Empire kNOw more

Lies The Government Told You

2012-01-05T14:14:00.000-05:00

For a very long time now our government, and the moneyed interests that exert great pressure and influence on the information media have lied to, and mislead the population in many ways. Judge Andrew Napolitano has with this book, tried to crack and break through the propaganda bubble that has been intentionally created here in America.
This is an hour long video book review of Andrew Napoilitano's book titled; Lies The Government Told You. It is a fascinating conversation between two disparate political people, Andrew Napolitano is a self described Libertarian and Ralph Nader the interviewer is a longstanding progressive, a man who has spent his adult life working for a safer, cleaner, and more moral Nation for everyone. They are two people who stand quite far apart politically, and a person could or would expect this exchange between them to be strained, or perhaps contentious. It is anything but. These two disparate men find nothing but common ground, discussing the immense chasm between what the people of this Nation have been led to believe, and the truth.
Please find the time to learn about the many lies you have been led to believe.

LIES THE GOVERNMENT TOLD YOU - C-Span book review
This video was not embeddable, hence I was only able to post a link to this video. That being said, this link will take you directly to the video book review.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can only be maintained for such time as the State can shield the people from the political,economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of it's powers to repress dissent, for truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension. the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." - Joseph Goebbels , Reich Minster of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945

Voices of Logic and Reason

2011-10-11T13:34:00.000-04:00

Jeffery Sachs is a bright and outspoken man. Here he does a great job of explaining the source of angst being felt across this Nation and this Planet. Please take a few minutes and listen to him flesh out the rationale felt by so many.

Also recently Nobel Laureate Economist Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times. His essay does a good job of explaining the consistent mis-representation of this movement for rational change. Here is is Op-Ed piece.
Paul Krugman's Panic of the plutocrats

‎"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford

‎"Widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot long endure side by side in a democracy." -Thomas Jefferson

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." ~ Josef Goebbles

"There's class warfare, all right,but it 's my class, the rich class, thats making war, and we're winning" ~ Warren Buffet

‎"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself.......That, in its essence, is Fascism: “ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Shared Sacrifice

2011-07-12T21:53:00.009-04:00

“The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such calculated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.” Howard Zinn, Historian 1922 - 2010

Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote an open letter to President Obama. He has asked us the American People to sign the letter with him. His letter points out the inequities of our tax and economic policies.
I don't want to speak for him so I ask you to take a few minutes and read Sen. Sanders letter to the President.
So far me, and one hundred and thirty four thousand people have signed the letter and I hope you will too.

Here is the link : Senator Sanders Letter to Obama

Also, recently Robert Reich has put together a great video explaining our situation and how we got here. I say it is a great video because he manages to explain things in just two minutes and fifteen seconds. It is obviously an overview or simplified explanation, but as such is quite succinct in conveying the message.

Here is the link : The Truth About The Economy in 2 min.+15 seconds!

"There's class warfare, all right,but it 's my class, the rich class, thats making war, and we're winning" ~ Warren Buffet

What the World Needs Now

2011-04-27T13:40:00.009-04:00

‎"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

‎Today we need to reset our moral compasses. Greed is not good. Greed is one of religion's deadly sins for good reason. We all need to take a step back and realize what we have become. It is an ugly sight.
Our brain-dead tax and economic policies are backwards and regressive. The majority of this Nation's wealth is becoming concentrated in ever fewer hands and each year more people fall between the cracks.
If we can wake ourselves from the media mantra of selfishness and consumerism we will see that we are allowing our children's future to be stolen by the opulent minority.
Change is created first in our minds, then through our actions. The first step is to take a hard look at ourselves and see what we have become.
Today we collectively act as though this Nation's criminal invasion of the Sovereign Nation of Iraq was OK. We don't object to our government torturing people. We remain silent as our Presidents claim powers above all laws of this Nation and this World. The President claims the right to disappear or assassinate anyone. By the way, that does include you, me, and our children. This is a horrid legacy we are leaving or children.
We need to change our thinking and behavior. We need to realize that what goes around, comes around. If we accept vicious criminal behavior from our government, the day that viciousness visits us gets closer. Caring about others pays long term dividends, we need to realize this.
Today we have allowed ourselves to be sold the dark, empty socio-economic policies of greed and violence. Empathy is the key to change. Please invest a few minutes of your time to listen to sociologist Sam Richards sharing his insights on empathy.

"I call you my base: the haves and the have mores." ~ Geo. W. Bush

"There's class warfare, all right,but it 's my class, the rich class, thats making war, and we're winning"
~ Warren Buffet

" They only call it class warfare when we fight back" ~ Cindy Sheehan

"What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood." ~Aldous Huxley

‎"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." - Thomas Paine

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." ~Sir Peter Ustinov

“If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. ” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

‎"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS." ~ Mohondas Gandhi

‎"Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." ~Desmond Tutu

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed" ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower

This photo was taken in 1994 during the famine in Sudan. The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards a United Nations food camp located about a kilometer away. The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it.
The photographer who took this photo, Kevin Carter committed suicide about three months later, due to depression. According to the New York Times, where this picture first appeared, the little girl survived.
Here is a link to a NYT story about this tragic situation.

One image of tragedy resonates in two lives

‎
"You just gotta look inside yourself and the eyes of your friends, and you'll find the secret of how to be a humanitarian. So, love to you." ~ Neil Young

The Age Of Inevitable Deception

2011-03-06T17:39:00.004-05:00

We are being mislead by the media in this Nation and while many people kinda' understand that, most do not understand the depth and degree of that deception. There are some glowing examples of this to be seen, but not coincidentally from the corporate media.
Several years ago, there arose a dispute between a couple of investigative reporters and the Fox News Affiliate they worked for. It was a story about bovine growth hormone and it's human health safety in milk. Eventually the reporters were fired, they sued in civil court for being wrongfully fired, and won.
Then NEW WORLD COMMUNICATIONS OF TAMPA, INC., d/b/a WTVT-TV appealed the decision, essentially saying they had the right to mislead and lie, and to require their employees to do so. The Appeals Court agreed.
Because the FCC's news distortion policy is not a “law, rule, or regulation” under section 448.102, Akre has failed to state a claim under the whistle-blower's statute. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment in her favor and remand for entry of a judgment in favor of WTVT.

Watch Jane and her husband explain it them selves in this clip from the documentary The Corporation.

As Akre noted after the verdict, "the `threshold issue' the court wrote ---

and all it ruled upon --- was whether the technical qualifications for a
whistleblower claim were ever met by me. In Florida, to file such a claim,
the employer misconduct must be a violation of an adopted law, rule or
regulation. FOX argued from the first --- and repeatedly failed in front of
three different judges --- to have the case tossed out on the grounds there
is no hard, fast, and written rule against deliberate distortion of the
news.

"In essence," she adds, " the news organization owned by media baron Rupert
Murdoch, argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to even lie
or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves."

News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and Fox News all have a long habit and history of playing fast and loose with the truth. I am including the link to an edited version of Robert Greenwald's glaring expose' of this gang in his documentary OUTFOXED - Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism. Though edited, this video details their long history of intentional slant, all the way to pure propaganda. It remains consistent with the original intent and scope of the full length documentary.

In the days of the Soviet Union, they had their State run news organs, Izvestia and Tass. These were pretty much propaganda organs, but they only had limited effect because the people new it was propaganda. Today we here in the USA have a real problem on our hands because most people believe they are hearing the truth, and moreover are inclined to think they aren't being lied to. Both of those ideas are fallacies, and to further the case we will take a look at the latest chapter in the continuing saga of media, and most specifically Fox Media lying and distortion.
Recently the Right-wing Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper attempted to have a law repealed that forbids lying on broadcast news.
Let that sink in, He wanted to repeal a law forbidding lying on broadcast news. Sanity prevailed in Canada. The law was not changed.
But the interesting news angle to this, is that now News Corp/Fox News has been barred entry into the Canadian market with their now dead, "Sun TV News".
Here is a link to a news article written by Robert Kennedy Jr covering this very subject.

Harper loses, and so does Murdoch

Folks there is an equally pernicious aspect to this story, other than News Corps claim to the right to lie, and being barred access to the Canadian market because of it. Think about the fact that the rest of the corporate media isn't telling us about any of this either. Take notice of the fact that this story was covered by Huffington
Post, and documentaries, but the corporate news has no desire to point out to us just how glaringly we are routinely lied to.
That glaring and consistent omission of the truth, by all of the corporate media is propaganda by omission, and we are victims of it routinely. Think about it, News Corp won the case, and confirmed their "legal right" to lie, in 2003 . It is now 2011, and Rupert's "Sun TV News" is barred from the Canadian market because of a ban on lying on the news.
How much of any of this has the corporate news informed us of?

Editors note: Today, March 17th, I saw an article on Crooks and Liars that dovetails quite well with this post, so I decided to add it to this post.
Check out this bit of Fox News bile.
Hannity turns logic on it's head

Gandhi Is Smiling!

2011-02-14T10:20:00.018-05:00

The people of Egypt have proven once again that the path to change is peace. Or perhaps I should say peaceful protest. The people of Egypt displayed remarkable restraint and co-operation. They defended each other, and themselves when attacked, but otherwise were remarkably peaceful and resilient.

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" Mohandas Gandhi

When the Berlin Wall came down, when the Marcos Regime was ended, and now in Egypt, non violent protest has been the hallmark of each. This is a time of change, let us hope that Egypt continues to move towards a government and constitution much more inclusive and representative of all the people. This will be a rapidly changing story as they move towards a new constitution and government. I hope this opportunity blossoms.
As the winds of change blow across the planet, we can only hope that peace and cooperation continue to prevail. Protest movements are sprouting up in many places, Bahrain, Iran, Algeria, and Libya are all mentioned as locations of protest. All will not succeed, we can only hope for real change that will bring some measure of fairness and equality to the people of these and other nations.
Speaking of other nations, I think of Saudi Arabia. This nation is a glaring example of all that is wrong in this world. It is a viciously repressive regime, a kingdom, to be exact. Decades ago the US govt. tied it's fortunes, our lives and livelihoods, to this brutal regime. We the American people need to learn and understand that our very way of life is at present tied to the continued repression of the Saudi people. It won't last much longer. The Saudi/US collusion runs deep and gets complicated very quickly, but it boils down to a system of financial/power collusion. When the people of Saudi Arabia overthrow the vicious and corrupt Saudi regime, life as we know it will change. The change will be very difficult for the US and it's people. Our economy, such as it is, relies on "cheap" oil, in ready and abundant supply. These supplies will be interrupted, how much, and how consistently remains to be seen, but you can count on it having a negative effect on our anemic economy.
As populist movements for freedom and representative government sweep across the globe, lets stand on the side of humanity. We should not side with brutal corrupt regimes, not even for the obvious selfish reasons of continuing an unsustainable system founded on corrupt regimes and unsustainable policies.

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox: Anniversaries Abound on Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox!

2011-01-17T15:35:00.000-05:00

This blog post from Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox is worthy of wider distribution. Hence my re-posting it here at my blog. Please take a few minutes and take a listen to Cindy and her guests, and Major General Smedley Butler, a real American hero that most Americans have never even heard of.

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox: Anniversaries Abound on Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox!

FREE SPEECH?

2010-10-21T14:25:00.028-04:00

Watching this election season unfold, I was struck by the absurdity of our present system. Money flooded this election at a level never seen before in our history. Much of this money was donated anonymously. Even if the source is known, the simple fact that people and corporations can spend as much as they want to is very disturbing.
At this point, I imagine some people will be thinking I am spouting some sort of sacrilege. They have bought the idea that money is speech. This is an idea promoted by moneyed interests, and sanctified by our courts. The Supreme Court has ruled so, so it must be so.
The Supreme Court can be wrong.
Money is not speech. Money is an amplifier of speech. I can speak, I'm doing so here. But how many will "hear" me? But if I had millions of dollars to spend, I could place this essay in major newspapers across the country. I could pay to have a professional production outfit turn this essay into a slick video advertisement. And then spend hundreds of thousands placing it in T.V. markets across the country.
Obviously money is NOT speech, it is an amplifier of speech.
When moneyed interests can spend to their hearts content, they can sway elections to their preference. While the overwhelming majority of the population is trying to make financial ends meet, the obscenely affluent can spend more in any given race than the voters will earn in a lifetime. This equation takes away any semblance of fairness, and places all political power in the pockets of a tiny minority of the population.
This problem is not new. For far to long the affluent have been purchasing political power through large campaign contributions, they contribute directly to candidates and to the parties. This money is not free. While contributors may not be able to completely dictate their desires to candidates or parties, we cannot be so naive as to think the contributors desires are ignored.
Recently there has been a brewing controversy over the issue of foreign money possibly being used to pay for political advertising. This is a valid concern. The idea of foreign interests attempting to sway our elections is vile to most thinking people. The logic is obvious.
But we all need to realize that it is just as wrong for a small domestic opulent minority to sway our elections. They have been purchasing political favor for far too long. Ask yourself if you think the Government is in any way responsive to your desires. Do you suppose that any of your friends or co-workers would say that they feel the Government is responsive to their needs? Now I ask you, do think the government is responsive to the desires of the Banksters? Or if I were to ask you, do you think that the major oil companies get their desires heard and considered, how would you respond?
Obviously this is a completely unfair system, in which the general population has been reduced to nothing more than profit sources for the financially powerful.
We all (most of us anyway) claim to embrace the idea of free speech. Free speech is seen as vital to the health of the republic. Yet in our present system the affluent are the only ones with a voice in our political process.

Education Crisis? Lewis Black sheds some light on our problem, and helps us to laugh at the same time!

2010-10-06T14:26:00.000-04:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Back in Black - Education Crisis

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

I'm voting (R)eptilian for all these important reasons!

2010-10-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

Saje's Eye: An open letter to the Tea Partiers

2010-10-06T12:29:00.001-04:00

Saje's Eye: An open letter to the Tea Partiers

The American Dream: You have to be asleep to believe it!

2010-09-08T13:40:00.004-04:00

  For most of my life, most of the people I have known have spent very little time or effort thinking about the World. They spend a little time in front of a newspaper, or watch the the TV news. They kinda' pay attention to what is being told. If they think about what they are hearing, they generally believe they are getting a "fair and balanced" view on whatever the subject happens to be. Rarely do they do anything resembling independent investigation of what they are told. Rarely do they even stop to think about the fact that powerful interests are deciding what they hear or see.
  I must admit, I have been guilty of this behavior myself. It is understandable how we fall into this easy acceptance. The news is generally bad news. Pondering the constant stream of depressing news, tends to be just that, depressing. We are all understandably more focused on our personal lives and the problems we face up close. We would rather focus on something fun and enjoyable, and that is what most of us have always done, and prefer to do.
  For the Second half of the Twentieth Century, this was an even easier paradigm to embrace because by historical human standards, or by current world living conditions the American population had it real good. There was plenty of "slack" in the economic chain, small and incremental losses were more theoretical than personal. Most often problems were somebody else's and not our own.
  Those days are over. While we have been asleep at the wheel, generally luvin' our countless and pointless distractions, amoral, greedy power-mongers have been busy stacking the deck against us, and humanity itself. There is no longer any "slack in the chain". If you care about your future, more importantly if you care about your children and humanity itself, it is time to get in the game. If you are still breathing it is not too late.
  I am including two links here, the first is George Carlin speaking from his heart, trying to awaken us from our self-indulgent slumber. The second is a documentary detailing another way that our elections are being purchased. Or despite the money changing hands, how they are being stolen. I hope you will invest a little of yourself, in you and your children's future.

This next video is a must see for anyone who cares about free,fair and open elections. It is produced by HBO, and titled HACKING DEMOCRACY.

Dismantling The Empire

2010-09-02T16:43:00.008-04:00

Mr. Chalmers Johnson is an astute thinker and well respected author. He has spent his life exploring and researching the inter-twined realms of Economics, International Relations, and Politics.
Here is an excerpt from his latest book:
Thirty-five years from now, America's official century of being top dog (1945-2045) will have come to an end; its time may, in fact, be running out right now. We are likely to begin to look ever more like a giant version of England at the end of its imperial run, as we come face-to-face with, if not necessarily to terms with, our aging infrastructure, declining international clout, and sagging economy. It may, for all we know, still be Hollywood's century decades from now, and so we may still make waves on the cultural scene, just as Britain did in the 1960s with the Beatles and Twiggy. Tourists will undoubtedly still visit some of our natural wonders and perhaps a few of our less scruffy cities, partly because the dollar-exchange rate is likely to be in their favor.

If, however, we were to dismantle our empire of military bases and redirect our economy toward productive, instead of destructive, industries; if we maintained our volunteer armed forces primarily to defend our own shores (and perhaps to be used at the behest of the United Nations); if we began to invest in our infrastructure, education, health care, and savings, then we might have a chance to reinvent ourselves as a productive, normal nation. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. Peering into that foggy future, I simply can't imagine the U.S. dismantling its empire voluntarily, which doesn't mean that, like all sets of imperial garrisons, our bases won't go someday.

Instead, I foresee the U.S. drifting along, much as the Obama administration seems to be drifting along in the war in Afghanistan. The common talk among economists today is that high unemployment may linger for another decade. Add in low investment and depressed spending (except perhaps by the government) and I fear T.S. Eliot had it right when he wrote: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."

I have always been a political analyst rather than an activist. That is one reason why I briefly became a consultant to the CIA's top analytical branch, and why I now favor disbanding the Agency. Not only has the CIA lost its raison d'être by allowing its intelligence gathering to become politically tainted, but its clandestine operations have created a climate of impunity in which the U.S. can assassinate, torture, and imprison people at will worldwide.

Just as I lost interest in China when that country's leadership headed so blindly down the wrong path during the Cultural Revolution, so I'm afraid I'm losing interest in continuing to analyze and dissect the prospects for the U.S. over the next few years. I applaud the efforts of young journalists to tell it like it is, and of scholars to assemble the data that will one day enable historians to describe where and when we went astray. I especially admire insights from the inside, such as those of ex-military men like Andrew Bacevich and Chuck Spinney. And I am filled with awe by men and women who are willing to risk their careers, incomes, freedom, and even lives to protest -- such as the priests and nuns of SOA Watch, who regularly picket the School of the Americas and call attention to the presence of American military bases and misbehavior in South America.

I'm impressed as well with Pfc. Bradley Manning, if he is indeed the person responsible for potentially making public 92,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan. Daniel Ellsberg has long been calling for someone to do what he himself did when he released the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. He must be surprised that his call has now been answered -- and in such an unlikely way.

My own role these past 20 years has been that of Cassandra, whom the gods gave the gift of foreseeing the future, but also cursed because no one believed her. I wish I could be more optimistic about what's in store for the U.S. Instead, there isn't a day that our own guns of August don't continue to haunt me.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire(2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006), among other works.

I was first introduced to Mr. Chalmers Johnson a few years ago. He was interviewed as part of the documentary Why We Fight. This Movie won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. (link @ right in Other Links) After watching that movie I did an internet search of Mr. Johnson and found out more about this very interesting man. I found out about his Blowback Trilogy, and started reading. Here is an insight into Blowback in Mr. Johnson's own words: "In Blowback, I set out to explain why we are hated around the world. The concept "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to and in foreign countries. It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. This means that when the retaliation comes - as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 - the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback. In the first book in this trilogy, I tried to provide some of the historical background for understanding the dilemmas we as a nation confront today, although I focused more on Asia - the area of my academic training - than on the Middle East."

The Second book in the trilogy The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic is also very interesting and enlightening. Here again I will defer to the authors thoughts: "The Sorrows of Empire was written during the American preparations for and launching of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I began to study our continuous military buildup since World War II and the 737 military bases we currently maintain in other people's countries. This empire of bases is the concrete manifestation of our global hegemony, and many of the blowback-inducing wars we have conducted had as their true purpose the sustaining and expanding of this network. We do not think of these overseas deployments as a form of empire; in fact, most Americans do not give them any thought at all until something truly shocking, such as the treatment of prisoners as Guantanamo Bay, brings them to our attention. But the people living next door to these bases and dealing with the swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape their women certainly think of them as imperial enclaves, just as the people of ancient Iberia or nineteenth-century India knew that they were victims of foreign colonization.

The third book in the trilogy is titled:
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. In this third installment of the series Mr. Johnson adds to our understanding of our situation going forward and I will again defer to the author for a greater understanding of his thinking:
“In Nemesis, I have tried to present historical, political, economic, and philosophical evidence of where our current behavior is likely to lead. Specifically, I believe that to maintain our empire abroad requires resources and commitments that will inevitably undercut our domestic democracy and in the end produce a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent. The founders of our nation understood this well and tried to create a form of government – a republic – that would prevent this from occurring. But the combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation is started down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play – isolation, overstretch, the uniting of forces opposed to imperialism, and bankruptcy.Nemesis stalks our life as a free nation.”

This series of books either separately

(as each was written as a 'stand alone' entity) or collectively
as a set, are an incredibly enlightening journey through modern history. Fleshed out in detail, analyzed from the insiders perspective, with the relevant details concerning many events never told of, or explained by our domestic politicians, and "talking heads".
This is a man who had the knowledge base, experience and "connections" to know what the relevant questions were to ask, and where to find the answers. He backs up his thoughts and findings with the sources. His books have extensive and thorough footnotes and annotation. To put it in common parlance: He does his homework, and shows his work.
In summary, Chalmers Johnson and his Empire Series should be on everyones reading list.
Here is a link to Mr. Johnson's books @ alibris.com
Also here is a link to his books @ Amazon.com

Our Way of Life is Based On Fear

2010-08-29T16:57:00.003-04:00

John Perkins is a very interesting man. When he worked as Chief Economist at a major international consulting firm, he often advised the U.N., the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He also advised major corporations and a host of nations in many parts of the world.
Having done this work, his insights into the realities of international aid, finance and politics are first hand. It is not a pretty picture. This man knows of what he speaks. He's been an active player in our vicious Empire.
I am going to add some excerpts here from an essay he wrote last Friday, for Huffington Post :

Our own government, in alliance with the big corporations and banks, has created an empire that imposes servitude, misery and death on millions of people. As a result, we who reside within the walls of the empire find ourselves surrounded by a field of fear that has been constructed by those who fatten their wallets by claiming to defend themselves (and us) against what they assert is tyranny.

We allow ourselves to be told that tiny nail files are so dangerous they must be ripped from our nail clippers, that toothpaste tubes of more than 3 ounces threaten 747s, and that armies owned by millionaire supporters of our political parties are somehow more acceptable than ones staffed by military officers sworn to uphold our Constitution.

The sad truth is that our way of life is based on fear, our economy is dependent on war and so-called Homeland Security. This must end.

Acts of terrorism and desperation will end when enough of us demand that our corporations, banks, and government cease to exploit the majority of the world's population and resources. Peace will arrive only when we insist on dealing with the world from a place of compassion - the very place I was taught that my dad and so many others defended during World War II.

The hour is indeed ours. You and I must take action.

Here is a link to the article: Vacating The Field of Fear
Also here is a link to his website:  John Perkins.org.

My Recent Response to Obama's Request For Contributions

2010-08-29T12:58:00.006-04:00

This is an unedited copy of my email response to Barack Obama's recent request for campaign donations addressed to me. I want to share it with everyone, perhaps others will do something similar:

You Obama were the first politician I ever donated cash to. I feel totally swindled. You campaigned standing behind a podium emblazoned with the word CHANGE, but you have been nothing but more of the same, on every front.

When I put my imagination into high gear, I can envision a worse scenario with a more truly vicious, fascist dictator in charge of this nation. But that is not in any way an endorsement of or for you.
You and the Democratic leadership behave as the spineless puppets of the corporatocracy. Even the ignorant would see it, if not for the constant fascist propaganda labeling y'all as socialistic/progressives.
Your commitment to change, to beneficial change for the American population, and humanity, definitely begins and ends with their fraudulent propaganda.
You are at best, the better choice between nothing and less. WHOOPEE!!!
Wake up and grow a set,
Eric

THE COVE : It got my mercury rising!

2010-08-25T18:59:00.007-04:00

I must admit that most of the time animal abuse takes a back seat to human abuse, in my mind. Because of this, I spend most of my political efforts highlighting problems affecting people. It is not that I don't care about animals, it is simply that there is so much exploitation of humanity occurring that the abused animals might have to "take a number" and get in line!

Having said that, it calls attention to the fact that this post is primarily about animal abuse. Dolphin abuse to be specific. Did you know that in a small fishing community in Japan thousands and thousands of dolphins are brutally slaughtered, every year? Virtually no one knew about this for a very long time. The people involved in this vicious business, and the Japanese Government have done everything they could to keep this secret. They have been aided in these efforts by the Japanese media. They have also been aided by the US corporate media in this information blackout. I ask you; How much do you know about the annual dolphin slaughter? I'm betting your knowledge of this carnage is limited to your exposure to the new movie/documentary The Cove. If you are as yet unfamiliar with this movie, I imagine your insight into this issue is minimal.

In The Cove, Ric O'Barry (Flipper's trainer) tells us about his personal experiences with the Flipper cast of dolphins. In fact, Flipper was actually a series of five female dolphins caught in the wild, and trained primarily by him. He explains how these dolphins needed to be replaced frequently because they didn't fare well in captivity. Also he explains how "Cathy" the last Flipper was so depressed by captivity that she stopped breathing in his arms. This traumatic experience was a life changing experience for him. As he puts it, he spent ten years building this dolphin industry up, and the last thirty-five years trying to tear it down!

As an adjunct to this great new movie the people involved also produced a short (eighteen min.) addendum piece titled Mercury Rising. This title may conjure mental images of hot weather, global warming, or climate change. That is not the point or subject matter of this movie "short". In this interesting piece, the makers highlight the immense problem of mercury contamination. This is a subject everyone needs to know more about. I am embedding this very informative shortumentary here (as well as two previews of The Cove). Please take a few minutes and watch them.

I have also included the movie trailer in this post, you can view it here:

Also if you would like to watch the longer movie trailer, I have added it here for you to see:

Ric O'Barry also has a website.

This is the link.

Background of Distrust, Prelude to Betrayal: America's unaddressed questions lead to culture of coverups

2010-08-12T22:42:00.004-04:00

by Kim-Ha Albert on Thursday, August 12, 2010 - First published August 9th on facebook

Editors note: Kim-Ha Albert is a fb friend of mine, I have discussed a variety of topics with him and know that he is both a learned man and diligent researcher, enjoy his connecting of the dots with this well written essay.

Today the world once again looks back to the horrors of nuclear war and the power of one bomb, like the one detonated over Japanese air-space on 9 August 1945, 65 years ago this day. How did this war come to know this madness? Were not the horrors of the Nazi death camps, the firebombing of Dresden, the massacre of Polish soldiers by Soviet forces at Katyn enough? And why was this being done by America? Is this behavior reflective of our values? Or is it in keeping with our past, our history, and with the genocidal removal of the native peoples here before Europeans, and the sales and enslavement of Africans thereafter? (continues below)

August 9th, 1945: This action upon Nagasaki was horrendous, to say the least.

In the aftermath of the events which shook the nation and the world, President Franklin Roosevelt was never taken to task regarding his prior knowledge, or his staff's knowledge of the potential for a Japanese strike on an American target and the one which occurred on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, 7. December 1941, the day he claimed "would live in infamy". Many scholars and historians have speculated that he knew of an eminent attack, and yet, because he was well aware of the popular and prevailing isolationist desires of the large part of the population, he did nothing to prevent the deaths of many sailors who burnt alive in the lower decks of their ships, covered with engine oil, in the dark, without any chance of escape or survival, becoming the sacrificial lambs that would necessitate U.S. involvement in a new world war.

He "wanted to help" Churchill, who for more than 180 days had been bombarded by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, yet London and Coventry burned out of control on any given night from late 1940 onward. In the anger and new found "patriotism" and hatred against anything Japanese, American citizens of Japanese extraction were rounded up like cattle and sent packing to camps far away from their homes, their businesses and properties were seized, and they were hated and vilified by the population at large. The few voices that questioned the type of intelligence to which the president was privy, and those who saw the attack as a deliberate "set-up", and a pretext to a war declaration which would lift America out of a decade-long economic downturn and depression, were silenced and un-American. Many years later it became accepted that the decision to pack the harbor full of all of the ships that could be docked there was an attempt to goad the Japanese Imperial Navy to do what was expected: Attack, provide a clear and "moral" rationalization for war, and the net outcome was to give the US Navy a new fleet, enrich the defense industries with new contracts, and have it all subsidized and funded by the taxpayer, many of whom would be drafted into the war effort: controlled, silenced, imprisoned by drill sergeants, KP, and fundamentally without any of the constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms one would normally expect in this nation.

Flash-forward to the end of the war: Nazi war criminals, Waffen-SS officers who were convicted by AMG- and IMT-sponsored courts for the ghastly crimes of murdering captured US soldiers at Malmedy, were being released in 1951, and even Eleanor Roosevelt was asking "Why are we freeing all of these Nazis?" Rocket scientists and missile technicians who employed slave-labour from Himmler's SS and Albert Speer's armaments ministry were brought to the United States and wooed to create new and interesting weapon systems here, without fear of reprisal.

In 1947, events near Roswell, New Mexico, were never adequately detailed by the military and the few inquiring minds that questioned those events were coerced into silence, ridiculed as being crazy, or eliminated.

J.Edgar Hoover had been known to have issues with a certain young man from Midland, Texas, who was singing songs and playing music which was, to him, apparently of the type and style associated with that originating with minorities, and he, like so many of his peers, were concerned that white women would start dancing with men from another, more oppressed race, and this outcome could lead to no good. It was always presumed by this author that his airplane "accident" in February 1959 was no accident, and yet another one bites the dust.

In 1963, with the abrupt termination of an American executive, and the shock of his alleged assassin being murdered shortly thereafter on LIVE television, more questions and more unsatisfactory answers, government bullying, and a new war and a draft followed. That, it was presumably believed "would shut them up."

On any given day it seems to be the government's viewpoint that there are a number of malcontents clamouring for their "rights", and they are allowed to fester unmolified by any politician or court. Pro-lifers, Feminists, Muslims who want a mosque in a certain New York City location, anti-Abortion Christians, anti-fur advocates, Aryan Militia groups, Immigration rights activists, Immigration reform vigilantes, American Native-peoples commonly referred to as Indians, Teabaggers, Birthers--these, and so very many more, are ON ANY GIVEN DAY, competing with each other for the nation's ear, the nation's attention, and some new government action. (The poor, the aged, the uninsured, the homeless, the obnoxiously wealthy, and the "unnamed government sources" remain OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND, and invisible to the visage of most.)

In early 1993, CNN went LIVE, on a Sunday morning, with news of an explosion in New York, and the media was focused upon an apparent bombing attempt on a virtually empty World Trade Center tower's parking garage. Some usual suspects were rounded-up, one who "stupidly went back" to the rental agency where he procured the truck, in order to get his deposit. Janet Reno had a blind Imam, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman convicted of "seditious conspiracy", and few if any cared anything about the injustice of that action, or many of the actions which were to follow from that one woman. And for the next 8 years the nation focused on sports, music, Monica, and a new guy, a former governor of Texas, who happened to share the same name and was indeed the son of a previous president. It was on his watch, when he became president, that a US "spy plane" (the media was rather quick with that summation) was forced down on April 1, 2001, over China's Hainan Island airbase, which is part of the People's Liberation Navy's most sensitive defense installation. People were outraged, visiting students from Taiwan near the campus of ASU could not get service at any restaurant until "we get our plane back!" and all of the most uneducated yokels in America showed their face and advertised their anti-Asian sentiments, especially after Bill Clinton's Justice Department head, Janet Reno, wrongly indicted and jailed an American physicist, Wen Ho Lee (Chinese: 李文和) for being a traitor and a spy while working at Los Alamos. These stories and many more died about as soon as they aired. It was the 90's, "hammer time", and no one wanted to miss an episode of "Cheers" or "Seinfeld".

But on September 11, 2001, New York felt the horror and shock of what damage two commercial aircraft could inflict on their city, and on the United States, by slamming into the World Trade Center's twin towers. Years of government cover-ups, denials, reticence, and lies had prepared some people here and abroad for what was to follow. For the average American, who turned into a flag-waving super patriot, none of this will make sense. But I recall search and rescue video which showed exhausted and frustrated firemen saying, "Nothing, not even a toilet bowl, fax machine, computer--you'd think with all these offices there'd be at least a door handle." I heard these words, and similar words in print media, too, time and again, in USA Today, The Arizona Republic, the (now defunct) Phoenix Gazette, and the New York Times and I found it in complete bad taste, as well, and a public relations black-eye, IF NOT A COMPLETE AND RESOUNDING IRONY, that they mentioned the rubble was being taken to FRESH KILLS ISLAND and that one of the pilots of the two planes was named KEVORKIAN. (WTF!!)

http://vimeo.com/12029551

Clinton, as does Obama, had a Republican party Defense Secretary. Clinton and Bush seem to me to be similar in agenda, presently, and I believe that with all the trips Clinton made to Seattle while Janet Reno (again with that woman!) was threatening to smash his company into 3 pieces (Bringing suit against the software company Microsoft for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act--I think she used that as leverage or black mail to gain CARNIVORE software "...or else!"), it has often occurred to me, since the beginning : What if over the period of 8 years, white jumpsuited men with hard hats who were indescript and looked like painters and plumbers just came here and there, this day and that day, entered the WTC towers and removed real porcelin toilets and urinals (everyone knows that evey skyscraper has on each and every floor,a battery of at least 10-20 toilets and urinals in each men's room) and that these were replaced with porcelin-coated toilets, yet the enamel covered a toilet which had an inner composition of C4 or thermite, which, unless exposed to extreme heat, would be quite harmless, and that the so-called "sleepers" here were not people, but objects we use daily, just as the so-called "dominos" in South East Asia were not nations, but people.

I put this out simply because nothing I have ever heard from any government source about what happened on September 11, 2001, and nothing I ever heard uttered by George W.Bush was something I considered credible, true, accurate, or moreover, anything short of a bald-faced lie. And when people are dissatisfied with the spoon-fed pablum and propaganda from a basically Nazi-esque fascist America, they look for and disseminate their own versions. America is not what it seems to be, just like the average conch on the beach is able to fool the uneducated passerby beach-comber. That which looks like a conch-shell, when found on the beach, looks on the outside like the same animal on the ocean floor, but actually now has a new resident, a hermit crab, dwelling inside--having devouered the original occupant and actual maker of the shell, and because of the shift in its specific gravity,gets a free ride to a better food buffet and floats to the top and onto the beach--America looks like the Red, the White, the Blue, but is basically no better than what Hitler was running back in 1933 under his Enabling Act, after his Nazi-initiated Reichstag Fire, which he blamed on communists and Jews, on the outside, it still looks like America,but in reality, the inner core of the nation is changed, and is completely divorced from what used to be here. We don't see it: Why? Because the frog in the boiling water will jump out, but the frog in water which is gradually heated will be boiled to death. We, the people, are gradually being "boiled to death" and are unaware of what's happening to us, because we are fish in water, unaware of the existence of sky, land, and what's underground. Our water is gradually becoming all foggy, the lines are getting blurred.

Lest ye forget, Janet Reno was also the same person who gave America the deaths of almost 80 children at the Branch Davidians ranch near Waco, Texas--ironically the very children she had accused David Koresh of abusing. Texas authorities seemed, at the time, to have no trouble with this chap, they returned weapons to him earlier, and the Texas Rangers report on what happened there in 1993 accuses Reno of the atrocity, the gassing, the fire, and everything else that went wrong. Also, Reno was the same person who leaked to the news media (regarding Richard Jewell) that led to the widespread and incorrect presumption of his guilt in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. She later apologized, saying "I'm very sorry it happened. I think we owe him an apology. I regret the leak."

I truly believe that she and many others in the Clinton administration (he initially wanted to put two women who cheated the social security taxes of their illegal alien nannies in the office of the highest office of justice in America!) served a vital purpose in the government, and that is the historic and endemic pattern of appointing and rewarding incompetence ("atta boy, Brownie, doing a bang-up job!"--George Bush) in the service of the people, and not getting people who have knowledge, brains, or moral fibre to do the right thing. Clinton and Bush are both of them disgraces! One, an impeached executive who lied and who possessed no moral fibre, and the other, a war criminal and a war criminal's syncohant!

Added 8/12/2010 by;

Kim-Ha Albert

The Bush administration, I have always contended, early on in 2001, started out by trying to pick a fight and fight a war with CHINA: their spy plane was allowed to be brought down over Hainan, but Kissinger and Associates advised young Bushie against this move--so he and his idiot collegues and butthole friends ripped a few pages out of Adolf Hitler's life story, and read about how he had his Nazi thugs find a mentally ill Dutch boy raving against the fascists, and they allowed him to play with matches, overheard his rantings, followed him and decided that by framing him for the burning of the Reichstag,( because they, THROUGH A SECRET UNDERGROUND TUNNEL CONNECTING HERMANN GOERING'S OFFICE TO THE REICHSTAG, had added the accelerant NECESSARY for the fire which matches ALONE could not cause); while it blazed out of control, all very shortly after Hitler's election in 1933, (which, like George W. Bush's election, was by no means a "mandate"), , they blamed "communists" and "Jews" -- and the Enabling Act of 1933 was born. Bush, Cheney, and many others masterminded an attack on America, had CIA-connected assets in Hamburg work with and goad, egg-on, and abet a small clique of Saudi and Kuwaiti agents who all wanted AMERICAN AIR BASES LIKE PRINCE SULTAN AND OTHERS OUT OF SAUDI ARABIA, ( and these agents were later disavowed by the Kingdom) and they WANTED TO MAKE A CONNECTION TO IRAQ, SADDAM HUSSEIN'S GOVERNMENT AND HIS FAMILY, and they used dubious links connecting Mohammad Atta while he was in Prague, to the Iraqi Embassy, which proved to be nothing, and they hoodwinked EVERYONE,later on with Dick Halliburton Cheney's "mushroom cloud speech" that there was a threat--in order to get the party started they needed a pretext (read: DECEIT) for war, had money shifted through some accounts, allowed these guys to come in and out of the country unfettered, just about as unfettered as the US money which years early under GHWB sent to Iraq through the Department of Agriculture which shifted money and credit blips on a computer out of the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale de Lavoro (BNL), an Italian government owned bank with branches throughout the world.(BNL Atlanta's lending to Iraq to $100 million in agricultural loans and $50 million to the Central Bank of Iraq on the condition that it was fully secured. In addition, BNL's activities violated U.S. banking laws.http://www.exportcontrols.org/bnl.html ) They allowed these men to take cursory piloting lessons, FBI director Robert Mueller allowed at least two agents, the Special Agents in Charge in Minneapolis and in Phoenix to work at cross-purposes, when one Coleen Rowley's memo to the director was not forwarded to the Phoenix agent about a man named Moussaoui.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html

The Phoenix FBI agent James Hauswirth made reports which were allowed to go ignored and were left unknown to Coleen Rowley, in a deliberate attempt to allow these people to do these things.

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?projects_and_programs=phoenixMemo&timeline=complete_911_timeline

It is high-time, almost 10 years after the fact, that the American people wake up and stop being the sheeple that were duped into believing that some guys with boxcutters with ties to Afghanistan did this on September 11, 2001
JFK speaking about secrecy

Thank you,

Kim-Ha Albert Eric Anderson- Editor.

"GLENN BECK HAS NAZI TOURETTES!" - Lewis Black Steamrolls Glenn Beck!

2010-08-08T11:08:00.000-04:00

Lewis Black does a great job of putting Glenn in his place! THE ATTIC! Watch and enjoy!

There's Sumpthin' Tricklin' Down Alright...

2010-08-02T19:46:00.002-04:00

And it AIN'T LIQUID GOLD!
This is a clear eyed look at our very near future. If we don't change the present course. Take a couple minutes and read this examination of what's up. I think you will be glad you read this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02krugman.html

Doing Nothing Is The Best We Can Hope For - in this case

2010-08-01T20:37:00.000-04:00

Letting all of Bush's tax cut expire would be the best thing Congress could do. This reality is laid out clearly by Fareed Zakaria in this video from CNN.

George Carlin At His Best - No Gloss! No Spin!

2010-08-01T11:29:00.000-04:00

In a three minute video clip George lays bare the true state of our nation, and by extension the U.S. dominated World. Get past his vulgarity, and see the larger vulgarity that is using and abusing us all! http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=159216125164

I Shall Pass This Way But Once

2010-07-25T11:02:00.004-04:00

   Back when I was a kid I spent a portion of my youth on my "aunt" and "uncles" farm. I lived with them for a number of years. They weren't my genetically connected relatives, they were my parents best friends.

My Dad died when I was ten years old, and it seemed like a great idea to all involved, that I would be the better for getting out of the city, 'specially seein' that I was a tad wild and runnin' with a group of "unguided - missiles", like myself. Yes, I thought it was a good idea too. I always enjoyed the farm, the aspects of animal husbandry, and nature that were all part of it.
   It was a fairly typical northeastern dairy farm. Fifty-some milkers in a stanchion barn, somewhere close to a hundred head in total, counting all the young stock. I was paid a stipend for my efforts, along with room and board. Within just a couple years I had purchased an aging mare as my own riding horse. It was a great way to grow-up, never-ending work and all.
   My Aunt Margie was a kind and warm hearted country woman. In some ways she was sort of a Dr. Dolittle of an individual. She would coddle and nurse the milkers along through the stepped on teats and various problems that would arise. Marge and her husband Gentry rightly prided themselves on the fact that they NEVER lost any calves! If we got them breathing, and their first meal into them, They ALWAYS thrived! To those of you not familiar with raising animals that is an impressive accomplishment, in those days conventional wisdom was that if the mortality rate was ten percent or less, that was all you could reasonably hope for. They had a zero mortality rate for decades!
  Sometimes on rainy afternoons, and cold winter days, Aunt Margie would crochet or do needlepoint. She made a number of very nice things.
  A couple years ago her daughter was having a garage sale, I brought some folding tables to her to use for her sale. Of course, I had to check out what she was selling. I was going through some pictures and frames she was trying to part with, and I found a framed needlepoint quotation Margie had made.
  I had to have it! I was surprised her daughter was selling it, but we all know how we are all short on room for our "stuff". Of course this heirloom is now mine. It is one of my prized possessions. The quotation is a great one, one that truly speaks to me.
  The quotation is this:
   *I Shall Pass This Way But Once *
   *Therefore Any Good That I Can Do *
   *Or Any Kindness That I Can Show *
   *Let Me Do It Now*
   *For I Shall Not Pass This Way Again*
   This simple thought conveyed by my Aunt Margie's needlepoint is so important to humanity. We all need to think more for and about each other. We humans, and notably we Americans embrace greed and selfishness in a nearly religious manner. This embrace is reaching epidemic proportions in our present culture, pushed upon us relentlessly by our corporate controlled government. It is constantly and brazenly promoted by our corporate media.
  We need a new reality, tens of millions of average Americans continue to support this political agenda As they are squeezed harder by the corporatocracy, they don't realize they are supporting the overt corporate party that is most viscously oppressing them. But these thugs are slick and they constantly appeal to peoples bigotries, fears, and worries. People seem to miss the fact that these folks are the ones constantly giving away "the store" to the most affluent, through evermore deregulation (decriminalization) and greater control of all that matters.
  In closing, I think Aunt Margie's words bear repeating:
   I SHALL PASS THIS WAY BUT ONCE
   THEREFORE ANY GOOD THAT I CAN DO
   OR KINDNESS THAT I CAN SHOW
   LET ME DO IT NOW
   FOR I SHALL NOT PASS THIS WAY AGAIN
  Thank You Aunt Margie, for SO MUCH !

Really Seeing the Gulf Mess Clearly

2010-07-21T17:39:00.000-04:00

Carl Safina is president of The Blue Ocean Institute, he is a prominent ecologist and marine conservationist. He is also an acclaimed author and respected voice on the Oceans and Seas of this Earth. Carl has been to the Gulf recently. After spending some time assessing the devastation he spoke at a TED conference with the Oil Spill as the topic. He has insights to share, so without further introduction, please watch:

The Story of Stuff

2010-07-19T22:01:00.002-04:00

  This is an interesting piece, it explores how we get all the things we think we want, and why we think we want them. Annie Leonard has spent a considerable amount of time researching the world of commerce and consumerism. She shares the results of her study here, in an easy to follow explanation of "The Story of Stuff".
  I promise you, this is far more interesting than I am able to convey. Not only will you find this interesting, you will more than likely think of several people you know should watch this.
  On to the "Stuff"! http://www.storyofstuff.com/

The Stupidity and Hypocrisy of the Austerity Movement

2010-07-18T08:32:00.002-04:00

This an open eyed look at the realities of : The Stupidity and Hypocrisy of the Austerity Movement explained so anyone,( even a politician!) could understand it!

Many thanks to Nate Silver at; http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ for his concise analysis.

Lies The Government Told You - Andrew Napolitano and Ralph Nader Speaking Freely

2010-07-17T13:52:00.001-04:00

This is an absolutely fascinating discussion of just what the title of Mr. Napolitano's new book says, Lies The Government Told You. He is interviewed by Mr. Ralph Nader, another man who has a long history of speaking out on behalf of the people. This is a rare moment when we can enjoy two champions of the people, both with a wealth of knowledge of history and the law. They speak freely about a host of lies, major ones that have had dramatic impact on our lives. This is MUST SEE TV! That is probably why it is on C-SPAN! Enjoy! http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/225457

Reagan Mythology Rewritten

2010-07-16T06:16:00.001-04:00

UNJUST SPOILS - The Real Problem In Our Economy !

2010-07-11T08:19:00.004-04:00

I recently read what I believe to be the best analysis of our economic situation, that I have seen yet. This is a concise explanation of our present problem and an optimistic view towards its solution, written by Robert Reich, a very bright fellow who has worked for a few Presidents , written several books and is worth listening to. Please take a few minutes and gain a greater understanding of our plight.

UNJUST SPOILS

Wall Street's banditry was the proximate cause of the Great Recession, not its underlying cause. Even if the Street is better controlled in the future (and I have my doubts), the structural reason for the Great Recession still haunts America. That reason is America's surging inequality.
Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Each of America's two biggest economic crashes occurred in the year immediately following these twin peaks—in 1929 and 2008. This is no mere coincidence. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing. America's median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades. Between 2000 and 2007 it actually dropped. Under these circumstances the only way the middle class can boost its purchasing power is to borrow, as it did with gusto. As housing prices rose, Americans turned their homes into ATMs. But such borrowing has its limits. When the debt bubble finally burst, vast numbers of people couldn't pay their bills, and banks couldn't collect. ...click here to read more

Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com andiTunes.

Thank you Robert, for a very insightful explanation of our situation. Eric

Circle of Strife

2010-07-10T12:43:00.009-04:00

   When you sleep with the devil, you should not be surprised when you wake up smelling like a goat. Seems obvious enough, and an idea and process most people would choose not to make, if they had the choice. Often governments make these choices for us. Even worse, they often do these types of things secretly. They do them secretly because they are criminal acts.
   By now you might be wondering what the hell I'm talking about. I will explain;

   In the aftermath of WWII there was a global movement towards democracy and self-determination sweeping the globe. Specifically to this story, in the nation of Iran they did away with a corrupt monarchy and replaced it with the first democratically elected government in Iran's history. High on the agenda of this newly elected government was seeking a fair and just renegotiation of the oil deal between British Petroleum and Iran. This had the potential to disrupt many of the profits and comforts enjoyed by the western capitalist economies. Under the existing deal, Iran got what BP was willing to give them: a percentage of BP's profits on Iranian oil. But Iran had to take BP's word for what their share was. They weren't allowed to see the books. This deal had been arranged through bribing the negotiators for the now defunct monarchy.
   Well, as you might guess the greed worshiping capitalists had an idea, overthrow the first democratically elected government in Iran's history, and reinstall the corrupt monarchy. Criminal yes, but great for the Western Empires, and their corporations annual profits.
  In what we have now been told was the first major criminal undertaking of the CIA, our government overthrew the fledgling democracy and reinstalled the corrupt and savage Shah of Iran to the Peacock Throne. BP got to keep its exploitative deal going for another twenty-five years, the people of Iran got to suffer economic exploitation, and barbaric intimidation and abuse at the hands of the Shah, and his vicious secret police. What a deal!
  This arrangement blew up with the Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution that occurred in Iran in the late 1970's. Along with the change in government, the young revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy and took many U.S. citizens hostage. We the U.S. public were hard pressed to understand why the Iranians seemed to hate us so much. We did not know then, that our government had killed their first democratically elected government, and by extension, subjected many Iranians to barbaric abuse and torture under the criminally corrupt Shah.
But, hey look at the upside, we in the west got to enjoy cheap oil, and economic plenty at their expense.
   Still to this day, we are mired in a monstrous conflict with Iran specifically, and Muslim Fundamentalists generally, derived from our criminal meddling in that nations internal affairs. If the financial accounting could be totaled, we could see that the exploitation we enjoyed in the western economies is now costing us more than was achieved during those years.
   Sadly, there is a measure of "poetic justice" to BP turning the Gulf of Mexico and portions of the U.S. coastline into a huge oil-slick. BP has always made a portion of their profits at others expense; And we, through the criminal activities of our government have a long and sad history of helping them to do it!
  Hence the title of this post; Circle of Strife.
  What goes around, comes around. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
  For a more detailed accounting of this portion of history, I'm including a link to a timely essay on this subject. I hope you take a few minutes and read more about it, here is the LINK.
  In the meantime keep smilin', with a little luck we will find a reason to... someday.


  Edited by Eric

Explore Our Descent Into Empire

2010-07-07T20:34:00.002-04:00

Tom Engelhardt is a man that knows of what he speaks. I have been a subscriber to both TomDispatch, (http://www.tomdispatch.com/) and The American Empire Project (http://www.americanempireproject.com/) for a couple of years now. These are two blogs to which Tom is very closely connected. TomDispatch.com is his own, the other is a cooperative effort with some other bright folks.
Tom's new book, The American Way of War : How Bush's Wars Became Obama's appears to be another of his timely and very insightful efforts.
  I just read an excerpt from this new book, and I have to recommend this book and Tom Englehardt to anyone trying to make sense of (and hopefully find our way out of ) our descent into vicious empire. In this post I am including links to the book excerpt and a recent interview with Tom on Democracy Now!

- Book excerpt
- Interview

http://www.alternet.org is the news-site where the book review is posted and it is a great source for information not told by the corporate media. http://www.democracynow.org is great as well.
Check them out for a dose of reality.

Happy Independence Day

2010-07-04T17:53:00.003-04:00

Happy Independence Day! In honor of this wonderfully historic day, here is a link to the Declaration of Independence, and one to the United States Constitution.

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html

We'll also be adding these to the Other Links section to the right. Make sure you bookmark them!

New Links

2010-07-02T23:17:00.000-04:00

   We just finished adding several interesting links to this site. We hope that you take a moment and check out the Other Links list. Other Links is where we will be posting interesting morsels from all over the web. We highly recommend all of them and would be hard pressed to rank them.

   -Revenge of the Fighting Quaker is an absolutely fascinating bit of United States history that many people don't know. It tells the story of Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, and how he, almost single-handedly, saved the United States (and possibly even the world).
   -Why We Fight is a documentary by Eugene Jarecki about the United States military machine and how it operates. The film details the corruption of the 'defense' contracting industry, and how the Pentagon runs US foreign policy. Absolutely essential information in an easy-to-watch package.
   -Flow: For Love of Water, a documentary by Irena Salinas, focuses on the worldwide demand for fresh water, and how we may have serious problems meeting that demand in the very near future, in large part due to the misbehavior of multinational corporations. Another must-see!

Knowledge Is Power

2010-07-01T21:22:00.001-04:00

Knowledge is power. If the United States Government is to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, then we the people need power. We need knowledge. If we don't know what's going on, we can't put events into context. Without adequate context, we can't make good decisions; And we need to make a lot of very good decisions in the near future.
Empire kNOw More aims to bring as much knowledge as possible to as many people as possible. To do this properly, we need tons of feedback. That's where you come in. Tell us what you know!

Eric