Merchants of Death Become Honest

There's been a remarkable restoration of honesty and integrity amongst America's merchants of death. As this chart shows, the companies that manufacturer and sell the equipment that allows American boys to go around the world, meet interesting people, and kill them, have become almost perfectly honest in their dealings with the US government.

While spending on 'defense' has soared to levels far beyond what the rest of the world combined spends, the American tax payers who pay for all of this can rest assured that every single nickle and dime is being spent completely honestly. This is a remarkable turn around for an industry that was once derided for selling $400 ash-trays and $1000 toilet seats. But as you can clearly see in this chart, since the peak of corruption in 1989, the number of prosecutions for fraud have now dropped to almost zero.

There's no one quite so honest as a Merchant of Death.

-- chart from Fraud Cases Fell While Pentagon Contracts Surged by Nick Schwellenbach at the Center for Public Integrity, who makes the odd assertion that the only reason the number of cases dropped is that there are fewer investigators today than back in 1995 when the 'Defense' budget was only a fraction of what it is today.

The law they'd rather forget about

Thanks to Progressive Review for this link to this article that appeared in the NY Times on Nov 5. 1999. CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS

From 1999 ...

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.

Today's action followed a rich Congressional debate about the history of finance in America in this century, the causes of the banking crisis of the 1930's, the globalization of banking and the future of the nation's economy.

Administration officials and many Republicans and Democrats said the measure would save consumers billions of dollars and was necessary to keep up with trends in both domestic and international banking. Some institutions, like Citigroup, already have banking, insurance and securities arms but could have been forced to divest their insurance underwriting under existing law. Many foreign banks already enjoy the ability to enter the securities and insurance industries.

Gee, how'd that work out?

Here's what a familiar name was saying then ...

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

Gee, how'd that work out?

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

Those dang opponents are always so gloomy in the face of progress, aren't they?

Fortunately, we had Bill Clinton to lead us to a brighter future...

And today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down these antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority. This will, first of all, save consumers billions of dollars a year through enhanced competition. It will also protect the rights of consumers.

-- statement at signing ceremony

Another War Lost?

Another War Lost? by William Lind via Antiwar.com

William Lind is a former Marine Corps officer who is usually far to the right of me politically. But, he is a very astute writer on military affairs, so I usually read his columns. This one is a very nice analysis of what's wrong with Obama's plan to 'win' the Afghan war. But, its this last bit about politics right at the end that struck me. So, this is the view of rather conservative ex-military officer ....

Here we see how little "change" the Obama administration really represents. The differences between the neo-liberals and the neocons are few. Both are militant believers in Brave New World, a globalist future in which everyone on earth becomes modern. In the view of these ideologues, the fact that billions of people are willing to fight to the death against modernity is, like the river Pregel, an unimportant military obstacle. We just need to buy more Predators.

Meanwhile, the money is running out. The ancien regime syndrome looms ever larger: we not only maintain but increase foolish foreign commitments, at the same time that debt is piling up, those willing to lend become fewer, and we are reduced to debasing the currency. Historians have seen it all before, many, many times. It never has a happy ending.

It appears Afghanistan will be the graveyard of yet another empire.

And the question that we should be asking? Why are we fighting in Afghanistan? As a nation, we are broke. So, why are we even trying to spent billions building a prosperous Afghanistan?

BTW, 'ancien regime' is what the court of King Louis XVI called themselves at Versailles. If you read history of the French Revolution, you'd learn that they spent themselves into horrible debt with silly wars and huge military budgets. They eventually collapsed the French economy to the point where people were starving and fighting to get bread. That led to the 'let them eat cake' comment, and to the French people eventually ridding themselves with such foolish rulers via the guillotine.

The State of Play in the Bomb-Iran Debate

The State of Play in the Bomb-Iran Debate by Justin Logan at Cato@Liberty.

Mr. Logan is commenting on a debate recently held about whether the US should commit more war crimes by launching an unprovoked attack on Iran. There are two interesting things in this debate. The first of course is that its all based on a false premise. That Iran is developing nuclear weapons. And that they are close enough that we should bomb them about it.

Actually, I'd be a little surprised if Iran wasn't at least thinking about developing nuclear weapons. They've seen what happened to Iraq and North Korea, and the obvious lesson the US is teaching the rest of the world is that they'd better go get nukes to try to deter the US. But, there's been zero proof so far that the Iranians have done anything substantial towards producing nuclear weapons. No inspection of their facilities have ever found any traces of any bomb-grade uranium being made. Uranium for a power plant can't be used to make a bomb, and all the IAEA has ever found is power-reactor-grade uranium.

But there's a second part that really strikes me as incredibly ridiculous. The fool Elliott Abrams makes this argument in his portion of the debate.

we are not talking about the Americans killing civilians, bombing cities, destroying mosques, hospitals, schools. No, no, no – weʹre talking about nuclear facilities which most Iranians know very little about, have not seen, will not see, some quite well hidden.

So they wake up in the morning and find out that the United States if attacking those facilities and, presumably with some good messaging about why weʹre doing it and why we are not against the people of Iran.

Itʹs not clear to me that the reaction letʹs go to war with the Americans, but rather, perhaps, how did we get into this mess? Why did those guys, the very unpopular ayatollahs in a country 70 percent of whose population is under the age of 30, why did those old guys get us into this mess.

The man can't possibly be that ignorant of US-Iranian history over the last 60 years. But, just in case he his, let me try to give him a few hints.

• 
  In the 1950's, the Iranians overthrew their shah and tried to put into place a western-style democracy. The problem was, these poor deluded Iranian democrats viewed the oil under their country as theirs. Whereas the US and Britain thought of the oil as their own. So, the CIA and British intelligence ran a joint operation to overthrow the Iranian government and put the shah's son in power as the new shah.
  
• 
  The Shah ran the country for almost thirty years. One of the things the Shah was well known for was for his vicious secret police which was trained by and worked with the CIA.
  
• When Khomeni overthrew the Shah, the US condemned this act. We tried to find ways to make the revolution fail, while at the same time inviting the Shah to come into the United States. This last act sparked the storming of the US embassy and the hostage crisis.
  
• The US responded by trying to launch a military operation into Iran to retake the embassy, but it failed when the helicopters didn't react well to sand and flying into each other.
  
• Next, the US used Saddam Hussein to launch a horribly nasty war against Iran. For the people involved, this war was as bad as World War I. Except it lasted far longer. It had trench warfare, and human-wave attacks against those trenches. The US and western Europe helped supply Saddam Hussein with poison gas, which he used to try to attack the Iranian trenches. All of this lasted for most of the 1980's.
  
• Then came Bush and his axis of evil. And all of the constant threats that the US would bomb Iranian nuclear facilities over the last four years of so.
  verthrow their government and welcome Osama Bin Laden as our liberator.
  

Hey, the Iranians call the US 'The Great Satan'. Please, there's not a chance in heck of the Iranian people greeting us as liberators.

Bush policies are back?

This is from an email I received from Amnesty International. They are organizing a lobbying campaign for when our pro-torture Congress-critters are back in the districts the weeks of April 6-17.

This past weekend we got a deeply troubling glimpse into the heart of the Obama administration's counter-terrorism policies.

On Friday, in a symbolic break with the past, the Obama administration announced it would drop the term "enemy combatant" - only to argue in the same breath that the administration has the legal authority to hold detainees indefinitely, without charge. 1

We're beginning to fear the worst: that the Obama administration will hold onto the failed counter-terrorism policies of the Bush administration. Such a move would solidify and make indefinite detention and other Bush policies the new norm in America.

Our most powerful antidote to these cancerous counter-terrorism policies is a full investigation that includes holding those responsible accountable.

Follow the link above for more details on how to join a delegation in your area.

Obstruction of Justice

Obstruction of Justice by Chris Hedges on Truthdig.com

If you don't know about the case of Dr. Al-Arian, then you should read this article.

To try to give the short version, Dr. Al-Arian was a professor at Univ of South Florida who vocally supported Palestinian rights. After years of FBI surveillence, he was arrested and tried on terrorism charges. The jury acquitted him on most charges, and hung 10-2 in his favor on others.

Government lawyers made wild assertions that showed a profound ignorance of the Middle East and exposed a gross stereotyping of the Muslim world. It called on the FBI case agent, for example, who testified as an expert witness that Islamic terrorists were routinely smuggled over the border from Iran into Syria, apparently unaware that Syria is separated from Iran by a large land mass called Iraq. The transcripts of the case against Al-Arian—which read like a bad Gilbert and Sullivan opera—are stupefying in their idiocy. The government wiretaps picked up nothing of substance; taxpayer dollars were used to record and transcribe 21,000 hours of banal chatter, including members of the Al-Arian household ordering pizza delivery. During the trial the government called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to inane phone transcriptions and recordings, made over a 10-year period, which the jury curtly dismissed as “gossip.” It would be comical if the consequences were not so dire for the defendant.

A jury, on Dec. 6, 2005, acquitted Dr. Al-Arian on eight of the counts in the superseding indictment after a six-month trial in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. On the 94 charges made against the four defendants, there were no convictions. Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian—including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad”—the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors, who voted 10 to 2 to acquit on the remaining charges, could not reach a unanimous decision calling for his full acquittal. Two others in the case, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted of all charges.

After losing before a jury, the federal government refused to drop the case. Instead they promised to move forward with another years-long trial on the charges on which the jury hung. In order to end the ordeal, Dr. Al-Arian agreed to a plea bargain where he would leave this country. A part of the deal was that he refused to testify in other cases. So, then a federal prosecutor had him hauled up to Virginia to force him to testify in other cases. When Dr. Al-Arian refused, citing his plea bargain deal, he was charged with contempt of court and kept in federal prisons.

Despite the refusal of a jury to convict him, he's been held in federal prisons for years.

PS ... note that while the author refers to the Bush Justice Dept and 'right-wing' prosecutors, the Obama Justice Dept is still pursuing the case. And note also that incredible amounts of extra jail time that they are asking for comes from the 'Patriot Act II', which was supported by Obama and the Democrats.

Obama the Republican

Obama: won't speed up Iraq pull out on AP

Obama the Republican ....

"I think the plan that we put forward in Iraq is the right one" because it calls for "a very gradual withdrawal through the national elections in Iraq,"

...

"I'm confident that we're moving in the right direction. But Iraq is not yet completed. We still have a lot of work to do," the president said of the war that's winding down after six hard-fought years.

And, for people in the National Guard who thought they might be able to spend some time at home. Well, not so fast. Obama has other 'wars' to fight.

_His administration was considering putting more National Guard troops on the U.S. border with Mexico to stem violence from the illicit drug trade.

And, gotta make sure that short-term 'anger' over million dollar bonuses to the very people who caused this crash doesn't get in the way of the long term policies of pumping trillions of our dollars into the Wall St firms.

_Anger over giant bonuses for bailout-recipient American International Group Inc. was justified, but he doesn't want his long-term focus threatened by what he calls the legitimate, but short-term frustrations over some of Wall Street's actions.

"My most important job is to get this economy moving again, to get credit flowing again so that businesses large and small can start rehiring, open their doors and we can start seeing economic growth again," Obama said.

Oh, and there's this other article announcing that Obama's relations with Iran will stay on the same saber-rattling, war-like course as Bush's. You didn't really think we were going to talk to Iran, like Obama promised in the primaries, did you?

Wow, the 'change' we are getting is just stunning isn't it? We can't 'change' the war in Iraq'. We are only 'changing' the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the worse. And, of course we can't 'change' the fact that Wall St. owns this government, and that they now have an apparently unlimited pipeline direct from the public treasury into their pockets.

People need to burn this into their memories as what the Democrats mean by 'change we can believe in.' If people want real change, voting Democrat is not the answer.

Some times, all you can do is cry ...

If Only the World Had Listened by Robert Fisk in The Independent

I don’t know if I met Tom Hurndall. He was one of a bunch of “human shields” who turned up in Baghdad just before the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the kind of folk we professional reporters make fun of. Tree huggers, that kind of thing. Now I wish I had met him because – looking back over the history of that terrible war – Hurndall’s journals (soon to be published) show a remarkable man of remarkable principle. “I may not be a human shield,” he wrote at 10.26 on 17 March from his Amman hotel. “And I may not adhere to the beliefs of those I have travelled with, but the way Britain and America plan to take Iraq is unnecessary and puts soldiers’ lives above those of civilians. For that I hope that Bush and Blair stand trial for war crimes.”

Hurndall got it about right, didn’t he? It wasn’t so simple as war/no war, black and white, he wrote. “Things I’ve heard and seen over the last few weeks proves what I already knew; neither the Iraqi regime, nor the American or British, are clean. Maybe Saddam needs to go but ... the air war that’s proposed is largely unnecessary and doesn’t discriminate between civilians and armed soldiers. Tens of thousands will die, maybe hundreds of thousands, just to save thousands of American soldiers having to fight honestly, hand to hand. It is wrong.” Oh, how many of my professional colleagues wrote like this on the eve of war? Not many.

We’re Paying Congress for This?

We’re Paying Congress for This? by Stanley Kutler on Truthdig

As someone who became aware of politics back when my mom had the Watergate hearings on TV in the house every day, this is something I'm painfully aware of. Congress no longer does real investigations.

And now comes Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank’s choreographed extravaganza in the House of Representatives, supported by an echoing committee, with sound bites worthy of a night in the Borscht Belt. The ostensible probe of executive bonuses at AIG—forget about any investigation of the company’s decisions that so damaged the financial world—offered a painful reminder of Congress’ now largely ignored unique power of investigation, derived from its constitutionally sanctioned authority to legislate. True, Congress has abused this power from time to time, but that is no argument against its existence.

Rep. Frank provided a perfunctory, carefully staged hearing this month. His fellow committee members had been prepped and primed—seemingly by their press aides rather than by any legal staff.

I stopped that excerpt in mid-paragraph because this is undoubtably true. The whole purpose of a Congressional hearing these days is to give each member 5 or 10 minutes to talk in front of a camera. That is the whole point of a modern congressional hearing. It was true when the Republicans were refusing to do any oversight of their president, and it was true for the last two years when the Democrats refused to do any oversight on a Republican President.

Hearings used to be much more open-ended. The main questioners of witnesses were the legal staff of the hearing that had spent long hours compiling and reviewing evidence and taking depositions from key witnesses. Each congress-critter would also ask questions, but the time they had for this wasn't nearly so limited as today.

In a modern hearing, its all designed to fit into a nice slot on C-span, and to provide each congress-critter with film clips of them looking officious asking questions at a hearing. But, you can see how each Congress-critter usually only gets one 5 minute slot to do this in. This of course makes it possible for any witness to dodge answering questions by running out that 5 minutes and moving on to the next questioner. The whole thing is just a giant PR show, and getting any real information out of the witnesses is not the point.

Its clear that replacing the Republicans with Democrats didn't change this. And that's very unfortunate because congressional hearings play a key role in our democracy. We are supposed to have separate but equal branches of government that provide checks and balances upon each other. And if any of these is supposed to be strongest, it is supposed to be the Congress, not the Executive Branch. Having an independent Congress with the power to investigate is a key pillar in what is supposed to be our free and democratic government.

Each Congress-critter takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. When they shirk that key constitutional duty to instead just posture for the cameras, they are doing grave damage to our country. Want to know who's 'un-American' these days? Watch a Congressional hearing. But its not some supposed secret communist who's the un-American person on your screen. Its the congress-critters who are failing to live up to the oath they took with their hand on a bible at the start of the session of Congress.

Flim-Flam Obama Man: The “New Democrat[ic]” President's Wall Street Loyalties Get Clearer Every Day

Flim-Flam Obama Man: The “New Democrat[ic]” President's Wall Street Loyalties Get Clearer Every Day by Paul Street on ZNet

Obama briefly expresses calculated outrage against "excessive" executive bonuses at AIG. He makes carefully orchestrated visits expressing concern about poverty and job-loss to hard-hit places like Pomona, California and Elkhart, Indiana. But it's all a public relations game. It's about pricking the boil of citizen fury to more effectively screw the citizenry over. The White House says mean things about capitalist parasites and then proceeds to give the financial overlords yet more of the public treasure - all in the name of restoring the "free enterprise" system.



The real point is to provide faux-populist cover for Obama's corporate, Wall Street agenda. Meanwhile the "mainstream" (corporate) media continues to ignore the new administration's related commitment to the amazingly unmentionable 1$ trillion-a-year Pentagon budget, a giant subsidy to high-tech industry that pays for more than 760 bases across more than 130 nations and accounts for nearly half the military spending on earth - all in the name of "defense." The leading Wall Street investment firm and bailout recipient Morgan Stanley reported one day after Obama's election victory that Obama has been advised and agrees that there is no peace dividend." [11]



At the same time, Obama's tepid and undersized stimulus plan is deceptively described as "massive" in much of the business press. It is dysfunctionally over-loaded with business-friendly tax cuts and too short on labor-intensive projects to put people to work right away. He says nothing about the overdue labor law reform he campaigned on, the Employee Free Choice Act. He speaks in support of the anti-union, teacher-bashing, and test-based corporate education agenda, advocating teacher "merit pay" and charter schools. He makes a public visit (in support of his stimulus bill) to the headquarters of Caterpillar, a provider of bulldozers for illegal Israeli settlements. Caterpillar was also the first large U.S. manufacturer in decades to break a major strike with scabs.

Witness to Israel's war crimes

Witness to Israel's war crimes Interview with James Leas, who visited Gaza after the main attacks, as a part of a National Lawyer's Guild delegation. Interview posted on SocialistWorker.org

UN Director [of Operations in Gaza] John Ging was actually in telephone contact with the Israelis before they attacked the UN compound, telling them that bombing was coming quite close. Ging told the Israelis that they should avoid hitting the UN compound.

The Israelis knew its coordinates, they knew exactly where it was, they could see it from the air very clearly. Ging told the Israelis that there were hundreds of refugees there, and that there were fuel tanks near the building, which if hit could create a massive explosion.

Ging told them that if they hit it with the white phosphorous bombs that were raining down around the city, there could be an enormous tragedy. But the Israelis went ahead and hit it anyway. Fortunately, there were some very brave people who ran out during the fire bombing and moved the trucks away, so they didn't have that explosion.

Just one of many incidents described in this article.

Iran Nuclear Nonsense

MI chief: Iran has crossed nuclear bomb threshold in Haaretz.

From a nuclear engineer's point of view (at least that's what my degree was in), what's in this article is total nonsense.

Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told lawmakers on Wednesday that Iran has "crossed the technological threshold" for making a nuclear bomb.

Ooooh. Sounds scary. But, notice there's no detail in there. Just a scary statement. If you read further, and if you have your brain engaged, you'll find its nonsense.

The article then swerves into a side issue about how the evil Iranians have developed a 'surface to surface' missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons. But that has nothing to do with the headline or the first quote. I'll return to that point later.

Then we get to the roll-on-the-floor-laughing part ....

According to Yadlin, the bottleneck in Iran's nuclear weapons program was in obtaining fissionable material.

No kidding?

That's like saying, the main bottleneck to cooking dinner tonight is that there is no food in the house. Oh, we can see alarming preparations towards cooking dinner. We can tell they've tested the gas burners on the stove. And we feel they could have dinner ready in 20 minutes once they obtain actual food.

But hey, without the food, there ain't gonna be no dinner. And, likewise, the main obstacle to building a nuclear weapon is always going to be 'obtaining fissionable material'.

Oh, and here's the fun part where the Israelis decide to tell you that they've been lying their rear's off to you all along.

The Iranians enrich between one and two kilos of low grade uranium, Yadlin said. However, once they decide to bring that to weapon's grade enrichment levels (93%) they could produce the amount needed for a bomb within several months to a year.

Note that the Israeli Military Intelligence chief says 'once they'. But, the Israelis have been screaming for years now that the Iranians have already been doing this. Now, the Israeli Military Intelligence chief is clearly saying that they haven't been, but that they might decide to do it. Gee, I guess its a good thing we didn't already bomb Iran based on the Israeli assertions that the Iranians were building a bomb.

This by-the-way, is in total agreement with what the IAEA has been saying all along. That there is no evidence that the Iranians have ever gone beyond the 4% or so enrichment needed to fuel a nuclear power reactor.

The Israelis don't seem to be able to keep their lies straight. In today's 'You-should-be-very-scared' story, they managed to admit they've been lying all along.

One last note. The article acts like to go from the 4% levels of enrichment to 93% levels of enrichment, its just like putting something in the microwave for 5 minutes. Its not nearly that easy. 'Enrichment' means trying to separate atoms that are nearly identical except for the weight of three additional neutrons in one atom over the other. If I gave that difference in weight in grams, it would be an incredibly small number. And I mean like a decimal point then 20 or so zeros before you get to the numbers sort of small amount of weight in even milligrams. They are trying to separate one thing that weighs almost nothing from something else that weighs just the tiniest bit more than almost nothing. Remember, they are trying to separate molecules of gas based on weight. They do this by spinning this around in a centrifuge.

The trick is, that you could have imperfections in your system that might allow you to get to 4%, but that would never let you get anywhere near 93%. This is a very tricky task, to spin atoms of a gas to one end of a centrifuge, then pull those atoms, and only those atoms out of the centrifuge and separate them. Each run through a centrifuge only 'enriches' by a tiny amount. Quite likely, if the Iranians were to try to go to 93%, they would discover flaws in their system that stop them at a lower level. At least that's what's happened to everyone else who's tried to do this, as far as I know. Those flaws aren't insurmountable, but its likely to be a 'try it - it didn't work - why didn't it work - oh fix this - try it again' sort of process. Ie, it doesn't just happen because someone throws a switch.

And all of this would take both a long time and all of those thousands of centrifuges the Iranians claim to have. Which means this, if we have IAEA inspectors going to the facilities, there is no way they could do this in secret. The US built a massive facility in Oak Ridge and ran thousands of centrifuges for months to do this during the Manhattan project.

In other words, there is no reason to be scared at all. If the Iranians were to go down this path, the whole world would know it months before they ever got there.

One more last note. When they say 'surface-to-surface missiles that can carry nuclear warheads', this is obviously dependent on the size of the nuclear warheads. That's the part of nuclear weapon design that takes some skill. Its simple to make the dang thing blow up. The trick is to make it small enough to fit on top of a missile, and still blow up. Go find pictures of the first American bombs, they were huge, and needed the entire bomb-bay of a WWII super-bomber to carry them. No way they'd fit on top of a missile.

So, the key question is, how big would be the nuclear bomb that would go on this missile? I suspect that what the Israelis are really saying is that the Iranians have a missile that would carry a modern American nuclear weapon, which the Americans have been designing on for 60 years to make a warhead small enough to fit on top of it.

This in no way means that the Iranians, who've never even exploded a test nuclear warhead of any size, can design and build a nuclear weapon to fit on top of this missile.

The Making of an 'Animal Rights Terrorist'

How Corporate Provacateurs Made Fran Trutt an “Animal Rights Terrorist” by Will Potter at GreenIsTheNewRed.com

Can't really excerpt this. The short version is that a purported attempt to pipe-bomb the executive of a company that uses dogs for product testing and training was actually orchestrated by a company called "Perceptions International" that was hired by the same executive. Follow the link to go read the whole story.

Remember the old rule of thumb some old 60's activist once taught me. If you want to know who the FBI informant in the group is, they'll be the one urging others to some sort of violent and illegal act.

Quakers for War

I'm on an email alert list for a group called "Friends Committee on National Legislation." They are basically the same people as the American Friends Service Committees.

The email they sent me staggered me. They are trying to get me to contact my Congress-critters to support "new, transformative vision that President Barack Obama laid out for this country in his budget proposal for 2010."

This is the same budget that increases Pentagon spending by $22 billion. I never thought I'd see the day that the Quakers would contact me and urge me to support a budget that RAISES Pentagon spending.

I'd say that they want me to support increased spending on the wars, but technically, that's not true. The Democrats have already broken their earlier promise to bring the wars 'on-budget'. Instead, the Democrats are doing exactly what Bush did and are asking for another $200 billion of 'off-budget', 'emergency' supplemental money to continue to fight the wars this year and next.

This is the same budget that increases Homeland Security spending by 6%

The Department of Homeland Security will receive $42.7 billion in discretionary spending for 2010, a 6 percent increase over 2009. The increase may be only 1.2 percent after Congress completes appropriations for 2009, according to the Associated Press. While the document describes how some of the homeland security money will be spent, intelligence spending is classified.

Dont' be fooled it the percentage increase goes 'down' to 1.2%. That just means that our lovely Democratic Congress is likely to spend even more on Homeland Security in 2009. Thus the 2010 money represents less of an increase over what we'll waste on this pork-barrel in 2009.

The words 'discretionary spending' are worrisome. That must mean there is non-discretionary spending, or perhaps compulsory spending in the Dept of Homeland of Security. I understand non-discretionary spending that keeps people fed or with shelter. But, for the Dept of Homeland Security? I'd say that whole department is 'discretionary'. Doesn't mean we shouldn't spend anything here. But, surely in a collapsing economy with out-of-control government deficits, almost all of this can be called 'discretionary'.

"Intelligence" spending is classified. Of course, most other nations know pretty much what we spend on this, so this is more about not telling the American tax-payers how much we spend on this. But this particular bit about what they want to do is fascinating.

Facilitates information Sharing. The President’s 2010 Budget will support initiatives to improve the sharing of intelligence, including terrorist-related information, with Federal, State, local, tribal and foreign partners. These efforts include advancing the National Suspicious Activity reporting Initiative; establishing agency-based, outcome-oriented performance targets for information sharing; and institutionalizing the use of
effective business practices.

This is exactly the programs that end up with Quakers on Terrorism Watch Lists and with records on file with what used to be called "Terrorism task forces" around the country.

Amazing, the Quakers seemed to have bought into Obama-mania so completely that they are urging me to contact my Congress-critters and beg them to support the budget that promises to spend even more money collecting and sharing information about groups like the Quakers.

Absolutely amazing.

Where is it easy?

Robert Fisk’s World: I told him I admired his refusal to sign the death sentences by Robert Fisk in The Independent.

I told him I always admired him for refusing to sign the death sentences on two condemned men. He smiled faintly and pointed out to me that as soon as Rafiq Hariri became prime minister – yes, the same supposedly saintly Hariri who was cruelly murdered in Beirut just over four years ago – Hariri signed the death sentences and the two men were hanged. Word has it that even then, the executioners messed up their work and at least one of the two had to be throttled to death by policemen who pulled on his legs. Did they ever, in their brief extension of life, thank the prime minister who tried to save them? "They didn't have time," Dr el-Hoss replied. Defenders of human rights have a tough time in the Middle East.

OK, where in the world do 'defenders of human rights' have it easy?

Or, another question that comes to mind. America was one of the few great powers left after World War II. America had a 'sphere of influence' over which it had a great deal to say about what happened there. Around about 1990, the other great superpower, the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving America as the world's only remaining superpower.

Given that we've been the world's only superpower for nearly 20 years, and were one of only two or so for fifty years before that, lets ask this question again. Where in the world is it easy for defenders of human rights? Not just merely less awful than some other place, but what places in the world truly respect human rights? And, did America have anything to do with its creation?

Since America has been fighting to defend freedom for fifty years now, and since the country that was supposed to be our main opponent left the field 20 years ago, isn't it worth asking just how well we are doing?

Red Light Flashing

When Things Fall Apart by Paul Craig Roberts on CounterPunch.org

On March 19 the New York Times reported: “The Fed said it would purchase an additional $750 billion worth of government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities, on top of the $500 billion that it is currently in the process of buying. In addition, the Fed said it would buy up to $300 billion worth of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.”

The current estimate for the 2009 budget deficit is now over $1.8 trillion dollars. This is a huge jump from the deficts of $400 to $500 billion a year that the government had been running.

It sounds nice to plan on spending this money. And in many ways, the new spending on 'stimulus' is needed. But the question always was 'who are we going to borrow this money from?' The rest of the world had already become leery of US debt, and the US didn't have a 'savings rate' even before the collapse.

So, this news is one big giant flashing red light warning of trouble ahead. The government is now playing Enron like accounting games, taking advantage of the fact that the Fed is not a government entity to use them to loan money to the rest of the government by buying massive amounts of bonds.

We need the stimulus. We need money pumped into this economy to try to create jobs. What we don't need is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can't afford them. What we don't need is trillions of dollars being pumped into banks to keep them afloat. What we don't need is one to two trillion dollars a year being spend on 'defense' and 'homeland security'.

Obama and the Democrats are making the classic mistake. They are trying to keep spending huge amounts on war and the military, while also trying to ramp up the domestic economy. They've failed to notice that its always guns OR butter. Guns AND butter at the same time never works.

We need the butter. We don't need the guns. We are heading for a major crisis worse than it is today if we foolishly fail to end these wars and massively slash what we spend on the military, intelligence, and homeland security.

Sometimes, you see evil

This image is from Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009 in Haaretz. Warning, its only the tip of the iceberg as to what you'll find in this story about a print shop that does work for members of IDF units.

Sometimes, you see evil. Its just right there in front of you.

Evil comes when people forget to treat other people as people. Evil comes when minds get so twisted by thoughts, dreams, ideology, greed, or anything else, that they forget that others are people just like them with their own loves and hopes and dreams. Evil can only occur when the mind has become so twisted that it thinks of others as some object or name, but never other human beings.

Listen to soldiers talk, and you always hear the most violent, racist demeaning language used to describe those they kill. Both the military command and the soldiers themselves know that this is the only way they can commit the evil that they commit.

In a war, it goes both ways. I'm sure one could easily find evil people on the Arab side that talk in racist terms about Jews, and easily justify to themselves the launching of rockets aimed at mothers and children, or the bombing of a pizza parlor or an ice cream shop.

Awhile back, I printed a famous quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr about violence. Since it applies here, let me requote it here.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. . . Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. . . . Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; Only love can do that." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Among the killers, among those who believe in evil, the myth is that killing can always settle the fight. The myth is that one can kill all of one's enemy, thus achieving peace. It never works that way.

Or to put it another way. The soldier that made this t-shirt probably believes he is defending the security of his country. And its easy for the soldier in the middle of the battle to think of only how many kills he is racking up, much like the dwarf and the elf did in the Lord of the Rings movies. But, someone in charge needs to be smart enough to realize that if this sniper fulfills his evil dreams, there would be others outraged by the death of a pregnant young woman and her child that will never see the light. Her husband, her father, her brothers would all know the shock of this. Maybe that young child that would never be already has an older brother who just lost both a mother and sibling.

What are the odds that these people might walk into a pizza parlor in Israel with explosives strapped to their chest? The snipers 'two kills' for one bullet would very likely lead to more exploding pizza parlors and ice cream shops and more attempts to launch missiles to try to hit other mothers and children.

Violence always begets more violence. Dr. King was right about that. In war, there is no 'security'. In war, someone is always trying to find a way to do harm to you. And, often times they will succeed.

The only 'security' comes from peace.

Contracts

Contracts, according to Obama and the Democrats.

When Labor Unions have contracts with auto-companies, Obama and the Democrats insist that these contracts must be given up and new concessions made by workers as a pre-condition for any government bailout.

When investment bankers have contracts with AIG that guarantee them millions of dollars of bonuses, despite the fact that these are the very people who drove the company 'too big to fail' into government ownership, then Obama and the Democrats insist that these contracts are sacred, that they must be honored, and that these people must get their millions of dollars.

With the Democrats, always watch ACTIONS. Ignore their words, as they are often designed to mislead and sometimes are outright lies. But watch the ACTIONS of the Democrats. Watch who the Democrats really support, watch where the money goes with the Democrats, and you'll see the true nature of that party.

If you don't like what you see, check out the Green Party.

Note: I see David Sirota saying much the same thing.

Last month, the same government that says it “cannot just abrogate” executives’ bonus contracts used its leverage to cancel unions’ wage contracts. As The Wall Street Journal reported, federal loans to GM and Chrysler were made contingent on those manufacturers shredding their existing labor pacts and “extract[ing] financial concessions from workers.” In other words, our government asks us to believe that it possesses total authority to adjust contracts at car companies it lends to, and yet has zero power to modify contracts at financial firms it owns. This, even though the latter set of covenants might be easily abolished

Of course, since Mr. Sirota is a Democratic party activist, the bad guys in the piece mysteriously become an anonymous 'government' instead of the party and President he just helped bring to power.

House Passes Bill With 'Mandatory' National Service Clause

House Passes Bill With 'Mandatory' National Service Clause from FoxNews.com

During an election season, we are often told that its better with the Democrats in power than with Republicans. And in some ways, that's correct. But it is also can be very dangerous to have conservative Democrats in control of the White House and Congress.

When there is a Republican President, many if not all Democrats will tend to vote against him. If for no other reason than party loyalty. This means votes in the House can be close, and sometimes, like on the first bailout bill last summer, the Republicans can be defeated.

But when there is a conservative Democrat in the White House, this dynamic changes dramatically. Now, the default option is for Democrats to 'support their President' and vote for his proposals. When these are conservative or militaristic, this means a large majority Congress is created as 'loyal' Democrats are joined with conservative Republicans.

This is how the bill bringing the DRAFT back to America just passed the House, 321-105.

Oh, the propaganda will tell you this isn't the draft. This story manages not to use the 'word' draft. 'Volunterism' is the propaganda word of the day, and its of course in the headline and prominent in this piece. Hidden most subtly are the words 'national service'. Some article correctly add 'mandatory'. This article downplace all of this by saying that 'forced service' is merely a concern. If you use the word 'slavery' for 'forced-service', are you more concerned? Although the propagandist for centuries have made sure the word 'slavery' is never used when it is the state that is demanding your 'forced service', at gunpoint if you dare to resist.

I was in the first group of 18 year olds not to be subject to the Draft after Vietnam. We still had to go fill out the selective service cards, but unlike those around me a year or more older than me, I didn't have to worry about being drafted. The main feeling I remember having back then was that I had other things to do with my life, other priorities to fulfill, other paths to follow. I thought it was fundamentally wrong for the government to step in and make me its slave for several years.

I still feel that way. You can dress it up with talk about doing other service beside military, you can hide it by duct-taping it to an existing volunteer agency. But this is still slavery. And, you know the bottom line is, the military is going to get enough bodies to fill what it considers its requirements.

It was the Jimmy Carter Democrats who ended the draft back during my youth. Now its the Obama Democrats that bring it back. Just one of the many ways you can see how radically the party has changed during my lifetime.

The Democrats bring back the draft. When I was 18, I never would have imagined I'd type those words.

Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney

Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney on RawStory

Hersh replied, "After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet."

Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command. "It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," he explained. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it."

"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

Hmmm, wonder who they report to now? Because the one thing you can be certain of is that they didn't just pack up and go home on Jan 20th.