Monday, August 29, 2011
Why My 9-Year-Old Neice Is Smarter Than Our Genius President
While the evidence suggests that President Obama is not terribly bright and has just benefited from succeeding a downright moron, and while voluminous evidence to which I am privileged suggests that my 9-year-old neice Hallie is extremely intelligent, consider just this one way in which Hallie would make a wiser president than Barack.
Infants live in the moment, and toddlers can't plan much beyond the next day or so, but as we grow we become able to consider longer periods of time. Obama seems able to manage consideration of the next funding cycle, for example. Hallie seems to do considerably better than that:
"August 28, 2011
"President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500"Dear President Obama,
"I am writing about the Keystone XL pipeline. You shouldn’t approve this. It will be a disaster for our environment. We have caused enough damage as it is.
"Instead of using fossil fuels, which cause global warming, we can use solar power and geothermal energy. It won’t all be easy. A lot of it will be very expensive. But it’s our choice, your choice even. It’s our only world, our only home, and we have to take care of it. There would be major changes in the environment if the pipeline is put in, and the earth as we know it might never be the same again. The USA already produces 30.3% of greenhouse gases. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something, and that’s why I’m writing this letter.
"Think about it. If you say yes, that this pipeline can be put into place, will it affect the people on earth seven generations from now? The chances are, yes. If you say yes, it will affect the whole planet and you will be remembered forever because of that. But if you say no, millions of people will benefit because of that, and everyone will be thankful.
"My grandparents cared enough to get arrested for standing on the sidewalk outside the White House, peacefully objecting to the Keystone XL project, and frankly, I’m quite glad they did.
"Martin Luther King used words. Mahatma Gandhi used words. And I am using words right now. Please think long and hard about this. I know your job must be really stressful, but this is important! I’m not the only one who cares. Please write back!
"Sincerely,
Hallie, age 9"
The evidence suggests that President Obama does not care in the least about people living several generations from now. Look at his work in Copenhagen to keep global warming going. Look at his military and energy policies, his education policies, his economic policies. There is nothing to suggest he cares.
Can he be brought to?
Can a combination of nonviolent resistance and verbal persuasion shake a President out of a mindset that blocks out the deepest wisdom of our culture articulated above by a nine-year-old? Can the same perhaps bring a majority of Congress Members to overrule the catastrophic course their executive is navigating?
Can a letter from a girl squeeze through a crack and find a human heart shriveled but beating inside the war machine? Can people who deeply believe they are right to serve an oligarchy, slaughter foreigners, imprison whistleblowers, and destroy the environment for the sake of very short-term interests, be brought to share in a longer-term vision?
Will a president ever use the ever-bullier pulpit he is given to challenge the campaign funders and the corporate media on behalf of the very viability of life on earth? Or do our elections now produce such servile "leaders" that persuading a president of anything requires persuading Wall Street and the Pentagon first?
Will Obama even read Hallie's letter?
Open proposal for US revolution: end parasitic and criminal economics. 3 of 4
By Carl Herman, National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history, who blogs as the Nonpartisan Examiner at Examiner.com. Carl was one of the leaders who launched the microcredit movement, and is a tireless activist for peace and justice.
Don't be confused by the title. Carl - like all of us at Washington's Blog - is against violent revolution, following instead the non-violent paths of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. As we have previously written:
I am NOT calling for the overthrow of the government. In fact, I am calling for the reinstatement of our government. I am calling for an end to lawlessness and lack of accountability and a return to the rule of law. Rather than trying to subvert the constitution, I am calling for its enforcement.
My friend and colleague for justice, Washington’s Blog’s author, invited me to “guest blog.” I’ll provide two. First: Gandhi’s conclusion of the essential importance of speaking Truth. Second: a 4-part series to document that current US wars are unlawful, US economic policy is massive criminal fraud, and that these “emperor has no clothes” facts are lied about by US corporate media in constant deception.
I appreciate Washington’s Blog’s author for the intellectual integrity and moral courage to document powerful facts; as I appreciate readers’ thoughts, words, and acts of virtue - Carl Herman
“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power… What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy… If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
– J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement, June 5, 2008
Revolution is from the Latin, revolutio, a “turn around” of political power.
The US public would revolt and end unlawful US wars and banksters’ rigged-casino fraud if they understood and embraced the central facts of these issues. This four-part series of articles provides the central facts, invites passionate public response, and proposes specific revolutionary public action.
Please share the Revolution to end unlawful US wars and return trillions of our dollars to constructive work. With millions of lives at stake (perhaps billions), there is nothing more important for public participation.
Part 1: Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic/criminal economics
Part 2: Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, all begun with lies
Part 3: Open proposal for US revolution: end parasitic and criminal economics
Part 4: Open proposal for US revolution: expose corporate media as propaganda
These four articles are academic in language and documentation. My citizen advocacy paper, Government by dicts, has additional resources.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Economics: I’m going to discuss trillions of dollars in a moment. As an economics teacher, I understand numbers this large are extremely difficult to imagine. If you are among the majority with this difficulty, I recommend that you follow the expert testimony that paints the picture, and know that success in this area of public education transformation that unleashes trillions of our dollars for human creative capacity in unimaginable power is sufficient to end the current economic crisis.
This is the longest section of my call for Revolution. If you tire in reading, please consider that at trillions of dollars of annual public benefits, you literally have nothing more valuable to do than understand the following facts that document the theft of our money.
Harvard’s Linda Bilmes co-authored a paper with Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz estimating the long-term costs of current US wars at now $3 to $5 trillion ($30-$50,000 per US household of $50,000/year income), with total debt increase since 2001 of over $10 trillion. Remember, as demonstrated by the evidence disclosed by our own government, all the reasons Americans were told to go to war were known to be lies as they were told and applicable law proves these wars Orwellian unlawful.
Just down the Charles River from Harvard, MIT’s Simon Johnson (and former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund) describes our economy being lead by gambling oligarchs who have captured government as in banana republics (his words), and might plunge the US into an economy worse than the Great Depression. From his article under the telling title, The Quiet Coup:
“Elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.”
He concludes fraud is the heart of Wall Street. Under the poignant title, Goldman Sachs: Too Big to Obey the Law: “The behavior and de facto immunity of the biggest banks is out of control.” He cites the financial crisis was engineered by the largest banks to consolidate power: in 1995 the leading six banks had assets of 17% of US GDP; today they have 63%.
His immediate best-selling book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street takeover and the next financial meltdown, was discussed with President Johnson’s Press Secretary and journalist with over 30 Emmy Awards, Bill Moyers, to explain the oligarchy, the loss of trillions of American taxpayer dollars to oligarchs’ manipulation as a matter of definitive fact, the oligarch’s looting of America is protected by their purchased political muscle, and without transformation “the next financial meltdown” is certain:
BILL MOYERS: Let me get to the blunt conclusion you reach in your book. You say that two years after the devastating financial crisis of '08 our country is still at the mercy of an oligarchy that is bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Correct?
SIMON JOHNSON: Absolutely correct, Bill. The big banks became stronger as a result of the bailout. That may seem extraordinary, but it's really true. They're turning that increased economic clout into more political power. And they're using that political power to go out and take the same sort of risks that got us into disaster in September 2008.
BILL MOYERS: And your definition of oligarchy is?
SIMON JOHNSON: Oligarchy is just- it's a very simple, straightforward idea from Aristotle. It's political power based on economic power. And it's the rise of the banks in economic terms, which we document at length, that it'd turn into political power. And they then feed that back into more deregulation, more opportunities to go out and take reckless risks and-- and capture huge amounts of money….The American democracy was not given to us on a platter. It is not ours for all time, irrespective of our efforts. Either people organize and they find political leadership to take this on, or we are going to be in big trouble, okay?... That's absolutely the heart of the problem. I would also say and tell you, and emphasize, these people will not come out and debate with us. The heads of these companies or their representatives, they will not come out. They're afraid. They don't have the substance. They don't have the arguments. We have the evidence. They have the lobbyists. And that's all they have.
BILL MOYERS: They've got the power, the muscle, the money.
SIMON JOHNSON: They have money.
BILL MOYERS: You just have the arguments. You just have the facts. On your side.
SIMON JOHNSON: Absolutely. That's exactly what it comes down to.
Most people don’t read professional economists’ writing. I do, and can tell you that leaders such as Simon Johnson are using unprecedented strong language to provide the facts. Again, in his choice of words: the US economy is under attack by a colluding and unlawful oligarchy. Without Revolution that forces political leadership to transform the US economy to serve the public rather than the oligarchy, as Johnson says above:
“The American democracy was not given to us on a platter. It is not ours for all time, irrespective of our efforts. Either people organize and they find political leadership to take this on, or we are going to be in big trouble, okay?”
Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren explains the economy in language just as fierce. She professionally observes that the US economy is run by “reckless gamblers” who exploit a system they know in advance will “privatizes gains and socializes losses.” She documents the increasing destruction of the US middle class as US financial “leaders” write their own laws “behind closed doors,” and choose regulators who will protect them and not the public in order to “fleece consumers.” As you may know, Ms. Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor at Harvard Law School and Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the so-called “bailout” program.
Ms. Warren admonishes: the US economy is in the “last chapter” with “all the chips on the table.” She says either the US public will demand their political and economic leaders end the fleecing because they “took the cops off the beat,” or the US middle class will devolve to live from paycheck to paycheck as Wall Street’s debt peons, “and the game really will be over.”
The good news is that solutions to the crisis are simple. But let’s first continue with crucial facts and testimony. Take a deep breath. This is the civic economics education leaders like you must be responsible for or else you’re damned for condoning US War Criminals and ongoing plunder of trillions of our families’ and children’s money.
Chris Hedges, Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times, best-selling author, and Pulitzer Prize recipient in 2002, writes that American taxpayers are on the road to permanent serfdom under a police state from oligarchs’ “rapacious looting” and their purchase of a politically-protected luxurious lifestyle. He calls our economic system “criminal” and “totalitarian capitalism” lording over the exploited slave-labor class the American public has become (Resist or Become Serfs and video, “Chris Hedges on poverty and the permanent lower class”). Mr. Hedges also writes and lectures that current US wars are criminal Wars of Aggression (here, among dozens of his works). From Wall Street will be back for more:
“These corporations don't make anything. They don't produce anything. They gamble and bet and speculate. And when they lose vast sums they raid the U.S. Treasury so they can go back and do it again. Never mind that $50 trillion in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including $7 trillion in the U.S. stock market and $6 trillion in the housing market. Never mind that the total amount of retirement and household wealth trashed was $7.5 trillion or that we saw $2 trillion in 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts evaporate. Never mind the $1.9 trillion in traditional defined-benefit plans and the $2.6 trillion in nonpension assets that went up in smoke. Never mind the job losses, the foreclosures and the 35 percent jump in personal and small-business bankruptcies. There are bundles of new money, taken again from us, to make deals and hand out outrageous bonuses. And when these trillions run out they will come back for more until our currency becomes junk.”
Mr. Hedges poignant assessment matches the acknowledged government data. According to the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, these financial oligarchs’ “trading” in non-wealth producing market derivatives increases the price of gasoline for all Americans somewhere from 33 to 60%. Market analysis in other commodities’ “trading” brings the total cost to American consumers of padded prices over $1 trillion every year. This is an incredible increase of prices to US households of ~$10,000 for every $50,000 of annual income!
“It's one of the most frustrating things. We essentially have had modern-day bank robbers -- except that they wore gray suits and not masks -- and there's been no accountability for it ...
Every day we see energy speculators, war profiteers, managed health-care providers, media propagandists, and/or financiers given some unfair advantage over the average consumers and taxpayers, and the cumulative effect of the American people watching selfishness prevail over the public interest has been an undermining of the public's trust in government.
There's no question the system is rigged against the little guy. The bigger interests have a lot more information. They jerry-rig the system so that they always win.”
This admission is crucial data. However, considering Elizabeth Warren and Simon Johnson’s expert testimony of a captured government who collude rather than end this parasitic cost to Americans, the Senate report should force government compliance under existing law to stop cartels, not merely report on how many trillions they’re costing the American public under the Senate’s “oversight.”
Nobel Prize-winning economist, former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, and Columbia economics professor, Joseph Stiglitz, agrees the US economy continues under oligarchic domination:
“What the Obama administration is doing is…ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.”
The economic fraud isn’t just protected by government non-regulation; the government is one of the principle embezzlers. The Pentagon admitted they “lost” $2.3 trillion dollars (over $20,000 per US household) and then didn’t follow-up with investigation. The American public heard about this news only once that anyone has been able to document from corporate media.
The solvable problems center around economic policy that creates protected parasites that collect unregulated and illegal gambling profits on the way up (the FBI reported 80% of the subprime mortgage fraud came from lenders), subsidized losses through “bailouts” on the way down, and then celebrate with unprecedented bonuses to themselves while publicly claiming to be doing “God’s work.” Future bailouts get guaranteed in advance without questions by government, while the symbolic program to help struggling homeowners is hyped in corporate media but not implemented.
The most egregious documentation of government fraud is in the data of collective government Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) that reveal trillions of our dollars invested while lying in omission that they have no money for budgets. This takes some time to understand; the data is explained and documented here. For an example to understand what this means, the University of California system (UC) had a budget deficit that resulted in thousands of students denied enrollment, thousands of staff laid-off, a 32% tuition raise, and a 10% employee pay-cut with furloughs to reduce education days. The deficit could have been fully-funded with less than one-fifth of one percent of California's documented investments. And no, the amount required for retiree benefits is only one-half of one percent of the total; that's the specious and usual "official" lie. The above link will walk you through those trillions, if this is of interest.
The cartels taking billions of our dollars are in many industries. Dr. Marcia Angell, former Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School documents:
“The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion).”
Importantly, “profit” is distinct from “research” in understanding these figures. This is prima facie evidence of unlawful collusion among a cartel, yet government doesn’t investigate. Dr. Angell concludes that US government will never provide universal health care because both political parties’ “leadership” obeys health insurance companies’ lobbyists rather than legislate for the public good. The lack of health care kills about 45,000 Americans every year according to the recent study championed by Harvard’s Medical School. Cost-benefit analyses range between $100 to $300 billion annual cost increase to the US by keeping health care companies between doctors and patients.
Is academic economics the proper place to work for solutions rather than a Revolution? Let’s look.
In light of the evidence so far of oligarchic control in the US economy, it’s troubling that professional economics journals’editorial boards have half the members receiving money from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is the pinnacle bank of the current banking system; with a majority of shares owned by the same banks that Simon Johnson reports have consolidated their assets to 63% of US GDP. This circumstantial evidence suggests that professional consideration of ideas contrary to existing monetary policy may be censored. We’ll examine omission of competing ideas you’ll conclude should be under political and public consideration shortly.
Jeffrey Sachs, best-selling author and one of the world’s best-known economists, agrees that competing ideas are missing in government and corporate media of our most important economic areas. He sharply writes:
“Cynics believe that the Geithner-Summers Plan is exactly what it seems: a naked grab of taxpayer money for Wall Street interests. Geithner and Summers argue that it's the least bad approach to a messy situation, in which we need to restore banking functions but don't have any perfect ways to do that. If they are serious about their justification, let them come forward to confront their critics and to explain to the American people why the other proposals are not being pursued.
Let them explain the hidden and not-so-hidden risks to the American taxpayer of the plan that they have put forward. Let them explain why they are so intent on saving the banks' bondholders, even the long-term unsecured creditors who clearly knew they were taking market risks in buying Citibank bonds. Let them work with their critics to fashion a less risky and less costly plan. So far Geithner and Summers tell us that their plan is the only option, but without a word of further explanation as to why.”
Leading academic economists testify that something is indeed missing from their understanding of crucial national economic understanding. Several professors from Harvard’s Economics Department admitted to the Boston Globe that they both didn’t see the economic collapse coming and don’t have solutions. They acknowledged limitations in their current theories and thinking:
"Everyone that I know in economics, and particularly in the worlds of academic finance and academic macroeconomics, is going back to the drawing board," said David Laibson, a Harvard economist. "There are very, very, very few economists who can be proud."
"You can't just say, 'I have a model for tremors that works great - I just can't explain earthquakes,"' said Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard who has studied financial crises.
"We have a very restrictive set of language and tools, and we tend to work on the problems that are easily addressed with those tools," said Jeremy Stein, a financial economist at Harvard. "Sometimes that means we focus on silly questions and ignore greater ones."
Let’s examine some evidence of how Revolution for these trillion dollar issues can breakthrough what Harvard’s Professor Stein calls “silly questions” to demand professional cost-benefit analyses of alternative models of economic management clearly discussed by many of America’s brightest historical minds.
The Great Depression in the US (1929-1941) motivated professional economists to comprehensively and creatively address its causes. Upon consideration of previous US economic depressions in 1837, 1873, and 1893, prominent economists led by Henry Simons at the University of Chicago proposed monetary reform as the nation’s most effective and practical policy response, known as the Chicago Plan (and here). This proposal was endorsed by Simons’ colleague, Paul Douglas, Frank Graham and Charles Whittlesley of Princeton, Irving Fisher of Yale, Earl Hamilton of Duke, Willford King of NYU, and sent to a thousand academic economists for their input. Three hundred twenty responded to the mailed proposal and survey (an impressively high number for a cold-call proposal and survey) from 157 universities, with 73% in full agreement with the proposal, 12.5% in approval with various considerations in its implementation, and only 14% in disagreement.
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman would become the proposal’s best-known champion.
This proposal was the shift from banking industry creation of “money as debt” through loans (technically “credit” and not money because it exists only and always as increasing and unpayable debt in the macro economy), to the government creating debt-free money for the direct payment of public goods and services. This policy has several extraordinary benefits (details in the links):
- The national debt is paid rather than always increased.
- It’s the only policy that accomplishes the goal of full employment as the government becomes the employer of last resort.
- This policy ends the economic crisis almost instantly; and once the program is established will guarantee no further unemployment crises.
- If the GDP value of government employment exceeds its costs (consider infrastructure that returns far more than costs), the US would have the double benefit of decreasing prices as well as full employment.
- For an example of interest, considering the US Department of Education reports that between 100,000 to 300,000 US public education positions are in danger of termination for the 2010-2011 school year, this policy creates money directly to rehire unemployed teachers and fill all school needs. Our current economic model will suffer the layoffs and decrease in education quality.
- State-of-the-art infrastructure.
- Elimination of almost all social costs of poverty.
- If banking were nationalized rather than being “bailed out” in the present, interest rates could be non-profit (think 1 or 2% mortgages that would reduce the cost of homeownership by 50%).
Despite 86% of academic economists in favor of this proposal, its 1934 policy proposal in Congress was defeated. Paul Douglas, leading economist and Senator from Illinois from 1949 to 1967 wrote:
“This proposal will of course be opposed by the bankers from whom it takes the lucrative privilege of creating purchasing power. It would however insure the safety of deposits, give large revenues to the government, provide complete social control over monetary matters and prevent abnormal fluctuations in the capital market. At the same time it would permit the allocation of productive resources…to remain primarily in private hands. All in all it seems the most promising program for the reform of our monetary and credit system…”
So: why isn’t this proposal considered by Harvard’s economists, Congress, and known to you today?
Consider the possible answer of oligarchic control of American “leadership” for generations as we consider the next piece of revealing evidence: Thomas Edison and Henry Ford understood the mechanics of money, and went on a media tour together to explain this transformative education.
Thomas Edison’s 1921 media tour with Henry Ford included traveling to the site of a hydroelectric dam to explain to the public through the media the economic breakthrough to build the dam apart from the parasitic and captured finance we still have today that Simon Johnson and Elizabeth Warren so strongly describe. Edison explained fully to the New York Times reporter how public works can and should be funded by government directly creating and paying for the project. This is less than half the cost of the continuing method of government borrowing money. Edison concluded the interview by explaining that ideas for the public good that challenged corporate oligarchs have always been defeated by the oligarch’s purchased propaganda campaigns:
“Certainly there is a complete set of misleading slogans kept on hand for just such outbreaks of common sense among the people. The people are so ignorant of what they think are the intricacies of the money system that they are easily impressed by big words. There would be new shrieks of ‘fiat money,’ and ‘paper money’ and ‘green-backism,’ and all the rest of it – the same old cries with which the people have been shouted down from the beginning.
But maybe we have passed beyond the time when the thoughtful 2 per cent – you know, I gather from my questionnaire that only 2 per cent of the people think,” and Mr. Edison smiled broadly. “Maybe they can’t shout down American thinkers any longer. The only dynamite that works in this country is the dynamite of a sound idea. I think we are getting a sound idea on the money question. The people have an instinct which tells them that something is wrong, and that the wrong somehow centers in money. They have an instinct, also, which tells them when a proposal is made in their interests or against them.”
In conclusion of this section of literal trillion dollar importance, there is a human face to our current economic condition calling for Revolution.
We live in a present political/economic “leadership” environment that allows a million children to die from preventable poverty every month. These million human beings die every month, year after year, despite the investment to save their lives is less than 1% of our income (the annual investment is ~$100 billion a year for about a ten-year project to end poverty forever). In addition, every nation that has ended poverty has also reduced their population growth rates to sustainable levels. This human cost is remarkably under-reported compared with the death toll of 3,000 innocent lives on the one day of 9/11 (allegedly the reason for US wars – to stop such innocent loss of future lives).
Preventable poverty kills 30,000 every day, ten times the deaths on 9/11, for a total of over 100 million innocent human beings killed since 9/11. And please remember the 45,000 dead Americans every year and our combined annual loss of $100 billion to $300 billion because US political “leadership” chooses cartel profits over physician-managed health care.
According to Jeffrey Sachs, when polled, the American public think we give 25% of our government budget to help the poorest of the poor, are willing to give 10%, and would be outraged to understand the actual figure we give is less than one-sixth of one percent of our income. American media and political leadership allow this disinformation to continue at the cost of 30,000 lives every day while Congress passed HR 4173 to guarantee future so-called bailouts for banks at $4 trillion dollars without hearings.
In review, this section has presented data and expert testimony that the US “modern” economy is still a Robber Baron-era oligarchy. Logically, only one of the following two conclusions seems to be possible:
1. Either people like Jeffrey Sachs, Thomas Edison, 86% of academic economists in the 1930s, and others of our brightest historical American minds beginning with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were too stupid to understand that corporate bankers creating a national debt supply rather than a money supply is best for Americans, and best without consideration or ethical refutation of their competing and wrong ideas. Things like the banking bailout should be done without Congressional hearings and passed immediately when banking insiders say so because they’re experts. And just because what you’re reading proved government and corporate media Orwellian war lies, those two groups wouldn’t collude with corporate bank and finance cartels to parasitize millions, billions and trillions of dollars because they respect law and honesty with money. Oh, and Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Paul Grayson and all the third parties are extremists with impractical ideas of monetary reform that don’t deserve explanation. Even though Pew Research reports 92% of Americans oppose our current economic management, we don’t need civic education on alternative models. Or…
2. The US “modern” economy really is an oligarchy that suppresses competing ideas and parasitically costs Americans trillions of dollars every year. Without Revolution, this parasitic cost will continue with current trends indicating the costs will increase.
“When our Federal Government, that has the exclusive power to create money, creates that money and then goes into the open market and borrows it and pays interest for the use of its own money, it occurs to me that that is going too far. I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money... The Constitution of the United States does not give the banks the power to create money. The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to create money, but now, under our system, we will sell bonds to commercial banks and obtain credit from those banks. I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with this Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. I make that statement after years of study.”
- Wright Patman, Representative in the U.S. Congress from 1929 to his death on March 7, 1976, and Chair of the House Committee on Banking and Currency for 40 years. For 20 of those years, he introduced legislation to repeal the Federal Reserve Banking Act of 1913. This quote is from excerpts of September 29, 1941, as reported in the Congressional Record of the House of Representatives (pages 7582-7583).
Revolution unleashes trillions of our dollars. Revolution exposes and ends what history will frame as the end of “Robber Baron” corporate/political cartels. Revolution enters America into a golden age unimaginable in the present.
And fortunately, the structural solutions are obvious, simple, and have been understood and advocated by leading American minds for literally centuries. Even if the economic solutions proposed beginning with Benjamin Franklin are too complex for you to invest your time to understand, the case for Revolution should be obvious by the suppression of these competing ideas that either are worthy of consideration or should have been professionally refuted (“refutation” is distinct from denial or propaganda as Thomas Edison explained).
If you want more economic data that piles-on additional proof of an oligarchy collusion between corporate cartels and owned regulators looting our economy, I recommend the brilliant comprehensive explanation and documentation of David DeGraw in his no-holds-barred paper, "Time for law-abiding American citizens to stop paying taxes, start a new government?"
And if you're ready to take the rational next step to embrace the possibility of economics that fully utilizes technology, watch Zeitgeist Addendum and/or Zeitgeist: Moving Forward. This planetary breakthrough potential is explained at The Venus Project.
Part 4: Open proposal for US revolution: expose corporate media as propaganda
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Playing the “Get into Saudi Arabia free card”
This guest blog is from Kevin Ryan, co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies. Kevin's personal blog can be found at Dig Within.Recent developments among supporters of the US government’s version of events indicate that they plan to begin blaming Saudi Arabia for the attacks of September 11, 2001. There is, in fact, much evidence suggesting complicity by some elements within the Saudi government. But that fact only further implicates western powers due to the close relationship between the Saudi royal family, which runs the Saudi government, and deep state controlling interests that have partnered with and manipulated the Saudi royal family for many decades. Blaming Saudi Arabia would, however, make a lot of sense if seizing resources, including the world’s greatest oil reserves, was what the war on terror has always been about.
Two weeks ago I spoke to NPR producer, Alex Kingsbury, who asked if I felt the release of the 28-pages of redacted material from the Joint Congressional Inquiry might help to solve the mysteries still surrounding 9/11. Those redacted pages, and much of the 9/11 Commission report that followed, have always seemed to be a kind of "Get into Saudi Arabia free" card for the powers that be. Kingsbury was interested in knowing whether the redacted pages, which are thought to contain significant references to Saudi Arabia, were of interest to me personally. Of course they would be, I said, but we should remember that the government of Saudi Arabia is far from representative of its people.
Similarly, a recent interview with “Counterterrorism Czar,” Richard Clarke, has been the subject of considerable discussion. Ostensibly, Clark’e objective with this interview was to make the controversial suggestion that two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were targets for recruitment by the CIA. What many have failed to emphasize, however, is that Clarke was simultaneously suggesting that the two alleged hijackers were actually working for the government of Saudi Arabia at the time of the attacks.
About a month ago, military intelligence officer and 9/11 staffer, Miles Kara, wrote to me asking if I was aware of the publication of a book called The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. Kara declared that this new book was – “the definitive work, to date, on 9/11.” Having since had a chance to borrow a copy of this book from the library, I can say that it is a malevolent piece of propaganda that attempts to persuade the ill-informed of three things.
The first thing that the Summers and Swann book attempts to do is malign the 9/11 truth movement. For example, the authors suggest that the movement is well represented by people like video-fakery and Star Wars beam advocate, James Fetzer, and it has been well answered by government employees and simple-minded contrarians like Ryan Mackey. Summers and Swann also state that well-sourced samples of World Trade Center dust, collected using completely appropriate chain of custody forms, are not good sources of information yet long-time propagandist, Gerald Posner, and Weekly Standard contributor, Thomas Joscelyn (who recently tried to link Iran to 9/11), are excellent sources.
The second goal of the book is to propose that the partial release of documents by the 9/11 Commission in the last few years has answered all the unanswered questions about the attacks. It’s not clear if the authors had a chance to look at many of those documents though. For example, one of them says that the training school for Hani Hanjour, whom the 9/11 Commission called “the operations most experienced pilot,” questioned Hanjour’s pilot certificate because he had “no fundamental skills / poor English” and they “wondered if the cert was false.”[1] This is but one of many examples in which these newly released documents directly contradict the 9/11 Commission report, instead of supporting it as Summers and Swann claim.
Most importantly, this new book attempts to blaze a new trail for Saudi complicity in the attacks of 9/11. Unfortunately, although the book details a number of reasons why the Saudi government should be investigated for supporting the alleged perpetrators of 9/11, it paradoxically avoids many of the important Saudi links to 9/11. The authors appear to do this in an effort to accuse the Saudis while simultaneously covering-up evidence that western corporations and western government leaders were really behind many of the Saudi links.
Here are a few of the surprising connections between Saudi Arabia and westerners who were in one way or another related to the 9/11 attacks.
· Bernard Kerik, the New York City police commissioner and “9/11 hero,” spent three years working in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s for a company that occupied one of the WTC towers at the time of the attacks. He then spent another three years in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s as “the chief investigator for the royal family.” It was Kerik who first told the public that explosives were not used at the WTC, and it was his police department that was said to have discovered the magic passport which fell from one of the towers to conveniently provide evidence identifying one of the alleged hijackers.
· One of two primary companies to manage the clean-up of Ground Zero, Bovis Lend Lease, had previously built the Riyadh Olympic stadium in Saudi Arabia.
· The other primary clean-up company at Ground Zero, AMEC, had just completed a $258 million refurbishment of Wedge 1 of the Pentagon, which is exactly where Flight 77 impacted that building. AMEC is a major international player in the oil and gas industry, as well as in other natural resource industries. AMEC had a significant presence in Saudi Arabia dating back to the late 1970s, providing support to the national oil company Saudi Aramco.
· The company that designed the security systems for the WTC complex, Kroll Associates, had strong connections to Saudi Arabia. For example, Kroll board member Raymond Mabus was the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the mid 1990s.
· All four of the primary contractors that were involved in rebuilding the security systems for the WTC had done significant business with the Saudis. Electronic Systems Associates' parent, S&H, designed King Saud University, and E.J. Electric worked for Saudi Arabian Airlines. Ensec was owned by a former arms dealer to the Saudis. Stratesec, which had contracts not only for the WTC but also for Dulles airport, where Flight 77 took off, and United Airlines which owned two of the three other planes, worked under "a joint venture agreement with Ahmad N. AlBinali & Sons Co., a large Saudi Arabian engineering and construction company, to develop and conduct business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
· The Bush and Bin Laden-financed Carlyle Group owned, through BDM International, the Vinnell Corporation, a mercenary operation that had extensive contracts in the Middle East since 1975 and trained the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Several of Stratesec’s key employees, including COO Barry McDaniel, came from BDM. In 1995, BDM’s Vinnell was one of the first targets of al Qaeda, in Saudi Arabia.
· In the 1990s, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), run by Dick Cheney protégé, Duane Andrews, trained the Saudi Navy and brought Saudi military personnel to company headquarters in San Diego for further study. SAIC played a large part in the NIST WTC investigation after 9/11, but was also involved in the investigation of the 1993 WTC bombing, boasting that -- "After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, our blast analyses produced tangible results that helped identify those responsible." SAIC was paid huge sums to rebuild the NSA and FBI systems that supposedly failed before 9/11.
· While SAIC was training the Saudi Navy, the Carlyle/BDM subsidiary Vinnell Corp was training the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Simultaneously, Booz Allen Hamilton was managing the Saudi Marine Corps and running the Saudi Armed Forces Staff College.
· Former FBI director Louis Freeh, whose agency investigated al Qaeda-attributed terrorism from 1993 to 2001, is now the personal attorney for Saudi ambassador "Bandar Bush."
· Salomon Smith Barney, the company that occupied all but 10 floors of WTC building 7, was taken over by Citigroup in 1998. Citigroup had recently been saved from bankruptcy by Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia, in a deal brokered by The Carlyle Group. It is believed that the money, and more, came from the terrorist financing network, BCCI, as it was dissolving. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney joined the advisory board at Solomon Smith Barney at that time and were on the board until they resigned to join the Bush Administration in January, 2001.
· The Saudi government was sued by thousands of 9/11 victim's family members due to the suspicion that Saudi Arabia helped to finance al Qaeda. The Saudis hired the law firm of Bush Administration insider, James Baker, to defend them in that lawsuit.
Summers and Swann seem to have missed these interesting connections between US government officials and corporations, and Saudi Arabia. That seems odd for a book that pretends to be the definitive work to date. Despite this inconsistency, it is doubtful that Richard Clarke, 9/11 Commission staffer Miles Kara, NPR’s Alex Kingsbury, or any other supporter of the government’s reports, will say anything about it.
[1] See FOIA response “5 AWA 356” received by the 9/11 Working Group of Bloomington http://www.911workinggroup.org/p/foia-research.html page 71 of 447
Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, all from known lies. 2 of 4
By Carl Herman, National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history, who blogs as the Nonpartisan Examiner at Examiner.com. Carl was one of the leaders who launched the microcredit movement, and is a tireless activist for peace and justice.
Don't be confused by the title. Carl - like all of us at Washington's Blog - is against violent revolution, following instead the non-violent paths of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. As we have previously written:
I am NOT calling for the overthrow of the government. In fact, I am calling for the reinstatement of our government. I am calling for an end to lawlessness and lack of accountability and a return to the rule of law. Rather than trying to subvert the constitution, I am calling for its enforcement.
My friend and colleague for justice, Washington’s Blog’s author, invited me to “guest blog.” I’ll provide two. First: Gandhi’s conclusion of the essential importance of speaking Truth. Second: a 4-part series to document that current US wars are unlawful, US economic policy is massive criminal fraud, and that these “emperor has no clothes” facts are lied about by US corporate media in constant deception.
I appreciate Washington’s Blog’s author for the intellectual integrity and moral courage to document powerful facts; as I appreciate readers’ thoughts, words, and acts of virtue - Carl Herman
“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.” - Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address, 1838.
Revolution is from the Latin, revolutio, a “turn around” of political power.
The US public would revolt and end unlawful US wars and banksters’ rigged-casino fraud if they understood and embraced the central facts of these issues. This four-part series of articles provides the central facts, invites passionate public response, and proposes specific revolutionary public action.
Please share the Revolution to end unlawful US wars and return trillions of our dollars to constructive work. With millions of lives at stake (perhaps billions), there is nothing more important for public participation.
Part 1: Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic/criminal economics
Part 2: Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, all begun with lies
Part 3: Open proposal for US revolution: end parasitic and criminal economics
Part 4: Open proposal for US revolution: expose corporate media as propaganda
These four articles are academic in language and documentation. My citizen advocacy paper, Government by dicts, has additional resources.
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US War Crimes: US political leadership is engaged in “emperor has no clothes” unlawful wars that have escalated into Pakistan, Yemen, and with rhetoric to attack Iran that darkly includes use of nuclear weapons in official first-strike policy. The US has abandoned its exercise of power under the US Constitution. Millions of Americans recognize this condition, but as yet a critical mass of Americans either do not recognize the facts or cannot articulate what they perceive into effective civic action. The educational stakes are whether the US will exist as a Constitutional Republic under the law, or as an unlawful empire.
The wars are not close to lawful, and political rhetoric is often in Orwellian opposition to the facts. One of the first academic leaders to explain the obvious is Francis Boyle, Harvard-educated (Ph.D in political science and J.D.) international law professor. His outrage is expressed in the title of his article, Is Bush’s War Illegal? Let us Count the Ways:
“The precedent again goes back to the Nuremberg Judgment of 1946 when the lawyers for the Nazi defendants argued that we, the Nazi government had a right to go to war in self-defense as we saw it, and no one could tell us any differently. Of course that preposterous argument was rejected by Nuremberg. It is very distressing to see some of the highest level of officials of our country making legal arguments that were rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal.”
Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton:
“An objective observer would reach the conclusion that this Iraq war is a War of Aggression, and as such, that it amounts to a Crime against Peace of the sort for which surviving German leaders were indicted, prosecuted and punished at the Nuremberg trials conducted shortly after the Second World War.”
Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan responding to the direct question whether the Iraq War is illegal:
“I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter… from the charter point of view, it was illegal."
In the January 2010 UK Chilcot Inquiry, testimony revealed that all 27 UK Foreign Affairs lawyers were in agreement that the US/UK war was an unlawful War of Aggression. Their unanimous professional legal assessment before the war began was rejected without public disclosure of their work and public debate.
This expert testimony that’s taken a few minutes to read has opened a door for you. The next step is to allow me to walk you through the laws that are being violated: the crystal-clear letter and spirit of the US-created UN Charter is taught and understood in high school history and government classes, linked here in my article, US war laws explained. Reading that article results in you having the objective facts that these wars aren’t close to legal, and only continue from public ignorance and belief in government/media propaganda. By analogy, anyone observing a baseball game, even if it was their first, when briefed on the strike zone could confidently assert that a pitch thrown ten feet over the batter’s head is definitively a ball. Importantly, this person could also confidently conclude that anyone in an official capacity who called such a pitch a strike would be intentionally lying.
Just as in baseball, the laws of war are meant to be understood clearly by all who care to be educated. The irony of the title in this academic area, political “science,” that has so little regard to the objective facts, calls for a breakthrough in American civic education to force political accountability for the life-and-death facts of war and trillions of dollars of cost. I’m going to introduce more testimony to paint the picture of our US civic education condition, but before I do I must again ask you to follow this link so the laws of war are clear to you. Only by understanding the law can you definitively see the Orwellian condition of unlawful US wars that these experts claim.
Daniel Ellsberg was the top whistle-blower of unlawful US acts in the Vietnam War, including the government-created lies to initiate, continue, and expand the war into neighboring countries. He writes and lectures that current US wars are also all founded upon obvious lies, unlawful, and in direct violation of the US Constitution.
In addition to the illegality of US wars that the evidence so far definitively proves upon examination, we know from the disclosed evidence of our own government that all claims for current US wars were known to be lies as they were told to the American public and not "mistaken intelligence." Read this to verify.
Let’s support this perspective with history:
President Kennedy warned of the need of public awareness that political leaders will lie on the world stage:
“No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion.”
President George Washington’s Farewell Address, the culmination of his 45 years of political experience, warned of the primary threat to America as “the impostures of pretended patriotism” from people within our own government who would destroy Constitutional limits in order to obtain tyrannical power:
“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.”
Young Abraham Lincoln wrote eloquently to defend the US Constitution from unlawful tyrants within our own government. In Congress, he spoke powerfully and truthfully that the President’s claims for armed attack and invasion of a foreign country were lies. Although war-mongers slurred Lincoln’s name at the time and he lost re-election, history proved his powerful and unpopular words correct in asserting the President of the US was a war-mongering liar:
“I carefully examined the President’s messages, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this examination was to make the impression, that taking for true, all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter, that the truth would not permit him… Now I propose to try to show, that the whole of this, — issue and evidence — is, from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.”
Lincoln also wrote that “pre-emptive” wars, such as the US engages in now in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and threatens for Iran, were lies and “war at pleasure.” Indeed, many of the Founding Fathers’ strongest admonitions were to guard against usurpation of power from within our own government.
General Smedley Butler (and here) was the most honored man in Marine Corps history upon his retirement after 34 years of service around the world, and privy to top secret war planning conversations. He wrote and publicly spoke that the purpose of US wars is never for democracy or national defense, but for political and economic control for millions and billions in profits for America’s leading “bankers, industrialists, and speculators.” General Butler asserted that all US wars is a “racket:” a deception whereby blood money from American taxpayers to “insiders” is always disguised as noble and necessary ventures. Americans are propagandized into paying again and again, and succeeding generations of loyal and gullible men unwittingly serve as the muscle for oligarchic profits. His recommendation to end war was to end its profit motive:
“Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers – yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
…Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.”
It’s important to distinguish General Butler’s expert testimony concerning a subjective analysis of motive from the objective fact of current unlawful US wars proved by the crystal-clear letter of the laws. The strength of my proposal for Revolution to end unlawful wars is based upon the independently verifiable evidence that is as “emperor has no clothes” obvious as a pitch ten feet over the batter’s head is nowhere close to a strike, and as obvious as Jim Crow laws being in violation of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
You’ve read the laws of war to verify this by now, yes?
My point in briefly reviewing testimony of Presidents Kennedy, Washington, Lincoln and General Butler is to communicate that the Revolution to end unlawful wars is not only founded in current law, but among the most important concerns throughout US history to safeguard the nation from propaganda-facilitated unconstitutional acts for oligarchic power and profit.
In irony of our history and law, there is no end in sight to current US propagandized unlawful wars. Fear-mongers’ use of “national security” rhetoric to attack and invade resource-rich and weaker nations continues. For example, in April 2010, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell officially stated attacking Iran is “always an option,” in Orwellian repudiation to the UN Charter and his Oath of Office to defend the US Constitution that recognizes the UN Charter as having equal force as Constitutional law. As Professor Frankfurt properly assesses: this is bullshi*. We cannot be proud of American government without revolutionizing this condition of official lies that the US can attack, destroy, and kill with our dollars under our American flag upon the dictate (dictatorship) of the leader rather than under the rule of law.
Upon examination, the war-mongering to attack Iran is composed of Orwellian and “emperor has no clothes” obvious lies. Let’s quickly prove one of many: Presidents Bush and Obama, many US Senators and members of Congress, and corporate media say that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad threatens to destroy Israel, to “wipe them off the map.” This is repeated endlessly as a lie of commission believed by most Americans.
However, it is an Orwellian lie verifiable with 5-minutes of reading the October 2005 speech that originated the claim. The clear content and context of the speech is the support of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli government’s violations of their civil and political rights, and the rule of law. Mr. Ahmadinejad uses an historical phrase from an Iranian exiled by Shah Pahlavi to encourage Iranians to persevere against the US-imposed Shah. The one paragraph in question in the speech continues to say that people thought the Shah’s government would never fall, but it did. People thought the USSR’s government would never fall, but it did, as did people think about Saddam’s government. The government of Israel will also fall if they continue their unjust policies toward Palestine.
There is no physical threat to Israel in any rational reading. Zip. Zero. Again, take the five minutes to confirm the American public is under attack from “official” propaganda for their civic education on a life-and-death issue that includes official policy to use nuclear weapons. The NY Times provides the translation, despite their lie of omission of definitive refutation of war rhetoric and call for impeachment of the political War Criminals.
The origin of the “reporting” was propaganda from an apparent faction vying for power within Iran and similar to what preceded the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Iran’s democracy from 1953 to 1979 in the now disclosed CIA Operation Ajax. If you have Persian friends, talk with them. I have a Persian friend who is a manager at NASA; incredulous and outraged the US government can tell such an enormous and obvious lie to threaten the results of Iraq on friends and family in Iran, especially with the known history of the US previous overthrow of Iran’s government under government and corporate media propaganda.
Once you confirm this specific example of an official civic lie for war, it also becomes clear that such a transparent lie is being protected by corporate media propaganda. I will address further evidence of corporate media collusion after the economics section. If you would like to understand how US “official” claims of Iran’s “nuclear program” are similar lies of commission and omission with zero evidence of any unlawful act by Iran or any evidence for nuclear material used for any purpose other than lawful energy and medical use, read this.
You can help catalyze this transformation; just as the Civil Rights Movement and Gandhi’s work for independence for India were functions of broad-scale public education. Civil Rights, freedom, and peace all require civic revolutions to accomplish, and are our most-treasured human accomplishments.
The “emperor has no clothes” American Revolution I’m proposing is for what is already legislated with war laws; a victory of WW 2. Indeed, all members of the military and government employees have already taken an Oath to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Revolution is the obvious and responsible American civic response to unlawful US wars from Republican and Democratic “deception and evasion,” with “the impostures of pretended patriotism,” and from “beginning to end, the sheerest deception.”
We the People can only declare ourselves “lawful” if we honor the war laws our own nation initiated. We the People promised a world that secures future generations from the scourge of war, and have the lawful basis under treaty status of the UN Charter for Revolution from the criminal cabal within political “leadership” and corporate media.
American adults sense many of these facts even if many of us cannot accurately articulate them; only one in five Americans report trust and satisfaction with their government. Americans are ready to act. This lawful call for Revolution can harness America’s passion for justice under the law, and constructively build a brighter future.
A dangerous possible consequence of refusing lawful Revolution is destructive public anger and civic violence. And given the state of the US economy, that we will discuss next, public anger could explode if not channeled into constructive Revolution.
Part 3: Open proposal for US revolution: end parasitic and criminal economics
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