The Existentialist Cowboy

Living Standards Declining in America

2009-11-23T07:22:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The US used to boast the highest standard of living in the world. Those days are long past. Today --the US is among the most inequitable nations on earth where is also found those nations enduring the very worst standards of living. The US --once number one --is not even in the top ten.

According the ranking, the country with the best living conditions is the Scandinavian country of Norway. Helped by a relatively small population of only five million people, combined with an abundance of energy resources such as oil and natural gas, the people of Norway also live in one of the most democratic countries in the world. Further contributing to Norway holding the top ranking in the report has been the ability of the socialist government to continue to provide the generous social benefits the government provides due in large part from its massive sovereign wealth fund, which is the second largest in the world at approximately 330 billion dollars.
--The richest country in the world does not have the highest living standards

About the current crisis begun in the Bush years, some have said that the stiumli were/are 'too small'. The real problem is that the wrong people got the 'stimuli'. Those getting the stimuli were the banksters who had created this mess to begin with! Much of the 'stimuli' wound up in offshore tax havens in which may be found much of US 'wealth'! Much of the 'stimuli' never stimulated anything but the greed of those getting the windfalls. Is there any evidence that the 'stimuli' ever created a single job or in any way 'stimulated' those who might have used the money to get out of poverty, buy a home or get an education.

'Trickle down' stimuli did not work because 'trickle down theory' is bullshit!

Wealth nor 'stimuli' trickle down! Wealth did not trickle down for Ronald Reagan, whose tax cuts began the current trend, and wealth has not trickled-down nor stimulated a recovery. Alas! Nothing is learned from the lessons of history. The lesson to be learned from the Ronald Reagan debacle, the sad effects of which we still live with, is that 'stimuli' are mere windfalls for elites and, in fact, began the trend in which the wealthy got richer and the those just getting by fell off the bottom rung.

Now --this is not a hit job on Obama. The current situation are simply the result of trends begun with the ascension of Ronald Reagan to the White House. It was Reagan's tax cut, benefiting only the upper quintile, which resulted in the long term trend in which just one percent of the total US population now owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined. Only coincidence theorists believe that it is only coincidental that those nation's having the highest living standards are, likewise, those nations boasting the more egalitarian socieities.

But nothing will change in America, however, until attitudes are changed. Tragically, attitudes change slower. A significant change may require a major depression, perhaps a generation or two before the reality of it all seeps in.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

2009-11-23T03:58:00.001-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Albert Einstein said: "the men who possess real power in this country have no intention of ending the cold war." It is one of the most incredible 'coincidences' in history that as the Berlin Wall fell and communism ceased to be the global threat we had been told it was, a new 'bogey man' would arise, as if on cue, to take its place. World terrorism', like a good steward, is now on the job, keeping the crooks on K-street and the Pentagon in firm control of one of the largest, most dangerous empires since Rome.

Like the U.S. today, the Roman economy was 'militarized', the empire over-extended, the battles fought by mercenaries. The currency might get you into the Coliseum for the 'games' but little else. Thus --bread and circuses were popular. When the Praetorian Guard auctioned the Roman Empire to Didius Julianus the sale was completed in Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman Sesterces.

Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:
1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.
2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies.
The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle.
Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension.
I have talked to so many economists and when asked what is the crux of the present financial problem, they all respond in unison, “it is the global imbalances… the West consumes too much while the East saves too much and consumes not enough”. This is exemplified by the huge US trade deficits on the one part and China’s massive surpluses on the other.
--Red Alert: The Second Wave of The Financial Tsunami

The U. S. is routinely pimped on K-Street and, like Rome's sesterces and denarius, the dollar is all but worthless; China boasts the Worlds largest POSITIVE current account balance; the US the largest trade deficit. China props up the US dollar but only because it has to. This Faustian bargain was first cut by Bush Sr who paved the way for Nixon's famous trip to China's Forbidden City.

In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”
Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more.
--Paul Krugman, The Phantom Menace

Some have said that the stiumli were not enough, in other words, 'too small'. It was not that the stimuli were too small but that those getting the stimuli were the banksters who had created this mess to begin with. Alas --nothing is learned from the lessons of history.

Most economists agree: the West consumes too much and the East, primarily China does not consume enough. Compounding the problem --China props up the dollar but only because it had to dump cheap product upon the American market via Wal-Mart, it's retail 'arm' in the U.S.

Rome

The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

'Criminal' Justice in Bush/Perry's Fascist Texas

2009-11-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Despite the state Board of Pardons and Parole voting to spare Robert Lee Thompson's life, Bush Jr's successor, Rick 'Hair Club of Men' Perry voted to kill him anyway. Why have a board when you have a dictator?

Even as the controversy over his execution of an innocent man goes unresolved, last night the Texas Governor rejected a rare clemency recommendation from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles for a man facing execution for a murder he did not commit.
Robert Lee Thompson was an accomplice in a violent convenience store robbery in Houston in 1996, when his co-conspirator fatally shot the sales clerk, a man named Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed. Thompson himself fired shots that wounded Mohammed, but it was his partner, Sammy Butler, who pulled the trigger that would leave him dead. Butler was tried and sentenced to life. A different jury found Thompson guilty and sentenced him to death.
...
Numerous defendants who did not kill anyone have been executed under the Law of Parties; that Perry wouldn't hesitate to sign off on Thompson's execution should comes as no surprise. But yesterday Thompson was granted a recommendation for clemency by the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles -- an extremely rare move. The Board, whose members are political appointments, has only recommended clemency two other times in recent memory.
One of these was two years ago in the case of Kenneth Foster, Jr., who also faced execution under the Law of Parties. In his case, the murder took place while he was in a car, 18 feet away. A grassroots campaign rose up to stop Foster's execution and in August 2007, Perry took the Board's recommendation and spared his life.
--Out-of-Control Rick Perry Overrides Rare Clemency Vote, Executes Man Who Killed No One

Why do these state-sponsored crimes against humanity continue? The Carvellian quick response: there's money in it!

It may be 'legal'! So what? Under Nazi law, the Holocaust was legal! What's happening in Texas is an on-going, institutionalized crime against humanity.

Here's how the prison moguls in the gulag state of Texas make money killing people: they farm out the prison system to 'private enterprise'. When there are profits to be made warehousing and killing folk, what incentive is there to keep the crime rate down? What incentive is there to educate people? The geniuses in Texas figured out that not only is it cheaper to kill folk than educate them, there is more profit it. Education --'they figger' --is expensive and requires the suburban, GOP nouveau riche to pay their fair share of taxes.

It is no coincidence that as executions increase the number of people graduating high school in Texas declines. This gulag state now leads the nation, beating even Mississippi for dead last in high school graduations. To be expected: those not graduating high school make up the greater part of those finding their way into the so-called 'criminal justice system'.

There is a fascist incentive, then, NOT to educate people. There is a fascist incentive to murder people while they are behind bars for crimes that might have been prevented by a responsible, civilized state. There is a fascist incentive to thumb the Texas nose at humanity, outsource justice to corporations, make the quick buck and let society slide off into the sewers of fascism and neo-barbarism. I state Texas at least since Bush Jr has become Nazi/fascist state and should be held to account by the civilized world.

The outsourcing of prisons should be banned by international conventions. This is a U.S/GOP holocaust that must be stopped now!

The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2 million people behind bars as of year-end 1999.2 With only 5% of the world's population, the US holds a quarter of the world's prisoners In the 1990s alone, more persons were added to prisons and jails than in any other decade on record.
...
In a continued examination of those states that lead the national trend in increasing levels of incarceration, the Justice Policy Institute turns a focus on the state of Texas. The Lone Star State's criminal justice system is particularly worthy of scrutiny at this time, as the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported in August, 2000 that Texas, for the first time, leads the nation in imprisoning its citizens: Texas now has the nation's largest incarcerated population under the jurisdiction of its prison system. Since 1990, Texas has lead the nation's 50 states with an annual average growth rate of 11.8%, about twice the annual average growth rate of other state prison systems (6.1%). Even more important to the national context, since 1990, nearly one in five new prisoners added to the nation's prisons (18%) was in Texas.
--An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

As the GOP "Enronized" the great state of Texas, an assembly line criminal justice system, in cahoots with a medieval, privatized prison system, proved to be an oxymoron. It was "criminal" but hardly "justice". Despite the GOPs "worst" efforts, crime in Texas, always a topic of much discussion and study, has gotten worse. Texas is big on capital punishment, but even its industrialized application of the death penalty just cannot kill off the criminals as fast as they procreate and multiply. The GOP may be seeking a "final solution".

...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:
There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.

The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail) reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.

Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).
If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of our current 2 million prisoners.
The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92, 669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-year 1999.
The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000, corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.
--An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

How GOP Bigots Scapegoat Obama

2009-11-19T04:57:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Hitler scapegoated jews! The American right wing now scapegoats Obama! Why are we surprised? The GOP/right wing is just doing what psychopathic screw-ups and habitual liars always do. They try to find someone else to blame.

Obama is an easy target! Because Obama is black the GOP can depend on getting the support of bigots without ever having to use that 'n' word themselves. They keep their collars lily white even as their motives are of darkest night! Their plans are drawn up on K-street; they don't have to get their hands dirty. Leave that to the rank and file bigots.

In response to my previous post, Noor al Haqiqa wrote:

That is probably one of the saddest vids [The Eagles, Last Resort] I have seen for awhile. Not because I don't delve into the mire a little too often, but because so much of that is part of my life. ...there are times I just want to hate the perpetrators of this situation, but I cannot for to do so would be giving them what they want ~ my soul.

I hear you. I am descended of Native Americans whom I believe were and would have been better stewards of this continent. At the same time, I am also descended of hard working Irish and Scottish immigrants who only wanted a chance in life. For many years --until the British lost the so-called 'Revolutionary War' --Native Americans and the new settlers lived peaceably. Several Native American chieftains were admitted to the Court of St James --Thayendanegea (Joselph Brant) most notably. Pocahontas, the Indian princess who helped the English colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, is buried in a churchyard in Gravesend, England. She died there in 1617 while trying to make her way back to her beloved native land --America.

I have often tried to fix a date on which we have all become pilgrims, the date on which we all lost 'our country'! What was the tipping point? When did we lose our grip? When did we find our 'Gravesend'? When did we lose our way among strangers?

I often recall the moment I witnessed in Houston's Jones Hall when amid thunderous applause Dan Rather introduced himself to a news conference attended by the media executives from across the nation. "Are you running for something," President Richard M. Nixon, already besieged by Watergate, asked Rather.

"No, Mr President!" Rather responded, "Are you?"

But it wasn't Watergate! We overcame and rose above Watergate. It was an old 'Western' in which the 'good guys' won. They did win, didn't they?

It was Reagan!

It was Reagan who finished the job. It was Reagan who stole the wealth of the nation and gave it to elites who did not produce it, did not deserve it and did nothing to earn it. The money changers were not driven from the temple. The temple was stolen by them. They call it the 'Fed'.

It was Reagan who pandered to ignorance, bigotry, hate, and prejudice. He could afford to pander; he was financed by a 'ruling elite', now just one percent of the entire population. It was Reagan who made psychopaths feel good about being psychopaths. It was Reagan who sold out America, broke the back of labor and exported U.S. industry and jobs to Japan and China.

Because of trends begun by Reagan, the U.S. is now at the very bottom of the CIA's 'World Fact Book' with the world's largest Negative Current Account Balance, formerly called the 'balance of trade deficit'. At the very top --with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance --is China to whom we have now exported our wealth. But because China must prop up the buck in order to sell to us via Wal-Mart, we would already be prostrate and penniless.

It was Reagan and the psychopathic ilk who followed him blindly over the cliff. It was the neo-imperialists, parasitic partners of the Military-Industial Complex, who dared dream of empire in the PNAC document: REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century [PDF]. It was these neo-imperialists, called NECONS, who pined for a new a 'catalyzing event', a new 'Pearl Harbor', that would be exploited to justify a campaign of aggressive wars, in fact, war crimes punishable by death even under U.S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

A so-called Neo-conservative movement 'Kristolized' in the 1960s, an obvious knee-jerk over-reaction to what was called a 'radical cultural revolution' that was perceived to have been taking place in the United States. Others just called it the 'Woodstock Generation'. Irving Kristol wrote: "If there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the counter-culture."

It is frightening to think that the US may now be poised on the brink of collapse because stuffed-shirts like William Kristol were hopelessly, awkwardly square, had never smoked a joint, and thought Woodstock was a little cartoon bird!

America might still change but only after it has had a sea change of heart and mind. But until wealth inequality is addressed, the media returned to the people and the anti-American-anti-Constitution imperialists tried for war crimes and mass murder, nothing will change for the better. A drunk who will not recognize his problem is just a hopeless drunk, a 'druggie' a hopeless druggie and a thief will steal again if he thinks he can get away with it.

There are no quick fixes and I expected none from Obama. He is just a man --not a miracle worker. And it requires a miracle to save us from the pox that has been visited upon us by the real 'enemy'. It was Pogo who deplored the waste dumped in his swampland home and said: "The enemy is us!" Pogo was right!

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

A Last Resort

2009-11-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A nation in which about one half of the population openly pines for the murder of the only fairly elected president in some 9 years is finished. The writing is on the wall. The America that most of us loved is dead. Tragically --it will not rest in peace, rather, infamy!

Who killed America but bigoted idiots throughout the GOP rank and file? who think themselves rich when in fact they --like the rest of us --are consigned to relative poverty while just one percent of the total population enjoys more wealth than that of 95 percent of the rest of us combined! It was all by design and began with the Presidency of Ronald Reagan about whom the GOP-types, this utterly failed mentality, these endemically criminal psychopaths, swooned: "He made us feel good about ourselves!"

Not only have the Wall Street Journal and the hosts of Fox News been issuing their usual dark mutterings, but a new slogan has began appearing on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and even teddy bears: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8."
That psalm reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."
Maddow seemed mainly amused by the teddy bears, but when she turned for comment to former right-wing evangelical leader Frank Schaeffer, he emphasized that in a religious context "it means something more threatening."
"The situation that I find genuinely frightening right now," Schaeffer explained, "is that you have a ramping up of biblical language ... and what it's coalescing into is branding Obama ... as 'not us.' ... Now he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel ... who should be slaughtered, if not by God then by just men."
--Former evangelist: Religious right is ‘trawling for assassins’

'Missing America' is about mourning the loss of ideals --freedom, equality, Democracy, inherent rights, self-evident truths, the promise that this government, this nation, unlike the monarchies of Europe, recognized in its founding document that the people are sovereign. Alas! None of that means shit to about to the congenital psychopathic idiots who have never bothered to read the U.S. Constitution but are, nevertheless, fuckin' experts!

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.
--Kevin Phillips, How the GOP Became God's Own Party, Sunday, April 2, 2006

To this ilk I say: you have never been interested in American ideals but those you could exploit. You have never loved this country but for what you could milk it for! You have never paid but lip service to the U.S. Constitution which you wield like a weapon when you like it but is but a 'goddamned piece of paper' when you don't! You have nothing meaningful to say to me so just shut the fuck up!

Last Resort!

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Why U.S. Nukes Did Not Shorten the War with Japan

2009-11-18T06:00:00.001-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The 'bomb' did not shorten the war, nor did it affect --in any way --Japan's insistence upon retaining its emperor. Absolutely nothing was gained by the wanton murder of some 200,000 civilians.

U.S. President Harry Truman is said to have nuked Japan because he wanted an 'unconditional surrender'! In fact, he got nothing more than what had been offered prior to the use of two nuclear weapons first against Hiroshima and, later, against Nagasaki. The Geneva Conventions which prohibit genocide were not codified until 1948. But it is the purpose of the law to codify prohibitions against acts that are --already --wrong! The law cannot make right a wrong nor can it make wrong acts that are clearly right!

I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that? Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face"
--Dwight David Eisenhower

It is said that Truman would accept nothing less than 'unconditional surrender' In fact, he did not get an unconditional surrender. The surrender was conditioned upon the retention of the Emperor, a request that the Japanese had made as it sued for peace.

"The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26th, 1945, by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed to by the Soviet Government, with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler.
PROCLAMATION DEFINING TERMS FOR JAPANESE SURRENDER, (2) OFFER OF SURRENDER FROM JAPANESE GOVERNMENT, The Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XIII, No. 318, July 29, 1945

The bombing --the deliberate elimination of some 200,000 people --was in vain. Estimates of 150,000 killed and wounded in Hiroshima and some 75,000 at Nagasaki may be conservative. Clearly --these deaths were avoidable.

Eisenhower is vindicated by history. Indeed, as Eisenhower made clear: Japan sought terms which changed not a bit by the the use of the bomb.

The use use of the bomb is --in either case --an act of genocide against a civilian population. Genocide is now prohibited by by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

Japanese leaders --military and civilian, including the Emperor --were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place.

The Japanese government wanted to surrender; its leaders, military as well as civilian, rationally understood that the war was lost. President Truman was fully aware? of the situation as early as May of 1945. A peace treaty could have been effected and the dropping of the bomb avoided.
But they had a determined attachment (irrational?) to? the emperor. Japan would have surrendered, very possibly as early as June 1945, had its ruling establishment received guarantees of the emperor's personal safety and continuance on the throne. This should have been the first step in an American surrender strategy.
--Journal of American History

Therefore, the U.S. use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction upon a civilian population changed absolutely nothing!

President Truman was fully aware of the situation as early as May of 1945. A peace treaty could have been effected and the dropping of the bomb avoided. Churchill and Stalin went along with the 'unconditional surrender' policy --but only reluctantly.

U.S. policy demanding an unconditional surrender was rendered moot by the fact that the surrender was not unconditional but contingent upon Japan retaining its emperor. In any case, it does not ameliorate U.S. targeting a civilian population. Japan's major cities were devastated. Casualties were already in the millions. Millions more were refugees. The fleet was lost. Merchant shipping could not leave home waters or sail from the few possessions still held by Japan.

U.S. policies and actions following the de facto defeat of Japan:

Targeted a civilian population, an action not yet covered by the Geneva Conventions of 1948.
Achieved NOTHING that Japan had not ALREADY agreed to.

As Japan, in fact, retained its emperor, it would appear that it was the U.S. --not Japan --that made concessions after the bombing.

Remembering the tragic aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb - BBC

U.S. Terrorism Against a Civilian Population

Addendum:

Following is my response to a comment on facebook:

Someone had posted:

"An invasion force would have still have to go in at the cost of 1000's of American lives. Ask any vet who landed at any island we captured."

1) Thousands of American lives were already lost to Japanese fighting from caves.

2) The point missed is that peace terms agreed to had already been agreed to by Japan before the bomb was dropped. There was, then, no point in dropping the bomb if the intention was to effect a un-conditional surrender. In any case, the U.S. did NOT get an un-conditional surrender. There is no ex post facto justification for this war crime.

THE BOMB HAD NO EFFECT ON PEACE TERMS.

3) There is no evidence that people fighting in caves were in any way dissuaded by the bomb! None! Japan had already agreed to the terms that were --in fact --signed after the bombs were dropped. The bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima --huge cities of civilians, not caves full of 'terrorists'!

What effect on cave guerillas did U.S. Military 'geniuses' think dropping bombs on civilian concentrations would have? Read Che , Guerilla Warfare. You may conclude that NUKES are powerless against a well-organized guerrilla force.

IF folk were fighting in caves, what effect did the bombs have? Clearly --no concessions were made as a result of NUKING the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! NONE!

Today --the US has been mired in Afghanistan for almost a decade! Guerrillas are fighting from caves, we are told! Do you propose that we NUKE Kabul because a rag tag band of guerillas are holed up in same caves some 100 miles away?

It would seem that if the US cannot 'win' a war against folk living in caves, then the U.S. would be well advised to get the fuck outt the war business.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

The End of American Community

2009-11-15T06:01:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In his essay on Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", W.H. Auden observed that theatrical directors throughout the 30's found it quite natural to make of Caesar a great fascist dictator --more like Mussolini than Hitler. The conspirators, he says, were "liberals". Up to date analogies are irresistible.

There was a very brief period of time not so long ago, before Iraq fell into utter chaos, that it could be said that George W. Bush had "...crossed the Rubicon". There are, however, even better analogies to be made. I am still surprised that the GOP 'released' the White House so willingly, it seems in retrospect. Still cynical, I am inclined to believe that the world left Obama in Bush's wake is now so precariously perched, so involved in economic disaster that it is hoped Obama will take 'the fall' for the mess that was left him.

In 1947, Auden would say of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that it had "great relevance to our time". Auden believed that Julius Caesar was about a society, the society of ancient Rome, on the very edge of doom. Auden did not believe that to be true of Western Civilization in 1947. But --is it true of the US, Britain, and Western Civilization today? Are we perched on the edge of doom?

Historically, of course, Octavian would "ride the storm" to prevail at Actium, and, assuming the title "Augustus" would give to Rome another 400 years. The prospects thus were not nearly so gloomy as those we face today.

Auden would write of the post Roman-Hellenic world that it collapsed of a spiritual failure, a lack of nerve, an utter inability to make sense of what was going on. This is the most accurate analogy that is to be made with the present. It is not surprising that a far flung war begun upon a pack of malicious and deliberate lies would drag on for years. It has done so only because few in power understand what is going on. The BBC states flatly: the Iraq war has sent shock waves throughout the Middle East that will be felt for a generation --an optimistic assessment.

There is yet another layer of complication. It has to do with the sense of community lately found lacking in America and, perhaps, to a lesser degree elsewhere. Auden makes much of the manner in which Shakespeare begins his plays. "First things in Shakespeare are always important", he writes. It is, therefore, significant that Julius Caesar begins with a crowd scene, evidence of community found in few modern societies.

The crowd is one of three important types: societies, communities, and crowds. One belongs to a society in which the individual has a function or to which one contributes in one way or another. Communities are composed of people who share a common love. Crowds, by contrast, are composed of members who neither belong nor join. Members of crowds merely add numerically to the crowd. The crowd, Auden writes, has no function.

Crowds arise when communities break down, when individuals for various reasons cannot share a common love or enthusiasm with others. Education has little to do with it. Knowledgeable, highly educated people often become members of crowds for various reasons and thus often help drive the enigma of fascism.

Over simplifications are tempting. Crowds are fertile ground, nurturing fascism and other forms of authoritarian governments and regimes. If the manner in which Shakespeare begins his plays is important, then it must be pointed out that Julius Caesar begins with a crowd scene and ends with the loss of Republic.

A "crowd" is most often ugly, fickle, angry yet manipulable. Kierkegaard would write of the public as merely a large crowd "...a Roman emperor, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxification of laughter." He would call the "press" the "public's dog" that is often set upon the truly great. Thus, the crowd, manipulated by demagogues and charlatans, becomes a mob.

I submit that the increasingly isolated, suburban nature of American society, in the midst of plenty, devolved into islands of isolation. The word community merely attached to a souless suburb does not make a community. It is but a sub-division at best. At worst --a dormitory. An affluent America became a nation of crowds, a public only loosely held together yet isolated by the science of demographics the very purpose of which is separation and analysis.

Given those conditions, the events of 911 were highly exploitable and America became an angry mob. The conditions were ripe for a would-be dictator to seize "the crown", vowing as he did to "...export death and destruction to the four corners of the earth." This would-be Caesar was hardly swept into office with a genuine popular mandate. Many say the election was stolen. Certainly, Gore received more popular votes in Florida. But for 911, Bush would have been retired early.

There is still some hope for a positive change, more if Bush had not left Obama an economic catastrophe already well under way. In this fog, we are fortunate if we should know what is really going on. Until America finds its soul, its sense of real community, it will remain like the Roman-Hellenic world. There is no Octavian in the wings who might give us a reprieve of some 400 years or so.

Putin on the Ritz

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Evidence that 911 was an Inside Job

2009-11-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

If 911 had not been an inside job, it would have been investigated! The cover up that followed has only one purpose: the protection of the guilty! It is not only the absurd, alleged conspiracy of 19 Arab hijackers, a cover story for which there is absolutely no convincing or admissible evidence, it is the fact that the events that day were deliberately covered up and access to evidence denied investigators.

It was odd to me that I was dispatched to go to New York even before the second plane hit the South Tower, while the media was still reporting only that a “small plane” had collided with the North Tower — far too small of a catastrophe at that point to involve FEMA . FEMA was mobilized within minutes, whereas it took ten days for it to deploy to New Orleans to respond to Hurricane Katrina, even with abundant advance warning! It was odd to me that all cameras were so fiercely prohibited within the secured perimeter of Ground Zero, that the entire area was declared a crime scene and yet the “evidence” within that crime scene was so rapidly removed and destroyed. And then it was very odd to me when I learned that FEMA and several other federal agencies had already moved into position at their command center at Pier 92 on September 10th, one day before the attacks!
...
We are asked to believe that all four of the “indestructible” black boxes of the two jets that struck the twin towers were never found because they were completely vaporized, yet I have footage of the rubber wheels of the landing gear nearly undamaged, as well as the seats, parts of the fuselage and a jet turbine that were absolutely not vaporized. This being said, I do find it rather odd that such objects could have survived fairly intact the type of destruction that turned most of the Twin Towers into thin dust. And I definitely harbor some doubts about the authenticity of the “jet” turbine, far too small to have come from one of the Boeings!
--Kurt Sonnenfeld, 9/11 FEMA videographer at Ground Zero goes public

Among the many lies about 911, the most egregious are the 'official ones' put forward by the Bush administration and Bush personally. And make no mistake about it: the story of 19 Arab hijackers co-ordinated from a cave in Afghanistan by a man who was most certainly already dead of kidney failure, is the most absurd lie among them. There is not a shred of convincing or admissible evidence in support of it.

It has been my experience that those who lie about a crime does so to cover it up, deflect a real investigation. Those who lie, cover up or obstruct justice are almost always guilty of the crimes. And those guilty of crimes are most motivated to cover them up. Bush order the destruction of evidence, in fact, the cover up of 911. He shut down every investigation. He his the truth. Then he lied about 911 repeatedly! We are justified in concluding that he lied and obstructed justice because he was he shares full responsibility for the 'inside job' we call 911.

This is a short article calling for justice. I am not inclined to re-write thousands of words already written. If you wish more, search this site with the label '911'. You will find plenty and all of it indicts the war criminal George W. Bush for whom 911 was PNAC's 'catalyzing event', the new Pearl Harbor that would justify his wars of naked aggression, conquest and oil theft in the Middle East.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

The Inevitable Collapse of the Dollar

2009-11-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Americans live beyond their means, Asia finances it and China props up the buck so that the US can buy Chinese made stuff at Wal-Mart. Eventually the Asians/Europeans will stop financing the USA, China will pull the plug on the buck and the bubble will burst.

The CIA's World Fact Book lists the US at the very bottom of a list with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. China, which pegs the Yuan to the dollar, is at the top with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance.

If the GOP had been correct, US exports should have risen! The 'balance of trade deficit' i.e, the NEGATIVE Current Account Balance would have been reduced! If the GOP had been correct, the US could have paid off huge amounts of national debt run up in incompetent and dishonest GOP regimes. The US might have survived decades of conservative budgets which forced the US to borrow from other countries. But --not surprisingly --things have not worked out as the GOP would have you believe.

Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.

Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable. America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it’s getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere.
But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar — which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.
--Palin vs Krugman On The Dollar -- Who Is Right?

It was hoped that by taking the dollar off the gold standard, US products would enjoy greater sales abroad. But like 'trickle down theory', it just has not worked out as planned. The CIA's World Fact Book proves it.

The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.

Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.

Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.

--Paul Craig Roberts, The US as Failed State

If the US is a 'failed state', it is because it has been impoverished by at least two trends: 1) the transfer of US wealth upward to just one percent of the US population which now owns more than 95 percent of the rest of the nation combined; 2) the decline of the US dollar, a trend begun when Richard Nixon eschewed the Bretton-Woods agreement.

Reducing the chances that we will weather this crisis are US wars of aggression which benefit only the defense contractors. Wars, in fact, reduce the GDP, destroy jobs, reduce productivity, and increase the trade deficit! If wars are so 'bad' for the economy, then how are they sold so easily? Why are they 'sold' at all? The quick response: they are sold with focus group tested bullshit!

There's a 'living' in killing, we are told! It's a lie -- snake oil for idiots and rank and file GOP. That wars are good for the economy is just a bald-faced lie cooked up by the defense lobby for whom killing IS a living but only for the shrinking one percent who benefit: the Military/Industrial complex.

Fact is war is most often disastrous for the economy.

In fact, most models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment. In this way, military spending is comparable in most models to any other form of government spending, such as spending on public goods or improving the environment.
This paper shows the projections of the impact of an increase in annual military spending equal to 1 percent of GDP (approximately the actual increase in spending compared with the pre-war budget) of the Global Insight macroeconomic model (see Appendix). The Global Insight model was selected for this analysis because it is a commonly used and widely respected model.1 Other models will show somewhat different projections, but it is unlikely that the direction of the long-term impact on any of the key variables will be different. In fact, because of the structure of the Global Insights model, it likely understates the negative impact of military spending relative to other models.
--The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending>

At the link (a PDF file) look for Table 1 which shows the key differences in projections, at five year intervals, between the baseline model and the simulation assuming higher levels of defense spending.

The decline in GDP projected for the twentieth year in the high military spending scenario is $42.1 billion. This corresponds to a projected loss of 668,100 jobs. Inflation is projected to be 0.7 percentage points higher in the high military spending scenario, with the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury note 1.1 percentage points higher than in the baseline scenario.
The higher interest rate is associated with a reduction in industrial production of 1.8 percent compared with the baseline scenario. Car and truck sales are projected to be 731,400 in the high military spending scenario compared to the baseline scenario. Residential investment is projected to be 3.5 percent lower, which corresponds to 38,500 fewer housing starts and a reduction of 286,500 in the number of existing homes sold.
--The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending>

The Inevitable Collapse of the Dollar

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Origins of 'Islamophobia' in US Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism

2009-11-12T10:41:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

'Islamophobia' in the U.S. is a top down phenomenon encouraged and exploited by the right wing. It is easier to whip up war fever if the populace is irrational, mindless, or unduly fearful of an entire class, religion or even race. A crooked, corrupt or illegitimate state is 'motivated' to encourage irrational fears among its populace. This was true of Rome, the Third Reich and it is true of the US. It is, perhaps, one of several harbingers of the fall of empire.

That 'Islamophobia' is a needless waste is proven by recent events.

Rev Michael Sinnott was freed in the early hours of Thursday morning. He said he was not harmed by his captors but was now "extremely exhausted".

"For long periods of time we had nothing at all to do, so we sat around in the hammocks and talked at length about religion," said Rev Sinnott, who was abducted on October 11 while taking a walk in his garden.
"We discussed ideology and they explained to me what they believed and I then explained what I believed. There were no problems and they treated me very well despite the difficult conditions.
-- Freed Irish priest 'treated well by Muslim kidnappers'

As appears to be the case with most of the US's most ill-considered 'adventures' and propaganda campaigns, Islamaphobia is all about 'oil' and how the US may justify its theft! Clearly, US adventures in the middle east are all about oil --a resource desperately needed by the US which had been, at one time, a leading producer.

The US finds it easier to 'sell' a war if it has been attacked by a class that is different. 911, clearly an inside job, a pretext for war, is the best example. 911 was --in fact --the 'catalyzing event' hoped for, perhaps planned for, by NEOCONS who drafted the infamous PNAC document: "REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES, Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century"

The passage reads as follows:

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

Some context: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break up of the old 'Soviet Union', the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev --all left the US without an easily exploited external enemy, one that might play the very role NEOCONS had hoped it might --that of providing a 'catalyzing event' around which right wing militarists, imperialists, oil fascists and would-be war criminals would rally a sheeple!

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

The Controlled Demolitions of 911

2009-11-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Only a controlled demolition looks like a controlled demolition. And WTC 7 looks like a controlled demolition because it was 'pulled' just as Silverstein himself said it was. And if it was 'pullled', it had to have been 'prepped', that is, explosives planted and wired perhaps two weeks or more in advance of the so-called 'terrorist attack'.

There is --in fact --not a shred of evidence to support the ludicrous THEORY that it fell as a result of dinky, piddly random fires that might have been pissed out!

For those who are not yet ready to make the commitment to obtain and read a book on 9/11, but who wish to learn more, a ten-minute solution is available. It only takes a few minutes to view video on the Internet of the collapse of Building 7, the 47 story skyscraper located immediately north of the WTC complex about 300 feet from the North Tower. Viewers will note the almost vertical collapse of the building. Only controlled demolitions have achieved vertical collapses of upright steel structures.
After viewing the video, many will agree with Dan Rather who said on CBS News that very evening that the collapse of Building 7 was “reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen too much on television before when a building was destroyed by well placed dynamite to knock it down.”
--Ronald Bleier, WTC Building 7 – The 911 Smoking Gun?

Now --about the other towers, we are shown videos that purport to be flights that BTS says were not even scheduled to fly that day and, if they had, the soft aluminum bodies could not have penetrated the HARD STEEL CLADDING at any speed. Nor would the airliners have penetrated the dense core clearly omitted from so-called 'official reports' and/or official conspiracy theories. The dense core seen pictured here is conveniently omitted from 'official theories' because its existence disproves the official lies.

The most notorious instance of omission is a a video which Perdue University --to its shame and chagrin --said 'animated' realistically the soft-bodied aluminum airliner literally slicing through the dense steel cladding. That is ludicrous in itself --a case of 'truth by animation'. Worse, however, is the fact that Perdue's 'whiz kids' omitted the existence of the dense, highly reinforced steel core seen in the photo.

I carry a swiss army knife. The blades are made of STEEL --not Aluminum. That's because Aluminum is not likely to penetrate anything that I might want to cut. Soft Aluminum airliner bodies, likewise, were never designed to penetrate hard, dense steel and 911 is most certainly NOT the test case that proves it does, will or ever has. Wenger and Victorinox are not likely to begin the manufacture of aluminum bladed Swiss Army knives any time soon.

Some have said that it was the kinetic energy of a moving aircraft that allowed it to penetrate the hard steel cladding. That's nonesense and easily disproven at home with simple materials. Try hurling a ball of modeling clay at a barn door. If you are Mickey Mantle reincarnated you might knock down the door if it is merely propped up. But you will NEVER ever penetrate the door itself. Try it! Soft aluminum fuselages, likewise, will never slice through the girders themselves as the official conspiracy suggests or states.

Condo LIES to Congress

Now ---if the official conspiracy theory of 911 were true, then CONDO would have had no MOTIVE for lying!

Criminals lie in order to cover up their crimes.

Criminals lie hoping to get away with it!

While CONDO was lying under oath, Bush, himself was ordering the destruction of all the forensic evidence relative to 911.

An innocent man is an idiot if he orders the destruction of evidence proving himself innocent.

ERGO --Bush was covering up his involvement in high treason and mass murder.
Sherlock Holmes said: 'When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however implausible, must be the truth!'. And the truth is a story of method, motive and opportunity.

Marvin Bush: A Story of Motive, Method, Opportunity! Two weeks is probably enough time to 'wire' the buildings for a controlled demolition.

Tower 7 blasted into rubble from NEW angle!

No Plane PLUS Huge Explosion Equals Controlled Demmoltion; Constrolled Demolition equals INSIDE JOB!

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Restore Democracy: Abolish the Electoral College

2009-11-11T02:59:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

If the 'President' is elected to represent the people of the United states, then he/she should be elected directly by the people. The Electoral College, in which electors represent states --not people --must be abolished and the 'office' of President elected directly. The voice of the people needs no proxy. The voice of the people must be be heard directly, loudly and often.

Fears that the 'college' might elect a minority President are not merely speculative should the nation be so deeply divided that three or more candidates split the electoral votes among them --no one getting a necessary majority. Precisely that happened in 1824, attempted in 1948 and again in 1968.

There are but two resolutions should it happen again:

either one candidate could throw his electoral votes to the support of another before the meeting of the Electors, or
the U.S. House of Representatives would select the president in accordance with the 12th Amendment.

The people are without a voice. There is no office nor branch of government that bears the responsibility of representing the voice of the people. There is the increasing danger that the current system may be 'gamed' and its flaws exploited.

Krugman looks at how the teapartying far right acolytes of Beck and Limbaugh could literally gain enough power to do what Republicans in California have done, saying, "In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state's fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

--Rob Kall, Top-down blowback: The GOP Discovers that the Grassroots Bites Back,

Abolishing the electoral college and electing the 'President' directly is essential if these fatal flaws are to be addressed.

There are several advantages to the direct election of the office of President.

With the Electoral college, there is always the possibility that a minority president may be elected;
Though it has not happened (to my knowledge) there is, nevertheless, a risk that "faithless" or "rogue" electors will cast ballots for whomever they prefer;
The Electoral College is blamed for depressing voter turnout;
and, most importantly, its failure to accurately reflect the national popular will.

It is the job of Representatives and Senators in Congress to represent the states. A 'President', elected, in fact, by the states via the electoral college, likewise, represents the interests of the 'states' --not the people.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Creationist B.S. Exposed

2009-11-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Richard Dawkins was recently issued a challenge --disprove creationism in one sentence. I can do that myself. Here it is: if we can see Andromeda --some 2.5 MILLION light years distant from earth --then creationism is false!

Andromeda can be seen even with the naked eye; in any case, it takes light from Andromeda some 2.5 MILLION light years to get here and be seen. That we can see these objects with or without telescopes utterly disproves creationism and a 'young Earth' or young universe.

I chose Andromeda because it is accessible, close enough to be seen with a good pair of binoculars, perhaps, even, with the naked eye. I saw Andromeda as a kid with a pair of hand-me-down 7x35 binoculars duct-tape to a shaky tripod. Deep space images from the Hubble are, of course, state of the art and much more dramatic. Galaxies some 17 BILLION light years distant prove that the Universe is considerably older than Sarah Palin's idiotic concept that homo sapien co-existed with dinosaurs a mere 6000 years ago.

Astronomy mag has an excellent article about how distances are determined. And the speed of light is a universal constant. [See: The Michelson-Morley Experiment. Michael Fowler, Univ. Va. Physics 9/15/08. ]These are not 'assumptions'. This is established, empirical science.

That issue is settled --the speed of light is NOT an assumption but a proven empirical fact! And so too are the distances to nebulae and galaxies much farther distant than Andromeda.

There are likely to be galaxies that formed slightly earlier, which so far we haven't been able to detect because they are so faint and distant.

However if we look back too far in time, there's simply no stars and galaxies to look at — after the Big Bang, it would have taken a few hundred million years for matter to clump together with sufficient density for stars and galaxies to form.

So if more powerful telescopes can't enable us to see any further into the universe why are we still building them?

Lomb says larger telescopes will be more sensitive and enable us to look into the past of the universe more clearly.

"There's still the great mysteries of what happened between 13.7 and 13 billion years ago," he says.
--What is the most distant galaxy a telescope can detect?

Below is the Hubble Deep Space photo. Every galaxy in the photo disproves Sarah Palin's 6000 year old universe.

Pick a galaxy at random. Imagine that you are an intelligent being living on a planet -- just one of a multitude of 'solar systems' that most certainly exist in this vast cosmos! Imagine that you have struggled with the concept that should your civilization develop craft capable of near light speed, it may yet take a million or more lifetimes to reach our own galaxy --the Milky Way and, when reaching it, 100,000 additional years to traverse it!

Dawkins Challenges Creationists: Put up or shut up!

Now --contrary to claims by critics, this article is referenced. Check the University of VA site above. Check the link to the blockquote. Check the Dawkins video. At last --check any high school or university text book on science, astronomy or the sicentific method. At last, in accordance with the principles of logical positivism [See: A.J. Ayer, 'Language, Truth and Logic'] everything I posted is easily verified experimentallly as described.

Now --since posting the article, I have found a very interesting site featuring a Java applet that 'duplicates' the Michelson-Morley experiment which proved the speed of light and the fact that it was constant and independent of the speed of the light source or its 'target'. Light speeed, in other words, is a universal constant.

Michelson-Morley Experiment Java Applet

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

How the Iraq War Destroyed the US Economy

2009-11-06T04:34:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Wars reduce the GDP, destroy jobs, reduce productivity, and increase the trade deficit! If wars are 'bad' for the economy, then how are they sold so easily? The quick response: they are sold with focus group tested bullshit!

There's a 'living' in killing, we are told! There is a more opulent living in the commission of mass murder which requires the construction of tanks, smart bombs, and fighter jets --the MIC, in other words. But that's all just snake oil for idiots and Republicans!

That wars are good for the economy is just a bald-faced lie cooked up by the defense lobby for whom killing IS a living but only for the shrinking one percent who benefit: the Military/Industrial complex, truly MURDER INC. Fact is war is most often disastrous for the economy.

In fact, most models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment. In this way, military spending is comparable in most models to any other form of government spending, such as spending on public goods or improving the environment.
This paper shows the projections of the impact of an increase in annual military spending equal to 1 percent of GDP (approximately the actual increase in spending compared with the pre-war budget) of the Global Insight macroeconomic model (see Appendix). The Global Insight model was selected for this analysis because it is a commonly used and widely respected model.1 Other models will show somewhat different projections, but it is unlikely that the direction of the long-term impact on any of the key variables will be different. In fact, because of the structure of the Global Insights model, it likely understates the negative impact of military spending relative to other models.
--The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending>

The decline in GDP projected for the twentieth year in the high military spending scenario is $42.1 billion. This corresponds to a projected loss of 668,100 jobs. Inflation is projected to be 0.7 percentage points higher in the high military spending scenario, with the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury note 1.1 percentage points higher than in the baseline scenario.
The higher interest rate is associated with a reduction in industrial production of 1.8 percent compared with the baseline scenario. Car and truck sales are projected to be 731,400 in the high military spending scenario compared to the baseline scenario. Residential investment is projected to be 3.5 percent lower, which corresponds to 38,500 fewer housing starts and a reduction of 286,500 in the number of existing homes sold.
--The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending>

Given those facts, should anyone be surprised that the US is at the very bottom of the CIA's World Fact Book with the world's largest NEGATIVE currnet account balance. China, which props up the declining dollar, is not surprisingly on top with the world's largest POSITIVE Current Account Balance.

One should not be surprised when millions of jobs are lost as GDP declines. Yet, as a result of right wing/militaristic/jingoistic propaganda and FOX, many people still believe that war and military spending creates jobs. That may be true in the short-term. But, in the long run, increases in military spending cause job loss.

the policy would likely lead to a rise in interest rates and inflation, as higher levels of demand begin to push against the economy’s capacity. The rise in interest rates will lead to less investment, and less demand for cars and houses.
Higher interest rates will also push up the value of the dollar. This will increase demand for imports, since foreign-made goods will be cheaper for consumers in the United States, and decrease demand for exports, since U.S.-made goods will be more expensive for people living in other countries. The result will be that the United States will run a larger current account deficit. Over time, this will lead to a larger foreign debt.
--The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending>

As I have maintained for years --military spending is a waste. Millions spent building a tank, for example, is money sucked down a black hole. The rank returns nothing on the investment and will, inevitably, be blown up! We could just throw our dollars upon a heap, set fire to them, and cut out the middle man!

Military spending slows economic growth, increases the budget deficit, increases the trade deficit as can be seen, in fact, in US's NEGATIVE Current Account Balance, formerly called the 'balance of trade deficit'.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Why Democrats Must Change or Perish

2009-11-04T01:41:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP is a disciplined monolith. Even when the GOP screws up and runs an idiot like George W. Bush or John McCain, there is the danger that he will win because, on election day, the GOP will close ranks, hold their noses and vote the party line. Liberal Democrats for whom Clinton or Obama are too conservative will pout and stay home. Worse --conservative Democrats will join the evil minions and vote for a Bush Jr or a John McCain.

The Democratic party, meanwhile, doesn't have the luxury of settling for a 'base hit' in a game in which there are only home runs. For the Democrats, that is! The GOP has the luxury of just putting a man on base! Democrats don't have the luxury of nominating anything less than a JFK or an FDR.

The left wing world wide is a disorganized amalgam of differing opinions, sitting ducks for a disciplined, Nazi-like top down party like the GOP where issues are not derived from the people but from focus groups, consultants and think tanks who literally manufacture issues based upon how well they 'test'. What really hurts is that for their talk about 'the base', the GOP owes its allegiance to the richest one percent of the US population, a moneyed segment that plays and wins because it writes the rules.

Voting green ...is a luxury of the middle class, who will more or less fare equally well materially under either major party. Yes, there are social issues, but keep in mind that Bush was chosen as the GOP's dream candidate in part because is soft on abortion. Middle-class women are the key swing voters in this election, an there are a lot of pro-choice soccer moms who lean Republican.

The most active segment of the GOP base is pro-life, but the majority of people in this country are not and the Republican thinkers and money men know it. Bush is not a 'stealth' candidate; he comes from Eastern moneyed Republicans; his dad despised the Christian GOP activists (and the feeling was mutual). Gore knows this, which is why he feels the need to protest (too much) that Bush really is pro-life ---it's been the Democrat's hole-card for so long he can't bear to feel the tactical advantage slowly slipping away from him.
--Nate Blakeslee, Texas Observer, Nov 3, 2000

There are two options left to Democrats.

Find a long term wedge issue that will split the GOP right down the middle. Exploit it!
Support sweeping electoral/election reforms that will ensure that every vote counts in every race --borda counts, range voting, abolition of the primary system, direct elections et al

The current system sucks! The GOP has the money to endure and rebound. Democrats, always scrambling for money, are a party of speedy sprinters in a long distance race. Democrats may change but risk becoming GOP-lite. They have little choice, then, but to change the rules, but how?

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Is the GOP a Nazi Party?

2009-11-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

dby Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It was James Whitcomb Riley, a Hoosier, not a Texan, who is credited with having said: "When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck." A thing or a party is what it does. This simple epistemological principles applies to everything from sub-atomic particles to mega-galaxies on the very edge of the universe and everything in between to include 'political parties'.

Merely putting a name on something does not explain it. Putting the label 'Nazi' on the US GOP does not explain either GOPPS or Nazis; it just helps us sort them out. I am sick of 'labels' and sick of the way labels have subverted American thought processes and debased the quality of debate and discourse. Labeling is passive. Meaningful sentences consist of subjects, ACTIVE verbs and, often, direct objects which are affected by some action that is taken. It is not enough for me to discount a politcian because they 'are' Republican. If I am to make my case, I must allege an 'action' --a GOP action --that has had, in fact, a harmful result. Indeed, it is the panoply of harmful actions that define this 'duck', this web-footed, forked tongued GOP!

The wake of WWII left many declaring that it must never happen again. If 'it' was to be prevented, however, it was clear that 'it' must be explained. The origins of WWII, however, could not be understood without first understanding a 'Nazi' mentality that provided it fertile soil and nurtured its growing roots. The Nazi weed grows and is cultivated in the US by bigots, authoritarians, and corporatists i.e, fascists.

At war's end, the victorious allies had in their custody the 'super-stars' of Hitler's Third Reich and imprisoned them at Nuremberg. Some believed that they should have been summarily executed. Others advocated trial for crimes against the peace and humanity. This is the legacy of Nuremberg: it left us what I hope is the lasting framework against which future crimes may be prosecuted. I have in mind the crimes perpetrated by the US against the sovereign nations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the peoples in those nations.

War criminals are where you find them. In the US, there were war hawks in both major parties, eager to avenge 911 and strike a blow against 'terrorism'. This is simplistic thinking. Terrorism is so vague as to be meaningless, certainly any act against US interests 'not liked' by the US or the specific interests affected. What if the 'interest' itself is illegal --the theft of Iraqi oil, for example. What about acts of terrorism perped by the US? Will the US govt root itself out and bring itself to justice? Don't hold your breath. The US govt has been, of late, fucked up!

'Revenge' is similarly problematic. 911 did not, does not and cannot justify the US invasion of either Afghanistan or Iraq for numerous reasons not the least of which is this: no one had been able to pin the 'rap' on Al Qaeda. Does al Qaeda exist? Could it possibly have pulled off 911? George W. Bush boasted of having killed alleged al Qaeda members though there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Afghanistan had anything whatsoever to do with crime of 911.

All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.
--George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2003

I believe that this statement speaks to George W. Bush's guilt of war crimes that were defined and prosecuted by the US and its allies at Nuremberg. I believe that Bush should be cross examined with regard to this statement. It should be put to Bush: what --specifically --was that fate? Are we saying that the US rounded up Afghanis en masse and subjected them to summary executions? Who ordered these summary executions? Were the executions sanctioned by the President?

If so --then the President and those carrying out the murders should be charged and, when found guilty, they should be hanged!

How to Know a Nazi When You Find One

Nazis are where you find them. In pre-war Germany, they were found in the party which gave them their name. In the US, latter day Nazis will be found in abundance in the GOP and even among the Democratic right wing. Nazis are what Nazis do!

Ritzler and his colleagues saw a socially distant, intellectually pretentious person lacking depth of character...this psychological profiled belonged to a simple man. They speculated that he attained his success by being a good organization man, doing what he was told to do and not making waves. ...no one suggested a person from academia, the clergy or the arts.
...
the experience of learning the subject's identity has been unforgettable. the psychological protocol belonged to Adolf Eichmann!
The Quest for the Nazi Personality

As he was tried, Eichmann was portrayed in the media as a 'depraved killer responsible for the deaths of millions'. And so he was but only because he was a bureaucrat, a 'Republican', an 'organization man', a man whose truth was the party line and modus operandi. The very face of 'evil' as it was glimpsed by Dr. Gilbert and, later, Hanah Arendt, turned out to be the banal face of a bureaucrat.

Nazis may not have issued membership cards and a subscription to a newsletter! They were defined, however, by a psychological characteristic perhaps first described by Dr. Gustav Gilbert, the American psychologist who 'interviewed' Nazis imprisoned at Nuremberg. It was Gilbert who defined the Nazi mentality by its 'utter lack of empathy', a trait that has been identified in the contemporary US GOP. See John Dean's 'Conservatives Without Conscience'.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

How the GOP is Killing America

2009-11-03T02:04:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The US is much, much worse off these days than Mexico which often takes the blame for the drug trade and 'income disparities'. Fact is --income and wealth inequalities are much, much worse in the US than in Mexico. At the end of the Bush Sr era, the upper quintile alone had benefited from the Reagan tax cuts. Even fewer benefited from Shrub's largesse! So --where do the GOP 'yankees' get off aiming their demagoguery at Mexico?

The piddly amounts of drugs sold across the border are a strawman --peanuts compared to the heist of US wealth pulled off by just one percent of the US population!

The GOP is either nuts or crooked or both! I often wonder what the US might have been if right wing psychopaths had not demagogued every war or every so-called 'crisis' and in ways that enriched only their 'base'! The end result is that just one percent of the entire population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined! Anyone not of that ruling elite still supporting the elitist GOP and complicit DINOs is nuts! And I have no sympathy for you!

And if Mexican drugs are sold in the US --what of it? Isn't that just good ol' laissez-faire, right wing, GOP 'free enterprise'? How long would that evil drug trade last if 'yankees' were not lined up to buy? And what percentage of the GOP is 'hooked' on cocaine? How long would the border traffic last if 'white shirted', clean shaven GOP faithful were not lined up to buy?

If the GOP were truly concerned about the 'streets' of the US, it would get its stupid head out of its stupid ass and support 'leftist' or Keynesian policies that are known and proven to have created jobs and can be depended upon to get people off the streets and back to work! How many folk sell drugs because it represents a 'calling', a mission from God?

The trend in which the rich get rich at everyone else's expense abated --briefly --under Clinton. The trend resumed with a vengeance under Bush II. I have the official stats to prove all this and have posted them in numerous articles.

Time for the GOP to Put Up or Shut Up

The US is a Third World Nation kept afloat by China. That fact is confirmed by the the CIA's own World Fact Book. The US is listed at the bottom with the world's largest Negative Current Account Balance. China is on TOP with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance. Thus China is in a position to prop up the buck in order to continue selling its crap to us via Wal-Mart. Quick --name just one industry in which the US leads the world!

This was all by design. The elites have no particular allegiance to the US. Certainly, one of the causes for the collapse is the capital drain to offshore tax havens.

I often wonder how great the US might have been had it not committed genocide for the resources it 'won' only to squander them leaving behind vast wastelands where once Native Americans lived peaceably with Buffalo. You've never seen a buffalo? Chances are you never will! The object of US policy was to kill the Buffalo and thus the Native American.

Let's talk about the stupid people who have taken over the US and the shill media which kisses up to them. Let's review the implications of a recent article in the Texas Observer.

On March 25, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° rolled into El Paso to report on Mexican drug-cartel violence. Cooper was one more in a recent wave of national news heavy hitters to parachute in, scare the pants off millions of viewers, then jet off to the next headline destination.

Dressed in military green, Cooper furrowed his brow and squinted solemnly into the camera as the lights of the international border checkpoint glimmered behind him. Guest Fred Burton, identified as a terrorism and security expert with Stratfor Global Intelligence, was beamed in from a studio in Austin to paint a menacing picture of Mexican cartels invading U.S. city streets. “It’s just a matter of time before it really spills over into the United States unless we shore up the border as best we can,” Burton warned.
By God, they’re coming to your neighborhood! Looking at another live feed from El Paso, listening to the breathless reports of violence and “expert” analysis about “spillover,” viewers could only assume that the city in which Cooper stood was under imminent assault.

That’s the reality these days for El Pasoans. Or rather, it’s the twisted perception created by border-warrior politicians and national news media, and foisted on Juarez’s relatively peaceful sister city. For El Pasoans and residents of nearby border towns, it might all be a mere oddity—maybe even worth a chuckle—if it didn’t mean the construction of 18-foot border walls, blustery talk about National Guard troop surges, and new resources for the disastrous war on drugs. While “troop surge,” “border wall,” and “drug war” might sound irresistibly sexy to politicians and pundits, it’s border residents who have to live with the fences and tanks and consequences.

The truth differs wildly from the perception. Certainly, El Paso’s symbiotic relationship with Juarez has been disrupted by the explosion of drug violence south of the border, which began to tick up in January 2008. But it’s not the kind of disruption brought to you by CNN, Fox, and the rest of the media pack.

The real impact of the ongoing tragedy in Juarez is felt by El Pasoans in more indirect and personal ways. While the brutality across the river has not caused a wave of kidnappings and murders in El Paso, folks do feel its effects every day. Families are divided. El Pasoans can no longer visit their friends, relatives, doctors or dentists in Juarez. Businesses on both sides suffer. The stories are legion: The high-school student who can’t visit her beloved, 105-year-old grandmother because her parents don’t want to risk her safety. The young Juarez woman who worries that her El Paso friends and relatives won’t be able to attend her wedding. And the many families mourning loved ones lost on the other side of the Rio Grande.

All too often the nightly news portrays Juarez and El Paso as one and the same, with the U.S. city symbolizing the perils of that new buzzword: spillover. Night after night, TV spin-meisters, retired generals, terror analysts and politicians rage on about spillover violence. They call Mexico a “failed state” and argue for militarizing the border. No wonder Americans are scared. No wonder El Pasoans feel doubly besieged.

Lights, Cameras, Mayhem

Consider this gem from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now a consultant for ABC News, commenting on Juarez: “There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border, and it’s stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq.”

After weeks of hearing the war drums beat louder and louder, Sito Negron, editor of El Paso’s online daily news journal, Newspaper Tree, recently decided he’d had enough. An insurgency on both sides? he thought, listening to Clarke’s prime-time pronouncement. Are you kidding me?

According to the FBI, more than 1,600 people were killed by cartel violence in Juarez in 2008. El Paso, a city of 755,000, recorded just 18 murders last year. Laredo had 11; Brownsville and McAllen had three and nine, respectively. By comparison, Washington, D.C., with a population smaller than El Paso’s, had 186 homicides in 2008.

Who Are the IDIOTS?

A native El Pasoan, Negron was fed up with national media feeding the frenzy to militarize his hometown. He published an opinion piece on Newspaper Tree titled, “Who are you idiots, and why are you on national television talking about the border? An open letter to U.S. media":

Get this straight. The violence is not “spilling over the border” into the U.S. No, every time you say that, whether you mean to or not, you’re conjuring up images of crazed Mexicans crossing the border to burn Columbus, and you have it backwards. It spilled over from the U.S. into Mexico and Latin America long ago. ... [F]or the past 20 years, we’ve been slowly turning the border into a militarized zone, so let’s not say there isn’t violence associated with both sides of the drug trade and the Drug War. We could say that we’re now sharing the violence to a higher degree, an important distinction from the simple-minded terminology of “spilling over.”

“I’m happy that the border is an important place,” Negron said a few days after writing the piece. “But I’m not happy about the context in which they place it. I’m generally a little more mainstream, but I got a bit loose with the editorial because I was ticked off.”

Other El Pasoans share his pique. Negron’s piece generated several dozen comments, mostly along this line: “Congratulations on hitting the nail on the head. I am so tired of hearing so-called pundits speak about the border without being here and experiencing it for themselves.”

Negron cops to his own role in whipping up the frenzy. In January he penned an article for Texas Monthly called “Baghdad, Mexico,” comparing the carnage in Juarez to the insurgent violence in Iraq. He wishes he hadn’t made the comparison, he says, because it helped fan the blaze of overheated news coverage.

“I regret using the word ‘Baghdad’ because people from elsewhere who don’t know much about the border or Mexico see that word and think, ‘We better send the military down there,’” Negron says. “The border becomes a backdrop for the nation’s fears and anxieties instead of a place where real people live.”

In late March, constituents criticized El Paso Mayor John Cook for missing a civic forum on the city’s east side. Cook couldn’t make it because he was being interviewed by BBC anchor Katty Kay. The BBC, Kay said, had information that drug violence had spilled into El Paso.

Cook was eager to set the record straight. He’s had plenty of practice lately, with national and international media frequently asking him about the situation in Juarez and in his own city. “I’ll speak with them and tell them there hasn’t been any spillover of violence into El Paso,” he says, “and then they will turn around and report that there is. Mostly I feel like I’ve wasted my time.”

He’s not the only border mayor who feels that frustration. In March, McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez got into an on-air tussle with CNN anchor Don Lemon. With archival footage of masked soldiers and body bags in Sinaloa, Mexico—960 miles from McAllen—rolling in the background, Lemon informed Cortez what was happening in his city.
...
When folks around El Paso and McAllen hear rhetoric [i.e, bullshit, EC] about sending troops to the border, they can’t help remembering what happened in Redford, four hours east of El Paso, in 1997. With drug trafficking having been declared a “threat to national security,” thousands of soldiers were dispatched to the border. Residents’ worst fears were realized when 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez was shot and killed by a Marine while tending his family’s herd of goats 100 yards from his home. Hernandez was the first American killed by U.S. military forces on native soil since the Kent State massacre in 1970. The Marine who shot him was not charged with murder, though the federal government eventually paid the Hernandez family $1.9 million to settle a wrongful death claim.

Shortly after Hernandez’s death, military operations along the border were suspended. Almost a decade later, from June 2006 to July 2008, 6,000 National Guardsmen were sent to the border as part of Operation Jump Start. This time they were assisting Border Patrol officers with technical, logistical, and administrative work to free up the patrol to focus on detaining more illegal immigrants. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster says the National Guard troops in his area spent most of those two years parked outside the city in Humvees, dressed in camo fatigues. “I came back from a trip and thought, ‘My God, what happened while I was away?’” he recalls. This time, at least, there were no murders—just a couple of bored soldiers who got into trouble for shooting off rounds on the outskirts of town one night.

Tired of living under virtual house arrest, mayors, county judges and business leaders formed the Texas Border Coalition in 2006, the first year of Operation Jump Start. The coalition has tried ever since to educate state and federal policymakers about what U.S. border towns are really experiencing and what they really need. They’ve spent a lot of time pleading their case in Washington. It’s been uphill all the way.
--Texas Observer, Lights, Cameras, Mayhem!

The US presumes to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq even as it creates conditions of 'occupation' within its borders. As it declines, the US becomes an increasing danger to almost every nation on the globe. What is the threat posed by Afghanistan? None! What was the threat posed by Iraq? None! If you think it was, then show me the WMD! What was the threat posed by Viet Nam? After some thirty or forty years I am still awaiting a credible answer to that one!

Enough is enough!

A good start will consist of shutting up the right wing media. Turn off CNN, Fox and the bullshit peddlers all over the tube! Secondly, the people of the US must effect the complete and utter repudiation of right wing practices which have, in fact, enriched just one percent of the entire population as some 95 percent of the rest of us have gotten poorer, impoverished utterly.

Secondly, the GOP must be held to account for war policies that have, in fact, bankrupted the US.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

How Foreign Lobbies and Elites 'Bought' the US

2009-10-31T06:03:00.000-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

FASCISM is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political policy defined by a corporatist economic ideology enforced by a dictatorial regime which, in turn, is supported by a symbiotic business/corporate community.

In pre-war Germany, Hitler held a meeting with his corporate backers. He cut them all a 'deal' and, in turn, was rewarded with their enduring support and they by his LUCRATIVE DEFENSE CONTRACTS. It was I.G. Farben which manufactured Zyklon 'B' used to murder Jews, gypsies and non-Nazis in concentration camps.

In the US just one percent of the nation's population has benefited from GOP (right wing) tax cuts. I have charged that the 'tax cuts' are, rather, an elaborate money laundering scheme in which the 'ruling elite' is paid a return on its investment, that is, the purchase of the US government by way of its pimps on K-Street.

Read the US govt stats re: income inequalities. Income inequalities in the US are instructive, the result of an ongoing auction of the US government to domestic and foreign lobbies. Glaring correlations not accidental: terrorism is worse under GOP regimes and --at the same time --income disparities increase. US tax policy, for example, favors the rich and, of late, just one percent of the US population which is enriched by those policies.

The area around K Street in Washington, D.C., abounds with lobbyists, many of whom represent foreign governments or entities. Although some major foreign governments continue to work mainly through their embassies in Washington, nearly one hundred countries rely on lobbyists to protect and promote their interests. The subculture of public relations and law firms that do this kind of work reflects a steady decline and privatization of diplomacy -- with an increasing impact on how the United States conducts its own foreign policy.
The strongest lobbies promoting foreign interests are driven by cohesive ethnic population groups in the United States, such as Armenia, China, Greece, India, Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and, historically, Ireland. Even countries that have strong bilateral relations with the United States, such as Australia, Japan, and Norway, need lobbyists as well as embassies. Lobbyists can operate within the system in ways that experienced diplomats cannot. A lobbying group can identify with a domestic ethnic bloc even though it is paid by a foreign government. Ethnic politics can trump corporate interests and, more important, influence what agencies within the U.S. government may see as the national interest.Illustration by Ib Ohlsson
The United States is a nation of immigrants -- a strength that has also created vulnerabilities. Although ethnic population groups have at times offset isolationist tendencies in the United States, they also can find themselves conflicted on issues that could divide the motherland from the adopted country, the United States. In other cases, these so-called hyphenated groups unhesitatingly side with the United States and, in effect, become more royalist than the king.
--Diplomacy Inc., The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Did Bush Era Mark the End of American Global Dominance?

2009-10-30T07:57:00.001-07:00

Recent evidence of the decline of US dominance began with US failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, complicated by the decline of US economic hegemony begun under Ronald Reagan, the related decline of the US dollar begun under Richard Nixon who bought the US some time by withdrawing from the Bretton-Woods accords, commonly called the 'gold standard'.

The decline of American dominance during the Reagan years are defined by the start of several long term trends, not the least of which was the decline of the US middle class during which wealth began its flow upward to just one percent of the entire population. US efforts in Viet Nam, already failed, left a shadow on rather impotent efforts by Reagan to re-assert US hegemony.

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Lies About Lockerbie, 911 and Terrorism

2009-10-28T03:38:00.000-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Unlike 911, Lockerbie was investigated but, like 911, the case is obviously not solved. It it was Mossad, according to Time, which issued the first 'tip' that a bomb had been placed among the luggage. That may be sufficient grounds for reasonable suspicion. Mossad, after all, is probably second only to the US CIA among the world's largest 'official' terrorist organizations!

Memorial services were held to mark the 20th anniversary of the crash of Pan Am 103 near Lockerbie, Scotland. Like 911, 'Lockerbie', an alleged 'terrorist' attack named for the nearby township, raises more questions than are answered. But there is one important difference. In Lockerbie there is identifiable wreckage. In New York and at the Pentagon, the laws of physics --we are expected to believe --were suspended!

In Lockerbie, southern Scotland, eleven people were killed when large sections of aircraft fell on, in and around the township, bringing total fatalities to 270. Many have called it the 'Lockerbie bombing'. Unlike 911, Lockerbie was investigated but, like 911, the case is obviously not solved.

Precisely how a rogue bag containing the bomb eluded the Frankfurt airport security system is still not known.
If bomb-laden luggage replaced an innocent bag, what happened to the displaced suitcase?
It so happened that the flight from Berlin to Frankfurt was delayed. While all the passengers ultimately made the connection to London, 11 suitcases, including the pilot's two bags, remained behind in Frankfurt. They were entered into the airport computer system and rerouted via the Pan Am flight. But only one of the pilot's suitcases was recovered at Lockerbie. The other had been mysteriously left behind in Frankfurt, and arrived safely in Seattle a day later. That story, which TIME has corroborated, doesn't prove Pan Am's claim that terrorists used al-Kassar's drug pipeline to pull a suitcase switch in Frankfurt. But it does support the theory that a rogue bag was inserted into the automated baggage-control system, as the secret FBI report indicates was possible.

Time

George Bush's [Bush I] letter of condolence, written almost four months after the shattered remains of Pan Am Flight 103 fell on Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, expressed the usual "my heart goes out to you" sorrow. "No action by this government can restore the loss you have suffered," he concluded. But deep inside, Mrs. McKee suspects it was a government action gone horribly awry that indirectly led to her only son's death. "I've never been satisfied at ( all by what the people in Washington told me," she says.
Today, as the U.S. spearheads the U.N.-sanctioned embargo against Libya for not handing over two suspects in the bombing, Mrs. McKee wonders if Chuck's background contains the secret of why this plane was targeted. If her suspicions are correct, Washington may not be telling the entire story. Major Charles Dennis McKee, called "Tiny" by his Army intelligence friends, was a burly giant and a superstar in just about every kind of commando training offered to American military personnel. He completed the rugged Airborne and Ranger schools, graduated first in his class from the Special Forces qualification course, and served with the Green Berets. In Beirut he was identified merely as a military attache assigned to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). But his hulking physique didn't fit such a low- profile diplomatic post. Friends there remember him as a "walking arsenal" of guns and knives. His real assignment reportedly was to work with the CIA in reconnoitering the American hostages in Lebanon and then, if feasible, to lead a daring raid that would rescue them.
McKee's thick, 37-page Army dossier contains so many blacked-out words that it's hard to glean the danger he faced. Surviving the censor's ink was his title, "Team Chief." Under "Evaluation," it was written that he "performs constantly in the highest-stress environment with clear operational judgment and demeanor . . . Especially strong in accomplishing the mission with minimal guidance and supervision . . . Continues to perform one of the most hazardous and demanding jobs in the Army."
For Beulah McKee the mystery deepened six months after Chuck's death, when she received a letter from another U.S. agent in Beirut. It was signed "John Carpenter," a name the Pentagon says it can't further identify. Although the letter claimed that Chuck's presence on the Pan Am plane was unrelated to the bombing, Carpenter's message only stirred her suspicions. "I cannot comment on Chuck's work," he wrote, "because his work lives on. God willing, in time his labors will bear fruit and you will learn the true story of his heroism and courage."
A four-month investigation by Time has disclosed evidence that raises new questions about the case. Among the discoveries:
According to an FBI field report from Germany, the suitcase originating in Malta that supposedly contained the bomb may not have been transferred to Pan Am Flight 103 in Frankfurt, as charged in the indictment of the two Libyans. Instead, the bomb-laden bag may have been substituted in Frankfurt for an innocent piece of luggage.
The rogue bag may have been placed on board the plane by Jibril's group with the help of Monzer al-Kassar, a Syrian drug dealer who was cooperating with the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Administration in a drug sting operation. Al- Kassar thus may have been playing both sides of the fence.
Jibril and his group may have targeted that flight because on board was an intelligence team led by Charles McKee, whose job was to find and rescue the hostages.
--Pan Am 103: Why Did They Die

The wreckage found near Lockerbie is clearly traceable to a specific flight. The aircraft was largely re-assembled. By contrast, 'scraps' left behind on 911 were hurriedly disposed of by executive order of George W. Bush. No attempt was made to investigate the crime. It was, rather, covered up. At the Pentagon, the glaring lack of wreckage was 'explained away'. The fuselage of Flight 77, we are told, vaporized. Aluminum does not vaporize at temperatures less than 11000 degree F, according to NASA some 1000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun. In any case, the dead were said to have been DNA id'd! But DNA literally 'melts' at temperatures well under 500 degrees F. So --which is it? Did the fuselage vaporize OR were the bodies identified via DNA. It cannot be both ways.

Willful destruction of evidence is a crime and those ordering it should be prosecuted! Moreover, it is my belief that only those guilty of a crime are sufficiently motivated to order the destruction of admissible evidence that might surely convict them of the crimes of mass murder and high treason. Bush Jr, should you happen to read this while surfing the net, you know who and what you are!

I defy anyone to produce a scrap, a shred of Pentagon wreckage traceable to Flight 77. Secondly, I defy anyone to produce a scrap of admissible evidence that any Arab hijacker was ever on board. Certainly, there are no Arab names whatsoever on the ONLY official document of Flight 77 passengers and that is the official autopsy report released to Dr. Olmsted in response to his FOIA request.

I have never had any reason --compelling or otherwise --to believe a word of Bush's 'official conspiracy theory' of 911. No aspect of this conspiracy theory can be believed. No part of it is credible. While it is time to fully investigate the events of 911, it might be advisable to begin a wider inquiry: why are there more terrorist attacks against US interests during GOP regimes than Democratic at least since the assumption of the office of President by Ronald Reagan? I'm waiting for a credible story from any Republican holding public office or supporting GOP officials holding any office in the nation!

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
'Flame' attacks, 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Exposing Lies About the FED, the CIA, the Murder of JFK

2009-10-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

New allegations about CIA involvment in the murder of JFK put a glaring spotlight on the current bankster crisis. Those who pull off crimes are, naturally, most motivated to lie about them! The CIA, therefore, looks very guilty of two murders that ripped America apart: the murders of JFK and RFK.

As news broke this week that CIA lies about the JFK murder had been exposed, I recalled that among the motives for JFK's murder was his threat to abolish the FED, the very source of the government's 'funny money' and most certainly, the root cause of the current banking collapse. JFK had threatened to strip the power of the FED, smash the CIA into 'a thousand pieces' and abolish the oil industry's sacred cow: the Oil Depletion Allowance. No President since has dared piss off so many powerful and ruthless people.

JFK tried to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest

The move would have bypassed the Fed by restoring to the government the power and authority to issue currency. Executive Order 11110 gave the US government the ability to create its own money --backed by silver! It just might have put the FED out of business.

Some background and basic economics: to pay it's bills, the US government borrows money from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Federal Reserve Notes are not backed up by anything. 'Silver certificates' issued under the authority of JFKs order would have been backed up by government owned silver. The government would no longer borrow from the FED to pay its obligations. It would have done so with 'silver certificates' issued by the government itself.

Like any commodity, Federal Reserve notes are subject to the laws of supply and demand. The demand for Federal Reserve notes might have collapsed altogether and the FED itself might have been forced out of business.

Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level. It would have would have made it possible for the government to repay its debt without having to borrow worthless 'notes' from the Fed and having to repay them later at interest.

Executive Order 11110 was never repealed. One wonders why no other President ever bothered to utilize it. Could it have had anything to do with the fact that JFKs order made him very, very unpopular throughout the banking establishment? JFK was brutally murdered in Dallas just five months after issuing the order. No more silver certificates were issued. The FED's gravy train was still intact.

FED owners do not have ready access to $trillions$ needed to float the US debt and deficit. They don't need it! The FED 'creates' money with a bookkeeping entry, writing out a check to the US government in exchange for US bonds. Cashing the check is easy; the US Government banks at the Federal Reserve.

It's a scam in which no 'real' money, no hard currency is exchanged. Government agents are never seen walking out of the FED offices --under armed guard --carrying bullion, coins, or, indeed, anything of real value. The Fed makes an 'entry' in the books! The government makes an entry in its books!

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
--Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, I believe, had foreseen what has happened in fact. That is the context in which the latest news should be considered.

The October 17 Times story was another such example. It revealed, perhaps for the first time in any major US newspaper, that the CIA has been deceiving the public about its own relationship to the JFK assassination.
On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The CIA hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in CIA support during 1963.
In August 1963, Oswald visited a New Orleans shop owned by a directorate official, feigning sympathy with the group’s goal of ousting Mr. Castro. A few days later, directorate members found Oswald handing out pro-Castro pamphlets and got into a brawl with him. Later that month, he debated the anti-Castro Cubans on a local radio station.
That the October 17 story was published at all is astonishing. According to Lexis Nexis, there have only been two earlier references to the CIA Joannides documents controversy in any major US newspaper: a brief squib in the New York Daily News in 2003 announcing the launching of the case, and a letter to the New York Times in 2007 (of which the lead author was Jeff Morley) complaining about the Times’ rave review of a book claiming that Oswald was a lone assassin.
--The JFK Assassination: New York Times Acknowledges CIA Deceptions

Just last year, the BBC reported that it was the CIA that was behind the murder of RFK, JFK's younger brother.

The new video and photographic evidence -- the result of a three year long investigation --"puts three senior CIA operatives" at the scene of the murder.
Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.
David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."
Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations.
Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated. [See also: CIA Involvement in the assassination Of Robert Kennedy]
--CIA role in Kennedy killing
--Evidence That the CIA Murdered RFK

As with the 1963 murder of JFK in Dallas, lingering questions dog the official theories. Powder burns indicated that three shots had been fired from very close range from 0 to 1-1/2 inches though no witness could place Sirhan closer than three feet. Sirhan's gun held only eight bullets but a total of ten were recovered. Three were found in Kennedy. Two were lodged in a pantry door frame. One was found in an airspace. Presumably four more were found elsewhere. Significantly, four bullets 'touched' Kennedy to include the three that were recovered --lodged --in his back. At no time was Sirhan ever behind RFK.

Inexcusably, the door frames were burned, the Los Angeles Police Dept. claimed no bullets were found lodged in the "bullet holes", and two expended bullets (inexplicably dug out of wood) were soon found in the front seat of Sirhan's car. The LAPD then destroyed their records of the tests that had been done on the "bullet holes" in the doorframe.
--Facts about the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination

Like the fatal flaws in the official conspiracy theory of 911, the holes in the government's JFK story are fatal.

No competent or sane sniper/hit man would choose to shoot anyone from the TSBD. The 'view to a kill' was obscured by branches and leaves as photos taken that day prove! It was and remains the worst of several possible locations!
Zapruder frame 313 proves conclusively that the fatal shot came from the front, the so-called Grassy Knoll
No sniper in his right mind would choose a kill spot providing no possibility of egress or escape! Oswald would have had to have ditched his rifle and run down some six flights! No 'hit man' would have tried it! It's stupid! The place would have been 'sealed'!
I have visited Dealy Plaza! The picket fence afforded cover, egress and a clear unobstructed shot of the 'target' from a distance about one third that of a site in TSBD.
From TSBD, the motorcade is moving laterally and then away; from the picket fence, the target's lateral motion relative to the 'shooter' is minimal. A non-expert could have made the shot but, in fact, it was an expert who did!

I interviewed a witness to the JFK murder many years after the fact. Rosemary Willis was but a child on that fateful day and her story has been ignored by the mainstream media. When we met, she produced several boxes of color slides that had been taken by her father that fateful day in Dealy Plaza.

Referred to in the literature of the assassination as the "little girl in the red dress", she is seen in the Zapruder film running along the south side of Elm Street. Her father, Phillip Willis, taking 35mm color slides, can also be seen in the Zapruder film, looking forward at his daughter, perhaps calling to her. She stops suddenly just as the Presidential limousine is partially blocked by a sign between the motorcade and Abraham Zapruder's camera.

The FBI seized the Phillips photos but returned them years later. I looked at them on a light table with a loupe. I immediately recognized Dealy Plaza, the limousine, the motorcade, the Texas School Book Depository, the Pergola, the Grassy Knoll, the Triple Underpass, place names now burned into the consciousness of a scarred nation.

One Phillip Willis took a series of 12 photos of Dealy Plaza, where Kennedy was shot, in the minutes before and after the assassination. Mr. Willis' photos and testimony before the Commission appear in the report.
He was not questioned about the eighth photo, a shot of the Book Depository entrance shortly after the shooting. As Willis later pointed out, one of the men in the photo "looks so much like (Jack Ruby), it's pitiful". FBI agents questioning Willis agreed with him that the man bore a powerful resemblance to Ruby. When Willis mentioned this to the Commission, no interest was shown. When the photo was published in the Warren Report, a considerable part of the face of the Ruby look-alike had been cropped away.
- JFK Conspiracy Theories

At last, Rosemary (if I may be so familiar) pointed out some especially interesting slides. One of them was a shot of the Pergola, above the grassy knoll, taken from her father's position on the south side of Elm Street. Through the columns, all was clear. Then Rosemary produced an old copy of Look Magazine and turned to a double page spread. Reproduced over facing pages was her father's photograph of the limousine with the Pergola behind it.

"Do you notice anything unusual?" she asked.

I had noticed something, something which I now believe was the result of FBI complicity in the cover-up of a murder! In the magazine spread, a train locomotive could plainly be seen between the columns. Indeed, there are railroad tracks in that area to this day as Google earth reveals. Those tracks were there in 1963 as well --as photos of the time reveal. It was in that rail yard that three "tramps" had been arrested prior to the Kennedy assassination. [See: JFK Conspirator Wanted Every Kennedy Dead ]

But why was there a locomotive in the published picture but no locomotive in the "slide"? Rosemary explained that after Look Magazine published her father's pictures, FBI agents took all her father's slides. As I recall, the slides were kept for several years. When they were returned at last, every slide that had depicted the train had been doctored. The train was gone. Only the FBI could have 'removed' the depicted train --but why? It was clear to me that the answer to that question might very well have solved the JFK murder case! The removal of the train was intended to protect the guilty and it was equally clear that by removing the evidence, the FBI was overtly obstructing justice, protecting the identity/identities of murderers and traitors! The murder of JFK was not just a murder. It was an act of high treason!

Why would the FBI find it necessary to remove a train? What did the FBI find threatening about a train? I've speculated that the train was the egress, the perfect getaway for the assassins who fired the fatal shot from the grassy knoll just as Mark Lane had theorized years ago. That raises the question: why would the FBI protect an assassin's get-away? Unless the FBI was a part of the plot, lately called a coup d'etat, it would not.

However speculative my thoughts, it is fair to say that when you have uncovered the FBI's motive for removing the seemingly innocent picture of a train, you will have gone a long way toward explaining why the Warren Commission insisted upon the theory that the fatal shot came from the rear when any examination of the Zapruder film will reveal otherwise. Those who cover up are guilty! Count on it!

Addendum

Here's more about Rosemary Willis from Wikipedia:

Rosemary Willis (born 1953) was a close witness during the assassination of President Kennedy.

Clearly seen in the Zapruder film at the start of the assassination wearing a white, hooded coat and a red skirt, located to the limousine's left, she runs southwestward and parallel with the limousine while she faces for a short time when the limousine was to her direct right.

At circa Zapruder film frame 190 (hereafter "Z-190"), she is seen slowing, then she stops running and, simultaneous with her slowing/stopping, she slightly turns her level-facing head to end up looking towards the southwest corner of the Texas School Book Depository.

Immediately after the sitting upright President Kennedy is first hidden at Z-207 by the "Stemmons Freeway" traffic sign in the Zapruder film, Rosemary suddenly, and beginning at Z-214, snaps her head very rapidly 90 to 100 degrees westward --completely away from the depository southwest corner-- within only 0.16 second to then face Abraham Zapruder and the grassy knoll by Z-217.

Precisely 0.60 second after starting her extremely quick westward headsnap towards Mr. Zapruder and the grassy knoll, President Kennedy's head then emerges back into the Zapruder film view at Z-225 still sitting upright with his face and arms already displaying a physical reaction to having already been impacted by a bullet.

Importantly, in 1978 Rosemary was interviewed by investigators from the House Select Committee on Assassinations and stated that she heard at least 4 shots during the assassination. She also stated to the HSCA that while she was still facing the grassy knoll picket fence, she was attracted to view the quick movement of a person who quickly dropped down behind a "wall" out of her view. Rosemary was also documented in the HSCA report that her father, military veteran Phillip Willis, became upset when the Dallas policemen, sheriffs, and detectives --who first quickly ran onto the grassy knoll where he thought the shots came from-- then the authorities ran away from the grassy knoll.

Rosemary's sister, Linda, stated to assassination researcher and author Richard Trask (“Pictures of the Pain” 1994) that after the assassination she and Rosemary also saw someone find a piece of the president's head that had landed in the grass located at least twenty-two feet to the left of the president.

After the assassination Willis, along with her sister, father (Phillip), and mother (Marilyn) were present at the Kodak photographic laboratory getting her father’s assassination related photo slides developed when the Zapruder film was also developed and first shown to approximately nineteen persons.

Rosemary Willis was never called to testify to the Warren Commission.
--Wikipedia, Rosemary Willis

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Failed State Update with Krugman and Roberts

2009-10-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In theory, a near worthless dollar is great for American manufacturers, American jobs. Lower costs for American goods means US exports should rise, reducing our trade deficit and helping pay off the national debt! That's the theory, the rationale behind Richard Nixon's decision to take the US off the so-called 'gold standard' back in the 70s.

The reality is this: despite the right wing's subversion of the dollar, despite the deals Nixon and subsequent GOP regimes cut with China, US exports have decreased, US jobs have decreased, the US standard of living has decreased as just one percent of the population has prospered at everyone else's expense. That has been the case at least since Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982, a tax cut which benefited only this rich base of GOP/right wing supporters. These downward trends have defined US history since the 1970s despite temporary gains made during the Carter and Clinton years. I have previously posted the key 'stats' which prove this to have been the case.

Check out the CIA's World Fact Book which lists the US at the very bottom of the list with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. China, which pegs the Yuan to the dollar, is at the top of the list with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance. If the GOP had been correct, US exports should have risen! The 'balance of trade deficit' i.e, the NEGATIVE Current Account Balance would have been reduced! If the GOP had been correct, the US could have paid off huge amounts of national debt run up in incompetent and dishonest GOP regimes. The US might have survived decades of conservative budgets which forced the US to borrow from other countries. But --not surprisingly --things have not worked out as the GOP would have you believe.

Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.

Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable. America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it’s getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere.
But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar — which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.
--Palin vs Krugman On The Dollar -- Who Is Right?

Foreign Policy magazine goes on to say that, as dismal as the effects of Chinese policy on the US and US consumers, 'It's the rest of the world -- particularly Europe and the Pacific Rim -- that are getting royally screwed by China's policy.' FB claims these countries now suffer because their products are 'less comptetive' in the US vis a vis Chinese exports.

Keep in mind, that it was Nixon who took the dollar off the gold standard because of 'pressures' on the value of the dollar. Simply, had there been a run on the buck, the gold in Fort Knox would not have covered it. The question is: is there any gold in Fort Knox?

Secondly, it was hoped that by removing the dollar from an unrealistic standard, US products would enjoy greater sales abroad. So what happened? Someone please tell me what the US produces? Cars? Nope, it imports them! Take a look at Flint Michigan if you are interested in knowing the effects this has had! Electronics? Nope! Since the early 1960s, it is Japan that has flooded the US market with transistor radios, calculators, etc! Aerospace? Nope! Ask a Californian! The Aerospace industry which had driven the SOCAL boom, is but a shadow of its former glory. What of 'Silicon Valley'. What of it? IT is outsourced to India!

The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.

Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.

Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.--Paul Craig Roberts, The US as Failed State

Richard Nixon Take US Off Gold Standard

The United States now no longer controls many of its domestic industries. Over the last 10 years alone foreigners have spent $1.2 trillion to acquire more than 8,000 key US companies. As of 2002, foreigners owned fully 20 percent of American manufacturing. In many high-tech and defense-related industries, the proportion is far higher. Such US industries as mining, cement, publishing, engine and power transmission equipment, rubber and plastics, and sound recording and motion pictures are now largely foreign owned. Even in industries like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, industrial machinery, transportation equipment, electronics, metal industries, and coal and petroleum industries, foreign ownership has recently become very high.
Increasingly therefore profits and technological secrets in such industries accrue to foreign owners. Moreover many of the key jobs (in research and development, for instance) go to foreign workers, while the profits that accrue to foreign holding companies boost the tax revenues of foreign governments. We are no longer capable of producing many critical components needed in our high-tech and defense industries.
--Foreign Ownership of U.S. Industries

I tried to learn the truth about those GOP/China deals back in the late seventies when I had a rare opportunity to put a microphone in front of George H.W. Bush in the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt-Regency in downtown Houston. Had I known then, what I know now, it might have been a much, much better interview. I left unhappy with getting Bush's goofy story about eating 'aeromatic meats' (dog lip) in the Forbidden City.

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Texas Oil Man: US Should Plunder Iraqi Oil

2009-10-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Texas oil man T. Boone Pickets typifies what is dead wrong about America and what passes for 'foreign policy'. Pickens claims the US is 'entitled' to Iraqi oil. How convenient for the oil barons who conspired with Dick Cheney to carve up the oil fields of Iraq before 911 would give Bush the pretext he would need to attack and invade Iraq, a nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with 911.

Nevertheless, it would be claimed that Iraq was --somehow --a part of the 'war on terror'. Is there no end to the lies? Might I remind that on 911, it was a gang of Israelis, perhaps criminals from Mossad, who were seen dancing and celebrating! It was NOT Iraqis who celebrated the deaths of innocent Americans! Clearly --Bush waged war on everyone but the 'real terrorists'.

Mossad is just as crooked as is the CIA about which I have written, possibly, thousands of pages [See: Why the CIA is the world's number one terrorist organization] Secondly, the US is perpetually auctioned off to the highest bidders on K-Street! And the the most powerful lobby on K-street is most certainly the Jewish Lobby. Meanwhile, Israel is breaking every international law with respect to Palestine as we write and post.

Every cover, every rationalization, every pretext for war was a treasonous lie from traitors who betrayed the people of the US, the Constitution, and specific US Codes that make any death resulting from such a war a crime punishable by death. If you are reading this, George W. Bush, you are not out of the woods.

Now for the idiot du jour:

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."
--Reuters, Pickens says U.S. firms 'entitled' to Iraqi oil

T. Boone Pickens is either stupid, ignorant or just doesn't care! I am referring to various kinds of law, specifically English Common Law upon which most US laws and Constitution are based and, secondly, US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 which makes what the US did in and to Iraq and to the people of Iraq a war crime punishable by death.

That applies, of course, to Bush who ordered the attack and invasion as well as his close associates who conspired with him knowing that Iraq had no WMD. It applies as well to the Army brass in an all volunteer army. They must take responsibility for having willingly participated in the commission of war crimes for which the penalty is death as prescribed by US law.

Now --are we to believe that US laws are no longer valid? Certainly --there must be a reason the Bush crime family is never brought to justice! There must be a reason that a certain 'class' in America is --in fact --above the law! Perhaps the law has become quaint replaced by a sophisticated but unjust two-tiered affair in which the criminal justice system enforces laws on behalf of an elite 'ruling class' which is itself place above the rule of law to which everyone is expected to pay obeisance and tribute! This elite ruling class of just one percent of the total US population own more than about 95 percent of the rest of us combined and is, in fact, the only beneficiary of US wars of aggression and oil theft in Iraq and elsewhere. Big Brother has arrived!

FACT TIME: there is only ONE justification for war under International Law and that is ''imminent threat'. Iraq POSED no such threat to the US or its interests. That's why Bush tried to claim that Iraq was a part of the so-called 'war on terrorism'' though there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE that Iraq had anything at all to do with 911.

I say revolution now! I say bring down this elite! I say arrest the war criminal who continue to rape the sovereign nation of Iraq! I say file capital charges against George W. Bush, his guilty staff and the Pentagon brass who knowingly and willing planned the entire heist on behalf of big oil!

I say charge every member of the Dick Cheney 'Energy Task Force' for planning it all, literally carving up the oil fields of Iraq before the all-too-convenient Riechstag Fire called 911 gave them the broad and wide ranging pretext to begin a perpetual war in which the US would plunder the Middle East.

Secondly, the US has an all volunteer army. Should that army commit war crimes, are not the willing participants of those crime subject to prosecution?

Is the legacy of the GOP/Reagan/Bush era the abolition of the rule of law? Clearly --unless things change, unless Bush and a gang of war criminals in the Pentagon are brought to justice, the very concept of the 'rule of law' will have become a macabre and ludicrous joke.

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."
--Reuters, Pickens says U.S. firms 'entitled' to Iraqi oil

What the US did in and to Iraq and to the people of Iraq is a war crime punishable by death. That applies to Bush who ordered the attack and invasion as well as his close associates who conspired with him in the knowledge that Iraq had NO WMD. It applies as well to the Army brass who must take responsibility for having willingly participated in the commission of war crimes.

A Nation of Laws or Outlaws?

Clearly --unless things change, unless Bush and a gang of war criminals in the Pentagon are brought to justice, the very concept of the 'rule of law' will have become a macabre and ludicrous joke.

Goodbye America, you sold your soul to the likes of T. Boone Pickens!

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Bombs and Bailouts: How the US 'Pissed Away' 14 Trillion Dollars

2009-10-20T06:15:00.001-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

After four years sifting through a morass of US government records, the Brookings Institution reports that the US government has spent $5.1 trillion on the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons, adding that if 'clean up, stockpiling and dismantlement' is included, the cost rises to $5.5 trillion.

US officials have called it: "money well-spent". Having spent trillions threatening the world, the US has recently bailed out the crooked banksters and other robber barons to the tune of $8.5 trillion for the total cost of the bailouts. See the spreadsheet graphic below. Click on it for the complete story.

Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons to deter and if necessary fight a nuclear war. Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union's military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive- providing "a bigger bang for a buck"-and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort-more than $5 trillion thus far-and its short and long-term consequences for the nation.
--Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, Brookings Institution

Elsewhere, Brookings reports that even as the Cold War ended, the US continued spending some $35 billion a year [$96 million a day], 14 percent of the defense budget on nuclear weapons and maintenance. Even Brookings concedes '..with the benefit of hindsight and objectivity, the waste, the duplication and occasional foolishness.'

Much is made of an 'atmosphere of tension, ambiguity and fear'! But the fact of the matter is this: much of that 'atmosphere' is traceable directly to the presence of a US nuclear arsenal that threatens the world. Brookings concedes that the moneys were not always well spent but does not go far enough. How many of the starving millions might have been fed with just one percent of some 14 trillion squandered by the US on weaponry and bailouts? How much more goodwill might have been achieved with the investment of just half that amount in peaceful projects that would have benefited all mankind? The US may have blown a golden opportunity forever!

``Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.''
-- Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Baghavad Gita

That might describe as well the ruinous effects of a wastral US fiscal policy, a bloated bailout for banksters, an impending implosion that will directly result from the US enrichment of just one percent of its population as some 95 percent descend into poverty, illiteracy and hopelessness and all of it a result of the right wing export of US industries, jobs, and hope!

Adendum:

The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corner, said: “U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since ’45.”

The headline next to it said: “Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And Bonuses.”

We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.

And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.
--Bob Herbert, Safety Nets for the Rich

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Michael Moore: How 'Banksters' Bleed America

2009-10-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

I have stats that prove just one percent of the US population owns more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. We are supposed to believe that's just an accident! It was, in fact, a deliberate transfer of wealth to those who benefit from US largesse to the US wealthy, members of the Military/Industrial complex, and, as Michael Moore dramatically demonstrates --a gang of 'banksters' who may have manufactured the recent 'financial crisis'!

Certainly --at the end of this 'crisis', only the 'banksters' will have benefited. Some already have! Everyone else wil be poorer if not poverty stricken. Bluntly --I am not all that excited about the restoration of the 'economic health' of the parasites who have leached upon the labors of those who create real wealth: workers!

It was written recently that Wall Street types were 'mocking' us, 'us' being the people of the US. Well, of course, Wall St mocks us. They're alright! They made out like the bandits they are in fact. Write this down: 1) Rich folk, bankers and elites LOVE recessions; they start them by 'taking their profits' i.e, dumping their holdings and depressing markets. 2) They short sell all the way down. 3) Then, they pick up the bargains when you are forced to sell or have already declared bankrupcy.

The banksters can do this because they control the markets.

Michael Moore 'Shakesdown' the Robber Barons

Clearly, the REAL cause of the economic collapse is the precipitous decline of US productivity over a period of some 30 years. The tell-tale symptom of this decline has been the fall of the dollar since Richard Nixon abandoned the 'gold standard' for the obvious reason that a run on the buck would have emptied Ft. Knox. Given a few ups and downs, the dollar has declined along with purchasing power, wages and living standards since that time.

The truth of my assertions can be found in the CIA's own 'World Fact Book' which lists China at the top of the list with the World's LARGEST POSITIVE 'current account balance'; the US is on bottom with the world's largest NEGATIVE current account balance, formerly known as the 'balance of trade' deficit! The difference between China's positive account and the US's negative account is largely the monies you might have made had not the GOP betrayed the American middle and lowers classes even as it enriched an increasingly tiny, ruling elite!

But it’s not a simple case of flourishing banks versus ailing workers: banks that are actually in the business of lending, as opposed to trading, are still in trouble. Most notably, Citigroup and Bank of America, which silenced talk of nationalization earlier this year by claiming that they had returned to profitability, are now — you guessed it — back to reporting losses.

Ask the people at Goldman, and they’ll tell you that it’s nobody’s business but their own how much they earn. But as one critic recently put it: “There is no financial institution that exists today that is not the direct or indirect beneficiary of trillions of dollars of taxpayer support for the financial system.” Indeed: Goldman has made a lot of money in its trading operations, but it was only able to stay in that game thanks to policies that put vast amounts of public money at risk, from the bailout of A.I.G. to the guarantees extended to many of Goldman’s bonds.

So who was this thundering bank critic? None other than Lawrence Summers, the Obama administration’s chief economist — and one of the architects of the administration’s bank policy, which up until now has been to go easy on financial institutions and hope that they mend themselves.

Why the change in tone? Administration officials are furious at the way the financial industry, just months after receiving a gigantic taxpayer bailout, is lobbying fiercely against serious reform. But you have to wonder what they expected to happen. They followed a softly, softly policy, providing aid with few strings, back when all of Wall Street was on the ropes; this left them with very little leverage over firms like Goldman that are now, once again, making a lot of money.
--Paul Krugman, The Banks are no Alright

The US is now a COW to be milked by 'banksters' at home and the Chinese ruling elite abroad. It was the treacherous, if not treasonous, activities of Bush, Nixon, Reagan and, most recently, Bush JR, who brought the world's great superpower to its knees!

It was Bush Jr who laid the groundwork for Nixon's famous trip China back in the seventies. Today, China props up a worthless dollar so that it can continue to sell US consumers --sheeple --products that were once produced by US industries, US businesses who employed a prosperous US working class that, bluntly, no longer exists. Name a single heavy industry in which the US leads the world (excluding military hardware). Secondly, the US dollar is worthless were it not propped up by China who is just trying to save their own asses by doing so.

Kudos to both Democracy Now and Michael Moore. Beginning with the 1989 classic Roger & Me, the Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore says his films come back to a central core concern: the economic system we have is unfair, unjust and undemocratic.

With his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore tackles the financial system and the interchanging circles of Washington politicians and corporate managers that run it. Moore says 'I thought I'd cut to the chase and propose we deal with this economic system and restructure it in a way that benefits people and not the wealthiest one percent.'

I agree! A 'recovery' in which wealth merely resumes its flow upward to just one percent of the population is just a band-aid on the pulmonary artery. If the flow upward is not stopped, the ultimate collapse of the US economy will make the Great Depression look like a Baptist picnic.

Also see:

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word