.. hell hath no fury ...
.. like a violated expectation
-=*=-
Apart from all the shocking negatives, we are left with one thing, and one thing only from the GWBush&Co catastrophe, and that is that they were just sooo bad, sooo hubristic - and so utterly criminal with it, that I, as many others, triggered into action by the perversion of democracy which was the bum’s rush to illegally invade Iraq, put the US under the microscope - and found it wanting in just about all respects.
Straight away, of course, I trigger some 'framing traps:' "Oh yeah, another anti-US rant." But really daaarlings, what else is there? We've had all the canards; "Hate America, love Americans," "Support the troops!" - all bulls**t. America is as America does, and what an eff'n disaster it really is. We have to abandon all pretence; see through all the carefully constructed furphies (keyword: Bernays); what we see (with eyes wide open) is what we've got. Then another canard: "(Mainly US-style) capitalism has brought more prosperity than any other system." Whilst it is true that the US, with only 5% of the world's population has garnered an obscenely whopping 25% of the world's resources to itself, they haven't done it by honest toil - Oh, no; quite the reverse. As the current financial crisis shows, the US has combined business and gangsterism, most of the graduates of the Harvard Business School (for sharks) and their ilk should more correctly be termed banksters.
Along with their hubris comes hypocrisy; say one thing whilst doing some other. In clear text: they deploy lies[1] in an attempt to disguise their criminal acts. The lies are often sourced from think tanks, erstwhile innocuous unless employed for criminal purposes, as they are by our so-called ruling élites (mainly US, UK, Aus & Israeli), except that there's nothing élite about criminality. The lies form a web of deceit that I refer to as the pushed-paradigm, trumpeted by the politicians (of both 'stripes' in our largely two party systems, noting that bipartisanship is itself deeply undemocratic), augmented by purchased 'talking heads,' transmitted by, even amplified by, the corrupt and venal corporate MSM - and, to their great shame, many publicly financed broadcasters like the AusBC & SBS; boo! Hiss! - Traitors all! Another clear-text: we the sheople® are being deliberately propagandised by our 'Establishments[2].' Outside of the Anglo-Judaic-sphere others copy or emulate - but they must in order to compete; a real-world case of bad-apples spoiling 'the game' for all. This is not what they teach us starting in kindergarten, hence the violated expectations.
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four[4] brought us the concept of thought-crime, but what of ruling-élite-crime? It is an incontrovertible fact, that not only do the rich get richer, but in the last few years (I like to begin my history with the most ghastly of war crimes, namely the A-bombings, but the story is much longer); the rich have increased their depredations to extreme, ever-more obscene levels. (Again, the 'framing trap:' no, this is not 'the politics of envy,' just the facts.) I have heard rumblings, (falsely) asserting that the current financial crisis was somehow caused by some sort of 'leftist' forcing of impossible mortgages onto the unable to pay (NINJA; no income, no job), but recall the ever-present, filthy think-tank/Luntz-playbook style framing. No; it was the self-styled 'masters of the (financial) universe' that invented the latest Ponzi scheme now collapsing[3].
Q: What will it take?
We, those who can see, see a world dominated by crime, mostly originating in the US. Extreme wealth, concentrated in extremely few hands (so few as in the order of the Forbes 400, say), effectively controls the world via the warned-about M/I-plex. They control commerce and politics, and through them the sheople, mainly via lying-by-design, manipulative propaganda, with brutal force not far off. But it's gone wrong; more accurately perhaps, it was always wrong. The simplest way of seeing that it's wrong is that they try to hide it all behind lies, with threats escalating to actual, murdering violence ("Economic Hit Man," then see [5], brrr!) It's gone wrong with the murder-for-spoil wars, literally millions slaughtered. It's gone wrong with commerce, keyword 'economic rent.' It's gone wrong with finance, keyword 'sub-prime.' And horror of horrors, it's going wrong with our once jewel-like planet's ecosystem, quite literally our one and only life-line, keyword 'greedastrophe®.'
A: The people united will never be defeated. We will posit two types of people, those with us (we the sheople), and those agin' us. Along with the perpetrators are their paid minions, those betraying us for $s. For them, both the corruptors and the corrupted, crime obviously pays - at least, currently. Then what of the amateurs, those I term the erring ideologues?
We need to save the world - because it is exactly 'business as usual' that is crashing our systems. Phillip Adams suggests it's time for any and all who have contributed to the crash, also those who merely 'support' those doing the crashing, to change their tune.
I repeat (looping) Q: What will it take - to save the planet?
-=*end*=-
Ref(s):
[1] lie2 —n. 1 intentionally false statement (tell a lie). 2 something that deceives. —v. (lies, lied, lying) 1 tell a lie or lies. 2 (of a thing) be deceptive. give the lie to show the falsity of (a supposition etc.). [Old English] [POD]
[2] establishment ... 6 (the Establishment) social group with authority or influence and resisting change. [ibid.]
[3] Most Serious Financial Crisis in World History
Grand Theft America.
Financial Crime of the Century
by Stephen Lendman
Global Research, September 29, 2008
«... The result of unfettered capitalism's fatal flaw - unbridled greed in a rigged system that rewards the few at the expense of most others. First an explanation of how it works. Free-wheeling, "free market" Chicago School fundamentalism the way economist Milton Friedman championed it in his 1962 book "Capitalism and Freedom" and taught it to students for decades. He believed that government's sole function is "to protect our freedom both from (outside) enemies....and from our fellow-citizens." Preserve law and order. Enforce private contracts. Protect private property and "foster competitive (unregulated) markets." Everything else in public hands is "socialism....blasphemy." Not to be tolerated.»
[globalresearch/Lendman]
[4] How close does this come?
«... has major significance for its vision of an all-knowing government which uses pervasive and constant surveillance of the populace, insidious and blatant propaganda, and brutal control over its citizens.»
[wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four]
My comment: the conscious manipulation of us, we the sheople, for nefarious and up to murderingly criminal purposes, constitutes an insurmountable affront to us, our democracies and the wider world.
Where are the adults?
-=*=-
[5] Then, a PS: Don't think 1984 is here? Try Lendman again:
«...The 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade is for combat. It's not the National Guard or local police. It's trained for war. "Equipped to kill people" with potent weapons, and a last hurrah scheme may be planned to divert public attention from the financial crisis. A "terrorist" attack with "chemical, biological" or other dangerous weapons. A possible pretext for martial law at a time the administration and Congress are vulnerable. When people are angry about Washington protecting the privileged. Partnering with them in crime. Defrauding the public and stifling dissent. Moving one step closer to tyranny and away from silly notions about democracy. Proving crime indeed does pay and awfully well on Wall Street. "It's the economy, stupid." Theirs, not ours.»
2008/10/14
erring ideologues, part ? ...
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G'day Phil, on seeing .. or nor seeing, when the scale is beyond comprehension ... from Tomdispatch Mike Davis "Can Obama See the Grand Canyon?"
As they get a mention ... Keith Olbermann with a Special Comment on the Repug tactics. Video and transcript.
Glenn Greenwald.
G'day Phil, symptomatic that McInsane, despite polls indicating that his negative tactics were repelling people, should choose more of the same for the third debate. "... there's no success like failure ...".
Ideological failure.
As the disaster known as the Bush era draws to a close, we'd do well to recognize just how deep its failures go. The Bush debacles — unbridled deregulation, illegal and immoral wars, the experiment in "disaster capitalism" that used to be the proud city of New Orleans — aren't primarily or exclusively policy failures. They're failures caused by two distinct yet interconnected ideologies: neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
On the economic front, both mainstream political parties embraced neoliberalism (also known by a term George Soros coined as "market fundamentalism") even before George W. Bush's presidency, though he took the ideology to new heights. Stemming from the ultra-conservative ideology of world leaders including Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl, neoliberalism advocates small government and the supremacy of free markets to promote growth. The United States exported these "Washington Consensus" policies — privatization, liberalization, and budget austerity — through influential financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
In military terms, the ideology of neoconservatism has grown in prominence for the last decade. Presenting a case for U.S. exceptionalism (what the rest of the world calls U.S. imperialism), neoconservatives argue that the United States has "a unique role in preserving and extending an international order." Neoconservatives such as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz sought and ultimately carried out the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and they have threatened to expand that war to Iran for the last few years.
It's worth bearing in mind that neoliberalism and neoconservatism are deeply intertwined and have roots in the colonial history of Europe and the United States. Both ideologies hinge on the idea that the world should follow U.S. orders but not emulate U.S. actions and are therefore deeply hypocritical. As the Bush administration finally draws to a close amid a global economic crisis sparked by inadequate regulation, it's time to permanently retire both of them.
Both candidates pursue the same faiulure .. Afghanistan, Chris Floyd, "Road to Perdition".
From Tomdispatch Aziz Huq
The eminence grise .. a book review.
"... and failure's no success at all".
G'day Phil, paid in inverse proportion to performance?
Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.
Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.
From the Guardian.
The above link is the starting point for Chris Floyd's latest.
William Greider.
Michael T. Klare on the crisis and the environment.
G'day Phil, I'll mention the second story that caught my eye this morning ... it is an example of the effect of the negative campaigning by the Repugs as well as some underlying attitudes.
A New Mexico gun shop owner says that he is "proud to offend" supporters of Barack Obama with its sign outside the store which reads "Pre-Osama bin Biden sale! Today, 7 PM - MIDNITE."
And even while the sale is over, the sign remains.
"If this sign offended people, I am damn proud of it," said shop owner Cope Reynolds in an interview with The Daily Times. Reynolds explained that "a lot of it is because of his Muslim upbringing."
"His name is Osama, er ..." began a store patron during an interview. "I mean, Barack Hasam Obama."
"It's actually Hussein Obama," said the cameraman.
"Hussein Obama," continued the patron. "That is a Muslim name."
It is just as well that I had seen another story that was pleasing ... Colin Powell endorsing Obama.
More here.
And Glenn Greenwald.
I'm anything but a fan of Colin Powell, and have no idea what impact (if any) his Meet the Press endorsement of Obama will have (full video is below), but I was really glad to see him make the following point in explaining why he has rejected McCain's candidacy:
I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian.
But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be President?
Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: he's a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
He better watch out or the subject of this story will be after him. It is a way they used to do things in America.
G'day Phil, a reminder from Chris Floyd of the true nature of Colin Powell.
Now to matters electoral ... Robert F Kennedy Jr and Greg Palast - "Block the Vote."
A criminal conspiracy from ACORN does grow.
It might need to be such a big fix that it will be blatant.
Now, more on the bailout ...
From Tomdispatch, Nick Turse and the suffering that has been caused .. note - the wrong people are suffering.
G'day Phil, here is a good read - Chris Hedges "The Idiots Who Rule America."
G'day Phil, G7 meets .. but what of the rest? Vijay Prashad - "Wealth's Apostles".
Chris Floyd with more on Colin Powell.
DemocracyNow! starting here on Iraq deal, McCarthyism and Powell.
Naomi Wolf and that combat brigade.
And now for a bit of fun ... Jon Stewart on how to tell if you're a real American. Video.
G'day Phil, "Give me an "F". Give me a "U" ... what's that spell? "War on terror". Tom Engelhardt's report card on the GWOT.
On the brief occasions when the President now appears in the Rose Garden to "comfort" or "reassure" a shock-and-awed nation, you can almost hear those legions of ducks quacking lamely in the background. Once upon a time, George W. Bush, along with his top officials and advisors, hoped to preside over a global Pax Americana and a domestic Pax Republicana -- a legacy for the generations. More recently, their highest hope seems to have been to slip out of town in January before the you-know-what hits the fan. No such luck.
Of course, what they feared most was that the you-know-what would hit in Iraq, and so put their efforts into sweeping that disaster out of sight. Once again, however, as in September 2001 and August 2005, they were caught predictably flatfooted by a domestic disaster. In this case, they were ambushed by an insurgent stock market heading into chaos, killer squads of credit default swaps, and a hurricane of financial collapse.
At the moment, only 7% of Americans believe the country is "going in the right direction," Bush's job-approval ratings have dropped into the low 20s with no bottom in sight, and North Dakota is "in play" in the presidential election. Think of that as the equivalent of a report card on Bush's economic policies. In other words, the Yale legacy student with the C average has been branded for life with a resounding domestic "F" for failure. (His singular domestic triumph may prove to be paving the way for the first African American president.)
But there's another report card that's not in. Despite a media focus on Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the record of his Global War on Terror (and the Bush Doctrine that once went with it) has yet to be fully assessed. This is surprising, since administration actions in waging that war in what neoconservatives used to call "the arc of instability" -- a swath of territory running from North Africa to the Chinese border -- add up to a record of failure unprecedented in American history.
And Keith Olbermann with a "Special Comment" on the gutter crawlers ...
G'day Phil, more on the financial crisis - or how to build a $100 Trillion house of cards and stick the public with the fallout.
Glenn Greenwald reports that some Repugs are either denying they said such things or apologizing if they taken the wrong way. After decades of sleaze, are they worried it isn't working?
But there are ways of countering the public intention ....
And from DemocracyNow!:
Intro.
Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. We speak to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy.
They've started already.
Other stories in the program:
Trailing in Polls, McCain Campaign Intensifies Attacks on Obama
Does Obama’s Record-Setting Fundraising Mark the End of Public Campaign Financing?
Weeks After Prosecutor’s Resignation, US Drops Charges Against 5 Gitmo Prisoners—But Won’t Release Them.
Just more of the same.
The Roman historian Tacitus famously put the following lines in the mouth of a British chieftain opposed to imperial Rome: "They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace."
Thus does Tom Engelhardt begin his introduction to a piece by Michael Schwartz - "Wrecked Iraq."
More on Iraq from Juan Cole.
And some want more ... Glenn Greenwald on an Op-Ed calling for action against Iran.
Two former Senators -- conservative Democrat Chuck Robb and conservative Republican Dan Coats (that's what "bipartisan" means) -- have a jointly authored Op-Ed in The Washington Post today decreeing what the U.S. must do towards Iran. The essence: Iran must be prevented, using any means necessary, from not only obtaining nuclear weapons, but also denied even "the ability to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon," which means "the complete cessation of enrichment activities inside Iran," even for civilian purposes.
To achieve that, the Patriot Act should be used to block all Iranian banks from any involvement in the U.S. economy and "our European allies [must] sever commercial relations with Tehran." And this is what we should immediately prepare for:
The U.S. military is capable of launching a devastating strike on Iran's nuclear and military infrastructure -- probably with more decisive results than the Iranian leadership realizes.
An initial air campaign would probably last up to several weeks and would require vigilance for years to come. Military action would incur significant risks, including the possibility of U.S. and allied losses, wide-scale terrorist reprisals against Israel and other nations, and heightened unrest in the region.
Both to increase our leverage over Iran and to prepare for a military strike, if one were required, the next president will need to begin building up military assets in the region from day one.
They conclude with this grave warning: "Time may be shorter than many imagine, and failure could carry a catastrophic cost to the national interest."
So here we have, yet again, our glorious Foreign Policy Community threatening another country -- one which hasn't attacked us and can't attack us -- with war, threatening to bomb them with "devastating strikes" that "would probably last up to several weeks and would require vigilance for years to come." And they want the next President, beginning this January, to "build up military assets in the region" in order to threaten and prepare for those attacks.
Of course, some of the usual suspects are involved.
A little bit of reality from Mohammed ElBaradei.
Not that it concerns those who create their own reality - and leave others to deal with the consequences (see above MS piece).
G'day Phil, Gordon Prather on the Op-Ed previously covered by Glenn Greenwald - the usual suspects with their attack Iran mantra.
More usual suspects - WINEP contemplating the "last resort".
Preventive - a seemingly innocuous word has been getting a lot of play in recent publications and conferences sponsored by Washington think tanks - perhaps nowhere more than at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
Generally we don’t expect death, destruction and illegality to rest on the preventive side of the equation. Then again, after March 19, 2003, perhaps we should. When WINEP uses the word preventive they mean "preventive military action." More precisely - a military attack on another country, in this case Iran that is neither in self-defense nor in response to an immediate threat of attack.
The likelihood of a military strike against Iran either by the United States or Israel has been debated for years waxing and waning with the geopolitical climate. What is not in question is the steady effort by some to lay the ground work for such an action.
Glenn Greenwald on what happens if you don't toe the line.
Over at Reason Magazine, in an article by Contributing Editor Cathy Young, I stand accused of harboring "sympathy for Russia"; tolerance of, and perhaps even support for, Putin's internal repression and oligarchical rule; and overarching anti-Americanism, or -- as she puts it -- overriding allegiance to "the cause of sticking a finger in America's eye." My transgression? This post of last week, in which I documented and objected to the misleading, one-sided propaganda from our political and media establishment depicting Georgia as the sweet, plucky, innocent, freedom-loving victim of Russia's "unprovoked" attack last August.
It seems Young has stumbled into a time machine and catapulted herself back to 2002 -- that glorious era when those who disputed the Government's scary warnings about the Grave Iraqi Menace were, for that reason alone, smeared as -- to use the Right's favorite term -- "objectively pro-Saddam," and, similarly, those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were deemed America-hating traitors: "not anti-war, just on the other side." Young then travels further back in time, circa 1954, to warn that my pro-Russia and Putin-apologist sentiments are found in "many quarters of the American left -- from Greenwald to Noam Chomsky to Alexander Cockburn and Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation (not to mention numerous commenters at sites like Salon.com and The Huffington Post)" -- all part of a Russia-loving cabal similar to those "Cold War-era leftists [who] pleaded for a more understanding view of the Soviet Union."
And thus, in attempting to refute my point as "blatantly false," Young actually proves it perfectly: the very same manipulative, debate-suppressive tactics used in 2002-2003 to propagandize the citizenry about the Grave Threat from Saddam are now being deployed (often by the same people and with the same motives) to impose false orthodoxies about Georgia and Russia, whereby those who refuse to ingest these deceitful Manichean fairy tales about that war -- or who, more unthinkably still, oppose the ill-conceived, dangerous plan to turn Georgia into a U.S. protectorate through NATO membership and other entanglements -- are smeared as Putin apologists and guilty of sympathizing with, acquiescing to, and even supporting Russian tyranny. Ironically, one must embrace and recite false propaganda from the American government/media establishment about Russia/Georgia, or else one is guilty of Putin-style authoritarianism.
Oh so familiar.
The Crawford Caligula gets involved in electoral matters.
"I got it wrong". - Alan Greenspan.
In a congressional hearing room on Thursday, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, one of the most influential civil servants of the past century, saw his stock plummet—and his entire career lose its moorings. More important, the ideological battle over economic theory and the role of government in markets—a fight that has played out in the current presidential campaign—took a historic turn.
With members of the House oversight and government reform committee blasting Greenspan for his past decisions that helped pave the way for the current financial crisis, he acknowledged that his libertarian view of markets and the financial world had not worked out so well. "You know," he told the legislators, "that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well." While Greenspan did defend his various decisions, he admitted that his faith in the ability of free and loosely-regulated markets to produce the best outcomes had been shaken: "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."
In other words, whoops—there goes decades of Ayn Rand down the drain.
Good place for A R.
Also.
G'day Phil, there was a raid by US forces into Syria - Chris Floyd on the matter.
Taking a page from the new bipartisan strategy now being employed in Afghanistan -- waging cross-border military raids into sovereign countries in order to protect a failing military occupation in a neighboring country -- the United States has apparently launched its first known incursion into Syria: the usual assault from on high with the usual tally of children as "collateral damage."
The BBC reports that American forces launched a small ground-air attack on the border village of Sukkiraya on Sunday, with military helicopters disgorging a squad of troops who attacked a building and killed "a man, his four children and a married couple."
Officially, the Pentagon has neither confirmed nor denied the attack, but the brass leaked word to the Associated Press that the shiv-stab into Syrian territory did indeed take place, and that it was aimed at -- wait for it -- "foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda." As the leaky Pentagon mouthpiece told AP: "We are taking matters into our own hands."
(And isn't it remarkable how every single person killed by American forces in the global War on Terror is somehow "linked to al-Qaeda"? Even the children. I guess American bullets and bombs have some kind of super-secret al-Qaeda sorting software embedded in them, guiding the munitions directly to the evil ones -- including the little evil ones: the doctrine of "pre-emption" in its purest form -- and sparing everyone else.)
Why has the Bush Administration raided Syria now, after years of accusing Damascus of aiding and abetting "al Qaeda-linked terrorist" funneling into Iraq? Well, most beserker militarist regimes have myriad reasons behind their various lashings-out, so there is probably a number of different factors invovled.
More from Juan Cole.
On the campaign trail .. the Repugs don't like ACORN so resort to their usual tactics.
An increasingly desperate Republican attack machine has recently identified the community organizing group ACORN as Public Enemy Number One. Among ACORN's alleged crimes, perhaps the most serious is that it caused, nearly single-handedly, the world's financial crisis. That's the fantasy. In the reality-based world, it was ACORN that sounded the alarm about the exploitative lending practices that led to the current mortgage meltdown and financial crisis.
Since the 1970s ACORN, which has 400,000 low- and moderate-income "member families" in more than 100 cities in forty states, has been warning Congress to protect borrowers from the banking industry's irresponsible, risky and predatory practices -- subprime loans, racial discrimination (called "redlining") and rip-off fees. ACORN has persistently called for stronger regulations on banks, private mortgage companies, mortgage brokers and rating agencies. For years, ACORN has alerted public officials that the industry was hoodwinking many families into taking out risky loans they couldn't afford and whose fine print they couldn't understand.
Now John McCain and his fellow conservatives are accusing ACORN of strong-arming Congress and big Wall Street banks into making subprime loans to poor families who couldn't afford them, thus causing the economic disaster. McCain's campaign is running a one-and-a-half-minute video that claims Barack Obama once worked for ACORN, repeats the accusation that ACORN is responsible for widespread voter registration fraud and accuses ACORN of "bullying banks, intimidation tactics, and disruption of business." The ad claims that ACORN "forced banks to issue risky home loans -- the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today."
Of course, if the Repugs say something, it does not necessarily mean that it is true.
Now a warning from Chris Hedges about the rise of populists in a time of crisis.
The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.
I watched these competing populisms flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.
Baldwin, like Nader, rails against corporatism and our involvement in foreign wars, wants to repeal NAFTA and denounces the curtailment of civil liberties. But Baldwin goes on to support the abolishment of whole departments of the federal government, such as the Department of Education. He calls for U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO, the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the outlawing of abortion and removing all restrictions on the purchasing of firearms. One of his catchier campaign slogans is: “To help keep your family safe and your country free, go buy a gun.” He wants to seal our borders, deny amnesty and social services to illegal immigrants and end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. He calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver.
These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency. The anger toward our elites will morph into rage. These new populisms may not be articulated by Nader and Baldwin, but they will be articulated by people like Nader and Baldwin.
Be aware ....
G'day Phil, more on the "where haven't we bombed" mentality - beginning with a report of US attacks in Pakistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani once again warned NATO that the unilateral air strikes into Pakistani territory were “counter-productive” today as the United States launched two drone strikes, in North and South Waziristan Agency, respectively, killing a total of 32 people.
The attack in North Waziristan is said to have targeted a “mid-level al-Qaeda leader” known as Abu Akash al-Iraqi. One Pakistani intelligence official said that he was believed to have been killed in the strike, though other officials cited local intelligence reports saying he was likely not one of the dead. That attack killed more than 20 people.
The other attack occurred just outside of the South Waziristan town of Wana, just a mile from a Pakistani Army base. Militants were among those reported killed, as were Ahmadzai Wazir tribesmen. The large, well-armed tribe last month threatened to take up arms against the US if the strikes continued. They have not yet responded to the latest attack.
Such raids and recalling that into Syria are raising questions and concerns.
Sami Moubayed.
Marcia Mitchell.
Farrah Hassen.
Jacob Hornberger.
After reading this material, much head scratching is the likely result. Crazy? Delusional? Sociopathic? Vested interests? Certainly no regard for law .. or even rationality.
G'day Phil, a couple of items for whenever ... first is Joshua Holland and the mess the US economy is in.
Then Naomi Klein on the trillion dollar crime scene.
Some boats do need to be rocked .. or preferably sunk without trace.
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