token, a doll, maybe, representing one of the dead, on one side, or the other, of the scale.
This is also the place for Kafka himself to make an appearance, for his role is like the jester or fool in Shakespeare. He is the modern day "deconstructionist," taking apart every role, including the falsity of the set and actors themselves, before our eyes. What we are left with is a musical hermeneutics where all values are atonal and truth is relative. By the time he exits, we, the audience, understand that right and wrong are merely symbols we assign to different placemarkers in the text.
This is a good place to insert a modern Merce-like number, where members of the cast, caught up in their internal anomie, dash frantically back and forth across the stage from various angles. Occasionally, a group forms, attempting to prop one slumping member or another up, but in the end it is hopeless, and the entire cast collapses in one huge exhausted heap, just slightly off center of the stage.
Now, we don't want to get too serious here,and the jurors are a great potential source of comic relief, as we depict their daily trials and tribulations just to get to the court on time. And we do want children to feel comfortable too. So I think that Zacarias should be portrayed as VERY ticklish, to kind of take the edge off of him. When the stun belt, or whatever it is that he wears beneath his orange jumpsuit, goes off after he answers a question, he should reflexively collapse into a fit of laughter, and roll around on the floor, holding his belly.
The verdict should be a 'space' where the entire cast can gather into one large collective song and dance, magically overcoming differences between oppressor and oppressed, with the transformative power of song.
Oh, and at the end, close with a haunting solo from Moussaoui about how his entire life has been spent "missing the plane."
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 29 2006 14:53 utc | 23
Yesterday there was a great program:
Suicide Bombers: A Psychological Investigation
It appears that suicide bombers psychological profile is nothing like serial killer's one...They are pretty normal people...Two experiments in the program dazed me...it's terrifying how people as a social beings actually do not have their own will and are easily influenced by authority or those around them...to the extreme...
Posted by: vbo | Mar 29 2006 15:00 utc | 25
Here's something to share with your neocon friends:
Bush Is No Conservative
March 29, 2006
by Paul Craig Roberts
President Bush passes himself off as a conservative Republican and a born-again Christian. These are disguises behind which Bush hides. Would a Christian invade another country on false pretenses, kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and show no remorse or inclination to cease the aggression?
Longtime Republican policy wonk Bruce Bartlett recently published a book, Impostor, in which he proves that President Bush is no economic conservative, having broken all records in spending taxpayers' money and running up public debt.
Were Bush merely another big spender, his presidency wouldn't differ from other pork-barrel administrations, but Bush's radicalism goes far beyond spending. Bush has taken an irreverent approach to the U.S. Constitution.
Bush bears no resemblance to a political conservative. A political conservative does not confuse government with country. Patriotism means loyalty to country. Bush, however, demands allegiance to his government: "You are with us or against us!" Critics of the Bush administration are branded "unpatriotic" and even "treasonous."
Loyalty to country means allegiance to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the separation of powers. It does not mean blind support for a president, an administration, or a political party.
The separation of powers and civil liberties that were bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers are the protectors of our liberty. Bush, who swore on the Bible that he would defend and uphold the Constitution, has made it clear that he will not let the Constitution get in the way of expanding the powers of his office.
Bush has overridden a number of protections in the Bill of Rights. The right to assemble and to demonstrate has been infringed. The Secret Service now routinely removes protesters from the scene of Bush political events. Many unthinking Americans go along with this authoritarianism because they don't agree with the protesters, but once the right is lost, everyone loses it.
Bush has ignored habeas corpus, and he claims the unconstitutional power to arrest and detain people indefinitely without a warrant and without presenting charges to a judge. This is the most dangerous abuse of all, because whoever is in office can use this power against political opponents. Many unthinking Americans are not concerned, because they think this power will be used only against terrorists. However, as the Bush administration has admitted, many of its detainees are not terrorists. Most are innocent people kidnapped by tribal leaders and sold to the U.S. for the bounties paid for "terrorists."
Bush has refused to obey statutory law, specifically the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Bush claims that as commander in chief he has the right to ignore the law and to spy on Americans without a warrant. Many unthinking Americans are unconcerned, saying that as they are doing nothing wrong they have nothing to fear. This attitude misses the point in a large way. If a president can establish himself above one law, he can establish himself above all laws. There is no line drawn through the law that divides the laws between the ones the president must obey and the ones he need not obey.
FISA does not interfere with government spying for national security purposes. Secrecy is protected, because the court of federal judges that issues the warrants is secret. Moreover, the law allows the government to spy first and then come to the court for a warrant. The purpose of the warrant is to be sure that the government is spying for legitimate purposes and not abusing the power to spy on political opponents for nefarious purposes.
When presidents sign a bill passed by Congress that they think might be interpreted in ways that could impinge on the powers of their office, they add a "signing statement" to protect traditional presidential powers. Under Bush, this practice has exploded. Bush has used signing statements considerably in excess of all previous presidents combined. Moreover, Bush uses the statements not to protect presidential powers, but to nullify acts of Congress, such as Republican Sen. John McCain's law against torture. Bush is using signing statements to turn the presidency into a dictatorship in which the executive is not accountable to laws passed by Congress. The next step is simply to announce that the executive is not accountable to elections either.
Bush's government is the first in our history in which there are no dissenting voices and no debate. Uniformity of opinion is more characteristic of a dictatorial government than a conservative one. Bush's government is all of one mind, because all important positions are held by neoconservatives.
Neoconservative is a deceptive term. It means "new conservatives," but there is nothing conservative about neocons. Neoconservatives believe in imposing their agenda on other countries – the antithesis of American conservatism.
In short, real conservatives believe in conserving the Constitution, government accountability, and civil liberties, and avoiding foreign entanglements. Judging by its behavior and its statements, the Bush administration stands completely outside the conservative tradition.
Here's Dr. Roberts' biography. He is an old time Conservative and certainly knows that Bush is not.
Posted by: Ensley | Mar 29 2006 15:12 utc | 26
Can't say it better than that. Bring that home to share with your families during the holidays.
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 29 2006 15:20 utc | 27
Right now, most of Germany's taxes are sucked out of the pockets of wage-earers in the middle class and upper end of the working class.
Taxes are high but there are a myriad of tax loopholes for the rich and for corporations to use. They are supposed to be there to encourage them to create jobs, which they are doing, except the jobs they are creating are abroad. (sound familiar, folks?)
Increasing the VAT is going to put a damper on consumer spending, which is already sluggish. In one sense it's progressive, but it also means that folks who are just barely getting along will on their budget find themselves having to get along on 3% less.
I think that the only way to beat down debt in the long run is to have a good long look at diminshing the role that government plays directly in the economy (the state of Lower Saxony owns 18% of Volkswagen AG) and look for ways it can invest in infrastructure, education and research & development instead of subsidizing dying industries and agriculture.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 29 2006 15:27 utc | 28
Debt is a construct of the rich to enslave the poor.
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 29 2006 15:30 utc | 29
Where has Tainte Aime a k a Loose Shanks been?
reinvented as ping ping, larry ellison, and a number of other psuedonyms. maybe i am presuming too much here, but there aren't many unique posters here who have such identifiable formatted comments, liberal references to both ring kissing & letting the good times roll, etc.
my real concern is that the poster formerly known as debs is dead has yet to find a suitable replacement name :)
Posted by: b real | Mar 29 2006 15:45 utc | 30
I think you might be correct about Tante, but you are wrong about debs. His posting was getting more frantic and so were references to his health. The anonymous poster's style is nothing like his at all, far more structured and impersonal. debs has disappeared fot the moment and I hope he is OK.
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 29 2006 16:38 utc | 31
even in the 'death of a groupie' post, did not "USuk" or "terrarist" catch your eye?
Posted by: b real | Mar 29 2006 16:46 utc | 32
SF Gate Column-Long Live The 9/11 Conspirac
Anyone still care about the heap of disturbing, unsolved questions surrounding Our Great Tragedy?
Interesting MSM article...
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 29 2006 17:24 utc | 34
Poeple really should go to the site malooga referenced in another thread. www.solari.com and link to the narconews site and read what she has to say. This shit is just amazing.
have been reading some at work. The interconnectedness of people rotating in and out of government is amazing. Some are loose, but they all seem to enrich the group.
To strike back, local investing is the key. We must learn sustainable living to fight the globalist cabal thats strip mining our countries of assets and ways of life.
Posted by: jdp | Mar 29 2006 17:35 utc | 35
An interview by the Nieman Press Watchdog with former ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas W. Freeman
Q. What is it that the enemies of the United States want?Freeman’s view: The argument that they hate us for who we are is not credible. So why is it that they have a problem with us? What is their agenda? Is there any part of it that is comprehensible?
Only two people in the world actually believe that there’s any possibility of a new caliphate being established, stretching from Spain to Indonesia: Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush.
...
Q. What are the merits of an American policy that encourages a degree of Kurdish autonomy and independence that is unacceptable to Turkey, Iran, or other citizens of Iraq? Won’t that inevitably lead to another instance of the sort of tragedy that is at the heart of modern Kurdish history?Freeman’s view: The Kurds are the big success story of Iraq so far. They actually like the American presence because it allowed them to become independent. But the same Kurds who were betrayed four times in the last century seem to be headed for yet another betrayal as the 21st century begins.
...
Q. How does America compare to the rest of the world – really?Freeman’s view: The press has inadvertently aided and abetted a kind of national complacency and smugness that contributes to the kind of hubris that has gotten us into trouble in Iraq, for example.
There are virtually no international comparisons stated in the press. You read that the American health system is causing GM and Ford to go under, and that 45 million Americans are uninsured, but you don’t hear about how the World Health Organization ranks the United States 37th in terms of the quality of health care, just barely ahead of Cuba; or that we spend twice as much as Canadians on health care but they manage to cover everyone and provide a higher quality overall. Our high school students think they’re the best in the world, but in fact they’re at the bottom of the pack internationally.
...
Reporters shouldn’t take any statement that is made here that attributes superlatives to the United States at face value; they should ask if that superlative is earned. Thanks to the Internet, one can more easily make international comparisons without having to go abroad -- but it’s not happening.The notion that we could learn from others is absent, nothing is put in perspective. Instead, the certainty that we are the best at everything results in chauvinistic complacency. And the problem with complacency is it allows problems to creep up on you that should never be allowed to come up.
I may be late to the permaculture party but....
Information links at www.transitionculture.org about the 2005 Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan is fascinating me at the moment.
Now rather than emigrate/escape to some other country, I want to raise the call for an "Energy Descent Action Plan" among my own local community.
How many of these local setups are out there? What's being planned for the post peak oil era in your neck of the woods?
Posted by: gylangirl | Mar 29 2006 18:50 utc | 37
Malooga,
You should pitch your play idea to Mel Brooks, some great visuals there.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 29 2006 18:54 utc | 38
Chas Freeman is someone I have mentioned here before. He's an old-style Republican, going back to his days as Nixon's interpreter in China (where I met him - he's the father of my roommate in Beijing in the 80's). He's a diplomat through and through, and has been on the leading edge of Republican complaints (think of all the Bush 1 figures who have quietly or not so quietly spoken up in recent years - it's worth noting he's not just former ambassador to Saudi Arabia; he was appointed to that position by Bush 1) against this administration for a long time now. If the "Diplomats for Change" press conference video is still online somewhere (it's from before the '04 election if I remember correctly), you can see him in action. He was also featured briefly in one of the documentaries about the Iraq War (I'm not sure whether it was Moore's or a different one).
I'm grateful for his efforts and his eloquence (he is what is usually called 'fiercely bright', and is one of the rare people who not only is so but also manages to come across so in televised interviews... I've also heard his Chinese skills described as the best of any white man's on the planet). I wish only that he had more ability to influence the current regime. Thanks for the link, b.
Posted by: mats | Mar 29 2006 18:55 utc | 39
To anyone more knowledgable about these things than me - is there not an historical analogy with the US now apparently fighting a two front insurgency (Shiites and Sunnis)with what was happening in pre WWII China between the guomengtang and the red army. I realize of course the latter two insurgencies were fighting Japanese. But is there not an historical anology? And it ended badly for both China and Japan. Anyone?
Posted by: D | Mar 29 2006 18:55 utc | 40
bonnie faulkner, host of kpfa's guns & butter, is interviewing david ray griffin on today's show at 1pm PST. streaming @ http://www.kpfa.org
Posted by: b real | Mar 29 2006 19:13 utc | 41
Even in West Texas, Bush Takes A Whuppin' by John Kelso
President Bush beat the rest of the field like an orchestra timpani in my poll to find out who's least admired among a list of shaky characters.A couple weeks ago, I asked y'all to vote on who you thought should have the lowest approval rating: George W., Saddam Hussein, Kenneth Lay, O.J. Simpson, Barry Bonds, Jeffrey "Let's Do Lunch" Dahmer, and Sarah, the nasty old former bartender out at the Dry Creek Cafe on Mount Bonnell Road.
Posted by: beq | Mar 29 2006 19:19 utc | 42
The Moussaoui trial is a show circus. The US desperately need to enforce the myth of 9/11 and so anything goes.
And no, ppl are not paying attention. They don’t understand law and court procedures. They watch travesties on TV, and always knew that ‘terrorists’ were guilty. Still, they need confirmation from time to time, or they will stop believing.
However, the confirmation need not be consequent, a Moussaoui spouting he wanted to fly a plane into the White House (or whatever) is plenty good enough.
Until recently, the M. trial has been little covered by the mainstream press. With 9/11 hitting the mainstream with Charlie Sheen, an event which was to be expected - him or someone else, even Amy Goodman has been calling for a new investigation- in view of the splitting off of paleo-republicans in some measure ... that is why CNN dared but then backed down - I guess they were surprised by the response, pretty much all in favor of a ‘new investigation.’ They felt they had stretched too far, even if their ratings and e-mails jumped to the skies. They need to balance where their bread and butter comes from - the authorities and the public. Tough call. They are risk aversive - as they know who pays them.
----
Fitz is contemplating indicting Karl Rove (see links above). But I personally think he won’t do it. Hadley, some other minor people, then it all fizzes out. Everyone here will note that previous momentum was lost in legalese, arcane procedure, etc. That will be the third time for Fitz.
Posted by: Noisette | Mar 29 2006 19:26 utc | 43
If you can't hear David Ray Griffin interview b real linked, he is giving a presentation Thurs. nite broadcast live here 7-10pm Calif. time.
Something interesting going on here...If you look down the left side of the first site I link, you'll notice it says he's addressing the Commonwealth Club on April 3. Yet if you follow the link, there is no mention of it on the C-C- site. Is he speaking, but they refuse to publicize it, or did they get cold feet. Mike Ruppert did address them when his book on 911 came out, and I think Griffin might have before as well - but I'm not certain. Commonwealth Club is Most Prestigious & Impt. place to speak. Anything hosted there can be discussed in "polite company". So...what's going on here anyway???
Posted by: jj | Mar 29 2006 19:35 utc | 44
For what its worth, Juan Cole has said many times that if the Shiites were to rise up and openly challenge the occupation -- the US would have no choice but to call it quits. This joint US Iraqi raid on the mosque was also a DAWA party headquarters frequented also by Sadrs people -- who are now being called "insurgents" by the US. Taken with the weird post by riverbend, that the Iraqi media is warning people to trust only US or US/Iraqi forces -- and to give no trust or authority to either police or security forces, is an ominous sign that the tables are being turned.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 29 2006 19:46 utc | 45
For those who are not familiar w/Catherine Austin Fitts, getting familiar is a good idea. She is no garden variety "conspiracy theorist", despite what many well-meaning B-School Academics like to think to maintain the orderliness of their world. She is the grand-daughter of the Dean of Wharton School, was a partner & board member of Dillon Read, and turned down an invitation to be on the Board of the Fed. When she joined BushDaddy Admin in high political position in HUD, after being a large fund-raiser, and discovered the systemic corruption in which all high ranking people were complicit, her integrity drove her out. And turned her life into a real-life "Enemy of the State" Affair. (I rarely recommend movies, but after reading Fitts, I do recommend it.) She was forced to move from DC to rural Tennesse, where she has family connections, to save her life.
So,...she knows whereof she speaks from personal experience. In this story she explained how Washington works. In utter despair w/the pervasive massive corruption, she got together w/a Very High Ranking CIA friend of hers. She asked him what needed to be done to clean out the rot. He said "elect women" to Congress. Since they're the underclass, they don't engage in sexual affairs, so can't be blackmailed. "Washington runs on blackmail."
Got it - Washington Runs on Blackmail.
One of the probs. w/Chomsky, safely ensconced in his rational universe in the Academy, is that he knows zero about the dark side of the Real, operational world of politics.
Posted by: jj | Mar 29 2006 19:49 utc | 46
This -tues.- interview w/Patrick Cockburn of the Independent - is best quick update I've seen. He's back in Iraq now.
Posted by: jj | Mar 29 2006 19:58 utc | 47
I haven’t read D. R Griffin’s books. At one point, I thought of ordering The New Pearl Harbor to see if it was well written and agreeable enough to be handed out to people. I didn’t do it, probably reluctant to spend money on a book I wouldn’t read in detail and had not planned as a gift.
Why? Because what I have read about it told me that it was a compendium of fact and speculation or rather discussion one can find on the net. I read he acknowledges ‘9/11 researchers’ - Paul Thompson’s timeline for example - and that these have not minded Griffin in effect summarising their work (anything to get the information out.)
But there is nothing new in the book .. if it just details parts of what internet conspiracists have noted, highlighted, dug up and discussed, what is the point? To give some respectability to this strand of public opinion or knowledge?
Why do that?
Now, I am not claiming Griffin is not sincere. He may very well be.
Grifffin, after all, is a theologian, and not any kind of researcher (science, market research, historical research, anything..). He is a man of the book, so to speak, someone who analyses texts (without a research aspect) and indulges in lofty ideas (apparently put aside in his 9/11 writings.) All one can say is that if he is sincere, he is a little lazy, because he piggy backs on others and has not investigated anything himself, even read up thoroughly, or used his expertise to address the matter - which would have lead to a different sort of book, about culture, politics, violence, God and so on..
Maybe he wanted some money and limelight. It is very possible. These humanities academic types are often rather flat and boring but imbued with their own status and importance - they loose the capacity to be self-critical and think about what they are doing. They just go ahead and do it. It is possible.
But it is odd all the same?
What is he trying to achieve?
I'm not accusing, just puzzled. And I have read some of his 'religious' scripts.
Posted by: Noisette | Mar 29 2006 20:04 utc | 48
'If You Start Looking at Them as Humans, Then How Are You Gonna Kill Them?'
Casey told us how, from the top down, there was little regard for the Iraqis, who were routinely called "hajjis", the Iraq equivalent of "gook". "They basically jam into your head: 'This is hajji! This is hajji!' You totally take the human being out of it and make them into a video game."It was a way of dehumanising the Iraqis? "I mean, yeah - if you start looking at them as humans, and stuff like that, then how are you going to kill them?"
He says that soldiers who served in his area before his unit's arrival recommended them to keep spades on their vehicles so that if they killed innocent Iraqis, they could throw a spade off them to give the appearance that the dead Iraqi was digging a hole for a roadside bomb.
snip
"you could basically kill whoever you wanted - it was that easy. You did not even have to get off and dig a hole or anything. All you had to do was have some kind of picture. You're driving down the road at three in the morning. There's a guy on the side of the road, you shoot him ... you throw a shovel off."
What have we done?
Posted by: beq | Mar 29 2006 20:06 utc | 49
Just followed Uncle's link on 911 column in SF daily newspaper's online edition. W/this many news organizations discussing 911, we're about at critical mass for the Putsch which Kevin Phillips tipped off in his interview w/Amy Goodman I think I pointed out in a link last week. (Interesting how he seems to be playing a critical role on his book tour, etc, in networking together longstanding rock-ribbed Repugs for the Putsch.)
Apparently, Fitzgerald has gotten Rove to cough up the goodies to implicate Cheney in l'Affaire de Plame. Bringing 911 out of the shadows will generate the firestorm necessary for resignation of the boy emperor - it's hopedto be replaced by, as Kevin said, a "Coalition Govt."
Clearly they're trying to move quickly to fend off suicidal move against Iran. If there is an Oct. suprise, Rove & the infantile illiterate will be on the wrong end of it.
I wonder if they're ready to dispose of the myth of the "war on terra" altogether, she asks optimistically???
Posted by: jj | Mar 29 2006 20:10 utc | 50
Rummy and Co. purposely harked back to the myth of the US army as liberators - see France. Even that ‘occupation’ or ‘liberation’ was desperate, with rampant desertions (yes, unoffical AWOLS), theft, looting, rape, and recreational, purposeless torture.
Eisenhower was furious and tried to put a stop to it. The result was that many blacks were hanged in France by the US military courts, principally for rape. In public executions, as examples.
The US army behaved better in Britain, they had more ‘respect’ as one would say today, but behaved worse in Germany. You don’t want to hear.
Of course, the Russians were even worse. Compared to them, the US soldiers showed some restraint (or that is the spiel in my family) and were cum-chewing cuddly chaps, Mom lovers and religious. Many a french farmer, starving German, managed to keep his daughters safe by ruses.
This is not US bashing, except insofar as it is mindboggling that anyone could today, in 2006, believe in the nobility of war, justify bloody invasions, imagine upright noble soldiers, patriotic chaps, dutiful sons, loving husbands, correct at all times, deferent, striving for noble causes. Huh.
And huh again.
Posted by: Noisette | Mar 29 2006 20:29 utc | 51
An interesting, wide ranging interviewAMY GOODMAN: You were a senator. You were a Democratic senator. What most made you listen?
GARY HART: Well, I’m a natural listener. I didn't have to be told to listen. That's the only way you learn, is keep your mouth shut, or except ask questions, and learn. I’m not a skeptic. I’m not a conspiracist, but over a lifetime of investigations and so on, it makes you wonder about how powers is used in Washington. I mean, there are now these stories coming out about tens of billions of dollars going to the oil industry, you know, with no debate and no discussion. I don't know why my party isn't doing its job.
@anna missed:
I even have a working title: "Moussaoui!"
@jj:
Thanks for the background on Fitts. Her work blew me away when I discovered it two years ago. It is easy to sit back and analyze power relations and problems; it is infinitely harder to come up with workable solutions. Her work is among the most radical and important of our day.
"He said "elect women" to Congress. Since they're the underclass, they don't engage in sexual affairs, so can't be blackmailed. "Washington runs on blackmail."Got it - Washington Runs on Blackmail.
One of the probs. w/Chomsky, safely ensconced in his rational universe in the Academy, is that he knows zero about the dark side of the Real, operational world of politics."
I agree with your point, and I would be willing to guess that 95%, or more, of those at the Senate level are being blackmailed. For the House, I would give the edge to pure criminal venality. But you do have to "pass the bar" to play with the big boys. In essense, I think that is what clubs like "Skull & Bones" are really about -- getting you in the right mindset to play with the adults.
I don't see women as any less compromised than the men. If Pelosi, Hilary, and Condi are not "made men," then I don't know what they are.
By the way, I never realized that you were female either.
I agree with your statement about Chomsky. I don't think it skews his power analyses, but it does account for the difficulty in effecting change.
And your theories about the coming putsch are quite interesting. I'm not sure what to make of it, but one can still dream, can't one.
@ Noisette:
I don't know what DR Griffin "gets" from all this either. But, I really do like him. I don't think original research is all that important here. What DRG does, is cut through the hundreds of theories and explanations out on the web, and simply and clearly present only the most obvious stuff, the stuff you can share with your Aunt Edna in the kitchen over coffee and pound cake, and watch her mouth tighten and wriggle like a caught fish, and then finally relent and drop down, and hear the long sibilant, "oh........" softly, almost unconsciously, escaping her lips.
And he keeps himself out of it, as opposed to Ruppert, who in one 1/2 hr. interview I aired of him, with Sue Supriani, "out of Babylon", says three separate times, "I'm only here to save lives..." Gedouttaheah! Self-serving ego like that stinks, whether it comes from some swarmy guru or the operator of a pay-per-view website.
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 29 2006 22:49 utc | 53
DRG said today that the reason he is doing this is b/c it may save lives. go figure.
Posted by: b real | Mar 29 2006 23:06 utc | 54
I just read the 911 articles linked above. Interesting stuff. WTC 7 is the one that has the conspiracy world going. Do I believe our Govt or people in it pulled this off? No. I do believe it was encouraged and the powers that be sit back and let it happen.
The powerfull sat back and said go ahead, we'll stand back, then proceeded woth the GWOT. Nice excuse.
Posted by: jdp | Mar 29 2006 23:08 utc | 55
D,
I would not go to far on that analogy. The Guomengtang and the Red Army was already in a civil war when Japan got involved. Japans involvement made temporary allies of the fighting parties. Even so, Japan manage to conquer most of the Chinese heartlands. At the end of the war, when Japan surrendered after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the japanese army still held most of the conquered territory in China.
Actually I do not see it as a good analogy at all.
Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Mar 29 2006 23:13 utc | 56
I just finished reading Pitts' 3-part essay on narco dollars. While some questions were raised by her math, it was a scary and enlightening read.
Her second last sentence is puzzling to me, however, in its apparent naiveté : "I want to teach Dave a way to make more money by getting out of narco dollars and backing Sam starting a solari and 'trading places.'" How does she teach Dave the drug smuggler to make more money legitimately? She spent the first half of part one of her essay explaining just why Dave does what he does. There's just too much profit potential for Dave to be doing anything else.
A while ago there was a mention in here about some of the people in Amman working for the freedom of foreign hostages in Iraq.
It is nearly time to lift a little corner on the machinations and mistruths perpetrated by assorted governments over this process.
Some canadian hostages have just been released and getting that story told seems to be complicated by some weird alliance between Canadian security intelligence services and the rabidly pro-zionist Canadian media conglomorate CanWest Global
This is yet another conglomerate trying to emulate Murdoch's NewsCorp.
This is being posted in the hope that a Canadian lurker may have further examples of this organisation's attempts to 'shape the news'.
CanWest has developed large holdings in Australia, Ireland ,and New Zealand. The time is ripe for a little show n tell for those countries' citizens.
Posted by: | Mar 30 2006 1:19 utc | 60
Eisenhower was furious and tried to put a stop to it. The result was that many blacks were hanged in France by the US military courts, principally for rape. In public executions, as examples.
Unm Noisette yer making me noivous here, are you suggesting that only Black US soldiers committed rape in France? that seems at least as unlikely as the Noble Soldier story.
or was it that White soldiers got away with it, and French racism of the time (focussed through the lens of Algeria?) latched onto the Black offenders? or the US military handed over their Black soldiers as scapegoats?
got any refs on this nasty little episode in the war?
Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 30 2006 1:22 utc | 61
Whoooops! Been away and hadn't had a chance t0 post until now. Did the terrorists win?
Posted by: McGee | Mar 30 2006 2:35 utc | 62
@Malooga, I was going to mention Skull 'n' Bones, but didn't take the time. I thght. it was powerful kids at play, connecting, etc., of no particular moment, til I heard Fitts tell the story I repeated above. Then I remembered that a key portion of their initiation ceremony is the Requirement that each new member tell their entire sexual history to the assembled band of brothers. Suddenly, that took on new meaning....Being initiated into the power nexus requires providing food even then for blackmail/means of control...
Fitts herself demonstrates the problems the elite encounter when they let in someone they can't blackmail. How do they force her to compromise her integrity. They couldn't, so when she demonstrated the courage & conviction to try to clean up the mess, they had to put into play attempts on her life. That's too cumbersome to be carried out on everyone.
But you don't have to blackmail Everyone, only key people.
Frankly, I'm rather ambivalent about what she's doing. I think her idea about having people withdraw their money from the corrupt banking system & investing in yr. own community is impt. But economically she really is not in disagreement w/the current economic paradigm - she just wishes they guys running it were honest. Looking at her website through that lens, arguably she's just encouraging the masses to find themselves some tiny subsistence niche.
I think she'd be more radical if she challenged Pirate Economics of the neo-feudal Barons. For example, let's look at what the Feds have done w/Fed. Budget. They're basically shovelling it to the rich & powerful, individually via tax cuts for uber-rich & in their corporate incarnations. States used to get huge chunks of their tax dollars back to invest in their people & infrastructure. No longer. It's so bad that in article from our local paper that I meant to post but didn't, I read that Goldman Sachs has started a new division to auction local infrastructres off to the highest bidder. (Which leads one to suspect that Admin's biggest crime in handing our ports over to Arabs, was in not giving Wall Street their cut of the pie!)
In any event, I wish someone w/legal & financial knowledge would put together community investment trusts allowing us to invest in our own infrastructure & deduct it from our federal taxes. ie. F' da Feds. Let's take our taxes back & buy up & maintain our own infrastructure, since they're no longer carrying out their responsibility.
(Here I guess I"m putting tog. some of Fitts' thinking w/the "onthecommons.org" guys.)
In short, I wish Fitts' would be more aggressive than merely encouraging the peasants to try & find a tiny scrap of land/small business from which to subsist. But I do like her very much, and think she & Thom Hartmann have more to say now than anyone else.
Posted by: jj | Mar 30 2006 2:54 utc | 63
Is everyone on board w/me on the developing Putsch? Did y'all read the all impt. interview of Kevin Phillips by Amy? That's what tipped me off. Throw in the play that's being given to 911. CNN ran a poll to see how the public was receiving it. Figures were astounding - like 83%. That tells those who matter that there's a Gathering Storm they can tap into to force Infantile Illiterate's Resignation should they choose to do so. Speaking of Blackmail, they have those guys by the throat, so they serve at the pleasure of those who matter.
In that context, I read Robert's piece reprinted above as a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice on the Conservatives Breakfast Table. He's been writing that for quite sometime. But pub. of Phllips book has galvanized them to come out of their holes & get newly engaged. This is the column to welcome & orient them in the new day.
I'm interested to hear how others are reading the tea leaves??
Posted by: jj | Mar 30 2006 3:04 utc | 64
CanWest Global is owned by the Asper's. Izzy died recently. Lenny is the boss now. Kinda explains the Zionism. They own Global TV and CHCH TV and the National Post. This bunch and SunMedia are solidly behind the US empire.
One opinion shaper for the Sun - Worthington - is the father-in-law of the shaper of the phrase "axis of evil".
Posted by: gmac | Mar 30 2006 3:22 utc | 65
jj, i haven't read the interview yet but i've read about it. i signed up w/the 9/11 truth .org bloggers brigade to i get updates a few times a day, and it does seem like its more 'in the news', probably because some efforts have been made and people are starting to realize they are not alone. i watched that poll very closely for a few days and it never wavered, hung between 81 and 83 % the whole time.
friday night i'm going to a local showing of the 9/11 movie, the great conspiracy. i've already seen it online bit it should be fun hanging w/a bunch of people i don't know who all believe, i think more and more people are coming over to the 'other side'. my cousins just visited from S.C. pretty normal, go to church andf all that. they don't buy the story at all. and they are not a pair one would consider 'far out'. very normal.
my tea leaves are saying things are heating up.
Posted by: annie | Mar 30 2006 3:28 utc | 66
I didn't read Phillips on Goodmans show, but I have bought the book and am currently reading it.
Your take on Fitts jj may be a good one, but I think Fitts still does us a favor in outing much of the system. Our tax dollars are extortion money going to subsidize and enrich the already rich.
Posted by: jdp | Mar 30 2006 3:31 utc | 67
Absolutely, jdp. I think she's great & so very valuable. I just don't get how she doesn't get that corruption is built into the very structure of "free-market econ." Hasn't she read about necessity of checks & balances, and about human nature, temptation etc. Puzzles me.
(The one thing that amuses me about her, is how from reading her speak about growing up it's easy to get the sense that she came from "the wrong side of the tracks". Nothing could be further from the truth. But then no woman makes Partner & member of the Board of Dillon Read as young as she did w/out being of some type of blue-blood lineage. In fact, her brother is, or was a few yrs. ago, Dean of Penn Law School. None of which is to imply that even some leftist faculty there don't think she's gone over the edge...but then they have no comprehension of having agents of the state trying to assasinate you! I would imagine that could be a fairly radical perspective altering experience for anyone!!)
What do you all think about my idea of community reinvestment trusts, possibly w/ability to issue bonds?
Posted by: jj | Mar 30 2006 4:20 utc | 68
@jj
"I'm interested to hear how others are reading the tea leaves??"
Well, I ain't got much to use as a yardstick 'cept history and human nature, and neither one of them is pointing to that hot end we'd all like to see here.
What are we askin' about here? Proof that the U.S. government deliberately and with malice an' aforethought hurt their own people in order to get what they wanted? You mean like the Tuskegee Experiment? Or Operation Northwoods?
Yeah, the admission that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was faked really went a-ways toward redressin' that whole messy business of killin' the Vietnamese, and there ain't too many people who seriously believe that the U.S. didn't at the very least know Pearl Harbor was comin' and could have prevented it. So why should 3,000 or some odd dead people in a couple of skyscrapers play out any differently?
Now I do have to admit it's a burr under my saddle that people are fightin' back and forth over the "Made It Happen" vs. the "Let It Happen" scenarios... as if one is more evil than t'other, or that the indisputable fact that the U.S. cynically capitalised on the 9/11 incident to push through an agenda that was all ready to go isn't distasteful enough. Even if 9/11 caught the federales with their pants down, everything they did afterwards seems enough to me to paint a black hat on 'em. But some folk want to believe their government just wouldn't do that sort of thing, so they somehow think that the feds lettin' people die is a more likely turn of events than makin' 'em die... or less evil, or something. At any rate, it helps folk sleep better at night even if it don't particularly stand up to reason or precedent.
But as for the big question about prognosticatin'...
Let 'em come out with whatever proof to the contrary you want. Folk will still believe what they want to believe and forget whatever salients run to the contrary. We've already got ample proof a'plenty that the government ain't got anyone's best interests at heart 'ceptin' their own, and it ain't been nothin' that a few thousand dollars in out of court settlements can't get people to shut up about.
I see this all going the way of the Fitzgerald case... gives us something to get bent out of shape over in the short run and then will get footnoted and forgotten as soon as the next shiny distraction comes along.
Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 30 2006 4:25 utc | 69
@jj et al...
David Walker, the US Comptroller General, predicts economic disaster for the U.S. (with video)
FEDERAL RESERVE ORDERS $2 TRILLION TO BE PRINTED AND PUT INTO CIRCULATION: US TREASURY FLABBERGASTED
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 30 2006 4:56 utc | 70
hope you're feeling better, uncle
what're the odds that the WH jettisoned andrew card b/c he's going to be indicted soon? kinda risky to introduce a new product right before the next illegal aggression against another sovereign nation.
jj- i like that idea
Posted by: b real | Mar 30 2006 5:18 utc | 71
i don't recall seeing this picked up here yet -- add another reason to the list:
In a March 26 interview on NBC’s "Meet the Press," Rice offered a different rationale for invading Iraq. She agreed that Hussein was not implicated in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks nor did she assert that he was conspiring with al-Qaeda on another assault.Instead, Rice justified invading Iraq and ousting Hussein because he was part of the "old Middle East," which she said had engendered hatreds that led indirectly to 9/11.
"If you really believe that the only thing that happened on 9/11 was people flew airplanes into buildings, I think you have a very narrow view of what we faced on 9/11," Rice said. "We faced the outcome of an ideology of hatred throughout the Middle East that had to be dealt with. Saddam Hussein was a part of that old Middle East. The new Iraq will be a part of the new Middle East, and we will all be safer."
Rice’s argument – that Bush has the right to invade any country that he feels is part of a culture that might show hostility toward the United States – represents the most expansive justification to date for launching the Iraq War.
It goes well beyond waging "preemptive" or even "predictive" war. Rice is asserting a U.S. right to inflict death and destruction on Muslim countries as part of a social-engineering experiment to eradicate their perceived cultural and political tendencies toward hatred.
Despite the extraordinary implications of Rice’s declaration, her comment passed almost unnoticed by the U.S. news media, which gave much more attention to her demurring on the possibility of becoming the next National Football League commissioner.
Yet Rice’s new war rationale, combined with the British memo on Bush’s determination to invade Iraq regardless of the facts, should be more than enough evidence to put Bush, Rice, Blair and other U.S. and British officials before a war crimes tribunal.
robert parry: time to talk war crimes
Posted by: b real | Mar 30 2006 5:29 utc | 72
Gee, Uncle, thanks :) Wish they provided a transcript, as I can't get the video.
But that's one of four reasons I'd bet the farm '08/09 is too late to remove these guys from power. They're simply so ideologically rigidified they cannot function as head of state. They're like having a blind man as sea-captain, who doesn't know he's blind or listen to anyone.
1) Econ. will meltdown first.
2) US foreign policy has to be substantially de-militarized quickly, as the rest of the world is rapidly forging alliances that exclude, and otherwise exist to the detriment of US elites. See Latin America. And Iran looms like the iceberg on the horizon, all the moreso as attacking it could cause rise of Fundie Wacko govt. in Pakistan.
3) Global Warming Has To Be Addressed Now. It's not only insurance cos. that are starting to panic.
4) They have No credibility anywhere.
And to a far lesser extent, there's concern over emerging theocracy, which could result in elites losing social control. (I think it's too late to stop this. The most one can do is slow it down.)
Posted by: jj | Mar 30 2006 5:34 utc | 73
jj
Your information of Fitts' revelations of "how the system works" re-arouses my concerns about the other Fitz and his investigations of Rove. IIRC he is also a "Skull and Bones" member.
Posted by: ww | Mar 30 2006 6:06 utc | 74
A friend e-mailed me the following, which is relatively long but quite interesting food for thought. Having sd that, I neither believe nor disbelieve it:
Protocols for Economic Collapse in America
And this is how the U.S. Treasury would handle an economic collapse. It’s called the 6900 series of protocols. It would start with declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt.
Then the SEC and the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market’s decline, hour by hour -- when Japan’s markets opened the next day, what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter-linkages of the global markets.
On the second day, US Special Forces would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located.
The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense. This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios. Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we’re talking
about now is aftermath -- how the aftermath would be handled.
One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that would cause the collapse, whether it’s military collapse or economic collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious -- when the mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.
Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US declaration of force majeure on debt service. It’s a very extensive scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic, political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse. Then they break down individual scenarios.
In the economic collapse scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto repudiation, and that’s how it would be interpreted by the world’s capital marketplaces.
Then the scenario goes on from there. The US Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They’d wait until the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a couple of hours. That’s when they’d determine how to begin the process of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible, mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all the rest of the world’s markets. Therefore you would want to declare the force majeure when the rest of the world’s markets closed.
The declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That’s pretty simple.
Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury does. He has that authority.
You might ask -- wouldn’t he have his arm twisted not to do that?
The answer is that if there isn’t any money left to service the debt, it doesn’t make any difference what the current regime might want to do.
The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim, from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now that is sinking into a sea of red ink.
The United States is consuming 80% of the planet’s savings rate to finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn’t being serviced, because they can’t hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their reserves are so depleted.
Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?
Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May is now unaccounted for?
Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is saying to the Bushonian Cabal that -- “You’ve got to start servicing this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations – European and Asian – whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.”
Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?
It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone familiar with finances.
So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing another faction? No, it’s not really blackmailing. It’s being done out of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are saying to the Bushonian cabal, “You’ve got to start servicing this debt because we don’t have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to cover this debt. If you don’t, then, at some point, we will have to publicly admit–in order to save our own necks -- that we were the end buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the whole cabal.
The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.
Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as foreign news services endlessly put it. It’s because Kissinger is the point man. He’s the one that is telling them the disposition of other foreign central banks.
Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they’re being stolen from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.
The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt policies (now they’re overt political, economic, social and military policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is consuming 80% of the planet’s net savings rate.
It doesn’t have the slack. In other words, it can’t refinance stealth debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly, running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.
So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime (and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people what’s coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to understand. They are telling the American people about the re-institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of the Treasury’s emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain domestic liquidity.
David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and, hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They’re not hiding it from anybody anymore. They are telling you what’s happening.
Now, what does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the debt can no longer be serviced. I’ve been asked this on the radio shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he’s out in the news more often than he used to be. It’s unusual for the Comptroller General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be out in the news so much.
It simply means that when he says the United States “will no longer be able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits,” he means that by 2009, if Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be consuming 100% of the planet’s savings rate to finance Bushonian budget deficits.
Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A) There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending. There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion-dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that’s equally unpalatable.
The other option, B, as Paul O’Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient revenues to continue to service debt.
The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury, which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt repudiation by the United States of America.
There are other signs to look for. They’re not going to happen now, but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you’ll begin to see more signs that the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn’t come in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.
In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain’t going to apply to the 10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do that.
When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a force majeure on debt, it wouldn’t be broad-cast on mainstream media. There’s no sense because the American people don’t even understand what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be picked up by all media outlets anyway.
The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European markets close. It’s also the lunch hour for the markets. It’s when you’re going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges. That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.
A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States markets, both equities debt and commodities–i.e., stock, bonds, commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits –would all be limit-offered with pools. “Limit-offered” means that there are more sellers at the limit – i.e., limit down– than there are buyers.
So-called ‘pools’ would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand contracts every few minutes. ‘Limit-offered with pools’–this is trader language. Pools to sell–2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit-offered price. That would begin to build.
By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in – because it would take awhile before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being released at lunch hour.
A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the installation of the so-called ‘declaration of fast market conditions,’ for instance; the declaration of ‘no more stop orders,’ the declaration of ‘fill at any price,’ etc.–in a desperate bid to maintain liquidity.
That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the American people found out what this was all about and when it was explained to them.
At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the next day.
The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.
On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had left.
Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar and declare it worthless.
This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been temporary and have been brought back up. But what we’re talking about now is the end.
These protocols that I’m referring to aren’t even all that secret. They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.
What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and contracting money supply.
There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30 years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state basis, was no longer possible.
This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it’s like the President of the United States pushing the final red button -- the commit button. The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism. It’s called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying the manage all this. I think it’s going to happen all simultaneously. There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be existing collapse protocols that can be used.
The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S. Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904–there’ll be A, B, and so on–which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be incorporated within the Department of Defense’s own World War III scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/ war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.
All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis, ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country, into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.
And that’s literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day, it would be all over -- a state of martial law. We’re not talking about war, now; this is just economic collapse.
There’s no military implication here, no political, no social implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and foods would be shut down automatically.
They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special 117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it’s planned. In other words, economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military action and control.
By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You’ve got to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they’re going to be shot.
Protocols for environmental disasters are called ‘scaling-circle scenarios.’ ‘Scaling circles’ is a Department of Defense euphemism. It’s also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services. In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or global, it’s got to start someplace. It’s going to start in one very small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.
The environmental problem, to whatever extent it’s possible, before it spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise affect other areas.
In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast, beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward -- that’s a different type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the purposes of maintaining control.
In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by the American people.
Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn’t even anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the American people wouldn’t get it. It would be announced that the stock markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we’ve always been taught they’ll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.
You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down because the American people have never been taught Economics 101.
The American people wouldn’t realize the full extent of it until the markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in front. Then they would go down and see the gas station’s closed. They see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there’s federal troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on
And remember -- it’s not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians. It’s federal. In other words, they would have the ability to militarize and give military authority to a civilian force.
This would include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be immediately militarized.
They wouldn’t take just anybody – like they did in Iraq. It would be like the military when they “call for volunteers.” Then they’d have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering, waving around the American flag and so on.
You’ve got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving the American flag in front of their face and say, “Hey, you’re going to get your chance you always wanted -- to fit your potbelly inside an army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would that be?”
“And besides, if you do this, then you’re going to get to eat.”
In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take any precautions. They wouldn’t have a clue because they don’t understand enough about economics to know what is happening.
So that’s what it is -- Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re-installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General David Walker is saying.
In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United States can do to protect themselves. We’re not going to make any suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there’s very little you can do.
We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store, but, frankly, that’s useless. In the last analysis, it’s a lot of hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.
The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to when he was asked by Barbara Walters, “How do we prevent reaching the problem by 2009?” He said simply, “A change of regimes.”
So how do you prevent it? Don’t vote for Bush and Cheney -- and hope that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have given him.
All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush-Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.
Here’s an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there have been record sales of Spam in the United States – the survivalists’ food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the spokesman for Hormel said, “It is the only food product you can buy with an expiration that’s 50 years.”
When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the last surviving item -- when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of unopened cans of Spam They’ll have monuments to the past out of Spam.
So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004, Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential currency restrictions. He used the word that’s going to fuel the flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.
It’s very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into gold.
Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming, although this wouldn’t actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.
I’m not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from 1933. It just says, “compelled,” as in citizens are lawfully compelled to redeem gold for script. I don’t think there was any such provision, which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR’s “Raw Deal” of 1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch out.
Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel supplies. That’s pretty sinister too.
What they’re talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting it simply, that’s what it means. The second point was to increase restrictions that already exist.
FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold: a) to restrict citizens’ ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens’ ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be hoarding.
And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they knew what it means and how people would interpret it.
They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people’s ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property -- to get around what the true intent of that was.
But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens’ ability to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced identification of gold holdings or forced redemption…
In other words, what you don’t want is citizens who have the ability to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be able to resist state control in the future.
You’ve got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the civilian population. You can’t have citizens out there hoarding food and fuel because then people can say to government, “I ain’t taking a rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don’t have to. You can’t control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper currency.”
I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming increasingly clear.
In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people who think that way will be ultimately vindicated – if George Bush has a second term in office.
People should quit making fun of them because they would be vindicated – even though they were all burned out, twenty-dollared to death, buying books and tapes, and discredited by mainstream media. It may sound like a hollow victory, but it won’t be a hollow victory for them – them that’s got the Spam…
addendum:
Some what related, is this outline the activities of a few of the more than 100 private mercenary outfits.
Aegis Defence Services Ltd
Olive Group FZ LLC
ISI
International Charters, Inc. (ici)
Blackwater usa
Titan Corp
Zapata Engineering (ordinance handling)
Armor Holdings Inc
Cochise Consultancy
DynCorp International LLC
SAIC-Science Applications Intl Corp.
Special Operations Consulting LLC
Triple Canopy Inc.
Triple Options
MPRI-Military Professional Resources Incorporated
Vinnell
BDM International Inc.
Here's a good introductory link by P.W. Singer that outlines the problem:
Peacekeepers, Inc.
www.policyreview.org/jun03/singer.html
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 30 2006 6:27 utc | 75
b real -- the Rice story -- stunning.
they open their mouths and these things come out.
like (a) they have no idea of the monstrousness of what they are saying and/or (b) they know or believe they have perfect immunity.
but then in the Dulles-through-Kissinger days similar monstrous things were said about Asians... it's all in the historical record and we're supposed to just paper it over and forget about it...
Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 30 2006 6:30 utc | 76
Ah Uncle...we love you, but where the Hell is the Brandy???
Could you/would you say something about the position/background/position of knowledge/reliability of the person who sent you this email? From old friend?Was it a one-to-one correspondence, or something making the rounds?
B-, does it deserve to be its own thread?
Posted by: jj | Mar 30 2006 7:55 utc | 78
David Walker in the interview does seem to contradict the David Walker in the e-mail, as in the interview he says the meltdown would take place over a generation (not by 2009) and fairly explicitly does not blame Bushco (as e-mail would indicate) but the whole political spectrum. Its a little hard to believe the government would instigate this total devaluation without signals beforehand to the hedge type elites, the pressure being fornoticed quite before conditions reached this kind of critical mass. Not that its out of the question -- as the whole essay would indicate in believable language, that they have thought about it enough to create detailed planning.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 30 2006 9:34 utc | 79
Those people who have been foolish enough to waste their energies trying to achieve change from within the system, will be aware of the power of the caucus. Originally the term for a meeting of the power brokers within a parliamentary system, this modus operandi has flowed down through all other allegedly democratic organisations within a society, as well as upwards through the multi-lateral, multi-national consultative process.
There, it has undermined genuine debate just as it has in legislative bodies throughout the world.
A meeting before the 'real' meeting, the caucus has become the forum where the real debate is engaged; well away from the prying eyes of Johnny Citizen.
Enough members of the larger official meeting are present to ensure that what is agreed at caucus will be what is 'decided' at the open public meeting later. Of course the horse trading, hypocrisy, and double dealing will remain hidden.
Any delegate remotely believed to be a potential loose cannon will be 'mistakenly' told the meeting was Tuesday in Timbuctoo when in fact it was Wednesday in Warsaw.
If there was one single flaw in the representative democratic process that could explain the sad state that has come to pass with most 'democracies', it is this caucus system, which needs to be either banned altogether (impossible to achieve), or forced into the light of day so that voters could get a genuine understanding of the real issues in play.
There is an interesting caucus being held in Berlin tommorow. Interesting only because it includes more than the official membership.
It is a meeting of 'official' permanent members of the UN Security Council. That it has more participants than the actual public meeting is the antithesis of how these things are meant to work.
It may seem perplexing but not surprising, that this caucus is being held after the official public meeting. That was held yesterday.
That meeting was of the UN Security Council.
The agenda? Ostensibly Iran's impudence to want independent and unhindered access to nuclear energy.
This was discussed at the Security Council and a wishy washy, somewhat meaningless resolution passed referring the matter back to the IAEA for further discussion.
The details of tommorow's caucus are here:
Crunch talks on Iran nuclear plan
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is joining foreign ministers from five other major powers to discuss a future strategy on the Iran nuclear issue.
The meeting in Berlin comes a day after the UN Security Council called on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.
Ms Rice and ministers from Germany, UK, France, China and Russia will discuss what to do if Iran does not comply. . . . .
. . . . .The working lunch will bring Ms Rice together with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Britain's Jack Straw, Philippe Douste-Blazy of France, Sergei Lavrov of Russia, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. . . . ."
There seems to be a couple of extras in there; namely Germany and the EU. They aren't permanent members of the Security Council. How could that be? And after the fact too! How come everyone is a whitefella apart from China? That's right. They have to have China along since the old Taiwanese puppet trick died a while back.
Goddamn it! Next thing you know Patel the curry-muncher will be wanting to join, not to mention the wily Pakistanis.
Well truth be told this isn't a post caucus, it's a pre-caucus and a damned important one too. The US is about to sit down with Iran and discuss the carve up of the oil resources of the former state of Iraq, now definitely on the failed list and if the Iraquis think that's bad, wait until the oil is all trucked and the former Iraquis have been sucked, fucked and lucked right out.
Anyway the US will being going into their first tete a tete with Iran for a couple of decades.
As they are going in with a single shot .22 derringer instead of their preferred .45 six-gun, they are in the uncomfortable position of having to drag all their mates along to this caucus. Even the punk assed 90lb puny's that turned yella in nought three.
This will be a vain attempt to stand over Russia and China, who have a whole other agenda being played very close to the chest. These guys are smart and aren't like the Dubya who telegraphs all his moves before he knows whether the opposition will lead with the left or the right.(LOL)
The Ukraine has been offered up as a sacrifice, but the rethugs are too silly to realise if you give a man back what you've already stolen from him, all that does is remind the fellow (i)you're not to be trusted and (ii) that you owe him big time.
These fuckwits have gambled with the future of Western Civilisation and lost. They aren't worried though.
Although most of the population formerly known as western civilisation will be trying to run their economies on the smell of an oily rag, this means Johnny Citizen will be paying so much for a sniff that he'll be grateful for the minor lube he cops before his regular royal rogering.
Posted by: | Mar 30 2006 9:57 utc | 80
@ anon Mar 30, 2006 4:57:42 AM
fascinating insight on all this. how do you do it?
Debs, I think you posted above. I don't know what is required to get you to come back but I'm asking....pretty please. as I recall two of our fellow barflies got a little bit shitty with you some time back. I would hope that you have thicker skin than that.
anyway, I looked for your email address in old posts hoping to contact you but had no luck. perhaps you could start posting under D the poster formerly known as Debs is dead.
March is almost over and it seems the madness has not yet descended upon us. Did we get the year wrong again. we were promised something bad last year in March as well IIRC.
Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 30 2006 10:23 utc | 81
@anon - Isn´t that meeting about Saudi Arabia????
'Saudi secretly working with Pak experts'
Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear programme, with help from Pakistani experts, the German magazine Cicero reports in its latest edition, citing western security sources.It says that during the Haj pilgrimages to Mecca in 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims to come to Saudi Arabia in aircraft laid on by the oil-rich kingdom.
Between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them took the opportunity to "disappear" from their hotel rooms, sometimes for up to three weeks, it quoted German security expert Udo Ulfkotte as saying.
According to western security services, the magazine added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan, a nuclear power since 1998 thanks to the work of the now-disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Cicero, which will appear on newsstands tomorrow, also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan's nuclear weapons "because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear programme".
The magazine also said satellite images prove that Saudi Arabia has set up in al-Sulaiyil, South of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles.
According to some western security services, long-range Ghauri-type missiles of Pakistani-origin are housed inside the silos.
Interesting for that to have been launched just today, just in time of the meeting. The journalist Ulfkotte has good connections with various secret services, but you never know if he has information or disinformation.
Now lets go and bomb Riyahd!
On the economic rason for the war on Iraq:
Does the Media Have It Right on the War?
The claim that the war has an economic foundation may sound strange in the context of American media coverage, because it is so unfamiliar. So let me begin by agreeing with two key points in the currently fashionable media analysis: The initial attack on Saddam Hussein's regime was a success and there was a moment -- just after the fall of Baghdad -- when the Bush administration might have avoided triggering a formidable armed resistance. The war and proto-civil war of the present moment were not the inevitable result of the invasion, but of Bush administration actions taken afterwards.We do not remember much of this now, but just after Saddam was toppled the American victors announced that a sweeping reform of Iraqi society would take place. The only part of this still much mentioned today -- the now widely regretted dismantling of the Iraqi military -- was but one aspect of a far larger effort to dismantle the entire Baathist state apparatus, most notably the government-owned factories and other enterprises that constituted just about 40% of the Iraqi economy. This process of dismantling included attempts, still ongoing, to remove various food, product, and fuel subsidies that guaranteed low-income Iraqis basic staples, even when they had no gainful employment.
...
Theres this tid bit from Iraqi Interior minister Bayan jabr:
northeast of Baghdad, he said.
"Soon we will have a big operation in and around Diyala," he said. "Within a month we will sort it out with a military operation involving defence, interior and multinational forces."
The biggest threats, however, were no longer al Qaeda but Saddam's Baathist followers led by former vice president Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and senior official Mohammed Younis Ahmed.
"We heard that Zarqawi this week quit the leadership of al Qaeda. What is left is the work of Saddamists," he said.
He gave no details of the intelligence on Zarqawi, whom U.S. and Iraqi officials blamed for last month's Samarra shrine bombing that fuelled an increase in sectarian killings.
A source in U.S.-led military intelligence said a relative lull in al Qaeda attacks may be tactical and said Zarqawi seemed to remain a key figure and a major recruiting draw.
END OF ZARQAWI?
"I'm telling you, Zarqawi is finished," Jabor insisted. "He only has a few supporters in Ramadi" in western Iraq, he said.
"The operation is led by Baathists and Saddamists and it will be easy to eliminate them ... There are maybe 1,000 left and we will start a campaign to round them up."
...................................
So now the Shiite militia infested interior ministry is claiming to have ridded Iraq of Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, curious development, that there are no more (al-Qaeda) terrorists in Iraq. Cuts against the US reversal by eliminating a US interest, and shows effectivness of militia operations, in comparison to US/Iraqi operations.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 30 2006 11:19 utc | 84
b,
You know I liked that second link. Now if Juan Cole would ever mention the economic effects, then we might be getting somewhere.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 30 2006 11:26 utc | 85
just a little vindication will help me sleep tonight (smile)
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 30 2006 11:31 utc | 86
The US propaganda machine: Oh, what a lovely war
The Lincoln Group was tasked with presenting the US version of events in Iraq to counter adverse media coverage. Here we present examples of its work, and the reality behind its headlines.
...
A week after the US Defence Secretary criticised the media for " exaggerating" reports of violence in Iraq, The Independent has obtained examples of newspaper reports the Bush administration want Iraqis to read.They were prepared by specially trained American "psy-ops" troops who paid thousands of dollars to Iraqi newspaper editors to run these unattributed reports in their publications. In order to hide its involvement, the Pentagon hired the Lincoln Group to act as a liaison between troops and journalists. The Lincoln Group was at the centre of controversy last year when it was revealed the company was being paid more than $100m (£58m) for various contracts, including the planting of such stories.
...
gylangirl wrote:
Now rather than emigrate/escape to some other country, I want to raise the call for an "Energy Descent Action Plan" among my own local community.
How many of these local setups are out there? What's being planned for the post peak oil era in your neck of the woods?
where I live, the city council talks about preparing for peak oil. city planning includes no buildings higher than seven stories tall...which is the highest level of a bldg considered reasonable for walking flights of stairs. obviously I don't live in a city full of skyscrapers.
bike and walking paths are getting more attention...with the idea of making them also horse and wagon friendly (because, where I live, there are ppl who use them regularly, such as Amish families, and also ppl who use them for pleasure...and get positive responses when they pull up in a horse and buggy at a strip mall...)
from what I read, moving to a place that is not going to possibly under the 20 ft rise in water levels is something to think about...also moving to a place that has easy access to farmlands is a good thing. of course, most of the "important" jobs are in larger cities, so not too many ppl will want to or be able to move until it is more feasible to live elsewhere because of other factors.
I love New Orleans, but I wonder if it is a lost cause with climate changes. Maybe it would be cheaper to move the city itself...bldg by bldg. I won't hold my breath for that one to happen.
but global warming hit the cover of Time, so it's "official" now, no matter what the neo-know-nothings say.
you might be interested in starting a thread on Le Speakeasy about this topic, and Deanander and Stoy, among others, have written about alternatives there in the past.
I talk to rich ppl about making money by getting ahead of the herd in alternative energy for small-scale projects, just to try to encourage the capitalists to do what they can for the greater good, knowing they can also make money from socially responsible actions too.
jj- imo, Bush should be removed from office and tried for thumbing his nose at the constitution...for violating his oath of office. I don't consider this a simple issue of impeachment. I think that all in Congress who have enabled him should be subject to censure. I think we need a "truth" commission, not a 9-11 commission, to discuss America's past in Chile and Argentina and death squads in Central America and Negroponte now using these tactics in Iraq.
...I think the best thing for this country and the world would be to get rid of the neo-cons and talibornagains from govt. Ask members of the govt to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, even if it disagrees with their contention that their fundamentalist beliefs take precedence. If they can't do this, they should resign and new elections should be held.
the media should educate the public about the problems of theocracy in other countries and note the parallels developing here...do not make American theocrats "exceptional."
And I will not hold my breath waiting for this because I know I would pass out before I'd see any such actions.
Posted by: fauxreal | Mar 30 2006 13:41 utc | 89
dan of steele wrote (Mar 30, 2006 5:23:28 AM ):
"as I recall two of our fellow barflies got a little bit shitty with you some time back. I would hope that you have thicker skin than that."
Debs seems to have taken his leave from attributed posting while I was in transition, so I ain't rightly sure what the full story here is. There was a time not too long hence when he and I butted heads over an issue, but I didn't take it as bein' "shitty" and I'd like to think that he didn't, either.
Now, I ain't sure what it is to hope for. If he's gone for health reasons, I'm gonna be sad, and if he ain't posting because of wounded feelings, I'm gonna be peeved. And if I'm one of the parties involved in the wounded feelings, I'm gonna be even more peeved.
Whatever the reason for his lack of a signature around these parts as of late, I hope it changes in the direction of some dialogue soon. His contributions here have (obviously) been mucho appreciated.
Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 30 2006 14:41 utc | 90
@ monolycus - "Now, I ain't sure what it is to hope for. If he's gone for health reasons, I'm gonna be sad, and if he ain't posting because of wounded feelings, I'm gonna be peeved. Lol. Is that how they're going to be speaking English in South Korea now?
Posted by: beq | Mar 30 2006 14:49 utc | 91
So, I was leaving the Moon and going over to LesSpeak to read fauxreal's last post over there but my finger got spastic and when I was about the click on LS on my list of favorites I hit Kyoto Journal which I hadn't visited in awhile and found and interesting piece by Tawada Yoko. Is Europe Western? It's hard to choose a blockquote that is most provacative but I'll try this one:
Traditional “Western” culture is often presented as a single line of development. That line, however, is a carefully cultivated fiction. For example ancient Greek culture is viewed as being an important part of that cultural lineage while the influence of Arab mathematics and natural sciences is excluded. In Hamburg, however, I have not found any trace of ancient Greek culture. In contrast, in a temple in the Japanese city of Nara, at the end of the Silk Road, one can see an ornament of grapes which originated in Greece. This stone fruit still hasn’t rotted although it is over a thousand years old and was around for a thousand years before that. The cultures of this earth have always formed a network and not several parallel lines.
Anyway, it's about Nationalism and I thought our community of barflies might be interested in it. Just a snack.
Posted by: beq | Mar 30 2006 14:58 utc | 92
Hopping madbunny (way upthread),
Jerome has spent quite some time over at European Tribune arguing that the Iranian oil bourse story does not make sense (expect for someone who tries to sell them a bourse-system). Read all about it.
Regarding uncle's friend I do not see why a crash of the US dollar would bring down all papercurrencies. I know that USD is the currency which other currencies measure themselves against, but that should be fairly easy to change. A monetary crash in the US will affect the rest of the world, but I do not see why it would do it to that extent.
Also I found the bit with paratroopers a bit extreme. Are US military forces so removed from the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located (which cities would that be by the way?) that they can not fly and drive to their positions?
But this is mostly nitpicking. What I really want to know is - like jj - what crediability do you attach to your source?
Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Mar 30 2006 15:47 utc | 93
@beq
"Is that how they're going to be speaking English in South Korea now?"
I'm workin' on it. I've already got a whole passle of 'em familiar with the phrase "Soylent Green is people."
Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 30 2006 16:55 utc | 94
A complement to b real's robert perry link is http://www.slate.com/id/2138332/?nav=navoa>this one from hitchens. not a mea culpa, but a bit of instrumental justification for the war, as you'd expect.
in any case, he can't seem to get it through his head, or be provoked to prove otherwise, the war was conducted for the most cynical reasons (oil, empire, neolib wetdreams).
yet, hitch's postmortum begs the question: if it was all about "freedom" and indeed if bush et al. really wished liberation for iraqis, then would the war earn our, the "left's," support?
I think so.
Posted by: slothrop | Mar 30 2006 17:13 utc | 95
my ideal war would have opportunists like Hitchens leading the charge
Posted by: gmac | Mar 30 2006 17:26 utc | 96
Jill Carroll freed -- and guess what
American reporter Jill Carroll was 'Released Unharmed' in Baghdad, and quickly had her mental status questioned for saying she was well-treated. The freelance reporter was kidnapped January 7 while on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor.
www.cursor.org this day. the accusations of false memory or fabrication came from the rabid fringe of wingnuttery, not from official sources, but it rang a distant bell for me...
so, who remembers that little blonde gal who was allegedly rescued by heroic sixguns-blazing action by evil Iraqi torturer-rapists -- with made-for-tv video of the staged rescue op -- and then spirited away to a medical facility where she was not allowed to talk to press... after, as I recall, she said that actually the Iraqi med personnel had been kind and good to her?
Jessica Lynch, that was the name. she was going to be BushCo's little Horst Wessel, but she told the wrong story (or so I dimly recall) and was reported as "suffering from shock" and "disoriented" and possibly unable to remember her dreadful treatment by the Axis of Evil.
now I am not one to discount Stockholm Syndrome, PTSD, repressed tramatic memory and all that stuff. but this reflex of "any witness whose testimony doesn't suit my script must be mentally unbalanced" is pathetic stuff.
Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 30 2006 21:50 utc | 97
afterthought:
of course maybe Carroll only meant that she was "well-treated" by US standards, i.e. far better than the Yanks treated their prisoners at A.G. and similar installations of international shame.
Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 30 2006 21:52 utc | 98
@GMAC:
Snitchens is a real piece of work, ain't he just?
Posted by: Groucho | Mar 30 2006 22:37 utc | 99
debs, do hope that was you posting at @ Mar 30, 2006 4:57:42 AM. i searched the comments last night looking for your last post - february 24. i was hoping it was anonymous you who took me to task for hoping for gore in 2008. we need/want your wit, insight, your contrarian kiwi brilliance.
Posted by: conchita | Mar 30 2006 23:30 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
Jimmy Carter in WaPo: A Dangerous Deal With India
Posted by: b | Mar 29 2006 8:20 utc | 1