Nefarious people within our government suppress any evidence of malicious intent and instead encourage the perception of incompetence, which often results in the blame being diffused throughout the bureaucracy rather than focused on the individual bad actors in power, who are ultimately responsible, but able to escape justice through a hidden network of friendships and alliances known as the establishment.
Musharraf blamed Islamic extremists for Bhutto’s death and said he would redouble his efforts to fight them.
“This is the work of those terrorists with whom we are engaged in war,” he said in a nationally televised speech. “I have been saying that the nation faces the greatest threats from these terrorists. … We will not rest until we eliminate these terrorists and root them out.”
Right, right, right. “Terrorists.” Gotcha. Anything bad happens, it’s dem damn dirty terr’rists.
Isn’t it weird how the terrorists’ are so kean to assassinate a politician with no actual power who may or may not have had a shot at the presidency? Especially when the presidency is currently occupied by a secular militant Bush-crony who hated Bhutto?
Hmmm….
Meanwhile, our esteemed president was quick to blame teh terr’rists too:
In the U.S., a tense looking President Bush strongly condemned the attack “by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy.”
Undermine Pakistanti democracy? You mean, like by supporting a dictator instead of demonstrators agitating for liberty? I guess that makes Bush a “murderous extremist.” Even more interesting is how he already knows that it was some lone gunman (“extremist” is a great catch-all) when there hasn’t been an investigation yet.
In fact, all of the neocon/fascist front have already condemned the attack, from Sarkozy to Karzai to Gordon Brown to the Pope. They were so quick with statements you have to wonder if they knew it was coming. And every single one of them has accepted Musharraf’s version of events without question.
Interesting….
Of course, Americans are in the thrall of a malicious and corrupt media establishment. There will be no questioning the official version of events.
The Pakistanis at least are not so stupid:
Many chanted slogans against Musharraf, accusing him of complicity in her killing.
“We repeatedly informed the government to provide her proper security and appropriate equipment … but they paid no heed to our requests,” Malik said.
As news of her death spread, angry supporters took to the streets.
In Pakistan it’s obvious. The president’s most esteemed foe is dead with a bullet in her neck. Do the fucking math.
Musharraf is a military man. The military is the most powerful institution in Pakistan and their intelligence service, the ISI, is a known collaborator with the CIA (some say it’s just a CIA puppet). The motive, means and opportunity are all right there. But we Americans — you know home of the brave, land of the free — will swallow the Musharraf propaganda like manna because our Dear Leader and his corrupt, oligarchical establishment have their fingers in this wicked little pie.
Pakistan is necessary for the perpetuation of other frauds, including the al Qaeda myth. That’s why control of Pakistan cannot be allowed to return to the hands of a democrat. The secret could be revealed, and that is most certainly worth killing for.
This is not the first attempt on Bhutto’s life:
Bhutto had returned to Pakistan from an eight-year exile on Oct. 18. On the same day, she narrowly escaped injury when her homecoming parade in Karachi was targeted in a suicide attack that killed more than 140 people.
That was Musharraf’s first “welcome back” message. Now, he has said “goodbye.”
Now here comes the lie:
Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban hated Bhutto for her close ties to the Americans and support for the war on terrorism. A local Taliban leader reportedly threatened to greet Bhutto’s return to the country with suicide bombings.
That’s a straight-up lie. First of all the Taliban has no claim on Pakistan; they are (ostensibly) Afghanis who are more concerned with fighting the Bush-puppet Hamad Karzai. Second, if al Qaeda truly hated Bush and the Americans they would target Musharraf, since he is Bush’s closest and most powerful ally in Pakistan. Bhutto’s death does nothing but strengthen his hand. The truth is that the CIA and the ISI worked together to train and create al Qaeda for bin Laden as a convenient scapegoat for anything and everything.
Now al Qaeda is getting the blame again. How convenient for a dictator like Musharraf (or Bush) to have a shadowy, ultra-evil organization to blame for everything. How convenient that al Qaeda apparently hates the same people that Bush and Musharraf do. How convenient that al Qaeda never seems to manage to kill right-wing hardliners but has amazing success with leftist pro-liberty politicians. How extremely fucking convenient.
The CIA/ISI/al-Qaeda axis is just a modern day Gestapo. They are an all-purpose assassination squad under control of the evil proto-fascist oligarchs who rule this planet.
It’s time for people to wake up and see through the lies. How many more people have to die before we finally learn we’re being played for fools?
UPDATE 12/28: The police charged with providing security for Bhutto left their posts shortly before the assassination.
Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her “abandoned their posts,” leaving just a handful of Bhutto’s own bodyguards protecting her.
As commenter pk_analyst points out below Bhutto was shot with an AK-47 rifle. Now the spinning, changing storylines and Big Lies come into play. In order to do a proper cover-up the authorities will have to eliminate the gun (many are saying she hit her head on some sort of lever instead of taking a bullet) and throw all the blame on mysertious al Qaeda members who may or may not even exist.
While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto’s death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, is the garrison city that houses the Pakistani military’s headquarters.
Just to be clear, “intelligence officials” almost certainly means “CIA officials.” The CIA is busily spinning the press. This is misinformation, folks. You are being lied to indirectly by your government and somewhat unwittingly by the media. Just so you know.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character, Sherlock Holmes, was found of saying,
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
And now, I will quote a DK diary that pretty much says it all:
There have been several recommended diaries about the call by House Judiciary committee members Robert Wexler, Tammy Baldwin and Luis Gutierrez for the committee to actually begin hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
But don’t you find it curious that there’s been literally no traditional media coverage of it? Three Members of Congress, all on the Judiciary Committee, call outright for impeachment hearings, and no one reports it? [emphasis mine]
The three even wrote an op-ed together explaining their reasoning and offered it to the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. No one has yet agreed to run it.
Isn’t that interesting, in and of itself? I mean, say what you want about impeachment, but when three members of the Judiciary Committee sign on to a positive call for it, that’s worth a little news blurb, don’t you think?
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this out. The word “conspiracy” gets tossed around a lot these days, but only for mockery in the mainstream press. Now we know why.
The whole establishment is committed. Between 9/11, Iraq, warrantless wiretapping and torture, they’re in this together. Big Media, Big Business and Big Brother are partners in this debacle; they sink or swim together.
There will be no help from the media on this one. We’re on our own.
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.
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.
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 gets annoying, you know, constantly explaining this to people, only to receive blank stares or mockery in response. I’ve long wished the Establishment (or “Illuminati” if you prefer) would just come out and admit it. It’s not like we’re in a position to do anything about it anyway. Well David Rockefeller (or D-Rock, as his friends in the international finanace ‘hood call him) has finally cleared the air:
“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” – From Rockefeller’s “Memoirs”, (p.405).
Uh, yes, that is the charge, Rockie, and what’s more we charge you with using any and every means at your disposal to accomplish this, including bribery, murder, lying, fraud, coups, mind-control, and, ironically, belligerent nationalism.
“The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism. ‘Populists’ believe in conspiracies, and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world’s economy. Because of my name and prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of ‘conspirator in chief’ from some of these people.
“Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted from our active international role during the past half-century. Not only was the very real threat posed by Soviet Communism overcome, but there have been fundamental improvements in societies around the world, particularly in the United States, as a result of global trade, improved communications, and the heightened interaction of people from different cultures. Populists rarely mention these positive consequences, nor can they cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic growth and the expansion of our political power without them.”
You will notice that he does not deny it. If anything he has confirmed that their is a “secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, [who] control the world’s economy”. What more is there to say?
Just this: Certainly we all appreciate the many benefits of modern capitalism and the technological goodies we’ve gotten our hands on. But at what cost? Politically, economically and ecologically it’s a loser for those of us who aren’t moguls. Who is going to control the one-world government he so fervently desires? If past performance is any indication of future performance, we can expect these internationalists to keep all the power to themselves. Democracy is simply “incompatible” with his smooth, orderly, one-world utopia.
The scary thing here is the idea, now realized before our eyes, that not all people who want to conquer the world are madmen. Some of them, clearly, know exactly what they’re doing; they plan decades ahead, carefully lay the groundwork and, with considerable patience, skill and cunning, achieve their goals through whatever methods required.
The whole affair is amazingly complex, but then again, so is collecting stamps, memorizing Tolkein or learning to program in C++. I suppose when you’re the billionaire son of a billionaire you need to have a hobby to keep occupied.
There are still many, many unanswered questions about 9/11. One of them revolves around the radios that firemen were using on that day, and a shady no-bid contract between the city of New York and Motorola. Was it just standard corruption, or was there something more? And why isn’t the Media covering this story? Robert Greenwald takes a look:
I love Wikipedia! Join us for our first episode of Electric Monkeypedia in which I quote a small passage of Wikipedia and, thereby, it becometh funny. All you have to do is read the following with a British accent:
The most distinct product of the joint is the roach, or unburnt unconsumed butt end. Roaches are typically either consumed with the aid of a roach clip which offers a narrow grip without the risk of burning one’s fingers, or are saved to be combined with other roaches and rerolled into a composite or second generation roach joint. Roaches are also sometimes finished by being smoked in a pipe, or (in rare cases) consumed by eating. This is sometimes referred to as “eating the peanut”, “popping the roach” or “Wu Tang-ing it”.
Ah, so funny. This is a real Wikipedia article, folks. I just found this today — don’t ask what I was doing — and had a laugh. It was clearly written by stoners, or by a nonsmoker who went deep undercover.
Man, all the tools are right there for you. Kids these days have it easy. (Get off my lawn!)
This is where you’re supposed to put the obligatory anti-drug message, where I get down on one knee and look the kids straight in the eye and tell’em all they really need to know about drugs: Kids, if you grow up and become a drug dealer, watch out for the CIA — the dirty spooks will want a cut of your profits or they’ll send in the DEA to ice you like a two bit hood. It’s even worse if you play along and sell your soul to the devil and Dick Cheney. The only smart thing to do is to become a real drug dealer by peddling expensive drugs like Prozac and Ritalin to fretful, always-absent mothers and fathers who just want their child to be “normal.” You can manipulate the political and economic systems of every last country to extract maximum profits with no hard feelings… ‘Cause it’s all legal.
There ya go kids. Remember what Uncle Vemrion told you.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Electric Monkeypedia!
The recent spate of police brutality is no accident. It’s not a freak coincidence, it’s the way it’s always been. Would I sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist if I said that the increasing militarization of the police is a carefully shepherded phenomena designed to slowly ensnare us in a web of oppression and fear? Well, I don’t care, because them’s the facts, man!
Four Recent Outrages
You’ve probably heard about the recent tasering of a U of Florida student who tried to ask John Kerry a few questions (but didn’t seem interested in hearing an answer). The kid, Andrew Meyer, was being kind of a dick and he overreacted and basically caused that situation by freaking out (notice how the cops lept into action when he mentioned Skull and Bones). He is now famous for pleading “Don’t Taze me, Bro!” shortly before he had 50,000 volts applied to his nuts.
This kid’s annoying dorkiness doesn’t absolve the police/security folks of responsibility. The fact that they tasered a guy who was subdued and on the ground is reprehensible. If you have six cops surrounding a suspect (who should’ve been escourted out, not arrested) there is absolutely no need to taser him.
Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.
Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.
Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield’s death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case. “One, she’s in a wheelchair. Two, she’s schizophrenic. Three, they’re using a Taser on a person that’s in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes,” Alexander said.
According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds.
Now, I’m sure that was a difficult situation, but I fail to see why it was necessary to taser an old woman in a wheelchair. Surely a person who can’t walk can be restrained fairly easily. In fact, we know she was not a threat because the lady cop managed to shock her for a total of 160 seconds — almost 3 minutes. And now she’s dead.
A Fluke Spurt of Stupidity?
So where did I find all of these stories? Did I go to a site dedicated to monitoring police brutality like CopWatch?
No. I found them all on Digg. All on the same page!
Now, this is no doubt more than normal, but it points to a larger problem in our society: The police are out of control.
And that’s exactly the way certain people want it.
The Real Role of Cops
You see, there’s a common misconception about police. Some people (mostly white, middle class folks) think that the police are here to “protect and serve” everybody. But notice that their motto doesn’t say anything about protecting everybody, or even treating everybody equally. It’s conspicuous by its absence, in fact.
The truth is that the police are paid to protect and serve the ruling class and the ruling class mostly needs protection from the underclass.
America is a classist society, just like the U.K. or India. The rich and poor divide is sometimes as stark as the difference between slums and condos. Poor people naturally get angry and even violent when they realize that their situation is completely hopeless. No amount of hard work will get you rich when your only job skills are burger-flipping and bathroom-scrubbing. So sometimes the poor take matters into their own hands and try to steal something from the rich. That’s where the police come in. If you rob a house or steal a car you will be arrested; simple as that.
But what happens when the rich steal from the poor?
For the most part: Nothing. The elite can literally write our laws with a few well-placed campaign contributions. They can make their left illegal while they continually try to box the underclass in with obscene violations of the first amendment like free speech zones. The elite ghettoize our inner cities, offshore our jobs, make helpful drugs illegal, send our children to die in pointless wars, kill all those who stand in their way and terrorize the rest of us with servile propaganda and there’s not a goddamn thing anyone of us can do about it.
Asside from high-profile cases like Enron, the elite are completely free to run wild and reshape society to their liking. And the way they seem to like it is: The rich can do whatever they want, the poor and middle class must be monitored constantly and arrested instantly if they step out line.
The police subconsciously know this. They know that becoming a cop grants them power over others, but they seem to know not to abuse this power when it comes to rich people.
You don’t see a bunch of people in Lexuses getting pulled over on Cops. That’s not because they’re not speeding and not doing anything illegal. I bet there’s a lot of cocaine in a lot of glove compartments in a lot of Lexuses (would that be “Lexi”?). But the cops know better than to fuck with the rich. The rich have lawyers, they have friends in the force, they have resources and most important, they know politicians who can put the squeeze on the captain and get you reassigned to guarding the Taco Bell.
Poor people have none of these connections or resources.
It’s fine with the rich if you want to oppress poor folk; in fact it’s pretty much encouraged. The rich know that by giving the cops special privileges they can secure the fealty of the police. So the police are permitted to act like they own the place as long as they don’t step on the toes of the elite — the only people who outrank the cops in our society.
So the real role of cops in society is to protect the elite from the underclass, which includes the middle class, but the middle class is mostly pacified by TV, material goods and beer. The police are free to get their jollies off by knocking a few heads together as long as they don’t beat up the son of somebody powerful. The elite like how the cops are hated and feared by the poor and respected and feared by the middle class. This gives the elite free reign since the cops fear and respect the upper class, the only group of people more powerful that themselves.
The Militarization of the Police
Gang members know the police as just another gang; a more powerful one, but a gang nonetheless. But the people who control the police (the elite, if you haven’t been paying attention) are increasingly arming the police as if they were a standing army. The militarization of the police has occurred mostly over the last 50 years and is spurred by two bullshit ideological wars: The War on Drugs and the War on Terror.
The police in most major now have enough armament to invade and occupy a small country. Hell, we could’ve sent our cops to Iraq and they probably would have done a better job at containing the populace since they’re more thoroughly trained for that sort of thing than the army. That’s no accident. The cops are an army; an army of the elite. Their enemy, let there be no doubt, is you.
The plan is to make America into a fascist state: Amerika. They started slowly and carefully, and as they’ve gained strength the police have gradually been let off their leash, but the end result is inevitable: a police state.
It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. In the late 1800s and early 1900s this country was consumed by labor strife. The Socialist Party was founded to look after worker’s right and communism was gaining strength because the Robber Barons’ form of capitalism was so completely corrupt that there was no difference between the Government and Big Business (sound familiar?).
Hand of the Oligarchy The Rockefellers basically controlled this country like it was theirs. When they had labor troubles they simply called in the police. The police busted heads and smashed the ranks of the striking workers and forced them to return to work for pitiful wages. The idea that the police can act as an arm of the Oligarchy is unfortunately not a new one. Things got better for awhile, but now we seem to headed right back to where we were a hundred years ago.
If anything the propaganda is a hundred times better now; many people think the police are there to protect everyone, but that simply isn’t the case. In many poor neighborhoods, if you call the cops they might show up four hours later. The nicer your neighborhood, the quicker the response. Many poor folks don’t even bother calling the cops. This, again, is not a new phenomenon: in fact, that’s how the Mafia got its start. The Italian and Irish Mobs began because a person of Italian or Irish descent could not expect to be treated fairly under the law. They knew that they had to take care of each other or nobody would; certainly the cops were more likely to beat you over the head with a baton than listen to your tale of woe. Like our current gang troubles the Irish Mafia was made possible by Prohibition. When a popular product is made illegal it can be extremely lucrative for those on the wrong side of the law; so much so that they can buy influence on the other side of the law and corrupt the entire system in the process.
Now the blacks are the new Irish and they have no pull with the cops, even though many black people are on the force (just like with the Irish). The difference is that the cops look after each other first, regardless of ethnicity. Once you are a cop you belong to a special club which is virtually above the law. As long as you don’t violate the Blue Code of Silence you can expect to reap the rewards of being superior to the underclass.
Tale of the Tasers The weapons a cop receives are a totem to his power over others. Normal people are not allowed to openly carry dangerous weapons around, especially as the second amendment has been eroded. An officer’s gun identifies him as a member of a powerful group and symbolizes his social superiority and separateness from the masses.
Tasers are the new nightsticks. Cops will use a taser at the drop of a hat because it makes compliance push-button easy. It should be noted that taser are not nonlethal; they are “less lethal” which is how I would describe a knife versus a gun. In no way are tasers harmless; they’ve been responsible for hundreds of deaths in the last few years.
Between tasers, pepper spray, nightsticks and ray guns the police have all sorts of “less lethal” devices to ensure submission. Add in handguns, shotguns and the heavy artillery used by SWAT teams and you have enough firepower to conquer a major rebellion… which seems to be the plan.
The Oligarchy seems to be expecting trouble from us, the unruly populace. I can only wonder why, but perhaps they know how foul and oppressive their policies are. If so, they can’t plead ignorance to our plight; they are in fact responsible for it. The Oligarchy has no love for democracy; they clearly prefer fascism; it’s so much more convenient. Sadly, many Americans agree.
But you know, “oligarchy”, “fascism”, “democracy” and “freedom” are just big, abstract concepts. At the end of the day it all comes down to what we experience in the world. This video is but a small example of the arrogance and violent entitlement that many cops feel:
Cops see their badge as a license to take the law into their own hands. Don’t like the customer service you’ve received? Pepper-spray’em and arrest’em. If any of us did the same thing we would be in jail for a long time, but this cop got off scot free. There’s justice for you; Amerikan-style.
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 Quebec police thought it would be fun to plant a few fake protesters in the recent Stop the SPP protests in Montebello.
Take a look at the video below. The guy in the suit with the beard is Dave Coles, the president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. He sees a bunch of beefy, 30 year old men dressed up like 17 year old anarchist punks who are clearly trying to provoke the police. He accuses them of being cops and they don’t deny it.
The cops “arrest” the provocateurs, to make it look legitimate, but there is no actual record of their arrest. They were plants, fakes, double agents, provocateurs.
The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.
Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.
Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them.
Late Tuesday, photographs taken by another protester surfaced, showing the trio lying prone on the ground. The photos show the soles of their boots adorned by yellow triangles. A police officer kneeling beside the men has an identical yellow triangle on the sole of his boot.
Kevin Skerrett, a protester with the group Nowar-Paix, said the photos and video together present powerful evidence that the men were actually undercover police officers.
“I think the circumstantial evidence is very powerful,” he said.
The three do not appear to have been arrested or charged with any offence.
Police confirm that only four protesters were arrested during the summit — two men and two women. All have been charged with obstruction and resisting arrest.
Veteran protester Jaggi Singh, who is helping to circulate the video as widely as possible, said all four of those arrested are known to organizers and are genuine protesters.
“But we see very clearly in that video three (other) men being arrested . . . How do (police) account for these three people being taken in, being arrested? Where did they go?” Singh said.
“I have no hesitation in saying they were police agents … and they were caught red-handed.”
The next time you are at a protest or see reports of a protest turning violent, it’s fair to wonder whether it was provoked by undercover cops posing as protestors. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle as the cops claim they need more gear to fight off the protesters that they themselves have planted to sew the seeds of violence. I don’t think it’s unfair to call tactics such as this “fascist” and demand an independent investigation.
Filed Under : conspiracy, corporatism, corruption, elite, evil, lying, Shadow Government, stupidity by vemrion
Jan.25,2008
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