Category : Congress

Mind-control. MKULTRA. Brainwashing.

The above words tend to stop rational conversation in its tracks, sending it down a slippery slope of confusion, conspiracy and mockery. We like to think we’re too smart to fall for that Hollywood crap. This is the real world, and anybody who thinks mind-control is real needs to re-adjust their tin-foil hat, right?

Er…. not really.

The Elephant in the Room
Mind-control is real. It’s in the public record. The CIA has admitted that they had a super-secret program called Project MKULTRA that was focused on brainwashing people so they could become the ideal assassin. From Wikipedia:

The published evidence indicates that Project MKULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and sexual abuse.

Project MKULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA files destroyed in 1973…

So let’s get this straight right up front: Mind-control experiments are in the Congressional Record. They were front-page news back in ’75 and the CIA has admitted that they tried their best to create a mind-controlled assassin program. They claim that they failed (after torturing and ruining the mental states of many unwitting “volunteers”, often grabbed from the military or prison). But the Church Committee is considered by many to be a “limited hangout”, which basically means admitting to a minor crime in order to cover up a major one.

Why was the CIA trying to create a mind-controlled assassin? It was widely believed that the Soviets were working on a similar program — and they were. But after the Cold War ended and some of Russia’s records opened it was revealed that they were not nearly as far along as the CIA was. Oops.

Warfare is used to justify a great many things, and in the context of the Cold War, the CIA’s mind-c0ntrol program seems almost justifiable. Unfortunately, despite the destruction of most of the MKULTRA records, the program appears to have been simply renamed and continued.

The Manchurian Candidate brought the mind-c0ntrol issue to the fore in 1959 via Richard Condon’s book. It was made into a movie in 1962 (and again in 2004). The plotline has the Communist Party brainwashing Americans into committing crimes, which probably only encouraged the CIA to continue its research.

Dirty Laundry
Congress has virtually no oversight over the CIA’s black-operations programs (because, by definition, they are “black”; meaning hidden and completely off-the-record) because the black-ops programs are funded by the CIA’s illegal drug-smuggling operations, thus ensuring there isn’t a line-item in a Congressional budget somewhere for “mind-control.” That doesn’t mean the program isn’t getting funded somehow, of course. Congress never authorized Project MKULTRA in the first place, of course; it still happened.

The CIA is widely thought to be behind the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 80s. Many former gang members have since revealed that they were getting their supply directly from CIA operatives. San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb wrote a serious of articles (and eventually a book, Dark Alliance) about how the CIA funded the Nicaraguan Contras using illicit funds generated by the sale of crack-c0caine (smuggled in from Nicaragua) in Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities. This was part of the Iran-Contra scandal, but it was largely obscured by the limited hangout that saw Ollie North take the fall (he later became a right-wing talk-radio host and Fox News correspondent; yes the same guy who did time for illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund the Contras got his own show on Fox News. Go figure.)

The CIA’s Mind-Controlled Assassin Program Hits the Road
Now, I’m not saying everybody in the CIA is a completely-immoral, evil genius, but like any powerful organization there are different factions. A lot of CIA folks seem to be trying their best to serve their country, but others have different motives, often because of financial ties, paranoia, political ideology or even darker agendas.

Whatever the reason, it seems that the mind-controlled assassins started popping up in the 1960s and have surfaced regularly since then. Like many MKULTRA victims, Sirhan Sirhan, the guy who supposedly shot Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, couldn’t remember the actual crime. If you do some research into RFK’s murder you’ll know that there were more bullets fired at the scene than could be loaded into Sirhan’s gun. It’s likely that there were multiple gunman and that Sirhan was not technically the assassin. The brainwashing process tends to be incredibly destructive and the mind-controlled slaves are not always the best shots. In those cases they still make excellent patsies.

“Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident.”
–John Lennon

Another likely mind-controlled assassin was Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s assassin. After Chapman shot Lennon 4 times he calmly sat down and waited. And waited. And waited until the police came and arrested him. If he had wanted to get away it would’ve been simple to blend into the NYC crowd and disappear into a subway. But killing the target is just the first part of an MKULTRA subject’s programming. The next step is to take the blame.

It’s so simple to blame everything on a lone-nut. These so called “lone-nuts” basically cleared the field of left-leaning presidential candidates and influential pro-peace figures in the 1960s. John F. Kennedy, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all supposedly killed by “lone gunman” who just happened to target the 3 leading lights of the Democratic Party during the tumultuous (but hopeful… until the gunfire) 60s. These assassinations are inherently political acts and we have to ask “who benefits?”, because somebody did.

Before They Scrub History Clean
The process seems to have improved in efficacy over the years, but it’s still incredibly destructive to the mind-controlled victim’s psyche. Look at our most recent example of an MKULTRA assassin, Jared Lee Loughner. He is a shell of a man. A cursory glance reveals him to be utterly insane. But why is he insane; what brought him to this point?

There’s so much more we need to know about Jared Loughner that I can’t be absolutely sure he’s an MKULTRA victim, but it’s looking extremely likely at this point. It’s doubtful there will ever be a thorough investigation; most likely the authorities will cover up any evidence that doesn’t fit the official story so these first few hours are essential in getting an accurate picture before it all goes down the Memory Hole.

I’ve already seen multiple news reports that suggest that Loughner was not the only assassin. Mind-controlled slaves often need their puppetmasters close at hand in case they go off the script; they also need to be triggered into going from dormant mode into kill-mode. However, the cover-up is already in full swing:

Dupnik said authorities were all but certain Loughner acted alone, saying “he’s a typical troubled individual who’s a loner.”

This is conflicted by an earlier report that authorities were seeking a second individual. There’s even a security camera photo of him.

Investigators said they were looking for an accomplice, believed to be in his 50s, who may have assisted in the attack.

Don’t let this information slip down the Memory Hole. The story is titled, “Cops hunt 2nd suspect in deadly Ariz. rampage.” It’s likely that the 50 year old gentlemen in the picture was Loughner’s controller. He waited until the time was right and then gave Loughner the pass-phrase that triggered his attack, possibly using a cell phone.

As of this writing Gabrielle Giffords is miraculously holding onto life despite having a bullet go through her brain. Even if she survives it seems unlikely she’ll ever fully recover. Please send your thoughts and prayers her way as she struggles for life; also her family must be in agony right now. I’m sure they want to see justice done. In order for that to happen we need an investigation that leaves no stone unturned. I’m extremely doubtful that the authorities will allow that to happen since the evidence is already pointing back to the CIA and most of the right-wing political elite has every motivation to paint Loughner as a lone, deranged nutcase. Certainly he was insane, but let’s look at his particular obsession:

“He was one of the last kids tocome [sic] in, and he sat down and almost immediately started laughing to himself in a way that was just kind of creepy,” a classmate, Alex Kotonias, 20, told USA Today.

“As soon as the teacher started going over the syllabus, he had this outburst out of nowhere, didn’t even raise his hand, and started asking the teacher some sort of weird questions about whether he believed in mind control.”

So the suspect was talking openly of mind control in the weeks before the shooting. Perhaps you think I’m stretching a bit, except that I’ve watched the videos on Loughner’s YouTube channel. Amazingly, 4 out of 5 of them talk about mind control! Often, the context is completely missing (as is logic and grammar, but that’s a side effect of being brainwashed); instead he just blurts it out like he did in class.

One of Loughner’s videos is all about mind control. It’s called “How To: Mind Controller“. I’m going to post it below, but don’t worry if it doesn’t make much sense to you (be worried if it does):

Okay, so clearly he’s nuts. But his obsession with mind control is telling. On some level he knows his brain is under attack. Check out his other videos for a deeper window into his damaged psyche.

The mind control video ends with Loughner claiming to be the mind controller: “I’m able to control every belief and religion by being the mind controller!” If you’ve looked at his other videos (which are mostly text-based writings) you’ll know he’s in control of two things: Jack and shit. However, from a certain point of view he has affected all of us. If you let fear and confusion and anger overtake you then you are letting Jared Lee Loughner control you. Don’t give in to fear… or the mainstream media’s storyline.

Fear is the Mind-Killer
Fear and control are big business and they are not left to amateurs. If you recall the run-up to the Iraq War you’ll know that the real masters of fear are the folks in charge; they are the government officials and spoonfed reporters who scared us into thinking war was necessary. They are the mind-controllers: the military-industrial-media complex managed to swing public opinion around from mostly against the war to a majority in favor of invading Iraq. They lied about it and they all got away with it too. The liars and cheats are mostly still in Congress or still pretending to be fair and balanced on our TVs.

Mind control is real.

It’s likely you are a victim at some point in your life. But there are different levels of mind control and fear-based propaganda is an inexpensive and non-invasive technique designed to work in aggregate on the masses. MKULTRA assassins are the other end of the spectrum; they are the focus of much work by the controllers. They are brainwashed using various techniques including drugs, torture, deprivation, isolation, hypnosis and more we can’t even know about yet. Personally, I suspect that there are implants that can be put in the subject brain (or maybe just their ear drum) so that they will literally hear voices. Who knows what the latest technology has allowed the puppetmasters to do?

Loughner tried to join to the Army a few years back. Supposedly he was rejected, but it’s also possible he was shunted into a super-secret MKULTRA program and spent the next two or three years being subjective to incredible abuse, drugs, hypnosis and the rest. Hold your hate until you can be sure that Loughner was in his right mind. I suspect that he is just as much of a victim as Representative Giffords is.

All I know for sure is that this requires more investigation but it’s not going to happen because people are too eager to accept the lone gunman theory because the alternative is too horrifying and crazy. It’s our fear that enables this trick to work again and again. Not just the fear of the government but the fear of being mocked and ridiculed for even suggesting such a thing. I felt that same fear myself while writing this post: “Will people think I’m nuts?” I’m sure some of you will, but I think you’re nuts if you’re bound and determined to overlook the evidence. MKULTRA is real. You can’t deny that. Your only escape from that reality is to believe the CIA’s assurances that the program has been discontinued. I think you’d have trouble finding a less trustworthy organization than the CIA. Disinformation is their job! And they do it well.

So don’t be surprised if, when Loughner starts to talk, he claims not to remember the shooting spree. He probably doesn’t; he was in a hypnotic trance at the time and that information (and so much more) is blocked to him. Also, don’t be surprised if you never hear about the accomplice/controller again. His picture is on this page if you doubt your own mind. Don’t worry; you’re not going crazy, you’re just waking up to a nightmare reality.

As you may be aware, Japan recently elected a new party into power after decades of dominance by the Liberal Democratic Party. The new party (Democratic Party of Japan) promised to be less “passive” in regards to the US. This has not gone over well within the bowels of the Pentagon:

In November last year, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned Japan that it would face “serious consequences” if the new government did not honour the commitments on the bases given by the former government. During his visit, Gates loudly lobbied for an extension of the military bases agreement.

Imagine if a foreign emissary came here warning us to do as he says or there will be “serious consequences”. Such arrogance is why the Japanese are unwilling to continue being our thankless sidekick.

China is also a factor. Japan seems to be throwing its lot in with China and other eastern countries, probably because our bullying behavior and rapidly-declining-in-value currency are getting really annoying.

Is this The Powers That Be’s way of getting back at Japan? It’s more of a warning than a crippling blow, but things could escalate quickly if the wall of secrecy continues to crumble:

The recent revelations of secret security pacts with the U.S. have inflamed public opinion. The Japanese Foreign Minister has appointed a team of scholars to delve into the Foreign Ministry’s archives to track down secret documents relating to security ties with the U.S.

“Secret agreements”? Yeah, this is when the conspiracy theorist in me starts paying attention. There is a lot more underneath the surface if you start to dig. If you find anything juicy, let me know in the comments.

I should also note that the US Government is currently the majority stakeholder in a direct Toyota competitor: General Motors. If “investigating” a foreign competitor to a state-owned business isn’t a conflict of interest, I don’t know what is. Congress has jumped the shark; we’d be better off with a bunch of muppets in charge.

Meanwhile, he Japanese people and their media are watching events in Congress closely, and they are familiar with Kabuki drama.

Still, the Japanese media have carried a number of articles and broadcast segments analyzing the meaning of the upcoming hearing, many pointing to what they saw as political motives behind the actions by lawmakers and regulators.

Mark my words, this bit of political theater is not a coincidence.

The Fed is starting to feel the heat! Keep the pressure on, Congresscritters. Looks like the House is united in demanding a real, independent audit. Now we’ve got to get the Senate on board.

More here.

Er… wait, was it “modest” or “obviously brilliant”?

Regardless, I have an idea, everyone! Stand back, place safety goggles over your eyes, make sure the lead-lined X-ray bib is securely fastened to your chest and that your boots tied up tight.

Some Background
Now, I may be an old-fashioned (young) guy, but I believe that fair is fair. And our tax code, ladies and gentlemen, is not fair.

For instance, did you know that:

Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO’s estimate.

What a sweet deal for them! They get to operate without having a huge tax burden weighing down on them, freeing them to make more investments and take more risks.

Of course, they have a shitload of capital, credit and resources to begin with. But this is America, goddammit! We don’t make corporations pay taxes no matter how much they fuck up the environment or make insane profits on the backs of their low-income workers.

But — and I’m getting to my ridiculously cool proposal — I can’t help but think that it’s not especially fair that multi-billion dollar companies don’t have to pay any taxes (ZERO fucking taxes) whereas, I, as a Regular Joe, have to pay about 30% of my income in taxes every year.

Perhaps I am just a whiner, not fit to lick the boots of a mighty multinational like Wal*mart. I know, I know. This is America. Corporations have more rights and resources than regular citizens. Yeah, “The Constitution guarantees…” blah blah blah… Obviously the Constitution don’t mean shit. Money talks and the Constitution was written on hemp paper by a bunch of proto-hippy revolutionaries who wore funny clothes and probably squealed like girls when tickled.

This is America, goddammit! We drive hummers and invade countries full of smelly brown people who are all determined to kill us (our Media assures us this; it must be true!) or even just because they looked at us funny. We don’t have time for “rules” or “equality” or what’s it called.. uh…. libraries? .. no… uh, — “Liberty!” Yeah, that’s it.

But what I want is not to return our country to the whole Constitution thing. I’m not that naive. However, I do think it would be freakin’ neat if we lived in a country where lawful citizens were counted as 3/5ths of a corporation. Currently, we’re about a zillionth of a corporation, so 3/5ths would be a vast improvement.

My Blindingly-Awesome Proposal
U.S. citizens, when paying their taxes, should be able to write off “overhead“. Only our “profits” should be taxed.

That means, no taxes should be administered until after the essentials of running a healthy body/mind have been accounted for.

What are the essentials? Food, water, shelter and clothing are a good start (no, a big screen TV is not an “essential”). That means I should be able to deduct all of the money I spend on food, rent/mortgage and clothes (within reason) before any other deductions. A healthy mind is important, too, so education costs, books and maybe even an internet connection should also be deductable.

Also, I have to have certain things in order to do my job — or even get to it — like a functioning car, gas, a bunch of hygienic equipment to look/smell nice, a cell phone and a computer. That’s all overhead; my paycheck is not “profit.” It’s revenue. I have to spend a big chunk of it just to stay alive and another chunk to fit into the corporate world. These are expenses and they are subtracted from revenue before you end up with profits — if you have any.

As you probably know, only corporate profits are taxable. Most overhead costs (the costs of running a business) are exempt. Wikipedia lists examples of overhead expenses as follows:

Overhead expenses include accounting fees, advertising, depreciation, indirect labor, insurance, interest, legal fees, rent, repairs, supplies, taxes, telephone bills, travel and utilities costs.

So I should be able to deduct my high-paid accountants as well. Then I can make sure, like most corporations, that I pay no income tax. Alternately, we could just leave gaping loopholes in the tax code so normal people don’t have to hire expensive accountants (and then deduct the costs of their services). Something like, “if you don’t feel like paying any income tax this year, check this box.”

So you see, my super-cool proposal just brings Joe Sixpack into the same league as the corporations, who already have incredible advantages in the economy because of their size and reach.

Corporate Welfare is Only for Wealthy Corporations
Small businesses generally take it up the rear as well since they can’t afford all those slippery accountants. Or maybe those small businesses just need to take a page from the criminals on Wall Street and learn how to privatize profits while socializing losses.

It doesn’t seem fair to me that the average guy/gal has to assume the vast majority of the tax burden when most of are making jack diddly squat compared to a major multinational. Fair is fair. Progressive income taxation is based on the idea that the rich should pay a greater portion of their income because they can afford it and because they owe it to society; especially since the rich people/corporations take advantage of the situation and pay their workers a pitance while making them work long hours in often-dangerous conditions. Meanwhile, the CEO gets his taxes paid for by the corporation via what is known as a “gross-up”.

Think it’s unfair of me to use the corporate tax code instead of the individual one? Well, like I said, fair is fair. Corporations are increasingly using the individual tax code:

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called “S” corporations pay taxes under individua
l tax codes.

“Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code,” Edwards said.

Turnabout is fair play.

Even though my brilliant tax proposal seems like a total giveaway I could make it a reality. If I had high-powered corporate lobbyists at my disposal I could enact all sorts of people-friendly laws. I’d use my army of ninja-lobbyists to get a 28-hour work week and every Friday off, along with guaranteed overtime for salaried workers and an Economic Bill of Rights for all.

Instead, the already-rich corporations have the lobbyists and they use them to get ever-greater amounts corporate welfare. Then they rewrite the laws so that the managers pay a lesser percentage of tax than their secretaries do, as Warren Buffett pointed out:

Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said: “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.

Notice how he implies he could’ve made his effective tax rate much lower if he had bothered. But he didn’t. Badass. But most CEOs are not as cool as Warren… of course, he could probably stand to pay his secretary more than 60K a year if he’s making 46 million, don’t you think?

Anyway, the point is: The system is unfair. Let’s try to level the playing field a little bit.

My proposal is not to make humans equal to corporations. That’s crazy. I just want to make a person worth 3/5ths of a corporation. Is that too much to ask?

Kucinich has introduced the Articles of Impeachment against Bush

…and the Media hasn’t said shit.

“Liberal Media” my ass! The Media is fucking fascist, end of story. They are utterly controlled by the same corporate interests that control both major political parties. That’s why Dennis Kucinich is a pariah in his own party — he actually looks out for the Constitution and the rights of We The People. Such dedication to Liberty is considered treason in the bowels of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

A few mainstream outlets picked up the story and managed to spend an approximate average of less than 200 words describing the measure. They couldn’t even be bothered to list more than a few of the 35 articles of impeachment.

I’ve seen better reporting in a fucking high school newspaper.

I don’t blame the beat reporters; if their editors said “give me 2,000 words” they would have. As is, they probably had to fight to get 200.

But it’s disgusting. I mean, jeeze, it’s only the impeachment of the goddamn President of the United States of America. They all managed to mention that it’s not politically feasible. Well I wonder why that is, you jackasses! It’s because you won’t cover it! If you did, everything would change, no matter how shitty and biased your coverage. Mr. 25% Approval Rating would not find many advocates in the populace, even if he would in the dominant press. And then you’d look pretty stupid, wouldn’t you, defending the murdering megalomaniac who launched an illegal war. Those of us who still remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton know that it takes very little to whip the Media into a frothing frenzy of obsessive, inane coverage. Surely you could do the same for Bush. But you won’t.

Because you’re traitors.

Yeah, that’s right. I said it. And it’s true. This president is the most evil, diabolical man ever elected and you, the supposed Fourth Estate, won’t criticize him in a voice above a whisper. It’s fucking pathetic.

Look at Kucinich’s 35 articles of impeachment. There’s a lot of red meat here:

#1: Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq

#2 Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression

#3 Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

#4 Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

#14: Misprision of a felony, misuse and exposure of classified information and cover up (Plame outing)

#15: Providing immunity from prosecution for criminal conduct for contractors in Iraq

#17: Illegal detention – detaining indefinitely, and without charge, American citizens and foreign captives (suspension of habeus)

#18: Torture – secretly authorizing and encouraging use of torture, as matter of official policy

#19 Rendition

#24 Spying on citizens violating 4th Amendment

#26 Announcing intent to violate laws w/signing statements, and then violating those laws.

#27 Failing to comply with congressional subpoenas, and instructing others to do so.

#29: Conspiracy to violate voting rights act of 1965, Ohio Sec of State 2004-06

#34: Obstruction into the investigation of 9/11

That’s just a few of them. And this isn’t wing-nut stuff, this is all stuff that has been discussed at one time or another in the mainstream press. Much of it was hushed up (the NSA spying scandal, election fraud, 9/11 obstruction) but some of it was loud and clear (torture, Plame, illegal Iraq War). Far from being left-wing lunacy, this is the last 7.5 years, distilled into 35 bullet points.

And yet the Media won’t cover a congressman trying to hold Bush/Cheney accountable for their crimes.

I already told you why. But let it sink in. The Mainstream Media are the ones who made the Bush/Cheney disaster possible. They’re the ones who greased the wheels, regurgitated the lies, jumped on the bandwagon and hushed up the really bad shit. Bush, without a fawning press corps, is just another partisan nutcase with a rich daddy. He wouldn’t’ve been re-elected, let alone “elected” in the first place (another coverup there).

Let me lay it down for ya, real simple: If Bush hangs, Brian Williams should hang, too. If Cheney hangs, Tim Russert needs to swing from the same pole. If Rumsfeld goes down to the gallows, Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks need to die too. The blood of OVER ONE MILLION IRAQI INNOCENTS is on their hands.

Maybe that’s why the Media is so protective of the Bush regime: They know if Bush goes down, they all go down. They’ve all bloodied their hands and sullied their souls together. Might as well stick together until the bitter end.

But if we don’t stop them, they’ll turn this nation into a fascist state and make you and I into criminals for believing in justice, peace and freedom. Somehow we’ve got to stop them, but I just don’t know how. I’m just some random guy with a blog. What can I do? There’s no one representing my interests in Washington except Dennis Kucinich.

One man, standing up against the Forces of Evil, spitting in the wind and calling for change. This doesn’t look good for the underdogs.

Meanwhile, the supposed hope of mankind is cozying up to Israel, possibly attending the secret Bilderberg meeting (another media coverup) and generally doing whatever it takes to get elected. Fair enough. But Barack Obama had better watch out that he doesn’t sell his soul in the process.

Maybe the whole Obama campaign is just a mirage, a hallucination by those of us who have dreamed of someone who could bring our government back from the brink of tyranny and outright fascism.

I hope I’m wrong, but it’s hard to believe in anything or anybody anymore. We’ve been utterly betrayed by the government, the media and the elite. It just hurts too much to care anymore. The audacity of hope, indeed.

I’d feel a lot more hopeful if I knew somebody out there was fighting the good fight. I sleep a little sounder knowing Kucinich has the balls of a man twice his size, but he’s only one man. We need a few hundred more like him in Congress.

Dennis Kucinich: I salute you. You are a true American patriot.

There exists, somewhere deep in the belly of the NSA, a database so large, so secret, and so illegal, that few government officials will dare talk about it, even off the record.

Sources familiar with the program say that the government’s data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. [emphasis mine]

Are you on the list? You have no way of knowing. There’s no way to reason with them, to tell them you’re not a threat. There’s no recourse, no due process, no rights.

This is the dark heart of our government, silently beating away in the darkest corner of a military base somewhere deep underground. There are people in position who long for (or at least plan for) the chance to take power in the next emergency. The Constitution would be suspended, Congress rendered impotent, martial law declared and cities locked down.

For what?

Fear. This government fears its citizens, not because they’re all terrorists, but because many of them still believe in democracy. Such people are dangerous. Believing in the Constitution might be enough to get you on the list.

Let’s imagine a harrowing scenario: coordinated bombings in several American cities culminating in a major blast—say, a suitcase nuke—in New York City. Thousands of civilians are dead. Commerce is paralyzed. A state of emergency is declared by the president. Continuity of Governance plans that were developed during the Cold War and aggressively revised since 9/11 go into effect. Surviving government officials are shuttled to protected underground complexes carved into the hills of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Power shifts to a “parallel government” that consists of scores of secretly preselected officials. (As far back as the 1980s, Donald Rumsfeld, then CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and Dick Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, were slated to step into key positions during a declared emergency.) The executive branch is the sole and absolute seat of authority, with Congress and the judiciary relegated to advisory roles at best. The country becomes, within a matter of hours, a police state.

Why? Why do we need to become a police state in order to become “secure”? Well, I already mentioned it above; the people who put these COG plans together are not patriots. They are traitors who wish to dispense with the annoyances of representative government and move instead to a system where everything is much smoother… for those in power.

It’s strange that they would throw 200 years of liberty at the first sign of trouble … if you don’t know who these people are. Notice who gets protected in the scenario above. They aren’t saving the Constitution, they’re saving their own asses. They don’t have contingency plans in place to ensure that citizens’ rights are upheld; no, they’re only concerned with maintaining their power and their control over us.

It’s not necessary that the government be saved. We can start a new one and Lord knows it’ll be better than the one we’ve got. But the one we’ve got is intent on saving its own skin, Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned. This isn’t a Continuity of Liberty plan. This is a Discontinuation of Liberty plan.

The totality of this plan, the way every tactically-important aspect has been planned for seizure and “continuity”, is to me indicative of Totalitarianism. The state and those in power can’t even imagine why we wouldn’t want the government to control everything. The idea that we could survive just fine without a bloated Federal government doesn’t even occur to them.

You know, the United States of America was originally supposed to be an alliance amongst soveriegn states. If something bad happens in Washington D.C. that shouldn’t directly affect Arizona or Minnesota, except as far as Federal money is concerned (the main tool by which the Federal government has tightened its control over the states).

Realize this: We don’t need a strong Federal government! We have state and local governments to take care of things important to every American; things like roads, power, water, communications and other services.

And who’s planning all this stuff anyway? Surely a competent agency with a devotion to civil liberties, right?

Haha, just kidding. You know we’re fucked: It’s FEMA!

Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary.

Seriously.

Well, I guess I should look at the silver lining: FEMA will probably be just an incompetent at taking our liberties away as at helping those in need… But that’s probably optimistic on my part. The reason FEMA sucks at disaster relief is because it was never really set up to be a benevolent agency; the idea behind FEMA was always this: Seizing control of the nation during an emergency.

This is the real purpose of the War on Terror. It’s to get us used to the idea that the government needs to step in and take over when things get rough. What they don’t tell you is that they’re intentionally creating a culture of fear to make the poisonous medecine go down easier, and they’re probably working the other end of things too, creating the conditions for terrorists to thrive so they’ll launch attacks and trigger the COG plans that were the whole point of the War on Terror in the first place. So, like the War on Drugs, the WOT is reall just a War on Liberty.

All this brings us back to the Main Core database:

Another well-informed source—a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community—says this particular program has roots going back at least to the 1980s and was set up with help from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been told that the program utilizes software that makes predictive judgments of targets’ behavior and tracks their circle of associations with “social network analysis” and artificial intelligence modeling tools.

“The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help,” he says. “Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets.” An intelligence expert who has been briefed by high-level contacts in the Department of Homeland Se
curity confirms that a database of this sort exists, but adds that “it is less a mega-database than a way to search numerous other agency databases at the same time.”

The fact that there are 8 million of us in this database is nothing less than horrifying. If there were really 8 million terrorists in the USA we’d have people exploding with Baghdad-like regularity… but we don’t. Nope, it’s far more likely that the people in this database are those like myself who believe in liberty and democracy. We are the true threat a tyrannical government would face in an emergency because we would want the Constitution to be reinstated. The COGers won’t let that happen.

That is why we need to be monitored. All of us. All the time. For no reason other than we might be a threat some time in the future. Maybe. The pesky 4th amendment makes this so much more difficult than the government would like, but after years of merciless attack there’s not much left of it in the public consciousness or on the law books. Here’s a look at what they monitor:

The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.

Basically, you are being monitored at all times. The NSA has been scooping up anything and everything on the internet for years. They already had phone conversations and financial transactions.

The privacy concerns are horrifying enough, but what’s worse is that the database is probably useless at preventing terrorism:

In any case, mass watch lists of domestic citizens may do nothing to make us safer from terrorism. Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM, a world-renowned expert in data mining, contends that such efforts won’t prevent terrorist conspiracies. “Because there is so little historical terrorist event data,” Jonas tells Radar, “there is not enough volume to create precise predictions.”

But there is a lot of data on regular Americans who aren’t planning any attacks. And that data can be misused, and it probably will be at the first opportunity.

So apparently I have a blog or something. Wouldn’t it be nice if I updated it every now and then?

Sorry for the nearly-a-month gap between updates. I’ve been busy, depressed, sick, busy and exhausted. And busy.

A lot has changed, but much more hasn’t. I get sick of the same old shit. It’s just depressing to have to contend with the fact that we’ve got a crew of fascists in the White House and no one seems to care, especially not Congress.

Similar to Hitler and Nazis we may have to wait for them to cause their own undoing. That seems like the way things are going: The Fed and Bush admin have completely fucked our economy to the point where I’m wondering whether I should move somewhere the hell else.

They said an emergency cut by the US Federal Reserve to its discount rate and a weekend deal for JPMorgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns at a fire-sale price had added to a sense of crisis sweeping through global financial markets.

The volatility spilled over into commodities Monday as oil prices soared to fresh highs and gold prices jumped as investors looked to safe-havens.

The fact that the government is bailing out mega-rich corporations at the expense of regular-joe taxpayers almost doesn’t even register in my mind. We’ve got bigger fish to fry: The stability of the economy as a whole is threatened.

It’s important to realize that the US dollar is a fiat currency, backed by nothing but promises. There’s no gold backing, no silver; nothing. It’s paper. It’s backed only by the promise of the government that its citizens will continue being productive and paying their taxes. But if the economy goes even lower into the pit of doom it’s falling in, then the American taxpayer will have trouble paying for much of anything. Houses are foreclosing and jobs are dwindling. There’s no end in sight so we don’t know whether this will be just a minor correction (read: recession) or a major depression.

It’s looking more and more like a depression.

There’s a lot of baggage here. The dollar has been inflated in value for years and now the cows are coming home to roost ontop of the chickens who wanted to be elsewhere but couldn’t afford transport because of high gas prices.

But’s the subprime mortgage mess that’s really triggering this downfall. Those same loans kept the economy afloat a few years ago, but now they’re acting more like a millstone. So, in order to save us from economic ruin, the Bush admin is robbing us of our own money. This money will be sent to the enormous banks who fucked us in the first place:

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

The Spitzer scandal proves once again that the most horrible thing any politician can ever do is have sex.

You can start illegal wars, violate every American’s 4th amendment rights simultaneously, give away billions to rich cronies, display utter incompetence and total hypocrisy, but God help you if you have sex with somebody who’s not your wife! (the solution is obvious)

Oh well. Spitzer was a hypocrite, too. He should’ve moved for legalized prostitution when he had the chance. But what really burns me is how we hold (or don’t hold) politicians accountable. Spitzer’s indiscretions are mostly a matter of concern for his wife; it’s none of our fucking business (ha!). Bush’s crimes are at a war-crime level or higher. Yet he is protected by the Democratic Congress as if he were one of their own.

Well, I guess he is.

The truth is that the ruling class looks after their own. Spitzer was standing in the way of economic progress so he had to go. Of course “economic progress” is just a euphemism for wealth redistribution; from the poor to the rich.

In the end, we’re on our own. The rich will look after themselves/each other, but they will only think about us insofar as we are necessary to their survival. It’s foolish naivety to believe otherwise, I’m afraid. They’ll save their servents before us, simply because they want someone to serve them hot toddies in the underground bunkers.

So my advice is: watch the markets. If there’s a run on the banks you’ll want to be first in line to get your cash. Remember, only the first 10% will get their money out. Everybody else is completely fucked if the FDIC doesn’t have a couple trillion laying around.

Of course what do I know? I’m just a simple peasant giving advice to other peasants on how to deal with an economic system invented by the nobles for the benefit of the nobles. There’s really not much we can do.

But you might be wise to avoid listening to the mouthpieces of the nobles. Their advice is usually self-serving at best. Perhaps even scarier is the idea that the high priests of the economy have no fucking idea what’s happening or how to stop it.

Sounds like a good time for a deus ex machina. Somebody must’ve seen this debacle coming, right? We need a white knight but all I see are charlatans, jokers and sycophants. Hoping for a miracle doesn’t seem like a very good strategy, but what other choice do we have?

Corporation – n. “An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility”

Ambrose Bierce

The Radium Girls.

Sounds like an all-girl punk rock band, right? Well, unfortunately, it describes the murderous actions of an American corporation; the willful disregard of the disposable human beings working for the company: US Radium.

In 1922, a bank teller named Grace Fryer became concerned when her teeth began to loosen and fall out for no discernible reason. Her troubles were compounded when her jaw became swollen and inflamed, so she sought the assistance of a doctor in diagnosing the inexplicable symptoms. Using a primitive X-ray machine, the physician discovered serious bone decay, the likes of which he had never seen. Her jawbone was honeycombed with small holes, in a random pattern reminiscent of moth-eaten fabric.As a series of doctors attempted to solve Grace’s mysterious ailment, similar cases began to appear throughout her hometown of New Jersey. One dentist in particular took notice of the unusually high number of deteriorated jawbones among local women, and it took very little investigation to discover a common thread; all of the women had been employed by the same watch-painting factory at one time or another.

Check out the whole agonizing story.

In 1925, three years after Grace’s health problems began, a doctor suggested that her jaw problems may have had something to do with her former job at US Radium. As she began to explore the possibility, a specialist from Columbia University named Frederick Flynn asked to examine her. Flynn declared her to be in fine health. It would be some time before anyone discovered that Flynn was not a doctor, nor was he licensed to practice medicine, rather he was a toxicologist on the US Radium payroll. A “colleague” who had been present during the examination– and who had confirmed the healthy diagnosis– turned out to be one of the vice-presidents of US Radium. Many of the Undark painters had been developing serious bone-related problems, particularly in the jaw, and the company had begun a concerted effort to conceal the cause of the disease. The mysterious deaths were often blamed on syphilis to undermine the womens’ reputations, and many doctors and dentists inexplicably cooperated with the powerful company’s disinformation campaign.

What sane VP would masquerade as a doctor to befuddle some poor, ill women? What else could make a man act like this?

The organizational structure of the corporation allowed and even encouraged these individuals to act in a criminal conspiracy to protect profits for the shareholders.

Certainly, the individuals involved are responsible for their actions, but look the role of the corporation in this. They were all acting for the benefit of the corporation. Why do we set up amoral, profit-driven corporations and then act surprised when their employees do awful things in the name of greed?

But here’s another question for you: What penalties did the VP and the toxicologist face for their subterfuge? My guess is: NONE.

These ladies died because of the coordinated action of a group of people. If we accept that one person engaged in such behavior is immoral, what do we call a group of immoral people acting the same way? A corporation.

Corporations concentrate power in the hands of a few (management and shareholders) so that the average joe (or jane in this case) has very little leverage.

Corporations have unique powers which enable them to escape prosecution for repeated lawbreakings. Nobody goes to jail because you can’t put a corporation in jail, only people. In that way, a corporation is superior to a mere human. It is a master of humans, not subject to laws that normal humans must endure.

Only individual officers and henchmen (management & staff) can be prosecuted for individual crimes that the corporation conceived and covered up. A corporation lives forever and can replace the personnel lost to jail in little time. Corporations are made of humans, but humans are abundant. Humans are irrelevent.

Those humans within the super-human corporate personhood are excempt from the law, and can’t help but feel a bit superior. Hiding behind a squadron of lawyers and a phalanx of security guards is easy for the VP of US Radium, but that’s not the case if he’s just some unemployed guy. Corporations grant humans power, not the other way around. Because they 0wn.

The special powers granted to the corporation make it damn near impossible for the individual human to stand against the mighty corporation in court or even in the public sphere, like the halls of Congress. Corporations rule the roost there, too. Everywhere there’s power or leverage, the corporations are already there. Their power and reach is such that corporations are superior to mere mortals under the code of law. They can’t vote but they can do pretty much anything else.

The conclusion is awful, but unavoidable.

Corporate Man is Super-Sapien.

]] art by Zbigniew Libera [[

If corporations decide that we “normal”, non-corporate-officer humans are too plentiful (oversupply lowers demand), they will simply draw up plans to wipe us out, buy the necessary politicans and carry out the fiendish plot.

We live in the corporations’ world. We who are not of the corporate body (“blessed be the name of our CEO”) are infidels in this land.

It’s a Corporate Holocaust©®™!!!

Our current Constitutional Crisis summed up in one pithy comic:

It wouldn’t be so depressing if it weren’t so true. The myth of partisanship is just that; a myth. In reality, both parties are controlled by a higher party: The Money Party (or the Business Party if you prefer).

If the two parties were boxers, the Democrats would be the one throwing the fight. The Republicans would be the one biting the other guy’s ear off.

No, not cheapskates; they’re quite profligate with our money. I meant that as far as buying a politician’s support goes, they are well worth the money. I’m not just being my usual cynical self by saying that; studies back me up.

Companies that give money to political campaigns have better-performing stocks, according to a new study, than companies that don’t contribute. It’s no small gap, either. Corporations that give the most have beaten the market by 2.5 percentage points a year over the past 25 years.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” says Charles Gabriel, a longtime political analyst with Prudential Equity Group, a division of Prudential Financial. “Unfortunately, an investment in Washington pays off.”

What is surprising is how much companies get for so little money. The public companies that do give money, on average, fork out just $1,700 to $2,000 per campaign and support an average of 56 federal candidates in each two-year cycle.

For the low, low, low price of just $1999.99 you can walk away with a brand new Washington politician!!! Act now, before the good ones are taken! Don’t walk away from this deal, folks! Having a Congressperson in your pocket is always a safe investment! For less than 2 thousand dollars you can get a politician to write and vote for legislation that will bring your company millions of dollars of tax breaks and more! Act now! Supplies are limited!! [/infomercial pitchman]

Campaign contributions are just a form of legalized bribery. Anybody who tells you different is either a fool or complicit.

Warren Buffett is no stranger to money. He’s one of the richest men in the world; I think he’s in third place at the moment.When he says the tax code is more lenient to the ultra-rich I’m inclined to believe him. After all, it was a bunch of rich guys who bought the politicians who wrote it.

The very rich in America pay taxes at a lower rate than most working people, and, due to a wrinkle in the tax code, private-equity partners enjoy some of the lowest tax rates of all. At a Hillary Clinton fund-raiser in New York last month, Warren Buffett, no stranger to wealth, told an audience filled with bankers and real-estate developers the system was, in effect, rigged. “This is what Congress in its wisdom did: the 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter.” Buffett (who is a director of NEWSWEEK’s parent, The Washington Post Company) offered a million dollars to any fellow magnate who could prove he had higher tax rates than his secretary.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this, but should be pissed off enough to fix it. It’s time to put some people in Congress who aren’t beholden to the rich. Right now there are two types of congress-critters: Those who were brought into office by rich men and those who are rich men. That’s not democracy; that’s oligarchy.

The creepy thing is that these people really do all know each other:

He [Steve Schwarzman] told The New York Times three years ago that he saw Averell Harriman, a financier who became an envoy to Russia and adviser to Democratic presidents, as a kind of role model. When Schwarzman was a brash young Yale student in 1969, he wrote Harriman, asking for an audience (the two had been in the same secret society, Skull and Bones; Schwarzman was a class behind George W. Bush).

Powerful folks all know each other. They keep tabs on each other. They help each other. They go to the same schools; they have access to the halls of power. They are the moneyed-elite. They are The Establishment, The Oligarchy: Your True Masters. Bow before them, peasant.

The Oligarchy won’t allow impeachment.

However, if you want to remove the Oligarchy you have to remove Bush first. It’s a Catch-22 born in Hell and swaddled in conspiracy. Some people suggest that the Democratic Congress is simply incompetent and divided. I think it’s much more likely that they are servile and paid-for.

Check out this awesome article from Glenn Greenwald. He nails the Democratic-controlled Congress for being the sell-outs they are.

Impeachment is necessary, but the Democrats resist where there’s merit while the Republicans rushed forth without the People behind them. Both parties are a bunch of fuck-ups. They’re so incompetent that there’s no difference between that and evil. When that’s the case you have evil hiding itself behind a Cloak of Stupidity. Ironically, it’s a brilliant plan.

Whoever said “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity,” was essentially writing evil a blank check. It seems the quote itself is stupid…or evil. Hanlon, however, created the quotation as more of a joke, not a axiom set in stone. Foolish are those who set store by it.

The Dark Ones will gladly use the Cloak of Stupidity to escape perceived culpability because the repercussions for negligence are much less severe than those for malice. It’s a simple cost-benefit analysis for the neocons: “We’re not evil, we’re stupid!” I predict you’ll be hearing that excuse a lot in the near future. Don’t fall for it. If you wear the Cloak of Stupidity you deserve to be stripped naked, warts laid bear.

The Oligarchy reacts to sunlight like a vampire does. Expose the Hidden Hand and you’ll be one step closer to impeachment and true liberty.