Thursday, July 2, 2009

AA Exposes Bush's 'Big Lie': Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

American Airlines itself is the source for information that AA Flights 11 (North Tower) and 77 (Pentagon) did not fly on 911. These flights are critical to the the government's crumbling cover up! Without those flights, Bush and his murderous co-conspirators will have to revise the big lie. They will have to concoct yet another cover story from the ground up! A cover up is on the brink of collapse when those guilty of capital crimes and high treason either turn on one another or are forced to revise the lie!

If neither flight was in the air as American Airlines itself has so stated, then numerous 'official versions' of the 'official conspiracy theory' are all a pack of malicious lies. That includes almost every statement made by Bush. It is, in my opinion, probable cause to indict Bush and his co-conspirators for the crimes of mass murder and high treason.

WikiScanner discovered that American Airlines changed their Wikipedia entry to state that Flights 11 and 77 did not fly on 9/11. The original entry was as follows:
Two American Airlines aircraft were hijacked and crashed during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack: American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and American Airlines Flight 11 (a Boeing 767).
New entry is as follows and includes the bolded text below:
Two American Airlines aircraft were hijacked and crashed during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack: Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and Flight 11 (a Boeing 767).

Although these flights were daily departures before and a month after September 11, 2001. Neither flight 11 nor 77 were scheduled on September 11, 2001. The records kept by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov/gis/) do not list either flight that day.

--Wikipedia

To make the point: the source for these change is American Airlines by making changes to Wikipedia. The 'story' is not Wiki. The story is not about Wiki. The story is about how AA 'corrected' a wiki entry. The story is about the fact that the evidence that Flights 11 and 77 were not flying on 911 comes from American Airlines itself.
According to a Freedom of Information Act reply from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the last known pre-9/11 flights for three of the four aircraft involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 took place in December, 2000, nine months before the attacks, while no pre-9/11 final flight information was provided for American Airlines flight 77 (N644AA).

However, a discovered searchable online BTS database produces the following search results for three of the four 9/11 aircraft on September 10, 2001:

AA 11 departs San Francisco (SFO): AA 09/10/2001 0198 (flight number) N334AA (tail number) BOS (destination) 22:04 (wheels-off time)

UA 175 departs San Francisco (SFO): UA 09/10/2001 0170 (flight number) N612UA (tail number) BOS (destination) 13:44 (wheels-off time)

UA 93 departs San Francisco (SFO): UA 09/10/2001 0078 (flight number) N591UA (tail number) EWR (destination) 23:15 (wheels-off time)

--911 Blogger, UPDATE: U.S. BTS FOIA Records For 9/11 Planes Differ From BTS Online Database [The records were obtained by Adrian Monaghan]
Anyone trying to prove that Flights 77 and 11 were not flying on 911 would have to verify that proposition through authoritative sources that could confirm it. The question is raised: how do we know who made the changes to Wiki? Everyone logged on to the internet does so from an IP address. In this case, the IP is that of American Airlines. It's traceable.

My own WHOIS lookup as well as a Google search of the IP address proves conclusively that it was --indeed --American Airlines itself that made the change. It is American Airlines --by way of Wiki --that has said that neither Flight 11 nor Flight 77 were in the air that day.

Therefore, the Bush theory of 911 is a deliberate lie.

My look up returned the following:

WHOIS - 144.9.8.21

Location: United States [City: Ft. Worth, Texas]

OrgName: American Airlines Incorporated
OrgID: AMERIC-112
Address: P.O.Box 619616
Address: MD 5308
City: DFW Airport
StateProv: TX
PostalCode: 75261
Country: US

NetRange: 144.9.0.0 - 144.9.255.255
CIDR: 144.9.0.0/16
NetName: AANET
NetHandle: NET-144-9-0-0-1
Parent: NET-144-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: DNS-P1.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P2.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P3.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P4.SABRE.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 1990-10-31
Updated: 2002-06-27

RTechHandle: OG60-ARIN
RTechName: Gelbrich, Orf
RTechPhone: +1-817-931-3145
RTechEmail: ************@aa.com

OrgTechHandle: ZW72-ARIN
OrgTechName: WARIS, ZISHAN
OrgTechPhone: +1-817-967-1242
OrgTechEmail: ************@aa.com

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2008-06-29 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
This is not the first major hole to be discovered. The many lies (many referenced in previous EC articles; see links below) are probable cause to begin a Federal Grand Jury investigation of George W. Bush's role in 911. Bush should be compelled by subpoena and Federal Marshals to testify under oath before an independent Federal Grand Jury. The AA revelations demand it!

Bush lies have the effect of covering up the truth, protecting the guilty and obstructing justice. The lies are an insult to the families of 911 victims, victims who are dishonored by the continuing cover-up! Bush's lies aggravate the crimes of mass murder, terrorism and high treason for which the penalty must surely be death.

911 did not happen as we have been told.

Bushco's 'official conspiracies theory' of 911 is full of holes. Flights 11 and 77 are essential ingredients in the 'official conspiracy theory' of 911. That AA claims that neither 11 nor 77 were in the air that day sinks Bush's theory. More importantly, however, it should get him an 'invitation' to appear before a Federal Grand Jury to answers charges that he betrayed his nation and waged war upon the people. Clearly --the official theory is a lie, an intentional cover-up. Cover-ups imply guilt! Otherwise --what is there to cover up? The official 'lie' goes like this:
At 8:20, Flight 11 stopped transmitting its transponder signal, and veered northward and departed dramatically from the westward heading of its planned route. The controllers concluded that the plane had probably been hijacked. 4 5 At 8:24, the following transmission was reportedly received from Flight 11: We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you'll be okay .. we are returning to the airport.

..Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet. Nobody move please we are going back to the airport .. don't try to make any stupid moves. 6

Neither of the pilots pressed the distress call button. At 8:28 controllers reportedly watched the plane make a 100-degree turn toward the south. 7 Presumably, Flight 11 continued south along the Hudson River until it reached the World Trade Center, though documentation of this is sparse given the lack of public information.

According to NORAD's September 18 timeline, the FAA did not notify NORAD of the signs that Flight 11 was hijacked until 8:40, 25 minutes after the first signs of trouble. 8

--Flight 11, The First Jet Commandeered on September 11th, 911 Research
Elsewhere, 911 Research stats: "there is no evidence for the assertions by some people... that the North Tower was hit by something other than Flight 11". But, if 11 were not in the air as claimed by AA itself, it could not have struck the towers.

The house of cards collapses.

Assertions that Flight 11 struck the North Tower that are --therefore -- utterly baseless, if not a deliberate and criminal lie!

If neither Flight 11 or 77 was in the air that day, then nothing in the 'official statements' with regard to the Twin Towers or the Pentagon is true.

If flights 11 or 77 did not fly on 911, officialdom must come up with another explanation to explain the towers' falls.

If flights 11 or 77 did not crash into either the tower or the Pentagon, then the official theory must be discarded.

While it is not good news for Bush, it is consistent with the fact that no wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever found at the Pentagon.

Moreover, photos of an engine rotor appear to depict an engine used in the Global Hawk, a payload carrying missile that was, according to Britain's International Television News, flown from the US to Australia completely by remote control. "A robot plane has made aviation history by becoming the first unmanned aircraft to fly across the Pacific Ocean."

Britain's ITN continued: "The Global Hawk, a jet-powered aircraft with a wingspan equivalent to a Boeing 737, flew from Edwards Air Force Base in California and landed late on Monday at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh, in South Australia state... It flies along a pre-programmed flight path, but a pilot monitors the aircraft during its flight via a sensor suite which provides infra-red and visual images."

ITN quoted Australian Global Hawk manager Rod Smith: '"The aircraft essentially flies itself, right t from takeoff, right through to landing, and even taxiing off the runway."'

The Global Hawk is a much better candidate for what Rumsfeld called '...the missile that struck this building' than a 757. Here's what you need to know about the Pentagon.
  • Only minutes after the strike, [see pic above] there is no sign of an airliner at all!!
  • No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever recovered.
  • Only ONE engine rotor (seen in photos) was recovered! This rotor is about one third the diameter of a 757 rotor.
  • A 757 has two rotors, each of which are nearly three times the size of the SINGLE rotor located at the Pentagon
  • Engine rotors are made of a Steel/Titanium alloy to withstand high temps inside jet engines.
  • Flight 77 could not have crashed into the Pentagon
The time has come to consign Bush's official conspiracy theory to the dust bin of history. The theory is not even a good cover story, surviving for as long as it did only because millions of good Americans wanted to believe it. Millions of otherwise good Americans did not wish to believe the very, very worst about an administration that had claimed to represent and defend our interests. Millions of Americans chose to believe that the government was still responsible to us, that the government was still the defender of Democracy as we are always taught in school.

Below: a US Global Hawk painted to look like an AA airliner. There is really no way to prove that this is NOT the very Global Hawk that would later leave behind its engine rotor on the Pentagon lawn.

Recognizing lies for what they are is a part of the process of growing up! America, it is time to grow up! It is time to confront this heinous pack of lies! It is time to insist that the Obama administration begin a REAL investigation. It is time to insist that a Federal Grand Jury investigate every count of high treason, mass murder and domestic terrorism that was perpetrated upon the people of the US by the Bush administration, collaborators in the Pentagon, K-Street, the Congress and the leadership of the Republican party, Marvin Bush's 'Securacom', Larry Silverstein, General Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and, of course, George W. Bush who was, at the time, the 'Commander-in-Chief' and ultimately responsible for the orders given the US military to 'stand down'.
By Donald Rumsfeld's own admission, he was unaware of any threats to the Pentagon -- the building where he was located during the September 11th attacks -- until an aircraft crashed into the side of it, and he ran out "into the smoke" to see if it might be a "A bomb? I had no idea." (ABC News This Week, Interview 9/16/01).

Well, that's a pretty tall tale by any standard. The New York Times reported that by 8:13am, the FAA was aware of the first hijacking out of Boston. The Pentagon explosion, which Donald Rumsfeld claimed he had "no idea," did not occur until approximately 9:37am, nearly an hour and a half later, this after two of the tallest buildings in the world were devastated. Note that a plane hijacked out of Boston can reach Washington D.C. as easily as it can reach New York City.

It was widely reported that Pentagon personnel were indeed aware of the threats to their security, and they took security measures on that morning. But not the "Secretary of Defense." Why should the man charged with defending the United States of America concern himself with hijacked aircraft?

There is a set of procedures for responding to hijackings. In particular, these procedures were changed on June 1, 2001 while Rumsfeld was in power as our Secretary of Defense, in a document called: "CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF INSTRUCTION, J-3 CJCSI 3610.01A"

The Global Hawk

The video asks: "Was 911 a Conspiracy?" That is NOT the question. Even Bushco claims that it was a conspiracy, a conspiracy of 19 Arab Hijackers who could not possibly have pulled it off. It is, frankly, a stupid scenario! Without the shock and awe campaign, no one would have believed it. The questions, rather, are which conspiracy and who were the conspirators? It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes who said that when you have eliminated the impossible what remains however improbable MUST be the truth!

ADDENDUM:

There has been a spate of fallacious comments of the form: "...uh...what happened the passengers, dude?". A few points:
  1. the 'question' is, in fact, an implied statement and ASSUMES there were flights! In a court, it would be said that the statement 'assumes facts NOT in evidence'!
  2. absence of evidence is not evidence in support of anything, let alone Bush's idiotic, fallacious and pernicious lie! ! The 'absence of bodies' is not evidence of a crash of any sort; only the presence of bodies traceable to the alleged flights are evidence supporting Bush's unsupportable thoery.
There is --in fact --NO forensic evidence of any sort that supports the Bushco official theory of 911. There is no evidence whatsoever that there were --at any time --any Arabs of any sort (terrorist or otherwise) on board Flight 77, a flight for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
The AFIP suggest these numbers; 189 killed, 125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were "passengers" on the plane. The AA list only had 56 and the list just obtained has 58. They did not explain how they were able to tell "victims" bodies from "hijacker" bodies. In fact, from the beginning NO explanation has been given for the extra five suggested in news reports except that the FBI showed us the pictures to make up the difference, and that makes it so.

Now, being the trusting sort, I figured that the government would want to quickly dispel any rumors so we could get on with the chore of kicking Osama/Sadaam's butt (weren't these originally two different people?). It seemed simple to me. . .produce the names of all the bodies identified by the AFIP and compare it with the publicized list of passengers. So, I sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the AFIP and asked for an expedited response, because we were getting ready to send our boys to war on the pretext that Osama/Saddam had done the deed. Fourteen months later, a few US soldiers dead, many Iraqi civilians pushing up daisies, and I finally get the list. Believe me that they weren't a bit happy to give it up, and I really have no idea why they choose now to release it.

foia-10003.jpg

No Arabs wound up on the morgue slab; however, three ADDITIONAL people not listed by American Airlines sneaked in. I have seen no explanation for these extras. I did American the opportunity to "revise" their original list, but they have not responded. The new names are: Robert Ploger, Zandra Ploger, and Sandra Teague. The AFIP claims that the only "passenger" body that they were not able to identify is the toddler, Dana Falkenberg, whose parents and young sister are on the list of those identified. The satanic masterminds behind this caper may be feeling pretty smug about the perfect crime, but they have left a raft of clues tying these unfortunates together.

--Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D., Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77
Worth repeating and in summary: the last known pre-9/11 flights for three of the four aircraft involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 took place in December, 2000, nine months before the attacks.

Unaccounted for passengers is among the biggest holes in Bush's cover story. If Bush cannot explain the absence of airliner wreckage or the alleged 'missing passengers', then his official theory must be discounted as utter bunkum, a pack of malicious lies. Unlike wine, crap does not improve with age.

Anyone believing that there were such flights AND that there were passengers should insist that a Federal Prosecutor put Bush on the witness stand in front of a federal grand jury and put to him the question: 'what was the fate of the passengers on flights 77 and 11?'

It would be very interesting to learn how he might manage to escape his experience without indictments for 1) MASS MURDER; 2) PERJURY; 3) OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE. Concerning possible charges of 'high treason' against Bush: was it not Bush who declared that we were at war? Was it not Bush and his shills who insist that the US attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq was in response to an 'attack' upon the US? Have not Bush partisans insisted, from the 'gitgo' that the US attack, invasion and occupatin of Iraq was part and parcel of the US 'war on terrorism'. That being the case, Bush's complity in the events of events of 911 are most certainly acts of betrayal against a sovereign in a time of war and, therefore, high treason.

At that point, his most effective defense will be bribery --tried and true for the rich and the guilty.

Among a growing number of links back to this article is this excellent expose of the Flight 77 fraud:
According to the official story, AA Flight 77, a Boeing 757, took off from Dulles Airport in northern Virginia at 8:10 a.m. bound for Los Angeles, with between 50 and 58 passengers. It flew west for about 45 minutes, making a curious detour to the north, west and south, before turning around and flying for another 45 minutes back to Washington. Why hijackers would allow a jet which they planned to crash into a target in Washington to fly for 45 minutes away from its target is not explained. Why did they not commandeer the plane ten minutes after takeoff when the plane was only ten minutes flying time from its intended target? The official story ignores this question, as it does all other questions.

As reported by the New York Times (International Herald Tribune, 2001-10-17, p.8), as AA 77 approached the Pentagon it executed a 270-degree 7,000-foot descent over Washington while flying at 500 mph. It approached the Pentagon on a horizontal trajectory so low that it clipped the power lines across the street then (so the story goes) it smashed into an outer wall of the Pentagon.

We were told (and, of course, expected to believe without question) that this maneuver was executed by an Arab pilot, Hani Hanjour, who in August 2001 was judged by the chief flight instructor at Bowie's Maryland Freeway Airport as not having the piloting skills required to fly a Cessna 172 solo. (Is there something fishy here?)

In contrast to the attention given to the collapse of the Twin Towers, the attack on the Pentagon received little attention until in February 2002 a French website (by Thierry Meyssan) appeared which reproduced images obtained from U.S. Army websites: Hunt the Boeing! These images cast doubt upon the official story that the Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757 jetliner. For example, here is a picture of the Pentagon crash site taken about two hours after the impact, with the fire still burning. Can you see any remains of the approximately 100 tons of metal (including engines, wings, and tail section) which makes up a Boeing 757? ...

--Pentagon Official Story Hoax

Following is a reader's playlist. I recommend it.


September Clues
Or --How to Fake a Terrorist Attack with an off-the-shelf video editing suite, a sound effects library, some audio samples and an utter lack of conscience or humanity!

911: Inside Job!

Why I Moderate Comments
  • American education has deteriorated inversely with the rise of right wing politics! [An example is the 'Texas' that Bush left behind. It beats out Mississippi for DEAD LAST in high school graduations at the same that that it LEADS the nation in executions due to the state's extremely high crime rate!]
  • I don't take kindly to threats and will trace IPs if I should take a threat seriously! Threats, it must be pointed out, are not protected 'free speech' and can be prosecuted.
  • I tire of bad grammar and fashionable but idiotic attempts to be cute.

Additional resources:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe



GoogleYahoo!AOLBloglines

Add to Google

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Add to Google

Add to Technorati Favorites

Download DivX

Spread the word

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The New Chicago Eight

..."The RNC Eight" Charged as Terrorists

A disturbing story from Information Clearing House explains why the RNC was held in Minnesota, and why the police there acted as if war had been declared on America's population.
In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty.

Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.
WHAT?!? Minnesota has its own version of the constitutionally dubious USA PATRIOT Act? What folly is this? It does explain how and why the modern-day version of the 1968 'police riots' at the DNC in Chicago occurred in Minnesota. The sonsabitches want to establish a test case that equates protest, dissent, or simply thinking for yourself as TERRORISM.

They also want to send a message to legitimate political dissidents - STFU!! It's like Bill O'Reilly became the the head of DHS or something (shudder at the thought.) This is the government trying to cut off everyone's microphone at once.

I've already made my comparisons of the violence in 2008 with that in Chicago in 1968 in my recent post Police State 101 - but this development brings them into high relief. This is a nakedly aggressive crackdown designed to suppress people's constitutionally protected rights of assembly and expression. If you still want more background on the DNC riots of 1968, or the Chicago Eight (Later Chicago Seven) trials, consult Wikipedia. There's also a good article here at History and Education blog.

The evidence that the authorities are relying on in these cases seems to be paper-thin, and one wonders if they intend to use the dubious 'rules of evidence' established for the Guantanamo Bay military 'trials' as a precedent. None of this passes either the laugh test or the smell test.
The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC — other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement — and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Searches conducted in connection with the raids failed to turn up any physical evidence to support the allegations of organized attacks on law enforcement. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police. As a result, police sought to claim that the seizure of common household items such as glass bottles, charcoal lighter, nails, a rusty machete, and two hatchets, supported the allegations of the confidential informants.
One has to assume that TPTB (the powers that be) really don't care about getting convictions in these cases. It will suffice for them if a pall of fear is cast over any act of political independence, and even if it doesn't they've got at least eight people who might question their 'patriotic' motives locked up at least until after the elections are over.

Anyone with two functioning synapses could have seen this coming from a long way off. The USA PATRIOT Act and its successors clearly were written in such a way that they sound like they are directed against foreign terrorists, but conveniently can be applied against domestic political opponents and critics of the government. "We'll try these draconian methods out on brown people for a while at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If we get away with that we're clear to bring them home to Peoria, Bakersfield, Des Moines and St. Paul Minnesota." That's how I perceive their thinking.

What worries me the most about this is not what the government is doing, but what I fear the Lamestream Media won't do - report this as a major story, which it surely is. It's after all an indication of a fundamental shift in society, the breaking of a covenant between the government and the people that has endured since the American Revolution. And ultimately I fear that the American people themselves won't respond with the energy required to put a stop to this, and turn back the judicial clock to a time when fairness mattered.

A little voice in the corner of my mind asks, "is it fascism yet?" I don’t know, but as a rule I’d say that if you can actually smell the polish on the stormtrooper’s boot, it’s probably too close to your neck.
UPDATE: Firedoglake has this post, with the video below about how Americans were tortured Guantanamo style after being arrested in Minnesota.
The shocking thing is that it would be very unusual for any of these thugs cops to face discipline over these various crimes of assault and failure to recognize the rights of their fellow citizens.

TAGS: ,

Cross-posted from
Les

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Sauce for the Goose

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people are upon us.
-- John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, 1630 --

A TERRIFIC POST from Bill W. (who is also a contributor at Crooks and Liars, who've also posted it) really lays on the line just how much harm the criminal Bush administration has done to international law, peace, and just incidentally, America's reputation. And it comes with a great video clip! (uploaded to YouTube by Bill W. - man, this guy does it all and gives you your correct change to boot.)

Sudan Cites US Example Why It Won't Comply With UN, ICC
One sad truth that Bill doesn't go into (and I'm racking my brains here to find a base he hasn't covered) - from the point of view of someone who isn't an American (I'm proudly Canadian, eh?) - is that this is just another example of the idea of American Exceptionalism that has been accepted and even nurtured under the good old Stars and Stripes for far too long.

Ah yes, American Exceptionalism - the bastard child of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. The not-quite-so-evil twin of Might Makes Right. Nurtured and fed on a falsehood that is older than the country itself - the idea that the US is so morally superior to everyone else that it can be described as The City on the Hill, The Beacon of Democracy, the Font of Everything That is Good in The World.

And the reason that the world doesn't have to be concerned about the actions of America or its leaders? - because they're just so darned peachy-keen, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed gee whiz golly gosh dripping with good intentions. And if those good intentions turn out to make some US businesses a tidy profit? Well all the better! We'll throw in a slice of hot apple pie, and teach your folks how to play baseball.

And if those good intentions lead to us backing a coup against your democratically elected leader and installing a business-friendly tinpot dictator who starts murdering the opposition? Well shucks, dang, and whoa there Bessie. That never happens! Except for a few times in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, and enough places that it's hard to remember them all. But you can rest assured it will never happen again anyway. Trust us.

And not to seem too critical of our well-armed neighbour to the south, I'd like to add that this principle of Exceptionalism is running afoul of another principle that originated in the US, in fact the very principle that the ICC is based on. Yes, that's right, it's called the Nuremberg principle. The idea is that entire countries are not responsible for wars, their LEADERS are. Especially when the leaders in question have been caught in so many lies that no-one can even keep track anymore. And let's not forget that indispensable adjunct to the Nuremberg principle, that the leaders must be held accountable for their actions. Please let's not forget that.

If Bush and his gang of criminals are not held accountable, and significantly if that accounting is not spearheaded by America herself, any credibility you have internationally will be lost forever. Because in Bush's eye's it's not the country as a whole that benefits from this status of City on A Hill, it's himself personally. And that's just not right. As important as it is for the world that Bush be brought to justice it is equally important to America that they take an active role. Else you'll be painted with the brush of complicity in his crimes.

The eyes of all people are upon you.


To wind it up, I've got some more video for you that's to the point:
All Presidential Accountability Goes Out The Window!

Oh, and there's one other thing. Did I mention that this is all going on against the backdrop of a British Parliament report that US assurances that it does not torture can no longer be taken at face value? Well, I meant to. It seems relevant.

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: , , ,

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The Most Unlikely Ally

Joseph Stalin's Connection
to Fascism in America

In the usual way that Americans have been taught to view history Joseph Stalin was an unrepentant monster whose Communist government suppressed and murdered its own citizens, denying them their rights and imprisoning them in cruel and inhuman gulags for the slightest act of disagreement with his regime.

As I have written before on my old blog, Friendly Neighbour, Stalin was, even after his death, an unwitting ally of far-right forces within the American system.
Stalin, while a valiant ally in the war, stands out as one of history's biggest meanest bastards. Estimates of the number of Soviet citizens killed by Stalin range as high as 20 Million. Most died by starvation as the result of disastrous agricultural policies that removed subsistence farmers from their land in misguided collectivization efforts. Many more died as a result of Stalin's extreme paranoia, taken out and shot or tortured to death in the infamous gulags. Stalin was evil.

...[I]n the post-war era, a great lie was sold to the American people, one I believe a vast majority of Americans still believe today. That lie was a great propaganda coup, providing the right wing with a magic hammer with which to beat its enemies mercilessly. That lie led to the cold war. That lie was that the evils of Stalin's Soviet Union were somehow the inevitable result of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Which anyone even passingly familiar with socialist doctrine can tell you is absurd.
A simple comparison that clarifies the effects of this great lie is this; The Red Scare was to post-war America as International Jewry was to Nazi Germany. The great threat that justifies all excesses. The great brush to paint all our enemies. The Red Scare.
My point was and remains that it wasn't Marxist doctrine that caused Stalin to be a megalomaniac, it was his paranoia and his embrace of totalitarian tactics to eliminate any threat to his rule. The great purges carried out in the 1930s are but one case in point.

The common belief that the cold war was a struggle between western democracy and Soviet Communism was a great lie. For one thing Soviet Communism didn't fit the egalitarian model at all. There was a privileged class of party members, military officers and secret policemen who lacked for little, lived in Dachas, rode around in chauffeur-driven hand-built automobiles and feared the peasantry no less than did their czarist predecessors. So Communism in the Soviet Union was a lie. But why on earth would the western world go along with that lie, even exaggerate it when it would have been much easier to call Stalin and his successors out for their hypocrisy?
“A lie would make no sense,
unless the truth were felt to be dangerous.”
- Carl G. Jung -
The simple answer to this is that this Soviet lie served the purposes of the corporatists to a tee to keep up the idea that the Soviet Union represented the inevitable outcome of Marxism, that is that it led to totalitarian regimes like that of Stalin. Which may have some truth to it, but it is simply astonishing how quickly the idea was extended to include not only Communists, but later 'Communist sympathizers', aka 'Pinkos' (not quite 'Red' in other words,) trade unionists, and later anyone who had the audacity to consider themselves anywhere to the left of center. Indeed, by the time Ronald Reagan ran for office they were using a new rhetorical technique - they began alluding to liberalism as 'the L word,' giving the impression that it was something so obscene that it couldn't be talked about in polite company.

Another device was in play - the ratchet effect. As this unrelenting stream of vitriol (based on absolutely nothing by the way) was directed on anyone to the left of center, inevitably people started moving out of the line of fire. They stopped calling themselves liberals even if they were by any definition of the word. They now self-identify as progressives or even moderate conservatives. The result of that was that the line that defined where 'left of center' was also moved to the right. So, in the next iteration (or turn of the ratchet in my analogy) people who had previously been to the right of center were called out, and some of them moved across the new 'middle' line - to end up on what used to be the far right. You can still see this process in effect anytime someone like Rush Limbaugh points to someone who is really quite moderate in their position and describes them as being from, not just the left, but the far left. Conversely, the term far right is almost never used in the United States. Which should give people cause for concern. The real outcome of this is class warfare in America with only the upper class having declared or holding any weapons.
"Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest lie.
In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people,
this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this country.

To ignore that--not to know that the history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against poor--is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us by people in power...

...If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up there--the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions pretending to be "checks and balances"--do not have our interests at heart, we are on a course towards the truth.
Not to know that is to make us helpless before determined liars."

Just look at how successful this undeclared class warfare has been. The Republicans opposed Social Security when it was first introduced on the grounds that it led to the 'slippery slope towards communism.' The fact that it helped the vast majority of Americans survive was not an effective counterargument in their narrow rightwing view. And they are STILL trying to dismantle the most successful program in the country's history. They have successfully blocked any form of universal health care with the same slippery slope canard. "OOOH - it might lead to communism. Slippery slope - ooga booga. Be very, very afraid." So you see how the ghost of the long dead Joseph Stalin is still acting as an ally to Corporate Fascist America. The frickin' ownership society they envisage can hardly be differentiated from a slave state.

It's really tragic that a large number of working class Americans continue to vote against their own interests for two reasons. The first is that they are afraid of being labeled 'far left' by the flying monkey brigade of Limbaugh and his putrid ilk. The second is that they cling to the myth of the American dream. They hope that somehow, against all odds, they will pass through that velvet curtain into first class, and they don't want to piss in the complimentary champagne before they get to stretch out in their generous double wide reclining seats.

The fact is, social mobility (the likelihood that you will end up in a different income bracket than your parents) is MUCH less in the US than it is in the rest of the western industrialized world. And as everybody knows, the gap between rich and poor is opening up into an absolute chasm that you will never cross if you are currently living modestly.
"In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors,
since all men are equal,
but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors,
for, from the time of Jefferson onward,
the doctrine that all men are equal
applies only upwards, not downwards."
-- Bertrand Russell --
I will further cannibalize my old post by plagiarizing it's close (I hope the author doesn't go after me.)
In the opening pages of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games the hero, Jack Ryan is visiting London. Unfamiliar with the English practice of driving on the left side of the road he checks to the left, where he expects traffic, then steps out onto the road and is nearly killed by a bus coming from the right. It seems to me a fitting image of what has happened to the US in the last 7 or 8 decades. While paranoically obsessing about a perceived threat from the left, America has left itself wide open for a takeover from the corporate right.
To tie this in to what's happening today, one needs only this quote from a pre-eminent veteran of the cold war.
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it."
-- General Douglas MacArthur --
A chillingly familiar theme in the post 9/11 America. It's hard not to see how the fear-mongering inspired by Stalin is just like that inspired by Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Stalin was of course the first bogie man bent on world domination and in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Which brings me to another pithy and pertinent quote.
"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely
or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear"
-- Bertrand Russell --

This post was written to set the table for a series of posts I intend to do under the heading of The History of Fascism in America. (THOFIA) It should fit in well with those of you who are already Naomi Wolf fans. It might rub some of you the wrong way if you believe the fascist influence to have begun with George W. Bush, his father, or even his grandfather. But that cannot be avoided.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
-- George Orwell --
TAGS: , , ,

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Sham on You

Whither Wither Democracy?

This item from the BBC strikes me as being painfully ironic.
The US, EU and other democracies are accepting flawed and unfair elections out of political expediency, Human Rights Watch says in its annual report.

Allowing autocrats to pose as democrats without demanding they uphold civil and political rights risked undermining human rights worldwide, it warned.
[..]
HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said it had become too easy for autocrats to get away with mounting a sham democracy "because too many Western governments insist on elections and leave it at that".

"They don't press governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy function - a free press, peaceful assembly, and a functioning civil society that can really challenge power," he added.
[..]
"It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the 'victor' is a strategic or commercial ally," Mr Roth said.
The ironic pain comes from the blatantly obvious fact that the most dubious elections of all have occurred right in the United States. The 2000 sElection of Bush the Lesser by a partisan and biased Supreme Court was a travesty. Four years later the more sophisticated but no less devastating electronic vote fraud in Ohio reinstalled the moron who would be king, to go on and add to the considerable damage he had inflicted on the nation. Anyone who thinks things are going to be better this time around should read this story from TPMMuckraker. I declare shenanigans!

I shouldn't need to elaborate - places like Bradblog and Black Box Voting have detailed the demise of democracy to death, for all the good it's done. I will sketch out just a few of the major ways that the electoral process has been thwarted in the last couple of elections:

1) Disenfranchisement before the fact: this includes practices such as caging lists and the generation of lists declaring people ineligible to vote because of criminal records that didn't exist. This latter instance was well documented after the fact in Florida, 2000, but too late to do any good as the result by then was a fait accompli.

2) Disenfranchisement after the fact: in 2000 this consisted of things like hanging chads and butterfly ballots. By 2004 it was implemented through electronic means, whereby your vote could be excluded or even flipped to the other side by the alteration of a memory card, taking only a few keystrokes.

3) False flag candidacies: Pssst. Hey, buddy! You want to ensure a Republican victory in an election? Just pour enough money into the Democratic primary to install a corporatist puppet on the other side. If you have an R - Republican running against a D - Republican, the Republicans will win every time. Do you think LIE-berman, Feinstein and Schumer are the only wolves dressed in sheep's clothing in Washington? Think again. It's not so hard to arrange things so the question becomes "will that be plastic, or plastic?" In fact it's a lot cheaper if you're an unprincipled Republican to eliminate your opposition in the Democratic primary than it is to defeat him in the general election.

4) Bulldozer tactics: Is there a particularly vocal opponent giving you trouble in Congress? Simply outspend him or her 5 to 1, and steal his seat. That's what's happening to Dennis Kucinich right now. Is it any wonder so many people choose not to participate when any good candidates are eliminated long before the ballot is even drawn up?

Here's another list, of a different kind altogether, from Mark Crispin Miller:

1. Repeal the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
This step will inevitably follow an in-depth investigation of how HAVA came to be.

2. Replace all electronic voting with hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB).
Although politicians and the press dismiss this idea as utopian, the people would support it just as overwhelmingly as national health care, strong environmental measures, US withdrawal from Iraq, and other sane ideas.

3. Get rid of computerized voter rolls.
It isn’t just the e-voting machines that are obstructing our self-government. According to USA Today, thousands of Americans have had their names mysteriously purged from the electronic databases now used nationwide as records of our registration.

4. Keep all private vendors out of our elections.
With their commercial interests, trade secrets and unaccountable proceedings, private companies should have no role in the essential process of republican self-government.

5. Make it illegal for the TV networks to declare who won before the vote-count is complete.
Certainly the corporate press will scream about its First Amendment Rights, but they don’t have the right to interfere with our elections. When they declare a winner when we don’t yet even know if the election was legitimate, they de-legitimize all audits, recounts and even first counts of the vote as the mere desperate measures of “sore losers.”

6. Set up an exit polling system, publicly supported, to keep the vote-counts honest.
Only in America are exit poll results not meant to help us gauge the accuracy of the official count. Here they are meant only to allow the media to make its calls.

7. Get rid of voter registration rules, by allowing every citizen to register, at any post office, on his/her 18th birthday.
Either we believe in universal suffrage or we don’t.

8. Ban all state requirements for state-issued ID’s at the polls.
As the Supreme Court smiles on such Jim Crow devices, we need a law, or Constitutional amendment, to forbid them.

9. Put all polling places under video surveillance, to spot voter fraud, monitor election personnel, and track the turnout.
We’re under surveillance everywhere else, so why not?

10. Have Election Day declared a federal holiday,
requiring all employers to allow their workers time to vote.
No citizens of the United States should ever lose the right to vote because they have to go to work.

11. Make it illegal for Secretaries of State to co-chair political campaigns (or otherwise assist or favor them).
Katherine Harris wore both those hats in Florida in 2000, and, four years later, so did Ken Blackwell in Ohio and Jan Brewer in Arizona. Such Republicans should not have been allowed to do it, nor should any Democrats.

12. Make election fraud a major felony, with life imprisonment--and disenfranchisement--for all repeat offenders.
“Three strikes and you’re out” would certainly befit so serious a crime against democracy.
Not to diminish the value of Mr. Miller's list, but one must ask, "what government is going to implement these changes?" I see a catch-22 here, a 'you can't get there from here' barrier that will not easily be surmounted. You're not going to get these kind of reforms until you change the entire body politic in Washington. You're not going to get a new body politic without the reforms. If you go to this post at OpEd news you'll see that a lot of the commenters feel the same way.

A more sobering reflection comes with the assumption that the November elections will be above board and the results the best we can reasonably hope for under the current conditions. (which for me would mean Obama in the White House, and a Democratic supermajority in both houses.) My point is that even the best case scenario under current conditions would be far from adequate to restore the democracy that used to exist in America. So I've decided to take a little un-scientific survey that you can answer in comments. There's no format, no multiple choices, no boxes to fill in - very open ended and unruly, the way I like things. Here is the one multi-part question.
Given the very best outcome that you can currently imagine for the 2008 elections, (feel free to name the winning candidate and his or her running mate, even cabinet members if that floats your boat)
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES THAT:
  1. The US will withdraw its troops from Iraq
  2. Prisoners currently in Guantanamo and elsewhere will either be released or tried under internationally recognized procedural rules
  3. The USA PATRIOT Act will be repealed
  4. The Military Commissions Act will be repealed and habeas corpus restored
  5. The Protect America Act will be repealed
  6. Serious crimes committed by the current administration will be prosecuted fully, and guilty parties penalized without pardons or commutations of sentence
  7. Crimes committed by corporate entities enabled by the current administration will be prosecuted
  8. Even one of the worthy proposals made by Mark Crispin Miller will be enacted
  9. Anything I missed? Add your own in comments and I will put it up here too.
Of course it's a given that there are some things that desperately need to be restored for democracy to work, but can't be without a second American Revolution. The partisan Supreme Court that the last two Bushes have left as their legacy for example. The pillaging of the economy by the multinationals. I'm sure you can think of a few more.

The worst case scenario is of course terrifying: the installation of a worldwide system of corporate fascism under the guise of globalisation. What's really scary is that the best case scenario doesn't look that good either.

TAGS: , , ,

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Bush Think: A Nuclear War Can be Fought and Won!

God, how I despise people who think war is a game.

--Last Chance Democracy Cafe

The origin of 'Bush think' may be found in a scenario dreamed up at the Rand Corporation at the height of the Cold War. Rand had designed mathematical models that dared think the unthinkable: a nuclear war can be won! Typically, the scenario relied heavily on 'game theory'. It proposed to use 'nukes' like poker chips, so-called 'rational incentives', to manipulate the other side. Rand theorists 'gamed' how many megatons might be dropped on a city, which cities would be nuked, how many deaths it would take to bring the Russians to the bargaining table.

A clue to Bush's thinking may be found in Bush's remarks to Matt Lauer of NBC Sept. 2, 2004. The topic was the War on Terrorism that Bush committed the US to fight.
I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world — let's put it that way.
That would appear not to have been the case or the outcome. Terrorism is always been worse under GOP administrations. There is no reason to believe that 'terrorism' is in any way 'less acceptable' especially to those to whom Bush had addressed his remarks at the outset of his foreign adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps as a result of his failures, Bush has resorted to dragging out a scenario that had been 'gamed' by the Rand corporation at the height of the cold war.

According to Mother Jones, the robber barons of big oil, Bush's base, began planning for the war some thirty years ago. They had been 'inspired' by the Arab Oil Embargo. It was certainly an act of war: spoiled Americans had been grievously inconvenienced!
Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington's hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf's oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance.
The Orwellian nightmare, the state of perpetual war, has come true but cannot be sustained. Worse than "mutually assured destruction", this universal exploitation of nightmare spells an end to those dreams that make life worth living. The grim vision offered by the GOP is --or had been --an avoidable choice. It was forced upon us by incompetent and cowardly. [See: Terrorism is worse under GOP regimes]

Dragging out Rand's Nuclear War Version 1.0 is not a good idea. Times have changed. Iran is not the Soviet Union. And, contrary to GOP tactics of exploitation of various threats and 'boogie men', terrorism is a tactic --not an ideology like communism. Terrorism is not a 'state' that can be identified. Terrorism, rather, is a tactic and, as such, it is inspired among many nations and many peoples at many and various times. An act of terrorism is a crime --not an act of war. Bush think is wrong and Rand's old scenario Version 1.0 is made obsolete by Reality Version 6.0.

Bush makes claims about Iranian nuclear capabilities are without independent and/or credible verification. The world has not forgotten the lies told about how Saddam Hussein was making chemical weapons in a beat up trailer, how Saddam tried to buy 'yellow cake' in Niger. Realistically --an anything said by Bush be believed?

Desperate to wage war on Saddam, Bushco told the world that Saddam was supporting terrorists. It was a lie. As the failed war dragged on, millions came to understand that Saddam's regime had not supported bona fide 'terrorists' in any way. According to the Pew Research Center, American skepticism about the war in Iraq increased steadily from its inception. It is increasingly seen as harming the "war on terrorism".

A plurality (47%) believes that the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism, up from 41% in February of this year. Further, a plurality (45%) now says that the war in Iraq has increased the chances of terrorist attacks at home, up from 36% in October 2004, while fewer say that the war in Iraq has lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in the US (22% now and 32% in October). Another three-in-ten believe that the war in Iraq has no effect on the chances of a terrorist attack in the US

- Pew Research Center, "Iraq Hurting War on Terror"

Having lied about Iraq, Bush will certainly lie about Iran in order to justify an attack. There is a danger of massive over-response to provocation, a 'scenario' perhaps just recently was narrowly avoided in the Straits of Horumuz. The question now is: will the world surface the remainder of his tenure? But, as long as Bush continues to occupy the Oval Office, Americans must ask the question: is there any rational basis for fearing Iran when every credible and independent source has said that Iran is years away from developing nukes that the US had previously made available to other nations?

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, old 'cold warriors' had been overtaken by events and reality. Their very jobs depended upon scaring the beejebers out of Americans.
What if there really was no need for much - or even most - of the Cold War? What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats?

What if, similarly, the War On Terror was largely a scam, and the administration was hyping it to seem larger-than-life? What if our "enemy" represented a real but relatively small threat posed by rogue and criminal groups well outside the mainstream of Islam? What if that hype was done largely to enhance the power, electability, and stature of George W. Bush and Tony Blair?

And what if the world was to discover the most shocking dimensions of these twin deceits - that the same men promulgated them in the 1970s and today?

Thom Hartmann, Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power

Hartman's source was a BBC piece called "The Power of Nightmares".
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organized terrorist network is an illusion.

--BBC: The Power of Nightmares

In the US, more have begun to question the Bush modus operandi of exploiting our nightmares, our fears of "radical Islam", a prospect at least as terrifying as "radical Christianity" and the equally ideological, rabid "Christianist" movement which overtly seeks to make of the US a theocracy. Should either side "win", people themselves will be enslaved to nonsense, claptrap and ideology, nothing less than a new dark age.

What is the date of America's descent into madness? It might have been Pearl Harbor. Certainly, the US helped meet the very real threat posed by Hitler's Third Reich, but, in retrospect, our leaders may have learned all the wrong lessons. Did they learn only that FDR grew in strength by promising to protect Americans from the spectres of world wide fascism and Nazism? Certainly, GOP regimes, having propped up Saddam, tried to make of him --Hitler! The GOP hated FDR but again learned from him all the wrong lessons. The GOP never forgive FDR for winning World War II but have been eager to exploit war and manufactured crises in times of peace. The GOP became the party of wars though there is nary a war that it can claim it won! Desparate for any success at all, the GOP has become the party of phony wars on drugs, porn, immigration and Murphy Brown.

Bush sought a chance to use nukes! Surely, a war on terrorism would give him the opporttunity. But how? "Terrorism" is not a geographical location. It is, rather, a phantom menace that is whatever the right wing says it is.

Game theory aside --there are NO winners. Game theorists should read Godel, to wit: NO formal system can generate every theorem from any given set of axioms and, likewise, no "game theory" of any sort can "game" every contingency. The use of nukes of any size or sort in the middle east will be catastrophic beyond our abilities to predict or plan for. It could very well usher in the end of mankind.


BBC: The Trap

A related story:
If the U.S. were to face a new conventional threat, its military could not respond effectively without turning to air power, officials and analysts say.

"That is the ultimate upshot of the war in Iraq: a response elsewhere would consist largely of U.S. fighters and bombers -- even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear strike -- because so many ground troops are tied up in Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear stike???

They are insane.

-- Iraq war has ground forces stretched thin

The "government" is not our "country". Bush is not the sovereign. We are the nation; we are the sovereign. Whatever "government" is in Washington, its only job is to protect and defend the country. The country is us! We can fire the government when it fails to do its job. New Orleans is merely the most graphic proof, the most dramatic illustration of how this government has failed the people of America and should be fired. Not just Bush --I envision a mass layoff! It is time the country changed its government. It is time to bring this government to its knees for having betrayed us --the nation.

Monday, January 14, 2008

The Oligarchs Strike Back

War Declared on Populism

Or maybe it would be safer to say that a surge has been declared in a war on the ordinary people that business has been waging pretty much since the American Revolution. Here's the item that has me upset, from TPMMuckraker.
Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.

"We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," chamber President Tom Donohue said....

Although Donohue shied away from precise figures, he indicated that his organization would spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it spent in the last presidential cycle. That approaches the spending levels planned by the largest labor unions....

"I'm concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media," he said. "It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits -- and who it is that eats them."
I'm bewildered. What 'candidates deemed to be anti-business' could Lord Donohue be referring to? All of the front runners of both parties are clearly bought and paid for. Sure, John Edwards has declared a desire to reduce the power of the biggest multinational corporations, but the furniture stores on Main Street don't have to be afraid of anything. In fact if you look at the Saudi princes who are the biggest beneficiaries of tax breaks to Exxon, Enron and others, maybe the 'U.S.' chamber of commerce should consider changing their name. Besides, Edwards isn't doing that well. So do you think Ralph Nader is poised to make a miracle comeback? I think the concern about anti-corporatist rhetoric is misplaced.

So, I've written an open letter in response to Tom Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

I think it's time for a reality check Mr. Donohue. Current campaign laws combined with the dubious principle of Corporate Personhood make your donations to candidates and your third party political ads to be 'free speech.' Imagine that - a corporation that speaks. Not only that, but the major media are owned by corporations - so you also have the power to stifle the free speech of anyone whose ideas you don't like, as Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul know only too well. The synergy of this is awesome to behold. The candidates have to toe your line to get advertising dollars, which you just get back in revenues at the television and radio stations you own. Pretty slick.

You've created a special industry of over 30,000 lobbyists, the vast majority working for corporations to make sure your point of view is always on the agenda of every elected representative in the country between election cycles. It would seem on the surface that your influence on the political process is overpowering. And you have the nerve to begrudge the common man his input for the less than a minute he spends in the booth every four years? It just doesn't pass the laugh test.

OK, reality check part 2: While you're busy whining about how hard done by your ultra-wealthy membership is, how have you been doing on advancing your agenda? Well, the percentage of government revenues coming from taxes on business has steadily declined over the last half century. Environmental regulations have been weakened, and those still left are no longer enforced. The heads of regulatory bodies under the Bu$hCo regime are themselves from the industries they are supposed to police. Likewise, business-friendly labor laws have weakened the unions, who now have a much smaller fraction of the workforce on their roles than they used to.

Antitrust laws haven't produced a meaningful lawsuit in some time. There was a significant judgment against Microsoft over Windows 95, but it was never enforced. Hell, Exxon still hasn't paid any fines over the Valdez oilspill in Alaska. CEOs salaries are off the charts, golden parachutes assure that there is no accountability. The most recent outrage is this story about Stanley O'Neal - whose stewardship of Merril Lynch cost the company $15 Billion in write-downs, but left him with a handsome $101 million pay-out. That's pretty hard to swallow for the working stiff who can't even cope with the rising cost of just about everything or the possible loss of his job or home.

Reality check, part 3 - What are the electorate seeing as the result of your success at getting your own way. Globalisation has allowed you to outsource to other countries, increasing your profits, decreasing the taxes paid to the U.S. government - all on the backs of your workers, many of whom are now your ex-workers. Unemployment is up by 5%, but that should make you happy because it drives the cost of labor down domestically. Who cares how many people lose their homes over it? Or that the result is a nation-wide recession? The fact is the top 1/10th of 1% have been strip mining the American economy since the Reagan years, and this is the result. You've got yours, to hell with anyone else, right? I swear your overall objective is to bring back the Dark Ages under a system of Corporate Feudalism.

As for who it is that creates wealth and benefits for society, it is and always has been the 'little guy' whose input into the political process you so fear. I'm calling you on that bullshit Mr. Donahue. If you want to call your beloved corrupt Republican party "the party of Lincoln," perhaps you should heed what he had to say on the subject:
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor,
and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed.
Labor is superior to capital,
and deserves much the higher consideration."
-- Abraham Lincoln --

That must sound like Marxism to your ears. In fact, I would almost guess old Karl may have read Lincoln when I read this.
"Capital is dead labor,
which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor,
and lives the more, the more labor it sucks."
-- Karl Marx --
And speaking of Karl Marx and Corporate Personhood, don't forget he also said,
"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality,
while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."
-- Karl Marx --
Sounds pretty prophetic to this LIVING, BREATHING person. Have a nice day, Mr. Donahue. On second thought, don't bother. Frankly I found that threat about biting me on the butt kind of distasteful.

Further Reading: John Edwards: My Plan to Stop Corporate Abuses

TAGS: , , ,