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four 5,087 posts msg #102052 - Ignore four modified |
8/7/2011 2:22:16 AM http://blogs.marketwatch.com/fundmastery/2011/08/06/bill-gross-no-dent-in-the-deficit/ http://uk.reuters.com/video/2011/07/19/david-cay-johnston-paying-taxes-to-your?videoId=217231660 |
novacane32000 331 posts msg #102067 - Ignore novacane32000 |
8/8/2011 8:12:48 AM Salary of the US President ...................$400,000 Salary of retired US Presidents .............$180,000 Salary of House/Senate .................... ...$174,000 Salary of Speaker of the House ............$223,500 Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders ...... $193,400 Avg Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN IRAQ $38,000 I think we know where the cuts should be made ! I do not find these salaries at all outrageous. The CEO of my company makes 4.5 million/yr and has cashed in 20 to 30 million in stock every yr for the past 4 yrs. No one complains because stock value climbs about 15% annually. In my area,if we dont pay a Director at least $175,000 to start,they are out the door in a few months. Point is -you are worth more if you are one of the few who can do the job. Not saying these politicians are doing what is right by they do have the ability. |
TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #102508 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
8/30/2011 1:33:09 AM http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2008/07/21/why-the-founders-rejected-a-central-bank/ http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977031677 Thomas Jefferson speaking on the first attempt to establish a central bank in America: "The system of banking is a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction. I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity is but swindling futurity on a large scale." "The end of democracy, and the defeat of the American revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of the lending institutions and moneyed incorporations." "If the people ever allow the banks to issue their currency, the banks and corporations which will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." "Paper is poverty... It is not money, but the ghost of money." "There is an artificial aristocracy, founded on birth and privelege, without virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendency." "The bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing against the principles and form of our Constitution. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in a time of war? It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or it might withdraw its aid. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?" James Madison speaking on the first attempt to establish a central bank in America: "History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible, to maintain their control over governments, by controlling money and its issuance." "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late revolution. The free men of America did not wait until usurped power has strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle." Andrew Jackson speaking on the second attempt to establish a central bank in America: "If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations." "I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic, inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a monied aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country." President Jackson told the bankers "You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal god, I will rout you out!" Abraham Lincoln speaking on the third attempt to establish a central bank in America: "The money powers prey on the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe. As a most undesirable consequence of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed." "The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity." "Government, possessing the power to create and issue credit and currency as money, and enjoying the right to withdraw both currency and credit by taxation and otherwise, need not and should not borrow capital at interest as the means of financing governmental work and public enterprise." "The privelege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity." "No duty is more imperative on the government than the duty it owes the people to furnish them with a sound and uniform currency, and of regulating the circulation of the medium of exchange so that labor will be protected from a vicious currency, and commerce will be facilitated by cheap and safe exchanges." President Woodrow Wilson, after having broken campaign promises and betrayed his country by signing into law the Federal Reserve Act: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation therefore, and all our activities, are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world. No longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Congressional Record, June 15, 1934): "Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power. But the truth is, the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the government of the United States. It controls everything here; and it controls our foreign relations. It makes or breaks governments at will. No man, and no body of men, is more entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks. These evil-doers have robbed the country of more than enough money to pay the national debt. What the National Government has permitted the Federal Reserve Board to steal from the people should now be returned to the people. The people have a valid claim against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. If that claim is enforced, Americans will not need to stand in bread lines. Homes will be saved. Families will be kept. What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of the United States. The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson's day must be fought over again. The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed; and the Federal Reserve Banks -- having violated their charters -- should be liquidated immediately. Faithless government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial. Unless this is done by us, I predict the American people -- outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land -- will rise in their wrath and send a President here who WILL sweep the money changers from the temple." |
TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #102548 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
9/5/2011 5:30:45 PM Charley Reese's final column A very interesting column. COMPLETELY NEUTRAL Be sure to Read the Poem at the end. Charley Reese's final column for the Orlando Sentinel. He has been a journalist for 49 years. He is retiring and this is HIS LAST COLUMN. Be sure to read the Tax List at the end. This is about as clear and easy to understand as it can be. The article below is completely neutral, neither anti-republican or democrat. Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. It's a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering! 545 vs. 300,000,000 People - By Charlie Reese Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits? Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank. I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes. Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan . If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy","inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do. Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess. What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you. This might be funny if it weren't so true. Please read all the way to the end. Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit Tax CDL license Tax Cigarette Tax Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax Excise Taxes Federal Income Tax Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) Fishing License Tax Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon) Gross Receipts Tax Hunting License Tax Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) Liquor Tax Luxury Taxes Marriage License Tax Medicare Tax Personal Property Tax Property Tax Real Estate Tax Service Charge Tax Social Security Tax (15 ½%) Road Usage Tax Recreational Vehicle Tax Sales Tax School Tax State Income Tax State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) Telephone Federal Excise Tax Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax Utility Taxes Vehicle License Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Watercraft Registration Tax Well Permit Tax Workers Compensation Tax Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids. What in the heck happened? Can you spell 'politicians?' I hope this goes around THE USA at least 545 times! YOU can help it get there!!! GO AHEAD. . . BE AN AMERICAN |
skareem 23 posts msg #102549 - Ignore skareem modified |
9/5/2011 7:32:56 PM Ahhh..hmmm.... I think we voted for those 545? So, does that mean we are to blame?? Nothing grows in vacuum my friend! If I leave my home with my windows and doors unlocked and some thieve comes in and cleans up shop in my absence, who to blame? Blame me or the thieve for doing his/her job? Who let those 545 in?? S. |
TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #102567 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
9/8/2011 10:00:55 AM In my inbox today: 10 Years After 9/11, Is America a Better Place? End of the American Dream What is the true legacy of 9/11? Unfortunately, it may be how the American people have responded to that event. 10 years after 9/11, is America a better place? Sadly, the answer clearly is no. In the ten years that have passed, a fundamental shift in our culture has occurred. The American people have eagerly given up large amounts of liberty and freedom in exchange for vague promises of increased security. We were once the land of the free and the home of the brave, but now we are the land of the scared and the home of the slave and we seem to like it that way. Most of us don't even remember how to act like Americans anymore. American culture has moved so far in the direction of communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany that it is absolutely frightening. When most of us were growing up, we were taught that the enemies of America were "totalitarian police states" that did not give liberties and freedoms to their people. Well, today nearly everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and tightly controlled. 10 years after 9/11, the American people are living in fear, the federal government is run by control freaks and paranoia has become standard operating procedure. What we have allowed to happen to this nation is absolutely shameful. Do you enjoy living in a police state? I don't. Once upon a time, the police were generally friendly and trustworthy. You actually wanted to know police officers and be friends with them. But today, police in most areas of the country are deeply feared, and for good reason. They are actually taught to be brutal and authoritarian. All of this comes from the very top. Prior to 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security, "VIPR teams", the Patriot Act, body scanners, "enhanced pat-downs" and "fusion centers" didn't even exist. A fundamental shift has taken place in America, and it is almost as if a severe mental illness has infected nearly the entire law enforcement community in this country. The "big black boot" that was supposedly going to keep us all safe is actually destroying this country and everything that it means to be an American. The following are some questions that you should ask anyone who believes that America has responded to 9/11 in a positive way.... Is America a better place when all of us (including grandmothers and young children) must either go through a body scanner that reveals the intimate details of our naked bodies or endure an "enhanced pat-down" during which our genitals will be touched in order to get on an airplane? Is America a better place now that TSA "VIPR teams" conduct approximately 8,000 "unannounced security screenings" a year at subway stations, bus terminals, seaports and highway rest stops? Should "out-of-nowhere" security sweeps by thugs in black uniforms at transportation centers and public events just be accepted as "the new normal" in America? Is America a better place now that the FBI can demand to see your cellphone data whenever it wants? Is America a better place now that the Patriot Act allows the federal government to secretly conduct surveillance on innocent American citizens, monitor the electronic communications of innocent American citizens and conduct warrantless searches of the homes of innocent American citizens? Is America a better place now that the federal government has a "secret interpretation" of the Patriot Act that they won't even release to the general public? How can we possibly follow their rules if they won't even tell us what they are expecting of us? Is America a better place when the federal government is so paranoid that it feels that it must issue "talking points" instructing government officials what to say about the 10th anniversary of 9/11? Is America a better place when young schoolchildren in New Jersey are being taught to snitch on their classmates and police are being used to crack down on "bullying activity" in public schools? Is America a better place when the federal government is so paranoid that they spend millions of dollars encouraging us all to spy on one another? The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign looks like it could have been pulled right out of an East German security handbook. Is America a better place when you must submit a "crop plan" and have your garden inspected by bureaucrats before you can participate in certain farmers markets? Is America a better place when people living in this country can be labeled "enemy combatants" just for uploading videos to YouTube? Is America a better place now that invisible "pain ray" weapons are being used in American prisons? Is America a better place now that state police in some areas of the country are using "extraction devices" to download data from the cellphones of motorists that they pull over? Is America a better place now that LRAD sound cannons are being used to break up college block parties? Is America a better place now that local police forces all over the country have been federalized and militarized? Is America a better place now that local police feel empowered to beat people until they are unrecognizable all in the name of maintaining "law and order"? Is America a better place now that police officers are patrolling the halls of our public schools and are beating up our kids? Is America a better place now that little children all over the country are being publicly arrested by police in their own classrooms and are being marched out of their schools in handcuffs? Is America a better place now that children are being herded like cattle into mass vaccination centers? Is America a better place now that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools all over the nation so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating? Is America a better place now that lemonade stands run by young children all over the nation are being shut down by police? Is America a better place now that large numbers of security cameras have gone up in nearly every major U.S. city? Is America a better place now that authorities will pull you over for having the "wrong" political bumper sticker on your car? Is America a better place now that the FDA is employing elaborate entrapment schemes against producers of raw milk? Is America a better place now that FBI surveillance teams regularly employ warrantless GPS tracking to monitor the movements of peaceful activists – even if they are not suspected of ever committing a crime? Is America a better place now that the NSA gathers an amount of information on all of us equivalent to the entire Library of Congress every six hours? Is America a better place now that the FBI definition of "suspicious activity" includes making "extreme religious statements" and believing in "radical theology"? The sad truth is that America is not a better place after 9/11. We have betrayed our founding fathers and we have cast aside many of our liberties and freedoms because we are so afraid that we can't even see straight. Fortunately, a growing number of Americans is actually waking up. More Americans than ever are tired of being treated like garbage and this is starting to be reflected in recent polling. For example, according to a new Gallup poll an all-time record 63 percent of Americans have a negative view of the federal government. Hopefully we will start to see a cultural shift back in the direction of increased liberty and freedom. If not, we are in for a total nightmare. If we continue on the path that we are on, this nation is going to become an absolutely horrific place in which to live. A totalitarian police state is not going to keep you safe. But it will make your life a living hell. Reprinted with permission from End of the American Dream. |
kahern1014 13 posts msg #102570 - Ignore kahern1014 |
9/8/2011 12:51:36 PM Looking Back on 9/11 a Decade Later We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo. A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. "He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them," Eric Margolis writes. "'Bleeding the U.S.,' in his words." The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap... Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction... may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” -- particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny. That Washington was bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s fervent wishes was evident at once. As discussed in my book 9-11, written shortly after those attacks occurred, anyone with knowledge of the region could recognize “that a massive assault on a Muslim population would be the answer to the prayers of bin Laden and his associates, and would lead the U.S. and its allies into a ‘diabolical trap,’ as the French foreign minister put it.” The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, wrote shortly after that “bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. [He] is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” and largely succeeded: “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death. The First 9/11 Was there an alternative? There is every likelihood that the Jihadi movement, much of it highly critical of bin Laden, could have been split and undermined after 9/11. The “crime against humanity,” as it was rightly called, could have been approached as a crime, with an international operation to apprehend the likely suspects. That was recognized at the time, but no such idea was even considered. In 9-11, I quoted Robert Fisk’s conclusion that the “horrendous crime” of 9/11 was committed with “wickedness and awesome cruelty,” an accurate judgment. It is useful to bear in mind that the crimes could have been even worse. Suppose, for example, that the attack had gone as far as bombing the White House, killing the president, imposing a brutal military dictatorship that killed thousands and tortured tens of thousands while establishing an international terror center that helped impose similar torture-and-terror states elsewhere and carried out an international assassination campaign; and as an extra fillip, brought in a team of economists -- call them “the Kandahar boys” -- who quickly drove the economy into one of the worst depressions in its history. That, plainly, would have been a lot worse than 9/11. Unfortunately, it is not a thought experiment. It happened. The only inaccuracy in this brief account is that the numbers should be multiplied by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, the appropriate measure. I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the U.S. succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s brutal regime in office. The goal, in the words of the Nixon administration, was to kill the “virus” that might encourage all those “foreigners [who] are out to screw us” to take over their own resources and in other ways to pursue an intolerable policy of independent development. In the background was the conclusion of the National Security Council that, if the US could not control Latin America, it could not expect “to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world.” The first 9/11, unlike the second, did not change the world. It was “nothing of very great consequence,” as Henry Kissinger assured his boss a few days later. These events of little consequence were not limited to the military coup that destroyed Chilean democracy and set in motion the horror story that followed. The first 9/11 was just one act in a drama which began in 1962, when John F. Kennedy shifted the mission of the Latin American military from “hemispheric defense” -- an anachronistic holdover from World War II -- to “internal security,” a concept with a chilling interpretation in U.S.-dominated Latin American circles. In the recently published Cambridge University History of the Cold War, Latin American scholar John Coatsworth writes that from that time to “the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of non-violent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites,” including many religious martyrs and mass slaughter as well, always supported or initiated in Washington. The last major violent act was the brutal murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, a few days after the Berlin Wall fell. The perpetrators were an elite Salvadorean battalion, which had already left a shocking trail of blood, fresh from renewed training at the JFK School of Special Warfare, acting on direct orders of the high command of the U.S. client state. The consequences of this hemispheric plague still, of course, reverberate. From Kidnapping and Torture to Assassination All of this, and much more like it, is dismissed as of little consequence, and forgotten. Those whose mission is to rule the world enjoy a more comforting picture, articulated well enough in the current issue of the prestigious (and valuable) journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. The lead article discusses “the visionary international order” of the “second half of the twentieth century” marked by “the universalization of an American vision of commercial prosperity.” There is something to that account, but it does not quite convey the perception of those at the wrong end of the guns. The same is true of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which brings to an end at least a phase in the “war on terror” re-declared by President George W. Bush on the second 9/11. Let us turn to a few thoughts on that event and its significance. On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in his virtually unprotected compound by a raiding mission of 79 Navy SEALs, who entered Pakistan by helicopter. After many lurid stories were provided by the government and withdrawn, official reports made it increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law, beginning with the invasion itself. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 79 commandos facing no opposition -- except, they report, from his wife, also unarmed, whom they shot in self-defense when she “lunged” at them, according to the White House. A plausible reconstruction of the events is provided by veteran Middle East correspondent Yochi Dreazen and colleagues in the Atlantic. Dreazen, formerly the military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is senior correspondent for the National Journal Group covering military affairs and national security. According to their investigation, White House planning appears not to have considered the option of capturing bin Laden alive: “The administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive.” The authors add: “For many at the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency who had spent nearly a decade hunting bin Laden, killing the militant was a necessary and justified act of vengeance.” Furthermore, “capturing bin Laden alive would have also presented the administration with an array of nettlesome legal and political challenges.” Better, then, to assassinate him, dumping his body into the sea without the autopsy considered essential after a killing -- an act that predictably provoked both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world. As the Atlantic inquiry observes, “The decision to kill bin Laden outright was the clearest illustration to date of a little-noticed aspect of the Obama administration's counterterror policy. The Bush administration captured thousands of suspected militants and sent them to detention camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration, by contrast, has focused on eliminating individual terrorists rather than attempting to take them alive.” That is one significant difference between Bush and Obama. The authors quote former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who “told German TV that the U.S. raid was ‘quite clearly a violation of international law’ and that bin Laden should have been detained and put on trial,” contrasting Schmidt with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who “defended the decision to kill bin Laden although he didn't pose an immediate threat to the Navy SEALs, telling a House panel... that the assault had been ‘lawful, legitimate and appropriate in every way.’" The disposal of the body without autopsy was also criticized by allies. The highly regarded British barrister Geoffrey Robertson, who supported the intervention and opposed the execution largely on pragmatic grounds, nevertheless described Obama’s claim that “justice was done” as an “absurdity” that should have been obvious to a former professor of constitutional law. Pakistan law “requires a colonial inquest on violent death, and international human rights law insists that the ‘right to life’ mandates an inquiry whenever violent death occurs from government or police action. The U.S. is therefore under a duty to hold an inquiry that will satisfy the world as to the true circumstances of this killing.” Robertson usefully reminds us that “[i]t was not always thus. When the time came to consider the fate of men much more steeped in wickedness than Osama bin Laden -- the Nazi leadership -- the British government wanted them hanged within six hours of capture. President Truman demurred, citing the conclusion of Justice Robert Jackson that summary execution ‘would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride... the only course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear.’” Eric Margolis comments that “Washington has never made public the evidence of its claim that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks,” presumably one reason why “polls show that fully a third of American respondents believe that the U.S. government and/or Israel were behind 9/11,” while in the Muslim world skepticism is much higher. “An open trial in the U.S. or at the Hague would have exposed these claims to the light of day,” he continues, a practical reason why Washington should have followed the law. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In June 2002, FBI head Robert Mueller, in what the Washington Post described as “among his most detailed public comments on the origins of the attacks,” could say only that “investigators believe the idea of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon came from al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, the actual plotting was done in Germany, and the financing came through the United Arab Emirates from sources in Afghanistan.” What the FBI believed and thought in June 2002 they didn’t know eight months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know) to permit a trial of bin Laden if they were presented with evidence. Thus, it is not true, as President Obama claimed in his White House statement after bin Laden’s death, that “[w]e quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda.” There has never been any reason to doubt what the FBI believed in mid-2002, but that leaves us far from the proof of guilt required in civilized societies -- and whatever the evidence might be, it does not warrant murdering a suspect who could, it seems, have been easily apprehended and brought to trial. Much the same is true of evidence provided since. Thus, the 9/11 Commission provided extensive circumstantial evidence of bin Laden’s role in 9/11, based primarily on what it had been told about confessions by prisoners in Guantanamo. It is doubtful that much of that would hold up in an independent court, considering the ways confessions were elicited. But in any event, the conclusions of a congressionally authorized investigation, however convincing one finds them, plainly fall short of a sentence by a credible court, which is what shifts the category of the accused from suspect to convicted. There is much talk of bin Laden's “confession,” but that was a boast, not a confession, with as much credibility as my “confession” that I won the Boston marathon. The boast tells us a lot about his character, but nothing about his responsibility for what he regarded as a great achievement, for which he wanted to take credit. Again, all of this is, transparently, quite independent of one’s judgments about his responsibility, which seemed clear immediately, even before the FBI inquiry, and still does. Crimes of Aggression It is worth adding that bin Laden’s responsibility was recognized in much of the Muslim world, and condemned. One significant example is the distinguished Lebanese cleric Sheikh Fadlallah, greatly respected by Hizbollah and Shia groups generally, outside Lebanon as well. He had some experience with assassinations. He had been targeted for assassination: by a truck bomb outside a mosque, in a CIA-organized operation in 1985. He escaped, but 80 others were killed, mostly women and girls as they left the mosque -- one of those innumerable crimes that do not enter the annals of terror because of the fallacy of “wrong agency.” Sheikh Fadlallah sharply condemned the 9/11 attacks. One of the leading specialists on the Jihadi movement, Fawaz Gerges, suggests that the movement might have been split at that time had the U.S. exploited the opportunity instead of mobilizing the movement, particularly by the attack on Iraq, a great boon to bin Laden, which led to a sharp increase in terror, as intelligence agencies had anticipated. At the Chilcot hearings investigating the background to the invasion of Iraq, for example, the former head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5 testified that both British and U.S. intelligence were aware that Saddam posed no serious threat, that the invasion was likely to increase terror, and that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had radicalized parts of a generation of Muslims who saw the military actions as an “attack on Islam.” As is often the case, security was not a high priority for state action. It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos had landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he was not a “suspect” but the “decider” who gave the orders to invade Iraq -- that is, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country and its national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden. To say that all of this is uncontroversial, as it is, is not to imply that it is not denied. The existence of flat earthers does not change the fact that, uncontroversially, the earth is not flat. Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Stalin and Hitler were responsible for horrendous crimes, though loyalists deny it. All of this should, again, be too obvious for comment, and would be, except in an atmosphere of hysteria so extreme that it blocks rational thought. Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Bush and associates did commit the “supreme international crime” -- the crime of aggression. That crime was defined clearly enough by Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at Nuremberg. An “aggressor,” Jackson proposed to the Tribunal in his opening statement, is a state that is the first to commit such actions as “[i]nvasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State ….” No one, even the most extreme supporter of the aggression, denies that Bush and associates did just that. We might also do well to recall Jackson’s eloquent words at Nuremberg on the principle of universality: “If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” It is also clear that announced intentions are irrelevant, even if they are truly believed. Internal records reveal that Japanese fascists apparently did believe that, by ravaging China, they were laboring to turn it into an “earthly paradise.” And although it may be difficult to imagine, it is conceivable that Bush and company believed they were protecting the world from destruction by Saddam’s nuclear weapons. All irrelevant, though ardent loyalists on all sides may try to convince themselves otherwise. We are left with two choices: either Bush and associates are guilty of the “supreme international crime” including all the evils that follow, or else we declare that the Nuremberg proceedings were a farce and the allies were guilty of judicial murder. The Imperial Mentality and 9/11 A few days before the bin Laden assassination, Orlando Bosch died peacefully in Florida, where he resided along with his accomplice Luis Posada Carriles and many other associates in international terrorism. After he was accused of dozens of terrorist crimes by the FBI, Bosch was granted a presidential pardon by Bush I over the objections of the Justice Department, which found the conclusion “inescapable that it would be prejudicial to the public interest for the United States to provide a safe haven for Bosch.” The coincidence of these deaths at once calls to mind the Bush II doctrine -- “already… a de facto rule of international relations,” according to the noted Harvard international relations specialist Graham Allison -- which revokes “the sovereignty of states that provide sanctuary to terrorists.” Allison refers to the pronouncement of Bush II, directed at the Taliban, that “those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves.” Such states, therefore, have lost their sovereignty and are fit targets for bombing and terror -- for example, the state that harbored Bosch and his associate. When Bush issued this new “de facto rule of international relations,” no one seemed to notice that he was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and the murder of its criminal presidents. None of this is problematic, of course, if we reject Justice Jackson’s principle of universality, and adopt instead the principle that the U.S. is self-immunized against international law and conventions -- as, in fact, the government has frequently made very clear. It is also worth thinking about the name given to the bin Laden operation: Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound that few seem able to perceive that the White House is glorifying bin Laden by calling him “Geronimo” -- the Apache Indian chief who led the courageous resistance to the invaders of Apache lands. The casual choice of the name is reminiscent of the ease with which we name our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Blackhawk… We might react differently if the Luftwaffe had called its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.” The examples mentioned would fall under the category of “American exceptionalism,” were it not for the fact that easy suppression of one’s own crimes is virtually ubiquitous among powerful states, at least those that are not defeated and forced to acknowledge reality. Perhaps the assassination was perceived by the administration as an “act of vengeance,” as Robertson concludes. And perhaps the rejection of the legal option of a trial reflects a difference between the moral culture of 1945 and today, as he suggests. Whatever the motive was, it could hardly have been security. As in the case of the “supreme international crime” in Iraq, the bin Laden assassination is another illustration of the important fact that security is often not a high priority for state action, contrary to received doctrine. |
TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #102745 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
9/28/2011 9:32:24 AM The 14 Most Corrupt Members of Congress: http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-crews-14-most-corrupt-members-of-congress-2011-9 10 Revelations The White House Doesn't Want You To Read In This Book: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-white-house-problems-confidence-men-economic-team-geithner-2011-9 |
TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #102820 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
10/4/2011 3:38:18 PM Gas For $1.75 A Gallon & Depression Level Unemployment: The USA After A Euro Collapse http://danielamerman.com/articles/2011/BrokenC.html |
TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #102855 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
10/7/2011 12:59:40 PM In my inbox: Subject: Congress The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure. I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to at least twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. Congressional Reform Act of 2011 1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office. 2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. 3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. 4. Congress will no longer vote for themselves, a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%. 5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people. 6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. 7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people , it will only take thre e days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the m essage. Maybe it is time. But, oh wait, who's gonna write the law???? THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! |
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