The Wild Wild Left - corruption

Unpluggable Leak In Gulf Between You And Wall Street

Edger — Sun, 30 May 2010 19:35:10 GMT

Twenty months after the financial meltdown of 2008, the U.S. congress is moving ahead with its financial system reform. In the following weeks, the Senate and House bills will be combined. While many details are still to be ironed out around issues like derivatives and consumer protection, it is clear that the legislation will not break up the massive banks that are blamed with the crisis. President Obama says the legislation will ensure the U.S. taxpayers never again bailout Wall Street, but Public Citizen's David Arkush says that until the banks influence on Capitol Hill is broken up or countered, there is no way to guarantee an end to bailouts.

Real News Network - May 29, 2010
Banks still the powerhouse in DC
David Arkush: Bank lobbyists outnumber reform lobbyists 11 to 1 on derivatives legislation alone
David Arkush is the Director of Congress Watch, a division of Public Citizen, which serves a dual role of monitoring lobbying activity, while lobbying as a consumer advocate. Arkush joined Congress Watch in January 2008 after working as a staff attorney at Public Justice, where he litigated civil rights, environmental, and consumer cases. He has lectured at Georgetown University, where he was awarded his Masters of Law in 2007. He graduated from Harvard Law in 2003, where he served as Managing Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Kevin G. Hall, is the national economics correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. Previously he served as Latin America correspondent. During his career he has reported from Mexico City, Saudi Arabia, Miami, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., for the Journal of Commerce and United Press International. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese.

Dr.Frank-N-Furter, meet Miss Synthia...

wyamarus — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:24:13 GMT

Just got this relayed by e-mail from the ETC Group, a biotech, agribusiness, and conservancy watchdog group out of Canada and the US. Just another way in which the arrogance of the Class of Entitlement is running roughshod over the rights and welfare of the 'ordinary' people of the Planet.

ETC Group
News Release
20 May 2010
www.etcgroup.org
Synthia is Alive ...and Breeding: Panacea or Pandora's Box?
As Craig Venter announces lab-made life, ETC Group calls for Global
Moratorium on Synthetic Biology.
In a paper published today in the journal Science, the J. Craig Venter
Institute and Synthetic Genomics Inc announced the laboratory creation of
the world's first self-reproducing organism whose entire genome was built
from scratch by a machine.(1) The construction of this synthetic organism,
anticipated and dubbed "Synthia" by the ETC Group three years ago, will
stir a firestorm of controversy over the ethics of building artificial life
and the implications of the largely unknown field of synthetic biology.
Panacea, or...? According to today's publication, "Synthia" could be a boon
to second-generation agrofuels making it - theoretically - possible to feed
people and cars simultaneously. The article further suggests that Synthia,
or synthetic biology, could help clean up the environment, save us from
climate change, and address the food crisis. "Synthia is not a
one-stop-shop for all our societal woes," disputes Pat Mooney, Executive
Director of ETC Group, an international technology watchdog based in
Canada. "It is much more likely to cause a whole new set of problems
governments and society are ill-prepared to address."

...Pandora's Box? "This is the quintessential Pandora's box moment - like the
splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep. We will all have
to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment," comments Jim
Thomas of the ETC Group. "Synthetic biology is a high-risk profit-driven
field, building organisms out of parts that are still poorly understood.(2)
We know that lab-created life-forms can escape, become biological weapons,
and that their use threatens existing natural biodiversity. Most worrying
of all, Craig Venter is handing this powerful technology to the world's
most irresponsible and environmentally damaging industry by partnering with
the likes of BP and Exxon to hasten the commercialization of synthetic
life-forms."(3)
Synthetic biology refers to the construction of novel life-forms using
synthetic DNA made from off-the-shelf chemicals - a form of "extreme
genetic engineering". The team behind today's announcement, led by
controversial scientist and entrepreneur Craig Venter, is associated with a
private company, Synthetic Genomics Inc, bankrolled by the US government
and energy behemoths BP and Exxon. Synthetic Genomics recently announced a
$600 million research and investment deal with Exxon Mobil in addition to a
2007 investment from BP for an undisclosed amount. Venter, who led the
private sector part of the human genome project ten years ago, has already
applied for patents related to Synthia's technology.(4)
Although high-profile backers of synthetic biology now occupy key positions
in the US Obama administration(5) there still remains no proper national or
international oversight of new high-risk, technologies that carry vast
implications for humanity and the natural world. In 2006, ETC Group joined
with other organizations to demand the formal, open and inclusive oversight
of synthetic biology(6) and have since called for a global halt on research
pending the development of global regulations. ETC Group has reiterated
that call at a scientific meeting of the United Nations Convention on
Biological Diversity in Nairobi attended by more than 100 governments.(7)
Pandemonium? The lack of global rules governing the field also concerns
many governments, illustrated by the biodiversity talks in Nairobi.
Mundita Lim of the Philippines delegation to the CBD expressed her
country's concerns "about the serious potential impacts of synthetic
biology on biodiversity... we believe that there should be no field release
of synthetic life, cell or genome into the environment until thorough
scientific assessments have been conducted in a transparent, open and
participatory process involving all Parties, indigenous and local
communities that will all be potentially affected by these synthetic life
forms with unknown consequences on biodiversity, the environment and
livelihoods." Today's announcement will give new urgency to the debate on
synthetic biology and provide a dramatic example of the need for rigorous
oversight over new technologies before their environmental or commercial
release is permitted.
---
1) Science, 20 May 2010, "Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a
Chemically Synthesized Genome," by D. Gibson; J.I. Glass; C. Lartigue; V.N.
Noskov; R.-Y. Chuang; M.A. Algire; M.G. Montague; L. Ma; M.M. Moodie; C.
Merryman; S. Vashee; R. Krishnakumar; N. Assad-Garcia; C.
Andrews-Pfannkoch; E.A. Denisova; L. Young; Z.-Q. Qi; T.H. Segall-Shapiro;
C.H. Calvey; P.P. Parmar; J.C. Venter at J. Craig Venter Institute in
Rockville, MD; G.A. Benders; C.A. Hutchinson III; H.O. Smith; J.C. Venter
at J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, CA. The paper acknowledges
'generous funding' from Synthetic Genomics Inc for this work, that three of
the leaders of the scientific team hold executive positions at Synthetic
Genomics Inc and that the J Craig Venter Institute itself holds stock in
Synthetic Genomics Inc.
2) For a graphic overview of the investors behind Synthetic Genomics, Inc,
see ETC Group's 2007 Poster "The Men & Money Behind Synthia." available
here: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/nod...
3) Some details of Synthetic Genomics deal with BP are available at
http://www.syntheticgenomics.c... and reporting of their
deal with Exxon Mobil is available at http://nyti.ms/sf5A6
4) ETC Group News Release, 7 June 2007, "Patenting Pandora's Bug, Goodbye,
Dolly...Hello, Synthia! J. Craig Venter Institute Seeks Monopoly Patents on
the World's First-Ever Human-Made Life Form" online at
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/nod...
5) US Energy secretary Steven Chu was feted by press as "The Secretary of
Synthetic Biology" when he was named to office last year (see
http://bit.ly/9pMDp8), reflecting his previous role as head of Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab where he oversaw a $600 million dollar investment by
BP in the university's synthetic biology labs. On the other side of that
deal was BP chief scientist Steve Koonin, now Undersecretary for Science in
the DOE. Koonin reportedly spearheaded BP's investment in Synthetic
Genomics Inc.
6) Open Letter on Synthetic Biology from Civil Society, May 2006:
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/mat...
7) ETC Group currently has three staff members in Nairobi at the meeting of
the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice to
the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (SBSTTA 14). The topic of
synthetic biology is under discussion at SBSTTA 14 under an item concerning
the biodiversity risks of next generation biofuels.
Notes to Editors:
ETC Group is an international civil society organization based in Ottawa,
Canada. We conduct research, education and advocacy on issues related to
the social and economic impacts of new technologies on marginalized peoples
- especially in the global South. We look at issues from a human rights
perspective but also address global governance and corporate concentration.
All ETC Group publications are available free of charge on our website:
www.etcgroup.org
ETC Group has been monitoring developments in synthetic biology for the
past five years and has pioneered civil society activism around the field.
In 2006 we joined dozens of other civil society organisations to protest
plans for voluntary governance of synthetic biology. In 2007 we released
"Extreme Genetic Engineering" the first ever critical introduction to the
field (available at http://www.etcgroup.org/en/nod... We also exposed
plans by J. Craig Venter and his colleagues to patent their planned
synthetic organism, which we dubbed 'Synthia'. A full archive of ETC
Group's writings, comments and press releases on the topic of Synthetic
Biology is available at http://www.etcgroup.org/en/iss...
and video, audio and graphic resources on the topic are available at
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/mat...
ETC Group has three staff members in Nairobi at the meeting of the
Scientific Body to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (SBSTTA 14).
The topics currently under discussion at SBSTTA include the biodiversity
risks of next generation biofuels and new and emerging threats to
biodiversity.

These folks at ETC Group have been in the forefront of stopping reckless, speculative, and unproven bioengineering and terraforming experiments like the attempt last year to blanket 200 square miles of the South Pacific with a nanotech carbon "powder" to block sunlight from getting to ocean plankton in an attempt to create a "carbon offset" and a future "trading asset",and the proposed attempt to create a 'solar shield' by releasing reflective nanoparticles in the upper atmosphere to reduce solar warming.

Their(ETC Group's) guiding principle is when the long-term consequences are unknown, the precautionary principle should be followed. The modern-day alchemists and necromancers like Craig Venter,and his associates at Sygenta or Monsanto should remember the advice that their classical predecessors of antiquity followed; "Do not call up what you can not put down".

Down the Foggy Ruins Of Time

Rusty1776 — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:38:02 GMT

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you.

Republicans have a Tambourine Man. His name is Limbaugh. He's a psychopath, but that doesn't bother Republicans, they admire psychopaths. Democrats have a Tambourine Man. His name is Obama. He panders to psychopaths every chance he gets, but that doesn't bother Democrats, pandering to psychopaths is what they do. They call it Centrism.

I remember Election Night 2008, I remember the hope so many progressives had that evening, but that evening's empire of hope has turned into sand, vanished from our hands, left us blindly here to stand but still not sleeping. Who can sleep? Who can sleep when war crimes won't be prosecuted, when Gitmo won't be closed, when there'll be no withdrawal from Iraq, when the war in Afghanistan will go on and on and on, when we're all on a one way trip on Wall Street's magic swirling ship, when our senses have all been stripped, when our hands can't feel to grip, when our feet are too numb to step, when there's nothing left to do but watch the boot heels of Karma grind what's left of this country into dust.

My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet. I have no one to meet, and this ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming . . .

Independence Hall is just a relic from America's forgotten past. Democracy is gone, it's vanished into the foggy ruins of time.
It didn't have to be this way. America had a Tambourine Man once, a Tambourine Man worth following . . .

He played a song for us, he played a song for the whole world. But no one sings that song anymore, no one can remember the words. They can't remember much of anything, they can't remember what's real and what's not, they can't even remember what happened yesterday, it's already vanished into the foggy ruins of time.

They turn on their TV's every jingle jangle morning, and what do they see? 200 channels of unreality, that's what they see. They hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme, they see laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun, but it's not aimed at anyone, it's just escaping on the run.

There's a Tambourine Man on every channel . . .

They're just ragged clowns, no one should pay them any mind, it's just a shadow they're seeing that they're chasing. But tens of millions of Americans watch them anyway, they're ready to go anywhere, they're ready for to fade, into their own parade, they're under the dancing spell of every Tambourine Man with unreality to sell and a channel to sell it on. All memory and fate have been driven deep beneath the waves, they've gone disappearing, through the smoke rings of what's left of America's mind.

Evening's empire of hope has turned into sand, it's vanished from my hand, left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping. So play a song for me, Wild Wild Left, play a song for everyone, play the good ones, play the best ones so they don't vanish too. Play them, keep playing them, because there's a diamond sky somewhere, a real one. Play those songs, keep playing them, and maybe someday we'll dance beneath that diamond sky, with one hand waving free, maybe someday all the songs will be good ones, maybe someday everyone will sing along and these dark days will be forgotten, maybe someday, deceit and injustice and war will vanish into the foggy ruins of time, they'll be what's forgotten, they'll be gone for good and no one will even know what they were.

The World They Set On Fire

Rusty1776 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:47:39 GMT

The plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty used to say, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Now it says, "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here."

Why did everything go to Hell so fast?

driftglass knows why, we ll know why . . .

We got the Bush Regime, arguably the most incompetent, corrupt and outright-treasonous Administration in American history. A regime so reckless, savage and gleefully bestial that it made the career-Nixon-hating Hunter Thompson actually pine for the good old days of Tricky Dick: "I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal."
And, like Nixon, it is more than likely that not a single one of the smirking traitors who nearly wrecked this country will ever spend a day in jail. Instead they remain lodged in our flesh like so many ricin pellets, oozing their poison into our national bloodstream, waddle from one fawning audience to another, worming their way into major media outlets, or dispatching their degenerate children and underlings out into the world the keep their poison pumping.
They soiled our good name, bankrupted the country, shredded the Constitution and kicked the crutches out from under the global economy on their way out the door, and while it is sometimes hard to focus on them through the flames of the world they set on fire, we must.

America could have had justice.

But America didn't get justice.

America got Hopey McChange, who said he wants to look forward, not backward. Who said there must be no "retribution", no "vengeance", no "payback", who said the era of "divisive partisanship" must end.
I don't have to translate that for you, progressives have learned the hard way how to translate Hopey McChange Language into actual words with actual meanings. You know what he meant. So do the war criminals who set Iraq on fire, the Wall Street Ponzi Schemers who set the global economy on fire, the DOJ fascists who set the rule of law on fire, the Diebold criminals who napalmed the 2004 Election into a firestorm of fraud, the torturers at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and hell only knows where else who torched the Geneva Conventions to ashes, and most of all, Bush and Cheney, who handed out blowtorches for 8 years to every halfwit RePug appointee in the entire federal government and smirked while democracy in America went up in flames.

Those criminals all heard him. They heard Hopey say no "retribution", no "vengeance", no "payback". They knew what that meant, they knew exactly what that meant, it meant they're home free, it meant they're above the law and always will be, it meant they can lodge even deeper into our flesh like so many ricin pellets, ooze even more of their poison into our national bloodstream, escalate their rampage against democracy, against human rights, against equality, against the truth, against reality itself.

What else needs to be said? About Hopey McChange. About his moral cowardice. About his obscene refusal to defend the Constitution and the rule of law. About his complicity in wars of aggression, in torture, in massive financial crimes against humanity.

The truth has indicted him. The truth has convicted him. Nothing can exonerate him. His guilt is manifest. Speeches cannot wash it away, charm cannot wash it away, the scheming of Rahm cannot wash it away, the prattling of Gibbs and Axelrod and Plouffe cannot wash it away, the clapping of Obamabots cannot wash it away, nothing can wash it away.

Anyone here, anyone on any progressive blog, any progressive anywhere who will not support a primary challenge in 2012 against Obama needs to walk away from their computer right now, find the nearest mirror, and look in it. They'll see a craven hypocrite looking back at them, a fraud, a "pragmatic" Russian Roulette player with a gun in their hand and a Lesser Evil bullet in every chamber.

Progressives pumping Lesser Evil bullets into their heads every election doesn't seem to be a very effective strategy. Progressives who have so many Lesser Evil bullet holes in their heads they need a calculator to count them all will call me a radical, but I think progressives should start pumping bullets into the Two-Party system instead. Truth Bullets. Reality Bullets. Third Party Bullets.

(Cross-posted at Docudharma and Firedoglake).

Quiet Storms

Rusty1776 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:20:55 GMT

Four score and twenty betrayals ago, when Barack Obama was busy posturing as a transformational leader, when he was busy promising government of the people, by the people, and for the people, he spoke of the core values progressives have always believed in as the solution to America's problems . . .

That spirit of looking out for one another, that core value that says I am my brothers keeper, I am my sister's keeper, that spirit is most evident during times of great hardship, but that spirit can't just be restricted to moments of great catastrophe. Because as I stand here and look out at the thousands of folks who have gathered here today, I know that there's some folks who are going through their own quiet storms.

Hurricane Ike had just hit the gulf coast of Texas, Wall Street was about to implode, the foundations of the economy were crumbling, Americans everywhere were losing their jobs, their homes, their last remnants of trust in the government . . .

All across America there are quiet storms taking place. There are lives of quiet desperation. People who need just a little bit of help. Now, Americans are a self-reliant people, we're an independent people. We don't like asking somebody else to do what we can do ourselves, but you know what we understand is that every once in awhile, somebody's going to get knocked down.

Every once in awhile . . .

Yes, and every once in awhile, the sun comes up. Then, every once in awhile, it goes down again.

Low income Americans get knocked down every day, middle class Americans get knocked down every day, seniors on fixed incomes get knocked down every day. Republicans knocked them down for 30 years, and now Barack Obama and that gang of corporate enforcers that used to be the Democratic Party are doing it. A punch in the face is a punch in the face. Analyze that, Beltway Republicrats. When Americans are flat on their back all the time, they don't give a damn whether the fist that knocked them down was a Republican fist or a Democratic fist. A corporate fist is a corporate fist. Whistle past that graveyard, Obamabots. Have an "ideologue" diary contest, fill that wreck list of yours with "ideologue" ravings and let's all see who can clap the loudest.
Every time Americans try to get up they get punched to the ground again, by health insurance profiteers, by bankers and predatory lenders, by credit card company and drug company and oil company thugs. Those profit-addicted junkies in their crack house corporations can call it "free market capitalism" all they want, but that's not what it is.

It's a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, it's a black branch with blood that keeps dripping, it's a walk through the depths of the deepest dark forest, where the people are many and their hands are all empty, where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, where the home in the valley meets the damp, dirty prison, where the executioner's face is always well hidden, where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten.

Turn off the network "news". Put the petitions away. Hang up the phone. Forget about calling Congress. You don't need to watch TV to know what the "news" will be, you don't need to send petitions you know will be ignored, you don't need to call Congress to know what the answer's going to be.

Bob Dylan was right 40 years ago, and he's still right.

Those quiet storms Obama talked about before Rahm handed him a club and told him to use it on all the wrong people won't be quiet storms much longer. There are too many quiet storms, there's too much suffering, there are too many consequences piling up, the silence is not going to last, the biggest storm this country's ever seen is heading our way and there won't be anything quiet about it.

It would be wise to get ready for that.

I remember the protesters at the Republican Convention in St. Paul. I remember their courage. They were the heart and soul of change we can believe in. They were the freedom you've never had, they were the leaders you've never known, they were the answer you've never understood. They were no one, but they were everyone, they were nothing, but they were everything. They were humanity taking a stand against inhumanity, they were the light on streets of darkness, they were reality in a system of unreality, they were the truth in a nation of lies, they were the promise of healing in a world of pain.

There will be more of them next time. At both conventions. Many more. Too many for the "free speech zones" to hold, too many for the talking heads to explain away, so many that the whole world will be watching.

Be one of those protesters. Be one of those Americans. Be the heart and soul of change you can believe in, be the leader you didn't know you could be, be the answer you finally hear blowing in the wind. Be humanity taking a stand against inhumanity, be the light on streets of darkness, be reality in a system of unreality, be the truth in a nation of lies, be the promise of healing in a world of pain.

This world is going to need healing, because a Storm of Karma is coming.

The Beltway Republicrats are heading right into it, but they don't even see it. I don't know when it's going to hit, but I know one thing, when that storm hits full force, it's going to be much too big for their little boat.

How many times can a politician turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?

Every time.

That's how many times . . .

(Cross-posted at Docudharma and Firedoglake)

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

Edger — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:31:41 GMT

Over at Mindfully.org you can find hundreds of big and small literary and informational treasures for those interested in peering through the veils of darkness that the media does it's best to pull over our eyes with all of their well practiced smoke and mirrors.

One such is in the Political/Social category. An article titled Beyond Voting about the limits of electoral politics, that is particularly relevant this year.

Here's an excerpt, but the entire thing is worth a close read, and some intense discussion or at least much thought, IMHO...

Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of "government":
(1) Unrestricted freedom

(2) Direct democracy

(3) Delegate democracy

(4) Representative democracy

(5) Overt minority dictatorship
The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .
...
In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials.
The candidates' stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues - apart from the feeble threat of changing one's vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician.
Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in "democratic" regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don't even know who they are. . . .
In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities. A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. (The Vietnam war, for example, was not ended by electing antiwar politicians, but because there was so much pressure from so many different directions that the prowar president Nixon was forced to withdraw.) If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil.

Deeper Politics: For Profit Government, Intelligence, Foreign Policy, and War

Edger — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:11:43 GMT

Crossposted from Antemedius

Last week we heard Peter Dale Scott, former Canadian diplomat and University of California at Berkeley Professor, and author of Drugs, Oil, and War (2005), The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (2007), The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11 and the Deep Politics of War (2008), talk with Paul Jay of The Real News in the The Deep State, A Powerless President, The CIA, Afghanistan, And Heroin, the first and second parts of a multipart series about the corrupted mindset in Washington that chooses who becomes president, and about the war machine that co-opted Obama into his escalation of a drug-corrupted war in Afghanistan.

Scott also talked about an "iceberg" analogy of US politics in which which "the visible part, the public politics, or, if you like, what goes on in the public state, is only a small percentage of the totality of what's going on, a lot of this is not subject to the restraints of the Constitution at all"

Here in part 3 of the series Scott again talks with Jay, this time about something much more sinister that permeates American political reality penetrating and corrupting much deeper than the normal military-industrial complex we've read about in the past - about the fact that the way to succeed in Washington has become to support the next use of the war machine to attack its next chosen target - about privatized intelligence services creating for profit wars, representing a private business that has become a form of permanent government - and concludes that the only way he can see out of the mire is that "We have to pull back from the two-party system and start a new kind of politics. We have to essentially build a new kind of civil society in America. And this is not easy, and I'm not confident that it will happen. The most likely thing to happen is that America will just go into decline from overextension the way that Britain went into decline from overextension before it".

To give you an example of how powerful they are, when it was clear that the intelligence about Iraq [had] been skewed and we went in because of weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. And they commissioned (Science Applications International Corporation) SAIC to investigate what went wrong. And SAIC came up with a report that didn't mention that some of the key people who had been saying that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction had been saying that it would be necessary to deal with him militarily were people who were in fact working for SAIC. So when you give a private corporation the job of seeing whether we should go to war against a country, and then you give that same private corporation the job of finding out why false information was given, you can see that there has been a very, very deep corruption of the process of gathering and analyzing intelligence in Washington and SAIC.
JAY: Who are some of the individuals you referring to?
SCOTT: If you don't mind, I'm going to read from an article by Donald Barlett that you already quoted from. This was David Kay, who was on the committee, and this is what he said in 1998 to the Senate Armed Services Committee, that Saddam Hussein, quote, "remains in power with weapons of mass destruction," and that, quote, "military action is needed." Wayne Downing, a retired general and proselytized for an invasion of Iraq, stating that the Iraqis, quote, "are ready to take the war ... overseas. They would use whatever means they have to attack us." Both of these men, David Kay and Wayne Downing, worked for SAIC. And so a decent analysis of what went wrong would have pointed to the fact that we were relying on people who had, really, a profit motive. I'm not saying that they did all of this thinking only of profit; I'm saying that they were totally part of this dominance mindset that I'm talking about, and they know that the way to succeed in Washington is to support the next target, the policy for the next use of the war machine.
JAY: Now, Robert Gates, Obama's secretary of defense, used to be part of SAIC as well. Is that true?
SCOTT: Was on the board of directors of SAIC, yes. And, you know, for that matter, Mike McConnell was with Booz Allen Hamilton.
JAY: So, given the Obama administration, again, promises of a new mindset, has the role of SAIC and these kinds of companies changed in any way?
SCOTT: No. See, this is why I talk about deep politics.

Real News Network - February 04, 2010
Full Transcript here
New mindset for US foreign policy? Pt.3
Scott: The military-industrial-counterterrorism complex is beyond Eisenhower's worst nightmare

Slaughterhouse Five

Rusty1776 — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:36:16 GMT

This is the Democrats' story. It's a story of consequences, it's a story of tragedy, it's a story ripped from the pages of history and stained with the blood of the innocent.

There are no characters in it and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces.

No We Can't has been a recurring theme of this story. When Obama got elected, No We Won't replaced it. We haven't seen any change, change has been consumed in a firestorm of corruption.

Enjoy your stay in Dresden.

Welcome to Hell.

Greetings from Slaughterhouse Five . . .

In Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim . . .

went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. He asked himself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was his to keep.

When we ask ourselves about our present, the answer is staring us in the face. It's as narrow as the tunnel vision of our "leaders", it's as deep as the corruption that oppresses us, it's as empty as our future and none of it is ours to keep.

Billy Pilgrim must have attended a White House strategy meeting right after the Inauguration . . .

I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.

It's pretty clear what the result of that meeting was. Wonderful new lies. Because of those wonderful new lies, 30,000 American soldiers are crawling into the quagmire of Afghanistan, like the big, unlucky mammals they are. 40,000 Americans will die in 2010 because of inadequate healthcare, like the big, unlucky mammals they are. More Americans will lose their jobs, lose their savings, and lose their homes, like the big unlucky mammals they are.

When the harsh truth scares the fuck out of the big unlucky mammals of this degraded species, too many of them swallow the lies, it's they only way they can go on living.

So it goes.

So it will always go unless Americans overcome their fear, unless progressives start getting serious, unless we take support for this criminal government off the table and put civil disobedience on the table.
We're learning from our mistakes, but we're not learning fast enough. Progressives have a lot of enemies, and time is one of the most lethal of them. We're running out of it, we don't have much time left to save this country, to reverse America's direction so time will be our ally instead of our enemy.

We have to learn what Billy Pilgrim learned by watching a war movie in reverse. Everyone in America, every human being on this planet has to learn what he learned by watching that war movie in reverse . . .

It's a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the men who flew them. American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to rejoin the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers back into the bellies of the planes.
When the bombers got back to their bases, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them back into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

If we could watch America's Two-Party Plunge Into Hell movie in reverse, every stolen dollar in the bank vaults of Wall Street, in the accounts of the war profiteers, in the pockets of K Street's and Capital Hill's corporate whores would be returned to us. The tea baggers would walk backwards out of their We Love Corporate Fascism rallies, drive backwards to their neighborhoods of racism and ignorance, and go back up into their attics, where it's always dark, where the odor of bat shit is thick in the air, where they'd stay because that's where they belong.

The tens of thousands of people at Obama's campaign rallies would stop clapping, stop cheering, turn their backs on him, and go home. The Twin Towers would unburn, the dead Americans in Iraq, the dead Americans in Afghanistan, would rise up from the bloody ground where they fell, go back to their bases, unload their weapons, fly back home, unjoin the military, and walk out of the enlistment centers.

The multitudes of the innocent, slaughtered in Bush's wars, would live again. Bush would be unelected, Reagan would be unelected, Nixon would be unelected. JFK would come back to the White House from Dallas. The pages of American history would turn back to 1960. Eisenhower would speak on national television again. He'd warn Americans about the threat of the Military-Industrial Complex.

And this time, Americans would listen, this time, they would heed his warning.

We can't turn back time, but we can prevent all of these tragedies we've endured from happening again. We can dismantle the war machine, we can throw corrupt incumbents out of power, we can take back our democracy, we can end the corporate rampage that is destroying us and the world we live in. We need to summon the courage and determination to do that, we need to eliminate the cause of all of these tragedies, the cause of all of this inequality, the cause of all of this suffering. We need to bury capitalism in the ground. We need to bury it forever so it will never hurt anyone ever again.

(Crossposted at Docudharma)

Sing It If You Understand

Rusty1776 — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:51:50 GMT

When Obama needed the votes of progressives to get elected, his message was Change We Can Believe In. But now that he no longer needs us, now that he has power, he has a very different message for progressives . . .

That blunt message is echoing from one end of the Beltway to the other, from the White House to Capitol Hill, it's echoing from K Street to Wall Street and across the corporate media airwaves. Corporate power must not be challenged. Don't even think about it. Byron Dorgan got the message. Chris Dodd got the message. Robert Wexler got the message. We all got the message.

2 AM and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake,
Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?

I don't have to tell you what her latest mistake was, I don't have to tell you when she made that mistake, I don't have to tell you because she wasn't the only one who made that mistake. 100 million other Americans made the same mistake on November 4, 2008, they believed the lies, they voted for liars and frauds and career criminals up and down the ballot.

So here we are.

"Pragmatic" progressives tell us we can't jump the track, the corporate media tells us we're just cars on a cable, the "Christians" tell us life's like an hourglass, glued to the table, so go to church unless you want to be damned to Hell for eternity like the Muslims and the Jews and the heathens in Africa and Asia. Well we've seen this movie before, we know who the killers are, we know who the victims are, we know who the warmongers are, we know who the hypocrites are, we know how it ends, we know how it always ends, but no one can find the rewind button, no one can ever find the rewind button.

Sing it if you understand . . .

An Uneasy Feeling . . .

This is a society in deep, deep trouble and the fixes currently in the works are in no way adequate to the enormous challenges we're facing. The fault lies everywhere. The president, the Congress, the news media and the public are all to blame. Shared sacrifice is not part of anyone's program. Politicians can't seem to tell the difference between wasteful spending and investments in a more sustainable future. Any talk of raising taxes is considered blasphemous, but there is a constant din of empty yapping about controlling budget deficits.

It won't be empty yapping for long, Lieberman and Conrad and Nelson and Snowe will see to that. Social welfare programs will be shredded, "entitlements" will be gutted, no Democrat will defend them, they've seen the writing on the wall, the ones who aren't "retiring" will say what their corporate masters tell them to say and do what their corporate masters tell them to do.

Hypocrites . . .

They're all there for the very same reason--POWER.

Digby . . .

The deficit scolds are coming out of the woodwork now that the Republicans brought us to the brink, slashing taxes for the wealthy, larding their own contributors with earmarks, solidifying the notion that military industrial complex spending is a sacred, untouchable icon, and fetishing and deregulating the market until they finally brought the whole system to its knees.

There's a light at each end of this tunnel, we shout, but we're just as far in as we'll ever be out, and these mistakes that we've made, we just make them again, like we did in 1980, and 1982, and 1984, and 1986, and 1988, like we've done every two years ever since the Reagan/Bush years, over and over again, by reelecting corrupt corporate Republicans and corrupt corporate Democrats.

We're trapped in that two-party tunnel to nowhere, we're just as far in as we'll ever be out. We've always been just as far in as we'll ever be out, we always will be just as far in as we'll ever be out. We've been wrong. We've been wrong every time. There's no light at either end of that tunnel. There's no light at the Corporate Democratic end of that tunnel and there sure as hell isn't any light at the Corporate Republican end of that tunnel.

Sing it if you understand.

May he turned 21 on the base at Fort Bliss. "Just a day," he sat down to the flask in his fist. "Ain't been sober, since maybe October of last year." Just a day. Just another day in the tunnel, just another demoralizing day like the one before it and the one after it, just another demeaning day for the powerless, for the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who have no choice but to obey their commanders, for the working people of this country who have no choice but to obey their bosses. Just another day in the tunnel, just another demeaning day in a demeaning life in a dying nation being destroyed by criminals.

Sing it if you understand.

Mike Prysner understands . . .

I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country in this tragic, tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis; only to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. But not people whose names we don't know, and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable; it's the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable; it's the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another country to make the rich richer.

Mike Prysner understands: "Our enemies are not 5000 miles away, they are right here at home" . . .

We need to get organized, we need to fight back. Take a deep breath. Take as many as you need. Then face the truth. There's only one way out of this. Working within the system is no longer an option, it just plays into the hands of the corrupt criminals who control the system.

Sing it if you understand.

2 AM and I'm still awake, writing these words,
If I get them down on paper, they're no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life they belong to.

The writers and poets, the songwriters, the activists, the seekers of peace and justice who who speak truth to power, who will not sell their souls for a corporate paycheck, who have seen enough, who will not submit to a criminal government, who know what has to be done, who are ready to do it, could use some help. From you. From every American who still gives a damn, from every American who still believes that justice matters, from every American who is ready to be the change they seek, from every American who is ready to get arrested if that's what it's going to take to restore democracy and the rule of law to this country.

I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd,
'Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud,
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to.

I can't speak for anyone else here, but I know why I'm here. I'm here to find the words, to use them as they were meant to be used, to make Americans understand, to find a way out of this tunnel, to forge a movement, to show those criminals in Washington what accountability looks like, to show them what massive civil disobedience looks like, so we can take back our government, so the rule of law can be restored, so democracy can be redeemed.

Somebody needs to get the fuck out, but it's not us, it's not progressives, it's not We the People, it's the criminal bankers and corrupt politicians and corporate media hacks who have the blood of the innocent on their hands, who have bankrupted an entire nation, who have turned America into a wasteland of lies, into a cauldron of corruption, into a corporate dictatorship. They have shamed us all. They are beneath contempt. They are the ones who need to get the fuck out of Washington, out of Wall Street, out of their propaganda studios, out of their corporate boardrooms, out of this country and out of our lives. If they won't go, we will have to make them go. One way or another.

Sing it if you understand.

(Cross-posted at Docudharma)