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The Rich Are Staging a Coup Right Now
Posted by Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com at 8:36 AM on September 29, 2008.
The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this.
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Also in PEEK
McCain Takes Obama's Bait: Promises to Bring Up Ayers at Debate
Steve Benen Washington Monthly
McCain Unveils New Economic Stimulus Proposal: Tax Cut For Millionaires
Faiz Shakir Think Progress
Bush-Supporter Dennis Hopper Switches His Vote: 'I Pray' Obama Wins
Staff Huffington Post
Update: House votes no on Paulson's bailout
Friends,
Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.
No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:
"Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.
"Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.
"At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.
"Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions."
Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.
The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.
And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.
Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?
It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people's home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage "crisis" may never have happened.
This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!
I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something -- NOW! Here's what you can do immediately:
1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what's the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.
2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).
3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.
When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.
P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we'll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say "NO!" If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House. THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM. CALL CONGRESS NOW.
Digg!
Tagged as: congress, bush, democrats, republicans, white house, rich, coup, robbery
Return to PEEK » Post Tools: email EMAIL print PRINT 115 COMMENTS PERMALINK
Also in PEEK
McCain Takes Obama's Bait: Promises to Bring Up Ayers at Debate
He doesn't care about Ayers, but he feels compelled to keep talking about Ayers, and has now promised to bring up Ayers at the debate.
Post by Steve Benen. October 14, 2008. McCain Unveils New Economic Stimulus Proposal: Tax Cut For Millionaires
Uh, Senator, I think you're missing the point.
Post by Faiz Shakir. October 14, 2008. Bush-Supporter Dennis Hopper Switches His Vote: 'I Pray' Obama Wins
One of Hollywood's few Republicans has switched his vote.
Post by Staff. October 14, 2008.
Comments Turn comments off sitewide Give us feedback »
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You're right about the bailout, so why are you including lies?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: rickiey on Sep 29, 2008 8:51 AM
Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills.
No it isn't.
The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is divorce.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Medical bills trigger half of all bankruptcies Posted by: MeyravLevine
» Link? Citation? Posted by: fanny666
» RE: Link? Citation? Posted by: bthespoon
» RE: Link? Citation? Posted by: rickiey
» RE: Link? Citation? Posted by: hilaryuk
» RE: Link? Citation? Posted by: rickiey
» RE: Link? Citation? Posted by: meltedpriest
» You know what they call a musician whose girlfriend just left him? Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: You know what they call a musician whose girlfriend just left him? Posted by: I-I
» Your wrong on both counts, the number one reason is no jobs.... Posted by: Prophit
» Here's your link from a 2005 Harvard Study, Moore is correct Posted by: bbq
The name of the game is survival, at best
[Report this comment]
Posted by: kathiparker on Sep 29, 2008 9:01 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The baby boomers are tired of the lies from our government but we're almost too tired to continue fighting against a system where the game is rigged. The younger people believe. Or at least they want to believe. What else can you do when fighting doesn't help.
I used to be against guns in peoples homes. Then Bush took over the presidency and I realized that without guns the president could continue to take over the country using the military and we wouldn't even have access to a revolution.
It's all over now. We'll all just plod along, hoping when we're young that we will be one of the rich, and then, too late, we will realize that all we can do is survive.
call me TiredCamper
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: The name of the game is survival, at best Posted by: nochicagoboys
» European market ananlysts were pointing out Posted by: bthespoon
» RE: The name of the game is survival, at best Posted by: PrinceRobert
The name of the game is survival, at best
[Report this comment]
Posted by: kathiparker on Sep 29, 2008 9:01 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The baby boomers are tired of the lies from our government but we're almost too tired to continue fighting against a system where the game is rigged. The younger people believe. Or at least they want to believe. What else can you do when fighting doesn't help.
I used to be against guns in peoples homes. Then Bush took over the presidency and I realized that without guns the president could continue to take over the country using the military and we wouldn't even have access to a revolution.
It's all over now. We'll all just plod along, hoping when we're young that we will be one of the rich, and then, too late, we will realize that all we can do is survive.
call me TiredCamper
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» My Bad Posted by: kathiparker
» Critical thinking isn't your long suit Posted by: ReallyBearish
» RE: Critical thinking isn't your long suit Posted by: offplanet
» Standing up for yourself isn't your strong suit. Posted by: disconcerted08
» RE: Critical thinking isn't your long suit Posted by: I-I
» Yours either Posted by: kegbot1
» A what?! You need a new dictionary! Posted by: photon's feather
» RE: Critical thinking isn't your long suit Posted by: tkwilson
Democrats are the Biggest Pushers of the Bailout
[Report this comment]
Posted by: rfrancis@godisdead.com on Sep 29, 2008 9:13 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Where does that leave fellow Alterneters come Novemeber?
Stop voting Democrat or Republican, you are just throwing your vote away.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Democrats are the Biggest Pushers of the Bailout Posted by: oregoncharles
» RE: Democrats are the Biggest Pushers of the Bailout Posted by: lenioui
» Somewhere I heard that Alternet receives funding from the Rockefeller.... Posted by: Prophit
» RE: Somewhere I heard that Alternet receives funding from the Rockefeller.... Posted by: lenioui
The link to 'Call Congress' at bottom goes to a "not found" page..
[Report this comment]
Posted by: adelaney on Sep 29, 2008 9:24 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
We love you Michael Moore! Thanks!
However, the links for the text at bottom of the article reading: "You have to call them now and say "NO!" ...CALL CONGRESS NOW." go to a page that reads "Not found" at the URL: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
Please fix this! thx.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Anyone who votes Republican or Democrat at this point is a FUCKING LOSER LOSER LOSER !!!!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: maxpayne on Sep 29, 2008 10:00 AM
Current rating: 2 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
And I don't want to sound like a mad man again but if Obama or Mccain gets the White House,
GOD WILL CONTINUE TO SEVERELY PUNISH THE USA TO ETERNAL DAMNATION THE LIKES OF WHICH AMERICA HAS NEVER EVER FUCKING SEEN !!!!
Even Bob Barr has a fucking clue at this point !
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Anyone who votes Republican or Democrat at this point is a FUCKING LOSER LOSER LOSER !!!! Posted by: MeyravLevine
» RE: Anyone who votes Republican or Democrat at this point is a FUCKING LOSER LOSER LOSER !!!! Posted by: oregoncharles
» RE: Anyone who votes Republican or Democrat at this point is a FUCKING LOSER LOSER LOSER !!!! Posted by: babs
» Gee, what a waste of effort on your part... Canada is about to become... Posted by: Prophit
» I should have said "western Ireland".... sorry... not north or eastern. Posted by: Prophit
» Your God... Posted by: LeaderofMen
» RE: Your God... Posted by: GrantBurkeVT
» RE: Your God... Posted by: alturn
» Just a small point, science has recently proved there is a God.... Posted by: Prophit
» ok heres the real thing Posted by: graffen48
» RE: ok heres the real thing Posted by: grangersmith
» RE: Anyone who votes Republican or Democrat at this point is a FUCKING LOSER LOSER LOSER !!!! Posted by: Lilykins
» Speak for yourself, there are others that do not have such a disposition. Posted by: Prophit
» RE: Anyone who votes Republican or Democrat at this point is a FUCKING LOSER LOSER LOSER !!!! Posted by: bthespoon
» RE: Anyone who votes Republican or Democrat at this point is a FUCKING LOSER LOSER LOSER !!!! Posted by: lenioui
» Of course, vote for a candidate guaranteed to actually lose, and YOU'RE A WINNER! Posted by: Beck
I love this quote:
[Report this comment]
Posted by: oregoncharles on Sep 29, 2008 10:15 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered"...
As someone noted just above, the Dems in Congress are the chief ones pushing the Bailout. They are "demanding" that at least a few Repubs vote for it, to give them cover. The Repubs, on the other hand, are showing signs of actual integrity, refusing to back a bill that violates all their supposed principles. Of course, their alternative is even worse, but we expected that.
MM actually admits that this bizarre picture is "typical." Then he offers the standard excuse: they're "cowering". Somehow, they're "afraid" of the big bad Republicans, or the big bad Wall Street tycoons on their doorstep with a REALLY BIG begging bowl. What are they going to do, whack the poor Congresscritters upside the head with their begging bowl? Granted, it's REALLY BIG.
Let's face reality here: they aren't afraid of anything, including, especially, their own constituents. They're just sold out. Isn't Wall Street the biggest bloc among Obama's "individual" contributors? And Biden's? And how many Congress members? Where's Pelosi getting her money?
We can take Pelosi down by helping Cindy Sheehan. And we can quit cowering ourselves by voting for candidates who really represent us.
Here are the first 7 points of Cynthia McKinney's 14 on this issue:
1. Enactment of a foreclosure moratorium now before the next phase of ARM interest rate increases take effect;
2. elimination of all ARM mortgages and their renegotiation into 30- or 40-year loans;
3. establishment of new mortgage lending practices to end predatory and discriminatory practices;
4. establishment of criteria and construction goals for affordable housing;
5. redefinition of credit and regulation of the credit industry so that discriminatory practices are completely eliminated;
6. full funding for initiatives that eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in home ownership;
7. recognition of shelter as a right according to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights to which the U.S. is a signatory so that no one sleeps on U.S. streets;
And the 14th:
"14. criminal prosecution of any activities that violated the law, including conflicts of interest that led to the current crisis."
You can look up the whole thing at http//votetruth08.com. Isn't that the attitude you want running things when the financiers drop the economy in the toilet?
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: I'm voting for McKinney Posted by: MeyravLevine
» RE: I'm voting for McKinney Posted by: Alohajnc
» Ralph is polling 5% to McKinney's 1 Posted by: bthespoon
» I don't know where you got those figures for polls, but they are wrong. Posted by: Prophit
» Something does smell, but it's not the figures I repeated Posted by: bthespoon
» This part was already done Posted by: rickiey
» That is not true...... they did know at time of application.... Posted by: Prophit
» I knew I loved that woman.... what a courageous and outstanding... Posted by: Prophit
Deregulation has undone the lessons of the Great Depression
[Report this comment]
Posted by: fanny666 on Sep 29, 2008 10:25 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933: “There Must Be A Strict Supervision Of All Banking and Credits and Investments. There Must Be An End To Speculation With Other People’s Money.”
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, was a direct rebuke of FDR. This bill was sponsored in the Senate by McCain's economic advisor Phil Gramm (R-TX) and in the House by James Leach (R-Iowa). 44 Democrats voted against it, but it was signed by Bill Clinton.
This is the bill that directly undid the most important regulatory bill that FDR signed, the The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which brought "an end to speculation with other people's money."
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Deregulation has undone the lessons of the Great Depression Posted by: billslm
» McCain is a Graham clone on economic theory Posted by: bthespoon
» The DLC controls the narrative of the Dem candidate, it's a straitjacket Posted by: Aposterioriperception
» RE: Deregulation has undone the lessons of the Great Depression Posted by: Blacktiger
the bail out is a poison pill
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Levon on Sep 29, 2008 10:26 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
that if the dems sign onto the will become as unpopular as the gop. mark my words, this bailout is designed to make the rich richer and to tar the dems as bad as managers as the repubs.everything this administration does is about politics.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: the bail out is a poison pill Posted by: maxpayne
» Bail out is a lose-lose for Democrats Posted by: bthespoon
» I think both sides of the aisle of voters are disgusted enought... Posted by: Prophit
Be Careful What You Wish For
[Report this comment]
Posted by: NoPCZone on Sep 29, 2008 11:32 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Let the markets crash- let it burn.
The acolytes of Milton Friedman and 'Chicago School Economics' have always touted the 'free market' and we have gone this far, so let's let it crash to discredit it for all time. Then we can start perp walking Republicans, DLC Democrats and Wall Street Con Artists and strip them of their ill gotten gains.
Part of free market economics is price discovery and that is what Wall Street fears. The free fall of overvalued assets and worthless paper 'securities' will show that the emperor has no clothes. Letting the corrupted market crash is nothing short of an intervention.
You are watching the Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein has described in action. You are also watching the DLC (Repugnican-Lite) 'Democrats' answer to the call of Wall Street- their true masters. It's time the entire House Democratic 'leadership' resigned- they have shown their hand by siding with Wall Street despite constituent calls running 100-1 against.
Whatever happened to REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY?
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Be Careful What You Wish For Posted by: gjones
» I agree, if we go down along with the bankers, the "cream" can rise to the..... Posted by: Prophit
PETITION
[Report this comment]
Posted by: fomented on Sep 29, 2008 12:18 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Click here to send your letter now.
If you have sent one before, send again.
http://www.votenobailout.org/
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: PETITION Posted by: fomented
» RE: PETITION Posted by: bthespoon
Bailout?...What Bailout?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: foius on Sep 29, 2008 2:10 PM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Thank God there are enough sensible congressmen/women to see that this bailout bill was anethema to the creed of capitalism, fairness, and common-sense. Unfortunately, the major players on Wall Street will not rest until market values reach ground zero. There can only be equilibrium in market value when the liquidity crisis can be backed by a stable currency minus the speculators in the money markets. That will be a long way from happening in any near or distant future. There is just too much to lose. Most of it belongs to the working Americans who saw fit to invest their savings in 401(k) plans. What happens to the asset values of their investments 401(k) now? Shore up the market by getting rid of the speculators and capitalizing the average Americans. Redistribute the taxpayers dollars to the taxpayers...period. This is NOT rocket science!!! Do you want rich people to decide what you get monetarily (next to nothing from them)? Why the big bailout for Wall Street? Who is managing the financial markets? Can the Federal Government be a major player(equity positions)in these markets? Will our elected officials in Congress squander another opportunity to bring fundamental reform, oversight, and congressional debate and review...then propose bi-partisan legislation to correct the deficiencies that exist from a de-regulated financial industry?
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» By rejecting the Bail Out, Congress Spent 700 Billion Today Posted by: EncinoM
» Neocon LIES from a machine of serial LIES Posted by: PointMan
» RE: By rejecting the Bail Out, Congress Spent 700 Billion Today Posted by: Alohajnc
» Feeding the beast that is the problem... Posted by: bthespoon
OR, Tell your Reps to go find $700 Billion elsewhere
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Rolomax on Sep 29, 2008 3:14 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
They can start Here:
$2.3 Trillion Missing
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My third eye tells me,that it will get rejected..
[Report this comment]
Posted by: BlueGorilla on Sep 29, 2008 3:40 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The mists are parting,the Amulet of Arse-Biscuit brings news from the near future . Allied with the Turquoise Rays of Tossa,they foretell that the bail out ,will not be passed...that is all I can see,as all becomes mist once more...
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Another reason to vote third party
[Report this comment]
Posted by: holypigeon on Sep 29, 2008 4:20 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Obviously Michael Moore's plea was posted before the decision the decision to reject the bailout was announced. I do think that we should take a look at who prevented this bailout from passing: the republicans! Had the democrats gotten their way, we would now be stuck with this ridiculous plan. Believe me, I'm no defender of the republicans, but why are democrats not held accountable for their own contributions to this stupidity? Even Moore is ready to make excuses for their stupidity/weakness/ignorance by blaming it on the usual pressures that cause them to yield irrationally every time. Its time to stop waiting for the dems to grow balls. We've given them enough time already. It's time to vote third party this election, and to convince as many people as possible to do the same!
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» RE: Another reason to vote third party Posted by: richholland
» Obama talks about how McCain never says "Middle Class" Posted by: bthespoon
Well?
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Posted by: Direct Democracy on Sep 29, 2008 5:04 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Congress, the White House and the Fed already HAD oversight responsibility for the US economy.
Maybe giving them more money and power isn't the answer.
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
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Speaking of Health Insurance...
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Posted by: Gaubladt on Sep 29, 2008 6:44 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Dear Michael,
I am paying more than $6,000/year for health insurance. I know that every dime I spend is being used to perpetuate an organization that is trying to keep our country from creating a single payer health plan. One of my providers actually sports a picture of their CEO shaking hands with President Bush. That picture cost them a $200,000 payment to the Republican Party outright and another healthy chunk of dough to Jack Abramov as well. My health insurance providers are cannibals.
I would like to know if there is a health plan that lobbies for a single payer American Health Plan. If not, is there a business model that could succeed in creating one? Perhaps the initial investors could be bought out by the plan after it becomes self sustaining, or just before "America goes single". Call me crazy. But, I would be willing to invest in something like that.
While pondering the filicide of the EV1, it amazes me how many business decisions are politically motivated. So, why not make the choice of health care a political decision as well as a business decision?
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» Business Coalition for Single Payer Posted by: bthespoon
CommonDreamer
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Posted by: CommonDreamer on Sep 29, 2008 7:26 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Most of what Michael Moore says is true - except it is not only healthcare bills that have bankrupted consumers. It is also the depression of wages, the regressive tax system (which in turn enabled the wealthy to drive up the prices of everything because they were given this insane and unjustifiable gift of more money than anyone knows what to do with...)....and also consumer inflammation....usury credit interest...the list goes on.
It was a confluence of engineered events - a massive gutting of the citizenry from every angle. And now they want us to pay for it. With what?
Here's a suggestion. Have all the masters of the universe - supposedly so much more brilliant than you and I...and worth every stolen penny so they would have you believe - sell their ridiculous $40 million mansions bought on the backs of workers (and sell to Russians, China or any other U.S. debt holders)....sell their art, boats, planes, buildings - and then return that money to the economy and to workers where it belongs.
Yes the bill is stupid too. Jim Webb has it right - anyone accepting federal dollars deserves federal pay. Let them eat cake. It's time for another revolution.
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Economic Meltdown Directly Linked to HealthCare
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Posted by: drricklippin on Sep 29, 2008 8:33 PM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Michael Moore-
We have seen the health care reform issue in polls overshadowed by the nation's economic crises. But you are absolutely correct when you stated this morning that the two are inextricably linked.
It is impossible to separate the housing forclosure crisis which precipitated this financial meltdown from the unaffordable costs of many medical bills.
Also the loss of US jobs and the pervasive fear of job loss has a profound and underestimated impact on the health of our citizens.
Part of my own health care plan -and I am a physician- is safe and healthy -dare I say meaningful- lifelong jobs for all able Americans.
But a jobs program as part of a health care reform package remains a distant dream
Be Well,
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa
ralippin@aol.com
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» Surprise, surprise - Michael Moore parody just in time for election! Posted by: stellabloo
Alternative to Bailout
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Posted by: Gaubladt on Sep 29, 2008 8:49 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The "bailout" is a crude defining description of a much more complex ecomomic mechanism. It is used to purchase mortgages.
The alternave would be to tax empty houses and when the tax authority acquires enough equity in the form of unpaid debt, it forecloses on the already-foreclosed property and gives, or leases to own, the property back to the previous occupants.
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And Obama and the Democrats are ready to rubber stamp approval.
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Posted by: lindat on Sep 29, 2008 8:54 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
At least the Repugs had the spine to kill this Wall Street bailout. Obama and the Dems were all set to cave in and sell us out. Again.
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The scam behind the scam
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Posted by: Luckydog on Sep 29, 2008 10:10 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
A coup or a robbery? In my 62 years I have never heard government officials use language so hysterical, so irresponsible as to seem to be deliberately trying to shake the confidence of the financial markets and the American people.
What if the real scam is to drive the stock market so low that insiders, funds and players are able to buy assets at fire sale prices?
As a bonus what if the Treasury Secretary of the United States with the help of Congress provided some of them; the ones with the right political connections, with 700 billion dollars to do it all in the name of rescuing the economy? Without oversight. Without judicial review. The Treasury Secretary to have full authority to parcel out the funds as he sees fit. That was the original request from the White House.
Think about it.
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Coup Facts
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Posted by: TruthGiver on Sep 29, 2008 10:13 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
To fully understand what is happening here, a few details are in order here.
First, one must read the article written by Elliot Spitzer JUST before he was taken down by the powers that be. This article details how the Bush administration opened the doors for the mortgage industry to get into this crisis, knowing all along they could pilfer the taxpayers in the end to soak up any losses.
Eliot Spitzer Feb 2008 article
Second, we must realize that this whole affair is simply a corporate restructuring. What corporation? The corporation that OWNS the Federal Reserve (it is NOT a US government agency or division). The Federal Reserve is owned by the wealthiest banks in the world, who also in turn own the largest insurance companies in the world, and so much more. Like in 1929, they are set to, and will execute, the US economy if they don't get their way. Haven't you heard the threats already? Think it's not true? What caused the great depression? A run on banks and the stock markets? But what caused that? What happened was the largest banks in the world called in all loans they could on Oct 29, 1929. As all callable loans had to be paid immediately, everyone and their brother had to sell stock, bonds and get their money from the banks to pay these loans, that were all being called in unreasonably on this day. And what did the Fed do? Nothing. It is/was the same people. These are the same people who brought us federal income tax, in the same act that formed the third incarnation of the Fed!
Why would the Fed do this? Because for the third time in US history, a president (this time Herbert Hoover) was threatening to end the Federal Reserve. Andrew Jackson once said, when asked what was his greatest accomplishment in his two terms as President, "I killed the Bank." (referring to the second incarnation of the Federal Reserve). Under the US Constitution, only the treasury is allowed to print our money, and although they still print our coins, the Fed is who really controls the US currency, and remember, they are a PRIVATE corporation, whom you will be told no specifics about.
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”
Sir Josiah Stamp - Director of the Bank of England (appointed 1928)
Reputed to be the 2nd wealthiest man in England at that time.
So once you have looked at these facts, especially the article by and the efforts of Mr. Spitzer, you can see what this is really all about.
Hope this helps some to understand.
In Truth, Justice and the American Way
The Freedom Truth Giver
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» The Federal Reserve did nothing because it didn't exist Posted by: bthespoon
» My brain farted...so sorry.... Posted by: bthespoon
Cracks In The Constitution
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Posted by: shill on Sep 30, 2008 4:21 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The above is a book I am now reading. It was written in 1980, and so far, seems to be even more relevant today. In it the author, whose name escapes me right now, states that the U.S. Constitution, instead of being the almost sacred document we have been told it is in history classes all through school, was actually designed by men with the express purpose of maintaining the wealth and power within the circle of the landowning rich, which included themselves. It is also asserted in the book that the Constitution, instead of being the "law of the land" has often been broken by presidents, the Supreme Court, etc. in the more than 200 years we have been a republic, and that, unlike the British and French governments, is designed to KEEP the politicians in office instead of letting us replace them easily with one fell swoop. What we are seeing in this administration with its wars that didn't have to be fought, and now its bailout program for Wall Street verifies the claims being made in this book. And, sadly, there is little we, the average American, can do about it, regardless of WHICH party gets in, because the Constitution is what the people in power SAY it is!
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Socialism for the Rich
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Posted by: billslm on Sep 30, 2008 4:23 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
So these are the "principles" of the Neo-cons! But, you may say, Hey! they've never done anything but steal and lie. That is old already.
What is new is that when push comes to shove, they violate their own principles and beg the taxpayers to "Give me your money. Save me! Please." They want pure Socialism!
They say, "You don't want these nice people to lose their 401k's, do you?"
Well no, I don't want anybody on Main Street to lose their savings but if you Wallstreet types did it and the little guy suffers, that is called a crime; the crimes of thievery, extortion, racketeering and running a con.
Somebody will have to go to jail. And I don't mean House Arrest for 3 months. I mean the Slammer! Not the country club, the Slammer! Where they love to watch Wall Street types on their knees saying, "Thank you, Sir, may I have another?"
Jail for every CEO who ran his company into the dirt and walked away Twenty to Fifty Million dollars richer.
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» RE: Socialism for the Rich Posted by: bthespoon
Both 9/11 and this Financial Crisis Were Engineered by the Same People
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Posted by: Nicnic on Sep 30, 2008 4:43 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Now they are revealing themselves. The financial crisis is a carefully planned and orchestrated attack that has been years in the making. The odds of such an event taking place around the world in unison and in like fashion with like remedy are astronomical. Our corporations and governments have been systematically raided and laid to waste in a global master plan to bankrupt the system into worthless paper while being stripped of it's hard assets and jobs. Now you're seeing the real engineering behind illegal immigration and the export of jobs.
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» Bin Laden took 19 guys with box cutters Posted by: bthespoon
The health coverage crises could solve our financial crises
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Posted by: bthespoon on Sep 30, 2008 5:10 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...if only we were smart enough to realize it.
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Me smells Rove at work
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Posted by: warrior woman on Sep 30, 2008 5:20 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Ok, it's October tomorrow. Bush is shunned by most Republicans now at the end of his presidency. He and his Sec. of the Treasury, Paulson propose a bailout plan with no oversight and unending refill options for 2 years. This is a perfect plan in that now almost ALL Republican's can show (right before the election) how they shun such measures, call for additional financial constraints and conservatism and are distancing themselves from the Bush administration. Democrats will be left holding a bag of stinking fish while most of us have suffered the most grievous crime in history. One that has been planned for years: witness the lack of regulation, assurances that the free market society will police themselves and the blatant handouts to this crew year after year after year.
We are completely being f'd.
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» RE: Me smells Rove at work Posted by: sallyride
EVERYONE'S GOING NUTS
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Posted by: sallyride on Sep 30, 2008 6:13 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Kudos to Moore but his links don't work, and his email address has crashed unless he's been "hacked"~!
With all the openness of communications on the Internet, if we email a one of the "candidates" through their websites, all we get back is pleas for $$$-- HA! Americans just can't trust anyone no more. ;-))
I'm tired of this yanking and pulling on our intellect strings, and invading our emotions. We did nothing to deserve this nightmare in "DC". In fact, Congress did it refusing to IMPEACH BUSH. I don't know about any one else but I'm sick and tired of this coming at us from all sides.
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» Eggs Posted by: bthespoon
NRA MUST REIGN IN NOVEMBER
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Posted by: sallyride on Sep 30, 2008 6:27 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Never Re-Elect Anyone Let's face it - newbies can't do any more damage than Congress had done that past 5 decades (and the presidents) in their drive to become imperialistic war-lords.
Term limits, no-cost campaigns, no one can run for office who has not worked a 40-hour week for at least 5 years, and no religions/faiths mentioned. We have had enough.
Best option? Office-By-Raffle: Every citizen's name in the "pot", drawn at random every 2 years to serve our nation 2 years in Congress, then back home to be normal people!
No one can be any worse than those we have been stuck with. Elected? I really doubt any election has been honest, and legal, looking back on the realities of our elections.
Any citizen would question, once serving their "Two Years for America", every shred of information, every bill before voting. Slow down? Perhaps. Who said we have to act fast on everything, in fact, most of the house and senate are only "acting" now.
We must have REFORM, not "Change."
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» Except for Kucinich and Conyers Posted by: bthespoon
treason
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Posted by: cyr3n on Sep 30, 2008 7:18 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
1. Imprison the CEOs, bankers, and government enablers for high treason
2. confiscate their wealth
3. profit!
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can you say october surprise?
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Posted by: bwo on Sep 30, 2008 8:06 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
how creative! and we all thought it would be an attack on iran...
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John "Keating Five" Mc Cain
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Posted by: FURonnie on Sep 30, 2008 10:46 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Why are we even considering this phoney, war mongering crook John Boy who deregulated the S&L in the 1980's. He hosed the taxpayer's to the tune of Billions and Billions and he's hosing us again. Wake up folks this is a Neo-Con job. Remember "A Blow Job cost us the White House but the Neo-Con job cost us Trillions"!!!!!!!
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PAULSON’S BAIL-OUT BILL IS UNDESIRABLE AND UNNECESSARY!
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Posted by: Peter Mackrael on Sep 30, 2008 11:04 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
When Congress meets on Thursday, the Paulson Bail-Out Legislation should not be accepted in any form! Purchasing paper that the market says is worthless is no solution at all. Setting fair prices while avoiding graft and fraud will be very costly and probably impossible. Recent bail-outs have already cost the US taxpayers about $700bn. This bill will increase US debt to about $12 trillion while doing nothing to prevent further consolidation and restructuring by US banks.
Foreign lenders now hold about 40% of US debt. This bill may reassure them for a short while until they see that US debt continues to increase while GDP declines. It may delay but will certainly not prevent a recession in the US. This bill will reward and encourage further irresponsible behavior by bankers and investors. In effect this bail-out will transfer $700bn from the poorest 90% (taxpayers) to prevent losses incurred by the richest 10% (the wealthy investors who hold debt derivatives and shares in these investment banks). In addition to transferring public wealth to political friends of both parties in the Wall Street community (consulting fees will be huge), this bill will severely limit spending on social programs for many years to come! There is a better alternative.
Perhaps in anticipation of possible rejection of the Paulson plan, the five big investment banks: Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have morphed into regular banks. In effect, the investment banks have increased their asset base while transferring their bad debt assets to commercial banks. I expect the bank executives believe the government will be less willing to allow these banks to fail.
The Paulson bill is not required! If these new banks require additional liquidity, existing regulations allow them to borrow from the Fed and/or sell assets to raise this capital themselves. If no private investors are interested and if one of these banks is unable to operate at a profit, we should allow that bank to fail and let any remaining assets be purchased by other investors. In the event that the remaining banks (including the many regional banks) are unable to provide consumer loans and adequate operating capital to US businesses, then and only then should the federal government buy or establish a national bank for this purpose.
Meanwhile we need to re-establish and enforce investment banking regulations. Also we need an independent investigation to understand how and why the investment banks and government got us into this liquidity crisis so it can be prevented in future. It is possible that stock manipulation and outright fraud has been committed in recent months.
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Oh, Obama ...
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Posted by: artifax on Sep 30, 2008 11:22 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Luv ya, Mike, but Obama's top contributor is Goldmam Sachs, with several more Wall Streeters in his top 13. How tough do you really think he will be on them and how good to us little people?
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We got Congress by the balls
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Posted by: mom'z the word on Sep 30, 2008 11:24 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I believe the reason why the bailout was defeated by a Congress that seems to be operating more on its own agenda than on the agenda of the people they represent is they are more scared of not getting re-elected in November than they are scared of what the Wall Street bullies will do.
All of a sudden what we say, millions of emails and calls against the bailout, had an effect. We have emailed and called before on issues but it did not have the same effect. Why? Because we didn't hold the trump card. The "you are out of there" vote card. This proves voters do have power. We can put the fear of god into their souls with the vote but that window of opportunity is very small. That window is now, a couple of months before an election. They have a free ride after that but now the whole election thing is in the palm of our hands. We have in our hands what they want more than life itself. Your vote to get re-elected. Even Big money contributors can not compete for this prize. This is when money is powerless to do anything. Big money can't actually vote. They can try and buy votes but they can't actually vote. Big money corporations after all are fictitious persons. They can't sign their name on a voter registration card. Makes them powerless to vote. This means right now Voters have ALL the power.
So I would suggest you go to this site http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll621.xml. It shows how your representative voted on the bailout. I was very surprised to see that Lois Capps,Dem, my representative voted for the bailout. I am going to let her know how that vote is going to effect my vote for her in November. I think it is very important to let your representatives know you know how they are voting. There is going to be another bailout bill. And fear and threats will be running rampant. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.
Play the vote card and see who Congress is more afraid of. Big money that finances their campaigns or voters who actually pull the trigger and put them in or take them out of office.
If your representatives know you can check in an instant if they bailed on a bill you are dead set against AND that you will vote them out if they fail to yield to your demands, well my friends that is what you call Power. And Big money can't do a damn thing about it at that point. Use your power wisely and use it often. Because after November as voters, we are lame ducks until the next election.
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The New World is over - The time of Kings and servants is here again
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Posted by: one-of-the-masses on Sep 30, 2008 2:53 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Everyone PLEASE stop kidding yourselves, PLEASE!!! If you think anyone in Washington is looking out for your well being, you are mistaken... If you just take a step back and watch what is happening with a fresh look, you will see it.
The Washington Democrats, Washington Republicans, the Wall Street Moguls, the corporate heads, CEO's, CFO's, and the rest - are the Kings. They are all neighbors, friends, relatives, mistresses, and partners. They know each other well. They are on the same team. Yes, there may be differences of opinion on this team, but the same team no less.
And of course, there is another team. The common man and woman. The 99.9% - who are now controlled hand and foot - by the top 0.1% - the KINGS. The game is rigged. The game is deception. The game is based on playing with our emotions - the servants - to steal from us and control us.
The motivation of course, is to stay rich, and keep getting richer - to stay powerful, and to keep this power. You and I are the financial engine which supplies their riches. Just like the days of old. It was a little more straightforward in the middle ages - the wealthy would just take your money away. Today is the same thing, just wrapped in lies and deceptions.
Does anyone remember when an every day Joe or Jane held an important political office? When it did not take MILLIONS $$$ to be an elected official?
This era is over. It has been over since the late 1960's.
If we truly want change, it is not going to come from Obama, not from McCain, or any of the other insiders. It has to come from you and from me. Thomas Jefferson knew what he was saying... Every Generation needs a Revolution. Ours is way overdue.
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» RE: The New World is over - The time of Kings and servants is here again Posted by: BlammDaddy
Not this Time!!
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Posted by: Ivann on Oct 1, 2008 12:36 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I have always been an admirer of MM & his untiring efforts to expose Bu$hco. However, I think that this piece exposes him to be a bit of a loose cannon. Of course it's gratifying to see members of Congress get some comeuppance but what MM is doing here is lauding the very people he has been excoriating all along, viz. th Repubes. Doesn't MM see what has happened here? The Repubes have bulldozed the Dems into supporting this bill while the Repubes hold back, so that in the end the Dems look like the "bad guys" to Main Street. Put aside all the infuriation about Wall Street; some measure of this nature has to be passed in order to save the jobs, savings & pensions of the poor & middle class, the people whose interests MM is supposed to have been supporting all along. People, lets get the economy back on track, get Obama elected, and THEN go after the real bad guys with EVERY means at our disposal. If the econony grinds to a halt, who do you think will suffer? The fatcats & bankers of Wall Street, or the people of Flint, MI ??
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© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
COUNTERPUNCH - What nobody in the corporate media is mentioning amid all the blather about the $700-billion Paulson bailout proposal is the impact it will have on the US dollar.
We are told that this huge gift to the financial sector—the assumption, at top dollar, of all the bad debt they’ve piled up–will be at taxpayer expense, but that’s only the half of it. (Really only the quarter of it because since the US government is technically bankrupt already, spending more than it takes in each year, all that money will be borrowed, and will be added to the national debt, meaning that just as the real cost of the $500-billion Iraq War is closer to $2 trillion, the real cost of the $700 billion bailout will be more like $1.5-2.5 trillion.)
But besides the direct bill handed to taxpayers for this gigantic con, there is the fact that adding that much to the national debt is also going to drive the dollar down precipitously against foreign currencies. We’re already seeing that happen, even while they’re just talking about the bailout. The dollar is falling against all major currencies—the Euro, the Yen, the Renminbi and the British pound. And it will continue to fall as the details of the bailout come out.
This will add to already powerful pressures in countries like Saudi Arabia and China, which hold huge quantities of US dollars and US dollar-denominated debt, to shift out of dollars and into other currencies—particularly the Euro and the Yen. Last week, an article in China’s People’s Daily, which like Pravda in the old Soviet Union, is the official voice of the leadership in China, called for just such a move. Russia is also calling for an end to the dollar as the underpinning of the global economy.
For some years now, many economists have been predicting an end to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, but this latest plan by the US Treasury will push such a shift forward from “some day” to “now.”
As long as the dollar has been the reserve currency—the currency in which key commodities like gold or oil were priced, and the currency that exporting nations stocked in their treasuries as a store of value – it was protected against collapse. But once it loses that status, there will be nothing to prop it up any longer, and it will quickly slide to a value that it deserves. We got an inkling of what is going to happen today, as crude oil prices leapt in the short time it took me to research and write this essay (less than an hour!) by 25%, the biggest jump in the history of the oil market. This timely vindication of my point was purely a move caused by loss of confidence in the dollar. There was no oil supply disruption. In fact, demand for oil has been sinking as the economic crisis grows. Oil producers and traders simply realized that the dollar is going poof, so they radically jacked up the cost of oil in dollars.
If you want to see what where the dollar is headed, look to the currencies of the debtor nations—countries like Mexico or perhaps Mozambique. A nation that makes almost nothing, and that imports most of its needs, cannot have a strong currency.
This might not matter much if we had a functioning domestic economy, where people could find the goods and services they needed without turning to sources from abroad. A big country like the US could simply turn inward and function on by its own domestic economic standards.
I remember back when the former Soviet Union was in a state of economic and political free fall in the early and mid 1990s, the currencies of the constituent countries, like Russia, Ukraine and Belarus had had collapsed to virtual worthlessness on the international market. A Byelorussian friend, an engineering professor from Minsk, living and working near me in China at the time, explained that although when he traveled the world, he felt like a pauper, things weren’t so bad back home Belarus, where he and his family would go in the summer. “My apartment only costs a few dollars a month to rent,” he explained, “and our food is bought on the local market using rubles, so it is very affordable.” The same was true for other needs, like clothing and books for school, he explained. The only problem was buying gas for his Russian Volga. “Gas,” he explained, “is priced as an international commodity, so it takes me one month’s wages in Belarus to buy the gas to drive once to and from our country dacha.”
You can start to see the problem. Since agriculture has been killed off in most of the US, in favor of giant agribusiness enterprises situated in the western part of the country and some parts of the Midwest, most people elsewhere will not have local produce available, and the cost of transporting food from California to places like New York or Pennsylvania will be prohibitive once the dollar collapses, since oil is priced internationally. Meanwhile, goods like TV sets, computers, phones, cars (or at least the key components of cars), clothing, etc., are no longer even made in the US, and will thus be completely unaffordable. As for the service jobs that are supposed to have replaced our old manufacturing sector, no one will be interested in buying what they’re offering, because they’ll be scrimping just to buy the key staples they need to survive, so of course joblessness will soar.
Eventually, of course, entrepreneurially minded people will begin establishing local farms again where they once flourished generations ago, and small factories will be built to provide key essentials, but all this will take time, and will have to cater to a market of people operating at a much lower standard of living.
The banking sector, meanwhile, which is the proximate cause of this monumental disaster, won’t mind any of this, for it will continue operating on the international stage, shifting its focus to lending money (no longer dollars, though), to growing economies in Asia and Latin America and eastern Europe. And this is what, in truth, the “rescue” of Wall Street is all about.
It’s not about saving Main Street, as Paulson claims. Main Street, under the bailout, is toast. It’s about helping the banks and investment banks and insurance companies that brought on this crisis to ride it out in style, their astronomical losses bankrolled or absorbed by the American public, so that they can shift their operations overseas and continue with their rape and pillage of the global economy.
The US will be left behind, a smoking ruin, with Americans, like Weimar Germans before them, going shopping with wheelbarrows full of worthless green paper to exchange for a few days’ groceries.
Fall 2008: Purple America
The Battle for Reality
by David Solnit
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What really happened at the 1999 WTO demonstrations in Seattle? On television, it looked like vandalism and random violence. On the streets, it looked like part festival, part uprising, part police riot. Now there’s a movie version. Activist and author David Solnit was there—organizing in the streets and speaking up on the set.
Photographer Kevin Sharp paired his photos of the 1999 event with stills from the new film. You might be surprised by what’s real and what’s not. Photo by Kevin Sharp sharpphotography.com
REAL OR RE-ENACTMENT?
Photographer Kevin Sharp paired his photos of the 1999 event with stills from the new film. You might be surprised by what’s real and what’s not. www.YesMagazine.org/wtoquiz
Photo by Kevin Sharp, sharpphotography.com
My stomach clenched the first time I heard that actor Stuart Townsend was making a mainstream movie about the 1999 shutdown of the WTO ministerial meetings, Battle in Seattle.
I was an on-the-ground organizer in Seattle, and for me and many other activists, the event was a high point in our social change work. It was a moment when organized resistance became a genuine popular uprising, successfully shutting down the opening day of the WTO meeting, taking over the downtown core of a major American city, and contributing to the collapse of negotiations that would have increased poverty, destruction, and misery around the world.
But for years, that story has been distorted. In mainstream media, the Seattle protesters have been portrayed either as violent extremists or as irrelevant “flat-earth advocates … and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix” as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman put it.
The story of Seattle has itself become a battleground, one where activists fight the lies and disinformation used to stoke public fears and justify repression against grassroots movements across the U.S.
Now Townsend wanted to tell our story, and I wondered if he’d do any better.
What would a multimillion-dollar Hollywood-star-studded film tell Americans about the sometimes life-or-death struggle against trade policies that threatened to wreck local economies and dismantle environmental protections the world over? Would it tell about the extraordinary power of 50,000 ordinary people in Seattle and their millions of counterparts around the world to demand a just and democratic world—or repeat media myths about riots and violence that activists had fought so long to change?
Who’s Really Rioting?
In the days after the Seattle uprising, I wrote this description:
On November 30, 1999, a public uprising shut down the World Trade Organization and took over downtown Seattle, transforming it into a festival of resistance. Tens of thousands of people joined the nonviolent direct action blockade that encircled the WTO conference site, keeping the most powerful institution on earth shut down from dawn until dusk. … Long shore workers shut down every West Coast port from Alaska to Los Angeles. Large numbers of Seattle taxi drivers went on strike. All week the firefighters union refused authorities’ requests to turn their fire hoses on people. Tens of thousands of working people and students skipped or walked out of work or school.
But, in the words of Britain’s Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, “What we hadn’t reckoned with was the Seattle Police Department, who single-handedly managed to turn a peaceful protest into a riot.” As police fought our blockades with armored cars and fired rubber, wooden, and plastic bullets, as well as tear gas, pepper spray, and concussion grenades, the corporate media looked for ways to dismiss a popular uprising as merely a few dozen people window breaking corporate chain stores. The cops and politicians also tried to use this as cover for their repression and brutality.
Photo by Kevin Sharp sharpphotography.com
Photo by Kevin Sharp, sharpphotography.com
Activists continued to engage in nonviolent direct action throughout the week, despite a clampdown that included nearly 600 arrests, the declaration of a “state of emergency,” and suspension of the basic rights of free speech and assembly in downtown Seattle. Corporate media promoted the impression that Seattle was staged by a fringe group of extremists whose violent tactics were to be feared. Despite this, a month later a January 2000 opinion poll by Business Week found that 52 percent of Americans sympathized with the protestors at the WTO in Seattle.
Ever since, corporate media and government authorities have used distorted images of Seattle to characterize all major mobilizations in the U.S. and internationally as potential “violent riots.”
In the lead-up to mass demonstrations against the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, for instance, local police agencies produced a video that combined images of activists breaking windows with fringe-sounding quotes from some Eugene activists that were used extensively by “60 Minutes” and other corporate media outlets. Police showed the video to the Los Angeles City Council just before a vote on funding a massive police presence and new riot gear to counter the demonstrations. The Council was scared, and the funding measure passed.
One of the most troubling of the many distortions of the Seattle story is a report on the New York City Police Department’s intelligence program, which attempts to justify the widespread suspension of civil liberties, mass arrests, and unrestrained spying and harassment that took place during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. The report says that the history of activist groups “is one of extreme violence, vandalism and unlawfulness,” and it links anarchists and “direct action specialists” to “extreme violence” and “terrorism operatives.”
More recently, references to “violent riots” at the Seattle WTO have increased as nervous authorities attempt to justify the suspension of civil liberties in the face of mass mobilizations planned for the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
Several other former Seattle anti-WTO organizers also showed up during the filming to try to influence the film. I think we made some positive changes and shifted Townsend’s views a bit, but it was too late to change the film’s basic narrative.
Whose Script
Two years ago, Stuart Townsend called me up. He had heard that I was involved in the organizing that led up to the Seattle protests.
In 1999, I had moved to Seattle for six months to help organize with the Direct Action Network, a broad umbrella group that provided a framework for thousands to coordinate resistance during the week of WTO.
I’m also an arts organizer and I worked with many other artists, groups, and activists to make the giant puppets, art, and street theater that were very present in Seattle. This was all part of an effort to find new language and new forms of resistance.
Townsend asked if I would talk to his art department about puppets. He emphasized that the film “was not taking sides,” but would tell the story through the eyes of the different people involved.
I asked to read the script and offer feedback. Townsend finally agreed just as he began filming in Vancouver, British Columbia. I pored over the script for three days in the back room of his production offices and was required to hand it back each day before I left. I circulated a summary for feedback to a group of activists I’d worked with in Seattle. I wrote up an analysis of problems we saw in the script, then met with Townsend and his assistant on the fourth day of filming.
I could tell he did not want to change the script so late in the process. A dozen of us met a few days later and organized a pressure campaign, applying tactics we often used in anti-corporate campaigns. We sent a strongly worded group letter demanding changes, called everyone we could think of connected to the film—friends of Stuart, people working on the film, and friends of friends, and we asked a couple of nonprofits not to cooperate with the film until our concerns had been heard.
We rewrote more accurate, alternative sections of the parts of the script we had problems with, but the filmmakers accepted only a handful of our revisions. Several other former Seattle anti-WTO organizers also showed up during the filming to try to influence the film. I think we made some positive changes and shifted Townsend’s views a bit, but it was too late to change the film’s basic narrative.
The Story Line
The movie follows several intertwined stories through the five days of the Seattle events.
Central characters include a low-ranking riot cop (Woody Harrelson), his pregnant wife who works in a downtown clothing outlet (Charlize Theron), a European member of Doctors Without Borders, an African trade minister, a TV news reporter and her cameraman, the mayor, the chief of police, and a handful of organizers from the Direct Action Network.
The African trade minister exposes the undemocratic internal process of the WTO, while the doctor argues against drug industry patents that leave poor countries unable to afford medicine.
An activist named Django talks about the WTO ruling against the Endangered Species Act, which overturned U.S. trade rules that required the international fishing industry to protect sea turtles.
Street action and police rioting supplemented with actual footage from Seattle bring back the intensity of the streets that week. Townsend’s docudrama plot twists make strong critical statements against corporate media and police violence. This movie can help shift the corporate media distortions of Seattle if it’s widely viewed.
At the same time, Townsend’s story also repeats some marginalizing myths and stereotypes about activists.
Let’s start with the riot cop played by Harrelson. The most three-dimensional character in the film, he has a job, a wife, and a child on the way. Meanwhile, the Direct Action Network organizers appear to have no jobs, families, or even homes. Their motivations come not from everyday grievances shared by most Americans, but from unusual personal circumstances. For instance, one of them has an axe to grind because his brother was killed in a forest protest.
Townsend also fails to grasp the real reasons for Seattle’s success. His movie implies that the activists “won” because police were caught by surprise, were too lenient, and waited too long to use violence and chemical weapons, and to make arrests.
But our actions were no surprise. As democracy researcher Paul de Armond writes in the most thorough analysis of the Seattle events to date, “The Direct Action Network and AFL-CIO plans had been trumpeted loudly, widely, and in considerable detail in the press by the organizers.”
We won because we were strategic, well organized, and part of strong local, regional, national, and international networks.
Decentralized networks are more flexible and stronger than top-down hierarchies like police agencies and city authorities, and this played to our advantage.
Many individuals and allied groups who had minimal contact with the Direct Action Network understood and supported the strategy, and participated in the action without ever attending a meeting or bothering to identify with a specific group.
My attempt to engage with Townsend’s movie helped me see how important it is for members of social movements to tell our own stories—not just about Seattle, but about all our struggles and victories—and to tell them loudly, publicly, and compellingly.
Writing a People’s History
My attempt to engage with Townsend’s movie helped me see how important it is for members of social movements to tell our own stories—not just about Seattle, but about all our struggles and victories—and to tell them loudly, publicly, and compellingly.
Widespread amnesia about the history of movements and rebellion is part of what has made grassroots organizing in the U.S. so difficult. Many activists have romanticized Seattle as a semi-spontaneous rebellion that arose as if by luck. This ignores the key strategizing, mass mobilizing, networking, education, and alliance-building that made Seattle possible. Battle in Seattle’s greatest contribution may be that it reminds us of this and spurs us to action.
A group of Seattle anti-WTO veterans launched the Web site RealBattleinSeattle.org, which aims to correct some of the film’s misrepresentations.
“Stories are how we understand the world and thus shape the future,” explains a statement on the site. “They are part of our fight against corporate power, empire, war, and social and environmental injustice, and for the alternatives that will make a better world.”
The real Seattle reshaped the story of what is possible for millions of people around the world.
In the days before, during, and after Seattle, thousands of Indian farmers in Karnataka marched to Bangalore in a solidarity action, and over a thousand villagers from Anjar held a procession.
In 80 different French cities, 75,000 people took to the streets, and 800 miners clashed with police. In Italy, the headquarters of the National Committee for Bio-Safety was occupied. Activists took over the WTO world headquarters in Geneva.
Turkish peasants, trade unionists, and environmentalists marched on the capital of Ankara.
A street party shut down traffic in New York City’s Times Square, activists took over U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshevski’s offices, and thousands marched in the Philippines, Portugal, Pakistan, Turkey, South Korea, and across Europe, the United States, and Canada.
In the years that followed Seattle, global justice and anti-capitalist activists were re-energized as northern movements joined already thriving global south movements to push back corporate capital’s efforts to further concentrate power and wealth.
The WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, fell apart in 2003 because of farmer-led protests.
The same year, the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) attempted to impose corporate rule on the Western Hemisphere, but collapsed due to hemisphere-wide popular opposition.
And the WTO has become increasingly irrelevant and powerless. As I write this the WTO is trying desperately to revive itself, using the pretext of the food crisis to argue for expanding the policies that created the crisis and the accompanying widespread hunger and poverty.
As the globalized system of poverty, war, and ecological destruction seems to be teetering, perhaps the battle simply to tell our own stories and histories is as important as any in the struggle to make history.
David Solnit wrote this article as part of Purple America, the Fall 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. David is an anti-war, global justice, and arts organizer. He was a key organizer in the WTO shutdown in Seattle in 1999 and in the shutdown of San Francisco the day after Iraq was invaded in 2003. He is editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World (City Lights Publishers, 2003) and co-author with Aimee Allison of Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better World.
This article is an adaptation of a longer essay from the new book, The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle (AK Press 2008) edited by and with essays by Rebecca Solnit and David Solnit and including the original “Resist the WTO Call to Action” and 1999 Direct Action Network broadsheet.
Interested? Watch The Battle in Seattle film trailer
See David Solnit on the Fine Art of Protest, and on People Power.
In hard times, tent cities rise across the country
By Evelyn Nieves
Updated Sep 30, 2008, 07:58 pm
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RENO, Nevada - A few tents cropped up by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed.
Then others appeared—people who had lost their jobs to the ailing U.S. economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.
Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a “tent city”—an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.
From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.
Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they’ve experienced a rise in homelessness since the home foreclosure crisis first erupted in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report’s release in April, with home foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening.
“It’s clear that poverty and homelessness have increased,” said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. “The economy is in chaos, we’re in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future.”
The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.
“What you’re seeing is encampments that I haven’t seen since the 80s,” said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle.
The relatively posh California city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, California, is trying to manage several growing tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood. In Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include Chattanooga, Tennessee, San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007. But the 2007 numbers omitted people who previously had been considered homeless—such as those staying with relatives or friends or living in campgrounds or motel rooms for more than a week.
In addition, the housing and economic crisis began soon after the government’s most recent data was compiled.
“The data predates the housing crisis,” said Brian Sullivan, a HUD department spokesman. “From the headlines, it might appear that the report is about yesterday. How is the housing situation affecting homelessness? That’s a great question. We’re still trying to get to that.”
In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up—in remote places to avoid police sweeps.
``What’s happening in Seattle is what’s happening everywhere else _ on steroids,’’ said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change, an advocacy organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold by homeless people.
Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps _ acts, said Harris, ``that we really haven’t seen around homeless activism since the early ‘90s.’’
In Reno, officials decided to let the tent city be because shelters were already filled.
Officials don’t know how many homeless people are in Reno.
``But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember,’’ said Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city’s redevelopment agency director.
Those in the tents have to register and are monitored weekly to see what progress they are making in finding jobs or housing. They are provided times to take showers in the shelter, and told where to go for food and meals.
Sylvia Flynn, 51, came from northern California but lost a job almost immediately and then lost her apartment.
The cheapest motels here charge upward of $200 a week, so Flynn ended up at the Reno women’s shelter, which has only 20 beds and a two-week limit on stays.
Reno will shut down the tent city as soon as early October, to make way for a parking lot for a men’s shelter, a women’s shelter, a family shelter and a resource center.
Reno officials aren’t sure whether the construction will eliminate the need for the tent city. The demand, they say, keeps growing.
Published on Monday, October 13, 2008 by the Salt Lake Tribune
EPA Ignores the Toxic Threat in Our Drinking Water
by Brian Moench
Care for a glass of rocket fuel?: EPA ignores a toxic threat
Melamine contamination of Chinese milk products has sickened more than 50,000 infants. Tens of thousands have been hospitalized, including a few who have died. Now all of Asia is in a panic.
Upon reading the news, I was more than casually interested, having recently consumed some Chinese dairy products myself. Like many Americans, I reacted with a quick condemnation of the Chinese government for negligence and "Chinese capitalism" for nurturing such naked greed. I thought, "Thankfully, I don't live in a country that allows big business profiteering to sacrifice the health and future of little children."
Then I turned the page of the newspaper and read another headline: "EPA ignores toxic rocket fuel chemical in drinking water." My gratitude was short-lived.
Perchlorate is the highly toxic oxidant component of rocket fuel that has been in large scale production by the military-industrial complex since the 1940s. It has contaminated ground water, drinking water or soil in 43 states, including Utah.
Independent testing of milk nationwide has shown near universal perchlorate contamination, often at concentrations well above safe limits. In 2004 and 2008 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published studies revealing contamination of most of the nation's food supply.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention randomly sampled almost 3,000 U.S. residents in 2006 and found perchlorate in every single person.
Small children and the unborn are the most vulnerable to perchlorate, which impairs endocrine function by interfering with iodine uptake by the thyroid gland. Perchlorate crosses the placenta and shows up in breast milk, leaving infants and fetuses with even higher blood concentrations than their mothers. In even the most minute concentrations perchlorate can cause enough thyroid inhibition to impair proper neurologic and brain development in children.
The CDC found significant effects at doses five times lower than the EPA's current "safe dose." At least 250,000 1-year-olds are exposed daily to unsafe levels of perchlorate in food. Adding tap water exposures on top of that only increases the health risks these children face.
One out of every six children nationwide has a learning disability or behavioral disorder severe enough to require therapy. Numerous environmental contaminants could be contributing to this alarming trend: mercury, radioactivity, generic air pollution and chemicals like bisphenol A, dioxins, PCBs and certainly perchlorate.
One would think that, with this scientific information in hand and our children's intellectual and career potential at stake, a democratic government and a society that gives heavy lip service to family values would aggressively intervene. You would be wrong.
Succumbing to pressure from the White House, the Defense Department and industrial heavy hitters like Lockheed Martin, the EPA announced that it intended to ignore the obvious danger of widespread perchlorate contamination of our food supply and refuse to require cleanup of the military and industrial sites responsible.
The two-pronged mandate of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts requires the EPA to: (1) set standards even stricter than the medical data might suggest so that a clear margin of safety for protecting public health would be preserved, and (2) make sure economic considerations are not allowed to weaken those standards. So much for lofty intentions.
Those mandates have always been under persistent industry attack, but during the Bush era the EPA and FDA have repeatedly tossed those mandates out the window and cut and run in any battle over public health. Their rulings on standards for particle air pollution, ozone, mercury, lead, arsenic, bisphenol A and numerous other chemicals have consistently defied the advice of even their own scientific advisers.
Never has this been more true than with their abandonment of our children to the pernicious effects of perchlorate.
© 2008 Salt Lake Tribune
Brian Moench is a Salt Lake physician and president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.
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Posted in Politics, Public Health/Safety, Water
14 Comments so far
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jclientelle October 14th, 2008 12:12 pm
All regulatory bodies should be staffed by people who are highly qualified in a relevent area. That is a radical departure from the Bush era practice.
The EPA needs health and environmental scientists, not political hacks.
Joe
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ezeflyer October 13th, 2008 3:31 pm
I have to admit that I agree with Reagan a little.
Government is the problem, REPRESENTATIVE Government, that is.
Direct democracy now:
ni4d.us
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rocyahsoul October 13th, 2008 5:09 pm
Thank you, finally someone else pushing direct democracy.
With the first vote we get after national referendum is established we need to use it to do away with the present government, lest we be ignored by them as often the state legislatures do when mandated by referendum.
We should use that first referendum to establish a limiting document, similar to the constitution which was also an exercise of direct democracy.
So refresh the constitution, establish calorie economics and make any multiperson organization not working toward human well being illegal. In every organizations charter their purpose must declare their efforts as toward living betterment and establish bench marks of expected results.
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
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Angry Kraut October 13th, 2008 3:03 pm
Moench writes, "One out of every six children nationwide has a learning disability or behavioral disorder severe enough to require therapy." This includes a large number of schoolchildren who have been diagnosed with "Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder", which basically means "won't sit still in rows and columns while being droned at by a teacher", and are being drugged into compliance with Ritalin and similar medications.
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rocyahsoul October 13th, 2008 5:10 pm
Calling it ritalin is very deceptive, you should call it what it is:
Addiction dosage daily meth amphetamine.
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
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Peaceful Abstract October 13th, 2008 2:53 pm
If you are looking for water treatment for your entire home or business, I can help. I am a part owner of a water purification company (http://primequestinc.com/). We are currently doing a promotion where as long as you can help me promote the company (giving me qualified leads), I will install a free system for your property.
For more info, please email me at sufi.joe@gmail.com
Thank you for your time.
Some benefits of Treated Water:
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* Clean Plumbing and No Clogging
* Increase lathering of soaps and shampoos.
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roncypert October 13th, 2008 5:23 pm
What about fluoride? Is this a reverse osmosis system?
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Peaceful Abstract October 13th, 2008 5:52 pm
It goes through 40 different natural minerals, check the website http://primequestinc.com/. On top of the treatment that we install by your main pipeline, we can install a reverse osmosis system under your kitchen sink for additional purification. You won't find a better purification system in the residential market.
Please email me at sufi.joe@gmail.com so we can exchange numbers and I can provide you with more detail
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FrederickJohnson October 13th, 2008 4:48 pm
Is this for real or just another scam? Besides, what about people living in rented apartments/houses, condos, and townhouses?
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Peaceful Abstract October 13th, 2008 5:46 pm
It's real. As far as rental houses, you would have to get permission from the property owner, preferably on paper. Apartments and condos require a commercial system which would purify the whole apartment complex (costs a lot of $$$) or we can install a system just for drinking.
For more info please email me at sufi.joe@gmail.com so I can give you my phone number and we can discuss it in detail
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rosemarie jackowski October 13th, 2008 2:23 pm
I have been following the reports about the toxins in our bodies. This is not new. One old report said that Mothers breast milk in California had one of the highest concentrations of flame retardants any where in the world.
That's Capitalism. EPA works for the corporations. Some make profits and some die.
Just one more reason to VOTE NADER.
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rocyahsoul October 13th, 2008 5:17 pm
Nader is a stooge of big monied interests. The Plaintiffs bar particularly, who pay for his posh globe trotting life style. He's so corrupt he's running AGAINST the green party candidate for president this year. How to divide the vote again Nitwit...
What kind of people do you suppose Celebrity Con-sumer Advocate Nader is having sex with, taking into account he's not had one declarable love interest throughout his whole life...? Totally inappropriate people to have sex with is my guess.
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
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atheist October 13th, 2008 2:05 pm
I'm even more concerned with water tainted with pharmaceuticals ! Why does our government allow drug after drug to be approved, and yet does nothing to ensure that the drug doesn't taint our water supplies ?
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herbalist October 13th, 2008 5:14 pm
Because they don't care. If they poison our bodies with more and more drugs, we go to see those paid doctors and throw even more money at research/development of new drugs to cure the poison. It's all about making money.
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Financial meltdown glossary
These terms have entered our daily dialogue as the worst financial crisis in decades has deepened.
updated 8:29 a.m. PT, Wed., Oct. 8, 2008
WASHINGTON - Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc., the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said Tuesday.
The tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees at the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government it needed to stave off bankruptcy.
The retreat didn't include anyone from the financial products division that nearly drove AIG under, but lawmakers were still enraged over thousands of dollars spent on catered banquets, golf outings and visits to the resort's spa and salon for executives of AIG's main U.S. life insurance subsidiary.
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"Average Americans are suffering economically. They're losing their jobs, their homes and their health insurance," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., scolded the company during a lengthy opening statement. "Yet less than one week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation."
The hearing disclosed that AIG executives hid the full range of its risky financial products from auditors as losses mounted, according to documents released Tuesday by a congressional panel examining the chain of events that forced the government to bail out the conglomerate.
The panel sharply criticized AIG's former top executives, who cast blame on each other for the company's financial woes.
"You have cost my constituents and the taxpayers of this country $85 billion and run into the ground one of the most respected insurance companies in the history of our country," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. "You were just gambling billions, possibly trillions of dollars."
AIG, crippled by huge losses linked to mortgage defaults, was forced last month to accept the $85 billion government loan that gives the U.S. the right to an 80 percent stake in the company.
Waxman unveiled documents showing AIG executives hid the full extent of the firm's risky financial products from auditors, both outside and inside the firm, as losses mounted.
For instance, federal regulators at the Office of Thrift Supervision warned in March that "corporate oversight of AIG Financial Products ... lack critical elements of independence." At the same time, Pricewaterhouse Coopers confidentially warned the company that the "root cause" of its mounting problems was denying internal overseers in charge of limiting AIG's exposure access to what was going on in its highly leveraged financial products branch.
Waxman also released testimony from former AIG auditor Joseph St. Denis, who resigned after being blocked from giving his input on how the firm estimated its liabilities.
Three former AIG executives were summoned to appear before the hearing. One of them, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg — who ran AIG for 38 years until 2005 — canceled his appearance citing illness but submitted prepared testimony. In it, he blamed the company's financial woes on his successors, former CEOs Martin Sullivan and Robert Willumstad.
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"When I left AIG, the company operated in 130 countries and employed approximately 92,000 people," Greenberg said. "Today, the company we built up over almost four decades has been virtually destroyed."
Sullivan and Willumstad, in turn, cast much of the blame on accounting rules that forced AIG to take tens of billions of dollars in losses stemming from exposure to toxic mortgage-related securities.
Lawmakers also upbraided Sullivan, who ran the firm from 2005 until June of this year, for urging AIG's board of directors to waive pay guidelines to win a $5 million bonus for 2007 — even as the company lost $5 billion in the 4th quarter of that year. Sullivan countered that he was mainly concerned with helping other senior executives.
Sullivan also came under fire for reassuring shareholders about the health of the company last December, just days after its auditor, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, warned him that AIG was displaying "material weakness" in its huge exposure to potential losses from insuring mortgage-related securities.
AIG's problems did not come from its traditional insurance subsidiaries, which remain healthy, but instead from its financial services operations, primarily its insurance of mortgage-backed securities and other risky debt against default. Government officials feared a panic might occur if AIG couldn't make good on its promise to cover losses on the securities; investors feared the consequences would pose a threat to the U.S. financial system, which led to the government bailout.
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AIG suffered huge losses when its credit rating was cut, thanks largely to complex financial transactions known as "credit default swaps." AIG was a major seller of the swaps, which are a form of insurance, though they are not regulated that way.
The swap contracts promise payment to investors in mortgage bonds in the event of a default. AIG has been forced to raise billions of dollars in collateral to back up those guarantees.
Sullivan said many of the firm's problems stemmed from "mark to market" accounting rules mandating that its positions guaranteeing troubled mortgage securities be carried as tens of billions of dollars in losses on its balance sheet.
This in turn, said former AIG chief executive Willumstad, who ran the company for just three months after Sullivan left, forced the firm to raise billions of dollars in capital. The federal rescue came after AIG suffered disastrous liquidity problems after its credit rating was lowered, forcing the company to come up with even more capital.
"AIG was caught in a vicious cycle," Willumstad said in the testimony.
Greenberg said that AIG "wrote as many credit default swaps ... in the nine months following my departure as it had written in the entire previous seven years combined." Moreover, "unlike what had been true during my tenure, the majority of the credit default swaps that AIGFP wrote in the nine months after I retired were reportedly exposed to subprime mortgages."
But Sullivan said the complex swaps had underlying value, even as the market for them froze, sending their book value plummeting and forcing AIG to scramble for collateral.
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"When the credit markets seized up, like many other financial institutions, we were forced to mark our swap positions at fire-sale prices as if we owned the underlying bonds, even though we believed that our swap positions had value if held to maturity," Sullivan said.
The hearing is the second in two days into financial excesses and regulatory mistakes that have spooked stock and credit markets and heightened fears about a global recession.
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FEMA sources confirm coming martial law
Wayne Madsen
WMR
October 8, 2008
WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.
In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.
On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario: WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document. The document is being called the "C & R" document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. "Conflict" is the "C word" in the document. The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. "Revolution" is the document’s "R word.
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/heyoka.16.waynemadsen.htm
Is Posse Comitatus Dead?
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted October 8, 2008.
Why are there active duty soldiers stationed on U.S. streets?
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Amy Goodman: In a barely noticed development last week, the Army stationed an active unit inside the United States. The Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Team is back from Iraq, now training for domestic operations under the control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The unit will serve as an on-call federal response for large-scale emergencies and disasters. It's being called the Consequence Management Response Force, CCMRF, or "sea-smurf" for short.
It's the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to USNORTHCOM, which was itself formed in October 2002 to "provide command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts."
An initial news report in the Army Times newspaper last month noted, in addition to emergency response, the force "may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control." The Army Times has since appended a clarification, and a September 30th press release from the Northern Command states: "This response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control."
When Democracy Now! spoke to Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Goodpaster, a public affairs officer for NORTHCOM, she said the force would have weapons stored in containers on site, as well as access to tanks, but the decision to use weapons would be made at a far higher level, perhaps by Secretary of Defense, SECDEF.
I'm joined now by two guests. Army Colonel Michael Boatner is future operations division chief of USNORTHCOM. He joins me on the phone from Colorado Springs. We're also joined from Madison, Wisconsin by journalist and editor of The Progressive magazine, Matthew Rothschild.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Why don't we begin with Colonel Michael Boatner? Can you explain the significance, the first time, October 1st, deployment of the troops just back from Iraq?
Col. Michael Boatner: Yes, Amy. I'd be happy to. And again, there has been some concern and some misimpressions that I would like to correct. The primary purpose of this force is to provide help to people in need in the aftermath of a WMD-like event in the homeland. It's something that figures very prominently in the national planning scenarios under the National Response Framework, and that's how DoD provides support in the homeland to civil authority. This capability is tailored technical life-saving support and then further logistic support for that very specific scenario. So, we designed it for that purpose.
And really, the new development is that it's been assigned to NORTHCOM, because there's an increasingly important requirement to ensure that they have done that technical training, that they can work together as a joint service team. These capabilities come from all of our services and from a variety of installations, and that's not an ideal command and control environment. So we've been given control of these forces so that we can train them, ensure they're responsive and direct them to participate in our exercises, so that were they called to support civil authority, those governors or local state jurisdictions that might need our help, that they would be responsive and capable in the event and also would be able to survive based on the skills that they have learned, trained and focused on.
They ultimately have weapons, heavy weapons and combat vehicles and another service capability at their home station at Fort Stewart, Georgia, but they wouldn't bring that stuff with them. In fact, they're prohibited from bringing it. They would bring their individual weapons, which is the standard policy for deployments in the homeland. Those would be centralized and containerized, and they could only be issued to the soldiers with the Secretary of Defense permission.
So I think, you know, that kind of wraps up our position on this. We're proud to be able to provide this capability. It's all about saving lives, relieving suffering, mitigating great property damage to infrastructure and things like that, and frankly, restoring public confidence in the aftermath of an event like this.
AG: So the use of the weapons would only be decided by SECDEF, the Secretary of Defense. But what about the governors? The SECDEF would have -- Secretary of Defense would have -- would be able to preempt the governors in a decision whether these soldiers would use their weapons on U.S. soil?
MB: No, this basically only boils down to self-defense. Any military force has the inherent right to self-defense. And if the situation was inherently dangerous, then potentially the Secretary of Defense would allow them to carry their weapons, but it would only be for self- and unit-defense. This force has got no role in a civil disturbance or civil unrest, any of those kinds of things.
AG: Matt Rothschild, you've been writing about this in The Progressive magazine. What is your concern?
Matthew Rothschild: Well, I'm very concerned on a number of fronts about this, Amy. One, that NORTHCOM, the Northern Command, that came into being in October of 2002, when that came in, people like me were concerned that the Pentagon was going to use its forces here in the United States, and now it looks like, in fact, it is, even though on its website it says it doesn't have units of its own. Now it's getting a unit of its own.
And Colonel Boatner talked about this unit, what it's trained for. Well, let's look at what it's trained for. This is the 3rd Infantry, 1st Brigade Combat unit that has spent three of the last five years in Iraq in counterinsurgency. It's a war-fighting unit, was one of the first units to Baghdad. It was involved in the battle of Fallujah. And, you know, that's what they've been trained to do. And now they're bringing that training here?
On top of that, one of the commanders of this unit was boasting in the Army Times about this new package of non-lethal weapons that has been designed, and this unit itself is going be able to use, according to that original article. And in fact, the commander was saying he had even tasered himself and was boasting about tasering himself. So, why is a Pentagon unit that's going to be possibly patrolling the streets of the United States involved in using tasers?
AG: Colonel Boatner?
MB: Well, I'd like to address that. That involved a service mission and a service set of equipment that was issued for overseas deployment. Those soldiers do not have that on their equipment list for deploying in the homeland. And again, they have been involved in situations overseas. And having talked to commanders who have returned, those situations are largely nonviolent, non-kinetic. And when they do escalate, the soldiers have a lot of experience with seeing the indicators and understanding it. So, I would say that our soldiers are trustworthy. They can deploy in the homeland, and American citizens can be confident that there will be no abuses.
AG: Matt Rothschild?
MR: Well, you know, that doesn't really satisfy me, and I don't think it should satisfy your listeners and your audience, Amy, because, you know, our people in the field in Iraq, some of them have not behaved up to the highest standards, and a lot of police forces in the United States who have been using these tasers have used them inappropriately.
The whole question here about what the Pentagon is doing patrolling in the United States gets to the real heart of the matter, which is, do we have a democracy here? I mean, there is a law on the books called the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act that says that the president of the United States, as commander-in-chief, cannot put the military on our streets. And this is a violation of that, it seems to me.
President Bush tried to get around this act a couple years ago in the Defense Authorization Act that he signed that got rid of some of those restrictions, and then last year, in the new Defense Authorization Act, thanks to the work of Senator Patrick Leahy and Kit Bond of Missouri, that was stripped away. And so, the President isn't supposed to be using the military in this fashion, and though the President, true to form, appended a signing statement to that saying he's not going to be governed by that. So, here we have a situation where the President of United States has been aggrandizing his power, and this gives him a whole brigade unit to use against U.S. citizens here at home.
AG: Colonel Michael Boatner, what about the Posse Comitatus Act, and where does that fit in when U.S. troops are deployed on U.S. soil?
MR: It absolutely governs in every instance. We are not allowed to help enforce the law. We don't do that. Every time we get a request -- and again, this kind of a deployment is defense support to civil authority under the National Response Framework and the Stafford Act. And we do it all the time, in response to hurricanes, floods, fires and things like that. But again, you know, if we review the requirement that comes to us from civil authority and it has any complexion of law enforcement whatsoever, it gets rejected and pushed back, because it's not lawful.
AG: Matthew Rothschild, does this satisfy you?
MR: No, it doesn't. One of the reasons it doesn't is not by what Boatner was saying right there, but what President Bush has been doing. And if we looked at National Security Presidential Directive 51, that he signed on May 9th of 2007, Amy, this gives the President enormous powers to declare a catastrophic emergency and to bypass our regular system of laws, essentially, to impose a form of martial law.
And if you look at that National Security Presidential Directive, what it says, that in any incident where there is extraordinary disruption of a whole range of things, including our economy, the President can declare a catastrophic emergency. Well, we're having these huge disturbances in our economy. President Bush could today pick up that National Security Directive 51 and say, "We're in a catastrophic emergency. I'm going to declare martial law, and I'm going to use this combat brigade to enforce it."
AG: Colonel Michael Boatner?
MB: The only exception that I know of is the Insurrection Act. It's something that is very unlikely to be invoked. In my 30-year career, it's only been used once, in the LA riots, and it was a widespread situation of lawlessness and violence. And the governor of the state requested that the President provide support. And that's a completely different situation. The forces available to do that are in every service in every part of the country, and it's completely unrelated to the -- this consequence management force that we're talking about.
AG: You mentioned governors, and I was just looking at a piece by Jeff Stein -- he is the national security editor of Congressional Quarterly -- talking about homeland security. And he said, "Safely tucked into the $526 billion defense bill, it easily crossed the goal line on the last day of September.
"The language doesn't just brush aside a liberal Democrat slated to take over the Judiciary Committee" -- this was a piece written last year -- it "runs over the backs of the governors, 22 of whom are Republicans.
"The governors had waved red flags about the measure on Aug. 1, 2007, sending letters of protest from their Washington office to the Republican chairs and ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
"No response. So they petitioned the party heads on the Hill."
The letter, signed by every member of the National Governors Association, said, "This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors … to the federal government."
Colonel Michael Boatner?
MB: That's in the political arena. That has nothing to do with my responsibilities or what I'm -- was asked to talk about here with regard to supporting civil authority in the homeland.
AG: Matthew Rothschild?
MR: Well, this gets to what Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont was so concerned about, that with NORTHCOM and with perhaps this unit -- and I want to call Senator Leahy's office today and ask him about this -- you have the usurpation of the governor's role, of the National Guard's role, and it's given straight to the Pentagon in some of these instances. And that's very alarming. And that was alarming to almost every governor, if not every governor, in the country, when Bush tried to do that and around about the Posse Comitatus Act. So, I think these are real concerns.
AG: Matt Rothschild, the Democratic and Republican conventions were quite amazing displays of force at every level, from the local police on to the state troopers to, well, in the Republican convention, right onto troops just back from Iraq in their Army fatigues. Did this surprise you?
MR: It did. It surprised me also that NORTHCOM itself was involved in intelligence sharing with local police officers in St. Paul. I mean, what in the world is NORTHCOM doing looking at what some of the protesters are involved in? And you had infiltration up there, too. But what we have going on in this country is we have infiltration and spying that goes on, not only at the -- well, all the way from the campus police, practically, Amy, up to the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. We're becoming a police state here.
AG: Colonel Michael Boatner, a tall order here, could you respond?
MB: Well, that's incorrect. We did not participate in any intelligence collection. We were up there in support of the U.S. Secret Service. We provided some explosive ordnance disposal support of the event. But I'd like to go back and say that, again, in terms of --
AG: Could you explain what their -- explain again what was their role there?
MB: They were just doing routine screens and scans of the area in advance of this kind of a vulnerable event. It's pretty standard support to a national special security event.
AG: And are you saying there was absolutely no intelligence sharing?
MB: That's correct. That is correct. … We're very constrained--
MR: But even that, Amy, now the Pentagon is doing sweeps of areas before, you know, a political convention? That used to be law enforcement's job. That used to be domestic civil law enforcement job. It's now being taken over by the Pentagon. That should concern us.
AG: Why is that, Colonel Michael Boatner? Why is the Pentagon doing it, not local law enforcement?
MB: That's because of the scale and the availability of support. DoD is the only force that has the kind of capability. I mean, we're talking about dozens and dozens of dog detection teams. And so, for anything on this large a scale, the Secret Service comes to DoD with a standard Economy Act request for assistance.
AG: Boatner, in the Republican Convention, these troops, just back from Fallujah -- what about issues of, for example, PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder?
MB: Well, my sense is that that's something that the services handled very well. There's a long track record of great support in the homeland. If those soldiers were National Guard soldiers, I have no visibility of that. But for the active-duty forces, citizens can be confident that if they're employed in the homeland, that they'll be reliable, accountable, and take care of their families and fellow citizens in good form.
AG: Last word, Matthew Rothschild?
MR: Well, this granting of the Pentagon a special unit to be involved in U.S. patrol is something that should alarm all of us. And it's very important to the Army.
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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!
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I think it is a great idea
[Report this comment]
Posted by: rickiey on Oct 8, 2008 4:15 PM
Current rating: 2 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I don't think anyone would be more effective at helping with a Katrina style disaster than they active duty army.
If they are telling the truth, and they aren't allowed to "assist with crowd control and unrest", that is.
Quite frankly, I don't trust our currrent administration enough (or indeed, at all) to think they are going to be utilized constitutionally.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: I think it is a great idea Posted by: Bellwether
» RE: I think it is a great idea (You GOTTA be kidding....) Posted by: Jayzer
» RE: I think it is a great idea (You GOTTA be kidding....) Posted by: QuestionAuthority
» RE: Right before the election - no coincidence Posted by: UnEasyOne
» usterroristnation Posted by: usterroristnation
» RE: I think it is a great idea (You GOTTA be kidding....) Posted by: rickiey
» Are you mental? Posted by: EinMD
» Of course they'll impose martial law..... Posted by: kellysgarden
» RE: Of course they'll impose martial law..... Posted by: madregal
» Makes one wonder why Bush/Cheney are still in the Whit House!! Posted by: donl51
» RE: I think it is a great idea - we could use it, too Posted by: sliver
what will it take for people to see reality????
[Report this comment]
Posted by: new world water on Oct 8, 2008 4:43 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Patriot Act,policy of preemptive war, U.S. troops on our streets for crowd control, Citizen I.D. cards, locator chips, survelience cameras, illegal wire tapping, waterboarding, electric shock,secret prisons,corporate bail out,detention camps,threat of Marshall Law,illegal arrest of reporters,no fly lists,V.P.not part of the Executive branch,Treasury Secretary now above the law, Geneva Conventions ignored, and we still don't get it. Fascism is here and we better start seeing it.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: what will it take for people to see reality???? Posted by: beautifulady2003
» martial law Posted by: kellysgarden
» RE: martial law Posted by: Richard House
Holy Shit!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Urstrly on Oct 8, 2008 4:47 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I have to wonder what they are anticipating. Maybe an end-run against an Obama presidency?
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» of course it's an end run Posted by: kww355
» RE: Holy Shit! Posted by: areles
» Yes! An anthrax attack would work beautifully Posted by: franny59
» Obama end run? Posted by: kellysgarden
» Maybe we should be looking at Bush/Chaney for another,''but self induced term in the white house Posted by: donl51
» It wouldn't be the first time... Posted by: bobtr900
Coincidence?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: lil ole me on Oct 8, 2008 4:51 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
according to a recent Congressional Commission report, 88 percent of National Guard units have less than half of the equipment required to perform missions at home. So is it safe to assume that the guard has purposely been deployed and depleted of resources so if it became necessary for the US military to step in there would be no resistance from what should be considered to be state controlled militia?
I hope Im wrong, but I gotta wonder.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Coincidence? Posted by: Hans
» RE: Coincidence? Posted by: FernLee
WHERE ARE ALL THESE SOLDIERS STATIONED?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: cori on Oct 8, 2008 5:53 PM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
wHERE ARE ALL THESE SOLDIERS. WILL THEY TRY AND STOP PEOPLE FROM VOTING? tHIS IS BOTTERRIFYING AND ENGRAGING!
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» BOTTERRIFYING ? Posted by: EinMD
» RE: WHERE ARE ALL THESE SOLDIERS STATIONED? Posted by: lil ole me
» Oh please Posted by: EinMD
» RE: WHERE ARE ALL THESE SOLDIERS STATIONED? Posted by: donl51
Posse Comitatus died with passage of the Warner Defense Act..!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: TJColatrella on Oct 8, 2008 7:05 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Ironic it's a Virginian who wielded the poison blade that killed Posse Comitatus...
This was the Warner Defense Act which eviscerated that great document, and subjects us all the the potential oppression by our own military acting to defend a potentially corrupt illegitimate Chief Executive and or his party..
This combined with NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 could easily spell the end of the America Republic such as it is..
Also their deployment in America as well as mercenary groups such as Blackwater may very well put down any upheaval if the Republicans steal this election..as is record..
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Posse Comitatus died with passage of the Warner Defense Act..! Posted by: acers
been dead so long........
[Report this comment]
Posted by: eaajdjholton on Oct 8, 2008 7:27 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
the corpse don't stink no more............
check this link for a really informative article
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/
journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm
(combine the lines above to make the link work in your browser)
It's from a homeland security thinktank journal/website.
A few things to take note of:
"Congress has also approved the use of the military in civilian law enforcement through the Civil Disturbance Statutes: 10 U.S.C., sections 331–334. These provisions permit the president to use military personnel to enforce civilian laws where the state has requested assistance or is unable to protect civil rights and property. In case of civil disturbance, the president must first give an order for the offenders to disperse. If the order is not obeyed, the president may then authorize military forces to make arrests and restore order."
So the POTUS says "Um, disperse please." and then he can send in the military to do his bidding..............think about that tool in the hands of the current administration!
"Federal military personnel may also be used pursuant to the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C., section 5121, in times of natural disaster upon request from a state governor. In such an instance, the Stafford Act permits the president to declare a major disaster and send in military forces on an emergency basis for up to ten days to preserve life and property."
Just how many Republican governors are there out there these days--and how many of them are interested in attaining power by any means possible? Can Sarah Palin be the only one?
"An infrequently cited constitutional power of the president provides an even broader basis for the president to use military forces in the context of homeland defense. This is the president’s inherent right and duty to preserve federal functions. In the past this has been recognized to authorize the president to preserve the freedom of navigable waterways and to put down armed insurrection. However, with the expansion of federal authority during this century into many areas formerly reserved to the states (transportation, commerce, education, civil rights) there is likewise an argument that the president’s power to preserve these “federal” functions has expanded as well."
For me, this one is the scariest. Think about the wiggle room inherent in this one, and then think about the situation our country currently finds itself in...........seems to me he's already got the excuse, tailor-made by himself! Why the troops haven't been rolled out already is probably more a teastament to Barney Frank than we will ever know.........
And I'll leave you with this from the final paragraph of the journal article referenced above (written by a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the U.S. Army Reserve who is also--by day, so to speak--an immigration attorney):
"But does the act present a major barrier at the National Command Authority level to use of military forces in the battle against terrorism? The numerous exceptions and policy shifts carried out over the past 20 years strongly indicate that it does not."
A chilling conclusion in these troubled times.
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All Great Empires Dissolve, Some Faster Than Others
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Posted by: blackie4aces on Oct 8, 2008 8:48 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Who of you out there who has ever been in the military does not understand that the role of the military is to break things and kill people? Granted, there may be some of you who served in Finance, but most of the rest of us learned what our mission was with no blurring of our purpose. So you (George Bush and the Pentagon) set up, of all things, a grunt division, a fucking grunt division, to operate in the U.S.? Furthermore, this is a division wherein a large portion of its personnel has experienced combat, which means that that component will be insane for the next ten years or longer. Am I being kidded or what?
I have to wonder if this kind of shit really bothers average Americans very much, if at all. Personally, I don't think it does. It's certainly not on the 6 O'clock news every night. In fact, I doubt it has ever been on the 6 O'clock news between the car commercials and those for feminine hygiene or male enhancement or erectile dysfunction products. Or toothpaste that promises a level of social acceptance unimagined previously.
During the most recent Presidential campaign debates, the two candidates argued about who they were willing to go to war against-as if that was their prerogative. Until recently, I always thought that was a function of the U.S. Congress. Evidently that's not true anymore, though I cannot remember the amendment to the Constitution that changed all of that. But who really cares? There's all the important shit to worry about, the momentarily current correct deoderant, the right mouthwash, the automobile that will get you laid, the fantasy that you are represented and you have rights guaranteed by the Constitution which the so-called people's repreentatives wipe their asses with every day.
And now there is the 3rd Infantry Division poised, at the ready for a Presidential order to "help out" (quell) any problems with the in-place deal that you, or a group of you, might have with it. America is dying and there isn't even a decent eulogy being delivered.
Satan's Neutral Corner
satansneutralcorner@yahoo.com
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» RE: All Great Empires Dissolve, Some Faster Than Others Posted by: binxwalker
» RE: All Great Empires Dissolve, Some Faster Than Others Posted by: clem
» RE: All Great Empires Dissolve, Some Faster Than Others Posted by: aussidawg
» RE: All Great Empires Dissolve, Some Faster Than Others Posted by: aussidawg
Creeped Out
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Posted by: cdmsr on Oct 8, 2008 11:34 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I will never be able to hear or read 'homeland' used to refer to the US and not be creeped out by the fascistic, jingoistic vibe that resonates therefrom. The developments chronicled in this transcript are the logical result of the mindset that would embrace such an abhorrent term.
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» RE: Creeped Out Posted by: Shey
» RE: Homeland = Fatherland Posted by: Sushi
» RE: Homeland = Fatherland Posted by: pcushniesr
» RE: Homeland = Fatherland Posted by: HoboHomo
» I agree "homeland" sounds bizarre... Posted by: Shakti
Where...
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Posted by: beautifulady2003 on Oct 9, 2008 2:37 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...are the American people during all this?
Oh yeah. As long as everyday life goes on as usual, they can turn their heads and not perceive a thing.
The news media can continue to spoonfeed the usual garbled crap that passes for news.
The US has a choice of electing one warmongering president or another. It doesn't matter. Neither Obama or McCain has any intention of relinquishing any executive powers that were stolen by Bush and Cheney.
The United States of America is in its death throes. Soon there will be the Fascist Republic of America. The president can impose martial law at will. I think that's what they're gearing up for.
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» RE: Where... Posted by: Shey
» RE: Where... Posted by: mr. joshua
» RE: Where... Posted by: Erin
» RE: Where... Posted by: donl51
They don't want to give it up...
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Posted by: Michel on Oct 9, 2008 3:21 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...and it appears that the Republicans are going to do whatever it takes.
I personally feel as if the Repubs are orchestrating their followers to create civil unrest...then Bush would have a reason to delay the change of guard and lock things down.
I could be wrong...I am not so sure though.
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» RE: They don't want to give it up... Posted by: cindi
» I doubt that you're wrong... Posted by: VickyinSD
The greatest military machine the world has ever seen,
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Posted by: bitsfick on Oct 9, 2008 3:48 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
got their ass kicked in Vietnam, are now getting their asses kicked in Iraq, and Afghanistan. All of our great military technology is no defence against IED's. Add to that the fact that our military leaders have already proven they are not to bright. Next question, what will the rest of the world do if we have a civil war. Better start brushing up on your Chinese and Russian. It will help being able to talk to your future rulers in their own langauge.
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» RE: The greatest military machine the world has ever seen, Posted by: donl51
There's somethin happening here...
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Posted by: katfish on Oct 9, 2008 10:05 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What stands out from this exchange is that what the military says about its constitutional limitations that is supposed to comfort us does nothing of the kind for anyone who is even mildly cognizant of the Bush administration's capacity for completely disregarding the constitution. These assurances are made with the best of intentions, presumably, but they are useless.
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» RE: There's somethin happening here... Posted by: Xynyx
Posse Comitatus Died When . . .
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Posted by: 6399 on Oct 9, 2008 10:18 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Blackwater storm troopers began patrolling the streets of NOLA after Katrina. They may not be army regulars, but they are ex-special ops, rangers, seals, etc. In my opinion, that's even worse cuz they represent the "lifer" who gets off on killing people and will never stop - be it in "private" security or as a cop.
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not entirely on topic but...
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Posted by: Benjaminsjw on Oct 9, 2008 10:26 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...USNORTHCOM? SECDEF? This starts to sound strangely reminiscent of those good old Soviet acronyms... (SovNarKom, AgitProp)...
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Vote fraud in Ohio
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Posted by: PaulK on Oct 9, 2008 10:45 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Tin whisperers Bush is coming
We’re finally on our own
This autumn I hear the drumming
Vote fraud in Ohio
Liberty stood for us
Soldiers are cutting her down
Same as they did long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know
Lie lie la lie lie lie lie lie
Lie lie la lie lie lie lie
Lie lie la lie lie lie lie lie
Lie lie la lie lie lie lie
Liberty stood for us
Soldiers are cutting her down
Same as they did long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know
Tin whisperers Bush is coming
We’re finally on our own
This autumn I hear the drumming
Vote fraud in Ohio
Vote fraud in Ohio
Vote fraud in Ohio
Vote fraud in Ohio
Vote fraud in Ohio
(get audience singing it)
What?
You better tell me!
. . .
--by Paul K. No full name, no copyright!
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Chickens coming home to roast never did make me sad :)
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Posted by: PakiBoy on Oct 9, 2008 10:53 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The war-crimes machine known as Pentagon is coming home to roast.
Fat, dumb, ignorant Americans who are happy when Pentagon drops bombs, agent orange, white phosphorous, DU encased ordinances, cluster bombs, etc etc over civilian population around the world, are going to get a taste of their own medicine.
Absolutely loving it!
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» RE: Chickens coming home to roast never did make me sad :) Posted by: HoboHomo
Homeland, homeland, homeland, the facist word that entered the MSM post 911
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Posted by: beijaflor on Oct 9, 2008 11:37 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
was used in this very informative article so many times,that I started to wonder if it was some kind of hypnosis trick.
This information needs to go out to as many people as possible and I might add, quickly.
Check out YouTube for more on this subject and Naomi Wolf's videos in particular. Get Informed NOW!
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If It's Really True
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Posted by: Last Chance on Oct 9, 2008 11:37 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
that Army units are deploying onto the streets of U.S. cities NOW, TODAY, then I suspect Bush may be plotting to arrange another terrorist attack on U.S. soil so he can declare martial law, cancel the elections and rule by decree. He and Cheney love being President and Vice President so much they will do ANYTHING to stay in the White house; and right wing Republicans will do ANYTHING to stop Barack Obama and any sort of return to Constitutional law and economic democracy. We live in terribly interesting times.
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» RE: If It's Really True Posted by: weslen1
» Obama and the Constitution? Posted by: perkywa
» RE: If It's Really True Posted by: WingsofCrystal
Watts LA Riots
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Posted by: Ripcord on Oct 9, 2008 11:41 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Goodpaster mentioned that the only time the Insurrection Act was invoked was during the Watts Riots in LA (circa 1967).
It was a good example of the potential danger of involving regular military in civil disturbances.
At the time I was a young officer stationed at Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma Arizona.
I received orders to train my platoon of communication experts for riot control in LA during the Watts rioting.
Half of my men had just returned from combat in Vietnam. Even though they were not infantry, they were a tough group. (one shot a CID investigator between the eyes as the Sgt came out of his house; another would go on liberty in to town, walk up to a bus stop and sucker punch a civilian.)
After weeding out some of the most violent Marines, I started training with M-14s and fixed bayonets.
When I asked one black Marine squad leader what he'd do if a black civilian was assaulting a white civilian with deadly force and I ordered him to shoot the black assailant?, --he said Sir, I'd turn around and shoot you. Well, I sent him to mess duty.
Thank God, we never deployed.
A few years later the Marine Corps changed its tradition of having Marines sleep in the squad bay with their beloved rifles locked to their bunks. After so much racial turmoil, all weapons would now be locked in armories away from the troops.
Remember the incident in LA where a truck driver made a bad turn into a bad neighborhood, was pulled from his truck and beaten within an inch of his life?
Handling such local civil disturbances is best handled by local civilian authorities, at worst by local National Guard units under the command of state governors.
Unfortunately, we've let Bush exhaust our National Guard and put all Guard units under national DOD control.
Folks, this mentally unstable President is a very present danger to domestic tranquility.
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Watts LA Riots
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Posted by: Ripcord on Oct 9, 2008 11:41 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Goodpaster mentioned that the only time the Insurrection Act was invoked was during the Watts Riots in LA (circa 1967).
It was a good example of the potential danger of involving regular military in civil disturbances.
At the time I was a young officer stationed at Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma Arizona.
I received orders to train my platoon of communication experts for riot control in LA during the Watts rioting.
Half of my men had just returned from combat in Vietnam. Even though they were not infantry, they were a tough group. (one shot a CID investigator between the eyes as the Sgt came out of his house; another would go on liberty in to town, walk up to a bus stop and sucker punch a civilian.)
After weeding out some of the most violent Marines, I started training with M-14s and fixed bayonets.
When I asked one black Marine squad leader what he'd do if a black civilian was assaulting a white civilian with deadly force and I ordered him to shoot the black assailant?, --he said Sir, I'd turn around and shoot you. Well, I sent him to mess duty.
Thank God, we never deployed.
A few years later the Marine Corps changed its tradition of having Marines sleep in the squad bay with their beloved rifles locked to their bunks. After so much racial turmoil, all weapons would now be locked in armories away from the troops.
Remember the incident in LA where a truck driver made a bad turn into a bad neighborhood, was pulled from his truck and beaten within an inch of his life?
Handling such local civil disturbances is best handled by local civilian authorities, at worst by local National Guard units under the command of state governors.
Unfortunately, we've let Bush exhaust our National Guard and put all Guard units under national DOD control.
Folks, this mentally unstable President is a very present danger to domestic tranquility.
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Thank you Naomi. Now Please sign the petition.
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Posted by: jameslyonsweiler on Oct 9, 2008 12:37 PM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Petition Link:
No US Armed Forces Actions Against US Citizens
Petition text:
As American citizens, we declare that no US armed forces unit has the right to subdue us, imprison us, or take our property, in keeping with the spirit and letter of the US Constitution, including the Amendments, and especially the Posse Comitatus Act, a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385).
We urge our representatives in Congress to pass emergency legislation reasserting Posse Comitatus and to strip the President, George W. Bush, of rights he claimed in his 'signing note' appended to HR5122 (also known as the John Warner Defense Authorization Act) on January 28, 2008).
We assert that under no circumstances should US armed forces be used against US civilians, including and not limited to crowd control or to put down insurgency.
We urge every armed force personnel to refuse to obey orders if directed to act against US citizens. We the people will collect funds for such infantry and officer's legal defense and will hold them as heroes and defenders of freedom for any time served in the defense of the US constitution.
When President Bush swore to uphold and defend the US Constitution, he agreed that he would be subject to two years' time in prison for any use of US Armed Forces personnel against US citizenry. It's time for even more toughly worded legislation to protect the people of the United States from domestic tyranny.
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» I'd delete the call to mutiny Posted by: Ripcord
It worked for Pinochet & Co. in 1973
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Posted by: zooeyhall on Oct 9, 2008 12:51 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Just look at pictures from the 1973 coup in Chile.
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All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic
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Posted by: Direct Democracy on Oct 9, 2008 5:58 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." Abraham Lincoln
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
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» ah huh!...tell me another one!! Posted by: donl51
chinese and russian?
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Posted by: theallegro on Oct 9, 2008 6:33 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
china hasn't invaded a country in a very long time - russia has NEVER invaded a country in its present form - neither country wants the US - canada has already invoked its right as a british commonwealth country (head of state here is queen elizabeth II, represented - superficially, of course, but this is important in this case - by a governor general) to become a part of the EU trading bloc.
There will be a south american trading bloc that trades with several middle eastern countries, south asian bloc headed by india (1.5+ billion people), asian bloc headed by china (1.7+ billion people) and russia will join the EU's trading bloc out of the need to sell energy and make money. where does that leave the US? probably wishing that they had stuck to the neoliberal economic ripoffs they had pulled before the use of illegal military force to prevent rivals from rising - i.e. denying china access to oil, etc...
My guess is that the US is about to fall, and fall hard into another revolution or a civil war or some combination of the two - i doubt it will happen anytime soon, but if the Founding Fathers did it right, it will happen... surely there are real patriots out there - and God bless the US if it turns out like Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers' idea of what a revolution should be: the United States Armed Forces (the natural transition of the states' militias, unfortunately) restoring the Constitutional rule of the Republic... yes, it would be a coup, but I know enough active duty US military guys (both enlisted and officers) who would join an active revolution the second they had support from a few of the top generals... transitioning to new elections for ALL offices, with international monitors, without lobbyists, without paymasters, and no more Federal Reserve: the poster above was correct - the Federal Reserve itself is unconstitutional. The ability to control the printing of money, adjust interest rates and cause hyperinflation at will is solely the domain of the Congress :P
hey... i can dream. but it's probably never going to happen. who won on dancing with the stars or american idol? isn't sarah palin hot?
lowest common denominator entertainment breeds more idiots who will believe anything, and they're doing a nice job of that - more americans would like to bomb iran than can name the official language or capital of said country (in case you weren't aware, it's persian/farsi (the second word is the persian word for the language) and tehran, respectively.
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The Rubicon
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Posted by: zorro on Oct 9, 2008 7:05 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What we have is history repeating itself---Ceaser has brought the army home. It was illegal in the Republic of Rome, and he did anyway. The brigade seems small, but it is the first of many--they will pave the way. A thousand men is sufficient to guard the new emperor, the White House and congress. just try and revolt, just try and impeach or arrest for crimes of humanity--just try and take back your country. Ceaser has his army--1000 private guards--the Imperial guard! This is no time for joking, but Life is often more true, and more frightening than fiction--and the Dark Side is powerful. Where ar our Jedi's? To the Rebel Alliance: strike at the rails, strike at the roads--destroy them--sieze the night and the element of surprise! Strike at the refueling stations. Immobilize them--bring them to our level. Strike the machinery--sabotage the industry--stop production--how your Might! Unite--and become your own wicked force--ther is more than one way to raise an army! it is coming. this is not fiction. you can submit, or you can live up to all those American ideals of freedom and justice you were brainwashed into believing. Show your strength!
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The "Un-Anticipated" Economic Downturn
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Posted by: BlackbirdHighway on Oct 9, 2008 7:42 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Does anyone else find it suspicious that these troops were put in place just before the economic downturn, just the thing that is likely to cause widespread panic, unrest, even rioting, which could easily result in the declaration of martial law?
And yet this economic downturn was "entirely un-anticipated" ???
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Vonnegut
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Posted by: InsertNameHere on Oct 9, 2008 8:17 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living."
-Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
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concerned
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Posted by: volscho on Oct 9, 2008 11:07 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
4,000 troops does not sound like something that could subdue the whole country...but could be used for certain engagements
...i know Bush issued the signing statement concerning Posse Comitatus, but what if they supplemented the U.S. troops with Blackwater troops? What legal regulations is Blackwater under when it comes to operating in the U.S.?
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» RE: concerned Posted by: donl51
what happened to "aid to the civil authority"...
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Posted by: Bearzerker on Oct 10, 2008 2:37 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
... which would be the call and authority of the Governors of each individual state?
the United States... somehow I don't think so!
This is so wrong on so many levels, but no one is taking notice [MSM] that another right has been usurped by Bush and his criminal empire bunch!
I heard Oliver Stone call Bush the best president ever when talking about his new film "W"...
I'm guessing he had to drink the Rovian Kool-Aid in order to make this mess of a film after all!
It's been one disaster after another from this administration... what a legacy he leaves!
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» HR5122 also known as the John Warner Defense Authorization Act Posted by: Bearzerker
» Oliver Stone Posted by: zipper696
REMEMBER KENT STATE
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Posted by: sallyride on Oct 10, 2008 6:54 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Never trust Bush, or anyone with any connection to him, but 'look' behind him. He cannot function on his own.
He knew we'd be in this mess a long time ago, it was planned. Paranoia's grounded in fact.
What he doesn't realize is that other members of the G7 don't like him either, nor respect him, but they do Americans, per se.
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» YET THEY'RE STILL IN OFFICE......sallyride! Posted by: donl51
Wait ..& yrs later and NOW they are 'Training ' for a WMD like attack
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Posted by: Purple Girl on Oct 10, 2008 7:10 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Within 3 sentences this Army Asshole revealed the absurdity of this entire LIE... So they didn't bother to begin such training after '93 WTC bombing, Not even after 9/11, and then still nothing with all the hype regarding Iraq or Even in the last few years considering iran & N.Korea??? Really NOW, about a month out from a National Election such Domestic Control Training has Begun?????
Clinging Tight to those Gods & Guns everyone...Because here they come!!They're not only planning on Steal this One...They plan to SEIZE this One! I think it is normally referred to as a Coup d'etat. Who else is similtaneously training...Black Water?
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the word in the street or as I say in the grocery store...
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Posted by: ellie on Oct 10, 2008 9:19 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
is that people are restless, pissed and afraid to band together al la patriot act, so we have a bunch of pissed off american citizens making their own rules for their family...
would be hard for one battalion to stop almost an entire population at once... this movement we are now seeing is truly unorganized underground grass roots stuff... the same type of overall unrest that led to the american revolution in the first place... both sides of the isle are pissed at everyone, especially the way these past 2 weeks have played out worldwide...
considering all 50 states are experiencing the same things... word is out folks... even if the entire army was brought back here for an attack on citizens, there would still be a high probability for the underground movement to exist and flourish... no one seems happy about anything!!!
not to mention there are enough guns already in the hands of citizens (for sports purposes only) for every man, woman, child, cat, dog and canary to pack at least 2 each... don't even think that a roundup of weapons will work, folks won't give up their guns... ordering people to turn in weapons will only make people hang on tighter, food for guns won't work in this time in history... there is always other items at hand for weaponry even if it gets down to throwing rocks...
ps... people are stocking up on staples from the grocery shelves... highly unusual buying patterns without an upcoming blackout or snow storm... review the contents of shopping carts at check out the next time you're shopping...
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Rule by Power of Fear
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Posted by: Pop on Oct 10, 2008 9:24 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The well planned US covert "terrorist" atacks pulled off on September 11, 2001, worked as planned in accordance with the planning suggested by PNAC. The pre-written Patriot Act was pushed through in the climate that "Terrorist" fear that was exploited very effectively by the Bush regime, where every area concerning freedom of the People with regard to our humanitarian and Constitutional rights. Bush has in fact boasted of his imperial power and said "The Constitution is only a God Damned piece of paper" and "I am the decider" There is not one area of our Constitutional laws, or humanitary rights that the Bush regime has not violated. The Posse Comitatus will be a small matter for our new All powerful Imperial Government to put away. The relatively small initial 4000 troops will prove to be only a start. All of all our troops serving in our military are subject to the commands of the "Commander-in-Chief". The plan is for complete control of the people, under threat of forse.
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Homeland Security
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Posted by: Archie1954 on Oct 10, 2008 10:08 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The president's use of signing statements is completely unconstitutional and has no standing in law. In fact the very use of them warrants an impeachment. It is tantamount to telling the Congress that it's laws don't apply to the executive branch. What greater reason to impeach then flouting of the law?
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» RE: Homeland Security Posted by: crazy carlos
plotzplotz
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Posted by: PlotzPlotz on Oct 10, 2008 10:09 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
WAY TO GO TJ. How about the elite media ignoring the effect of FRACTIONAL BANKING and how money is created out of nothing. For sure we saw this coming some time ago. As the good book says: Pay Attention! Be Alert! the One World Order folks are making their play.
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2nd Amendment anyone?
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Posted by: perkywa on Oct 10, 2008 10:28 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
THIS is why the founders put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution.
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. A Republic is a well armed Sheep contesting the vote"
Benjamin Franklin
When the Army comes you gun grabbing un-armed Sheep will be rounded up like the mutton you are!
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» RE: 2nd Amendment anyone? Posted by: cindi
» 1st Amendment too Posted by: perkywa
So they were in Falluja?
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Posted by: manderson on Oct 10, 2008 11:33 AM
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We all have read, even in Mainstream Media, about what the Army did in Fallujah----killed many innocent Iraqis and built a wall around it...all as a lesson to the Iraqis about messing with Blackwater.
To my knowledge, the Army has been called out MULTIPLE times in our comic-opera-democracy's history for domestic duty. One above respondent mentioned Los Angeles----there was also Cleveland (1967) Washington D.C. (1932), Chicago (1886), and others that I would need a reference work in front of me to write down.
I don't trust the present administration (nor any of them, back to JFK) any farther than I can throw my car. We are dealing with pathologically evil humans here---that includes, to a degree, Barack Obama, although I would consider him more a prisoner of circumstances than an extreme case, like Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin et al. That also includes the perpetual adolescents of the military lumpen/intelligentsia like Michael Boatner, who is obviously a good pathological liar for his career.
I have no doubt this present financial crisis was planned, and contingencies were planned also. For those of you Repugs and Freepers who thought they were voting for good government, you're now going to get it---good and hard. With liberty and justice for all who cooperate. But don't worry, they'll still call it a democracy. And you'll know how big a dog you are by the size of the leash they give you. It's time to pay the ignorance tax.
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So the Pentagon claims...
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Posted by: zipper696 on Oct 10, 2008 12:10 PM
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quote:
"...The primary purpose of this force is to provide help to people in need in the aftermath of a WMD-like event in the homeland. It's something that figures very prominently in the national planning scenarios under the National Response Framework, and that's how DoD provides support in the homeland to civil authority. This capability is tailored technical life-saving support and then further logistic support for that very specific scenario. So, we designed it for that purpose...."
Clearly imagining either a nuclear or biological attack within the Continental US.
That would seem logically to need the expertise of the guys at Fort Deitrick with their containment suits and specialist detection equipment NOT front line combat troops.
The local emergency services (fire, ambulance, police, Coast Guard) all have trained personnel to make an initial assessment of a "situation" and then go through existing channels to the governor and ask for further assistance for both the imminent danger to surrounding population and to contain and interdict access to the locale.
The well tested procedures would have the governor call in the National Guard for crowd control and movement of casualties and refugees, thanks to the use and depletion of the Guard on the Iraq situation this becomes more and more problematic...
Perhaps a situation that suits the plans of those currently in power?
Bush/Cheney have been conspicuous by their lower profiles during the financial meltdown with Bush muttering anodyne sentences and Cheney simply "somewhere else" - let us hope that these megalomaniacs are NOT planning to hold onto the throne by these means.
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I knew the army guy was lying, instead of just a dupe...
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Posted by: dbarber on Oct 10, 2008 4:53 PM
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When I read THIS:
AG: Boatner, in the Republican Convention, these troops, just back from Fallujah -- what about issues of, for example, PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder?
MB: Well, my sense is that that's something that the services handled very well. There's a long track record of great support in the homeland. If those soldiers were National Guard soldiers, I have no visibility of that. But for the active-duty forces, citizens can be confident that if they're employed in the homeland, that they'll be reliable, accountable, and take care of their families and fellow citizens in good form.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Are we supposed to believe he's been that sequestered?
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» Nope ... Posted by: franny59
"YES" next question...?
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Posted by: BlueBerry PickN on Oct 12, 2008 10:02 AM
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Considering that Kennedy & Palast have already identified the myriad means that 'Election08' is already stolen in favour of ReichWing Republicans...
perhaps the light-hearted approach isn't nearly enough?
If you want a global legacy that extends beyond sheer disgust with the USA, perhaps now might be the time to get serious.
its not a game, you've been killing & oppressing peoples for decades.
this isn't a joke: you've ruined the global economy...
Billions are watching: clean up your act, folks.
nobody is making excuses for you anymore & we're tired of taking the crap & being told to be grateful for it.
" ...Those who build walls are pretending
That forever they can defend them
Those who dam streams can build fountains (yes they can)
But those of us who just let them run free...we can move mountains
But I know they never gonna tell you Why, no
They only wanna tell you Lies, no
...
Its time...it's time to go Home
...
How many people were they runnin from and
How many people never saw it comin
How many people never heard the warning
How many people never stayed at home and
How many people never heard the call and
How many people never saw it all and
How many people did they spend it on and
How many people got to sing this song and
How many people never heard the cry and
How many people gotten pushed aside and
How many people never saw the doves fly
How many people never said goodbye and
How many people never saw the fall and
How many people til we end it all and
How many people never saw the wrong and
How many people did we drop a bomb on?... " - M.Franti & Spearhead, Time To Go Home
Spread Love, not corporate dependence...
BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian
~~~
"... tolerance of intolerance is cowardice..." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
"Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence." ... "Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle" – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn "
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
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WHEN A NATION'S INTELLIGENTSIA GOES OFF HALF COCKED
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Posted by: Raymond Emerson on Oct 12, 2008 10:13 AM
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the poor and the middle class get holes in their feet. Milton Friedman was wrong.
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The telling thing...
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Posted by: ibsteve2u on Oct 12, 2008 4:41 PM
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...is that so many could suspect so ill of our leadership.
I preferred the days before this Administration, when people had to invent reasons to distrust "the Man".
Sad, that America could fall so far as to tolerate leaders who lie to start wars, authorize the use of torture, and - in the cruelest sham of all - corrupt our Department of Justice.
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article much better than naomi wolf opinion
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Posted by: whealeydj on Oct 12, 2008 8:47 PM
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as she actually asked pentagon spokesman and person from The Progressive some tough questions. Whether you believe what he had to say is another story. re term Homeland Security has seemed way to close to German Gestapo which is acronym meaning Homeland (GEheimnes) State (STAtz) Police (Polizei).
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God I hope Naomi Wolf is wrong
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Posted by: chrish on Oct 12, 2008 11:02 PM
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Another stolen election would cause riots this time, and these troops would be deployed to quell them. The Hallibuton detention centers are awaiting their first influx of guests. And how convenient, what good television, that a lot of the rioters would be African American - they could reinforce the stereotypes and lock up hundreds and thousands of our fellow Americans of African descent. God I hope she's wrong. This next month is the most important ever in American history. Scary scary times - they will not go quietly, no way.
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New surveillance program will turn military satellites on US
By Julian Sanchez | Published: October 05, 2008 - 07:15PM CT
An appropriations bill signed by President Bush last week allows the controversial National Applications Office to begin operating a stringently limited version of a program that would turn military spy satellites on the US, sharing imagery with other federal, state, and local government agencies. The government's own watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, has warned in an unpublished report that the more expansive program in the offing lacks adequate safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties.
For now, the law restricts the NAO to "activities substantially similar" to those carried out by the Civil Applications Committee, an interagency coordinating body formed in 1976 to give civilian agencies access to military satellites for scientific and disaster preparedness purposes, such as "monitoring volcanic activity, environmental and geological changes, hurricanes, and floods." But as a draft charter for the Office makes clear, officials at the Department of Homeland Security hope to branch out from these traditional applications, providing assistance and information to domestic law enforcement agencies.
That doesn't sit well with some members of Congess, who in a sharply worded letter earlier this year expressed concerns that the NAO "raises major issues under the Posse Comitatus Act" barring the military from performing law enforcement duties, and worried the program could be used to "gather domestic intelligence outside the rigorous protections of the law—and, ultimately, to share this intelligence with local law enforcement outside of constitutional parameters."
And as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the Government Accountability Office appears to share those concerns. In an unpublished analysis—a public version of which may be released in coming weeks—the GAO found that there did not seem to be adequate "assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards," nor sufficient checks and oversight procedures to prevent the misuse of satellite imagery.
The existence of the NAO was first publicly disclosed in press reports last summer, several months after its creation at the behest of the Director of National Intelligence. Following hearings held by the House Committee on Homeland Security, Congress blocked funding for the NAO, pressing DHS for more information about the legal basis for the progam—as well as the privacy safeguard to be put in place. The current appropriations bill permits the NAO to be funded only for the purpose of carrying out the old Civil Applications Committee's functions, pending a certification by the Secretary of Homeland Security that the Office's compliance with the law has been vetted, and provision to the Appropriations Committee of details of how funds will be spent. The bill also directs the Inspector General to provide regular reports—somewhat oddly, to the Appropriations Committee—on the data collected by NAO.
Among the questions raised about the proposed program is whether it runs afoul of the Reconstruction Era statute that makes it a crime to use the armed forces to "execute the laws" within US borders. Tim Sparapani, senior legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, believes the new initiative to be "a prima facie violation of the Posse Comitatus Act—this is about using a military asset to do domestic law enforcement." If law enforcement or immigration agencies need spy satellites, he argues, they should ask Congress to buy them some, rather than using the powerful eyes in the sky operated by the National Reconaissance Office for foreign-intelligence agencies not bound by domestic privacy constraints. "The military should never be used against the citizenry," he argues. "Even if we're talking about shooting pictures of people instead of shooting people, the principle remains the same."
But Gene Healy, an attorney and scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, is not so sure. At least since the 70s, says Healy, courts have tended to read the prohibition on using the military to "execute the laws" only as a barrier to "hands-on policing," such as conducting arrests or doing crowd control. That means sending soldiers to physically search a criminal suspects home is out, but loaning expertise or equipment and sharing information may be allowed. During the 2002 hunt for the "DC sniper," he notes, Army aircraft were used in the effort to hunt down the serial killer. "That doesn't mean it's a good policy," says Healy, "I can think of a lot of reasons it's a really bad idea to let soldiers train narcotics officers too, but that doesn't mean either is illegal under the current statute."
And what of Fourth Amendment concerns? Here, Sparapani says, the program enters "uncharted waters." In a pair of 1986 decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that aerial observation by surveillance planes did not count as a Fourth Amendment "search." If you grew your marijuana out in the open, the justices essentially concluded, you could not claim a "reasonable expectation of privacy" even if the crop wasn't visible from the ground. But the court left open the question of whether the same logic would apply in the case of technology more esoteric than an airplane. And in 2001, the court concluded that a search warrant was needed to use infrared scanners to detect the heat signature from an indoor dope-growing operation.
Presumably intelligence satellites have a range of sophisticated scanning equipment that would fall under the latter rule. But even in the case of ordinary image capturing, the high degree of precision of the satellite cameras—by some accounts good enough to read a page of text in a subject's hand—may make spying from space qualitatively different from a plane flyover.
Whatever the courts decide, Sparapani argues that Congress should press DHS to be more forthcoming about how it plans to use the orbiting eyes. "Given this administration," he says, "'trust us' just doesn't work anymore."
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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