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And, yes, I DO take it personally: 04/15/2012 - 04/22/2012
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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky
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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Is capitalism in fact bankrupt?

from al jazeera...
With a world-wide financial crisis, towering government debt and the public outrage of the 99 per cent it is suggested that the free market is not free enough. Is capitalism in fact bankrupt?

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More on the American Surveillance State

in the previous post, i highlighted yesterday's democracy now interview with nsa whistleblower william binney... glenn greenwald, naturally, is all over it...
We love to tell ourselves that there is a robust freedom and a thriving free political press in the U.S. because you’re allowed to have an MSNBC show or blog in order to proclaim every day how awesome and magnanimous the President of the United States is and how terrible his GOP political adversaries are — cutting and edgy! — or to go on Fox News and do the opposite. But people who are engaged in actual dissent, outside the tiny and narrow permissible boundaries of pom-pom waving for one of the two political parties — those who are focused on the truly significant acts which the government and its owners are doing in secret — are subjected to this type of intimidation, threats, surveillance, and climate of fear, all without a whiff of illegal conduct (as even The New York Times‘ most celebrated investigative reporter, James Risen, will tell you).

Whether a country is actually free is determined not by how well-rewarded its convention-affirming media elites are and how ignored its passive citizens are but by how it treats its dissidents, those posing authentic challenges to what the government does. The stories of the three Democracy Now guests — and so many others — provide that answer loudly and clearly.

[...]

Two Democratic Senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado — have spent two full years warning that the Obama administration is “interpreting” its spying powers under the Patriot Act in ways so “twisted” and broad that it would shock the American public if it learned of what was being done, and have even been accusing the DOJ and Attorney General Holder of actively misleading the public in material ways about its spying powers.

chilling, isn't it...?

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Friday, April 20, 2012

"We Do Not Live in a Free Country"

more on our rapidly expanding national security state...

democracy now via information clearing house...

National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance

In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower.

Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.


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American terrorism - killing people by remote-controlled video game

whenever i read stories about drones performing targeted killings, i can't help but think of what it would be like to be living in a place where robotic killing machines routinely fly overhead and never knowing who will be their next targets or when death will rain from the sky... i can't imagine how horrifying that must be...

glenn...

There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list.

[...]

[I]t’s critical to note how removed all of these questions [about the drone campaign] are from democratic debate or accountability, thanks to the Obama administration’s insistence that even the basic question of whether the CIA has a drone program is too secret to permit it to publicly acknowledge, even though everyone knows it exists — especially in the countries where it routinely kills people.

[...]

So here we have this incredibly consequential policy adopted in total secrecy by the Obama administration, one that empowers the President to secretly target people, including American citizens, for instant, due-process-free death. They have placed the policy beyond the rule of law — by insisting that it’s too secret for courts to examine — and shielded it completely from democratic debate. The only time we are permitted even to hear about it is when the President, his aides and loyalists politically exploit the corpses they create by strutting around with chest-beating, tough-guy boasting about how Strong it shows Obama to be (because, really, what is more courageous, more embodying of the noble American warrior spirit, than killing people by remote-controlled video game while the killers are ensconced in secure bunkers in the U.S.?).

glenn points to several democratic bloggers and fervent obama apologists who completely discount the drone war and the establishment of the national security state as a "standard single-issue monomania"...

all i can say is that there are none so blind as those who refuse to see...

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Take a look at the future of the privatization of water

not only is the privatization of water resources another way the world's super-rich elites can continue to bleed the peasants by monopolizing what should be a freely available commodity and is the fundamental right of every living thing on this earth, we now can see how it's designed to make even MORE money by selling water to the highest bidder and treating the wastewater results...
Shocking Conflict of Interest: Private Water Companies Partner With Fracking Lobby

Selling water to drillers, two of the nation's biggest private water utilities may soon profit from treating the wastewater.

Two of the country's largest private water utility companies are participants in a massive lobbying effort to expand controversial shale gas drilling -- a heavy industrial activity that promises to enrich the water companies but may also put drinking water resources at risk.

The situation -- which some watchdogs describe as a troubling conflict of interest -- underscores the complex issues raised by the nationwide push to privatize infrastructure and services like water, prisons, and roads.

just when you think out-of-control greed and profiteering can't possibly get worse, lo and behold, it does...

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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Tom Friedman, ultimate wanker

i completely forgot about atrios' top ten wankers of the decade, a list he compiled to celebrate his ten years in blogging... i'd followed the other nine but it slipped my mind that he was to announce number one on tuesday... so, without further ado, here it is...
THE ONE TRUE WANKER OF THE DECADE

Tom Friedman.

He fetishizes a false "centrism" which is basically whatever Tom Friedman likes, imagining the Friedman agenda is both incredibly popular in the country and lacking any support from our current politicians, when in fact the opposite is usually true. Washington worships at the altar of the agenda of false centrism, and people often hate it. Problems abroad, even ones which really have nothing to do with us, should be solved by war, and problems at home should be solved by increasing the suffering of poor and middle class people. Even though one political party is pretty much implementing, or trying to implement, 99.999999% of the Friedman agenda, what we really need is a third party catering precisely to this silent majority of Friedmanites.

Truly great wankers possess a kind of glib narcissism, the belief that everything is about them while simultaneously disavowing any responsibility for anything. The important thing about an issue is whether it proves Tom Friedman fucking right, but if it doesn't we can just move on to the next big thing that will prove Tom Friedman fucking right. If you advocate for wars that go a bit bad, well, it's not your fault. If only Tom Friedman had been in charge everything would have been great.

Such wankers are impervious to criticism because they're always doing battle with straw critics. They never remember what they said last week, and assume you won't either.

i remember the first and only friedman book i read - The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization... i read it when it first came out in 1999 and thought that in doing so i had joined the ranks of wise and sophisticated global thinkers... in the thirteen years since, i have come to share atrios' opinion...

thomas friedman's biggest fan is thomas friedman... friedman loves to bask in the praise those worshipful acolytes who think he's the ultimate representation of wisdom and political savvy... atrios thinks he's merely a buffoon... i agree...

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Sandy Weill, an architect of the economic collapse, is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

conclusively proving that my country's values are firmly in the right place... < /snark>

from time to time on this blog, i have railed against individuals i consider to be high profile examples of what is wrong in this country and the world... karl rove, carl icahn, donald rumsfeld, george bush, lloyd blankfein, bill kristol and a number of others spring to mind... yesterday's post by robert scheer in truthdig added yet another name to my black list - sanford weill...

How evil is this? At a time when two-thirds of U.S. homeowners are drowning in mortgage debt and the American dream has crashed for tens of millions more, Sanford Weill, the banker most responsible for the nation’s economic collapse, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

So much for the academy’s proclaimed “230-plus year history of recognizing some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders.” George Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Albert Einstein must be rolling in their graves at the news that Weill, “philanthropist and retired Citigroup Chairman,” has joined their ranks.

Weill is the Wall Street hustler who led the successful lobbying to reverse the Glass-Steagall law, which long had been a barrier between investment and commercial banks. That 1999 reversal permitted the merger of Travelers and Citibank, thereby creating Citigroup as the largest of the “too big to fail” banks eventually bailed out by taxpayers. Weill was instrumental in getting then-President Bill Clinton to sign off on the Republican-sponsored legislation that upended the sensible restraints on finance capital that had worked splendidly since the Great Depression.

[...]

Although Weill has shown not the slightest remorse, Reed [John S. Reed, Citibank CEO when has had the honesty to acknowledge that the elimination of Glass-Steagall was a disaster: “I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships,” he told Bloomberg News. “If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking, you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity.”

sandy weill... somebody we can all look up to...

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The history of James Johnson, Goldman director, "should disqualify him from service on the board of any public company"

more pushback on the criminally negligent banksters... see the financial times article here...

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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The asshole Allen West - god forbid we should have social and economic justice

i don't ordinarily comment on the constant stream of bullshit associated with the left/right, democratic/republican, progressive/conservative divide but i find this deeply troubling...
Rep. Allen West: Thin line between communism and progressivism

Rep. Allen West, a tea party Republican from Florida, said Tuesday that he did not regret describing the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as communists.

At a forum, he called on journalists to study the political spectrum of ideologies and claimed that in the early 1900s, American communists called themselves progressives.

“There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, Socialism,” West said. “It’s about nationalizing production, it’s about creating and expanding the welfare state, it’s about this idea of social and economic justice… it is also about the creation of a secular state.”

oooooo... social and economic justice... the horror...!

i know that finding individuals of limited intellectual capability and myopic views representing the people of this country in the united states congress is not uncommon... it's when they seem to be deliberately trying to incite fear and promote divisiveness that it crosses the line...

i lived through the cold war and the "better dead than red" era and to have that kind of demonization being revived is not at all where we need to be... there has been a time or two when, in my training classes and leadership teaching, i've been accused of being a communist for my obvious preferences for workplace democracy... rather than declare a belief in the status quo of an authoritarian, command and control organization that allows those at the top to maintain a grip on money and power, it's easier to mount ad hominem attacks...

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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Citigroup - suck on this, Vikram Pandit

any pushback on the criminal bankers is welcome...

from the nyt...

Citigroup Shareholders Reject Executive Pay Plan

Citigroup’s shareholders rejected the bank’s plan to award its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, $15 million in compensation, in a show of frustration about Wall Street pay.

At the bank’s annual meeting Tuesday in Dallas, a majority of investors voted against a proposal on executive compensation, which included approving Mr. Pandit’s pay package.

The advisory vote comes amid widespread furor over Wall Street pay. At a time when profits and stocks are slumping, bank chiefs are collecting multimillion-dollar payouts.

Last year, Mr. Pandit’s compensation included a $1.67 million salary and a $5.3 million cash bonus. In addition, he received a retention package valued at $40 million. In 2009 with the bank on the edge of failure, Mr. Pandit accepted only a $1 salary.

unfortunately, the shareholder vote is not binding...
Citi doesn’t have to act on the vote, which isn’t binding. Still, it speaks to shareholders’ issues. Only 45 percent of shareholders supported the plan.

“Citi’s board of directors takes the shareholder vote seriously, and along with senior management will consult with representative shareholders to understand their concerns,” said Jon Diat, a spokesman for Citi.

too bad they can't take the 99% seriously...

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Monday, April 16, 2012

The rich have milked our society for everything

from common dreams... well worth clicking through and reading the whole thing...
Five Reasons Why The Very Rich Have NOT Earned Their Money

1. They've Taken All the Middle Class Wage Increases
2. They've Mismanaged Key American Industries
3. They've Benefited from 50 Years of Public Research
4. They've Increased Their Incomes By Not Paying Taxes
5. They've Contributed Little to Society

what it boils down to is that the country has been run for their benefit...

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Sgt Robert Bales, our super-elite predators, the foreclosure scam, endless war and unchecked violence

mark ames posting at consortium news...
The 1%’s Hand in the Afghan Murders

This past Thursday, a Modesto, California, man whose house was in foreclosure shot and killed the Sheriff’s deputy and the locksmith who came to evict him from his condominium unit. Modesto authorities responded by sending 100 police and SWAT snipers to counter-attack, and it ended Waco-style, with the fourplex structure burning to the ground with the shooter inside.

[...]

These “death by foreclosure” killings have been going on, quietly, around the country ever since the housing swindle first unraveled. Like the story of the 64-year-old Phoenix man whose daughter and grandson were preparing to move in with him after losing their home to foreclosure — only to get a knock on his door surprising him with an eviction notice on the house he’d owned for over 30 years. Bank of America foreclosed on him despite his attempts to work out a fair plan.

We now know that the same banks that had been bailed out over their subprime fraud disaster were, by the time this happened, headlong into another criminal scheme, this time foreclosure fraud. The fraud was effected both illegally and in bad faith on a scale so vast it’s hard not to think that it was carried out by some marauding foreign army.

Anyway, the old man grabbed a .357 and a beer, walked outside into a sea of Phoenix cops and snipers, and fired his gun off until they cut him down in a hail of bullets.

[...]

Nothing illustrates the interlinking between the class war at home and the imperial wars abroad more starkly than the example of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the Army sniper accused last month of killing 17 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children.

[...]

Less well-known or discussed is what happened to Sgt. Bales on the other front: the class war front. Three days before his shooting rampage, the house where Bales’s wife and two children lived in Tacoma, Washington, put up for a short sale, $50,000 underwater. This was exactly what Sgt. Bales and his wife feared might happen if the Army forced him into a fourth battlefield deployment.

The last time Sgt. Bales deployed — to Iraq in August 2009 — Bank of America foreclosed on the family’s rental property, a duplex that his wife had bought in 1999 that was also underwater. Within months of BofA taking their duplex, Sgt. Bales’s Humvee hit an IED and flipped over, causing brain and head injuries. On a previous deployment to Iraq, Sgt. Bales had one of his feet partially blown off by a bomb.

[...]

The extent to which mortgage lenders and banks deliberately preyed on American military families is made clear by this little-known fact: the Tacoma region, home to Fort Lewis-McChord, the largest base in the Western United States and home to 100,000 military personnel and family, suffered one of the worst predatory subprime loan epidemics in the country, an anomaly in the state of Washington. According to Richard Eastern’s firm, roughly half of all home sales in that region are either foreclosures or short sales. As early as 2007, the Wall Street Journal singled out Tacoma as one of the nation’s worst affected regions from subprime plunder.


meanwhile, here's the view of the traditional media, parroting the insane view of our super-rich elite predators...

As for Sgt. Bales – whom the Army accuses of “snapping” for no good reason, accusing him of being a drunk, or of mental weakness, incapable of handling his marriage or the stress of combat – he might even be put to death. He now sits in Fort Leavenworth military prison, charged with the murder of 17 Afghan civilians.

The way the One Percenter “winners” see this story, it’s all proof that the system is working perfectly.

As the National Journal reported, “Nearly all of National Journal’s National Security Insiders agree that the military justice system can conduct a fair trial for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.”


and the beat goes on...

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Yesterday was International Pillow Fight Day - Who knew...?

it's way past time for something on the light side...

Photobucket

from raw story...
Some 100 people did battle with feather-filled pillows Sunday in front of central Rome’s Santa Maria in Trastevere church, to celebrate International Pillow Fight Day.

The pillow warriors, most between 18 and 30 years old, lined up face-to-face, then unleashed their fiercest pillow-fight moves when the church’s bells rang at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT).

After about 20 minutes of battle, with clouds of feathers in the air and piled on the ground they threw down what was left of their weapons, then proceeded to lie down on them.

International Pillow Fight Day was launched in 2008. This year, events will be held from April 6 to 15 in dozens of cities including Belgrade, New York, London, Paris and Sydney.

and a happy monday to all...!

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Julian Assange new show starts today on RT

here's the trailer...



and here's a 20-minute pre-show interview with assange on rt...

Photobucket

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Sunday, April 15, 2012

Military violence that is smoothly regulated by laws that spare civilians -- is usually a sick joke

the post title is taken from a tomdispatch post authored by chase madar who has recently published a book on the ongoing case of bradley manning entitled, The Passion of Bradley Manning...
What the Laws of War Allow
Do the WikiLeaks War Logs Reveal War Crimes -- Or the Poverty of International Law?

[...]

“International humanitarian law,” or IHL, is the trying-too-hard euphemism for the laws of war. And as it happens, IHL turns out to be less concerned with restraining military violence than licensing it. As applied to America’s recent wars, this body of law turns out to be wonderfully accommodating when it comes to the prerogatives of an occupying army.

[...]

Here is where the WikiLeaks disclosures were so revealing. They remind us, once again, that the humanitarian dream of “clean warfare” -- military violence that is smoothly regulated by laws that spare civilians -- is usually a sick joke. We need to wean ourselves from the false comfort that the law is always on the side of civilians. We need to scrap our tendency to assume that international law is inherently virtuous, and that anything that shocks our conscience -- that helicopter video or widespread torture in Iraq under the noses of U.S. soldiers -- must be a violation of this system, rather than its logical and predictable consequence.

[...]

Who, after all, writes the laws of war? Just as the regulations that govern the pharmaceutical and airline industries are often gamed by large corporations with their phalanxes of lobbyists, the laws of war are also vulnerable to “regulatory capture” by the great powers under their supposed rule. Keep in mind, for instance, that the Pentagon employs 10,000 lawyers and that its junior partner in foreign policy making, the State Department, has a few hundred more. Should we be surprised if in-house lawyers can sort out “legal” ways not to let those laws of war get in the way of the global ambitions of a superpower?

[...]

[Bradley Manning] saw very clearly what so many professors and generals take pains to deny: that the primary function of the laws of war is not to restrain violence, but to justify it, often with the greatest lawyerly ingenuity.

it's a cold splash of water for me to grasp the very obvious truth that "the laws of war are also vulnerable to 'regulatory capture' by the great powers under their supposed rule"...

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