darethefuture.com

Mossad Comes to America: Death Squads by Invitation

04 Mar, 2010 James Petras

AMERICA IS BEING MADE TO WALK ON TIGHT ROPE The principle propaganda mouthpiece of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO), the Daily Alert (DA), has come out in full support for Israel’s practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassination. In the face of world-wide governmental condemnation (except from the Zionist-occupied White House and US Congress), the PMAJO slavishly backs any brutal murder committed by the Israeli secret police anywhere in the world and at anytime.  The recent assassination of Hamas leader, Mahmoud Mabhouh, in Dubai is a case in point.   The PMAJO has defended all of Mossad’s criminal actions leading up to the murder, including extensive identity theft and the stealing or falsification of passports and official documents from several European countries, presumably allied to the Zionist state.  Among the Mossad agents who entered Dubai to kill Mabhouh, twelve agents used stolen or forged British passports, three Australian, three French, one German and six Irish.  These agents assumed the identity of European citizens in order to commit murder in a sovereign nation. Once again the PMAJO demonstrate that its first loyalty is to the Israeli secret police, even when they violate the sovereignty of major US allies.  No doubt the PMAJO would readily support the Israeli Mossad, even if it were shown to have used U.S. documents to assassinate Mabhouh.  In fact, two of the 26 Israeli assassins, carrying fake Irish and fake British passports, are known to have entered the United States after the killing and may still be here. The position adopted by the Daily Alert and the PMAJO in defense of Israel’s international terrorist act followed several lines of attack, which will be discussed below. These include: (1) blaming the victim, (2) claiming that extra-judicial, extra territorial murders are legal, (3) minimizing the murder of ‘one’ individual, (4) deflecting attention from the Zionists by blaming ‘other Arab’s, (5) favorably comparing Mossad assassinations to US killings in Afghanistan, (6) trivializing and relativizing world  condemnation, (7) citing “self-defense”, (8) praising the high tech ‘operational details’ of the assassination and (9) discrediting the Dubai police investigators rather than the Israeli perpetrators. Abridged articles, cited in the Daily Alert, have appeared in the op-ed pages of several US, UK, Canadian and Israeli newspapers, as well as in rightwing magazines like Forbes and Commentary.  The mainline Zionist propaganda technique is to avoid any discussion of Israel’s egregious crimes against sovereignty, due process, international law and the personal security of individuals.  In doing so, the Daily Alert adopts the propaganda techniques common to all totalitarian regimes practicing state terrorism. (1) Blaming the Victim On February 22, the Daily Alert (DA) headlined two articles, which were entitled: “Killed Hamas Official betrayed by Associates says Dubai Police Chief” and “Hamas:  Assassinated Operative put Himself at Risk”.  The DA forgot to mention that Israeli secret police had been tracking their prey for over a month (having failed to assassinate him on six previous attempts) and that the Dubai Police Chief was not blaming Hamas officials but was in the process of accumulating evidence, witness statements, videos and documents proving the Israeli identities of the assassins.  Needless to say, if we were to accept the American Zionists’ argument that any leading opponent of Israel, who travels without an army of bodyguards, is “putting himself at risk”, then we must acknowledge that ours is a lawless world where Israeli hit squads are free to commit murder anywhere, any time. (2)  Extra-Judicial, Extra territorial Murder is “Legal” (At least if the killers are Mossad) The February 22 and February 24 issues of the DA include two articles arguing that Israel’s practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial murder is legal.  One article is entitled, “The Legality of Killing of Hamas Mahmoud al Mabhoud” and the other, “The Proportionate Killing of Mahmoud al Mabhoud”.  These avoid any reference to international law, which emphatically rejects cross-border, state-sponsored murders.  Legality, for the PMAJO, is whatever the Israel’s secret police apparatus deems expedient in pursuit of its goal of eliminating leaders who oppose its colonial occupation and expropriation of Palestinian lands.  If Israel’s extra-judicial, extra-territorial murder of an adversary in Dubai is legal, why not assassinate opponents in the US, Canada, England or any other country where they might travel, live, work or write?  What if the critics and opponents of Israel decided that it was now “legal” to murder Israel’s supporters wherever they lived citing the Daily Alert’s definition of legality?  We would then find ourselves in a lawless world of “legal” murder and totalitarian cross-border surveillance. (3)  Minimizing the Murder The Feb 22, 24, and 25 issues of the Daily Alert deflect attention from the Mossad murder by making comparison to the hundreds of Afghan civilians killed by US drone attacks.  The claim is that “targeting individuals” is less a crime than mass killings.  The problem with this argument is that for decades Mossad has “targeted” scores of opponents overseas and killed thousands of Palestinians in the occupied territories (where they work with the domestic secret police, Shin Bet, and the military, IDF).  Moreover, this argument linking Israel’s extra judicial assassinations with US colonial killing of Afghans is hardly a defense of either.  By implicating the US in its defense of state terror, Israel is holding up the worst aspects of American imperialism as a standard for its own political behavior.  One state’s crimes are no justification for another’s. (4)  Blaming the Arabs:  Deflecting Attention from Israel The DA Feb. 22 article entitled “The Assassination Heard Around the World” insinuates that the murder was a “result of a Hamas power struggle” or by one of “many Arab groups who loathes the Islamist Hamas”. In other words, all the forged or stolen European passports of Israeli dual citizens, and the Dubai security videos of Mossad operatives in various costumes, not to mention the jubilant affirmation by top Israeli leaders of the killing, was in reality ‘Arab tricks’.  This crude propaganda ploy by the most prominent Jewish American organization reveals their own descent into a fantasy land of self-delusion, possible only in the closed world of US Zionist politics. (5)  Technical Proficiency The DA published several articles praising the technical details of the Mossad assassination in Dubai, an aspect of the operation, with which few Israel security experts would agree.  The Feb. 24 DA article entitled, “Assassination Shows Skillful Planning” chastises Israel’s critics for not recognizing the high quality of the “operational aspects” of the killings and recommends its “lessons for all intelligence services around the world”. Like sociopaths and serial killers, US Zionists openly promote Israeli death squad techniques to all fellow state terrorists.  In the DA, professional techniques of assassination are far more important than universal moral repugnance of political murders. (6)  Discrediting the Investigators While Defending the Perpetrators The DA on Feb. 25 cited a long and tendentious attack on the Dubai police, published in Forbes Magazine, which ridiculed their meticulous investigations uncovering Mossad’s roles in the murder.  In this article, the Dubai authorities were condemned for uncovering Israeli involvement while not investigating the source of the murder victims’ … Iraqi passport!  Instead of encouraging the Dubai police pursuit of justice, the Daily Alert published a long diatribe implicating Dubai in the attacks of 9/11/2001, its continued trade with Iran, its ‘involvement’ in international terrorism etc.  There was no mention of Dubai’s relatively friendly position to Israel and Israelis prior to Mossad’s blatant violation of its sovereignty. Conclusion The American Zionist propaganda campaign in defense of Israeli state terror and, specifically, Mossad’s murder of a Hamas leader in Dubai, relies on lies, evasions and specious legal arguments.  This “defense” violates all precepts of a civilized society as well as the most recent American federal laws prohibiting all forms of support for international terrorism.  The PMAJO can pursue its defense of Mossad’s acts of international terrorism with impunity in the US because of its power over the US Congress, the Obama White House and the American mass media.  This ensures that only its version of events, its definition of legality and its lies will be heard by legislators, echoed by Zionist activists and embellished by its solemn defenders in academic and journalistic circles.  To counter the American Zionist defense of Israel’s practice of extra-territorial, extra-judicial executions by the Mossad, we need American writers and academics to step forward.  It is time to expose their flimsy arguments, bold-face lies and audacious immorality.  It is time to speak out against their impunity, before another Israeli secret police murder takes place, possibly inside the USA itself and with the shameless complicity of Zionist accomplices. The authorities in Dubai have found clear evidence that the Mossad assassination team received support from European Zionists.  The hotels, air tickets and expenses were paid with credit cards issued in the US.  Two of the killers may be in the US now.  Will a time come when American Zionists, who are unconditional public defenders of Mossad killings, cross the line between propaganda for the deed to become accomplices of the deed?  The robust American Zionist defense of Mossad’s overseas assassinations does not augur well for the security of Americans in the face of Israel’s willing U.S. accomplices. ****************************************** James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles. Courtesy Intifada

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

TIME TO START OVER, AMERICA’S POLITICAL MESS

05 Mar, 2010 Gordon Duff

TERM LIMITS, A THIRD PARTY OR EVEN REAL CAMPAIGN FINANCE RULES AREN’T ENOUGH Where do you start?  John McCain is facing a challenge in Arizona.  He is going to drag out his military record and his experience as a personal recommendation.  Few Americans really know that McCain is a mental case with a “war record” he has had to have “classified” to keep himself out of prison. The truth, is this all?  Does he have lifelong ties to organized crime, a history of voting against veterans and working against POW/MIA group?  It is even worse than that.  We have never had a person this crazy with this much baggage running for any office in our history.  McCain, the personal shadow of Josef Lieberman, the Senator from Tel Aviv, along with dozens of others, could and should all be doing time, not “serving democracy.” We have never had a political candidate in our history so deserving of the attention of criminal profilers as John McCain.  Now that there is time for reflective and intelligent thought, those who supported him should take a look at his real history. The myth of John McCain, carefully groomed by the organization was challenged by POW advocate Ted Sampley.  It makes a powerful read and earned Sampley the hatred of McCain and John Kerry until his death.  I can think of no better epitaph for an American. McCain, the lovable sociopath, is not the only one, not by a long shot.  We have peppered the country with junior versions of McCain, all chasing the brass ring represented by selling America to the powerful and generally evil groups that own our government.  It isn’t just AIPAC, front for poor Israel, a country that  touts itself as the “second most powerful nuclear power on earth” or the endless lobbies.  The disappointment so many feel about President Obama tells the story. As a veteran, I had to work for Obama, or so I thought.  McCain had done so much against our POWs and their families, was so crooked, did so much to betray America’s veterans that he had to go.  This left me with having to push support to Barack Obama, another of those “out of nowhere” politicians, obviously alot smarter than McCain and with some sense to know what economic disaster looks like.  I knew he couldn’t be running for office unless he had been “packaged” by some group with an agenda to keep things as they were. Here is a question.  If Congress wasn’t as corrupt as we know it to be, a pile of money hogs with their noses stuck in a trough, would the health care bill have passed by now?  Any idiot knows we need one, OK, any half idiot.  Every American that opposed health care, or at least a public option, must be a total dupe.  When we started, 40% of Americans had no coverage, it is now 55%.  However, the bill we are voting on is a boondoggle for the insurance companies and, even then, the GOP isn’t happy with that. How do I hate the democrats for their corruption and gutlessness when the entire Republican party is even worse, pawns of gangsters, totally bereft of any humanity at all? All Americans asked of Obama was to clean up the remains of two stolen elections and investigate the criminal conspiracy at the heart of the Bush administration.  At least, we need a new 9/11 Commission and a Special Prosecutor to go after those who have been accused of perjury and submitting false information to the first one.  This would jail half the Bush Administration and, perhaps, open the door to a look at how things really work. Tens of millions of Americans and most people outside the United States believe 9/11 was a conspiracy involving the Bush administration and groups from Israel.  Whether this is true or not, since 9/11 we have found massive evidence that it may be true and, since the Detroit “Crotch Bombing” of 2009, we have a publicly know evidentiary trail showing how it could have been done using the Mossad and Israeli owned companies. Even those Americans who still buy the MSM/Corporate press version of the conspiracy, there is enough proof that the Iraq invasion was part of a criminal conspiracy that should jail, not only a former President and Vice President but dozens of others also.  That one is a slam dunk. Obama has failed totally in his responsibility as president there. Remember the Acorn scandal?  Filled the newspapers with stories of buying votes and people dressing up as pimps.  Now we find our “pimp” was a CIA employee, the newspaper stories were totally false and Acorn was victimized by a plot between the GOP, CIA and Israel as part of a ploy to rig a 3rd consecutive election.  These are the facts as they stand, facts that will never be reported but facts just the same. They tell you what is wrong.  Nobody will ask newspapers why they take orders from lobbyists or why paid lobbyists like Tom Ridge and so many others are paraded in front of the public, them and their scripts, bringing us endless falsified news. I was never a big one for the “grand conspiracy.”  I had worked in politics, knew I was around crooks.  Every American accepts this silently.  It is why America is a failed state, heading down the toilet, dead in the water and, as any real economist knows, hopeless.  I spent a alot of time with former Washington attorney and Senate Finance Chief Counsel, Jeff Gates over the last couple of weeks.  We were on a lecture tour of Pakistan together and ended up dozens of discussions, some including alot of table pounding.  We are both good at that part. Jeff wrote tax code, the detail stuff, when working in the Senate as a lawyer.  I come out of banking and finance also, so we had alot to go over.  It took a couple of days, but eventually it began to sink in.  What he knew and what I knew went one direction, our government had been under the control of organized crime for many years, not just since Reagan, as I had suspected.  It went back long before that.  Kennedy stood up against it, so did his brother Bobby. The facts were there, not “newspaper” facts or Fox News “fair and balanced” facts.  You could tie the ownership and control of newspapers, corporations and political parties to a few families.  The “conspiracy theories” about the Trilateral Commission, CFR or Bilderbergers and Illuminati was a joke.  It was the “mob” clear and simple.  Prohibition, millions in profits buying government, not the Italian “Mafia” but a Jewish one, steeped in politics, both  Republican and Democrat heading one way, the destruction of America. Jeff’s conclusion was that the nation of Israel was established as a base for criminal operations as the legitimacy of a “nation state” was needed to gain control of America from within and without.  The facts were there.  His book, Guilt by Association and his website, www.criminalstate.com put it in terms that are unavoidable.   I talked at length about history, where my background comes in.  It all went together too well.  We are continually bombarded by conspiracies to keep us off track.  Everything is manipulated. It was depressing.  I keep looking within the political system and wonder why it does nothing but the same things, with Democrats moderating some aspects of financial abuse and theft but the direction keeps coming back.  Our political system itself failed because we allowed money to buy power, which it did.  It has never let go, it only made more money and bought more power. The game wasn’t to steal money itself but to pile up debt.  This is where the boring economic stuff comes in, why debt, and we are drowning in it, is vital to control of the US.  Those Americans who talk about the Federal Reserve system and how it has turned over control to foreign banks, total control of America, are starting to get the picture.  You just aren’t getting the entire picture unless you understand who the Rothchilds are and how they invented what we know of as banking. It is possible that none of the major wars of the past 200 years would have started without the Rothchilds and their friends managing them.  We are fighting two of those wars now, wars we have no idea how we got into, wars begun on 9/11, a vast plot of amazing complexity supposedly begun in a series of caves somewhere.  Anyone who still believes this, I do wish you my best.  You are trusting souls. There are themes we can always come back to.  We can take the Smedley Butler theme, named after the famous Marine General: “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.” “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” Butler saw America as an imperialist power, not unlike Nazi Germany or Japan, working, not for the good of Americans but for a criminal conspiracy of feudal lords who used war and America’s military might for profit.  It doesn’t take a genius to trace the oil, gas and opium of our current wars to back up the same assumptions but things have become more complex than that. Do you accept Jeff Gate’s model that Butler, a military officer, was missing much of the background and that something more sinister was behind it all.  If you run the clock back to the 1930s, history was seen differently then. When we think Jews, we are immediately reminded of the holocaust and Hitler, usually by Jews who have made a life out of bringing this up as an excuse for Israel.  In the 25 years starting with 1972, the United States had to veto 32 United Nations resolutions against Israel calling for sanctions, much like those against Iran today.  Few Americans know this and even fewer have any idea why the rest of the world would be “picking on Israel” like that.  Any other ally damned by the entire would that may times would have gotten tons of press and some serious questions.  We get nothing but stories of evil Arabs and how Israel is threatened.  Now we wake up to find them running much of the Middle East, a huge military power and in control of much of American politics. Nobody is surprised but everyday Americans, or they would be if they knew.  With Israel controlling our news and free to buy and sell Congress,  we will never know, or so Jeff Gates says.  Is he wrong?  Can anyone prove it?  I wish them luck. The “yellow press” of today, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the gang that pushes the “party line” have their roots decades ago.  We pretend that control of the press controls our elections.  With a two party system, control of both parties takes little effort.  Why would this kind of power take chances?  Control both parties, at least in the key areas involving support of Israel, support of debt and bleeding America dry. If anyone tries to stand up against you, they can be murdered.  Why was Reagan shot?  Did he catch on?  Was Kennedy shot because he tried to stop Israel from getting nuclear weapons?  What kind of man was Senator Paul Wellstone?  He and his family died in a mysterious plane wreck, like the wreck that killed Governor Mel Carnahan when he ran against John Ashcroft, “trained Israeli seal” and Christian Zionist extremist. Ashcroft oversaw the dismemberment of the American Constitution, though Carnahan even after his death (murder?) still defeated him in the election.  In Ohio, GOP “electronic voting specialist,” Mike Connell had a similar accident.  One thing certain about America, stand up long enough, speak out enough or threaten the rackets and a house will fall on you. For every killing we ask about, there are a dozen, maybe a hundred we forget quickly or never hear about at all.  Anyone remember Jim Trafficant, the “crooked Congressman” recently released from prison?  Even as a “convict,” most Americans, if they knew why he really went to prison would give him a Medal of Freedom.  It wasn’t graft that sent him to jail, it was that he refused to be involved anymore and started to talk. He is lucky a house didn’t fall on him. Is Israel actually running America or is it a group of oil companies, defense contractors and financial crooks, backed by a media run by Israel?  These are the choices.  The old choice, “America is run by her people, as with any decent democracy” is believed by no one and easily debunked by a short look at our wars, 9/11, political assassinations, our economic condition and a look at the lies our newspapers carry. and so it goes…. ______________________________________________________________ Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is a regular writer for veteranstoday.com and opinion-maker.org

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

Mr President Obama: Replace Rahm with Me …an open letter from Michael Moore

06 Mar, 2010 Michael Moore

Dear President Obama, I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that’s been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to non-violently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do. I don’t need much, just a cot in the White House basement will do. Now, don’t get too giddy with excitement over my offer, because you and I are going to be up at 5 in the morning, 7 days a week and I am going to get you pumped up for battle every single day (see photo). Each morning you and I will do 100 jumping jacks and you will repeat after me: “THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ELECTED ME, NOT THE REPUBLICANS, TO RUN THE COUNTRY! I AM IN CHARGE! I WILL ORDER ALL OBSTRUCTIONISTS OUTTA MY WAY! IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON’T LIKE WHAT I’M DOING THEY CAN THROW MY ASS OUT IN 2012. IN THE MEANTIME, I CALL THE SHOTS ON THEIR BEHALF! NOW, CONGRESS, DROP AND GIVE ME 50!!” Then we will put on our jogging sweats and run up to Capitol Hill. We will take names, kick butts, and then take some more names. If we have to give a few noogies or half-nelson’s, then so be it. In our pockets we will have a piece of paper to show the pansy Dems just how much they won by in 2008 — and the poll results that show the majority of Americans oppose the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and want the bankers punished. Like drill sergeants, we will get right up in their faces and ask them, “WHAT PART OF THE PUBLIC MANDATE DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND, SOLDIER?!! DROP AND GIVE ME 50!” I know this is the job Rahm Emanuel was supposed to be doing. Now, don’t get me wrong. I have always admired Rahm Emanuel (if you don’t count his getting NAFTA pushed through Congress in the ’90s which destroyed towns like Flint, Michigan. I know, picky-picky.). He is what we needed for a long time — a no-apologies, take-no-prisoners fighting machine. Someone who is not afraid to get his hands dirty and pound the right wing into submission. Far from being the foul-mouthed bully he has been portrayed as, Rahm is the one who BEAT UP the bullies to protect us from them. That’s certainly what he did in 2006. After six long, miserable years of the middle-class getting slaughtered and the poor being flushed down the toilet, Rahm Emanuel took on the job of returning Congress to the Democrats. No one believed it could be done. But he did it. Big time. He put the fear of God into the party of Rush and Newt. They had never been so scared. More importantly, though, he instilled a sense of hope in the Democrats that they could actually score the mother of all hat tricks in 2008 — and with you, an African American no less, in the pole position! It worked. The Darkness ended. The vast majority of nation wept with joy on the night of the election (those who weren’t weeping went out and bought a record number of guns and ammo). Unlike the last president, you didn’t “win” by 537 votes in Florida (although Gore won the popular vote by a half-million), you beat McCain nationally by 9,522,083 votes! The House Democrats got a walloping 79-vote margin. The Senate Dems would caucus with a supermajority of 60 votes unheard of in over 30 years. The wars would now end. America would have universal health care. Wall Street and the banks would, at the very least, be reined in. Hardworking citizens would not be thrown out of their homes. It was supposed to be the dawning of a new age. But the Republicans were not going to go quietly into the night. You see, instead of having just one Rahm Emanuel, they are ALL Rahm Emanuels. That’s why they usually win. Unlike most Democrats, they are relentless and unstoppable. When they believe in something (which is usually themselves and the K Street job they hope to be rewarded with someday), they’ll fight for it till the death. They are loyal to a fault to each other (they were never able to denounce Bush, even though they knew he was destroying the party). They dig their heels in deep no matter what. If you exiled them to a lone chunk of melting polar ice cap, they would keep insisting that it was just a normal “January thaw,” even as the frigid Arctic waters rose above their God-fearing necks (”See what I mean — this water is COLD! What ‘global *warming*’?! Adam and Eve rode dinos…aagghh!!… gulp gulp gulp”). We thought we were all done with this craziness, but we were mistaken. Like a beast that you just can’t cage, the Republicans convinced not only the media, but YOU and your fellow Dems, that 59 votes was a *minority*! Precious time was lost trying to reach a “consensus” and trying to be “bipartisan.” Well, you and the Democrats have been in charge now for over a year and not one banking regulation has been reinstated. We don’t have universal health care. The war in Afghanistan has escalated. And tens of thousands of Americans continue to lose their jobs and be thrown out of their homes. For most of us, it’s just simply no longer good enough that Bush is gone. Woo hoo. Bush is gone. Yippee. That hasn’t created one new friggin’ job. You’re such a good guy, Mr. President. You came to Washington with your hand extended to the Republicans and they just chopped it off. You wanted to be respectful and they decided that they were going to say “no” to everything you suggested. Yet, you kept on saying you still believed in bipartisanship. Well, if you really want bipartisanship, just go ahead and let the Republicans win in November. Then you’ll get all the bipartisanship you want. Let me be clear about one thing: The Democrats on Election Day 2010 are going to get an ass-whoopin’ of biblical proportions if things don’t change right now. And after the new Republican majority takes over, they, along with a few conservative Democrats in Congress, will get to bipartisanly impeach you for being a socialist and a citizen of Kenya. How nice to see both sides of the aisle working together again! And the brief window we had to fix this country will be gone. Gone. Gone, baby, gone. I don’t know what your team has been up to, but they haven’t served you well. And Rahm, poor Rahm, has turned into a fighter — not of Republicans, but of the left. He called those of us who want universal health care “f***ing retarded.” Look, I don’t know if Rahm is the problem or if it’s Gibbs or Axelrod or any of the other great people we owe a debt of thanks to for getting you elected. All I know is that whatever is fueling your White House it’s now running on fumes. Time to shake things up! Time to bring me in to get you pumped up every morning! Go Barack! Yay Obama! Fight, Team, Fight! I’m packed and ready to come to D.C. tomorrow. If it helps, you won’t really be losing Rahm entirely because I’ll be bringing his brother with me — my agent, Ari Emanuel. Man, you should see HIM negotiate a deal! Have you ever wanted to see Mitch McConnell walking around Capitol Hill carrying his own head in his hands after it’s just been handed to him by the infamous Ari? Oh, baby, it won’t be pretty — but boy will it be sweet! What say you, Barack? Me and you against the world! Yes we can! It’ll be fun — and we may just get something done. Whaddaya got to lose? Hope? Retardedly yours, Michael Moore P.S. Just to give you an idea of the new style I’ll be bringing with me, when a cornhole like Sen. Ben Nelson tries to hold you up next time, this is what I will tell him in order to get his vote: “You’ve got exactly 30 seconds to rescind your demand or I will personally make sure that Nebraska doesn’t get one more federal dollar for the rest of Obama’s term. And then I will let everyone in your state know that you wear Sooner panties, backwards. NOW DROP AND GIVE ME 50

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

FREEING DR. AAFIA, A MATTER OF HONOUR

03 Mar, 2010 Gordon Duff

THE SERVICE AND SACRIFICE OF ALL AMERICAN WAR VETERANS IS AT STAKE MY HONOUR IS NOT FOR SALE, NOT FOR A LIE Veterans Today Editors, Jeff Gates, Raja Mujtaba and I were in the AF-Pak region over the last couple of weeks.  Jeff and I are Vietnam veterans, Raja a decorated combat veteran, tank commander, from the India/Pakistan war.  We met dozens of Pakistani military, including nearly all of their highest ranking retired officers, from Admiral Sirohey, Chairman of their Joint Chiefs of Staff to General Alsam Beg, Head of the Army to Lt. General Hamid Gul, former head of the ISI.  In our party were our other Veterans Today contributors, BG Asif Haroon Raja and BG Raza Ali, of “Charlie Wilson’s War” fame. Today, I received an email from Admiral Sirohey.  His office is lined with memorabilia from a long career of service, service as an ally and friend of the United States.  Sirohey and the rest were America’s most stalwart allies during the Cold War.  These were the real allies that helped us bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union.  I was honoured to be among them.  Today Admiral Sirohey is scheduled to attend a rally protesting the illegal kidnapping, brutalizing and conviction of Dr. Affia Siddiqui.  America’s best friends in Asia, the finest soldiers in the world are horrified at what we have done. Can it be that bad? VETERANS TODAY EDITORS RAJA MUJTABA AND JEFF GATES, ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN, FEBRUARY 2010 (PHOTO BY GORDON DUFF) The Bush administration, when it saw its “War on Terror” wasn’t getting enough suspects, hired drug cartel members and criminal elements to kidnap innocent civilians to fill our secret prisons.  Yes, we actually did this.  In this case, we kidnapped a mother with 3 children, tortured her for years, murdered a small child and then charged her with attempting to murder her captors after years in a secret prison  on Bagram Air Force Base. Every soldier on that base, everyone who has served there has to live with the dishonour of this act until something is done.  Remember when America, after World War II painted the people of Germany with the stain of guilt for not knowing about the death camps?  Tell me what is different here?  We didn’t know that druglords and gangsters were stealing people off the street to fill our prisons with “terror suspects” so Bush/Ashcroft and Cheney could crow about their successes? If you didn’t know before, this is what all the secret “torture memos” were all about, not real terrorists, but innocent people we “bought” as though we were slave runners of old. A few years after we bought our phony terror suspects, tortured, raped and brutalized them, most were released.  They had committed no crime other than to be standing on the wrong dark street corner when the druglords working for Bush were out hunting “meat” for America’s gulags. Dr. Aafia had to be convicted, had to be jailed and silenced.  The crimes against her and her children were so heinous, only a kangaroo court in America, a country whose news is orchestrated by the Islam hating MSM/Corporate media and powerful Israeli/AIPAC lobby would have the audiacity to bring her to trial. Do we need to review the case?  Remember the OJ case?  He was released because of a glove not fitting.  Dr. Aafia was shot by the “translator” during her “debriefing.” She has a Doctorate from an American university.  She comes from a country where everyone speaks English.  “If the translator doesn’t fit, you must acquit!” Do we now call a person with a cattle prod a “translator?” When the My Lai massacre happened, I was with a Marine unit less than 50 miles away.  All of us who were there then, not so many are around any more, carry the stain of that dishonour and have for decades.  I can talk of honour or service but all people see is babies and their mothers, shot to death, lining the bottom of a ditch. It is a matter of honour. There are no “secret prisons” and nobody is tortured without someone knowing about it.  We are all responsible, I don’t care if you are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere around the world, active duty, reserve, National Guard, retiree or veteran.  We are nearly 30 million strong.  Many of us don’t have much, memories, wounds, a small pension and our honour. Our silence strips our honour away. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was not a terrorist.  The newspapers lied, we all know why.  Either she is guilty or we all are.  Better to destroy her than to arrest those guilty of real crimes, arrest people some of us voted into high office. “We were just taking orders.” Where have we heard that before, Nuremberg?  It isn’t just this one life.  We already killed over a million people in our ill fated invasion of Iraq. Fog of War.  We know better, everyone with eyes to see knows better, know it now.  Then why are we still acting like criminals?  No more lies.  We are at war, a war with real enemies.  We have so little, our short lives, our families and what we believe in. Did a tiny crippled woman, illegally imprisoned for years try to murder a room of FBI, Special Forces and Blackwater/CIA operatives? I can tell you this:  If I get my butt kicked by a 100 pound woman in a wheel chair, you won’t see me in front of a jury in New York City crying for my mama. The only possible answer is that everyone involved in the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a liar.  Nothing else is possible.  I know why they lied, they were ordered to “for the good of the service.”  Was there something in the oath involving “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America unless told to lie for the good of the service?” What are we protecting? Once the public learns that we are buying phony terror suspects from the worlds largest drug dealers, people we are protecting, people flooding our streets with narcotics, there might be problems.  Best not let the public know why we never found those weapons of mass destruction, that yellow cake uranium, those mobile bio-weapons labs or why our continual search for Osama bin Laden keeps failing. The deal of the century, destroying an innocent life and earning the hate of a valued ally, all to stand behind the lies and rhetoric of America’s “dark age.”  We would be lucky if it were only every citizen of Pakistan that was enraged at us for this travesty.  It is worse, far worse. Who are the real terrorists?  In Pakistan, Admiral Sirohey, friend to half a dozen American Presidents is heading to a peaceful protest.  What can we, Americans, claim?  If kidnapping, torture, rape and covering it up by letting the victim rot in prison isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is. We should be thankful for that seat on the UN Security Council.  We may need it for more than covering up for Israel.  The next nation facing sanctions for international crimes may be us.  All that stands between us and being cut off from the world is our veto.  All that is keeping an entire administration from War Crimes trials is the Bush administrations withdrawal from the International Criminal Court at the Hague. Why is President Obama allowing the outrages of the Bush administration to continue. _____________________________________________________ Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East and the more backward parts of … He is a regular writer for veteranstoday.com and opinion-maker.org

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

Our Fundamental Truth about …

As I was about to begin writing this piece, the melody of the unforgettable theme song of that classic movie ‘Casablanca’ drifted up from my memory and mingled with the subject of what I was about to write: ‘It’s now an old, old story, a love for profit’s glory, a case of do or die; the fundamental truth of life … in USA … ’ (‘As Time Goes By.’)

As you may remember, the movie theme dealt with the reality of “woman needs man, and man must have his mate, that no one can deny….” All of which made perfect sense to me for dealing with truth in the topic of this article.

Every month, some American businesses move their operations and jobs out of the US to some low wage country. Why do they do this? It’s easy to understand.

When employers face unrelenting competition from foreign companies who are able to market equivalent goods or services using their native workers to do the same work in ten, twelve or more hours per day, six days per week, without US job safety regulations, worker compensation, pensions, and spend only a small fraction of the wages that US employers pay American workers to do the same work; then US based employers are faced with a sink or swim dilemma. US law allows foreign companies to export many goods and services to the US consumer market without imposing any import tariffs.

Foreign-made products can be sold in the US for a lower price than equivalent products produced in the US. A US-based company faces two options to survive, - move and setup their operations to produce goods or services outside of the US; then export their products to the US and sell them to US customers, or go out of business. The result is a loss of jobs either way for US workers. It is workers, who create America’s potential.

When the wages of unemployed workers disappear, the incomes of merchants disappear. In a money economy, it is absolutely important to maintain the circle of income for workers, whose wages are spent to purchase goods and services they need. Those purchases provide the incomes that businesses use to pay the costs and wages of other workers, who produce yet other goods and services that other workers and businesses need to continue their pursuit of life. It is not difficult to understand that relationship.

Because we need a solution to the immanent collapse of the US economy, let’s consider the essence of what we suggested in an Open Letter to President Obama, shortly after he was inaugurated. The letter is listed below.

————————————

“February 12, 2009

“President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

“Congratulations, Mr. President

“Please read this suggestion.  It could solve what you are trying to do.

“The rejuvenation of the economy would be possible if Congress enabled the federal government, instead of employers, to assume the responsibility to pay the wages of all workers nationwide.

“Doing this would enable employers to invest in upgrading workers’ skills to use efficient cutting-edge technology and research to make US employers the foremost providers of quality goods and services. The employers of industries and businesses would be happy to focus those savings on optimizing their processes.

“The government would be able to recover the cost of paying the wages of all workers in the US by taxing the profits of employers, but would allow employers to deduct the costs of adopting appropriate technologies and research efforts that enhance their operations.

“Workers would again be spending their wages to purchase the goods and services from industry and business.

“The government would also be able to tax the income of all workers, but would allow their appropriate deductions.

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the total wages paid to all US workers during the years 2002 through 2007 ranged from $1,182 trillion to $1.532 trillion dollars per year.

“The 2009 bank bailouts will exceed the total wages paid in 2007.

“If the federal government were to pay the 2009 wages of all workers; it would be less than what is spent for the bailouts of failed loans by banks.

When workers can become customers, they spur continuing improvement in the production and distribution of goods and services.

“The government would secure our unalienable Rights, as described so well in the second paragraph of the Declaration.

“God bless your wishes,

“Wilfred Mische”

—————————————–

Now, let’s look at a very important portion of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be elf-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This tells us that governments are instituted by people to secure those unalienable Rights. That means that the purpose of our federal and state governments is to secure what makes it possible for the people of the United States to have the liberty to pursue their life in happiness. What is required for the American people to secure their pursuit of happiness and other unalienable Rights?

In our money-based system, people need to be employed to earn the financial income with which they purchase the goods and services that they consume to satisfy their standard of living.

Merchants and farmers depend on those purchases for an income to pay their costs to produce and distribute goods and services for their customers and also to maintain their personal lively-hoods.

In the times past and the present, merchants of all types employed workers to do the work of producing and distributing the goods and services that consumers purchase. Since most of the consumers are workers or are related to workers, the survival of industry and business depends on the consumption of workers who earn wages that enable them to purchase the goods and services of an appropriate standard of living. The generator of prosperity, in a money-based society, is the opportunity and ability of workers to earn a wage that can purchase an appropriate standard of living. If workers are unable to purchase goods and services, merchants are unable to sell goods and services.

In the USA, our federal government has allowed the products and services of foreign businesses to enter the US consumer market without tariffs and to be sold in competition with US made goods and services. The competition impels US manufacturers to produce or service goods that excel in quality at the most cost efficient and appropriate design. But, foreign manufacturers can employ workers at a fraction of US production costs to do the same thing with an advantage, because foreign manufacturers are free of the labor and regulation costs required of US manufacturers. Foreign manufacturers can thereby afford to offer their product at a significantly lower sale price that cannot be matched or beat by an equivalent product offered by US manufacturers on the US consumer market.

Our suggestion to President Obama can enable a true solution and genuine stimulus for US-based manufacturers and service businesses that choose to remain in the USA. The Declaration of Independence said in its second paragraph, that the purpose of our federal government is to secure the rights of American people; which includes those who are involved in the processes of US-based industry and business. The proposal urges Congress and the President to pass legislation to authorize and appropriate the funds for the federal government to assume the responsibility of paying the wages of all employees of US-based business and industry. Such a law will enable US employers to produce, distribute and market their goods and services for sale in the US consumer market without incurring the cost of labor. With that law, we the people of the United States will be able to preserve and improve our industrial and business prosperity.

Might other nations adopt a similar process for their markets? Yes, but America has a huge and sophisticated consumer market, which has been lost to foreign manufacturers. By having our government assume the role of paying the wages of all US-based employers, we will recover the loss of our US consumer market and enable American industry, business and formal education to concentrate our attention on innovating cutting edge technology in the production and distribution of goods and services for Americans.

If you have questions, take a look at the letter we sent to President Obama. We did receive a letter from his office, which thanked us for sending the letter. If you agree with the proposal, write him; we can’t afford to lose the blessing of our consumer market, its industry and jobs, and needlessly go down the drain as a nation.

May God help us.

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

Joe Stack, that 54 year old software engineer wrote a detailed explanation on his website why he chose to catch our attention by flying and crashing his airplane into an office of the Internal Revenue Service. He knew, that if he chose to do that, he would need to be willing to die in the process.

What was Joe’s reason for doing that? Why would he sacrifice his own life to tell us that? Evidently, he wanted to warn us that our America is no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Why did he think we, the people of the United States don’t realize that we no longer rule ourselves? Did he hope that we might somehow secure our inalienable Rights with a government that derives “its just powers from the consent of the governed” rather than the influence of money from lobbyists?

Take a look at his own words, exactly as expressed from his web site:

“If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation” I have spent the total years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

“While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

“Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich = cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

“And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!

“How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

“How did I get here?

“My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t stealing from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

“The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.

“That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.

“Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through engineering school and still another five years of “paying my dues”), I felt I finally had to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.

“On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father. I realized this at a very young age.

“The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.

“In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time. When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me). I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me that I would be “healthier” eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn’t quite go there, but the impression was made. I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.

“Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ contract software engineer… and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.

“For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).”

SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.

(a) IN GENERAL - Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:

(d) EXCEPTION. - This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. - The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.

“Note:
· “another person” is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.

· “taxpayer” is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.

· “individual”, “employee”, or “worker” is you.

“Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.

“During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my ‘pocket change’, and at least 1000 hours of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting their time. I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity. This, only to discover that our efforts were being easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the windfall from the new declaration of their “freedom”. Oh, and don’t forget, for all of the time I was spending on this, I was losing income that I couldn’t bill clients.

“After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise. The best we could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they weren’t going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists). This immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.

“Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle. If I had any sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.

“Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn’t need all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to “shore up” their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.

“Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. Our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long after that, ‘special’ facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months. This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive. Ironically, after what they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY! After these events, there went my business but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.

“By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.

“To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed. But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice.

“So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again. But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake.

“When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

“This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.

“I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

“As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

“I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

“I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

“The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

“The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”


Joe Stack (1956-2010)

02/18/2010

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

Recently, the world heard that one of its most celebrated and admired athletes was exposed as an adulterer. This paragon of esteem has been a record breaker and achiever beyond the greatest performers of all time in his specific sport. He was a combination of cordial and favored features and skills, which millions of people admire.

He became an extraordinary perfectionist in learning the precise techniques that enabled him to successfully contend with many of the momentary vagaries that the wisps of weather and terrain imposed on his accepted task of assigning a tiny, dimpled, white ball to obediently soar and land in a distant temporary grave, and be resurrected in triumph.

Once hailed as the king of the sport with fame and fortune, the shock of his sin mounted against him and emerged as an opportunity for empty souls to denigrate his charm and demolish his godlike elevation. Wishes of adversity were extended to him by haters who despised his origins. But the real God blessed him with the nobility of his parents, to honestly respect his people and apologize for his Achilles heel and promise his restitution of the admiration that he admittedly owed to his fans.

What a wonderful example for all of us, to see a Tiger recognize the faults of his weaknesses. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” The great basketball star, Magic Johnson, found a similar weakness, and in his midlife crisis he was similarly blessed by his Almighty.

Will the leaders, who lied to create the war and terror that killed or wounded millions of innocent men, women, and children in Iraq, Afghanistan, the USA and Palestine, apologize to the people of the world? Will they confess why they overthrew the unalienable Rights of their victims and the American people? Might George Bush 41, Bill Clinton, George Bush 43, Dick Cheney and his swarm of neo-cons, and the members of Congress who approved the war and terror; will the people of the world soon or ever see them confess and apologize for their international war crimes?

Will Barack Obama continue to fall into the sins of his predecessors and continue to violate the unalienable Rights of those same and other victims, or will he stop the wars that are now his and prove to be a champion that deserved to receive the Peace Prize?

None of the political crooks were champions. None of them could hold a stick in comparison to Tiger Woods. Millions of young people admire public figures in sports and entertainment, but only a few stars get through the eye of a needle and save their lives and reputations. Tiger has taught his young admirers a lesson they will never forget or follow his mistake. He saved a generation and possibly will truly be a legend.

Is the future built on the lessons we learn? If that is true, then most of us are probably still in school, learning our lessons, as well. Will we be tested? The wise ones would probably tell us – yes, life in this world is our lesson. May God be with all of us!

- WJ Anthony

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

February 18th, 2010

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

(Thanks to the great website, Opinion Maker, for this excellent article.)

AFGHAN LEADERS CALL SURGE, “IMBECILIC AND TRAGIC”

14 Feb, 2010

Gordon Duff

WRONG REGION, WRONG ENEMY, WRONG TACTICS, BAD ADVICE

AMERICA RECRUITING 10,000 TERRORISTS A DAY IN AFGHANISTAN

Last year a number of contractors were thrown out of Afghanistan over the infamous “but-crack” video showing nude imbeciles involved in an unsanitary ceremony.  Little did we know that these must have been the people who planned the American “Surge” meant to stabilize Afghanistan, supplied the intelligence for General McChrystal, may actually have written his report.  Top leaders of the Afghan people weighed in on our operation in Helmand province with American Marines and British troops.  They call it “imbecilic” and “tragic,” faulting nearly every aspect as uninformed, misinformed or simply wrong.

Tribal “Jirgas” (councils) of the real government of Afghanistan, the actual rulers of that fractured state are behind one thing now, getting America out of Afghanistan and getting rid of Karzai, who they see is, not only an American puppet but one of the most useless human beings ever born.  Why mince words.  Actually, I am, their real words are much worse than anything that could be printed, their rage, their words and their tears.

A MASSIVE BLUNDER

Word has been pouring out of Afghanistan.  Every move America makes is hitting blogs around the world through a network of Afghani ex-patriots who are in continual communication.  The word is out:  Our “invasion” that combined Afghani forces with American and British has not gone after Taliban strongholds at all but rather attacked areas controlled by Karzai opponents who were ready to negotiate a legitimate government.

To the people of Afghanistan, the Karzai government was put in place out of utter idiocy in the first place, a failure of the Bush administration to understand that Afghanistan was not going to be ruled by brutal warlords from the “Northern Alliance” who are the ethnic enemies of the majority of the population of Afghanistan.  Placing weakling Mohammed Karzai in as president and supporting him thru a rigged election has only made things worse.

USING “COUNTER-INSURGENCY” TO RECRUIT TERRORSTS

American, Britain and the “Afghani Army” simply aren’t very good at many things, Afghanistan has proven this.  We don’t seem to be able to tell a poppy plant from wheat, we can’t find Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, and we don’t know the Taliban from our own “butt-crack.”  Reports on operations are clear.  We are managing to frighten, brutalize and anger hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing to do with the Taliban, not before anyway.

Now, “they” are rethinking this.  This is the message being received around the world.

Tribal leaders are saying:

We have millions of young men coming of age, America doesn’t realize this.  Each one will become a fighter with one purpose in life, to free their country and drive out foreign invaders.  Each child you see will be a trained soldier with a Kalashnikov.  We will fight for a century if we have to.  Ask Britain, ask Russia, they know.

Why did America have to come here, join with criminal elements, brutal drug lords, mass murderers, people whose only history is brutality toward their own, why was America so stupid as to think we would respect them when they and their stooges rain bombs down on our children?

THE FAILED SURGE IN IRAQ, THE REAL TRUTH

America calls it “the surge” or the “Sunni awakening.”  Either way, it was all a con.  General Petraeus paid millions in bribes to war lords, mostly Sunni and put the militia members who were fighting the United States on the payroll.  The fighting died down, most American troops withdrew to safe areas and we claimed a victory.  What did we really accomplish?

Well, years later, we are still there and Iraq is becoming less stable every day.  The “leaders” we paid rebuilt the old Baathist party, now, without Saddam to lead it, it is simply a massive crime organization involved in daily murders, kidnappings and racketeering.  We created a country plagued by a Mafia we built, now nobody is asking us to leave anymore, everyone is scared to death.

Thank you General Petraeus.  As with General Westmoreland in Vietnam, we “managed the news” and “stayed on message” but our strategy was a sham, it was simply a way to admit failure and lie about it.  We are planning the exact same thing in Afghanistan but it simply didn’t need to be that way.

WHAT A COMPETENT AND WELL INFORMED MILITARY LEADER MIGHT HAVE DONE

Sitting in Kabul or Washington, surrounded by drug dealers and thieves, even worse people in Kabul, it is hard to get good information and make good decisions.  Everyone you talk to has an agenda, everyone is lying.  Who are our advisors?  Well, first of all, the entire world knows that Karzai’s family is helping run the largest drug cartel in the world.  In fact, the biggest civil project America has done in Afghanistan was to repair a dam producing electricity for Kandahar, a dam that also provides irrigation for most of Afghanistan’s opium crop, one Americans are dying to keep secure today.

“Don’t worry, no poppy plants will be injured in the making of this picture.”

America had the chance to sit down with Pakistan and other regional powers, some that we don’t talk to and come up with an economic solution that could provide lasting stability for the tribal regions which are primarily inside Pakistan.  We failed to realize that 25 million Pashtuns live just the other side of the border in Pakistan.  With the right help for Pakistan, the right economic programs and leadership, both countries could be helped and lives, perhaps millions, could be saved without pouring billions of useless dollars into the pockets of defense contractors infesting the halls of Congress, some with the arrogance and blatant insensibility of our actual elected leaders.

IMRAN KHAN OF PAKISTAN, THE REGION’S ONLY RESPECTED LEADER

Combine Michael Jordan, Antonio Banderas and John F. Kennedy and you have Imran Khan, or that is how many in Afghanistan and Pakistan see him.  Cricket is “the” sport in Pakistan and he is the most famous player in the historyof that game.  He is also a political leader, outspoken, charismatic and in a country where most other leaders are Punjabi or Sindhi, Khan is a Pashtun.

Khan is known for his outspoken commentaries warning the west of Islamic extremism and advocating economic development over military solutions that Khan says only fuel terrorism. Khan says:

My Generation grew up at a time when colonial hang up was at its peak. Our older generation had been slaves and had a huge inferiority complex of the British. The school I went to was a similar to all elite schools in Pakistan, despite becoming independent, they were, and still are, producing replicas of public school boys rather than Pakistanis. I read Shakespeare which was fine, but no Alama Iqbal.

The Islamic class was not considered to be serious, and when I left the school I was considered amongst the elite of the country because I could speak English and wore western clothes. Despite periodically shouting Pakistan Zindabad at school functions, I considered my own culture backward and Islam an outdated religion.

Amongst our group if any one talked about religion, prayed or kept a beard he was immediately branded a Mullah. Because of the power of the Western Media, all our heroes were western movie or pop stars.

In University not just Islam but all religions were considered anachronism. Science had replaced religion and if something couldn’t be logically proved it did not exist. All supernatural stuff was confined to the movies…Moreover, the European history had an awful experience with religion, The horrors committed by the Christian clergy in the name of God during the Inquisition had left a powerful impact on the western mind.

To understand why the west is so keen on secularism, one should go to places like Cordoba in Spain and see torture apparatus used during Spanish Inquisition. Also the persecution of scientists as heretics by the clergy and convinced the Europeans that all religions are regressive.

However, the biggest factor that drove people like me away from religion was the selective Islam practised by most of its preachers. In other words, there was a huge difference between what they practised and what they preached. Also, rather than explaining the philosophy behind the religion, there was an over emphasis on rituals.

I feel that humans are different; to animals whereas the latter can be drilled, humans need to be intellectually convinced. That is why the Quran constantly appeals to reason. The worst of course, was the exploitation of Islam for political gains by various individuals or groups.

Hence, it was a miracle I did not become an atheist. The only reason why I did not was the powerful religious influence wielded by my mother on me since my childhood. It was not so much out of conviction but love for her that I stayed a Muslim.

Firstly, the inferiority complex that my generation had inherited, gradually went as I developed into a world class athlete. Secondly, I had the unique position of living between two cultures. I began to see the advantages and the disadvantages of both the societies.

In western societies, institutions were strong while they were collapsing in our country. However, there was an area where we were and still are superior, and that is our family life. I used to notice the loneliness of the old-age pensioners at Hove Cricket ground (during my Sussex years). Imagine sending your parents to Old Peoples’ Homes!

Even the children there never had the sort of love and warmth that we grew up with here. They completely miss out on the security blanket that a joint family system provides. However, I began to realise that the biggest loss to the western society and that in trying to free itself from the oppression of the clergy, they had removed both God and religion from their lives.

KHAN’S ROLE

With civil government in Pakistan collapsed under scandal and the Afghani government in Kabul ruling little of the country and mistrusted by the vast majority of its citizens, and NATO, led by the United States fearful of terrorism and Islamic extremism, Khan is the only well known individual with the trust and respect of Islam and the United States yet known for his outspoken independence.  Khan has not been a friend to the United States, quite the opposite.  He has been one of America’s greatest critics at a time known for America’s greatest failures.

His tough role of standing up to the west and to corrupt forces in his own country and his strong ties to Afghanistan make him the vital key to ending the cycle of terrorism and extremism in the region, a region whose potentials for conflict can be far more threatening than the current war in Afghanistan.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have been increasing daily with each accusing the other sponsoring terrorist group.  Terror attacks, shootings, bombings, occur daily in Pakistan and India and are on the increase.  The two regional nucear powers, both allies of the United States, are on a continual “war readiness” footing.

FINDING THE RIGHT ENEMY

Currently, no respected leader in Afghanistan will talk to any American, military leader or diplomat under any circumstances.  America believes it is negotiating with the Taliban and is moving forward with a “plan” but is operating under a series of misconceptions.  No non-Islamic forces will ever be allowed to operate in Afghanistan.  They will only cause tribal uprisings, creating terrorism, not ending it.  Why leaders like General McChrystal who knows this very well would purposefully ignore this fact is strange indeed.

The border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are areas of lawlessness that can provide safe harbor foreign terrorists and have, in limited numbers, how limited, we will never know.  The same region is also home to millions of people who can be armed insurgents and radicalized “Jihadists” or live in relative peace, largely depending on factors now controlled by the United States.

LIVING WITH THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST

In the 80s, when the pro-Soviet government in Kabul called for Russian help against tribal opposition, America weighed in, arming Mujahideen insurgents, the exact same people we are fighting today, same people, same leaders, same beliefs, only a generation later.  When we had the chance to come into Afghanistan as a friend after the withdrawal of Russian forces and build a new economy there for pennies, we didn’t care.  The Soviet Union had collapsed and we lost interest.  We are now paying for those mistakes.

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Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East.

He writes regularly for Veterans Today and Opinion Maker.

Readers Comments

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights

(Thanks to the great work and website - Opinion Maker) The rise of ‘Chimerica’

11 Feb, 2010 Humayun Gauhar

We are in the throes of that rare seminal change that is caused by the collapse of a World Order. The transition period turns order into disorder, particularly economic and political. The catalyst is almost always acute financial strain caused by military misadventures that throw up internal contradictions long hidden beneath the surface. Stability returns only when a new order has been painfully forged with regional or global power shifting wholly or partially elsewhere, only to go again with the next great flux. Such is the ebb and flow of world power. Today’s flux is greater than the one caused by the two World Wars with the Great Depression thrown in between, when power shifted from Europe to the United States and the late unlamented Soviet Union. It led to that ‘Great Rivalry’ between the two, famously known as the ‘Cold War’, and the raising of the so-called ‘Iran Curtain’ by the Soviets. The US became a new kind of superpower, largely without conquest and direct control but acquiring hegemony through, as far as possible, consensual rather than coercive domination. Instead of conquering and occupying territory (until Afghanistan and Iraq) like the European colonizers did, it won world market shares and influence mostly via economic domination and the threat of being left out in the cold (sanctions) – the redoubtable Carrot and Stick policy rather than the European Divide and Rule doctrine. The Cold War was also a World War, with the world largely divided between the US and the Soviet Blocs. And just as WWI became a new kind of war with the use of aerial power for the first time and WWII with the ultimate use of nuclear bombs, the Cold War was a new kind of war fought neither by conventional nor nuclear weapons but by the threat of the use of them. Like all wars, it too was about the control of world market shares and access to cheap labour, raw materials and markets, largely Third World, made captive by systematic dependence and the seduction of interest bearing loans with often inhuman conditions attached masquerading as ‘aid’. Proof lies in the fact that not one developing country has come out of the pejorative Third World category because of the Bretton Woods institutions or any other form of ‘aid’. Instead, most have got more dependent. The Cold War ended with the demise of the Soviet Union and the US acquiring the mantle of sole superpower. From 1990, we saw the dawn of a unipolar world. It had to be brief. Now it’s over. It couldn’t last. Why?  The US has yet to learn to function outside an adversarial framework. When there was no adversary left, it made enemies where there were none instead of becoming honest broker. Now with another acute economic downturn the short-lived unipolar world gives way to a multi-polar world and power shifts from West to East, from the US to China. The US was unable to consolidate its unipolar position because only by giving benefit without conditions and strings attached can it be done. Instead, it chose to act like the global bully led for eight years by the global idiot – not unlike a village idiot. Having failed, it is now giving way to sharing global power with China, and in the not-too-distant future with Russia and perhaps with Germany as well. Only one country remained outside the two main superpower blocs during the Cold War, its strength coming from its strong ideology. That was China. And it is China and only China that is emerging as the new superpower, to share global power and influence with a diminished United States. Whether it leads to another US-China Cold War remains to be seen, but if it does it will be a war America cannot win. Thus I believe (hope?) that America realizes that it can extract greater mileage if it works with China. That will require an extraordinary of leap of maturity on its part, something that has been lacking since it acquired superpower status. It may be forced to learn now, since I find it difficult to accept that it won’t realize that in an adversarial relationship with China it will be the ultimate loser. It will have to have a cooperative relationship with China, because right now both are dangerously dependent on the other. Andreas Lorenz calls this new possible relationship ‘The Rise of Chimerica’. Let’s see. Essentially, the rousing plank of world wars is ideology by exploiting the lowest common denominator to get public support – fascism versus democracy, secularism versus religion, capitalism versus communism – all to do with dominance and maximizing economic advantage. They bubble and boil in the cauldron of power unseen for long. Then one day some incident leads to the lethal brew spilling over the world war becomes hot. Just as the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia and Heir Presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne) in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, triggered off World War I; the bombing of Pearl Harbor turned Hitler’s European war into World War II; the US-Soviet standoff of the Cold War was World War III (fought mostly by intelligence and, when unavoidable, by proxy), and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan triggered off its demise and the advent of the unipolar world; the tragic events of September 11, 2001, triggered off World War IV, popularly known as the ‘War Against Terror’, fought again with a new and most potent kind of weapon yet – the human bomb – and against a new kind of enemy – ‘Shadows’ cast, not by the British music group of the Sixties but Frankenstein’s monsters of America’s own creation – Non-State Actors. What next? The defeat of the US and its allies, particularly in Afghanistan, and the huge amount of money borrowed and wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan triggered the demise of the unipolar and the advent of a multi-polar world, even if it doesn’t signal the end of World War IV just yet. For that we will have to wait for the second great economic downturn, which may be upon us faster than we imagine. Because World War IV it is led by the US on one side and non-Muslim militants on the other, some believe it to be a war between secularism and Islam or even the recent Judeo-Christian Combine versus Islam. Yet others would like to believe that it is the coming of Armageddon, when Christians and Jews will fight the forces of the anti-Christ (which Christian fascists consider Islam to be) until the latter are decimated and Israel truly comes into being, unchallenged and unbothered. As you can see, the world may have changed many a time but the high incidence of fruitcakes in it remains undiminished. It is a war that America is losing. And it is a war that has triggered off its economic collapse because it brought its economic contradictions to the fore. The US brought this upon itself by getting involved in two unnecessary wars, one contrived. It exposed the structural weaknesses in its economy, its sorry economic condition brought on by reckless borrowing and the acute state of bankruptcy of its financial institutions due to reckless management and weak regulation driven by greed and avarice. While we blame greedy bankers for taking huge salaries and even bigger bonuses, we forget that what they did was entirely legal, though immoral. The laws and the system allowed them to be both greedy and immoral. It was this same greed and immorality, duality and megalomania driven by the hegemony drive that informed America’s relations with other states, especially of the Third World. It could not last. It had to implode. It did. All claims of having “got over the hump”, “green shoots”, “turnaround” and “recovery” are so much poppycock. They just cannot help misleading their own people and the world, like its genetic, underlining the amorality of capitalism. They have done nothing to correct the acute fundamental and structural flaws in their economy and their financial institutions. All their bailouts were throwing bad money after worse. America’s total indebtedness is even worse than it was in October 2008, when the downslide started. Many of its states, particularly its richest, California, are bankrupt. The dollar has lost value and is continuing to lose value. Unemployment is at a long-time high. Manufacturing is receding. Banks are not lending and people are not borrowing. This does not portend well for a consumption-based economy. Credit Default Swaps of between $50-60 trillion overhang, like dark, ominous clouds threatening a mega storm. The commercial real estate bust is neigh. No, the fundamentals, already terrible, have got worse. The only thing that has saved the American economy so far from utter collapse is China, because it too would suffer woefully were America to go belly up. America is its biggest customer. How people with the wisdom of the Chinese could put most of their eggs in one basket and make their economy so dependent on the health of someone else’s economy mystifies me. They should have started boosting domestic consumption years ago in order to weather just such an eventuality. They could easily have done this since their domestic consumption is very low and savings very high, and thus gradually reduced their dependence on exporting to America, which they are beginning to do now. I can only put it down to the rapid drive for economic development. It has been so rapid that it has left the world breathless. Perhaps it was high-speed economic progress that caused a temporary suspension of the fabled Chinese wisdom and their genetic long-term thinking. The backlash had to come. This does not mean that China will not wrest maximum advantage out of this flux, but at a pace that doesn’t adversely impact its economy. As you see the Yuan revalue you will also see the mighty dollar recede. Soon, oil will not be traded in US dollars alone and new oil bourses will start coming up, ending the dollar’s monopoly in oil. As to the over $4 trillion debt the US owes China, plus some of the Chinese surplus of $2 trillion lying in dollars, the only way out that I can see is debt-equity swaps, which means that China will end up owning a lot of America’s prime family silver. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. That’s the swing of the pendulum. But don’t simply write America off so fast. Whatever happens, it will retain the most precious asset of all that makes a country primus inter pares. It has the world’s largest and most advanced knowledge bank. No one else comes close in comparison. As long as they have that and they start seeing sense – which can only come with the end of juvenile recklessness and the advent of some wisdom – America will remain a power to contend with. Wisdom is not new to America. Its founding fathers had it by the bucketful, more than collectively seen at any one time. It was this wisdom that led America to become the world’s first (largely) consensual hegemon rather than the usual coercive hegemon, as the European colonialists had been. Actually, we are a very lucky people, living in times that are fast changing with history being made by the minute. I am following the growing tensions between China and India, China and America’s cyber wars, China and the US… I might be wrong, but I see another, bigger, financial setback for the US economy this year when commercial real estate loans default. This will be much bigger than the home loans, which led to the Crash of 2008. This one will be too big to bail out. Already you can see that the US Congress regards the two bailouts of AIG and the favoritism shown to Goldman Sachs as mistakes. I followed the questioning of the US Treasury Secretary in the Senate Committee and he was most unconvincing. The Euro could collapse too, for it is highly overvalued. However, it is a currency without a father – or many fathers, to be precise. They need to devalue but if they do, it could accelerate the economic collapse of Spain, Greece, the UK and Portugal, to name but four hidden ‘giants’, not to mention ‘Bankrupt Britain’. We mind find the Euro inch further towards the drain, along with the dollar, before the end of this year. The British Pound has already become marginalized.

erna4 State's Unalienable Rights