By Shamus Cooke
01 July, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — There should be no doubts about the U.S.’ decisive role behind the now-crumbling military coup in Honduras. As commander and chief of the U.S. armed forces, the blame for this intervention lies solely on President Obama.
The White House, however, would like you to believe that they “attempted to convince the Honduran military not to intervene.”
Rubbish.
When it comes to the Honduran military, the U.S. government needn’t ask permission for anything. The decades long relationship between the two institutions is one of dependence — Honduras’ military has long been financed and trained by the U.S. The New York Times explains:
“The two nations have long had a close military relationship, with an American military task force stationed at a Honduran air base about 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa. The unit focuses on training Honduran military forces, counternarcotics operations, search and rescue, and disaster relief missions throughout Central America.” (June 28, 2009)
And from Latin American expert Eva Gollinger:
“The US Military Group in Honduras trains around 300 Honduran soldiers every year, provides more than $500,000 annually to the Honduran Armed Forces and additionally provides $1.4 million for a military education and exchange program for around 300 more Honduran soldiers every year.”
This year U.S. aide to Honduras was $43 million.
It is utterly unimaginable that the Honduran military would act against the wishes of the hemisphere’s military and economic superpower.
In fact, the chief military leader of the Honduran coup — Joint Chief of Staff Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez — lived and was trained at the notorious School of Americas (SOA), a U.S. military base that trains Latin American military officers to act in the best interests of United State’s corporations. It is no coincidence that another coup leader — Air Force head Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo — is also an SOA graduate.
When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya realized that Vasquez was acting against him, he was fired — the rest of the military chiefs resigned in protest; and the coup was on.
The highly conservative Honduran Supreme Court then gave the military the “legal” cover it needed to pursue the coup, a fact the U.S. media uses to justify the events.
The reason for the coup lies in President Zelaya’s recent foreign policy shift — away from the United States towards Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. This turn was the result of the United States largely ignoring Honduras, after a long lasting, villainous relationship had ended: the U.S. had, for years, funneled large amounts of cash and arms to the Honduran government to kill the regions political leftists, the high point being the regions turbulent 1980’s.
After Zelaya was elected in 2006 (he still has one year left in his term), he promised to shift Honduras’ politics toward helping the poorer layers. He realized that he could not achieve any of his promises with the scant amount of aide from the U.S. and looked instead to the Latin American trade association, ALBA. Zelaya explained:
“I have been looking for projects from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, Europe and I have received very moderate offers … that forces us to find other forms of financing like ALBA.” ( Reuters, April 26,2008 )
The U.S. government did not like this move, since it prefers U.S. banks to dominate the economies of Latin American countries. The New York Times confirms:
“…[Washington’s] relations with Mr. Zelaya…had recently turned colder because of the inclusion of Honduras in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, a leftist political alliance led by Venezuela.” (June 28, 2009)
Nearly all of the U.S. media’s writing about the Honduran coup is littered with negative references to Hugo Chavez, the “socialist project,” and other buzzwords meant to influence the reader toward acceptance of the coup.
For example:
“…[Zelaya] has the support of labor unions and the poor. But the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest.” (New York Times, June 28, 2009)
Obama himself does nothing to condemn the coup. Yes, he is “deeply concerned” about the events in Honduras, but his vague comments about “dialogue” and respecting “legal procedures” is full of loopholes — big enough for a coup to squeeze through.
If Obama immediately refused to recognize the newly installed coup government in Honduras, while threatening to withdraw U.S. military and financial aide — along with the U.S. ambassador — the coup would dissolve in seconds. Strong actions like these, however, were completely absent.
Eva Gollinger comments:
“I think a clear coup d’etat against a democratic government that also happens to be a major dependent on U.S. economic and political aid should provoke a more firm and concise statement by the US Government.”
Such a statement did come not only from the General Assembly of the United Nations, but from the formerly U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS). Both organizations are refusing to recognize the new coup government in Honduras and are demanding the return of Zelaya. This is a big blow to Washington, who in better times could rely on the OAS and U.N. to turn a blind eye to a U.S.-sponsored coup, such as the one in Haiti in 2004.
Now, however, the OAS has largely broken from the U.S. stranglehold, emboldened by the independent path taken by numerous Latin American countries, though especially Venezuela.
And this is the broader motive for the coup. The U.S. banks and other corporations that once dominated Latin America are being quickly pushed aside, so that governments may use their country’s wealth for social services and real economic development — not foreign for-profit plunder.
The U.S. coup attempt in Honduras is thus a sign of desperation. It was also a huge gamble. Obama had hoped that the U.N. and OAS would let this one slide. It was also hoped that the Honduran people would be intimidated by martial law and a communications blackout. Neither was the case.
Huge protests have defied the military-ordered curfew. Latin American countries have united in defiance of a tyrannical U.S. policy. It is reported that these happenings are causing splits in the Honduran military, while also a general strike was being prepared by the nation’s trade unions.
In consequence, the coup is likely to crumble, and Obama’s first attempt to re-tame Latin America will have failed. The actions of the U.N. and OAS are striking examples of the shrinking international influence of the U.S., meaning that future interventions — both military and economic — are likely to be more direct to restore U.S. hegemony. Obama’s more-subtle attempts to uphold U.S. “influence” in the world will ultimately require blunter, Bush-like tactics.
If the Honduran coup fails, Obama will eloquently discuss how pleased he is that “democracy was restored” — while refusing to admit that he tried to kill it.
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Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Luminous Compass has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Luminous Compass endorsed or sponsored by the originator.
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Insurance lizards slobbering poisonous saliva and feeding money to rotten prostitutes in Congress (except a noble few) dare debate with disgusting aplomb whether insurance-pig-snakes’ bank accounts are more important than the lives of thousands of men, women, and children dying every year for lack of healthcare.
Our Congress bordello of lunatics – made up mostly of fat Christianoids (aka: humanoids masquerading as Christians) with other cults fanatics (invoking different brands of divinities) – are at it again! Merry Christmas congressional bastards! Happy Hanukkah, torture aficionados! May the fleas of a thousand camels invade your armpits!
Here is a partial list of bribes paid to our representative whores and Senaturds.
SENATE
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) $150,999
Thomas R. Carper (D-Del) $125,000
Tom Coburn (R-Okla) $15,000
Michael D. Crapo (R-Idaho) $16,879
Judd Gregg (R-N.H) $575,000
Kay Hagan (D-N.C) $875,000
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) $60,000
Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) $15,000
Johnny Isakson (R-Ga) $467,002
John F. Kerry (D-Mass) $9.8 million
Jon Kyl (R-Ariz) $121,000
Jack Reed (D-R.I) $15,000
HOUSE
Dave Camp (R-Mich) $490,000
Eric Cantor (R-Va) $92,000
Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex) $265,000
Jim McDermott (D-Was) $41,961
Allyson Y Schwartz (D-Pa) $15,000
John Tanner** (D-Tex) $15,000
Mike Thompson** (D-Calif) $95,000
John Yarmuth (D-KY) $5 million (Stock held in brother’s HC company)
Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif) $180,000
John D. Dingell (D-Mich) $80,000
Jane Harman** (D-Calif) $7.7 million (owns stock in 30 HC companies)
Charlie Melancon** (D-La) $17,000
Fred Upton (R-Mich) $525,000
Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y) $30,000
Peter Welch (D-VT) $15,000
Edward Whitfield (R-KY) $80,000
(”Financial Disclosures,” LegiStorm, WaPo, 06/13/2009)
Their PACs also get huge campaign financial contributions from the industry.
America’s useless, poisonous, and vicious insurance gangsters are financing mobs of brainless but armed neo-brown-shirts to threaten citizens engaged in discussing why America – (not for long anymore) the richest country on earth – has millions of human souls without healthcare, without shelter, and without enough healthy food.
The rabid and greedy right wing cockroach mobsters scream in terror of socialist tyranny control of medicine, when for years the best kept medical programs have been government programs: Medicare and Medicaid. There is no hope for a fake democracy on the brink of catastrophe when it has 50% of its voters dumbed down and kept ignorant by the deliberate lowering of education to serve a capitalist regime armed with the lies of its corporate main sewer media bordellos.
Fidel Castro could not resist slamming the ridiculous corporate-owned government of fat capitalist America for abandoning its poor and dispossessed when Cuba, a country that has been blockaded for 50 years, has the best medicine in all the Americas and exports thousands of excellent doctors to countries in need.
Let’s see now if Obama has the cojones to at last deliver some of his famous “Change we can MAKE BELIEVE in” and if Americans have the guts to kick out the oppressors.
Wake up, land of the cowards and home of the slaves!
Below, for the benefit of sleeping beauties, an excerpt from Tolstoy, proving that our Planet of Assholes has not changed since his times.
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From: The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
It is easy to understand that the landowner prefers to believe that the existing order is inevitable and immutable, because this existing order secures him an income from his hundreds and thousands of acres, by means of which he can lead his habitual indolent and luxurious life.
It is easy to understand that the judge readily believes in the necessity of an order of things through which he receives a wage fifty times as great as the most industrious laborer can earn, and the same applies to all the higher officials. It is only under the existing regime that as governor, prosecutor, senator, members of the various councils, they can receive their several thousands of rubles a year, without which they and their families would at once sink into ruin, since if it were not for the position they occupy they would never by their own abilities, industry, or acquirements get a thousandth part of their salaries.
The minister, the Tzar, and all the higher authorities are in the same position. The only distinction is that the higher and the more exceptional their position, the more necessary it is for them to believe that the existing order is the only possible order of things.
For without it they would not only be unable to gain an equal position, but would be found to fall lower than all other people. A man who has of his own free will entered the police force at a wage of ten rubles, which he could easily earn in any other position, is hardly dependent on the preservation of the existing regime, and so he may not believe in its immutability. But a king or an emperor, who receives millions for his post, and knows that there are thousands of people round him who would like to dethrone him and take his place, who knows that he will never receive such a revenue or so much honor in any other position, who knows, in most cases through his more or less despotic rule, that if he were dethroned he would have to answer for all his abuse of power – he cannot but believe in the necessity and even sacredness of the existing order.
The higher and the more profitable a man’s position, the more unstable it becomes, and the more terrible and dangerous a fall from it for him, the more firmly the man believes in the existing order, and therefore with the more ease of conscience can such a man perpetrate cruel and wicked acts, as though they were not in his own interest, but for the maintenance of that order.
This is the case with all men in authority, who occupy positions more profitable than they could occupy except for the present regime, from the lowest police officer to the Tzar. All of them are more or less convinced that the existing order is immutable, because – the chief consideration – it is to their advantage. But the peasants, the soldiers, who are at the bottom of the social scale, who have no kind of advantage from the existing order, who are in the very lowest position of subjection and humiliation, what forces them to believe that the existing order in which they are in their humble and disadvantageous position is the order which ought to exist, and which they ought to support even at the cost of evil actions contrary to their conscience?
What forces these men to the false reasoning that the existing order is unchanging, and that therefore they ought to support it, when it is so obvious, on the contrary, that it is only unchanging because they themselves support it?
What forces these peasants, taken only yesterday from the plow and dressed in ugly and unseemly costumes with blue collars and gilt buttons, to go with guns and sabers and murder their famishing fathers and brothers?
They gain no kind of advantage and can be in no fear of losing the position they occupy, because it is worse than that from which they have been taken.
The persons in authority of the higher orders – land owners, merchants, judges, senators, governors, ministers, tzars, and officers – take part in such doings because the existing order is to their advantage. In other respects they are often good and kind-hearted men, and they are more able to take part in such doings because their share in them is limited to suggestions, decisions, and orders. These persons in authority never do themselves what they suggest, decide, or command to be done. For the most part they do not even see how all the atrocious deeds they have suggested and authorized are carried out. But the unfortunate men of the lower orders, who gain no kind of advantage from the existing regime, but, on the contrary, are treated with the utmost contempt, support it even by dragging people with their own hands from their families, handcuffing them, throwing them in prison, guarding them, shooting them.
Why do they do it? What forces them to believe that the existing order is unchanging and they must support it?
All violence rests, we know, on those who do the beating, the handcuffing, the imprisoning, and the killing with their own hands. If there were no soldiers or armed policemen, ready to kill or outrage anyone as they are ordered, not one of those people who sign sentences of death, imprisonment, or galley-slavery for life would make up his mind to hang, imprison, or torture a thousandth part of those whom, quietly sitting in his study, he now orders to be tortured in all kinds of ways, simply because he does not see it nor do it himself, but only gets it done at a distance by these servile tools.
All the acts of injustice and cruelty which are committed in the ordinary course of daily life have only become habitual because there are these men always ready to carry out such acts of injustice and cruelty. If it were not for them, far from anyone using violence against the immense masses who are now ill-treated, those who now command their punishment would not venture to sentence them, would not even dare to dream of the sentences they decree with such easy confidence at present.
And if it were not for these men, ready to kill or torture anyone at their commander’s will, no one would dare to claim, as all the idle landowners claim with such assurance, that a piece of land, surrounded by peasants, who are in wretchedness from want of land, is the property of a man who does not cultivate it, or that stores of corn taken by swindling from the peasants ought to remain untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger because the merchants must make their profit. If it were not for these servile instruments at the disposal of the authorities, it could never have entered the head of the landowner to rob the peasants of the forest they had tended, nor of the officials to think they are entitled to their salaries, taken from the famishing people, the price of their oppression; least of all could anyone dream of killing or exiling men for exposing falsehood and telling the truth.
All this can only be done because the authorities are confidently assured that they have always these servile tools at hand, ready to carry all their demands into effect by means of torture and murder.
All the deeds of violence of tyrants from Napoleon to the lowest commander of a company who fires upon a crowd, can only be explained by the intoxicating effect of their absolute power over these slaves. All force, therefore, rests on these men, who carry out the deeds of violence with their own hands, the men who serve in the police or the army, especially the army, for the police only venture to do their work because the army is at their back.
What, then, has brought these masses of honest men, on whom the whole thing depends, who gain nothing by it, and who have to do these atrocious deeds with their own hands, what has brought them to accept the amazing delusion that the existing order, unprofitable, ruinous, and fatal as it is for them, is the order which ought to exist?
Who has led them into this amazing delusion?
They can never have persuaded themselves that they ought to do what is against their conscience, and also the source of misery and ruin for themselves, and all their class, who make up nine-tenths of the population.
“How can you kill people, when it is written in God’s commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill’?” I have often inquired of different soldiers. And I always drove them to embarrassment and confusion by reminding them of what they did not want to think about.
They knew they were bound by the law of God, “Thou shalt not kill,” and knew too that they were bound by their duty as soldiers, but had never reflected on the contradiction between these duties.
The drift of the timid answers I received to this question was always approximately this: that killing in war and executing criminals by command of the government are not included in the general prohibition of murder. But when I said this distinction was not made in the law of God, and reminded them of the Christian duty of fraternity, forgiveness of injuries, and love, which could not be reconciled with murder, the peasants usually agreed, but in their turn began to ask me questions. “How does it happen,” they inquired, “that the government [which according to their ideas cannot do wrong] sends the army to war and orders criminals to be executed.” When I answered that the government does wrong in giving such orders, the peasants fell into still greater confusion, and either broke off the conversation or else got angry with me.
“They must have found a law for it. The archbishops know as much about it as we do, I should hope,” a Russian soldier once observed to me. And in saying his the soldier obviously set his mind at rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or conundrum on my part.
Everyone in our Christian society knows, either by tradition or by revelation or by the voice of conscience, that murder is one of the most fearful crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel tells us, and that the sin of murder cannot be limited to certain persons, that is, murder cannot be a sin for some and not a sin for others.
Everyone knows that if murder is a sin, it is always a sin, whoever are the victims murdered, just like the sin of adultery, theft, or any other. At the same time from their childhood up men see that murder is not only permitted, but even sanctioned by the blessing of those whom they are accustomed to regard as their divinely appointed spiritual guides, and see their secular leaders with calm assurance organizing murder, proud to wear murderous arms, and demanding of others in the name of the laws of the country, and even of God, that they should take part in murder. Men see that there is some inconsistency here, but not being able to analyze it, involuntarily assume that this apparent inconsistency is only the result of their ignorance. The very grossness and obviousness of the inconsistency confirms them in this conviction.
They cannot imagine that the leaders of civilization, the educated classes, could so confidently preach two such opposed principles as the law of Christ and murder.
A simple uncorrupted youth cannot imagine that those who stand so high in his opinion, whom he regards as holy or learned men, could for any object whatever mislead him so shamefully. But this is just what has always been and always is done to him.
It is done (1) by instilling, by example and direct instruction, from childhood up, into the working people, who have not time to study moral and religious questions for themselves, the idea that torture and murder are compatible with Christianity, and that for certain objects of state, torture and murder are not only admissible, but ought to be employed; and (2) by instilling into certain of the people, who have either voluntarily enlisted or been taken by compulsion into the army, the idea that the perpetration of murder and torture with their own hands is a sacred duty, and even a glorious exploit, worthy of praise and reward.
The general delusion is diffused among all people by means of the catechisms or books, which nowadays replace them, in use for the compulsory education of children. In them it is stated that violence, that is, imprisonment and execution, as well as murder in civil or foreign war in the defense and maintenance of the existing state organization (whatever that may be, absolute or limited monarchy, convention, consulate, empire of this or that Napoleon or Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, commune or republic) is absolutely lawful and not opposed to morality and Christianity.
This is stated in all catechisms or books used in schools. And men are so thoroughly persuaded of it that they grow up, live and die in that conviction without once entertaining a doubt about it.
This is one form of deception, the general deception instilled into everyone, but there is another special deception practiced upon the soldiers or police who are picked out by one means or another to do the torturing and murdering necessary to defend and maintain the existing regime.
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most tragic and long-lasting conflicts and a major source of world’s instability. Knowing the facts may save us all from catastrophe.
The U.S. government is directly involved in this conflict. The American People are increasingly imperiled by its actions and corporate media’s misinformation sponsored by special interests.
Here at last are the facts in a powerful, irrefutable documentary further supported by extensive data and research assembled for easy access: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
Change we can believe in?
Yes, we can!
Look forward!
Not behind?
Forget war crimes!
Look forward!
There will be new crimes aplenty?
Yes, we can!
A truckload of women and children’s …
Assorted body parts! They are the empire’s
Mother’s Day gift to Afghanistan.
WWI mothers started Mother’s Day
To tell the world:
“Let no son be forced to kill another mother’s son, ever again!”
Yes, we can!
Look forward!
Not backwards?
Can’t you see?
Change we can believe in?
New war criminals forgiving old criminals?
More prisons and slave camps for the poor!
Forgive killers who sent sons to die?
Die for what? For oil, you fools!
Don’t look backward.
Look forward!
There is fresh blood on the streets.
Can’t you see change we can believe in?
Forget Wounded Knee.
Forget Mi Lai.
Forget old blood on forgotten streets.
Look forward!
Yes, we can!
Immunized criminals are ready again
to offer torture and murder expertise
We are a country under law?
We have kangaroo tribunals spitting on obsolete treaties.
God Bless America!
Land of compassion.
One lunatic, deaf, and blind nation under what God?
The old, jealous lord of hosts?
Change we can believe in?
Yes, we can!
Give us a break!
All lunatics can.
Not a single White House press core baboon
raised a grunt of protest
at the Mother’s Day’s dinner
Obama hosted with empty jokes.
Change we can believe in?
Economics – a science?! That’s pure BS. Economics is not a science. It is a fast game played with fake money by crime-clowns to screw people. And if people don’t like losing all the time and dare raise hell? Then the crime-clowns shoot people like fish in a barrel with real guns and laugh at how dumb the godless-communist-terrorists are. The torture-lover Cheney would like to say, “SO???! Just shut up if you know what’s good for you!”
Private banking is a fast clown sport based on rules written by crime-clowns and these rules were elevated to the bullshit dignity of a science by phony greed and torture aficionados like Milton Friedman and Henry Kissinger, two close friends of nasty General Augusto Pinochet, the bloody butcher of Chile.
Fundamentals
The fundamental principle of Clown-Economics is this: Those who make the rules are the rulers. Freedom, justice, democracy, the Constitution are carrots for jackasses who will never wake up until it’s too late. The crime-clowns will bury them, claiming that enemies of freedom did it.
The crime-clown rulers of the world have been called all kinds of names: conservatives, liberals, republicans, elites, aristocrats, neo-fascists, neo-nazis. And all of them, as long as they hold the guns, the money, and the bully pulpit, deem themselves better than others because they spray their shit with expensive deodorant and wear shiny silk clothes and expensive watches.
Crime-clowns who claim their shit doesn’t stink also claim to own the world by the will of God; the proof is in the fact that they own it. They will win every argument because they own the military, banks, media, money machines, and most of the schools. They will claim to be entitled to exploit ignorant, hard-working people as long as they fail to lift themselves by the bootstraps, even if the poor never had any boots to pull straps from.
Crime-clowns – how they operate
The crime-clowns play doctor with us, make us sick by polluting everything we breathe, drink, or eat. They’ll keep us under their stinking ether of religious bull dung and political nonsense to sell us their filtered holy toilet water and provide the world with Indian treaty toilet paper guaranteed to clean stupid asses of every dime they have left so that, when Armageddon comes, the poor will be raptured into heaven by Jeez-ass, even if the screwed are chewing-wine drinking-Pope following-pizza-happy gluttons or carpet-kissing-camel-riding-oil-smeared ragheads, or proper-stiff-double-talking-Anglo-American-racist banksters, and yes! zion-freaks, also, if they accept dirty, blood-soaked money as the ultimate revelation of the Lord of Hosts, and boy! do they ever !
The ruthless crime-clowns
The supreme crime-clown oligarchy is sinking the world and intends to keep it all for themselves, no matter how many children starve or how many they need to kill. They shrink and grow pale when someone reminds them of the guillotine, that efficient, old-fashioned, civilizing instrument of liberty used by the French to cut fat pigs down to size and establish egalite’, fraternite’ and liberte’ … until the hogs came back and imperialism triumphed.
But slicing swine into dog sausages is beyond imagination today, as long as the crime-clowns keep the sheeple under TV sedatives, ball games, and other deliberate distractions, including toxic fast food that keeps them as stupid and weak (but obedient).
The banking system is one global crime-clowns, creating dog and pony derivative shows and printing monopoly money with rigged electronic software in a virtual world of ugly illusions and manipulated by diabolical programmers to help the crime-clowns steal the work product of millions of men, women, and children all over the world. Remember the super-rich crime-clowns are above the law. They can bomb, murder, torture, destroy democracy, and still get get-out-of-jail-free cards along with bonuses for being great thieves.
Fortunately clown capitalism is about to die. If we learn from all this how to love life and the earth, the gods may smile on us and give us another chance.
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This letter demanding justice on the question of crime and punishment was submitted to the President on the whitehouse.gov website.
Dear President Obama:
Are we are a nation of laws or a haven for criminals?
I respectfully contend that your rationale on the issue of Crime and Punishment is unrealistic.
You said:
This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.
The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.
To restore faith in our Constitution, respect for the law, and to revive trust in civilized justice, “We The People” demand prosecution of all crimes committed against our citizens, our democracy, and against humanity.
This nation keeps many petty criminals in prison and holds a number of desperate innocents prisoners. This nation has permitted profiteering by privatized correctional corporations that provide slave labor for businesses and delay releasing many to fatten their bottom line.
Can the United States afford not to look back and learn from mistakes? Can any legitimately elected President trash the law and condone unspeakable crimes committed by the lowest and most ferocious among us just because they now offer the same excuse Nazi criminals at Nuremberg pleaded: “We were obeying the Führer’s orders.”
Should survivors of torture camps in Germany have forgiven Hitler to avoid “laying blame for the past.” That would make as much sense as condoning the crimes of the illicit Bush regime that destroyed the prosperity and security of our nation and laughed all the way to the banks, which U.S. citizens are now again being robbed to bail out instead of seeing them nationalized and all the thieves prosecuted.
Here is one of among hundreds of astonishing injustices. One criminal rewarded for his horrors is Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller (picture at right), Guantanamo’s prison commander in November 2002, whose approach to dehumanizing prisoners and making every shred of comfort in their lives dependent on his perceived cooperation with interrogators impressed Donald Rumsfeld (another criminal) to such an extent that, in the fall of 2003, he sent Miller to Iraq to “Gitmo-ize” the prison system there, leading directly to the implementation of the sadistic regime that was exposed when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004.
Mr. President, if you truly intend to obey and enforce the Constitution and laws of the United States faithfully as you swore to do, then dispense embracing the Devil in hope of bipartisanship. Milk of kindness and sewage should never be mixed. Mr. President, show that serious violations of human and civil rights shall never be condoned in our civilized nation. The Geneva Convention and laws of the United States need to be enforced if the people are ever again to trust their government. Anything less turns our country into a ridiculous, immoral empire and will be the direct cause of our approaching collapse.
Sincerely,
Aldo Vidali
“Who Should Resist, and Who Will Become Serfs?” This article by Chris Hedges (4/7/09) is an absolute must-read. All who study it should either be galvanized into action or be prepared to kiss their money and asses goodbye.
“America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.”
We do indeed have a cargo cult democracy now. At regular intervals we check boxes, flip levers, or poke buttons to choose among preselected candidates and so give an illusion of choosing our government. But policy making has long since been outsourced to privately funded and directed to think tanks and corporate interest groups.
Wake up!
Before anything changes people have to understand that despite what they’ve been told, they have no share in civic power. If they can’t stomach this fact, they have to start taking their duty as citizens seriously. They must inform themselves about issues, candidates, the uses and structure of power, and do it everyday. Democracy is much, much more than just donating to a party and hooting for/against branded candidates once every two or four years.
Most of all, shut off the god damned TV. Stonewall American Idol. Boycott professional sports. In the old days, the Romans used bread and circuses to keep the yokels pacified. Today it’s beer and B-ball. The flip side of e pluribus unum is divide and conquer, which is exactly what trivial pursuits and diversions do.
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Let us be clear: the capitalist system is at an end. A call for Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman to take courage by outlining specific moves the government must make to stave off the looming threat of tyranny by power-holding lunatics.
Commenting on the Geithner plan in his March 21, 2009 NYT article, In Despair over financial policy, Paul Krugman wrote: “The zombie ideas have won,” and “[f]or the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose.”
Obama under sword of a scared ruling class
While Krugman is quite clear, it would be opportune for him to expose the fact that it is not important if Obama seems unaware that the greed system doesn’t work because Obama is under the sword of a scared ruling class that desperately seeks to save its privileges, no matter how many kids have to die for lack of food, shelter, and healthcare. When JFK told the truth about their conspiracies, they killed him.
Obama’s precarious position
Obama knows that he would end up like JFK and Martin Luther King were he to admit that capitalism is a savage system run by an unconscious and brutally selfish minority. After all, Obama is surrounded by the types of hypocrites that have ruled the world since time immemorial, no matter by what names they are called, i.e., Conservatives, Republicans, Pharisees, Fascists, Nazis, Falangists, Neo-cons, Stalinists, Imperialists, Colonialists, Zionists.
If Obama were to reveal that the only way to save our country is to nationalize all major industries and services and to govern the people’s commonwealth by common consent under a pluralist, participative democracy, he would be killed.
The good unspoken news: capitalism is dead
What comes next will be a new and better world, unless the power-holding lunatics pull another 9/11 to set the stage for their dream of restoring absolute medieval tyranny as they set up again and again in many unfortunate parts of the world, like the Philippines, Cuba, Chile, Haiti, Columbia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, American Samoa. In final destructive desperation to retain wealth and power, the vicious oligarchs may soon try to force citizens back into slavery to “protect us from terror.” So be prepared: these monsters are torture aficionados and believe they are superior by the will of an invented lunatic god who made them in his own insane image.
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Dramatic moves by the people’s government are necessary to prevent our Ship of State from sinking. But the people have lost their government and these moves won’t happen. As citizens, we need to give up the false illusions under which we live. A view from the Crow’s Nest.
Pirates still in control
The U.S. ship’s command deck is threatened by a mutinous crew of old capitalist pirates still free to roam about. They are the same rotten gang that stole the People’s wealth and sunk the world into poverty. These bastards are driven by lust for absolute power over us all. The Ship of State is now still in their financial hands. They own it. We, the dispossessed, are navigating in a stormy sea on uncharted waters in the fog of political ignorance, reading false charts created daily by the hegemony of fake news, false values, and weird doctrines. President Obama, smart as he is, has placed too much control in the hands of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is steering the U.S.’s financial rudder on a perilous course in a desperate attempt to save obsolete capitalism by bailing what is irremediably sinking in a storm of financial troubles that threatens all the people on earth with shipwreck and drowning in a bottomless ocean of debt. Clearly, this is the end of the lunatic empire and, we hope, the painful birth contractions of a new truly human civilization.
Half measures not enough
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is right when he says that the administration needs to stop “taking half-measures and should tackle the recession head-on.” This is, of course, no “recession” by any stretch of the imagination. It is more than a “depression.” It is much larger and deeper than any economic fall in human history. The President, says Krugman, must prepare public opinion for really bold policies that the President keeps on promising and really act on those. Krugman’s opinion is realistic. We must receive specific and timely orders from the Captain when a ship is sinking.
Ridding ourselves of ridiculous illusions
What are these bold actions Obama must order to save our Ship of State and the future of humanity? First, help the American people to cast aside and let go of the ridiculous illusions fostered by capitalist lies that greed is good and opportunity is equally open to all in the land of the free and the home of the brave. That has never been true and is evermore untrue.
Second, the President must help the People see that the “American Dream” has turned into a nightmare from which we must awake fast if we are ever to save that lost dream and make it a reality.
From the Crow’s Nest, the course ahead is clear and what happened on our course behind us is even clearer in hindsight, as expected. We are sinking. No matter how fast we bail out this old capitalist slave ship (which has been masquerading as a carnival luxury cruise), it is full of holes and the water is coming in faster than we can bail it out. What we must do to save our asses is. First, the People must realize that we have all been robbed of our commonwealth and our constitutional rights; we have all been raped and deceived by a satanic system of human exploitation run by inhuman monsters that claim to own the entire planet.
Collapse of capitalism
The capitalist system is collapsing and it must die if the planet is to survive, but the evil thieves want to prop up their system of legalized robbery and murder any opposition. They want just enough terror to save their own privileges and their fat behinds. So, Secretary Geithner, one of the privileged money boys, is trying to save the private Robber Bankers with the People’s money. These useless con men deserve to walk the plank after being keelhauled. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Taylor in 1816, wrote, “And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.” To save our nation, all banks must be nationalized. The Federal Reserve fraud must be unmasked for the instrument of oppression it is. It must be permanently removed. All utilities must be nationalized.
Obama won the election for the People, not for the bankers or the speculators who rob us (the working men and women( blind every day of our lives without producing anything of value. The People now have bought and own the banks and the People know how to run them and should run them. Unless we nationalize and regulate all major industries and take back all that the robber bankers and CEOs have stolen from us, our country may soon collapse in chaos. The Federal Reserve’s printing of worthless cash is not going to prevent the colossal fall that will take down with us the rest of the global economy and expose all humanity to the most destructive consequences in the history of the world.
A clear view from the Crow’s Nest
So, this is the clear view from the Crow’s Nest. This is a warning call for all hands on deck. We are about to sail through very dangerous reefs and shoals. We must put the rootless rascals, still unpunished, free among us, and who brought us to this pass, in irons or they will soon try to take the ship back by deceit or force, just as the German right wingers did under the Nazi brown shirt movement after first destroying their own country. The U.S. neo-fascists have already set up private armies like the Blackwater goons waiting to act with the excuse of terror they will arrange for as they did on 9/11. They have the money to pay killers to do their bidding and keep silent. (See the Kennedy video on this page and you’ll understand what is meant here.)
We must help Obama by protecting his back. We must help him feel strong, even if the super-rich treasonous privateers surround him, ready to cut his throat. We must help Obama stand strong and save our democracy from the threat of the neo-cons’ fascist reactionary violence. Their real domestic terrorism is hiding behind their fake patriotic verbiage. And remember: they are torture aficionados!
We still hope that Obama will bring real change. However, right now we’ve got the same slick mob of capitalists running our economic and military ship from behind the curtains of capitalist propaganda and we still hear that, despite how discredited they are and how indifferent they are to the plight of the people’s rising homelessness and lack of healthcare, profits and tax cuts are their highest priorities. When the People’s patience runs out, then all hell will break loose and the most vicious form of fascism will react with terror and mass killings. The time to ask for nationalization of the assets We the People paid for and own is NOW. We the People, if we had honest elections, would own the government, not the CEO’s of fat-ass corporations.
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