Original Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=61760§ionid=3510203
Gore Vidal, US novelist, historian and social critic says the Bush regime has killed all of the constitutional links that made the US a republic.
On early Friday morning Iran time, in an exclusive interview with Press TV, Vidal said that President Bush has rid the country of the Bill of Rights, habeas corpus and the entire legacy of the Magna Carta in the name of war on terror.
He also criticized the House of Representatives for not impeaching President Bush, over a wide array of subjects such as disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame's covert status. Vidal did however single out Rep. Dennis Kuchinich for drawing up articles of impeachment against the president.
Vidal, long strongly critical of the Bush administration, said the administration has both an an explicit and covert expansionist agenda.
In his writings he has made the assessment that for several years, the administration and its associates, many of whom are magnets in the oil and gas industry have had clear aims to control the oil of Central Asia which is to follow on the heels of gaining effective control of the oil of the Persian Gulf--a project that took a new twist with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991.
That event inadvertently served as the basis for the neo-conservative American Project for the 21st Century document and policy guideline that has been the hallmark of the Bush-Cheney years.
Regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks, Vidal has written the American intelligence community clearly warned it was coming but the event provided political cover and pretext for the plans that the administration already had in place for invading Iraq--plans that can be traced to the waning days of the first Bush family presidency.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Bush's top general quashed torture dissent
Original Link: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/30/richard_myers/
By Mark Benjamin
New evidence shows that despite warnings from across the military, former Gen. Richard Myers shut down legal scrutiny of brutal interrogation tactics.
The former Air Force general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, helped quash dissent from across the U.S. military as the Bush administration first set up a brutal interrogation regime for terrorism suspects, according to newly public documents and testimony from an ongoing Senate probe.
In late 2002, documents show, officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all complained that harsh interrogation tactics under consideration for use at the prison in Guantánamo Bay might be against the law. Those military officials called for further legal scrutiny of the tactics. The chief of the Army's international law division, for example, said in a memo that some of the tactics, such as stress positions and sensory deprivation, "cross the line of 'humane treatment'" and "may violate the torture statute."
Myers, however, agreed to scuttle a plan for further legal review of the tactics, in response to pressure from a top Pentagon attorney helping to set up the interrogation program for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The documents unearthed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, along with testimony from a recent hearing, shed new light on the role played by the man who was the nation's highest-ranking military officer and who acted, by law, as the top military advisor to President Bush. Until now, it was unclear how Myers handled those duties during the genesis of the military's harsh-interrogation program.
"He is rarely referenced as one of the usual suspects," noted Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School who is following the continuing Senate investigation. "He did play a much more central role" than previously known, Turley said. "The minute the military lawyers expressed concern, they were shut down."
The chain of events involving Myers began in late 2002. Rumsfeld was considering the approval of three categories of interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo. The list included some brutal tactics, including stress positions, exploitation of phobias, forced nudity, hooding, isolation, sensory deprivation, exposure to cold and waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
According to written correspondence that came to light during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17, various military leaders balked at the plans in a series of memos produced during the first week of November 2002. In addition to the criticisms raised by the Army, the Air Force leadership cited "serious concerns regarding the legality" of the list of proposed techniques. The Navy also called for further legal review, and the Marine Corps stated that the techniques "arguably violate federal law."
Because of these concerns, Myers' legal counsel, Rear Adm. Jane Dalton, began a fresh evaluation of the legality of the interrogation tactics. "My recollection is that all four of the [military services] suggested that there needed to be further legal and policy review," Dalton testified. The legal review, she told the committee, would have included further input from the military services and provided for a full airing of their concerns.
But such an analysis threatened to undermine Rumsfeld's agenda -- and that's when Myers stepped in. Dalton testified that Myers ordered her to stop that review because of a request from Pentagon general counsel William Haynes. Haynes was spearheading Rumsfeld's efforts to set up a harsh-interrogation program at the Pentagon. "The best of my recollection as to how this occurred is that the chairman called me aside and indicated to me that Mr. Haynes did not want this broad-based review to take place," Dalton testified. "When I learned that Mr. Haynes did not want that broad-based legal and policy review to take place, then I stood down from the plans."
Dalton said Myers was aware that the military services believed the interrogation techniques might be against the law. "It is my recollection that he was aware of these concerns and that I made him aware of those concerns," she said.
Rumsfeld signed off on almost all of the techniques on Dec. 2, 2002. At the time, the military's interrogation of the so-called 20th hijacker, Mohammed al-Khatani, had recently begun at Guantánamo -- an interrogation in which Rumsfeld was personally involved. Al-Khatani was stripped naked, isolated, given intravenous fluids and forced to urinate on himself, exercised to exhaustion, called a homosexual, forced to wear a mask and dance, leashed and made to perform dog tricks. His interrogations lasted 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 days.
Myers has never been forced to answer many questions about his role in the interrogation program. When a reporter gathering information for a May 2008 Vanity Fair article showed him a copy of the December 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld, Myers responded, "You don't see my initials on this."
In a telephone call, Salon provided Myers' office with a detailed description of this Salon article. He declined an interview request. A source close to Myers said he expects to be called in front of the Senate committee to answer questions about his role in the interrogation program.
In addition to Myers' role, the testimony and documents from the Senate investigation show that in 2002 Rumsfeld raced to start the interrogation program -- duplicating harsh tactics already being used by the CIA -- in part because of a bureaucratic turf war between the Pentagon and the intelligence agency. "You actually have agencies trying to outrun each other to create a torture program," Turley said, noting the odd nature of that battle. "It was like there was a debate over who would have jurisdiction over interstate highways."
As Bush's Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was known across Washington for jealously guarding and seeking to expand his control over U.S. national security policy and operations, particularly when it came to intelligence activities. He often duplicated CIA capabilities by setting up separate operations at the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld's decision to create an undersecretary of defense for military intelligence in late 2002, for example, was widely seen as a snub at the CIA. He reportedly sought to end the Pentagon's "near total dependence on the CIA," as he put it, by creating a new espionage arm, the Strategic Support Branch, specifically to bring some activities traditionally carried out by the CIA under his own control. Interrogations became a key part of that fight.
Richard Shiffren, a former deputy counsel in the Department of Defense, told the Senate committee that Rumsfeld was adamant about expanding the Defense Department's reach. "The secretary was very jealous of other agencies," Shiffren said, "specifically, with respect to DOD's inherent capabilities." He said that because of Rumsfeld's competitive spirit, when it came to interrogations, the defense secretary "ended up, sort of, building a capability that mirrored the CIA."
In March 2002, the CIA asked the Department of Justice about the legal limits for interrogating suspected al-Qaida member Abu Zubaydah, who had been captured by American and Pakistani agents on March 28, 2002. After that request, the Justice Department produced on Aug. 1, 2002, the infamous "Bybee memo," which defined torture as treatment "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." This was the start of the CIA's brutal interrogations at so-called black sites, or secret overseas prisons. Zubaydah's interrogation included waterboarding.
John Yoo, one of the Justice Department attorneys who helped draft that memo, told the House Judiciary Committee last Thursday that after the CIA had asked for a memo on the limits of interrogation, a similar request soon arrived from the Pentagon. Yoo said in written testimony that the Justice Department "gave substantially the same advice to both agencies." All the wheels were now in motion to implement the interrogation plan.
To develop the CIA interrogation program, the agency turned to two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, hired as contractors. The two were formerly involved with the military's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program, which trains U.S. soldiers to resist torture if they're captured, by exposing them to brutal treatment. The psychologists helped the agency to "reverse-engineer" the techniques -- originally meant to help protect U.S. soldiers from enemies who disregarded the Geneva Conventions -- for use in prisoner interrogations by the United States.
The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this month further elucidated Pentagon efforts to do the same thing. Top Pentagon attorneys were requesting information from the military's SERE school in July 2002. Officials there supplied information on a range of harsh tactics. In September 2002, military interrogators from Guantánamo Bay traveled to SERE school for training.
In the preface of a recent report on U.S. abuse of detainees by Physicians for Human Rights, retired Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, the man the Army enlisted to conduct an initial investigation into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, railed against the Bush administration. "The Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," Taguba wrote. "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
For a variety of complicated political and legal reasons, few in Washington think any high-level Bush administration officials will ever face a judge because of their actions. "It is not likely there are going to be prosecutions," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. But he hopes that one day there will be a fact-finding commission that will expose the full truth. "There is definitely a story that needs to be told," he said.
Richard Myers retired from service on Oct. 1, 2005. Bush awarded Myers with the Presidential Medal of Freedom the following month. Myers was elected to the boards of two major U.S. defense contractors, United Technologies and Northrop Grumman, in 2006.
By Mark Benjamin
New evidence shows that despite warnings from across the military, former Gen. Richard Myers shut down legal scrutiny of brutal interrogation tactics.
The former Air Force general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, helped quash dissent from across the U.S. military as the Bush administration first set up a brutal interrogation regime for terrorism suspects, according to newly public documents and testimony from an ongoing Senate probe.
In late 2002, documents show, officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all complained that harsh interrogation tactics under consideration for use at the prison in Guantánamo Bay might be against the law. Those military officials called for further legal scrutiny of the tactics. The chief of the Army's international law division, for example, said in a memo that some of the tactics, such as stress positions and sensory deprivation, "cross the line of 'humane treatment'" and "may violate the torture statute."
Myers, however, agreed to scuttle a plan for further legal review of the tactics, in response to pressure from a top Pentagon attorney helping to set up the interrogation program for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The documents unearthed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, along with testimony from a recent hearing, shed new light on the role played by the man who was the nation's highest-ranking military officer and who acted, by law, as the top military advisor to President Bush. Until now, it was unclear how Myers handled those duties during the genesis of the military's harsh-interrogation program.
"He is rarely referenced as one of the usual suspects," noted Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School who is following the continuing Senate investigation. "He did play a much more central role" than previously known, Turley said. "The minute the military lawyers expressed concern, they were shut down."
The chain of events involving Myers began in late 2002. Rumsfeld was considering the approval of three categories of interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo. The list included some brutal tactics, including stress positions, exploitation of phobias, forced nudity, hooding, isolation, sensory deprivation, exposure to cold and waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
According to written correspondence that came to light during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17, various military leaders balked at the plans in a series of memos produced during the first week of November 2002. In addition to the criticisms raised by the Army, the Air Force leadership cited "serious concerns regarding the legality" of the list of proposed techniques. The Navy also called for further legal review, and the Marine Corps stated that the techniques "arguably violate federal law."
Because of these concerns, Myers' legal counsel, Rear Adm. Jane Dalton, began a fresh evaluation of the legality of the interrogation tactics. "My recollection is that all four of the [military services] suggested that there needed to be further legal and policy review," Dalton testified. The legal review, she told the committee, would have included further input from the military services and provided for a full airing of their concerns.
But such an analysis threatened to undermine Rumsfeld's agenda -- and that's when Myers stepped in. Dalton testified that Myers ordered her to stop that review because of a request from Pentagon general counsel William Haynes. Haynes was spearheading Rumsfeld's efforts to set up a harsh-interrogation program at the Pentagon. "The best of my recollection as to how this occurred is that the chairman called me aside and indicated to me that Mr. Haynes did not want this broad-based review to take place," Dalton testified. "When I learned that Mr. Haynes did not want that broad-based legal and policy review to take place, then I stood down from the plans."
Dalton said Myers was aware that the military services believed the interrogation techniques might be against the law. "It is my recollection that he was aware of these concerns and that I made him aware of those concerns," she said.
Rumsfeld signed off on almost all of the techniques on Dec. 2, 2002. At the time, the military's interrogation of the so-called 20th hijacker, Mohammed al-Khatani, had recently begun at Guantánamo -- an interrogation in which Rumsfeld was personally involved. Al-Khatani was stripped naked, isolated, given intravenous fluids and forced to urinate on himself, exercised to exhaustion, called a homosexual, forced to wear a mask and dance, leashed and made to perform dog tricks. His interrogations lasted 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 days.
Myers has never been forced to answer many questions about his role in the interrogation program. When a reporter gathering information for a May 2008 Vanity Fair article showed him a copy of the December 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld, Myers responded, "You don't see my initials on this."
In a telephone call, Salon provided Myers' office with a detailed description of this Salon article. He declined an interview request. A source close to Myers said he expects to be called in front of the Senate committee to answer questions about his role in the interrogation program.
In addition to Myers' role, the testimony and documents from the Senate investigation show that in 2002 Rumsfeld raced to start the interrogation program -- duplicating harsh tactics already being used by the CIA -- in part because of a bureaucratic turf war between the Pentagon and the intelligence agency. "You actually have agencies trying to outrun each other to create a torture program," Turley said, noting the odd nature of that battle. "It was like there was a debate over who would have jurisdiction over interstate highways."
As Bush's Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was known across Washington for jealously guarding and seeking to expand his control over U.S. national security policy and operations, particularly when it came to intelligence activities. He often duplicated CIA capabilities by setting up separate operations at the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld's decision to create an undersecretary of defense for military intelligence in late 2002, for example, was widely seen as a snub at the CIA. He reportedly sought to end the Pentagon's "near total dependence on the CIA," as he put it, by creating a new espionage arm, the Strategic Support Branch, specifically to bring some activities traditionally carried out by the CIA under his own control. Interrogations became a key part of that fight.
Richard Shiffren, a former deputy counsel in the Department of Defense, told the Senate committee that Rumsfeld was adamant about expanding the Defense Department's reach. "The secretary was very jealous of other agencies," Shiffren said, "specifically, with respect to DOD's inherent capabilities." He said that because of Rumsfeld's competitive spirit, when it came to interrogations, the defense secretary "ended up, sort of, building a capability that mirrored the CIA."
In March 2002, the CIA asked the Department of Justice about the legal limits for interrogating suspected al-Qaida member Abu Zubaydah, who had been captured by American and Pakistani agents on March 28, 2002. After that request, the Justice Department produced on Aug. 1, 2002, the infamous "Bybee memo," which defined torture as treatment "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." This was the start of the CIA's brutal interrogations at so-called black sites, or secret overseas prisons. Zubaydah's interrogation included waterboarding.
John Yoo, one of the Justice Department attorneys who helped draft that memo, told the House Judiciary Committee last Thursday that after the CIA had asked for a memo on the limits of interrogation, a similar request soon arrived from the Pentagon. Yoo said in written testimony that the Justice Department "gave substantially the same advice to both agencies." All the wheels were now in motion to implement the interrogation plan.
To develop the CIA interrogation program, the agency turned to two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, hired as contractors. The two were formerly involved with the military's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program, which trains U.S. soldiers to resist torture if they're captured, by exposing them to brutal treatment. The psychologists helped the agency to "reverse-engineer" the techniques -- originally meant to help protect U.S. soldiers from enemies who disregarded the Geneva Conventions -- for use in prisoner interrogations by the United States.
The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this month further elucidated Pentagon efforts to do the same thing. Top Pentagon attorneys were requesting information from the military's SERE school in July 2002. Officials there supplied information on a range of harsh tactics. In September 2002, military interrogators from Guantánamo Bay traveled to SERE school for training.
In the preface of a recent report on U.S. abuse of detainees by Physicians for Human Rights, retired Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, the man the Army enlisted to conduct an initial investigation into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, railed against the Bush administration. "The Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," Taguba wrote. "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
For a variety of complicated political and legal reasons, few in Washington think any high-level Bush administration officials will ever face a judge because of their actions. "It is not likely there are going to be prosecutions," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. But he hopes that one day there will be a fact-finding commission that will expose the full truth. "There is definitely a story that needs to be told," he said.
Richard Myers retired from service on Oct. 1, 2005. Bush awarded Myers with the Presidential Medal of Freedom the following month. Myers was elected to the boards of two major U.S. defense contractors, United Technologies and Northrop Grumman, in 2006.
Dollar Destruction, My Wealth Inequality Manifesto
Original Link: http://seekingalpha.com/article/82848-dollar-destruction-my-wealth-inequality-manifesto
By Philip Davis
Is the Fed actively trying to destroy the dollar?
Well yes, of course they are. Americans had done something that was unforgivable to Republicans by the end of the Clinton administration - they had attained a decent standard of living. Median net worth had climbed from $57,800 under Reagan/Bush in 1992 to $78,400 in 2001, a 35% rise in the wealth in the middle of the middle class. People with zero or negative net worth were also at all-time lows with just 17.6% of the population in debt.
Although the wealth of the nation increased dramatically in the 90s, the percentage of wealth held by the top 1% of the the country FELL from 37.2% in 1992 to 33.4% in 2001 but the Bush tax cuts quickly reversed that and sent the top 1%’s wealth back to 34.3% by 2004. Where did most of that money come from? Well the top 4% DROPPED from 25.8% of the nation’s wealth to 24.6% of the nation’s wealth and that figure is brought UP by the top 1%.
It’s not just the theft of your tax dollars by the top 1% that hurts you in this economy. As I wrote in "The Dooh Nibor Economy" the unbridled spending of a very small percentage of people who effectively have infinite wealth drives up the price of good and services for everyone else, creating additional taxes that are paid by the other 99% in the form of higher commodity prices, housing prices etc. throughout the economy.
The bottom of the Forbes 400 richest Americans has $1.3Bn (Roger Wang) while the richest (Bill Gates) has $59Bn. As a group, those 400 people control over $2Tn in assets, earn $300Bn a year and pay $75Bn a year less taxes on that money now than they did in 2001 - just those 400 people out of the 3M in the top 1%. That’s $600Bn that our government had to borrow in order for them to get 15% richer last year, rather than the 11.25% richer they would have gotten under the old tax code.
Of course corporations are legal people too, and they have had their taxes slashed as well, yet our national debt is being financed by rich and poor alike as our "lock box" has been raided, social programs have been slashed, debts have piled on and the few dollars we have left have lost 40% of their value since the Supreme Court decided George Bush was our duly elected leader.
The policies pursued by the Fed are murdering the working class people of this country. Low rates are not being passed on to the homeowners or borrowers who need them as, suddenly, nobody who is not in the top 4% qualifies for a low-interest loan anymore, so the lending institutions (the definition of which has now been broadened to include the financial institutions who gamble in the commodity markets) who are given access to OUR money by the Fed at ultra-low rates, but use that money to speculate in the commodity markets.
Look at Goldman Sachs (GS). They have been given access to and have used the Fed discount window yet they have analysts telling you to buy oil and other commodities and stay away from the US auto industry, Boeing (BA), all the other banks, retail… etc. So, effectively, the Fed is giving them OUR money and they are sending it out of the country to OPEC by the tanker-full, causing American citizens to double their spending on fuel and other commodities and drawing money away from US industries like the US auto industry, Boeing, Banks and Retailers — Isn’t that just the greatest scam ever???
So this is my quarterly message to voters - GET MAD! It is not going to be enough to sit back in your chairs and complain to your TV that things need to change, because we are reaching a tipping point where we are losing control of this country and it is being stolen from right under our noses by people who wrap themselves in a flag and question your patriotism if you question their actions - this is NOT the America we were brought up to believe in!
For those of you who haven’t seen it, I urge you to view this video clip from "Network" in which Howard Beale urged voters of the Ford administration to get mad - the similarities to today’s situation are downright scary 30 years later…
By Philip Davis
Is the Fed actively trying to destroy the dollar?
Well yes, of course they are. Americans had done something that was unforgivable to Republicans by the end of the Clinton administration - they had attained a decent standard of living. Median net worth had climbed from $57,800 under Reagan/Bush in 1992 to $78,400 in 2001, a 35% rise in the wealth in the middle of the middle class. People with zero or negative net worth were also at all-time lows with just 17.6% of the population in debt.
Although the wealth of the nation increased dramatically in the 90s, the percentage of wealth held by the top 1% of the the country FELL from 37.2% in 1992 to 33.4% in 2001 but the Bush tax cuts quickly reversed that and sent the top 1%’s wealth back to 34.3% by 2004. Where did most of that money come from? Well the top 4% DROPPED from 25.8% of the nation’s wealth to 24.6% of the nation’s wealth and that figure is brought UP by the top 1%.
So the people who think they are rich but aren’t actually rich enough to be invited to Crawford on the weekend, the ones who give until it hurts at the Republican fundraisers, were the ones who got well and truly screwed by the Bush economy. The top 4% had gone from 22.8% of the nation’s wealth in 1992 to 25.8% in 2001 and then, just 3 years later, while the top 1/4 of their group became SUPER RICH, the rest lost over 5% of their assets. Read the report, it’s fun!
Another thing that’s striking about this report is the count of millionaire households, which lept from 3.4M in 1992 to 7.3M in 2001 (and we’re using 2001 because it’s AFTER the dotcom bubble broke). Three years later, in 2004, new wealth creation had clearly ground to a halt as only 600,000 new households achieved millionaire status with just 6,000 crossing the $10M line to join the top 4% (vs 297,000 under Clinton) and just 53,000 making it to the top 10% at the $5M mark in Bush’s first 3 years versus the 790,000 that had made it to the top 10% under Clinton.
Even sadder, just 574,000 out of 112M US households managed to break into the $1M net worth category vs. the 348,000 PER YEAR that attained the American dream during the Clinton administration. Why do I care so much? Well, the last time this much wealth was concentrated in the hands of the top 1% of the country was 1929 - you cannot line the pockets of 3M people at the expense of 300M other people without the system breaking down, we are now at that breaking point!
Another thing that’s striking about this report is the count of millionaire households, which lept from 3.4M in 1992 to 7.3M in 2001 (and we’re using 2001 because it’s AFTER the dotcom bubble broke). Three years later, in 2004, new wealth creation had clearly ground to a halt as only 600,000 new households achieved millionaire status with just 6,000 crossing the $10M line to join the top 4% (vs 297,000 under Clinton) and just 53,000 making it to the top 10% at the $5M mark in Bush’s first 3 years versus the 790,000 that had made it to the top 10% under Clinton.
Even sadder, just 574,000 out of 112M US households managed to break into the $1M net worth category vs. the 348,000 PER YEAR that attained the American dream during the Clinton administration. Why do I care so much? Well, the last time this much wealth was concentrated in the hands of the top 1% of the country was 1929 - you cannot line the pockets of 3M people at the expense of 300M other people without the system breaking down, we are now at that breaking point!
Over the past 7 years, the wealth of the top 1% of this country has grown from 33.4% to 39.7% primarily due to a massive transfer of money by taking on $5Tn of government debt in order to finance a 50% decrease in taxes paid by that group. THESE ARE THE TAX CUTS THAT YOUR "LEADERS" ARE ASKING YOU TO DEFEND!
That's right, those evil, greedy, self-centered, hypocritical bastards are asking you to make sure that our government continues to borrow money, debase the currency, destroy our nation’s infrastructure and throw millions of citizens into poverty - in order for 3M people to continue receiving over 1/2 of the "tax cuts."
That's right, those evil, greedy, self-centered, hypocritical bastards are asking you to make sure that our government continues to borrow money, debase the currency, destroy our nation’s infrastructure and throw millions of citizens into poverty - in order for 3M people to continue receiving over 1/2 of the "tax cuts."
It’s not just the theft of your tax dollars by the top 1% that hurts you in this economy. As I wrote in "The Dooh Nibor Economy" the unbridled spending of a very small percentage of people who effectively have infinite wealth drives up the price of good and services for everyone else, creating additional taxes that are paid by the other 99% in the form of higher commodity prices, housing prices etc. throughout the economy.
The bottom of the Forbes 400 richest Americans has $1.3Bn (Roger Wang) while the richest (Bill Gates) has $59Bn. As a group, those 400 people control over $2Tn in assets, earn $300Bn a year and pay $75Bn a year less taxes on that money now than they did in 2001 - just those 400 people out of the 3M in the top 1%. That’s $600Bn that our government had to borrow in order for them to get 15% richer last year, rather than the 11.25% richer they would have gotten under the old tax code.
Of course corporations are legal people too, and they have had their taxes slashed as well, yet our national debt is being financed by rich and poor alike as our "lock box" has been raided, social programs have been slashed, debts have piled on and the few dollars we have left have lost 40% of their value since the Supreme Court decided George Bush was our duly elected leader.
The policies pursued by the Fed are murdering the working class people of this country. Low rates are not being passed on to the homeowners or borrowers who need them as, suddenly, nobody who is not in the top 4% qualifies for a low-interest loan anymore, so the lending institutions (the definition of which has now been broadened to include the financial institutions who gamble in the commodity markets) who are given access to OUR money by the Fed at ultra-low rates, but use that money to speculate in the commodity markets.
Look at Goldman Sachs (GS). They have been given access to and have used the Fed discount window yet they have analysts telling you to buy oil and other commodities and stay away from the US auto industry, Boeing (BA), all the other banks, retail… etc. So, effectively, the Fed is giving them OUR money and they are sending it out of the country to OPEC by the tanker-full, causing American citizens to double their spending on fuel and other commodities and drawing money away from US industries like the US auto industry, Boeing, Banks and Retailers — Isn’t that just the greatest scam ever???
So this is my quarterly message to voters - GET MAD! It is not going to be enough to sit back in your chairs and complain to your TV that things need to change, because we are reaching a tipping point where we are losing control of this country and it is being stolen from right under our noses by people who wrap themselves in a flag and question your patriotism if you question their actions - this is NOT the America we were brought up to believe in!
For those of you who haven’t seen it, I urge you to view this video clip from "Network" in which Howard Beale urged voters of the Ford administration to get mad - the similarities to today’s situation are downright scary 30 years later…
Bush Declares US In ‘State Of Emergency” Over Iranian Nuclear Fears
Original Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1113.htm
By Sorcha Faal
Russian Military Analysts are reporting today that the United States President has declared that his Nation is now in a ‘State of Emergency’, both militarily and economically, by his signing of an Executive Order, and which we can read in part as reported by the White House News Service:
"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that the current existence and risk of the proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat."
These reports state that upon North Korea’s presenting to the United States the complete dossier on its nuclear weapons programme, and for which President Bush immediately dropped all sanctions and removed them from the American list of countries supporting terrorism, the US Intelligence Community ‘shuddered’ at the full implication of Iran’s involvement in the building of North Korean’s nuclear weapons.
Since the establishment of North Korea’s large-scale atomic energy research complex in Yongbyon in the 1960’s with the help of the Soviets, say these reports, the North Korean’s have amassed enough nuclear material in their arsenal for the making of over 200 atomic weapons in the 1-5 kiloton range.
However, since the conclusion of the Supply Agreement in December, 1995, North Korea utilized their relationship with Pakistan’s ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’ Abdul Qadeer (AQ) Khan to build a nuclear bomb which they exploded on October 9, 2006 to the ‘shock’ of the Western Powers.
Most ominously for the West, though, has been the North Koreans detailing in their reports that the financing of the nuclear research leading to their atomic bomb was conducted on behalf of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, a branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran's military.
Even worse for the Americans, continue these reports, was that Pakistan itself had been funneling billions of US supplied terror funds to assist the Iranians in their efforts to acquire atomic weapons, and which has set the American’s on a ‘collision course’ with the Pakistanis.
According to the United States Government Accountability Office, over $6 billion given to Pakistan by the US since their ‘war on terror’ was begun in 2001 has been ‘lost’.
Pakistan has also refused the demands of the US Congress to be given access to AQ Khan, and as we can read as reported by the Sify News Service: “Pakistan has rejected the demand of US lawmakers for direct access to nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, saying it alone can probe into allegations that he proliferated the country's nuclear secrets. "We have made it clear, at every level, that no outside authority can interview Dr Khan," a senior official of the foreign office told IANS.”
The ‘greatest fears’ of the Americans have now been realized, said one Top Russian General in these reports, due to Iran now being able to combine the nuclear bombs they now have with the cruise missiles they had previously acquired from Ukraine, and of which we can read as previously reported by the BBC News Service:
“Ukrainian arms dealers smuggled 18 nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in 1999-2001, Ukraine's prosecutor-general has said.
The Soviet-era Kh-55 missiles - also known as X-55s - have a maximum range of 2,500km (1,550 miles). They are launched by long-range bombers. Official Ukrainian state bodies were not involved in the sales, the prosecutor-general's office said.
It added that the missiles were not exported with nuclear warheads.”
But, to the most concerning element of the American President’s declaration of a State of Emergency lies in the extraordinary powers granted to him, and which include his ability to bypass the US Congress to launch immediate attacks upon Iran and any Nation that comes to their defense.
Even more ominously, for the American people, is that under this new State of Emergency, President Bush is able to suspend all civil liberties and institute martial law over his citizens, even to the extent of suspending the upcoming elections should he declare it to be in his Nations best interest.
It is no wonder that the United Nations has ‘warned’ that an attack upon Iran by the US and Israel will result in a ‘fireball’ being ignited in the Middle East, but to the truest reason behind the igniting of Total Global War by the West lies in the words of the Iranian President himself, and who has warned that the astounding rise in oil prices is a ‘game’ being played upon the citizens of the Western Nations as our World is currently ‘saturated’ in oil not being used, or shipped.
For the American people to fully understand the truest state of their World, and the catastrophic horrors to come, they only need follow the rise in the price they pay for fuel to see the destruction of their economy is being deliberately manipulated to coincide with shock of war upon their own Homeland.
To the World that will arise in the ashes of this planned destruction they are only now beginning to glimpse…but to little, and much to late for them to stop what is to come.
By Sorcha Faal
Russian Military Analysts are reporting today that the United States President has declared that his Nation is now in a ‘State of Emergency’, both militarily and economically, by his signing of an Executive Order, and which we can read in part as reported by the White House News Service:
"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that the current existence and risk of the proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat."
These reports state that upon North Korea’s presenting to the United States the complete dossier on its nuclear weapons programme, and for which President Bush immediately dropped all sanctions and removed them from the American list of countries supporting terrorism, the US Intelligence Community ‘shuddered’ at the full implication of Iran’s involvement in the building of North Korean’s nuclear weapons.
Since the establishment of North Korea’s large-scale atomic energy research complex in Yongbyon in the 1960’s with the help of the Soviets, say these reports, the North Korean’s have amassed enough nuclear material in their arsenal for the making of over 200 atomic weapons in the 1-5 kiloton range.
However, since the conclusion of the Supply Agreement in December, 1995, North Korea utilized their relationship with Pakistan’s ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’ Abdul Qadeer (AQ) Khan to build a nuclear bomb which they exploded on October 9, 2006 to the ‘shock’ of the Western Powers.
Most ominously for the West, though, has been the North Koreans detailing in their reports that the financing of the nuclear research leading to their atomic bomb was conducted on behalf of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, a branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran's military.
Even worse for the Americans, continue these reports, was that Pakistan itself had been funneling billions of US supplied terror funds to assist the Iranians in their efforts to acquire atomic weapons, and which has set the American’s on a ‘collision course’ with the Pakistanis.
According to the United States Government Accountability Office, over $6 billion given to Pakistan by the US since their ‘war on terror’ was begun in 2001 has been ‘lost’.
Pakistan has also refused the demands of the US Congress to be given access to AQ Khan, and as we can read as reported by the Sify News Service: “Pakistan has rejected the demand of US lawmakers for direct access to nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, saying it alone can probe into allegations that he proliferated the country's nuclear secrets. "We have made it clear, at every level, that no outside authority can interview Dr Khan," a senior official of the foreign office told IANS.”
The ‘greatest fears’ of the Americans have now been realized, said one Top Russian General in these reports, due to Iran now being able to combine the nuclear bombs they now have with the cruise missiles they had previously acquired from Ukraine, and of which we can read as previously reported by the BBC News Service:
“Ukrainian arms dealers smuggled 18 nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in 1999-2001, Ukraine's prosecutor-general has said.
The Soviet-era Kh-55 missiles - also known as X-55s - have a maximum range of 2,500km (1,550 miles). They are launched by long-range bombers. Official Ukrainian state bodies were not involved in the sales, the prosecutor-general's office said.
It added that the missiles were not exported with nuclear warheads.”
But, to the most concerning element of the American President’s declaration of a State of Emergency lies in the extraordinary powers granted to him, and which include his ability to bypass the US Congress to launch immediate attacks upon Iran and any Nation that comes to their defense.
Even more ominously, for the American people, is that under this new State of Emergency, President Bush is able to suspend all civil liberties and institute martial law over his citizens, even to the extent of suspending the upcoming elections should he declare it to be in his Nations best interest.
It is no wonder that the United Nations has ‘warned’ that an attack upon Iran by the US and Israel will result in a ‘fireball’ being ignited in the Middle East, but to the truest reason behind the igniting of Total Global War by the West lies in the words of the Iranian President himself, and who has warned that the astounding rise in oil prices is a ‘game’ being played upon the citizens of the Western Nations as our World is currently ‘saturated’ in oil not being used, or shipped.
For the American people to fully understand the truest state of their World, and the catastrophic horrors to come, they only need follow the rise in the price they pay for fuel to see the destruction of their economy is being deliberately manipulated to coincide with shock of war upon their own Homeland.
To the World that will arise in the ashes of this planned destruction they are only now beginning to glimpse…but to little, and much to late for them to stop what is to come.
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