Did You Like Catch 22? Liberals? They Should Be Arrested! (!) No Wonder those Fabulous Koch Bros. Are Billionaires - They Steal US Blind! Revolution Soon?

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."

Thomas Jefferson

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Those darned Liberals! Always making trouble for the Poor Little Rich People!

Tom Engelhardt tells us all about it at the Tom Dispatch:

The book series I co-founded and co-edit, the American Empire Project, is rolling out its latest volume today, and it’s a news-maker.  Peter Van Buren, a Foreign Service Officer, spent a year at two forward operating bases in Iraq helping to “reconstruct” that country.  With its ironic title, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, his work, a remarkable deconstruction of that effort and more generally of the debacle of American-style armed “nation-building,” will be a classic in the annals of anti-interventionism.  He’s also a natural as a writer.  Think of him as the State Department’s Michael Herr, though in its first rave reviews his book is being compared to Joseph Heller’s classic World War II novel Catch-22.  As it happens (again see below), Van Buren is now paying for the devastating portrait he’s painted of America in action in Iraq quite personally.

Please read it all at Tom's.

Koch-Glitsch is part of a global empire run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have taken a small oil company they inherited from their father, Fred, after his death in 1967, and built it into a chemical, textile, trading and refining conglomerate spanning more than 50 countries.

Koch Industries is obsessed with secrecy, to the point that it discloses only an approximation of its annual revenue -- $100 billion a year -- and says nothing about its profits.

The most visible part of Koch Industries is its consumer brands, including Lycra fiber and Stainmaster carpet. Georgia- Pacific LLC, which Koch owns, makes Dixie cups, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern bath tissue.

Charles, 75, and David, 71, each worth about $20 billion, are prominent financial backers of groups that believe that excessive regulation is sapping the competitiveness of American business. They inherited their anti-government leanings from their father.

Abolishing Social Security

Fred was an early adviser to the founder of the anti-Communist John Birch Society, which fought against the civil rights movement and the United Nations. Charles and David have supported the Tea Party, a loosely organized group that aims to shrink the size of government and cut federal spending.

These are long-standing tenets for the Kochs. In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket, pledging to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, welfare, minimum wage laws and federal agencies - including the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.

And the latest on those greatest of benefactors to all our rulers?

It's hard to believe after the last few ecological and financial scandals that any worse could be easily revealed.

And yet, it always is.

They never quit stealing us blind. Wonder why they think they can get away with it?

It's probably too easy a question.

Koch Brothers Caught Trading with Iran and Bribing Officials

Brian Walker

A new investigative report by Bloomberg canvasses decades of criminality and bad business ethos from Koch Industries. The report reveals that the Koch brothers schemed to sell petrochemical products to Iran’s nationalized oil program, and that the company has bribed foreign officials in Africa, India, and the Middle East in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, among other legally and morally questionable acts.

The report also shows how the Koch brothers have a history of pressuring whistleblowers into quitting by removing them from their normal work environment and stripping them of their normal responsibilities. Koch Industries bribed foreign officials to secure business relationships, and have continually ignored regulations even despite a history of fatal accidents.

Koch Industries paid $35 million to settle lawsuits covering more than 300 oil spills across six states in 2000.

Claims that corruption within Koch Industries extend all the way to the top of the chain have been supported by eyewitness testimony from prominent employees who alleged under oath that they were trained in a scheme to cheat oil producers out of money.

According to data compiled by the Senate, Koch records show that from 1986 to 1988 alone, Koch took at least 1.95 million barrels of oil that it never paid for. These reports show the Koch rise to power has been riddled with discrep(a)ncy, corruption, and questionable dealings.

And the occupation of Wall Street is going well? We'll see as it spreads throughout the country (or doesn't):

On the Occupy Wall Street ‘Media Blackout’

By Nathan Schneider

Among those part of and concerned with the Occupy Wall Street movement, it’s very common to hear complaints about the lack of mainstream media coverage. There’s even a sign at the occupation’s media center that says, “Welcome to the media blackout.” To a large extent, the blackout is real. The New York Times and other local papers didn’t give the movement headlines until almost a week in, with the exception of a cover story in Metro that first Wednesday. And, while several local TV stations were at Liberty Plaza during the first week, their reports weren’t being picked up by national affiliates. Only recently has this begun to change.

Online, there have been accusations of outright censorship. Yahoo has admitted to “not intentional” blocking of emails with links to occupywallst.org, blaming their spam filter. (This excuse is not widely believed, but plausible—I’ve seen the site trigger non-Yahoo spam filters as well.) Twitter has similarly blocked #occupywallstreet from being listed as a trending topic. (This may be because it keeps being throttled by Anonymous bots — or, more conspiratorially, because a considerable stake in the company is owned by JPMorgan Chase, which also just donated $4.5 million to the NYPD.)

Really, though, what do you expect? Resistance movements should not count on coverage by establishment news outlets, much less favorable coverage. Mainstream media are usually a part of a movement’s opponent, and they certainly are in this case. The movement’s job, then, is to make its actions so irresistible that the media have to cover it, despite themselves. In an instructive essay about her experience doing media relations during the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, Mary King writes:

[A]ttentive news coverage can never be taken for granted or assumed. It must be won. Gaining the attention of the news industry is one of the central functions that must be planned by a nonviolent movement that hopes to succeed.

In this respect, Occupy Wall Street is already succeeding.

Gotta revolution (yet?).

Occupy Wall Street: “It Is a Revolution”

Since Sep. 17, hundreds of demonstrators in the Occupy Wall Street movement have transformed the quiet Zucotti Park in lower Manhattan from a place where Wall Street traders once relaxed during lunch breaks into a demonstration camp.

Participants from all over the United States have joined the movement that criticizes the injustices of the capitalist system and calls for greater democracy and individual freedom.

Their base is right in front of the aptly named Liberty Plaza, former headquarters of NASDAQ and current office of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

"This is a democratic awakening," Cornel West, a prominent activist and Princeton professor, told journalists prior to speaking before nearly 2,000 protestors at Occupy Wall Street's General Assembly on Tuesday.

The protest was first called up in July 2011 by Adbusters and Anonymous, two groups of social activists, artists and hackers.

"We are trying to build the community and the culture we would like to see in the world," explained Isham Christie, film theory and philosophy student at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Centre and an organizer of the protest, calling it a "fight for a (fairer) world".

"People who feel alienated from the consumer society or don't have jobs or are homeless… can come here and be supported," Christie told IPS. "We are trying to build an alternative institution to what we see as the exploitative, oppressive capitalistic society that we live in."

"If only the war on poverty was a real war. Then we would actually be putting money in it," read the sign West held during Tuesday's demonstration.

"I'd really like the whole societal structure to change, the whole ideas of capitalism and the distribution of wealth. I'd really like to see that turn around to something where it honors more the actual people who are involved in the society," Turkish-born Gaye Ajoy told IPS.

Ajoy, who moved from Florida to New York City just a few days ago, added, "I oppose the one percent of people who own the whole country and don't (care) about anybody else."

Ajoy believes that the protestors' views are similar to the ideas of the counterculture movement in the 1960's and '70's and activists like Martin Luther King Jr. or Gloria Steinam.

West noted the diversity of demonstrators, saying, "It is sublime to see all the different colors, all the different genders, all the different sexual orientations and all the different cultures all together here at Liberty Plaza."

A popular movement

In comparison to the elitist structure of the banks and companies it opposes, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement does not have a hierarchy. Everyone can speak up or participate in discussions, and so everyone can take responsibility – or refuse it.

Brian Phillips, a 25-year-old Google consultant and field journalist from Washington state, arrived in New York only a few days ago and has already become the communications director for the protest. Like many others, he gave up his former civil life to participate in the movement.

"I was a community director in my home state, managing a four million dollar complex," Phillips told IPS. "I quit my job, I… hitchhiked all the way over here and I am here to stay and help these guys."

Communication, both internal and external, is one of the key elements of the protests. By using websites, webcasts, tweets and live streams, Occupy Wall Street stays in touch with other movements, both national and global.

"It's very, very, very important that we are connected to the internet," Phillips explained. "We need the world to see what we are doing and… to know what we are doing."

"Because we are broadcasting from Occupy Wall Street, which is (the) headquarters of the revolution, we have ten other cities around the United States starting to be occupied. We have Boston, Chicago, LA, Austin, Charlotte. We have a bunch of places starting up. It's going big – and it's increasing by size faster than we've expected."

Occupy Wall Street is also garnering more attention from both local and global media, thanks to the growing outrage and support from well-known figures including MIT professor Noam Chomsky and rapper Immortal Technique.

The fact that New York City police arrested about 80 people during an unapproved march to the United Nations on Saturday also helped attract media attention.

Still, Phillips refused to endorse their coverage. "The actual media companies – NBC, MSN, all those companies – they're not going to report on us and they're not going to tell the truth," the computer scientist told IPS. "They are not going to tell the world what is really going on."

Global connections

Someone who wanted to know what was really going on in Zucotti Park was Bettina Schröder from Cologne, Germany, who is currently visiting New York and read about the protest on the internet.

"We knew that there was something going on, but we kind of ran into it," Schröder said. "We thought it was smaller, but it is nice to see that there are quite some people. Hopefully it will be more and more. It is just the beginning."

Martin Peutsch, Schröder's boyfriend, was especially satisfied with the protest's location. "Wall Street is the right spot, I think. A lot of Americans have suffered a great deal because of the banking crisis," Peutsch said to IPS.

"I think it is time to mobilize resistance and to show the banks in America that they cannot do whatever they want and then go on as if nothing has happened."

Schröder also saw a global aspect to the protest. "There are so many other movements in so many different countries. People have to speak up their minds – and I think it's really, really good," she said.

West, who compared the "U.S. Autumn" to the so-called Arab Spring, believed in the longevity of Occupy Wall Street, as long as protesters stay strong.

"I think we gotta keep the momentum going, because it's impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one or two demands," West stated.

"In the end, we are really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution - a transfer of power from oligarchs to everyday people of all colors. And that is a step-by-step process, it's a democratic process, it's a non-violent process – but it is a revolution."

And the "war" in Libya? Right!

The War in Libya is a Fraud
Using Human Rights Organizations to Launch Wars

The U.S. has used NATO to continue the occupation of post-Second World War Europe. It will now use AFRICOM to occupy Africa and create an African NATO.

____________________

George Dumbya Taught US To Laugh at Nu-ku-lar Matters For A Very Good Reason

[If any readers could make a contribution to this cash-strapped blog, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your past support!]

Somehow I just keep remembering some rightwingnut like Ann Coulter or another of the ghastly girl lawyer/reporters (who exhibit very little professional training in those fields) who so ably are trotted out by the Faux Snooze to allay the suspicions of Mr. and Mrs. America about nuclear poisoning and state that it might even be "good" for you. (Apologies to Michael McDonald.)

Fukushima and the Battle for Truth

Large sectors of the Japanese population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination

Paul Zimmerman

September 27, 2011

Fukushima’s nuclear disaster is a nightmare. Ghostly releases of radioactivity haunt the Japanese countryside. Lives, once safe, are now beset by an ineffable scourge promising vile illness and death.

Large sectors of the population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination, setting the stage for a public health tragedy.

A subtle increase in the number of miscarriages and fetal deaths will be the first manifestation that something is amiss. An elevated incidence of birth defects will begin in the Fall and continue into the indefinite future. Thyroid diseases, cardiac diseases and elevated rates of infant and childhood leukemia will follow. Over the next decade and beyond, cancer rates will soar.

Chernobyl was the harbinger of this heartbreaking scenario. It taught mankind the inescapable biological truths that emerge within populations internally contaminated by heightened levels of fission products. And yet, government and industry schemers attack these truths as unfounded scare-mongering. With cold indifference, they deny that Chernobyl was a mass casualty event. They turn a blind eye to a huge body of research and deviously proclaim that no evidence exists that more than a handful of people suffered harm from the Ukrainian disaster. They publish propaganda, draped in the guise of science, that dismisses the hazard of low levels of internal contamination. Believing their subterfuge to have been successful and intoxicated by their hubris, they are already positioning themselves to stage-manage the public’s perception of Fukushima.

Japan’s government, its Nuclear Safety Commission, and the Tokyo Electric  Power Company have already demonstrated that they will do everything in their power to keep citizens ignorant of what is taking place. The emerging health crisis is scheduled to be erased.

Following a time-tested blueprint worked out by prior radiation releases around the world, data relevant to assessing the medical impact of the accident will not be gathered. Radiation doses to the population will be woefully underestimated. The hazards associated with low levels of internal contamination will be obliterated from all discussions of risk.

Academic journals that support the nuclear agenda will be flooded with bogus studies demonstrating that no health detriment was suffered by the population. The heightened incidence of childhood leukemia will be attributed to some as yet unidentified virus unleashed by population mixing following the evacuations caused by the tsunami. (This theory is currently in vogue to deny that the heightened incidence of leukemia among children under five years of age living nearby to nuclear reactors is radiation induced.)

The birth defects will be summarily dismissed as impossible because the risk models upheld by the International Commission on Radiological Protection don’t predict them. The possibility that the models are fraudulently constructed escapes consideration. (See A Betrayal of Mankind by the Radiation Protection Agencies, available as a free download at http://www.du-deceptions.com/excerpts.html.)

How is TRUTH to gain ascendancy when blocked by this institutionalized matrix of deceit? What agency can possibly take the lead to accurately document the full scope of the disaster, identify its victims and those at risk, and publish trustworthy public health information? Who is going to take responsibility to protect the children? To wait for the government to come to the rescue is naive. The history of radiation accidents testifies that governments routinely betray their citizens in deference to their nuclear weapons program and the nuclear industry. No, only one alternative is open to the people of Japan. They must become proactive. They must seize the initiative and wrest control from government and industry of the “perception” of the catastrophe.

The accident at Fukushima demands that a peoples’ campaign be initiated to produce an honest assessment of the current situation, catalog the medical consequences as they emerge, and offer accurate advice as to how citizens can protect themselves. Using the internet as a platform, scientists from all relevant disciplines must band together with interested laypeople with something valid to contribute to create a widely distributed open source research project.

The evolving online encyclopedia will archive all pertinent data and preserve it from future tampering. The accident from its inception must be documented. With published reports frequently in conflict with one another, all available information, whether from government sources, citizen investigators or eyewitnesses, must be gathered for future evaluation. 

Worldwide meteorological data since March 11 must be assembled. All official and unofficial measurements of radiation in the environment, both in Japan and worldwide, must be collected and collated. This is essential information required for future epidemiological studies. Contaminated agricultural areas must be identified. Samples of all edible material for human and animal consumption must be evaluated for safety.

As suspected radiation-induced illness begins to appear in the population, healthcare providers and victims must make public their experiences. Initially, this information will be anecdotal but nonetheless invaluable. It will identify emerging trends of morbidity and mortality and define population subgroups requiring more systematic scientific investigation.   Researchers working alone or in groups must seize the initiative to pursue study in their fields of expertise and interest. (One excellent suggestion by Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility is the widespread collection of babies’ teeth to provide objective data on the geographic dispersion and uptake of strontium-90 [1].) 

Methodologies, data and results need be posted online as they become available. Free access to the whole body of work must be guaranteed so as to allow scrutiny by people from all over the world. Transparency must be paramount. An open dialogue will allow divergent points of view to be fairly represented. Disagreements over research protocols or the interpretation of results will point the way to new avenues of investigation where clarification and consensus might be achieved. Objective investigation via the scientific method will be the final arbitrator of truth. The ultimate goal of this effort will be to produce an unbiased determination of the public health consequences of radiation released into the environment, assess the accuracy of current standards of radiation safety and identify how improvements can be made for the common welfare of humanity.

It is urgent that this initiative commence immediately. Data must be captured while it is remains untainted. Of particular importance is the securing of pre-accident health statistics for the population of Japan. Rates for various pregnancy outcomes; the frequency of different types of birth defects; the incidence of thyroid diseases, heart diseases, cancers and so forth, all must be cataloged.

There is good reason why this baseline data need be preserved. The history of radiation accidents is littered with examples of the outright falsification of data that has prevented an honest evaluation of the effects of low levels of internal contamination on human health. 

For instance, evidence exists that morbidity and mortality data published by the U.S. Government’s Public Health Service was altered in the wake of radiation releases from nuclear weapon production facilities and commercial nuclear power plants so as to hide cancer deaths in the population [2].

The accident at Three Mile Island, persistently painted by government and industry spokesmen as a benign event, in fact produced illness and death among humans and farm animals downwind [3,4].

After the accident at Chernobyl, hundreds of thousands of so-called “liquidators” participated in cleanup operations in close proximity to the destroyed reactor and also built a concrete sarcophagus around the reactor building to entomb the radiation. 

According to the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), in subsequent years this population was reported as having a lower rate of leukemia than the general population. Only later did it come to light that Soviet doctors were forbidden from recording leukemia in their diagnoses [5]. The Wales Cancer Registry was cited by the ECRR as excising cases of cancer from its database so as to prevent the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in the U.K. from being blamed for causing illness to the population. Also mentioned by ECRR was the alteration of infant mortality figures in Germany after Chernobyl so as to mask the impact of the accident on public health [5].

Mischief has not been confined to falsifying health records. In 1957, a fire broke out in the graphite reactor at Windscale, England on the site now occupied by the Sellafield facility. The amount of radiation released and the incidence of cancer induced in the population of Ireland has remained fiercely contentious issues.

According to the ECRR, at some point after the fire, meteorological records were altered “with the apparent motive of concealing the likely location of any effects” [5]. Similarly, the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Japan suffered a devastating fire in 1995. Prefecture and city officials found that the operator had tampered with video images of the fire to hide the scale of the disaster [6].     

If an accurate documentation of the health consequences of Fukushima is to succeed, one condition is paramount: the project MUST retain its independence from the international agencies that currently dominate the discussion of radiation effects. The tacit mandate of these organizations is to support nuclear weapons programs and the nuclear industry, and they do so by publishing fraudulent scientific studies that downplay the hazards to health of radioactive material released into the environment. 

For example, the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and other UN organizations jointly published Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-economic Impacts [7]. 

This study is routinely cited as proof that Chernobyl had little impact on public health. It concluded that only twenty-eight first responders died from acute radiation syndrome and 4,000 children developed thyroid cancer, fifteen of whom died by 2002. In addition, it estimated that an additional 4,000 fatal cancers might arise in the overall population.

This sanitized version of the catastrophe was reached by the devious method of consulting only 350 sources of information, mostly published in English, while ignoring  30,000 publications and 170,000 sources of information available in languages other than English [8]. A summary of this large body of literature, published as Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, concluded that radiation-induced casualties approached 980,000 [9].

To offer a second example, a number of prestigious institutions have published disinformation on the hazards to health of depleted uranium weapons. These include WHO, IAEA, the European Commission, the Royal Society in the U.K., the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in the U.S., the Rand Corporation, and the Health Physics Society [10,11,12,13,14,15,16].

All concluded that weaponized uranium creates no adverse health effects when internalized by soldiers on the battlefield and downwind populations. Justification for this conclusion came from a survey of the scientific literature regarding uranium contamination among workers in the uranium and nuclear industries and populations exposed to elevated levels of uranium in their drinking water.

Historically, the only two types of adverse health effects documented among these populations is altered kidney function due to uranium’s chemical toxicity and cancer due to uranium’s radioactivity. But studies of veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome reveals no evidence of kidney disease. And according to models promulgated by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the radiation dose from battlefield uranium is too low to initiate cancer. The conclusion? Case closed! DU cannot be a factor in the severe suffering of veterans or the increased incidence of cancer and birth defects in Fallujah and other areas of Iraq.

 As convincing as the logic of these studies attempt to be, they all suffer from fatal flaws. They all fail to acknowledge that combustion-derived micro- and nano-sized particles of uranium have unique biokinetics when internalized that are not comparable to historical types of uranium exposure, and they quit cleverly fail to take into account the most up-to-date research on the toxicology of uranium.

New research conducted since the first Gulf War has demonstrated that uranium is genotoxic (capable of damaging DNA), cytotoxic (poisonous to cells), mutagenic (capable of inducing mutations), teratogenic (capable of interfering with normal embryonic development) and neurotoxic (capable of harming nerve tissue).  This research has yet to dislodge the stale mantra that uranium is only capable of causing kidney disease and cancer. (For a thorough disclosure of the fraudulent science used to discount the hazards of DU and a summary of recent research on the toxicology of uranium, see this author’s “The Harlot of Babylon Unmasked: Fraudulent Science and the Cover-Up of the Health Effects of Depleted   Uranium”  in   A   Primer   in   the   Art   of   Deception   available   at

http://www.du-deceptions.com/ [17]. )

Mischief also infects the radiation protection community. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima conducts ongoing medical research on the health of the survivors of the atomic bombings at the end of WWII. The Life Span Study is the single most important piece of evidence used by the ICRP for setting worldwide guidelines for radiation safety. 

That radiation safety for all types of exposure and all manner of radiation-induced illnesses relies so heavily on this research is incredibly disturbing because the Life Span Study is deeply and irreparably flawed. Initiated five years after the bombings, after tens of thousands of victims succumbed to unidentified levels of radiation exposure, results are hopelessly skewed in favor of finding radiation less hazardous than it in fact is.

Further, the study can provide no meaningful information on the birth outcomes to fetuses exposed in utero.  More problematic is the fact that both the study and the control groups were internally contaminated by the black rain that showered down upon the destroyed cities after the blasts.

This unacknowledged contamination of the control group hopelessly compromises any meaningful conclusions of the rates of radiation-induced illnesses in the study group. The Life Span Study is plagued by numerous other flaws that raise serious questions as to why it has become the centerpiece of radiation standards. (For further information on this topic, consult Exhibit C in the aforementioned free download at http://www.du-deceptions.com/downloads/Betrayal_Chap6.pdf.)

The Japanese have been victimized by nuclear horror more than any other people on Earth. Today they are immersed in an imperceptible tragedy that will slowly but inevitably bring disease and heartbreak to millions. In response to this crime, a rare and courageous opportunity exists. By undertaking a national campaign to honestly document the disaster that is engulfing them, they can  lead all of humanity to break through the quagmire of deception and deceit that has allowed nuclear weapons and reactors to flourish. Truth finally has an opportunity to triumph over falsehood. In some small but significant way, this would be fitting repayment for the malevolence of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima. 

(Paul Zimmerman is the author of A Primer in the Art of Deception:  The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science.  A more technical, fully referenced presentation of the fraudulent nature of current radiation standards and the coverup of the effects of depleted uranium weapons can be found within its pages. Excerpts, free to download, are available at www.du-deceptions.com.)

Anyone in the U.S. awake yet?

When Will You Leave the U.S.? Will It Be After the Next Unexplained Catastrophe? Israeli Paranoia Games Imperil ALL

[If any readers could make a contribution to this cash-strapped blog, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your past support!]

Remember bragging about how wonderful life was in the U.S. when you were much younger? How freeing the feeling of living in a freedom-loving land was (versus the authoritarian types of government that you studied in school and saw reported about in the news)?

Bet it never occurred to you that local police in the USA would ever feel free enough to spray a poison (mace) at young girls who were peacefully (although loudly) demonstrating in our "freedom of speech" land.





John Atcheson reports from the clown tent in Common Dreams:

Perry is merely the leading clown of nine evil clowns vying for the Republican nomination. They all seem more interested in making you afraid and making you hate than in making you laugh. They also display a contempt for reality and truth. Yet their individual lies – as destructive as they are – are small potatoes compared to the faulty map we’re using to set national policy.

We can start with Reaganomics and its toxic legacy. You know, government-is-the-problem-shrink-it-until-you-can-drown-it orthodoxy, combined with the notion that the free market is the font of all good things, if we just leave it alone and get gubmint’ off its back.

This particular bit of idiocy has been tried three times. First in the 1880’s through the 1890s, then again in the 1920’s, and finally between 1980 and 2008. Each period featured laissez-faire economic policies like low taxes, small government, deregulation, and corporate-friendly policies. And guess what?

Each period brought extreme income inequality and the inevitable economic collapse that follows.

It’s possible after the Great Depression a few folks still believed these policies could lead to prosperity. But after 2008? After going 0 for 3? In baseball, there’s a name for that: striking out.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need no stinkin’ reality.

Want another dose of reality defying mythology? How about notion that cutting debt will increase economic growth - the prevailing view of the Republican Party, and apparently Obama and the press. Has this particular antidote ever cured the patient?

Nope. Killed it, more often than not.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need no stinkin’ …

Here’s another. Trickle down economics. Seen anything trickling down, lately?

No, you haven’t. In fact, since Reagan introduced this “theory” from the back of a crumpled napkin, the income of the top 1% has doubled. Yours? Not so much. You've lost ground.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need no…

How about the idea that the rich are the “job creators?”

Again, not so much. Right now corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in assets because there's not enough consumer demand to justify hiring.

Throwing more money at the ultra rich will make them even richer, but it will have no effect on the economy until consumers start buying – and the only thing that can make that happen is a government stimulus large enough to create jobs and restore confidence.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need …

And how about the wellspring of right wing whackiness? Specifically, the notion that unconstrained capitalism is a necessary pre-requisite for freedom. That the two are joined at the hip, inseparable – that one cannot stand without the other.

This particular bit of reality-bending lunacy was popularized by Milton Friedman. It explains why, to right wingers, socialism is bad, why regulations are perceived as a commie plot (especially environmental regs), why the free market is sacrosanct, why the entire Republican Party is anti-science and in thrall to climate denial.

Each implies a legitimate role for government intervention in the market; therefore – in the minds of the wingnuts - each threatens freedom.

Here again, reality differs. With totalitarian China practicing virulent capitalism, with successful examples of social democracies, and with the advent of a new kind of tyranny – the tyranny of the unconstrained corporation – Friedman’s linkage of capitalism and freedom is revealed as nonsense.

But that’s reality and we don’t . . .

Yes we do, damn it. We do need some stinkin’ reality. We need a whole lot of it, and we need it now, or the whole damn country will follow Rick Perry or some other lying demagogue off the ragged edge of civility and into the mouths of dragons.

Are we likely to get it? Hell no.

With the mainstream media playing the part of a mute stenographer, the Democrats trembling at the first sign of opposition and coughing up our lunch money like a pre-pubic nerd trapped in the bathroom, and Citizen’s United turning our elections into a bidding war, we’re about out of stinkin’ reality.

And that makes us out of luck.

John Atcheson's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, as well as in several wonk journals. He is currently at work on a fictional Trilogy that centers on climate change. Atcheson's book reviews are featured on Climateprogress.org. Email to: jbatcheson@gmail.com

Paul Krugman dissects the latest "class warfare" nonsense here (and yes, I know I've run this before, but it seems worthwhile to emphasize it again):

This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare.” It was, of course, nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it’s people like Mr. Ryan, who want to exempt the very rich from bearing any of the burden of making our finances sustainable, who are waging class war.

As background, it helps to know what has been happening to incomes over the past three decades. Detailed estimates from the Congressional Budget Office — which only go up to 2005, but the basic picture surely hasn’t changed — show that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That’s growth, but it’s slow, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II.

Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

So do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?

This gentleman speaks to my heart and mirrors all my concerns.

And history.

Why We Left The United States

By Bob Alexander

September 17, 2011

TVNewsLies

Because on December 12, 2000, the United States Supreme Court nullified the results of a national election and installed George W. Bush as president. And then I saw millions of my fellow Americans deliriously happy the Rule of Law was broken by the Supreme Court of the Land so “their guy” could … “win.”

That’s when I knew partisanship had ultimately won out over reality. More Americans believe in angels than election fraud. If millions of Americans could turn a blind eye to a stolen election, simply because their side stole it, and then have that coup legitimized by not only the Supreme Court … but by all of MainStreamMedia … then I knew the country I lived in was not the land of my birth. I can’t emphasize this enough. Millions of Americans were ecstatic that George W. Bush won regardless of how he won. Unquestioning blind partisanship was more important than the law to these people. But more ominous was Main Stream Media ratifying the coup. At that moment Corporate Media proved they were committed to the destruction of our democratic republic.

That was pretty scary to witness. We’ve all heard of similar ham-fisted tactics used in banana republics south of the border … but this was happening … here.

That’s when I began formulating my Crazy Stupid People Theorem. Whoever thought the Supreme Court’s decision was part and parcel with a “Normal Transfer of Power” was either Stupid, Crazy, or … Evil. Americans who didn’t know it was essentially a coup were either Stupid, or Crazy, or a little bit of both. If anyone knew it was an outright theft of Americans’ votes … and they were perfectly ok with that … well … what else could you call it other than Evil? The subversion of our right to choose our elected representatives strikes at the heart of our country’s founding principles. But again, and this is what continues to confound me, millions of Americans thought it was just fine and dandy.

Along with millions of sane Americans … I didn’t “Move On.” I could not understand why it was so important the institutions Americans trusted most to protect its freedoms and principles had crammed George W. Bush down our throat.

Then 234 days into Bush’s first term as president … the attacks of September 11th 2001. And from that day on … everything the Bush/Cheney regime did to distort and transform the United States of America into something … unrecognizable … was because of 9/11. It all came down to 9/11 … period. The buck stopped there.

And as we were all walking around in a daze, coated with the ash of human beings and pulverized concrete, we were spun into the Ultimate War Crime; wars of aggression. As Chris Hedges wrote, “ … We became what we abhorred. The deaths were used to justify pre-emptive war, invasion, Shock and Awe, prolonged occupation, targeted assassinations, torture, offshore penal colonies, gunning down families at checkpoints, massive aerial bombardments, drone attacks, missile strikes and the killing of dozens, and soon hundreds, and then thousands, and later tens of thousands, and finally hundreds of thousands of innocent people.“

Then the dawning realization … the 9/11 trigger mechanism that caused Hell on Earth for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq … was a grotesque lie. This was the ultimate Horror piled upon horror.

Hundreds upon hundreds of statements from members of the Senior Military and Intelligence Services, Law Enforcement, Government Officials, Engineers, Architects, Pilots and Aviation Professionals, Professors, 9/11 Survivors and Family Members, Artists, Entertainers, and Media Professionals, are on record saying the Official Account of 9/11 is: "False", “Impossible”, “A Bunch of Hogwash”, “Total B.S.”, “Ludicrous”, “A Well-Organized Cover-up”, “A White-Washed Farce”, “Absurd”, "Fatally Flawed", "Not Possible.”

The lies the Bush/Cheney Regime told us that led our country into The Ultimate War Crime were predicated upon the lies the government previously told us about the attacks of 9/11.

As Ralph Lopez wrote, “The biggest problem with the 9/11 Truth Movement is where it leads: a place dark and evil beyond imagination. … when hundreds of American military officers, pilots, engineers, and CIA veterans stepped forward to say they believed the official story to be a monstrous lie, I was shaken to the core. … The conspiracies led to the deep dark hole that we are ruled by criminal psychopaths.

This is about as bad as it gets. We knew the government covered up how and why 3,000 people died on 9/11, and then went on to use the attacks as an excuse to do everything we find reprehensible today. And again … corporate media ran cover for the government.

If we can’t believe the government’s cover-up, we’re left with three options:

Conclusion One: They Made It Happen.
Conclusion Two: They allowed it to happen.

Or …

Conclusion Three: The attacks of 9/11 were possible because of massive incompetence on the part of the Bush/Cheney Regime.

If Incompetence is the least offensive rationale to explain the actions of the Bush/Cheney regime, then … why has there been no accountability?

Involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing that happens during the commission of a misdemeanor or because of gross negligence or carelessness. According to Federal sentencing guidelines, Involuntary Manslaughter is punishable by 6 years in prison.

Shouldn’t someone (or a lot of someones) from the Bush/Cheney Regime be prosecuted for the gross negligence that led to the deaths of almost 3,000 people? Not in post-9/11 America.

But while we struggled to map out just exactly what a post-9/11 America looked like … another stolen presidential election knocked us to our knees.

We knew it was stolen in Ohio. We knew how it was stolen. And once again the corporate media buried the truth by ignoring it. And the blind partisan Crazy Stupid People rejoiced in the prospect of “Four More Years” of the Bush/Cheney Regime.

Throughout it all the majority of Sane Americans made the same strategic blunder over and over and over again. We were used to signing petitions and having protest marches. We treated these people like they were politicians. But the Bush/Cheney gang were not politicians. They were Gangsters and Thugs. Politicians periodically bend to the will of the people. Thugs. Don’t. Care. These people wipe their ass with petitions. When Dick Cheney was told that two-thirds of Americans said the war in Iraq was not worth it, Cheney replied, "So?"

That’s who we were dealing with. Gangsters who completely ignored the will of the people. We could write all we want, and call all we want, and demonstrate all we want … but by following their rules … we had the unlimited freedom to be ineffectual.

The Republican Machine, aided and abetted by Corporate Media, stole the presidency of the United States twice. Together they started two wars and have killed over a million people. How could we think they would back off and play nice because we all wrote scathing e-mails or marched in protests? They were Thugs. We were supposed to arrest Thugs, put them on trial, and if guilty, put them in jail. But we didn’t do that.

We decided to hope instead. We hoped the Bush/Cheney Regime wouldn’t completely destroy the country before 2008. We hoped the same corrupt voting systems that delivered us George W. Bush would magically allow us the autonomy to elect someone to save us from “the Evil-doers.” We hoped a Constitutional law professor would restore the Constitution. But most of all we hoped, for the first time in living memory, that a politician would deliver on his campaign promises.
The policies of the Bush/Cheney Regime are still in place under the Obama administration. We still have the wars of aggression and occupation. Innocent people are still killed every day. We still hold prisoners in Guantanamo Bay who after almost ten years have yet to be charged or tried for any crime. The Bush/Cheney/Obama Regimes have given away trillions of dollars to people who engineered the largest financial swindle in recorded history. And they, along with our honest-to-god war criminals, continue to walk free, unindicted, unaccountable, and above the law.

As Michael in NY wrote . . . in October 2009, “ … my belief is that the American system has lost its capacity for reform.” I’ll take that to the next step … the American system has lost its capacity to govern. Corporate interests under the guise of Partisanship über alles.
And as Paul Craig Roberts wrote the other day, “Obama regime appointee Cass Sunstein, a Chicago and Harvard Law School professor, thinks the 9/11 movement, for challenging the official “truth”, should be infiltrated by US intelligence agents in order to shut down the fact-based doubters of government propaganda. When a law professor at our two most prestigious law schools wants to suppress scientific evidence that challenges government veracity, we know that in America respect for truth is dead. The notion that a country in which truth is dead is a “light unto the world” is an absurdity.”

I find that nothing short of terrifying. And real solutions are nonexistent.

And so . . . after 10 long years, and finally having enough money … we left. It may be completely illusory, but it feels like we have a future here. It feels more substantial than … hope. It feels like we finally have come home.

Regards,
Bob Alexander
Founder of Superbeans.com

Obama, the Palestinian State & Zionist Schizophrenia

By Gilad Atzmon

Some may be surprised to learn that Israel and most Israelis actually want the Palestinian initiative to go ahead and to succeed. They want a Palestinian State because this is the only solution that would save the 'Jews only State' from a demographic meltdown.

Congress Sees Middle East Through AIPAC-Colored Glasses

 Tapping the Israeli Embassy

By Philip Giraldi

 What the FBI uncovered was a massive and highly focused campaign referred to by the Israelis as "perception management," but which the CIA would refer to as a covert action.

Bullsh*t: The Perfect Academic Word for US Debt, Economic, War Policies

Carl Herman

Nonpartisan Examiner

Examiner.com

On Bullsh*t, Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt’s 2005 best-seller, defines “bullsh*t” as saying whatever necessary to dictate an audience’s interpretation of a subject. Bullsh*t is comprised of lies of omission and commission, of course, but shifts as needed to maintain the desired dictatorship (the literal “say” of what people perceive).

Frankfurt observes that bullshit is more prevalent in politics than ever before, has zero respect for the truth, and is intentional and ongoing to replace facts. He explains in the video.

Frankfurt provides academic permission for Americans to use “bullsh*t” to describe US “leadership” obvious use of bullshit in debt, economic, and war policies.

Use this academic term at your command.

The American public struggles with political and US corporate media bullshit to discern fact from spin.

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” -  unsourced and attributed to Andrew Carnegie

Here are leading US “leadership” areas of bullshitting the American public:

1. Congressional reports disclose that all “reasons” for war with Afghanistan and Iraq were known to be lies as they were told.
2. avoiding the obvious answer of ending an Orwellian "debt supply" and replacing it with money. A national debt is simply bullshit.
3. a million children a month to die of preventable poverty, even though historically ending poverty reduces population growth rate and the investment is less than 1% of the developed nations' gross national incomes (GNI).
4. Orwellian unlawful wars, including using depleted uranium weapons to damn victims with continuous misery and death.
5. torture, extrajudicial assassinations (including against American citizens) and indefinite detentions. 
6. destruction of the US Constitution into a form of government closest to fascism and nowhere near a constitutional republic.
7. literally throwing Americans onto the streets rather than take any of a dozen acts to allow them to stay in their homes.
8. intentional unemployment, crime, infrastructure decay, fear, anger, depression (both economic and psychological) rather than create money for full employment.
9. allowing 45,000 Americans to die every year from lack of health care, even though universal single-payer saves the nation $100-$300 billion every year.

With all respect, these bullsh*tting literal psychopaths in US “leadership” knew/know exactly what they're doing. A psychopath has a veneer of social grease thinly covering vicious acts.

The bullsh*tters’ last strands of support are dissipating; cognitive dissonance of the American public is embracing the “emperor has no clothes” facts.

The good news is that every step "leadership" takes down their path of deceit and destruction, they become easier to see for what they are.

We will win with critical mass of public recognition of what’s right in front of everyone to see (and smell).

You, citizen, have unique opportunity to contribute your unique, beautiful, and powerful self-expression to building a brighter future if you choose the intellectual integrity and moral courage to do so.

Please do.

Millions will live or die, billions will have a life worth living or misery, and trillions of dollars of power are directed at our collective choice.

Video

Class Warfare My Ass

Saturday 24 September 2011

William Rivers Pitt

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, speaks at the Florida P5 Faith and Freedom Coalition Kick-Off event at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, Florida, September 22, 2011. (Chip Litherland / The New York Times)

I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.

- George Bernard Shaw

I have been saying this for years upon years, but it bears repeating: the most awesome, fearsome, and effective weapon in the arsenal of the modern Republican Party is their total, utter and complete lack of shame.

That weapon - the ability to say or do anything, literally anything, even as it flies in the face of on-the-record comments made just the day before, or contradicts thousands of votes cast in congresses past - is the equivalent of a battlefield-deployed tactical nuclear weapon. It clears the field, but good, and if everything is ashes in the aftermath, so be it.

So long as effective spin makes the news cycle, it's a victory for them, and screw the people who get hurt.

The GOP wins when that is the contest, and that is all they care about...and the awful irony comes when the very people getting screwed are up on their feet cheering after the deal goes down, because "their team" won the day.

Watching these recent GOP debates has cracked me up for any number of reasons, but nothing can top watching those millionaires square off in an attempt to prove who among them is the most "folksy," the most in tune with the working stiff. Mitt Romney, whose personal fortune roars deep into nine figures on the left of the decimal, actually claimed he was a middle class guy during a recent campaign appearance.

Ah, yes, the irony again...just think, if people banking nine figures of personal wealth were actually considered middle class, all of our problems would be solved, right?

Or something.

Which brings us to the subject of "class warfare." The term has been a favorite broadside of the right-bent rich-people-first set going on forty years now, and in times past has always reaped them rich rhetorical benefits. We're a classless society here in America, don'tcha know, so accusations of "class warfare" have all too often sent lily-livered liberal-leaning politicians scuttling for the exits, for the apology, for the eventual retreat.

Oh no, it isn't class warfare, this is only fair...which earned, invariably, a reply of "CLASS WARFARE SOCIALISM WHAAARGARBLE" . . . which, in turn, earned another hasty retreat instead of a proper and just reply.

Which is, should have always been, and should now be: kiss my ass, you leech, you bloodsucker, you greedy whore, you war profiteering glutton, you disgrace, you betrayer of America.

Oh, I know the argument. I know it as well as the spit I leave on the sidewalk when there is a bad taste in my mouth. The rich are better than us, they are the ones making the jobs, they have earned their esteemed position through a Randian process of natural economic selection, etc...except for the sneaky fact that a large number of these "business titans" inherited their wealth, and today increase their wealth not through hard work, but through favorable interest rates and even more favorable tax rates on money that is already in the bank.

The top-earning businesses in America today, across the board, are wallowing in record profits, and yet somehow hiring is stagnated. Why is that?

Could it be that these titans are holding off on hiring in order to affect the number of jobless Americans, so as to influence public opinion as we head into an election season? God almighty, to have such astonishing reach...to be able to keep millions out of work in order to put one black guy out of a job...now that's real power.

Class warfare, indeed.

Poverty has increased locally and nationally across the board, joblessness is reaching Great Depression-era levels, and millions have lost houses to those whose own homes resemble castles, to those who are secure in both funding and foundation. Money does not disappear. It has to go somewhere; what is lost is always found. Most all of us have spent the last several years losing money hand over fist, while Forbes tells us that the richest among us have increased their wealth by vast amounts in one year.

Try to contain your shock.

There is work available for the doing, on infrastructure and new technology fields and any number of other areas, but the GOP majority in the House of Representatives won't have any of it, because their marching orders are to screw the American economy in as many orifices as are available to try and unseat the sitting president. Period, end of file, and if you still think that isn't their intention, I have a big red bridge over San Francisco Bay to sell you.

Class warfare? These cretins have the unmitigated gall to accuse other people of class warfare?

It is a wonder of American politics, this absolute and astonishing lack of shame on the part of the modern GOP. They have spent the last thirty years stifling a minimum-wage increase, they blocked legislation to help 9/11 responders pay for very present health concerns, and spent the latter part of this last week trying to screw disaster relief funding for people who lose homes to tornadoes, floods, wildfires and earthquakes.

They hate Social Security and Medicare down to their gold-plated bones. Now they are deliberately and intentionally stifling the very economy they themselves tore up, for no other reason than to win the next election.

How are they doing it? Money and power, power and money, and be damned to those who suffer for their desires.

Psssst...it is class warfare: full-throated, no-bullshit class warfare, and the rich ones whining about it are the ones who are winning. Be on your own side for a change of pace. They got the guns, as a man once said, but we got the numbers.

It is class warfare, and has been for a generation. We've been losing, badly.

For now.

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