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.
"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.
RNC 2008: I was arrested after filming this video. The cops fired flash grenades, herded us onto Marion bridge and arrested us
I went downtown to St. Paul in order to get some pictures and observe the situation (I already protested on Monday), but John Ireland Bridge was blocked by the police with dump trucks when I got there. The cops said there was a bomb threat to the Minnesota Historical Society, but that was quite clearly a lie since they were standing so close to it and they'd already closed the other bridges as I found out later.
So I went over to the capitol on foot using the Marion Street Bridge instead. I saw more cops than protesters.
The cops had the city in a headlock. All the other bridges were closed by the police; cops, BCA agents and national guardsman were everywhere. St. Paul was on fucking lockdown.
By the time I found out how totally heavy-handed the police presence was I was getting tired and decided to split. I was trying to get back to my car on the other side of the Marion street bridge when I saw a group about 200 protesters approaching the bridge. That's why I'm walking against the flow at the beginning of the video. Unfortunately I was too busy trying to get good footage and didn't notice the cops had surrounded us on all sides.
Soon the police started firing flash grenades, smoke bombs and generally scaring the shit out of me and all these peaceful protesters. We were corraled onto the bridge where they told us we were all under arrest, but not before all of us were shellshocked by the overwhelming police response. Watch the video, but beware that it's intense, chaotic and there's swearing and explosions.
Notice how none of the protesters resisted or attacked the cops in any way. This is ironic because we were charged with "resisting a lawful order" along with the 1st amendment-killing crime of "presence at an unlawful assembly." Whatever happened to the right of people to peaceably assemble?
We are not free; The Bill of Rights is no longer operative.
If you aren't reading this from jail that simply means the cops haven't bothered to arrest you on trumped up charges yet. They can clearly do exactly that whenever they want, with no repercussions. I wasn't even part of the protest and I was charged with being part of an "unlawful assembly."
The whole arrest process took hours. We were told to sit and put our hands on our heads, which many people had to do for several hours (your arms get sore). I was cuffed after an hour or so and stood around for another hour waiting to get my mug shot (on the bridge; this was all very ad hoc). Since we were on the bridge for so long they eventually hauled at least 3 porta-potties onto the bridge itself, for both police and protester usage (under heavy guard, of course).
Eventually I was led onto a city bus with 40 other arrestees and brought to the Ramsey County jail for booking. They searched me about 5 times, confiscated all my stuff, and gave me a paper bag with a peanutbutter and jelly sandwitch and two apples. See, even oppressive police tactics have a Minnesota Nice aspect. Of course we didn't get knives so we had to spread the jelly and PB with our fingers.
Hours dragged by as we waded our way through the bureaucracy and were eventually cited and loaded onto a paddywagon and driven out of the jail. They let us out just outside the fences and we were free -- and on our own far from where we were arrested, but at least the incredibly awesome Coldsnap Legal Collective were there to offer us hugs and access to free legal advice.
People without rides or places to go were able to sleep on the grass outside the jailhouse thanks to sleeping bags the Coldsnap folks brought. Somebody sent the angels last night; they're doing great work and need your support!
The problem with good things is that the police like to infiltrate and ruin them from the inside. That might've been the case with the protest last night. I heard several people talking about police plants -- agent provocateurs pretending to be protesters, inciting violence and keeping their superiors informed about where they are headed.
Unfortunately, this is standard practice for police departments these days, including Denver during the DNC. How many acts of vandalism and violence that you read about in the mainstream media were actually committed by undercover cops in order to incite and defame activists?
Imagine the embarrassment of the police and governments if they held a convention with massive protests and no one was arrested! They'd have spent millions upon millions of dollars for nothing! They've got to earn their outrageous security budgets, which is why they were so keen to arrest anybody who happened to be near Marion St. Bridge last night, including media folks and medics (at least 5 were arrested, along with a dozen credentialed photographers).
Of course they also wanted to show who's boss. Clearly they are, and clearly they are not going to allow us to change the system peacefully or otherwise. We are not free. We are only permitted to do what they let us; truly free expression is verboten. Believe it or not, America used to be a pretty anything-goes society as long as it wasn't overtly violent (think of the Old West). Nowadays we cling to our police state as if that makes us safer. But what have we lost in the process?
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.
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:
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".
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?
Tarpon Springs detectives said a body was found in a small storage shed on the west side of the mobile home. Handwritten notes were found that describe the victim's intention to take her life, and foul play does not appear to be involved.
Palfrey, 52, reportedly was staying with her mother Blanche at the Sun Valley Mobile Home Park, 167 Cypress Ave.
Hmm... a lady who had threatened to reveal the names of many high-powered clients turns up dead and everybody in the press and police force yells "suicide." Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't buy it. Many, many people wanted her dead and her list of names buried forever.
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.
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.
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!
Feeling like somebody's out to get you? Set you up?
Maybe you pissed off the wrong people. If you know anything about the Church of Scientology's connections to the CIA maybe you should be afraid. They might want to freak you out.
Operation Freakout was a CoS plan designed to get journalist Paulette Cooper "incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." The Scientologists drew up detailed plans for freaking her out, ruining her reputation and getting her arrested for bomb threats.
When she has been found alone, telephone ( during the work week ) 2 Arab Consulates in NYC, from telephone booth nearest PC's place. Telephoner should be a girl that sounds like PC and the call should be fast,to the point, and impinge. It should go as follows: from a totally trusted non staff member.
"I just came back from Isreal ( pronounces the way it is pronounced in Isreal ) I've seen what you fucking bastards do. At least youre not going to kill my sister. I can get away with anything. I'm going to bomb you basterds. Say something in Jewish/swear or mumble something jewish.
While the spelling and grammar reveals their ignorance, their gall no doubt counted for a lot. Scientology put many of these crazy schemes into action and eventually got Cooper arrested.
Part of the plan consisted of a Scientology volunteer impersonating Cooper and making verbal threats towards the President and Henry Kissinger, and a second volunteer reporting them. Another named Jerry Levin moved into Cooper's building and befriended her during her darkest months, and reported back to the Church such things as "She can't sleep again...she's talking suicide. Wouldn't this be great for Scientology!"
Beware of pissing off somebody with more resources than you. You might find your world turned upside down by people who can afford to play with you as if you were a mouse and they were bored housecats.
The American conceit that we're all created equal is charming and amusing. In reality those born into the corridors of power need not worry about paying the rent or keeping food on the table... and that tends to free up time for certain impulses better left hidden.
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.
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.
The battle over saggy pants reveals a deepening race and class divide in America
This blog is your leading pants-related resource. Okay, so this is the first time I've blogged about pants, but dammit, with a name like Electric Monkey Pants I better have some pants turf staked out, ya heard?
The Threat Okay, so some uptight folks are trying to introduce stringent pants regulations when we don't even have decent electronic voting regulations. I guess it's easier to legislate against somebody who can't fight back. Pretty much everybody who wears saggy pants is not in a position to pass laws, which is probably part of why they're wearing the damn saggy-ass pants in the first place.
Proposals to ban saggy pants are starting to ride up in several places. At the extreme end, wearing pants low enough to show boxers or bare buttocks in one small Louisiana town means six months in jail and a $500 fine. A crackdown also is being pushed in Atlanta. And in Trenton, getting caught with your pants down may soon result in not only a fine, but a city worker assessing where your life is headed.
"Are they employed? Do they have a high school diploma? It's a wonderful way to redirect at that point," said Trenton Councilwoman Annette Lartigue, who is drafting a law to outlaw saggy pants. "The message is clear: We don't want to see your backside."
The bare-your-britches fashion is believed to have started in prisons, where inmates aren't given belts with their baggy uniform pants to prevent hangings and beatings. By the late '80s, the trend had made it to gangster rap videos, then went on to skateboarders in the suburbs and high school hallways.
I didn't know that shit started in prison, but it makes sense: That's where our (mostly minority) youth are spending a lot of time these days because of insane, pointless drug laws and a prison-state mentality, with GW as the crooked warden.
It's worth noting that black people face harsher, less forgiving punishments from our draconian drug laws even though the percentage of white & black teens using pot is almost the same.
"Are they going to go after construction workers and plumbers, because their pants sag, too?" Murray asked. "They're stereotyping us."
The American Civil Liberties Union agrees.
"In Atlanta, we see this as racial profiling," said Benetta Standly, statewide organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. "It's going to target African-American male youths. There's a fear with people associating the way you dress with crimes being committed."
A Few Questions There are some questions that popped into my head after reading this story. Let me try to answer them as they come:
Are these laws targeted at blacks? Almost certainly.
Are saggy pants a real problem? Fuck no, it's mostly a fear-based response by legislators who are terrified of their own kids.
Will there be more laws like this? Of course. Like I said, those wearing saggy pants are generally not in a position to legislate back.
Are these laws going after a deeper problem? Yes, but they're attacking the symptoms rather than the core issues. The real problem is that our society requires an underclass to clean our toilets, mow our enormous lawns and serve us our drinks.
The Racial Divide If you're a rich, white person who has his or her Harvard graduation date marked on the calendar from the day you're born, you probably have no idea why someone would hang around in the 'hood all day selling drugs, listening to that "crunk" and sagging your damn pants.
Well guess what, elitists?! They don't fucking want to live in the 'hood and sell drugs to get by, but what other options do they have? Are you gonna hire'em? They're not like you, are they? They speak differently and they have weird customs like the way they sag their pants. (OMG!)
Sagging pants are a way of fighting back against the uptight culture that demands conformity even as it espouses the (vague, far-off) concept of "freedom". They look ridiculous precisely because that's the goal. If it pisses off whitebread America, it's cool. As a way of fighting against the system it's pretty feeble, but that proves my larger point that the underclass has no other options available to them.
For my part, I would encourage people not to sag too low simply because it becomes hard to run from the cops when you're sagging down to your ankles. Am I gonna create a law to fight this scourge? Fuck no; I would repeal laws, starting with our drug laws, which seem designed to permanently disenfranchise our poverty-stricken youth. The upper class can buy their kids out of jailtime, but if you're living in the 'hood you probably can't afford Johnnie Cochran.
Black people are especially fucked these days since the elite is coming down on them harder than ever while the Mexicans are coming across the border anxious to take their jobs, eager to be the new underclass. Shit, due to this competition among the disadvantaged, rich people now get to watch labor costs drop even more than they dared dream; meaning they can get their landscaping done cheaply than before ("yay, Capitalism!"). Of course, that cheap landscaping doesn't pay enough to enable the workers to buy a house and become citizens. Nope; gonna send that money back home (where things are just as stratified by race and class).
The Class Divide Ah, race and class. Two things Americans hate to talk about, yet the problem stares us in the face every day. Who's washing those dishes in the restaurant after dinner? Who's cleaning those toilets? Instead of paying a living wage and giving the underclass a hand up so that they can join the middle class we seem to be focused on keeping them down.
Then we blame them for their position, as if it was all their fault.
The truth is that America wants an underclass. We need it. We need somebody to do the crappy jobs that nobody wants because we're unwilling to pay a fair wage to the people who break their bodies doing hard physical labor. In many ways slavery, or at least some of the ideas that fed it, carries on today in that the rich like to set up pyramids with themselves at the top. If you're gonna be on top of a pyramid, that means many, many more people have to be on the bottom, and (most important) you have to prevent them from getting up to the top.
The pyramid theory of society has been tried many times and it always fails. Weren't we trying something new in America? Weren't we trying to level the playing field and give everybody a shot? Somehow that got lost as the rich set up their system of control so that a free people became bonded by economic manipulation far beyond their control.
Political freedom means nothing if you have to work all the time just to keep food in your belly. What the underclass wants is economic freedom. It may be too late since the rich already control everything of value. What's left but revolution?
We Know Best If sagging pants are our biggest problem we should consider ourselves lucky. Surely there's more important things to consider, but these laws against clothing point to some deeper issues. So, should we ban those baggy pants?
I'll tell you what: We can ban saggy-ass pants if those who like their pants baggy also get to pass a few rules and regulations of their own. I foresee an ordinance that requires people wearing suits to loosen those ties. After all, if you wear your tie too tight you risk cutting off the circulation to your brain, leading to an increase of shitty laws like this one.
I know gas prices are high, but this is just ridiculous.
Lemme break it down for you, in the hope that I will understand it myself. Here's what happened: I filled up my car's tank on Thursday. Like always, I tripped the mileage counter so it was back to zero. I like to keep track of my miles per gallon just to see if the car's doing okay and all that.
So skip forward to Saturday. I drive to the disc golf course to hook up with some friends and throw 18 holes. Afterwards we drive to the bar and run into some friends. After drinking and playing some pool we move decide to play another 18 holes. At this point I look at my gas gauge. It reads 1/4 full.
I assumed that something was wrong with the gauge. It's electronic and only reads accurately when you turn the key. So I figure maybe there was a glitch and it will read correctly when I turn it off and turn it back on again. So we throw a round and I check the gas level again. It still reads a quarter tank.
Now I know I didn't drive that far. I check the trip mileage and it reads less than a hundred miles (normally I can expect well over 300 miles per tank). I forget about it for awhile, thinking that maybe the gauge is stuck for some reason and I'll be able to drive on it for 300 miles. I checked for a pool of gas on my driveway that might indicate a leaky gas tank and found nothing.
But on the way home from work yesterday the gas light came on, signalling the tank was almost empty. Not wanting to risk it I swing back into a gas station and put the pump in. The gallons start adding up. 2.... 3..... 4.... WTF?!
I fully expected it to stop before 3 gallons. My tank was empty. The mileage counter read almost exactly 100 miles since my last fill up.
The thought hit me like a flung portion of pudding -- Somebody stole my gas!!
I can't think of any other explanation. I checked this morning and the gas is still there. My tank is not leaking. I know I hit the mileage counter at the last fillup; I remember doing it and it was only a few days ago.
There's only one possibility: Somebody siphoned my gas out of the tank while I was playing disc golf! Now, I've heard of some fucked up shit in my time, but who the hell goes around siphoning gas out of peoples' tanks? I don't want to unfairly smear the good names of my fellow disc golfers, but I don't think there was time at the bar. And it was very busy around there.
I know there were a lot of kids hanging around the disc golf course. I don't know why anyone would decide to fill up their tank at the expense of mine, but selfishness is certainly not unheard of on this planet. Still, it's disappointing from a group that's usually above such pettiness. I thought the only people who stole gas were in the Bush Administration!
Has this happened to anyone else? I know gas prices are getting out of hand, but I hadn't foreseen this. Bastards got me for like 25 bucks worth of gas!
Have you ever had a Death Metal Morning™? It's when you need a fix of super-loud, super-fast death metal in the morning when most sane people are listening to light music to slowly wake the hell up.
As I was pulling out of my driveway this morning I couldn't find anything decent on the radio so I switched to a CD Andy gave me - Nile. I figured it might be a death metal morning. Boy was I right.
Not three seconds after putting on the CD I turned onto a road not more than 100 feet from my house and was nearly driven right off the road by a vehicle coming at me at extreme speed.
This is a neighborhood, mind you. Kids are all over the place around here, and this street was a residential road (one lane in each direction) with a speed limit of 30 mph, which most people actually follow. Not dumbshit though. She/he was going at least 50 miles an hour. Although the car was coming right at me I managed to make it up to 30 before they caught up to me. You'd think we'd be cool, right?
No. Dumbfuck swerves and passes me, crossing the double yellow line (no passing) and into oncoming traffic (there was none. This is a quiet neighborhood...or it was) and gives me the finger as if this is all somehow my fault.
No way, muthafucker. Not in my neighborhood. So I follow the little bitch and lay on the horn. We come up to a stoplight and we have to wait at least 30 seconds, thus negating any time dumbshit might've saved by speeding 50+ mph in a residential zone.
Muthafucker should be thanking Jesus I didn't have a fucking baseball bat in my car or there would've been trouble. She/he would've seen a well-dressed office drone jump out of his car with a bat and death metal blaring. I would've proceeded to beat the fuck out of his/her nice-ass SUV (of course it was an SUV) while screaming, "Not in my neighborhood, MUTHERFUCKER!!!" repeatedly. It would've been quite a sight.
Luckily, I don't have a baseball bat in my car, but life is a mosh pit and I'm thinking about getting one. We live in a death metal world and if you're not ready to fight back you're gonna get your face stepped on.
Nile, by the way, is perfect for working through a spasm of rage in the morning. It truly was a Death Metal Morning™.
Was Pat Tillman eliminated to silence a powerful anti-war voice?
It's looking more and more like Pat Tillman was murdered -- executed if you will. The incredible revelations were revealed in a new AP story that doesn't draw any conclusions, but whose fresh details paint a picture of an Army-wide cover-up and an execution-style assassination. From Yahoo:
Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.
The doctors — whose names were blacked out — said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
10 yards away? How do you fuck up so badly that you manage to put 3 bullets -- in a tight grouping -- in the head of a fellow Ranger? It doesn't seem very likely, especially when there was zero evidence of enemy fire. That means that they were not in the fog of war and the confusion that follows from it.
It's also worth noting that the Tillman story has changed several times. First, he was killed by enemy fire. Then he was killed by friendly-fire. Now it seems the "friendly" might have been aiming right at him.
The evidence points directly to it and the motivation is clear - Tillman abandoned a lucrative career in pro-football immediately after 9/11 because he felt a rampaging patriotic urge to defend his country, and became a poster child for the war on terror as a result. But when he discovered that the invasion of Iraq was based on a mountain of lies and deceit and had nothing to do with defending America, he became infuriated and was ready to return home to become an anti-war hero.
As far back as March 2003, immediately after the invasion, Tillman famously told his comrade Spc. Russell Baer, "You know, this war is so fucking illegal," and urged his entire platoon to vote against Bush in the 2004 election. Far from the gung-ho gruff stereotype attributed to him, Tillman was actually a fiercely intellectual man with the courage of his convictions firmly in place.
Tillman had even begun to arrange meetings with anti-war icons like Noam Chomsky upon his return to America before his death cut short any aspirations of becoming a focal point for anti-war sentiment.
This is the last thing the Bush/Cheney administration needed. Could they have possibly given the order to assassinate Tillman and then cover it up?
Former presidential candidate Wesley Clark said he thought the orders to whack Tillman must've come from the very top. Tillman could've become an anti-war voice much more resonant among men and conservatives than Cindy Sheehan. He represented a threat precisely because of his service, his life story and his fierce, questioning intelligence. The latest (and most pathetic) propaganda seems designed to paint Pat as an atheist to undermine America's trust in him:
But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.
The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."
If there was no enemy fire, why were they on the ground? How do we know this account wasn't completely fabricated? I think Congress needs to talk to the doctors and investigators who attempted to pursue the homicide angle, but were stymied.
A group of governors asked Bush and Marine Gen. Peter Pace about their backup plan for Iraq. What would the administration do if its new strategy didn't work? The conclusion they took away was that there is no Plan B. "I'm a Marine," Pace told them, "and Marines don't talk about failure. They talk about victory."
"Plan B was to make Plan A work."
Talk about some scary shit. Are these two running a war or a comedy show?
If the Democrats don't smell weakness here and move in, it's because they're controlled by the same folks who control the neocons. I was hoping there was another game in town, but it looks like We the People are alone in this fight. And most of us would rather watch Larry the Cable Guy than put pressure on our representatives. We know this is stupid.... are we still going to stand for it?
Sometimes I think the world would be better off without us. If we can't fix this maybe our species doesn't get to survive. We're destroying our planet and killing each other. All these years and we still haven't figured it out.
"The ultimate Plan B is pull everybody out," said Stephen D. Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adviser to the Defense Department. "Nobody wants to do that. Most are looking at the middle ground between surge and pullout."
Well, let's go for Plan-fucking B already, asshole!! "Nobody" wants to do that? Who the fuck are you talking to, Biddle?! Get us the fuck out of there. NOW! We don't want to be an Empire anymore, okay? So fuck off and die.
Biddle, who noted that new Iraq strategy proposals "proliferate hourly" in the public domain, said another variant is to set up "heavily defended forward operating bases out in the desert somewhere [and] either sit there and mind our own business and do nothing except be present -- enabling us to say we're still there -- or, in a somewhat more activist flavor, to conduct raids of various kinds" against al-Qaeda bases and rescue missions for Iraqi military units.
Oh great, we can be warlords in western Iraq and Somalia just like all the other gangsters and thugs. We could conduct raiding parties like pirates or vikings. Brilliant. This fucking egghead is just brilliant. This weak-ass, spineless piece of shit is suggesting the United States of America assume the position of the lowest of the low -- a marauding band of beggars and thieves.
First of all, al-Qaeda is mostly an illusion, a creation of the CIA during the Afghan war against the Soviets. Secondly, they were just an excuse to kick our country in gear. The Powers That Be decided that they wanted us to be aggressive and bloodthirsty to further the consolidation of their empire so they cooked up 9.11 to whip us into a frenzy. But now the excitement has worn off and we're stuck in the middle of the desert with a bunch of people who are so crazy they're killing each other more than us.
Let's face reality, wake up from this nightmare, impeach Bush/Cheney and bring the troops back home! Then we can apologize to the world, undertake massive economic reforms, investigate the wrong-doings of the government going back 60-some years and put things right politically. We've really let things get all fucked up, so we've gotta clean house. First on the list are those spineless scorpions -- the neocons. Then we can get the vampire bats (fat aristocracy/business) and the filthy rats (criminal networks) and the scheming spiders (secret ruling cabals) who have woven this network of fear and exploitation.
Can we agree that this war is bankrupt? It's all over but the crying... and some more killing if the neocons get their way. That's why we have to sweep them from power. If we don't act soon we can expect more of the same. Attacking Iran would be colossally stupid... in other words, it's right up the neocons' alley.
Boycott the BBC! "Cock-up" Reveals Pre-Knowledge of WTC 7 Collapse, but Damage Control Afterwards Points to Conspiracy
The BBC has been in the middle of a blogger firestorm the last couple days after clear and incontrovertible evidence appeared, showing that the Beeb had reported the collapse of the Salomon Brothers Building -- better known as World Trade Center 7 -- before it actually collapsed! Check out the screen grab below (I've circled WTC7):
The BBC engaged in some quick (and pathetic) damage control but failed to calm the boiling outrage erupting around the world. In so doing they revealed that they've lost all of their tapes from 9/11 and doefully ask somebody to send them a copy, plz. (I'm not fucking kidding. Check the link):
We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it.
I don't even know where to begin.
Okay, Beeb... so you're telling me that nobody fucking bothered to save or secure any of the tapes from an entire day of broadcasting -- a day that, even for the Brits, would have to rank as one of the most important in a generation at least, and then you meekly ask for a copy as if it's our job?! What the hell?! Then you claim incompetence (just like the Bush regime)?! Well, your excuse is so fucking pathetic I'm inclined to agree that you are a bunch of morons.
Do you believe them? I don't. This is bullshit. I'm starting to think that the BBC, and all the other major news organs, are in fact part of the conspiracy -- after the fact.
So how did the Beeb get the news that the WTC7 building was about to collapse? Well, that certainly could be fairly innocent on their part. If a "trusted source" informed them of the collapse, they would be inclined to report it, and not bothering to check and see that the building is still standing does reek of incompetence. However, they seem quite competent at getting videos removed from YouTube and GoogleVideo. Strange for a news organization that was supposedly trying to get their tapes back.
I managed to find a clip on YouTube that hasn't been taken down yet. It's got a full 25 minutes of the BBC's feed from 9/11, so you'll have to fast forward ahead to the 15 minute mark to see the footage in question.
So, this could be an isolated incident, right? A fluke bout of premonition by a major media outlet that is unique in the pages of history? Not quite.
CNN did the same damn thing. In fact, the footage of WTC7 is even better in the CNN version and you can see that the building is not really on fire. There's plenty of smoke around it, but most of it appears to be coming from the wreckage of the two towers. Reporter Aaron Brown at least seems vaguely aware that the building is still standing, but he clearly mentions a collapse that either has occurred or is about to occur.
What are we to make of all this? Well, I think that's pretty obvious. The corporate-controlled media is lying to us. Every day, with every breath, and every death in Iraq or from the growing numbers of dead or dying first responders... they're lying to us. They know which way the evidence points, and they're doing everything they can to cover it up. After the BBC's litany of pathetic excuses they had the gall to mock those of us who question the official story:
If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that. As one of the comments on You Tube says today "so the guy in the studio didn't quite know what was going on? Woah, that totally proves conspiracy... "
So they're not only mocking those of us genuinely concerned about the events of 9/11 (if we don't learn what really happened, how can we prevent another one?), they've sunken so low they're using a Bush regime apologist's anonymous comments on YouTube to make their case. FUCKING PATHETIC.
What's even more intriguing is how the BBC flak, Richard Porter, seems more interested in carrying water for the Bush regime than he does in showing his news organization as a competent and trustworthy news source. In fact, he goes out of his way to make the BBC appear utterly incompetent -- no doubt because it helps the Bush regime with their own claims of incompetence rather than malfeasance. Instead of acknowledging legitimate questions about that fateful day he does all he can to back up the official story (which, by the way, is a conspiracy theory no matter how you slice it). I say again: FUCKING PATHETIC.
That's it. You're done, Beeb. I had you in my bookmarks, but you're gone now. You're fucking gone. You are nothing more than an agent of evil to me now. I will give you the same amount of trust I give the Bush regime -- less than zero.
I'm calling for a BOYCOTT, folks. We can't let our media LIE to us and get away with it. Going back to them and reading their deception-stained news would be like an abused wife going back to her drunked and violent husband. Enough!
What's the number one thing a news organization is supposed to do? Tell the truth, right? When a news outlet refuses to do that, what good are they? They're about as useful as a knife in the eye. They're about as helpful as gonorrhea.
I'm calling for a boycott until such time as the BBC fires that arrogant, pandering fuckhead, Richard Porter, head editor of world news... AND launches a full and impartial investigation into the tragic events of 9/11 -- giving all theories equal credence until the evidence makes clear which is most likely. And not a trashy hit-piece like that Conspiracy Files piece of shit (which was debunked about 5 minutes after it aired).
It really pains me to do this. The BBC has a lot of quality programming and some of their shows have really hit hard and exposed lies and crimes in government. However, they are tainted meat to me now. I can't eat the rest of it just because it looks okay -- how do I really know? Trust is such a fragile thing, and getting it back after losing it is not easy. Good luck, BBC. I hope you do the right thing.
You've no doubt been caught in the media's miasma of sensationalization. Their orgy of recrminiations and fingers pointed, obliquely or not, is mostly a distraction. But there might be some truth to the whispers that she was murdered. It should not go without notice that there is a billion dollar inheritance at stake.
A week before her death, Monroe spent a weekend at Lake Tahoe's Cal-Neva Lodge as a doped-up plush-toy of owners Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana. Later, friend Ralph Roberts said Monroe described it as a "nightmare," and that she'd felt more like a prisoner than a guest. Photographer Billy Woodfield, who'd worked with both Monroe and Sinatra, told Wolfe that Sinatra gave him a roll of film from the weekend to develop: "In his darkroom the photographer was shocked to see that the photos were of an unconscious Marilyn Monroe being sexually abused in the presence of Sam Giancana and Sinatra. Marilyn had been drugged in order for the compromising photos to be taken." Woodfield advised Sinatra to burn them.
Drugs, mind-control, assassination, rape and blackmail. What a wonderful world we live in. Sinatra was protected from on high, much like Johnny Fontaine in the Godfather, so this doesn't sound too out of character for him. He wants a fine piece of ass, so all he has to do is pick one from the pages of People magazine. His goons get the drugs and the dame and the rest is a party, if that's what you'd call it.
The death of Anna Nicole's son, Daniel, seemed very suspicious to me (removing the heirs?). I think we have to look at the obvious suspects in this case (which the police seem reluctant to do): She made a lot of enemies for marrying J. Howard Marshall a little over a year before his death. The complex court case involving the Marshall family's efforts to deny Anna Nicole a slice of that billion dollar payout got dirty fast. After a recent Supreme Court ruling in her favor I think it's foolish to ignore the obvious suspects in our midst. E. Pierce Marshall is dead, but no doubt somebody else is controlling the family now. The question is "who?" and how far will they go to maintain their fortune?
The two-part television interview, titled "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened," will air Nov. 27 and Nov. 29 on Fox, the TV network said Tuesday.
"O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes," the network said in a statement. "In the two-part event, Simpson describes how he would have carried out the murders he has vehemently denied committing for over a decade."
Not only is he a murderer, he's also a publicity hound.
Normally I'd insert something snarky and sarcastic here, but is there really any need? I mean, this pretty much says it all, doesn't it? He's had 10+ years to think about it, and now he's going to tell us how he would rather have done it, given what he knows now. Well, that's just great.
Perhaps he can take on the Kennedy assassinations next. Hell, why not do a reality TV show:
"It's O.J. Simpson in... How I Would've Murdered Those People:The Most Famous Murders in History, Seen Through the Eyes of a Calculating Psychopath. This week O.J. tells us how he would've whacked JonBenet Ramsey!"
