Troop supporter: I support the troops!
Interlocutor: Okay, let's see how you support the troops.
Troop supporter: You just did.
Interlocutor: I just did what?
Troop supporter: You just saw me support the troops.
Interlocutor: No I didn't. I heard you say you support the troopers.
Trooper supporter: That's right.
Interlocutor: Okay, then. Let's see how you support the troops.
Troop supporter: You just did!
Interlocutor: No I didn't. All I saw was you saying you support the troops. I want to see you actually support the troops.
Troop supporter: That's how I support the troops.
Interlocutor: To support means to assist. How does your empty declaration of support assist the troops?
Troop supporter: Why don't you support the troops? Don't you love your country?

"In our society, police officers are expected to endure significant burdens by citizens' exercise of their First Amendment rights ... the right of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state." Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011).

When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.

for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Ecuador Cuts Wages of Top Officials to Fund Maternity Doctors

Published 21 February 2015

The country’s President said will slash high level public servant wages — including his own — to fund 2,000 medical specialists.
The Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa announced Saturday that he will make a reduction on high-ranked public servants salaries — including his own — in order to fund more than two thousand physicians as part of an intensive health campaign aimed at reducing maternal mortality.

“Everything is planned, the problem is the money, this corresponds to current expenditure and things have to be done gradually,” President Correa said Saturday, adding that the country needs more specialists, especially gynecologists, anesthesiologists and nurses.

According to Correa, the 10-15 percent reduction will represent about US$ 21 millions, which will go to the country's Health Ministry. Those impacted by the cut will include the president, vice president, ministers, members of the Council for Citizen Participation as well as public servants who earn more than US$6,000 per month.

The left-wing leader said that this is only a first phase of his plan, since the country requires an estimated 2,187 health professionals to significantly reduce maternal mortality, which will requires an estimated US$41 million.

During the past decade, Ecuador has seen dramatic improvements to the quality of life of its citizens as well as to the economy of the country under Correa's “Citizen’s Revolution.”

According to official figures, between 2007 and 2014, more than 1.5 million people had been lifted out of poverty in the South American country.

How Many Muslim Countries Has the U.S. Bombed Or Occupied Since 1980?

By Glenn Greenwald

November 07, 2014 "ICH" - "The Intercept"- Barack Obama, in his post-election press conference yesterday, announced that he would seek an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from the new Congress, one that would authorize Obama’s bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria—the one he began three months ago. If one were being generous, one could say that seeking congressional authorization for a war that commenced months ago is at least better than fighting a war even after Congress explicitly rejected its authorization, as Obama lawlessly did in the now-collapsed country of Libya.
When Obama began bombing targets inside Syria in September, I noted that it was the seventh predominantly Muslim country that had been bombed by the U.S. during his presidency (that did not count Obama’s bombing of the Muslim minority in the Philippines). I also previously noted that this new bombing campaign meant that Obama had become the fourth consecutive U.S. President to order bombs dropped on Iraq. Standing alone, those are both amazingly revealing facts. American violence is so ongoing and continuous that we barely notice it any more. Just this week, a U.S. drone launched a missile that killed 10 people in Yemen, and the dead were promptly labeled “suspected militants” (which actually just means they are “military-age males”); those killings received almost no discussion.

To get a full scope of American violence in the world, it is worth asking a broader question: how many countries in the Islamic world has the U.S. bombed or occupied since 1980? That answer was provided in a recent Washington Post op-ed by the military historian and former U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich:

As America’s efforts to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State militants extent into Syria, Iraq War III has seamlessly morphed into Greater Middle East Battlefield XIV. That is, Syria has become at least the 14th country in the Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.

Let’s tick them off: Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. Whew.

Bacevich’s count excludes the bombing and occupation of still other predominantly Muslim countries by key U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, carried out with crucial American support. It excludes coups against democratically elected governments, torture, and imprisonment of people with no charges. It also, of course, excludes all the other bombing and invading and occupying that the U.S. has carried out during this time period in other parts of the world, including in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as various proxy wars in Africa.

There is an awful lot to be said about the factions in the west which devote huge amounts of their time and attention to preaching against the supreme primitiveness and violence of Muslims. There are no gay bars in Gaza, the obsessively anti-Islam polemicists proclaim—as though that (rather than levels of violence and aggression unleashed against the world) is the most important metric for judging a society. Reflecting their single-minded obsession with demonizing Muslims (at exactly the same time, coincidentally, their governments wage a never-ending war on Muslim countries and their societies marginalize Muslims), they notably neglect to note thriving gay communities in places like Beirut and Istanbul, or the lack of them in Christian Uganda. Employing the defining tactic of bigotry, they love to highlight the worst behavior of individual Muslims as a means of attributing it to the group as a whole, while ignoring (often expressly) the worst behavior of individual Jews and/or their own groups (they similarly cite the most extreme precepts of Islam while ignoring similarly extreme ones from Judaism). That’s because, as Rula Jebreal told Bill Maher last week, if these oh-so-brave rationality warriors said about Jews what they say about Muslims, they’d be fired.

But of all the various points to make about this group, this is always the most astounding: those same people, who love to denounce the violence of Islam as some sort of ultimate threat, live in countries whose governments unleash far more violence, bombing, invasions, and occupations than anyone else by far. That is just a fact.

Those who sit around in the U.S. or the U.K. endlessly inveighing against the evil of Islam, depicting it as the root of violence and evil (the “mother lode of bad ideas”), while spending very little time on their own societies’ addictions to violence and aggression, or their own religious and nationalistic drives, have reached the peak of self-blinding tribalism. They really are akin to having a neighbor down the street who constantly murders, steals and pillages, and then spends his spare time flamboyantly denouncing people who live thousands of miles away for their bad acts. Such a person would be regarded as pathologically self-deluded, a term that also describes those political and intellectual factions which replicate that behavior.


The sheer casualness with which Obama yesterday called for a new AUMF is reflective of how central, how commonplace, violence and militarism are in the U.S.’s imperial management of the world. That some citizens of that same country devote themselves primarily if not exclusively to denouncing the violence and savagery of others is a testament to how powerful and self-blinding tribalism is as a human drive.

The US military consists 100% of mercenaries, people who decided to kill others for a living. Officers go to college to learn to kill them in vast quantities.

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Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required

By SHAILA DEWAN

AOctober 28, 2014 "ICH" - "NYT" - RNOLDS PARK, Iowa — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.

The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.

“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

The federal government does.

Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.

“They’re going after people who are really not criminals,” said David Smith, a former federal prosecutor who is now a forfeiture expert and lawyer in Virginia. “They’re middle-class citizens who have never had any trouble with the law.”

On Thursday, in response to questions from The New York Times, the I.R.S. announced that it would curtail the practice, focusing instead on cases where the money is believed to have been acquired illegally or seizure is deemed justified by “exceptional circumstances.”

Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the I.R.S., said in a written statement, “This policy update will ensure that C.I. continues to focus our limited investigative resources on identifying and investigating violations within our jurisdiction that closely align with C.I.'s mission and key priorities.” He added that making deposits under $10,000 to evade reporting requirements, called structuring, is still a crime whether the money is from legal or illegal sources. The new policy will not apply to past seizures.

The I.R.S. is one of several federal agencies that pursue such cases and then refer them to the Justice Department. The Justice Department does not track the total number of cases pursued, the amount of money seized or how many of the cases were related to other crimes, said Peter Carr, a spokesman.

But the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based public interest law firm that is seeking to reform civil forfeiture practices, analyzed structuring data from the I.R.S., which made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.

The practice has swept up dairy farmers in Maryland, an Army sergeant in Virginia saving for his children’s college education and Ms. Hinders, 67, who has borrowed money, strained her credit cards and taken out a second mortgage to keep her restaurant going.
Continue reading the main story

Their money was seized under an increasingly controversial area of law known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agents to take property they suspect of being tied to crime even if no criminal charges are filed. Law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited.

Critics say this incentive has led to the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks and other financial institutions must report cash deposits greater than $10,000. But since many criminals are aware of that requirement, banks also are supposed to report any suspicious transactions, including deposit patterns below $10,000. Last year, banks filed more than 700,000 suspicious activity reports. Owners who are caught up in structuring cases often cannot afford to fight. The median amount seized by the I.R.S. was $34,000, according to the Institute for Justice analysis, while legal costs can easily mount to $20,000 or more.

There is nothing illegal about depositing less than $10,000cash unless it is done specifically to evade the reporting requirement. But often a mere bank statement is enough for investigators to obtain a seizure warrant. In one Long Island case, the police submitted almost a year’s worth of daily deposits by a business, ranging from $5,550 to $9,910. The officer wrote in his warrant affidavit that based on his training and experience, the pattern “is consistent with structuring.” The government seized $447,000 from the business, a cash-intensive candy and cigarette distributor that has been run by one family for 27 years.

There are often legitimate business reasons for keeping deposits below $10,000, said Larry Salzman, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice who is representing Ms. Hinders and the Long Island family pro bono. For example, he said, a grocery store owner in Fraser, Mich., had an insurance policy that covered only up to $10,000 cash. When he neared the limit, he would make a deposit.

Ms. Hinders said that she did not know about the reporting requirement and that for decades, she thought she had been doing everyone a favor.

“My mom had told me if you keep your deposits under $10,000, the bank avoids paperwork,” she said. “I didn’t actually think it had anything to do with the I.R.S.”

In May 2012, the bank branch Ms. Hinders used was acquired by Northwest Banker. JoLynn Van Steenwyk, the fraud and security manager for Northwest, said she could not discuss individual clients, but explained that the bank did not have access to past account histories after it acquired Ms. Hinders’s branch.

Banks are not permitted to advise customers that their deposit habits may be illegal or educate them about structuring unless they ask, in which case they are given a federal pamphlet, Ms. Van Steenwyk said. “We’re not allowed to tell them anything,” she said.

Still lawyers say it is not unusual for depositors to be advised by financial professionals, or even bank tellers, to keep their deposits below the reporting threshold. In the Long Island case, the company, Bi-County Distributors, had three bank accounts closed because of the paperwork burden of its frequent cash deposits, said Jeff Hirsch, the eldest of three brothers who own the company. Their accountant then recommended staying below the limit, so for more than a decade the company had been using its excess cash to pay vendors.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

More than two years ago, the government seized $447,000, and the brothers have been unable to retrieve it. Mr. Salzman, who has taken over legal representation of the brothers, has argued that prosecutors violated a strict timeline laid out in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, passed in 2000 to curb abuses. The office of the federal attorney for the Eastern District of New York said the law’s timeline did not apply in this case. Still, prosecutors asked the Hirsches’ first lawyer, Joseph Potashnik, to waive the CARFA timeline. The waiver he signed expired almost two years ago.

The federal attorney’s office said that parties often voluntarily negotiated to avoid going to court, and that Mr. Potashnik had been engaged in talks until just a few months ago. But Mr. Potashnik said he had spent that time trying, to no avail, to show that the brothers were innocent. They even paid a forensic accounting firm $25,000 to check the books.

“I don’t think they’re really interested in anything,” Mr. Potashnik said of the prosecutors. “They just want the money.”

Bi-County has survived only because longtime vendors have extended credit — one is owed almost $300,000, Mr. Hirsch said. Twice, the government has made settlement offers that would require the brothers to give up an “excessive” portion of the money, according to a new court filing.

“We’re just hanging on as a family here,” Mr. Hirsch said. “We weren’t going to take a settlement, because I was not guilty.”

Army Sgt. Jeff Cortazzo of Arlington, Va., began saving for his daughters’ college costs during the financial crisis, when many banks were failing. He stored cash first in his basement and then in a safe-deposit box. All of the money came from paychecks, he said, but he worried that when he deposited it in a bank, he would be forced to pay taxes on the money again. So he asked the bank teller what to do.

“She said: ‘Oh, that’s easy. You just have to deposit less than $10,000.'”

The government seized $66,000; settling cost Sergeant Cortazzo $21,000. As a result, the eldest of his three daughters had to delay college by a year.

“Why didn’t the teller tell me that was illegal?” he said. “I would have just plopped the whole thing in the account and been done with it.”

2014-10-13 16:59:14
American politicians are fond of telling their audiences that the United States is the greatest country in the world. Is there any evidence for this claim?

Well, yes. When it comes to violence and preparations for violence, the United States is, indeed, No. 1. In 2013, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government accounted for 37 percent of world military expenditures, putting it far ahead of all other nations. (The two closest competitors, China and Russia, accounted for 11 percent and 5 percent respectively.) From 2004 to 2013, the United States was also the No. 1 weapons exporter in the world. Moreover, given the U.S. government’s almost continuous series of wars and acts of military intervention since 1941, it seems likely that it surpasses all rivals when it comes to international violence.

This record is paralleled on the domestic front, where the United States has more guns and gun-related deaths than any other country. A study released in late 2013 reported that the United States had 88 guns for every 100 people, and 40 gun-related deaths for every 400,000 people — the most of any of the 27 economically developed countries surveyed. By contrast, in Britain there were 6 guns per 100 people and 1 gun-related death per 400,000 people.

Yet, in a great many other areas, the United States is not No. 1 at all.

Take education. In late 2013, the Program for International Student Assessment released a report on how 15-year old students from 65 nations performed on its tests. The report showed that U.S. students ranked 17th in reading and 21st in math. An international survey a bit earlier that year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the ranking was slightly worse for American adults. In 2014, Pearson, a multinational educational services company, placed the United States 20th in the world in “educational attainment” — well behind Poland and the Slovak Republic.

American healthcare and health fare even worse. In a 2014 study of healthcare (including infant mortality, healthy life expectancy, and mortality from preventable conditions) in 11 advanced industrial countries, the Commonwealth Fund concluded that the United States ranked last among them. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. healthcare system ranks 30th in the world. Other studies reach somewhat different conclusions, but all are very unflattering to the United States, as are studies of American health. The United States, for example, has one of the world’s worst cancer rates (the seventh highest), and life expectancy is declining compared to other nations. An article in the Washington Post in late 2013 reported that the United States ranked 26th among nations in life expectancy, and that the average American lifespan had fallen a year behind the international average.

What about the environment? Specialists at Yale University have developed a highly sophisticated Environmental Performance Index to examine the behavior of nations. In the area of protection of human health from environmental harm, their 2014 index placed the United States 35th in health impacts, 36th in water and sanitation, and 38th in air quality. In the other area studied — protection of ecosystems — the United States ranked 32nd in water resources, 49th in climate and energy, 86th in biodiversity and habitat, 96th in fisheries, 107th in forests, and 109th in agriculture.

These and other areas of interest are dealt with by the Social Progress Index, which was developed by Michael Porter, an eminent professor of business (and a Republican) at Harvard. According to Porter and his team, in 2014 the United States ranked 23rd in access to information and communications, 24th in nutrition and basic medical care, 31st in personal safety, 34th in water and sanitation, 39th in access to basic knowledge, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, and 70th in health and wellness.

The widespread extent of poverty, especially among children, remains a disgrace in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. A 2013 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund noted that, of the 35 economically advanced countries that had been studied, only Rumania had a higher percentage of children living in poverty than did the United States.

Of course, the United States is not locked into these dismal rankings and the sad situation they reveal about the health, education, and welfare of its citizens. It could do much better if its vast wealth, resources, and technology were employed differently than they are at present.

Ultimately, it’s a matter of priorities. When most U.S. government discretionary spending goes for war and preparations for war, it should come as no surprise that the United States emerges No. 1 among nations in its capacity for violence and falls far behind other nations in providing for the well-being of its people.

Some would argue that religion makes people into better people, but decent people don't need an excuse to be decent.

2014-10-02-- 14:53:07
A recent OECD study shows that the US ranks 27th out of 31 countries in measures of social justice, barely above Mexico. It ranks 21st in inequality, poverty, life expectancy, infant mortality, maternity leave, environmental performance, 18th in mental health and 19th in welfare of children. Also ranks toward the bottom in high-school dropout rates and poor student performance in math.

2014-09-26 6:51:06
Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder Leaves Office (Good Riddance)

Good riddance!

Eric Holder has announced that he is leaving his post of Attorney General, which he has sullied and degraded for six years.

A corporate lawyer with the Wall Street law firm Covington & Burling, Holder will be remembered for his timid defense of civil rights; his overseeing and even encouragement of the massive militarization of the nation’s police forces; his anti-First Amendment efforts to pursue not just whistleblowers but the journalists who use them; threatening both with jail and in fact jailing a number of them (particularly in the case of whistleblower extraordinaire Edward Snowden, and WikiLeaks journalist Julian Assange, both of whom reportedly face U.S. treason charges); and his weak enforcement of environmental protection laws.

But Holder, who came into his position as the nation’s top law enforcement officer in early 2009 at the start of the Obama administration and at the height of the financial crisis, will be best remembered for his overt announcement that there would be no attempt to prosecute the criminals at the top of the nation’s top banks, whose brazen crimes of theft, deceit, fraud and perjury during the Bush/Cheney years and beyond sank not just the U.S. but the global economy into a crisis which is still with us.

Holder not only did not make any effort to put Wall Street’s banking titans behind bars for their epic crimes, he did not even make them step down from their exalted and absurdly highly compensated executive positions when his office reached negotiated settlements with the banks in civil cases involving those crimes—civil cases that almost always allowed the banks to settle without even having to admit their guilt. (His ludicrous excuse: punishing these criminal executive might jeopardize the banks’ stocks and hurt “innocent” shareholders!)

Nor was this legal benevalence limited to purely financial crimes. Banks like Citicorp and HSBC, which were found to have knowingly laundered millions—even billions—of dollars in drug money for drug cartels, were also allowed by Holder to escape with petty fines, and no prosecution of a single bank executive.

It is being suggested that Holder may opt to go back to his old post as a partner at Covington & Burling, which would be the final, though hardly surprising, insult to the American people, providing a particularly galling example of Washington’s revolving door between government regulators and enforcers and the industries that they were supposed to be regulating or keeping honest.

God, how far we have fallen from the days when Ramsey Clark was Attorney General, and left to become a leading critic of Washington’s imperial government at home and abroad!

At this point the Obama administration is little more than a place holder until the next presidential election in 2016. President Obama, who campaigned as a fire-breathing liberal who would restore constitutional government, end the Bush/Cheney wars, re-open the government so that transparency instead of secrecy would be the default position, and take decisive action against climate change, has abandoned all those false promises.

The illegal and unconstitutional wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are now being expanded into Africa and Syria and, at least by proxy, but most dangerously, to Ukraine. Civil liberties are under attack at least as severely as they were back in the McCarthy period, with whistleblowers being jailed, the president asserting the unfettered right to order the killing without trial of American citizens, and a spying system in place run by the National Security Agency that is monitoring and storing, by its own admission, virtually all electronic communications of the American people. The government is also as closed and secret in its operation as it has been since 1974, when it was broadened following the Watergate and Cointelpro scandals, and is certainly less transparent and open than it was even under Bush/Cheney. The Obama administration has also done little to nothing about tackling carbon emissions despite the president’s lies to the contrary in his address to the UN.

In all of this extraordinary list of treachery and cowardice, Holder has played his sycophantic role as a defender of corporate America, of white privilege, and of Washington power. He has been both the John Ashcroft and the Alberto Gonzalez of the Obama administration. (Actually, that comparison is unfair to John Ashcroft, who at least was a man of conviction—repellent as some of those convictions may have been. In Holder’s case, we have a man not of principle, but who is simply a corporate lawyer, ready to do his clients’ bidding, however sordid and corrupt.)

Given the depths of unpopularity to which President Obama has sunk after six years of selling out his own electoral base and catering to the interests of the rich and powerful, the military establishment and neo-con right-wing of the Washington policy elite, it is safe to say that Holder’s replacement, still unknown, will be no better—though given Holder’s tenure it’s also hard to imagine his successor being much worse either.

So good riddance to Holder. But it will be worthwhile, and indeed important, to watch carefully this departing Obama official’s behavior back in the private sector, from under which rock he emerged to be Attorney General six years ago.

2014-09-26 6:51:05
What's Wrong with the NFL Is What's Wrong with America

Sexism. A culture of violence. Untrustworthy leadership. Runaway wealth inequality. An indifference to workers’ health. Employees who are above the law. Hush-hush financing. Multimillion-dollar tax breaks.

We’re not talking about America’s top corporations. We’re not even talking about the Christmas parties on Wall Street. We’re talking about the National Football League.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s handling of Ray Rice’s videotaped brutality has brought the NFL back into the public eye. It’s a sorry spectacle which others have addressed at length, so we’ll just repeat the cliché: It’s the cover-up, stupid.

For my personal assessment of Goodell, we can turn the mic over to Bill Simmons and UltraViolet. And as for the NFL itself, let’s just say it’s America in microcosm.

Capital In the 21st Century NFL

While the league’s finances are largely kept secret from the public, we know the following from public filings (form 990) and news reports (including a leaked copy of the NFL’s audited financials for 2010):

The NFL organization has 1,856 employees and paid $107.7 million per year in salaries last year. Goodell was paid more than $44 million. That means more than 40 percent of the organization’s entire payroll went to one individual.

Most of Goodell’s income was in the form of a “bonus” based on performance standards which, like that of many corporate CEOs, have never been publicly defined.

Roger Goodell is not a “job creator,” even by the right’s loose definition. He — like most corporate CEOs nowadays — invented nothing, made nothing, and built nothing. And the gravy train doesn’t stop at his house. Jeff Pash, the General Counsel, was paid $6,199,000. The EVP of Business Ventures got $4,180,000. The CFO made nearly $2 million. The EVPs of Operations and Human Resources made more than $1.6 million each. (Another executive, the EVP of media, was paid $26 million by an “affiliated” organization.)

All told, more than 54 percent of the organization’s entire payroll went to five individuals — the organization’s top 0.0027 percent. The remaining 43 percent or so was divided among 1,851 employees- the 99.9973 percent.

Now that’s inequality.

Government Of the Rich, By the Rich, and For the Rich

The NFL doesn’t even make a profit — at least on paper. To the IRS, it’s a “nonprofit organization.” But “nonprofit” work pays well for some. The top guy’s salary has certainly soared in recent years:

A bipartisan bill called the “PRO Sports Act,” which would have ended the nonprofit status of the NFL and similar organizations, appears to have died in committee. It’s reasonable to assume that Goodell, the son of a Senator, had something to do with that.

Executives like Goodell — or, for that matter, bank CEOs like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon — seem to be compensated more for their ability to influence elected officials than for their business acumen. On that score, at least, he’s been a good investment. In addition to protecting its tax status, Goodell’s NFL has brokered loans, bonds and tax concessions for its franchises.

Payback

The NFL had annual gross receipts of $184.3 million in 2010 — and that doesn’t include earnings for the individual franchises which own it. It reported $788,113,036 in total assets on the tax-exemption form which is its only public disclosure. It gave exorbitant salaries to its top executives — and it paid no taxes.

Goodell’s hypocrisy and apparent dishonesty is a shameful but very CEO-like display, one for which he’s not likely to be held accountable …

…that is, unless he becomes a financial liability.

But that day may be coming. More than half of those polled by Reuters/Ipsos said that sponsors should sever their ties with the NFL over its handling of violence scandals involving Rice, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, and other players. A number of sponsors have said they don’t want their ads running during games involving the Vikings or Rice’s former team, the Baltimore Ravens, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

They say payback is a bitch. But in today’s America, the only payback that matters is counted in cold cash. If the day comes that owners are forced to choose between Roger Goodell and their own profits, the response will be swift and sure. The commissioner’s instant gratification will turn into instant karma.

Goodell will be fine, of course, no matter what happens. That can’t be said about most Americans. We don’t even now if it can be said about most NFL employees, who are paid so little while the few are paid so much.

As for Goodell’s accomplishments, well … Under his leadership the NFL fought reports of player head injuries for years. Its security apparatus and legal teams have intervened when its players are arrested, often for violent crimes, securing special treatment which ordinary citizens don’t receive. It has fostered a culture of misogyny, brutality, and amorality in the field of sport, whose stars were once considered examples for young people to follow.

But then, the NFL isn’t an example for today’s corporatized America. It’s a reflection of it.

The U.S. government leads the world in assassinations. No other regime can come close in this remarkable achievement. Every month, there are new assassinations. The process never stops. People are being assassinated on a regular basis by national-security state officials. The assassinations include American citizens. State-sponsored assassinations have become an ordinary part of American governmental life.
The U.S. government also leads the world in bombings. Every day, new bombs are dropped on people. We don’t even know how many people are being killed by the bombs. We don’t know who the victims are. It doesn’t really matter. As long as there is a terrorist in the vicinity of the bombs, why should anyone care who else happens to be killed? The notion is that if the national security state isn’t bombing people over there, the American people won’t be safe over here.
Guantanamo Bay continues to stand as monument to the adoption of a communist-like judicial system, one in which people are jailed for life without trial and where any trial would be a mockery of justice anyway. No jury trials. No due process. No speedy trials. Torture and other cruel and unusual punishments. No right to confront witnesses. No right to a presumption of innocence. Let’s face it: there is as much justice at Gitmo as there is in the rest of Cuba.
Why should this surprise us? At the very inception of Gitmo, the Pentagon announced that the area would be a Constitution-free zone. That meant that the Bill of Rights wouldn’t apply there. What better evidence of how national-security state officials view the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than that?
Invasions, occupations, coups, partnerships with criminal organizations (e.g., the Mafia) and brutal dictatorial regimes (e.g., Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Chile), destruction of democratic systems (e.g., Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and Egypt), and foreign aid to dictatorships.
Did I mention torture? The U.S. government is the clear-cut winner when it comes to the number of people tortured in the 21st century. Maybe the communist regimes in Red China, North Korea, and Vietnam are also in contention for #1 in torture, but would it really change things if the U.S. government was relegated to #2 or #3?
Now, ask yourself these simple questions: Is this the type of government that our American ancestors intended to bring into existence after they successfully seceded from the British Empire? Is this the type of government that the Founding Fathers had in mind after the Revolution? Is this the type of government the Framers intended when they proposed the Constitution to the American people?
The answers are not difficult: No one can honestly maintain that our ancestors, the Founding Fathers, and the Framers intended the type of government under which we live today.
So, who are the patriots and who are the traitors in all this? Those of us who defend the founding principles of America and the Constitution or those who have taken our nation to the dark side, with assassinations, torture, denial of due process, invasions, coups, destruction of democratic systems, support of dictatorships, foreign wars, foreign interventions, foreign entanglements, and foreign aid?
The fact is that it was a horrible mistake for Americans to have abandoned the philosophy of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism that guided our ancestors. They fiercely opposed standing armies for the precise reason that massive permanent military establishments inevitably lead to perpetual war, loss of liberty, dark-side practices, and national bankruptcy.
Consider just the current brouhaha regarding ISIS. More bombs. More death. More destruction. But what was it that gave rise to ISIS? You guessed it: The post-9/11 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which destroyed the country, killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people, and produced perpetual crisis and a permanent stream of people who hate the United States.
And what gave rise to the 9/11 attacks? You guessed it: the Persian Gulf intervention against Saddam Hussein, the brutal sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were worth it, the unconditional foreign aid to the Israeli government, and more.
And who was it that was partnering with the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980s? You guessed it: The U.S. national-security state apparatus that was grafted onto our federal system after World War II.
It’s time for Americans to go beyond getting the “right” president into office. After all, for many President Obama was the “right” president and he turned out to be no different from President Bush. As long as the national-security apparatus remains grafted onto our governmental system, America will continue to be enmeshed in the dark side of life.

If you trust in the rigors of science: evidence, testing, peer review etc.—you’re used to the fact that science is completely indifferent to your feelings. Yes, we all want the sun to revolve around the Earth and for plastic to be nutritious for sea creatures, but in science, wishing it were true doesn’t make it so. Religion, on the other hand, gets to be custom fitted. You can be a Christian and if you don’t like the part in the Bible about being happy when smashing babies against rocks (Psalms 137:9), you can just ignore it. Or if you no longer think it’s kosher to even say publicly, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet (1 Timothy 2:12),” you can be mum on that one too. Disagree with slavery? No problem. Want to wear something besides linen? That’s fine. religious people—especially religious leaders—bristle at science. They’ve grown accustomed to being able to carve out exactly what they like from religious texts, leaving the objectionable stuff behind.
This has led to a bizarre paradox: The Creationist with an iPhone or respectively the Anti-Vaxxer in a Prius. Utilizing science and all its comforts and advances, while being selectively skeptical about what science actually has to offer. Using technology to deny science takes some skilled compartmentalizing. It’s saying you have faith in science enough to post cat gifs on Facebook but not enough for science to contradict your convictions.
There was a time when we thought the Information Superhighway would make everyone more informed, better educated. Instead its enabled the misinformed to find places to permanently nestle in confirmation bias. Misery loves company—as does ignorance. Think of science as the user agreement you have to say yes to before getting to use technology. In that contract (we know you haven’t read) is the accord that you—albeit passively—agree in evolution, climate change, vaccinations and math. Otherwise it’s a breach of contract.

..."faith" - which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" that Australia exists, or that fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. ...Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.

Elections

If you're playing chess with someone and suddenly you realized they were not only cheating on every move, but they also put millions of dollars into changing the very rules themselves and even influencing the media and public perception of the game(s), and then eventually they hired one of their friends to take your place at the table so you're not even really playing anymore.... would you agree to keep playing that game, or even still believe you were playing anymore in any real way?

How Empires End 
These events occur, falling like dominoes, more or less in order, in any empire, in any age:

1. The reach of government leaders habitually exceeds their grasp.
2. Dramatic expansion (generally through warfare) is undertaken without a clear plan as to how that expansion is to be financed.
3. The population is overtaxed as the bills for expansion become due, without consideration as to whether the population can afford increased taxation.
4. Heavy taxation causes investment by the private sector to diminish, and the economy begins to decline.
5. Costs of goods rise, without wages keeping pace.
6. Tax revenue declines as the economy declines (due to excessive taxation). Taxes are increased again, in order to top up government revenues.
7. In spite of all the above, government leaders personally hoard as much as they can, further limiting the circulation of wealth in the business community.
8. Governments issue bonds and otherwise borrow to continue expansion, with no plan as to repayment.
9. Dramatic authoritarian control is instituted to assure that the public continues to comply with demands, even if those demands cannot be met by the public.
10. Economic and social collapse occurs, often marked by unrest and riots, the collapse of the economy, and the exit of those who are productive.
11. In this final period, the empire turns on itself, treating its people as the enemy.

Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War.
(* indicates successful ouster of a government)

China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Libya 2011*
Syria 2012

All fascist regimes have an assertive ultra-nationalism that frequently feeds off a sense of victimhood. This need to assert a frequently mythical notion of national power and greatness, often through war or imperial expansion, generally produces a militarization of society as well as a rewriting of history to support the new agenda. Fascist government frequently evolve into police states to suppress dissent and maintain the regime.

“Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence.
Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.”
— William E. Gladstone

"Survivoship bias" is what happens when one only pays attention to those who survive a certain activity, peril, or risk, and makes ungounded conclusions about cause and effect from that. One famous example is Neitzsche's famous saying, "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger". It is based on the survivorship bias that those who survive terrible calamities tend to be stronger than other people. But it doesn't mean the calamity MADE them stronger - it might mean simply that only those who were strong to begin with survived the calamity.

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” - David Ben-Gurion, a.k.a. David Grün (1886-1973), Israeli Prime Minister (1948-53, 1955-63) revered by Israelis as "Father of the Nation"

cd 2014-08-01 6:26:57
On September 30, 2011, on the order of the president, a U.S. drone fired a missile in Yemen and killed Anwar al-Awlaki. A Northern Virginia Islamic cleric, in the aftermath of 9/11 he had been invited to lunch at the Pentagon as part of a program to create ties to Muslim moderates. After he moved to Yemen a few years later, the U.S. accused him of working with al-Qaeda as a propagandist who may have played an online role in persuading others to join the cause. (He was allegedly linked to the “Underwear Bomber” and the Fort Hood shooter.) However, no one has ever accused him of pulling a trigger or setting off a bomb, deeds that might, in court, rise to the level of a capital crime. Al-Awlaki held a set of beliefs and talked about them. For that he was executed without trial.
In March 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder made quite a remarkable statement about the al-Awlaki killing. He claimed “that a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to ‘due process’ and that the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protection against depriving a citizen of his or her life without due process of law does not mandate a ‘judicial process.’” In other words, according to the top legal authority in the nation, a White House review was due process enough when it came to an American citizen with al-Qaeda sympathies. I

Humanize Palestine

The first step in the feudalization of America was smiley faced Ronald Reagan who convinced smug, well fed, and complacement middle class Americans that they did not have to pay taxes to maintain the governmental functions that provided the foundation for their prosperity. The second step was to sit back, smile, and watch as the infrastructure of the entire nation slowly deteriorated while the soon to be obsoleted middle classes dug themselves into unmanageable and inescapable debt while trying to maintain the standard of living that their media told them was required for full participation in the Great American Dream. The third step was to use the growing decay of our infrastructure and the growing inability of local, state, and federal government resources to keep pace with the downturn to declare that this was proof positive that government could not resolve our problems. The fourth step was to test the waters and see if the time was yet ripe to begin declaring bankruptcies at all levels of government and use the self-induced crisis as an excuse to privatize all government services with the exception of police and miliitary functions. To do this, the oligarchy needed a test case, a city and a state that had been so completly debilitated by steps one through three as to be incapable of resisting betrayals of the social contract that would have been inconceiveable a generation ago. Voila! Detroit, Michigan!

Today Detroit and Michigan, tomorrow Chicago and Illinois? Bit by bit, nibble by nibble, this country is being savaged. One fine day in the very near future, the feel good liberals who are STILL supporting the Democrats are going to ask themselves just how this all happened. No big mystery to me and certainly no mystery to people like Glen Ford and Chris Hedges. Voices crying in the wilderness.

What is happening in Detroit was, though less dramatic, foreshadowed in Chicago and other cities, John. See, e.g., http://www.boston.com/. . ./grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy. The article, which is dated June 27, 2006, tells how Obama and his cronies, including Valerie Jarrett and a partner in his former "civil rights" law firm, promoted subsidies to Chicago developers for "public-private partnerships" to redevelop public housing at the tax-payers' expense and at private profit. Much of the housing quickly became uninhabitable (rats, lack of heat, water, etc.), displacing the poor (read mostly black) away from the city center and in many cases replacing them with upper-class whites. The article mentions that one of Obama's cases, again with this "civil rights" law firm, where he spent 8 years of his life (more that twice his stint as a "community organizer") involved the defense of one of the developers sued by the city for failure to provide heat. Ibid. Valerie Jarrett "managed" one of these failed properties.

While this may be old news, my guess is that most USans are unfamiliar with it. The story was published, as you see, in the msm, at least two years before online sites like CD and networks like MSNBC began cheerleading for Obama. Thus, my point in mentioning it is that a necessary component of "change for the better," if we are ever going to achieve it, is to become better-educated voters. The information is always out there somewhere. I found enough information in mainstream newspapers in 2008 to know that Obama was just another status quo politician being marketed as something new. (His opposition to a Palestinian state, change of his position on a bill regarding contamination of a water supply by a nuclear energy company, Exelon, after accepting more campaign donations from it than any other candidate, and support for the death penalty were just three things I learned about him from reading mainstream newspapers in 2008).

A lot of people on this site blame the msm for the ignorance of the public. Among them is SR, who up-voted a comment by another poster complaining that only one member of Congress had voted in opposition to the Iraq War. (Actually, 172 members voted against the invasion, a vote which was covered by every mainstream newspaper across the country). This was obviously an important vote. If citizens don't care enough to educate themselves as to how their own representatives, much less the rest of Congress voted on such an important issue, than who is to "blame?" Citizens, IMO, are going to have to take a lot more responsibility for the shape of the country if we expect to change it. We can start by caring enough about our government to educate ourselves about the latest brand candidates instead of getting swept up in hysteria generated by corporate-manufactured propaganda (e.g., the Obama hype campaign). That will require us to begin acting like citizens instead of consumers.

2014-07-19 — The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the United States needs to spend $3.6 trillion over the next six years to replace and repair the nation's decaying dams, upgrade its parks and outdated schools, rusting water mains, and our crumbling airports, train and bus terminals, roads and bridges — many of which have deteriorated to Third World standards. (Although, to be fair to the Third World, I've seen U.S.-funded roads in Afghanistan in better shape than some in L.A.) The ASCE gives the U.S. a D+ on infrastructure.
The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. 25th in the world in infrastructure, behind Oman, Saudi Arabia and Barbados.

What socialism could do at its best: prioritize the people and thus improve their daily lives.

It was Nietzsche who said: "madness in individuals is rare, but in groups it is the norm." Nietzsche's logic applies very well to the US Empire. Deranged individuals walk among us, but deranged behavior and thinking are writ into the very cultural order of American society.
First, the USA is a society where the mentally ill can freely purchase dangerous weaponry. This is madness.
The USA is a society that glorifies war and killing at every turn. You can buy pink rifles for girls. The military has open access to all schoolchildren. The national anthem is played at nearly every sporting event, and the message is always "support those who died for our freedom." They say this even when they are speaking of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This is craziness.
The USA is a dog-eat-dog society, a winner take-all society, a Social Darwinist paradise. You are not human in the USA if you don't take part in the orgy of mindless consumption. People who can't afford to join in the orgy, are left in bitter alienation and it is generally accepted that they just have to accept their subhuman status. This is insanity.
The culture is deeply misogynistic--masculinist values, as might be expected in a warrior state, are treated as the supreme human virtues. Those who fail to measure are dismissed as "girly men" and "fags." An ongoing war of assault and rape and murder is being fought against women, often by "the men in their lives." FBI statistics tell the grim truth, but the culture pretends that it's still the era of the Debbie Reynolds Show. This is lunacy.

Before 2030 arrives the temperatures of Earth will be above the 150 degrees F all summer long on both the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere's summers. There won't be any food to eat or any fresh water to drink for several years straight then it's going to get real hot. Why that high rise of temperature before 2030? It is because before 2030 several trillion tons of methane gas will have escaped from melted Arctic permafrost and entered the atmosphere's greenhouse gas mix.

Shree MahaLakshmii is the Goddess of wealth and prosperity, both material and spiritual. The word ''Lakshmi'' is derived from the Sanskrit word Lakshmi(???????), meaning "goal." Lakshmi, therefore, represents the goal of life, which includes worldly as well as spiritual prosperity. In Hindu mythology, Goddess Lakshmi, also called Shree MahaLakshmi, is the divine spouse of Lord Shree MahaVishnu and provides Him with wealth for the maintenance and preservation of the creation. In Her images and pictures, Lakshmi is depicted in a female form with four arms and four hands. She wears red clothes with a golden lining and is standing on a lotus. She has golden coins and lotuses in her hands. Two elephants (some pictures show four) are shown next to the Goddess. This symbolism conveys the following spiritual theme: The four arms represent the four directions in space and thus symbolize omnipresence and omnipotence of the Goddess. The red color syinbolizes activity. The golden lining (embroidery) on Her red dress denotes prosperity. The idea conveyed here is that the Goddess is always busy distributing wealth and prosperity to the devotees. The lotus seat, which Lakshmi is standing upon, signifies that while living in this world, one should enjoy its wealth, but not become obsessed with it. Such a living is analogous to a lotus that grows in water but is not wetted by water. The four hands represent the four ends of human life: dharma (righteousness), kama (genuine desires), artha (wealth), and moksha (liberation from birth and death). The front hands represent the activity in the physical world and the back hands indicate the spiritual activities that lead to spiritual perfection. Since the right side of the body symbolizes activity, a lotus in the back right hand conveys the idea that one must perform all duties in the world in accordance with dharma. This leads to moksha (liberation), which is symbolized by a lotus in the back left hand of Lakshmi. The golden coins falling on the ground from the front left hand of Lakshmi illustrate that She provides wealth and prosperity to Her devotees. Her front right hand is shown bestowing blessings upon the devotees. The two elephants standing next to the Goddess symbolize the name and fame associated with worldly wealth. The idea conveyed here is that a true devotee should not earn wealth merely to acquire name and fame or only to satisfy his own material desires, but should share it with others in order to bring happiness to others in addition to himself. Some pictures show four elephants spraying water from golden vessels onto Goddess Lakshmi. The four elephants represent the four ends of human life as discussed above. The spraying of water denotes activity. The golden vessels denote wisdom and purity. The four elephants spraying water from the golden vessels on the Goddess illustrate the theme that continuous self-effort, in accordance with one's dharma and govemed by wisdom and purity, leads to both material and spiritual prosperity. Goddess Lakshmi is regularly worshipped in home shrines and temples by Her devotees. A special worship is offered to Her annually on the auspicious day of Diwali, with religious rituals and colorful ceremonies specifically devoted to Her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXw3NMOE_Sc

Martial Law by Executive Order 3/21/12 President Obama's National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in particular -- completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of "national security." Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency. Even as the 2012 NDAA was rooted in the Patriot Act and the various executive orders and Congressional bills that ensued to broaden executive power in the "war on terror," so the new Executive Order is rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950 which gave the Government powers to mobilize national resources in the event of national emergencies, except now virtually every aspect of American life falls under ultimate unchallengeable government control, to be exercised by the president and his secretaries at their discretion. The 2012 NDAA deemed the United States a "battlefield," as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, and gave the president and his agents the right to seize and arrest any U.S. citizen, detain them indefinitely without charge or trial, and do so only on suspicion, without any judicial oversight or due process. The new Executive Order states that the president and his secretaries have the authority to commandeer all U.S. domestic resources, including food and water, as well as seize all energy and transportation infrastructure inside the borders of the United States. The Government can also forcibly draft U.S. citizens into the military and force U.S. citizens to fulfill "labor requirements" for the purposes of "national defense." There is not even any Congressional oversight allowed, only briefings. In the NDAA, only the president had the authority to abrogate legitimate freedoms of U.S. citizens. What is extraordinary in the new Executive Order is that this supreme power is designated through the president to the secretaries that run the Government itself: • The Secretary of Defense has power over all water resources; • The Secretary of Commerce has power over all material services and facilities, including construction materials; • The Secretary of Transportation has power over all forms of civilian transportation; • The Secretary of Agriculture has power over food resources and facilities, livestock plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment; • The Secretary of Health and Human Services has power over all health resources; • The Secretary of Energy has power over all forms of energy. The Executive Order even stipulates that in the event of conflict between the secretaries in using these powers, the president will determine the resolution through his national security team. The 2012 NDAA gave the Government the right to abrogate any due process against a U.S. citizen. The new Executive Order gives the government, through the Secretary of Labor, the right to proactively mobilize U.S. citizens for "labor" as the government deems necessary and to coordinate with the Secretary of Defense to maintain data to coordinate the nation's work needs in relation to national defense. What is extraordinary about the Executive Order is that, like the NDAA, this can all be done in peacetime without any national emergency to justify it. The language of the Order does not state that all these extraordinary measures will be done in the event of "national security" or a "national emergency." They can simply be done for "purposes of national defense," clearly a broader remit that allows the government to do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, to whomever it wants, all without any judicial restraint or due process. As Orwell famously said in 1984, "War is peace. Peace is war." This is now the reality on the ground in America. Finally, the 2012 NDAA was hurried through the House and Senate almost like a covert op with minimal public attention or debate. It was then signed by the president at 9:00 PM on New Year's Eve while virtually nobody was paying attention to much other than the approaching new year. This new Executive Order was written and signed in complete secret and then quietly released by the White House on its website without comment. All this was done under a president who studied constitutional law at Harvard. It is hard to know what to say in the face of such egregious disregard for the integrity of what America has stood and fought for since its founding. It is hard in part because none of us thought such encroachments would ever happen here, certainly not under the watch of a "progressive" like Obama. At one level, the prospect for war with Iran is probably an immediate justification. But the comprehensiveness of the Executive Order, like that of the 2012 NDAA, speaks to something much deeper, more sinister. I would suggest that this Order, like the NDAA, has been in the works for some time and is simply the next step in the logic of the "global war on terror." Our political elites have come to consider democracy an impediment to effective governance and they are slowly and painstakingly creating all the democratic legalities necessary to abridge our democratic rights with impunity, all to ensure our "security." Of such measures do republics fall and by such measures tyrants emerge. The only thing that really remains is the occasion to test the new rules of the game. Perhaps that will be war with Iran, perhaps some contrived emergency, or perhaps, as long as the public and media remain asleep, no occasion will be necessary at all. It will just slowly happen of its own accord and we, like the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water, will just sit there and be consumed by our own turpitude.

Thu-03-27 17:48:54 The monsters in our midst are woven into our national identity. American society was built on a foundation of slavery and genocide: aggressive racism, Eurocentrism, a right to dominate others.

Philosophers have debated the meaning of evil for centuries, but we see it every day inequality. If a person has billions or millions while others starve, that person lives a life of evil every second of the day.

2014-04-14 7:19:46 : the first-ever scientific analysis of whether the U.S. is a democracy, or is instead an oligarchy, or some combination of the two. The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media). The U.S., in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious "electoral" "democratic" countries.

2014-04-09 13:18:50 : The greatest dangers for the United States do not lurk in terrorist cells in the mountains surrounding Kandahar that are planning on assaults on American targets. Rather, our vulnerabilities are homegrown. The United States plays host to thousands of nuclear weapons, toxic chemical dumps, radioactive waste storage facilities, complex pipelines and refineries, offshore oil rigs, and many other potentially dangerous facilities that require constant maintenance and highly trained and motivated experts to keep them running safely. The United States currently lacks safety protocols and effective inspection regimes for the dangerous materials it has amassed over the last 60 years. We don’t have enough inspectors and regulators to engage in the work of assessing the safety and security of ports, bridges, pipelines, power plants, and railways. The rapid decline in the financial, educational, and institutional infrastructure of the United States represents the greatest threat to the safety of Americans today.

The monsters in our midst are woven into our national identity. American society was built on a foundation of slavery and genocide: aggressive racism, Eurocentrism, a right to dominate others. We haven’t faced these monsters; we’ve simply armed them.

Address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower "The Chance for Peace" delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16,1953.

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

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, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
— Richard Buckminster Fuller

“I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.”
— Richard Buckminster Fuller

When Republicans or democrats use the term we will fight for liberty and freedom they mean they will fight for corporate liability exclusion and cost avoidance for corporate private extraction systems for growth of private wealth and influence in government but ready to exclude those not represented by capital from public inclusion in both liberty or freedom but not from corporate government accountability without representation. Without separation, segregation, exclusion there can be no public controls and everyone knows the public must be controlled for freedom and liberty to succeed

“This is a pretty loveless world we live in,” she concluded. “We have lots of romantic love. We have lots of ‘Sex and the City.’ But real love, love that is the kind that saves people, and makes the world better, and makes you go to bed with a smile on your face, that love is lacking greatly. You have to search for that.”

From Mark Twain:
"I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning--knowing well that I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair."
- Letter to William Dean Howells, 2 April 4 1899

The rule of law requires an engaged civil society with the breathing space to demand accountability of those in power, which in turn requires independent institutions serving the people.

2014-01-01 It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. - Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird" The year of the gun began in Tulsa, where four women were found bound and shot to death in their apartment. Twelve days later, a fifteen-year-old boy in New Mexico used an AR-15 to slaughter his father, mother, brother and two sisters; his brother was nine years old, and his sisters were five years old and two years old respectively. Less than a month later, a man shot and killed four people in a rural New York barber shop. A little over a month later, two men and two women were lined up and shot in a basement in Akron. Four days later, a man in Washington State shot and killed his girlfriend and three neighbors before the police shot him down. Two days later, a man shot and killed five members of the mother of his daughter's family before also being killed by police. Four days later, a Kansas man shot his roommate to death, shot his best friend to death, and then shot his best friend's girlfriend and her 18-month-old daughter to death. On the weekend of Mother's day, a man shot and killed two couples before burning their homes, and then shot and killed a newspaper deliveryman. A little more than a month later, a man in Hawaii shot and killed the couple that managed his apartment building, shot and killed four neighbors, took hostages, and was eventually himself gunned down by police. Two weeks later, a Dallas man shot dead his wife, his girlfriend and two of his children. A week after that, a man in Oklahoma City shot his mother, sister, niece and baby nephew to death. A month later, a man walked onto the Navy Yard in Washington DC with a sawed-off shotgun and killed twelve people. Four days later, a woman in Texas shot and killed her husband, her three sons, and then herself. A month later, a man in Phoenix shot and killed four people and then himself with a shotgun. Two days later, a Texas man shot and killed five people. The next day, a South Carolina man shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, two of her children, her parents, and then himself. A month later, four people were shot and killed in Topeka. Two days after that, an Arkansas man shot and killed his daughter's boyfriend, his four-month-old grandson, his granddaughter, and then himself. On the same day, a Tennessee man shot and killed his wife, his son, his daughter, and then himself. Five days later, a Connecticut man shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, two other people, and then himself. This is, bear in mind, an incomplete accounting. Then there were the school shootings. In 2010, by comparison, there were nine school shootings in America that killed seven people. In 2011, there were eleven school shootings that killed nine people. In 2012, there were fourteen school shootings - including the massacres at Sandy Hook Elementary and Oikos University - that killed 43 people. In 2013, there were twenty-three school shootings that killed nineteen people. Nine, then eleven, then fourteen, then twenty-three. If the trend holds, we can look forward to maybe thirty or forty school shootings in 2014. Then there was the two-year-old North Carolina girl who shot herself to death with a gun someone left lying around, the three-year-old Arizona boy who shot himself to death with a gun someone left lying around, the five-year-old Texas boy who was shot in the head by an eight-year-old boy with a gun someone left lying around, the two-year-old Texas boy who shot himself in the head with a gun someone left lying around, the South Dakota woman who was shot while trying to take a gun away from her two-year-old son, the four-year-old Michigan boy who shot himself to death with a gun someone left lying around, the 11-year-old Virginia boy who shot himself in the mouth with a gun someone left lying around, and all the other 7,500 children who were admitted to hospitals with gunshot wounds this year, 500 of whom died. But there's nothing we can do about it, because there's nothing we can do about it, because there's nothing we can do about it, because there's nothing we can do about it, because there's nothing we can do about it, because freedom, or something. Lather, rinse, repeat. If nothing else of any value happens in 2014, if the Affordable Care Act crashes and burns, if Ted Cruz is appointed Emperor Of All The Things, if the Trans Pacific Partnership becomes the law of the land, if that land becomes traversed and poisoned by the Keystone XL pipeline, if the government shuts down again, if the nation defaults, and if the press keeps taking people like Sarah Palin seriously, at least, for the love of all that is good and decent and sane, let us resolve individually and as a nation to try as best we can to get some semblance of a grip on the deranged slaughter caused by guns. You may love guns, and hate the president. But working to keep living children from becoming dead children is something every American should be able to get behind. Let's give it a try, and see what happens. The baby you save may be your own.

Most accidents are caused by a premeditated decision to step in harm's way, by cutting corners to save time

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. An atheist wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate... American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.” - Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Proud of what? That US troops that are occupying Afghanistan,Iraq, and Yemen? Proud that we have raped the Haitian working class? Proud of police assassinations of unarmed black youth in the US that occur almost on a daily basis? Proud of the wage cuts and layoffs and harassment that workers endure in the US and virtually every country where Wall Street has its hundreds of billions invested?

2013-12-14 05:49:38 The US is simply fulfilling its destiny of being the most violent and terrorist nation in the world... bar none... Murdering innocent men, women and CHILDREN is US SOP... To support Obama, any US President, and the vast majority of US politicians who refuse to condemn such actions as war crimes and crimes against humanity is to be complicit in such horrors...

“Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Measure people by their level of human care and decency toward other people and the natural world in general.
Do not honor greedy, anti-social, self-aggrandizing, or homocidal behavior on the part of those who would display it.
Do not glorify other human beings.
Display deserved respect for those who excel in human decency.

We have our priorities, which include re-fighting the Crusades, stealing other nations' resources, and winning 19th century geopolitical games.
For these priorities we need lots of weapons, lots of oil, lots of spying, and a completely mindless population.
We have our priorities.

“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted…the Patriot Act. As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.” – US Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall

• The Government seizes and searches all internet and text communications which enter or leave the US
• The Government created and maintains secret backdoor access into all databases in order to search for information on US citizens
• The Government operates a vast database which allows it to sift through millions of records on the internet to show nearly everything a person does
• The Government has a special court which meets in secret to authorize access for the FBI and other investigators to millions and millions of US phone, text, email and business records
• The Government keeps Top Secret nearly all the decisions of the FISA court
• The Government is fighting to keep Top Secret a key 2011 decision of the FISA court even after the court itself said it can be made public
• The Government uses secret National Security Letters (NSL) issued by the FBI to seize tens of thousands of records
• The National Security Head was caught not telling the truth to Congress about the surveillance of millions of US citizens
• The Government falsely assured the US public in writing that privacy protections are significantly stronger than they actually are and Senators who knew better were not allowed to disclose the truth
• The chief defender of spying in the House of Representatives, the Chair of the oversight intelligence subcommittee, did not tell the truth or maybe worse did not know the truth about surveillance
• The House intelligence oversight committee repeatedly refused to provide basic surveillance information to elected members of the House of Representatives, Republican and Democrat
• The paranoia about secrecy of surveillance is so bad in the House of Representatives that an elected member of Congress was threatened for passing around copies of the Snowden disclosures which had been already printed in newspapers worldwide
• The Senate oversight committee refused to allow a dissenting Senator to publicly discuss his objections to surveillance

[http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/23-1]

[Inspired by David Miranda dentention 13.08]
21st century rendition of the miranda warning....
“You have no rights. Everything you have ever said and thought will be used against you in a court of law. You do not have the right to legal counsel.”

The true heroes of our culture are the ones that refuse to go to these misguided foreign wars in the first place.

"I was just following orders" was not accepted as a defense at the Nuremburg trials.

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.
Benito Mussolini

Banning books is done by people that can not provide any skills to counter what they believe is not their truth.

Minimum investment, maximum anticipated returns, limited liability, socialized risk.

The real consistency of American foreign policy : always support advocates of capitalism and militarism; always denigrate or attack all supporters of socialism and peace. 2013-07-27 13:50:55

What policy does the US have? In Syria, the US supports extreme radical Sunni fundamentalists. In Egypt, the US support the military that kills Sunni fundamentalists. In Saudi Arabia and the rest of the gulf emirates, Sunni fundamentalist rule with the backing of the US. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen the US blows up civilians supposedly to suppress Sunni fundamentalists. In Iraq, the US supposedly supports the majority Shia government, but doesn't decry the daily bombings that kill dozens, done once again by Sunni fundamentalists. 2013-07-27 13:37:17

Police personality screening actually looks for those personality types who will willingly obey orders with little or no question, and who are motivated by a simple reward system. Independent thought, situational judgement and dispute resolution are actually discouraged outside of the limited techniques 'taught' at Police academies. 2013-07-27 6:50:56

Full Internal Report to follow immediately in High Embarrassment Factor code. BSTS. H&H. BTB.