Viva la Revolution!! The Iranian People Show How to Stand Against Tyranny!

There's something thrilling going on in Iran.

You wouldn't know it from the coverage on many mainstream media news outlets this weekend (Fox, CNN and ABC, I'm looking in your direction), but there's a revolution going on in Iran!

It's a good kind of revolution; pro-freedom, pro-democracy and mostly peaceful (though many protestors are being beaten by police and Hezbollah thugs). The people of Iran are standing up for truth and justice and they are not being intimidated by theocratic thugs and government lies.

It makes me wonder why our U.S. media isn't really standing with the people of Iran. Maybe it's because I'm getting cynical in my (heh) old age, but I think it has something to do with the loss of their favorite boogey-man. It's getting harder and harder to portray Iranians as fanatical terrorists bent on the destruction of the West:

Perhaps the most moving scene involved a group of young demonstrators, displaying the green colours of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the defeated challenger, breaking into English and chanting: "We want freedom."

In an instant, these television pictures from Tehran delivered a stark reminder that Iran is not a backward country of medieval fanatics, but a modern nation with 70 million people, two thirds of whom are under 30 and have the same interests and aspirations as their Western counterparts.

These are my peers. My fellow-Twitterers. My friends. My brothers and sisters.

This is the real Iran:

No more distortions. No more hate. No more fear-mongering, Fox News! No more! We are the same, the Iranian People and those of us in the United States who still value and cherish freedom.

There is no difference between us beyond geography. Many of the Iranians even speak English and they are young and internet-savvy: they have been using Twitter to organize on the fly and there was a collective moan when Facebook was blocked. This is a youth movement that is cracking the edifice of lies that have served the hardliners on both sides for far too long.

Just don't watch television if you want the real scoop:

Today, as global geopolitics is shaken to its core by events in Iran, I turned on cable news this morning, and saw endless ads for a Larry King Jonas Brothers “interview”, Morning Joe yukking it up discussing Kuwaiti massage therapists, a video of a tomato throwing contest on CNN, talk radio blowhard Bill Bennett…and occasionally a phone call from Christiane Amanpour in Tehran. I can’t even bring myself to turn on the network morning programs, I might vomit.

The mainstream media is rapidly smothering itself into a coma of irrelevance. Do they think we're too stupid to get the news from somewhere else? Heck, I don't even need the media at this point; I can get info directly from the participants in the struggle via Twitter.

Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan are covering the protests virtually nonstop. With the Huffington Post on the case, who needs the MSM?

At this point, Big Media is just playing catch-up. They were asleep at the switch for several days, but now seem to be paying attention again... but they are definitely not leading; they are following.

I should note that I'm taking it for granted that the election was stolen. They apparently did not even do a good job of it. From the numbers I've seen, Ahmadinejad didn't even finish second! He finished 3rd, behind another reform candidate! Mousavi, the challenger and probable winner, was actually told by the Interior Ministry that he had won and to prepare his victory speech (which they insisted must be gracious and not boastful) before turning around and declaring Ahmadinejad the winner by a landslide. The numbers belie this laughable claim. The official results have Mousavi losing his home turf (preposterous) and big urban areas where he has polled higher than Ahmadinejad.

Let's face it: This election was straight-up rigged. The Iranians know it and they're not standing for it, which is more than I can say for Americans (*cough-2000-cough*). Now is our chance to repent for our laziness and apathy and support the democracy-loving Iranians with all our hearts!

I stand with the Iranian People in solidarity. We stand for Democracy, Freedom and Justice! May the winds of change bring peace and prosperity to Iran. Peace be upon you!

OppositeLand: How Washington Really Works

If you're like most Americans, you probably think that organizations like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are there to protect the common man from white collar criminals on Wall Street.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is that the SEC is an agency dedicated to protecting the criminals from the gimpy arm of justice. The Madoff scandal is a perfect example. His Ponzi scheme was operating right out in the open and anybody with enough financial sophistication to work on Wall Street would've been able to figure out the fraud if they had bothered to add up the numbers.

Former fraud investigator Harry Markopolos did add up the numbers:

"The SEC was never capable of catching Mr. Madoff. He could have gone to $100 billion" without being discovered, Markopolos testified. "It took me about five minutes to figure out he was a fraud."

Markopolos had been warning about Madoff's scam since 2000. Nobody listened. He sent his detailed warnings with his reasonings attached and written in such a way I, a financial neophyte, could understand the brazenness of the fraud. It should have been obvious to any SEC fraud investigator within a matter of minutes.

Here's why they didn't pursue the matter:

Madoff, who was at one point chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and sat on SEC advisory committees, was "one of the most powerful men on Wall Street and in a position to easily end our careers or worse," Markopolos said.

The SEC would have been investigating one of their own, and that's just not gonna happen; then or now. That would be like Cheney investigating Bush or vice versa. Ain't gonna happen.


You see, Washington D.C. is kind of like OppositeLand: Everything is the opposite of the way it should be. Our biggest criminals are not just coddled, they are given the keys to the kingdom. When our banks screw up they are given billions for free, but when you are deep in debt you can bet on the credit card industry bribing Congress into passing tougher bankruptcy laws.

If you're able to wrap your head around the absurdity of the situation you might not be that surprised to find that the CIA is funding terrorism, the FBI is protecting criminals and the DEA is protecting drug smugglers. That's the way things work in OppositeLand. Bill Clinton gets impeached for a blowjob and Bush didn't even get censured for pissing all over the Constitution and starting two illegal wars in which over a million people died.

Welcome to OppositeLand, where if you fuck up, you move up. If you have ethics and morals, you can expect to be a social leper or maybe even have your ass killed for your troubles.

2005 Bankruptcy Law Finance Industry Sought has Strangled Economy

Was the banking industry screwed over by its own bankruptcy law? It sure appears to have hurt the economy...

“Before the reform, overindebted households might file bankruptcy and get rid of their credit card debt, and that would free up income to pay the mortgage,” Morgan said. “The new law blocks that escape route and forces better-off households to continue paying credit card debt, which makes it harder than before to continue paying the mortgage.”

The conclusions of Morgan and his colleagues echo earlier findings that the new law’s tougher requirements appear to have increased the number of people defaulting on their mortgages or walking away from their homes rather than seeking bankruptcy protection.

“One of the great lessons and ironies” of the new law, Treasury Department economist David P. Bernstein wrote in a recent paper, was that, by increasing the dollar value of assets susceptible to default, it has weakened many of the financial institutions that sought the new law in the first place.

Man, those guy are fucking idiots, right?
Hmm... I suspect that we need to reference incompetence theory here. These assholes didn't get to the top of the finance industry by being clueless morons eager to throw their body into the arms of Defeat. No, these hard-asses know a lot more about the economy than most people do and they're using that insider knowledge to time the crash of the economy and profit from it.The bankruptcy law was an important part of the crash: it was the trigger. It was the pin that popped the bubble.

The robberbarons in charge of this economy aren't stupid. They know that their inflationary, fiat monetary system creates boom and bust cycles so they simply manipulate those cycles to their favor and crater the system at a time of their choosing.

Cheney's invested in Europe. The Bushes are in South America and the Middle East. I'm sure Hank and Ben are well taken care of, too. The rest of us will be the ones to deal with the fallout from this avoidable disaster. Don't assume the bankruptcy law was unimportant; it emanated from the very heart of the banking industry and its passage was assumed/assured in Congress. That law is now adding to the misery of those suffering in this corpse of a system.

It's time to change. We need to switch to a gold-backed system wherein people can feel safe and plan for the future without the economic rollercoasters juiced by Big Media's propaganda system, creating fear at the opportune moments. We ride on, strapped into a rickety system that is doomed to fail, and soon. The government hasn't been keeping up the rollercoaster. In fact, the top of the hierarchy have sold all the screws and bolts to China for a tidy profit. We are held aloft by hope, inertia and the wings of big-tittied angels.

Well, don't look down. Like Wile E. Coyote, we'd fall if we did. But we have to fall, don't we?
 

It's time to fall up
refuse to die
and start to fly
away from the lie

Reality's a bitch

Obama is picking moderates and center-rightists for his cabinet. That sound you hear? It's the sound of a million hopes and dreams thudding to the earth like balloons suddenly alchemized into lead.

We can only hope things will get better under Obama. I'd say they can't get worse, but that's not true. Evil has built up quite a momentum under Bush. The decisions he made (or his fellow cabalists made for him) over the last 8 years will continue to reverberate through the nation for the foreseeable future. Bush's legacy of wickedness and the destruction he wrought on our nation's principles and people will not be easily forgotten. Or forgiven.

But Obama seems very much of the same mind as Bush when it comes to the economy and the dire imperative of taking care of the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else. Citigroup should've been allowed to fail. Instead we've given the supposed pillars of capitalism 7.76 trillion in taxpayer money:

The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

If one of the pillars of American capitalism is made of butter, which Citigroup seems to be, then they must crumble (melt?). New ones will rise, if you believe in the free-market.

Neither Bush nor Obama does.

And with those two messing around with the economy I don't either; there never was and never will be a true free market because somebody's always got an agenda and if they have influence in government they will use that power to affect change to their benefit, principles be damned. People who talk lovingly about free markets are full of shit. They want open markets, the same way horny guys want loose women: They don't really love them (captains of industry prefer monopolies over competition), but they sure will take advantage of it while it's there. A "free" market is just one that hasn't been spoiled yet... but it will be. It will be.

The only way to fix this is to reconfigure the fundamentals of our economy so the super-rich don't control everything. But how are we gonna do that if they already do? Are they going to just let us? Fuck no. They have to have a reason first, and we haven't given them one.

Until we do, nothing will change. Reality's a bitch, ain't it?

We're all gonna die: Why we need a soft landing

Things look grim. I'm sure we're not out of the woods yet -- there's a long way to go before we hit rock bottom.

You can probably guess my reaction to the bailout: SCAM!!

So, our plan is to give the people who fucked the economy billions of dollars with no real plan to get it back? Brilliant! How could that not work?

The assholes basically just got us to pay them for ripping us off. Quite the smooth move on their part. 

But you know, it's basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic at this point. I don't think $700 billion (actually, with all the pork it's closer to $850 billion) will make a lick of difference. The problem is much deeper than that; it has to do with the way we create and regulate money, at the fundamental level. Basically, we need to return to the gold standard, eliminate fractional reserve lending and dissolve the Federal Reserve.

This will make for some bumpy transitions, as a nation used to 5% growth every year realizes that maybe 0.2% is more appropriate. Of course, the 5% growth stat is illusionary. You have to grow by 5% every year just to stay ahead of inflation. If you want to actually make money you need an even higher rate -- which leads to risky investments. Wall Street wants ever-better numbers and the strain of achieving them has led many an executive to make risky, negligent or downright stupid investments. We need fiscal sanity! It may be boring, and less people will be able to make a living moving electronic numbers around, but it will bring stable beneficence to the majority of the world.

Problem: How to get there from here. 

Step one: Reach rock bottom.

We're well on our way there. I'm afraid nothing will change without suffering because there's no motivation otherwise. It's a sad truth. The problem is that we're speeding too fast towards rock bottom. We may hit it with the impact of a dinosaur falling off a thousand-foot cliff. That would basically end our civilization as we know it.


We need a soft landing. But how to get it? The fat-ass rich people stole the golden parachutes, but in a world where money is worthless paper what help will those parachutes be?

There's no way out of this one, folks. We're all gonna die unless somebody has been planning ahead with an altruistic and audacious plan to save us from our high-velocity trajectory straight into the ground.

We can't look to the people in charge to save us -- they're the ones who got us into this mess. So I guess we don't have many options. Who has a plan? Who has the resources to make it work? Who among us is bold enough to listen?

We are fast approaching the Rubicon.

Look out for falling banks

Holy cow -- lookout! There's banks falling like boulders all around us!

Luckily for them, when big, important institutions such as investment banks fail, they fall right into the loving arms of the Bush administration.

AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch this week alone. Am I forgetting one? Probably. Now regulators are calling other banks looking for buyers in case Washington Mutual fails too.

Wall Street couldn't be in worse shape if it was literally on fire.

But, the GOP is there to bail these irresponsible banks out of trouble with -- you guessed it -- taxpayer money.

That's what the Establishment truly believes in: Socializing losses and privatizing profits.

God bless America, Comrade.

Do you want the truth? Or do you want to be entertained?

"The American people are today the best entertained and the least informed people on the face of the Earth."

--Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

--William Colby
CIA Director, 1973-1976

An Obviously-Brilliant Proposal

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 individual 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?

COINTELPRO is back

Dave Zirin at The Huffington Post was labelled a terrorist and a potential threat for going to anti-death penalty meetings.

I am "Dave Z." This nickname was given by an undercover agent known to us as "Lucy." She sat in our meetings of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, smiling and engaged, taking copious notes about actions deemed threatening by the Governor of Maryland, Robert Ehrlich. Our seditious crimes, as Lucy reported, involved such acts as planning to set up a table at the local farmer's market and writing up a petition.

Our totalitarian government is not as keen on dissent as they would like you to believe. Sure, you can protest all you want... but you will be monitored.

COINTELPRO was the codename for activities related to spying on peaceful protesters during the 60s. Now there's probably a new codename, but the plan remains the same. There are totalitarian elements in our government. These fascists seem to operate with near-total impunity; they are protected from On High; nobody can bring them to justice. Democracy is a myth used to control the masses. We live in Oligarchy.

The definition of irony

This story is too ironic for comment:

After Sony BMG supplied a pirated license code for Ideal Migration, one of PointDev's products, the software maker was able to mandate a seizure of Sony BMG's assets. The subsequent raid revealed that software was illegally installed on four of Sony BMG's servers. The Business Software Alliance, however, believes that up to 47 percent of the software installed on Sony BMG's computers could be pirated.

These are some pretty serious—not to mention ironic—allegations against a company that's gone so far as to install malware on consumers' computers in the name of preventing piracy.

Read the whole article.

Refuting "Incompetence Theory" in just one sentence

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.

Benazir Bhutto was obviously assassinated by Musharraf

Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto is dead. She was shot by her assassin, who then blew himself up.

Bhutto's archenemy, Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf, who has the most to gain from her death, tried to make it look as though he hadn't wished for such a thing:

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.

Sherlock would 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.

Secrecy is poison to a democracy

"CIA" is the opposite of "freedom"

Secrecy is poison to a democracy.

Disband the CIA, America's Gestapo while we still have a few shreds of liberty left.

Corporate Holocaust©®™ - Corporate Man is Super-Sapien

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©®™!!!

Conspiracy for World Domination Confirmed by David Rockefeller

I would like to sincerely thank David Rockefeller, chairman of every internationalist organization you can think of, for coming out and admiting that there is a global conspiracy to unite the world under a one world government.

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.

He continues with an even more revealing passage:

"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.

Rudy Guiliani and the faulty FDNY radios

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:

Electric Monkeypedia: The Roach

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.

Another reason I love Wikipedia? Pictures like this:

I like how it's simply labeled: Joint.

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 Police are Paid to "Protect and Serve" the Rich, Not You and Me

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.

Then there's an older video that just made it on Digg showing a police officer shooting an Air Force security officer at point blank range for no apparent reason. There was an investigation and a trial and -- (surprise!) Officer Ivory Webb was cleared on all counts.

Next we have the case of the delinquent granny who was finally brought to justice. Her crime? Not watering her lawn:

Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors.

She was arrested July 6 after failing to give her name to a police officer who visited her home.

During a struggle, Perry fell and injured her nose. She spent more than an hour in a holding cell before police released her.

I bet we all feel safer with Ms. Perry behind bars.

If you think the police can't top that, think again. Next is the case of the wheelchair-bound schizophrenic:

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.

Politicians are cheap

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 says the system is rigged

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.

Police provocateurs try to disrupt union protest

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.

Unlike the chickenshit, corporate-controlled American media, the Canadian media are not afraid to expose underhanded tactics like this, which are clearly inspired by J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO.

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.

A general strike has been proposed for 9/11/07. No work, school or shopping

Endless War.
Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Iraqis.
Torture.
Surveillance.
Civil Rights and Habeas Corpus: Gone.
Executive Privilege: No Accountability.
9/11 Questions?

Corporate Media.
Corporate Government.

Tyranny. Fascism. Lies.

The Time Has Come.
To Say NO.
While We Still Have a Chance.

GENERAL STRIKE
Tuesday 9/11/07
No Work. No School. No Shopping.
Hit the Streets.

"Somebody should do something!!!"

That somebody should be you.

The War on Common Sense -- Just another 21st century witch-hunt

AG Alberto Gonzales, wounded by his recent string of lies and spin before Congress, is proposing a crackdown on copyright infringement.

• Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights.
• Allow computers to be seized more readily. Specifically, property such as a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture has become popular among police agencies in drug cases as a way to gain additional revenue, and is problematic and controversial.
• Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention regulations. Currently criminal violations are currently punished by jail times of up to 10 years and fines of up to $1 million. The IPPA would add forfeiture penalties too.
• Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes. Currently certain copyright crimes require someone to commit the "distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies" valued at over $2,500. The IPPA would insert a new prohibition: actions that were "intended to consist of" distribution.

This is typical of the neocons. The wind is blowing against them, so they've redoubled their efforts rather than wondering if it's a good idea to pursue the same goals so mindlessly.

She's a witch! Burn the witch!!
It might also be an attempt to woo Hollywood Democrats by making them an offer they can't refuse. Many Democrats (and Republicans too, of course) take large amounts of money from the MPAA and RIAA (collectively known as the mafiaa), which is fully in support of this legislation. One gets the idea they'd be in support of a bill that called for executions on the spot for suspected pirates. Piracy is much like terrorism that respect; it's a word used almost exclusively to demonize a certain group, which gives power to those who are able to prosecute and persecute them. Basically, it's a 21st century witch-hunt.

Instead of burning people at the stake we need to take a look at the laws on the books and find ways to make them less draconian in an age of easy file-sharing. The ability to share/copy files is one of the greatest uses of the internet and it demands a new way of thinking about copyright and intellectual property. The endless roadblocks we get from politicians and businessmen (including legislation like the DMCA, copy-protection like DRM and lawsuits like the RIAA's campaign against music-sharing) only serve to slow down innovation and erect huge barriers of entry that make it hard for start-ups and small businesses to make a dent in the marketplace with a new idea.

This legislation (the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 [pdf]) might backfire if it is passed. It will push more and more people to use free and open source software in order to avoid potential liability. Even having a copy of Microsoft Word is dangerous if you don't also have a receipt proving ownership.

The War on Common Sense
Add the War on Piracy to the growing list of ideological wars we're fighting, including the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. If it seems odd to you that we're waging "war" against a tactic (terrorism) and an inanimate object (why don't they put the drugs in jail?), that means that you don't have sufficient faith in our dear leaders.

I would argue that the Big 3 Unwinnable Ideological Wars constitute an undeclared War on Common Sense. The War on Common Sense is designed to make the general populace believe that up is down, day is night, freedom is slavery and George Bush is a genius.

Please notice the tremendous power that is derived from a war, even a fake one. There's a reason why we don't still wage the War on Poverty (well besides the fact that the ruling elite don't give a fuck) -- there's not an easily-demonized enemy that the ruling class can disparage in order to increase their own power and prestige. If such an enemy exists, it's almost certainly the ruling class itself. That's not gonna work! It's best to have a war on somebody who can't really fight back.

So what's next? Well, I'd guess we'll have a War on Illegal Immigration, which will do nothing to stop the flood of immigrants coming into the country because it won't go after the root problem: the economic disparity between the U.S. and Mexico. Like the War on Drugs, illegal immigration is a problem caused by the policies of the wealthy elite and far from suffering from this problem the elite actually make a shitload of money from it. The CIA runs drugs to pay for their illegal black ops and a whole parasitic class of DEA agents and police officers have grown fat arresting nonviolent drug offenders in order to continue the charade.

Similarly, the corporate elite have grown even more wealthy from illegal immigration. Instead of paying their workers a fair wage they employ illegal immigrants for a fraction of the salary a naturalized citizen would earn. This simultaneously impoverishes Americans who can't find a job and enslaves illegal immigrants to a corrupt system that gives them just enough money to get by and not a penny more... all while making the CEOs of these corporations even richer by saving money on labor costs, which is reflected in their end of the year bonus. What a great scam!

The War on Terror is a money-making scheme as well. If you doubt this, I suggest you watch Iraq for Sale, a documentary about war profiteering in Iraq. The government sends incredible amounts of money to private contractors like Blackwater and Halliburton, then some of this money is funneled back to the very people who came up with the idea of going to war in Iraq in the form of campaign contributions (you know: legalized bribery). It's an endless loop of corruption! Legal corruption!

The War on Piracy will have to evolve to a similarly corrupt state if it wishes to become self-perpetuating. Certainly, there is some money to be made by suing college students, but that's chickenfeed. Clearly the RIAA is getting better at extortion so they don't even have to go to trial in most cases, but I'm guessing there's still a lot of overhead. If they really want to make a mint they should look into what Canada is doing. Making innocent people pay for "crimes" they might or might not commit is so much more fun and profitable. The copyright tax is applied to everybody and it's institutionalized so it will be damn near impossible to get rid of. As bad as the RIAA is, they haven't managed to achieve something that evil... yet.

How long before people wake up to the fact that these ideological wars are always ineffective at achieving their stated goals because the real goals are hidden -- and they involve profiting off the situation, not solving it. I suppose it takes a certain amount of cynicism to believe your fellow man is capable of such two-faced corruption. But that's the way it is, folks.

Maybe we should declare a moratorium on bullshit wars.

Why do we let the Media decide who our candidates will be?

Taking part in a televised debate can be a make-it-or-break-it moment for any presidential candidate. But what if you're not allowed to debate at all?

A diabolical Catch-22
As many of you are aware, not all candidates are allowed to debate in a given broadcast debate. This has been a problem for years. During the last presidential election both the Libertarian and Green party candidates were actually arrested trying to get into a debate they had been explicitly banned from!

Most candidates are excluded from the debate simply because the Media (big M) deems them minor/unknown/unpopular candidates. Well, of course they're unknown; they're not allowed to debate on national TV!! Bit of a Catch-22, wouldn't you say?

A most insidious and foul Catch-22, I would say. Here's why: We supposedly live in a democracy. It's not really a democracy, it's a republic (that's a story for another day), but we like to pretend that the people really have a say. The hidden reality is that the bosses of the major television stations are making decisions that define the course of our nation, and they're doing it from private boardrooms sequestered on the 100th floor of a skyscraper, and there's nothing any of us can do about it because they aren't elected or accountable to anybody but the company's shareholders -- ya know... other rich people.

Why should the CEO of CNN have such power? Why should he (and it's almost certainly a he) determine who will and won't be the next president of the United States before the people ever get a chance to vote in a primary?

Isn't that censorship? Isn't that more like an oligarchy than a democracy? Why do we let them get away with it?

Well, until recently most people didn't even know about the problem. And we didn't have the power to make a difference anyway. But things are changing.

Social Media saves the day
Social Media has finally offered regular people like you and me a voice. Sites like Digg, while not perfect, have enabled users to vote (you know, like a democracy) on what stories they think are worthy.
Two candidates, Ron Paul and Mike Gravel, owe most of their young supporters to the users of two social media sites: Digg and Reddit. Without those two sites neither candidate had a hope in hell of cracking the oligarchy and getting significant, objective coverage by the mainstream media (MSM).

Why does the media censor and ostracize certain candidates?
The candidates that find themselves locked out of televised debates tend to have a few things in common: They tend to be unpopular or unknown (but that is not always the case). Their campaigns are usually poorly funded (maybe because it's hard to raise funds if you get no coverage) and sometimes they have views that are contrary to the political mainstream.

But sometimes the political mainstream is very much at odds with the desires of the voting public. A perfect example is the continued prohibition of cannabis (you know: "marijuana"), an issue on which the politicians are most definitely out of step with most of America, which favors medicinal pot by an astonishing 78% margin. Net candidate Mike Gravel recently came out in support of legalizing cannabis, which he says should be for sale in liquor stores. For a mainstream, "media-approved" candidate, such a position would be political suicide. Why?

Perhaps the media has been shaping our political landscape for such a long time nobody can even remember a time when they weren't. Perhaps there are certain forces at work behind the scenes that determine what is considered politically acceptable and what is considered "extremist."

It's hard not to see the media as a controlling, suppressing force when they blatantly censor certain candidates. Ron Paul's performance in the recent Republican debate at the Reagan Library was hailed by many observers, but when it came time to review the field and do some analysis ABC News made a curious omission: Ron Paul.

He wasn't even available as an option for viewers to vote for. He wasn't mentioned anywhere in David Chalain's analysis. If not for a web uprising (involving Digg and Reddit) Ron Paul would probably still be excluded. When ABC finally backed down (after deleting a storm of comments asking, "Where's Ron?") Ron Paul ran away with a landslide victory in the online poll. The numbers are incredible (and no doubt skewed by a reaction to the censorship). Paul clearly has a massive groundswell of public support.... but in the corporate realm he has apparently earned only hand-waving dismissal and contempt.

What are we supposed to think of this? When there are 10 candidates at a debate and viewers are only allowed to vote for 9 of them is that not censorship? Is that not electioneering by a major corporation?
And when they back down and include the suppressed candidate and he wins the poll, how do they respond? They write an article in which they find people to scratch their heads and say, "who knows how this Ron Paul got popular. Must be sumthin' to do with them internets." Then they conclude he has no chance of winning and that this is just an exercise in teenage rebellion (or something) and wave their hands, content that they will never have to talk about him again.

Democratic candidate Mike Gravel has experienced the exact same treatment, but on the other side of the aisle. Gravel and Paul are both painted as "extremists" within their respective parties, so we'd can conclude that Paul is a right-wing extremist and Gravel is a left-wing extremist, right?

Not quite. Both candidates are populists, espousing "common sense" positions that many average Americans hold, but which are not endorsed by many mainstream politicians. Both are opposed to the Iraq War (and always were), both question Prohibition, both are wary of a pre-emptive strike against Iran and both are suspicious of the corporate media that excludes them from debates. In short, they have a lot in common with the public they are trying to represent.

Meanwhile, the Media's favorite Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, goes around saying fascist shit like this:

We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

[ Interruption by someone in the audience. ]

You have free speech so I can be heard.

Is that what most Americans believe? Wasn't America founded by overthrowing the "lawful authority" of the British? And this "Freedom is about authority" stuff sounds like a parody of George Orwell's 1984... but Rudy was being serious! "You have free speech so I can be heard"?!! Saturday Night Live couldn't parody Rudy any better than he does himself.

Which candidate is really an "extremist"? Which candidate is fundamentally out-of-line with the thinking of mainstream America? Well, maybe America really does want fascism instead of freedom, but the noise on the internet would seem to indicate otherwise.

Media Control and Manipulation
It seems like ancient history now, but it was actually the recent past when the mainstream media controlled every avenue of information and expression in this country. Nowadays we can talk about these things and send our message out to a wide audience, but as recently as 12 years ago it simply was not possible for a middle class person to route around the MSM. Suddenly most people can afford machines that are more powerful than a printing press, and allow common people to talk to each other without the Media's filter. That's why the Media is so upset about blogging and social media -- they're so used to having an absolute stranglehold over the conversation in this country.

The Media is used to controlling:

• what information citizens receive
• what information citizens are allowed to share with one another on the national stage
• discussion and framing of issues in mainstream press
• which issues receive national coverage (and which are ignored)
• who gets to talk about the issues in the press (and who doesn't)
• how political actors are portrayed (villain or hero or neutral)

Social Media smashes that control grid and puts power in the hands of the many, rather than the few. This is a recent development so the full ramifications are not yet clear, but one thing we are finding out is that the Media has been using their incredible power to highlight certain candidates and suppress others.

The media has a paternalist streak that is really out of place in this day and age. The Washington Post thinks they know best and they aren't afraid to tell you that they already know Gravel & Paul are not going to be elected, so why don't we just eject them from the debates already?

The Democratic debate in South Carolina featured eight candidates, while 10 crammed into the GOP debate in California last Thursday. Voters trying to sort out their presidential choices aren't helped by debates cluttered with the likes of Mike Gravel (hint: he's a former senator from Alaska) on the Democratic side and Ron Paul (hint: he's a libertarian House member from Texas) among the Republicans.

Thank goodness for our dear corporate masters. If they didn't come in any set things straight we'd have to learn somebody's name and what they stand for. MY GOD! The very idea exhausts me.

Sarcasm aside, this sort of thing has been going on for generations. That's why an editorial like the one above doesn't seem odd to them; this is standard operating procedure! The Media has identified the candidates they don't like (the ones that aren't easily bought/co-opted) and now they've decided to tell you, Dear Voter, than you needn't concern yourself with these troublesome miscreants. Big Media will make things simple for you by excluding them.

...But wait a minute. Isn't this a democracy? Don't the voters decide who is voted off the proverbial island?

Well, now you know better. That is not the way America works. America is run by a ruling class of oligarchs no different than the ones who control Russia. The difference is the American media freely admits that oligarchs run Russia, but they would sooner give their mansions to the poor than admit America is the same. The exact reverse scenario plays out in Russia where the Russian (government/oligarch-controlled) media is free to disparage America and mock its corrupt institutions, while speaking ill of Russia is a good way to get your broadcasting license revoked.

The awful truth is that America has long been controlled by the rich, just like most nations throughout history. They have remade American society and government to suit themselves and they have grown very comfortable on their throne.

What is an Oligarchy?
Stephen Fleischman, himself a former mainstream media man, tackles the reality of the Oligarchy in an article for Counterpunch:

My dictionary says an oligarchy is a form of government where most or all political power effectively rests with a small segment of the society. As Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, puts it, "Oligarchies are often controlled by a few powerful families whose children are raised and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy, often at some sort of expense to those governed." Does that sound like the administration of George W. Bush?

Why, yes it does! That must be a weird coincidence. ... right?

I wish I could tell you more about the Oligarchy, but it operates in secret and prefers that most citizens do not even know it exists. In fact, by using the mainstream media the Oligarchy is able to program us so that even if we are provided with irrefutable evidence of the existence of said Oligarchy, many will still deny it and disbelieve it.

You're probably wondering "How?!"

Have you ever been called a "conspiracy theorist?" Well, it tends to end any meaningful discussion of the facts and immediately puts the onus on the accused to defend himself from the charge leveled at him. The Media has a few "magic words" like this at their disposal. It's amazing how effective they can be. Nobody wants to be called a conspiracy theorist... but isn't that just an ad hominem attack? It's no different than calling someone a poopy-head.

I suspect there may be more to it than that. In a future post I'll look into how the Oligarchy exploits its control of the media for fun and profit.

What should we do about it?
At a certain point we in the 'net community need to stand up and say, "To hell with you guys. We're hosting our own debate and we'll invite everybody!" We just need to set up a website with a group of people dedicated to hosting the cyber-debate; we'll get some buzz going and then what candidate will say "no" to a chance to get his/her message out to such an elusive audience?

The media can't be trusted to define, design and delineate the ground rules for our national debate. Candidates are having trouble getting their message across because of the media's filter. It's time to cut out the middle man.