Revolution, Evolution, Devolution

Revolutions can be profitable.

Type	Who Profits	Pro	Con
Cultural	General public, artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, creators, media distributors and related	Potential for societal evolution and increase of power to the people	None, from the perspective of the general public
Technological	Creators, users and distributors of technology	Potential for societal evolution and increase of power to the people	May lesson power of public while increasing power of government/big industry
Physical (Storm the capital)	Government, defense & security industry, gun makers	None - not possible in the US/illegal to suggest	Lessons power of public while increasing power of government/big industry

Is not our best hope to change ourselves through culture? Maybe my assumptions are wrong -- what do you think?

Take Time to Smell the Flowers

So many other things stink.

Historically we're a hard-working, hard-playing nation that has had little time for smelling flowers, but the saying is still appropriate -- is it not a good idea to MAKE time in order to appreciate life? If we don't appreciate what we still DO have, what are we fighting for? But wait, who's fighting to make the nation a better place? Aren't most people too busy doing other things, like working, playing and watching people smell flowers on TV?

Would a 1900s American fight to stop this:
- 20% reduction in pay
- 25% reduction in home value
- Increase in rent costs
- 500% increase in the cost of milk

- 500% increase in the cost of produce

- Increased terror, violence and war, all for profit

??

The numbers may be inaccurate, but this what we're faced with today. I'm asking you, do we a fight IN us? How can we work hard for less money, play hard at a higher cost and now FIGHT while still smelling the flowers?

Our ancestors I think WOULD fight for that. They fought against being taxed and unrepresented. Do we have any fight left in us or put a fork in us, we're done? This is a challenge, not a statement of pessimism.

There are REASONS prices are going up and your pay is going down. Are you resigned to accept this?

I still like Barack Obama, but prior to him being elected, I wrote that liberals would be dissatisfied with his government, not because of any distrust in Barack Obama, but because I see our system in charge of our politicians, not our politicians in charge of our system. Sure, there are some differences between the parties and certainly between George Bush and Barack Obama, but liberals and conservatives need to realize our system wants little to do with fiscal conservatism, social programs or free markets.....unless MAYBE we fight HARD for those things. We can fight for the nominal difference between parties during elections, but now is the time to come together as a PEOPLE, OUTSIDE of the traditional channels of mainstream media and take back our nation. Is that even possible?



The Quiet Coup:Former IMF Chief Economist: The US is a Banana Republic:

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

In other financial industry/organized crime news and just when you thought AIG couldn't be any more screwed up, Wayne Madsen, who was arrested/intimidated recently while working on this story, writes about AIG's airplane business and ties to Stanford and US covert ops.

Comments:
BlankPhotog said (re: WHO ARE WE?)...
"We live in a stacked set of petri dishes. Workplace culture, street culture, coffee house culture, art culture, shopping culture, road culture... bike culture. Most people have a hard enough time affecting one culture, let alone the whole stack. There's carryover. Spillover. Runoff. We let the bad people/culture/pathways fester, or reward them (both are as evil) and we get some bad germs/memes infecting the stack. We go the other way, and we get some kind of antibacterial cleansing. Nasty! But to embrace the notion that there's any kind of short term balance between these two may lead one to abandon the idea of cultural change. We're making the cultural poisons as we consume them, adapt to them, jam on them. They kill us; others take our/their place. Stronger, weaker, weirder. But are we weird enough? I think not."

Your Job:
Make time for "smelling the flowers", but if you don't also make time helping ween our government from the various powers that be, such as the financial industry, the result might be that the government seizes the flowers, privatizes them and then docks your paycheck everytime you want to smell them. 

Who ARE We?

What is US culture? TV shows, bad movies and hamburgers? Rock n roll? Weapons? Fast food? Big cars? Baseball? Apple pie from Walmart? China? Your local musician, artist and filmmaker?

Is US culture outsourced? Can we make our own culture?

Can we control our own culture? Me, me, me, I know that one. YES, we can!



Every day I react to the news I read. When this blog is more about pointing out what's going on instead of pointing out what we CAN DO differently, I'm at best, giving myself therapy, raising awareness of issues, providing a unique perspective, highlighting or making a specific criticism or motivating someone.....to do what? Anger without action...what good does that do? Am I creating something new or am I just tweaking the wake from the motorboat of mainstream media?

We can change ourselves and others by improving, creating and defining our own culture. This might be the most under-appreciated tool we have. It may be the most powerful tool we have.

So how does one change their culture? Via improved consumption, creation and advocacy. Give good stuff more attention and bad stuff less attention. Good and bad are of course subjective but without subjectivity, there'd be no diversity. Advocate that good stuff and don't advocate or give power to the bad stuff (via attention) -- ie, tell people about stuff. Create something if you can, and that can be anything from writing a comment on a blog to making an independent movie. All three of these are powerful. Pick any and go!

What do YOU think?

What power (foreign) lobbyists?

Earlier this month Charles Freeman, once the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, after being rumored to be nominated to the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, was attacked by many pro-Israeli groups for his outspoken views on Israel and alleged ties to Saudi Arabia and China. On his way out he claimed that pro-Israeli groups have a stronghold on US politics:

"The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies (re: his alleged influence by Saudi Arabia and China) by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States. "

"The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired. The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the wilful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth."

"The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favours."

In the New York Times Freeman had said “Israel is driving itself toward a cliff, and it is irresponsible not to question Israeli policy and to decide what is best for the American people.”



Debate over Freeman himself aside, this raises a few questions which beg discussion where discussion seems taboo. Two of them are:

1 - Do foreign lobbies have too much power over the US political process? Who has more power, the US citizen or Saudi Arabia? At the time of the Katrina hurricane, more US money was being spent on displaced settlers in Israel than displaced New Orleans residents. On one hand, character assassination has indeed been used to stifle discussion, but on the other hand, many critics are bigots that have stereotyped entire populations based on religion -- the result is that most people simply don't want to talk about any of this. It's too controversial. How do we get past that? Regardless of how much power various foreign lobbies have, or who has the most or the second most, etc, foreign lobbies certainly have power. Whenever discussing power is taboo we have a problem, as citizens of a country that need it's government to prioritize us as #1.

2 - Are the foreign lobbies helping themselves? Is US foreign policy helping the US, Saudi Arabia or Israel? (or China, etc)Specific hard-right policies have been espoused by foreign lobbies in the name of the foreign entities that they represent. Have those actually been helpful or hurtful to their causes? Foreign nations have a problem when narrow-minded or radical groups wholly represent them. For instance, the occupation of Iraq has empowered Iran. That hasn't helped Saudi Arabia or Israel. Right-wing radicalism, from any nation, seems to encourage more right-wing radicalism. Barack Obama seems to get this, but what's he going to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

My goal here is not to condemn foreign (or domestic) lobbies but to encourage discussion about them. Lobbying of all kinds continues to dramatically increase, meaning money & power continue to increase their hold on whoever we vote in.

Your Job:
Break a taboo. Discuss openly the above issues, either here or in everyday life, with an open-mind and without bigotry.

Happy Monday!

"WE have to change"

One reader (BlankPhotog) makes some excellent points and suggestions:

"Obama is a necessary shift away from the Bushites, but he's still safely ensconced in the politics of a self-perpetuating two-party system that's built on the bubble of an ever-growing economy by-any-means-necessary. I happen to like Obama. But for America to reap the benefits of change, WE have to change. And to some extent that's an unreasonable expectation. Real, sustainable change would be a shock to everything about how we live, our expectations of the future for ourselves and our children, and what we must do to survive. Historically we don't handle such shocks well as human beings or as Americans. We overreact. We underreact. We point fingers and switch parties, and the system remains the same, or on the same disastrous course.

A President reacting to the real crises we have been facing for the last 15-20 years would have had more of a chance to fix and prevent problems than Obama will have. My expectations for Obama are few, as a result...

We need to fire the economic system that supports and defends private profit at public cost. "

Your Job:
It's Suggestion Sunday. What do you suggest we do?

"The Big Takeover"

Wall Street robbed you and then used the robbery to gain significant control.

Don't read the excerpts that I quoted below from Matt Taibbi's MUST-READ Rolling Stone article. Instead, just go read the article. It's one of the best, if not the best, on what's taken place.

It's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity...

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers...

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.

Know Thy Disaster Capitalism

Oil prices rose when two US navy vessels collided. 

"The book and film, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, argue that the free market policies of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics have risen to prominence in countries such as Chile under Pinochet, Russia under Yeltsin, the United States (for example in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina), and the privatization of Iraq's economy under the Coalition Provisional Authority not because they were democratically popular, but because they were pushed through while the citizens of these countries were reacting to disasters or upheavals. It is implied that some of these shocks, such as the Falklands war, may have been created with the intention of being able to push through these unpopular reforms in the wake of the crisis.

Disaster Capitalists Reap Profits

The rise of disaster capitalism

Olberman: Break Up the Banks

""Break up the banks. Regulate the financial industries, to within an inch of their existences. Roll back corporate legal protections. Make liable the officers of corporations for their debts and for their deeds. Resurrect the rallying cry of a hundred years past: bust the trusts!"

Who's in charge?

And what are they in charge of?

Some people expect Barack Obama to be capable of fixing everything. Why hasn't Obama made Congress less corrupt? or Why hasn't he fixed the potholes on my street?

But he should be in charge of the executive branch, no? There's a discrepancy between how people perceive the government to be run as a top-down organization and the reality that politicians are for the most part puppets to advisors, lobbyists and industry.  Is that also true about Barack Obama? He speaks as if he's trying to change that.

Neocons designed a policy which made money for the defense and security industries and appeased hard-core right-wingers in Al Qaeda, organized crime, Israel and Iran, to name a few. Bush was a puppet. Obama and Clinton seem like strong personalities that wouldn't be puppets. How much power does the US president have however? Do they tend to simply approve and sign what is handed to them? Why did Obama pick the advisors he picked? Were they handed to him?

Who's in charge; the financial elite, with it's ever-growing military and organized crime ownership or Barack Obama? The first group is tied to oil, arms and drug trades and money laundering. Is the president a weak individual or is Barack Obama another public face of the financial elite's drive to destroy that which we cherish and they find to be burdensome overhead; democracy, independence and the US Constitution, for example. I believe we should consider the former, that Obama's political speeches aren't total lies, that he is trying to make change, but that he's one man against a tidal wave of people who don't want change or to help the everyday American, but that every US president ends up being put in a bubble of limited information and disinformation and ultimately controlled by advisors, lobbyists and industry.

Josh Marshal writes:

What is so damaging about this isn't the money... The problem is what appears to be the president's mortifying impotence in the face of bankers and financiers who created the problem. The president speaks and acts for the federal government, which is to say, the American people, who have mobilized more than a trillion dollars and all powers of the state to repair the damage emerging out of the financial sector. And with all that, he's jacked up on a employment agreement between a company the government now owns and derivatives traders who sank the world economy and may quite likely be looking at criminal charges for their activities in the not too distant future?

How strong is the US President? Does he need to fire Geithner? David Lindoff thinks so:

He should promptly demand Geithner's and Summers' resignations, and should also fire the CEO of AIG, Edward Liddy (as 80% owner of AIG, the US has the power to do that anytime). It would also be a good idea at the same time to fire the CEOs of all the leading banks that are at this point surviving on government bailouts.

This would allow Obama to correct the fundamental mistake he made during the transition period following the November election in installing a bunch of Clinton-era economic advisors and Bush holdovers to be his economic team.

Was the bailout itself a scam?

Rober Scheer says:

It's an important glimpse into the cesspool that is Wallstree, but it’s a side show, you know, and I know it’s confusing—millions, billions, trillions. But the real scandal is—the money—AIG is basically a shell game at this point, and they’re passing the money through AIG to the big banks, the former stockbrokers and so forth. Goldman Sachs got the biggest amount, $12.5 billion. The head of AIG was on the board of directors and the head of the audit committee for Goldman Sachs for five years. The Treasury Secretary that put this deal together, Paulson, under Bush was the head, was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. The guy who administered the TARP fund was a vice president at Goldman Sachs. The Democrat who made all of this deregulation possible, Robert Rubin, when he was Secretary of Treasury, and then Lawrence Summers who followed him, Rubin had been the head of Goldman Sachs. And they pushed through the basic deregulation that allowed these banks to become too big to allow to fail.

So while I think it’s a terrific teaching moment to see how excessive the pay is for people who basically brought the world economy to its knees, which are these so-called executives, and I think there is a real phony in that they had to be given these bonuses for retention—Andrew Cuomo, in his letter to Barney Frank, pointed out that the eleven of the top people who got these bonuses have already left the firm, so that really doesn’t hold water. But I think the real scandal here is that we’re supposed to own 80 percent of AIG, and maybe the Fed and the Treasury are in on it, but basically it’s being used as a shell to pass on money to these banks, Goldman Sachs being the leading one, and that should be examined, because I think that is really a criminal waste of our money.

As readers know, organized crime and the Carlyle Group (uber war profiteering venture fund) has been buying up banks at discount rates. A few people related are getting in trouble:

The indictment charges that Morris and others corrupted billions of dollars worth of investments from which they reaped more than $30 million in undisclosed fees, gifts, and bribes. Over twenty investment deals were allegedly tainted by the defendants’ kickback schemes and fraudulent self-dealing, including the following:

...Five investments involving The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity funds, totaling approximately $730 million in capital commitments from the State pension fund. Morris and his partner obtained over $13 million in sham placement fees.

Many people tortured at Gitmo are innocent. Are we manufacturing future terrorists?

U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar

Obama on Leno:

One reader, BlankPhotog, posted this, showing again how we're experiencing more of a correction, than a depression or recession:

Americans lived in a "Made-off" and Ponzi bubble economy for a decade or even longer. Madoff is the mirror of the American economy and of its over-leveraged agents: a house of cards of leverage over leverage by households, financial firms and corporations that has now collapsed in a heap.

When you put zero down on your home, and you thus have no equity in your home, your leverage is literally infinite and you are playing a Ponzi game.

And the bank that lent you, with zero down, a NINJA (no income, no jobs and assets) liar loan that was interest-only for a while, with negative amortization and an initial teaser rate, was also playing a Ponzi game.

And private equity firms that did over a $1 trillion of leveraged buyouts (LBOs) in the last few years with a debt-to-earnings ratio of 10 or above were also Ponzi firms playing a Ponzi game.

A government that will issue trillions of dollars of new debt to pay for this severe recession and socialize private losses may risk becoming a Ponzi government if--in the medium term--it does not return to fiscal discipline and debt sustainability.

A country that has--for over 25 years--spent more than income and thus run an endless string of current account deficit--and has thus become the largest net foreign debtor in the world (with net foreign liabilities that are likely to be over $3 trillion by the end of this year)--is also a Ponzi country that may eventually default on its foreign debt if it does not, over time, tighten its belt and start running smaller current account deficits and actual trade surpluses.

Whenever you persistently consume more than your income year after year (a household with negative savings, a government with budget deficit, a firm or financial institution with persistent losses, a country with a current account deficit) you are playing a Ponzi game. In the jargon of formal economics, you are not satisfying your long-run inter-temporal budget constraint as you borrow to finance the interest rate on your previous debt, and are thus following an unsustainable debt dynamics that eventually leads to outright insolvency.

According to Hyman Minsky and economic theory, Ponzi agents (households, firms, banks) are those who need to borrow more to repay both principal and interest on their previous debt; i.e., Minsky's "Ponzi borrowers" cannot service either interest or principal payments on their debts. They are called "Ponzi borrowers" as they need persistently increasing prices of the assets they invested in to keep on refinancing their debt obligations.

By this standard, U.S. households whose debt relative to income went from 65% 15 years ago, to 100% in 2000, to 135% today were playing a Ponzi game.

And an economy where the total debt to GDP ratio (of households, financial firms and corporations) is now 350% is a Made-Off Ponzi economy. And now that home values have fallen 20% (and they will fall another 20% before they bottom out) and equity prices have fallen over 50% (and may fall further), using homes as an ATM to finance Ponzi consumption is not feasible any more. The party is over for households, banks and non-bank highly leveraged corporations.

The bursting of the housing bubble, the equity bubble, the hedge funds bubble and the private equity bubble showed that most of the "wealth" that supported the massive leverage and overspending of agents in the economy was a fake bubble-driven wealth. Now that these bubble have burst, it is clear that the emperor had no clothes, and that we are the naked emperor. A rising bubble tide was hiding the fact that most Americans and their banks were swimming naked; and the bursting of the bubble is the low tide that shows who was naked.

Madoff may now spend the rest of his life in prison. U.S. households, financial and non-financial firms, and government may spend the next generation in debtor's prison having to tighten their belts to pay for the losses inflicted by a decade or more of reckless leverage, over-consumption and risk-taking.

Americans, let us look at ourselves in the mirror: Madoff is us and Mr. Ponzi is us!

Your Job:

What are you thoughts on Barack Obama?

Change

Obama's Treasury Department pushed to allow the executive bonuses.

Homeland Security has internment camps for protesters.

Wayne Madsen was arrested:

"In the eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, I covered anti-war protests in Washington and never once did I face an arrest situation, although there were some close calls. My arrest-free journalism record was shattered last night in Alexandria, Virginia, while meeting a confidential source.

I hoped to report today on a significant link between “Sir” Allen Stanford’s collapsed Stanford Financial Group and a top Democratic Party lobbyist who is close to the Obama administration. I also hoped to report on the covert activities of Stanford’s operations in Venezuela and Panama."

Still no torture indictments from Obama admin

National Service now mandatory for young people

Why's the angry crowd following a politician?

Congress is OUTRAGED that AIG gave huge bonuses to the financial products division that helped cause this mess. OUTRAGED! One congress-person suggested the people involved commit suicide! The politicians are outraged because the public is outraged. The public must feel a bit better to know that at least the politicians are outraged and seem committed to addressing this outrage. The media is OUTRAGED too and they're making more on advertising because you're so OUTRAGED you're spending more time watching everyone be OUTRAGED!

But wait! In a closed door session, the Senate EXPLICITLY REMOVED the provision that would have stopped these bonuses from taking place.

The measure, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), was removed by negotiators in a late-night, close door meeting. In the negotiations, senators agreed to limit executive compensation but decided to forgo barring excessive bonuses -- in fact, they specifically exempted it.

But wait! That's millions. What about the BILLIONS? The bonuses are only a fraction of the total money robbed from taxpayers.

Here’s the problem with all the hoopla over the $135 million in AIG bonuses: This sum is only less than 0.1% – one thousandth – of the $183 BILLION that the U.S. Treasury gave to AIG as a "pass-through" to its counterparties. This sum, over a thousand times the magnitude of the bonuses on which public attention is conveniently being focused by Wall Street promoters, did not stay with AIG. For over six months, the public media and Congressmen have been trying to find out just where this money DID go. Bloomberg brought a lawsuit to find out. Only to be met with a wall of silence.

Until finally, on Sunday night, March 15, the government finally released the details. They were indeed highly embarrassing. The largest recipient turned out to be just what earlier financial reporters had said was rumored: Mr. Paulson’s own firm, Goldman Sachs, headed the list. It was owed $13 billion in counterparty claims. So here’s the picture that’s emerging. Last September, Treasury Secretary Paulson, from Goldman Sachs, drew up a terse 3-page memo outlining his bailout proposal. The plan specified that whatever he and other Treasury officials did (thus including his subordinates, also from Goldman Sachs), could not be challenged legally or undone, much less prosecuted. This condition enraged Congress, which rejected the bailout in its first incarnation.

Is our outrage being channeled and contained? Politicians love crises. It allows them to do their thing -- talk and allocate money. What new program with this crisis create? How about a "Financial Company Accountability Program" that in reality further decreases transparency, increases bank bailouts as well as bonuses for the most greedy and destructive.  Transparency and oversight have received some lip service recently, but that's it. The public hears a politician TALK about transparency and oversight, gets excited and moves on to new issues, right? Politicians talk and allocate money.

These financial crises are going to be used as an excuse for more programs, I'm sure. We should be eliminating the Federal Reserve but instead will we see a more globalized Federal Reserve-type banking mechanism instead?

Diebold Admits ALL Versions of Their Software Delete Ballots Without Notice

Your Job:

Keep yelling, but don't let the angry crowd be misled by politicians seeking to channel your anger into even more problems.

Bail outs and bonuses

AIG has received $170bn in taxpayer money since being saved from bankruptcy in September. They are now giving $165m mostly to the very business division that wrecked the company's finances.

Obama has asked his Treasury Secretary to block the bonuses.

"Under these circumstances, it's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay," Obama said. "How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?" He said he has asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole."

Rep. Frank: We Own AIG, So 'Maybe It's Time To Fire Some People'

The public is outraged. When the public is outraged politicians say things. Will they do anything? Whose side are they on? Keep screaming. Let's find out.

Henry Paulson was behind the threats of martial law and a new great depression prior to the passage of the bailout bill.

The Bush adminstration worked very hard in multiple ways to keep the War on Terror going. The Red Cross has a report on the administration's efforts to recruit anti-US terrorists and reduce the credibility of our own intelligence through absurd torture.

US interrogators attached detainees to collars like dogs and used their leashes to slam them against walls, forced them to stand for days wearing only diapers, and tied detainees necks with towels and threw them against plywood walls, according to accounts in a secret 2007 report issued by the Red Cross to be printed in a New York magazine and leaked on Monday.

Your Job:

Pick someone to call in government and tell them how you feel. Here are some free switchboard numbers:

1-800-828-0498

1-800-459-1887

1-800-614-2803

1-866-340-9281

1-866-338-1015

1-866-220-0044

1-877-851-6437

Suggestion Saturday

What do you suggest we do?

Can you get away with murder?

So far, yes.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s bombshell earlier this week that Vice President Dick Cheney controlled an “executive assassination ring” continues to reverberate throughout Washington, with Nixon aide John Dean going so far as to accuse the former VP of murder if the charges are true.



Your Job:
Don't be silent. Talk about this. Should Cheney or Bush be pursued for war crimes? On one hand, let's move on and not be burdened by the failures of a previous president however on the other hand, what precedent do we let be set if Cheney can be allowed to operate illegally and above the law?

Given that Obama's justice department is defending Rumsfeld, I doubt there will be any justice on this matter, unless of course you start talking.

Money does grow on trees....

Well, you might not have the ability to mass produce cash the way banks do, but you can save yourself some money in the long run and improve the earth and air around you in the short run.

Nationalize the fed: "The Banking system is the principal cause of social evil in the United States."

"Today, we seem to be dealing with another International Crime Syndicate."

The Shadow Financial System



Use your water for good.


Dave's Garden
CA:"What grows here?"
Las Pilitas Nursery

Your Job:
Plant something. Plants create cleaner air. Two redwoods offset your entire life's carbon production. Don't have space for two redwoods? How about something you can eat instead? You can grow many things indoors or on your roof. If you live on the west coast, the Sunset Western Garden book is a must have encyclopedia if information. When you're considering what to grow, try doing a search using Dave's Garden above, which can help you find out what grows best in your physical location and with the sun available and water you want to provide. For low-water or xeriscaping gardening on the west coast, check out: http://www.ebmud.com/conserving_&_recycling/plant_book/

The food you grow will also taste much better than that which is shipped to you from other parts of the world.

If you've been reading this blog or paying attention to the economy, you know that food is going to skyrocket in price over time. There are food shortages across the world. When banks dramatically increase the supply of cash in the world, as they have been, then the value of that cash goes down and the price of things like food, goes up.

Plant something! Happy Thursday.

Cheney ordered suicides

Defense intelligence was running an assasination ring that reported directly to Dick Cheney.

"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

Stories have been coming out about covert Pentagon assassination squads for the last several years. In 2003, Hersh himself reported on Task Force 121, which operated chiefly out of the Joint Special Operations Command. Others stories spoke of a proposed Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, which sought to draw out terrorists by having the US involved in creating terrorism.

Most people know that Vice President Dick Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton, which makes billions of dollars a year from oil and primarily defense-related construction contracts (and that war and chaos increase Halliburton's profits, which in turn increase the value of Cheney's stock options)...

Many people know that Cheney was a congressman from Wyoming. Some even know that he was one of the founders of the Project for a New American Century. Well-read people know that the Project for a New American Century, in turn, called for a new American empire well before 9/11, and lamented that, without a "catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor", transformation of America into an empire would be very slow.

But even well-informed people probably don't know that -- in the 70's -- Cheney was instrumental in generating fake intelligence exaggerating the Soviet threat in order to undermine coexistence between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which conveniently justified huge amounts of cold war spending. See also this article. This scheme foreshadowed Mr. Cheney's role in generating fake intelligence in Iraq by 30 years.

And did you know that Cheney has been perhaps the leading advocate for strengthening the powers of the White House to the point of monarchy for at least 20 years?

Have you heard that Cheney has been instrumental in creating and practicing Continuity of Gvernment measures for the last 20 years or so. These "COG" measures -- which were implemented on 9/11 -- could lead to the destruction of the Constitution, the virtual disbanding of Congress, and the loss of the American form of government.

Or that newly-released documents show that Cheney was involved in debates concerning illegal wiretaps 30 years ago?

Did you catch that the former director of the CIA accused Cheney of overseeing American torture policies ? Or that Colin Powell's former chief of staff stated that Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes for his role in facilitating torture?

And, according to to the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the massacre against Vietnamese civilians, Cheney is the main guy helping to fund groups which the U.S. claims are terrorists (see confirming articles here and here)

And guess who is the prime architect of efforts to bomb Iran? Yup, Mr. Cheney (see also this article).

To recap, Cheney's past includes:

• Oil

• Defense

• Faking intelligence and using scare tactics about enemies to justify a pre-planned military agenda

• Lobbying to give the president the powers of the king

• Calling for an American empire and lamenting the lack of a "new Pearl Harbor"

• Police state type wiretapping

• Selling war

• Promoting torture

• Funding Al-Qaeda

Did all of these aspects of Mr. Cheney's background converge in the Iraq debacle? Well, a top official at the State Department stated there was a secret "cabal" involving Cheney, and that Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the country's foreign policy.

Did they converge on 9/11?

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-dont-know-dick.html

Your Job:

Research and Educate. There are many reasons why people tend not to know what's really going on, including but not limited to, they:

- don't want to know

- don't have time to find out

- don't want to stand out or be ridiculed

- get their news from major corporate news sources, who don't report on everything or "drive home" the more important stories.

When information is less taboo to discuss, it's easier to for people to discuss it. Seymour Hersh has an excellent track record of reporting otherwise unreported information about the Pentagon and intelligence services. Over the years he has developed great sources inside the government. Maybe he's wrong this time. Maybe not. Is not an assassination squad run by the ex-vice president or anyone under US law something to be concerned about? There were a lot of mysterious deaths, all called suicides, during the Bush administration. Is it time we look back at them? Do folks even remember them?

Mr. Cheney, why do YOU hate America? Power & profit, no?

Happy Wednesday.

Who harms us? Who has power?

Who doesn't want American to succeed? Today, we consider if that list includes Republicans, Bailed-Out Banks and The Pentagon. 

Today's Republicans?

A former leader of the Christian Right has issued a truly scathing and blistering critique to the Republican Party, calling them "anti-American" and a "fifth column" in the country for their efforts to "sabotage" national economic recovery.

Calling Republicans "arsonists" who are trying to burn down the country, said Schaeffer...

"You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess," Schaeffer wrote. "Today, no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!"

Note: This is not a wholesale endorsement of democrats, by any means. To generalize, the republicans got us into this mess and are now trying to sabotage efforts to get us out, but many democrats did nothing to stop them for many years and in many ways, especially from a distance, especially with things related to foreign policy and an ever-expanding government, the parties can seem nearly identical.

Bailed-out Banks:

Taxpayer-bailed-out banks squandered billions, froze loans to US taxpayers and gave them to foreign companies.

Rather than using federal bailout money to reinvigorate lending to consumers, some banks that received funds from TARP have spent it on questionable items that have done little to improve the health of the country’s financial sector but have certainly helped out foreign economies such as Dubai and China.

For instance, Citigroup Inc, which received $50 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds, made an $8 billion December loan, not to an American entity, but to a Dubai public sector company, according to a newly released Monday memo by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), chairman of the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee.

The Pentagon: The Pentagon knowingly exposed troops to toxic chemicals while claiming they were safe.

Who has caused us more harm, Al Qaeda or Republicans? Al Qaeda or Banks? Al Qaeda or the worst side of the military industry?

Why do they all hate America?

The NSA has too much power in the US.

What about Saudi Arabia or Israel?

Jubilation was heard in Tel Aviv as Haaretz, the Israeli daily, boasted November 6th: "Obama kick-starts transition, picks Israeli Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff."

Best known for his fundraising prowess among wealthy Jewish Democrats, the naming of Emanuel as the first presidential appointment echoes Sarah Palin's famous one-liner, "I love Israel." That claim was voiced in her vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden who is featured on a YouTube video famously proclaiming, "I am a Zionist."

In sharp contrast to Obama's claim that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, Emanuel claims he would do it again today. As chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he directed party funds to pro-invasion candidates and recruited candidates to oppose anti-war Democrats.

Known in Washington as an outspoken pro-Israel hardliner, he joins Speaker Nancy Pelosi in bringing to the Middle East peace process a record of support for Tel Aviv's targeted assassinations of Palestinian political leaders. ("Pelosi supports Israel's attacks on Hamas group," San Francisco Chronicle, June 14, 2003).

Your Job:

Reduce the power of that which harms us. Discuss the power openly (without inducing hatred or violence). What gives people or organizations power? How do they keep it? How much turnover occurs from year to year with power -- with individuals? families? institutions? groups of people? What power do you have?

I apologize for the blog being down this past week -- a very good friend of mine died. Have a great Tuesday! :)