President Merkin

To Joe Bageant on Being a Virginian

2008-06-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the Bermuda Triangle of Virginia: born and raised in Alexandria, went to Mr. Jefferson's University, and years later, with family in tow, had a delightful time trying to sell our restored farm-house on the Northern Neck. It started as a dilapidated waterfront farmhouse -- a restoration project on Mosquito Creek.

You’d think we would have caught on with the Creek name connection … Looking out over the Creek to the spit of land dotted with duck blinds, I asked the real estate agent, "What kind of name is Mosquito Creek? Anything to do with all these mosquitoes?" Our real estate agent glibly replied in that distinct rural Virginian accent, "Just rained. . . It’s an Indian name. Antipoison Creek's just there over across the road. Where John Smith was healed from the sting ray barb..."

Nothing like standing in History to take your mind off the present, eh? What is it that we can't wa(r)sh away the deep stains of Virginia so thoroughly ground into our soul? How is it that we can watch the HBO series, John Adams, and see our beloved Jefferson move about like the mute mime guy in the comedy duo of Penn and Teller ... but still hold back tears of compassionate conductivity because they were all serious about Liberty? Liberty was a life and death matter to them. What does it mean to us now?!

It seemed like farmers then were part of the vanguard, integral to a movement that could uplift the status of all mankind. And their offspring, who migrated to the cities, had a bit more of an horizon’l perspective than waiting for the next natural catastrophe so they could get a new pick-up with the insurance money.

Given the caked-mud realities of the political motivations of the electorate in rural America (i.e., we elect people who ask us to do as they say, not as they do), what is pulling me towards the Virginia mountains? To a land where my strangeness (i.e., progressiveness) would have to constantly hidden so that I wouldn’t get shorted the next time I’d buy Silver Queen corn?

Are these folk Hobbits, entrenched in their provincialism, protected from the outside world by a mental attitude that is not neutral (so they think)? Do they hide behind the wall of recent memories (one or two generations), certain that this will hold back the dark forces of Mordor? They pin their hopes on Sauron simply looking over their heads, ignoring the intrinsic wealth buried beneath them?

The Soles of our Souls Are Worn Thin

2008-05-09T11:09:00.000-07:00

The very soles of our souls are worn thin. Holes clean through. The gangrened rag-covered feet desperately seeking warmth from the puny fires at Valley Forge serve only to remind us. "Snap out of it!" Cold images of solitude slap us on the face. And, slap us again, "Wake up! Wake up… they are coming!”

The psychopaths have worn us out. We're holding on by the skin of our souls. And you look around, The majority of our brethren hold tight to their psychopath-in-training milieu. Have they emptied their psyches of the Old Testament Imagery the array of Sodom and Gomorrahs, the Noatic flood, or the snake-made-me-do-it in the garden of Eden.

For thousands of years (that we know about), these Retardants have been busily distorting this reality. But why?
This reality, this dimension, this evolutionary platform, could very well be what these psychopaths (and the consciousness behind them) believe it is. It's their hiding place. It's Count Dracula's coffin of repose, filled with the dirt of the homeland. This is their hide-out and, as far as they are concerned, they don't want to share it.

Blind to Cause, they are at a loss as to why we are here --
and over millennia, most of us don't have a clue why we're here either. This was the falsehood we have taken on as our own.
They know the Laws of physics (resonance) work here, and they have used resonance ("Power over the Air" is the "biblical" descriptive phrase), the Nada Brahma, to create a den that Spirit/He/The One will never penetrate. But, the Cause (as dim and faint in us as to be microscopic) still has a resonance in us. They can feel and sense it in us. And, to put it mildly, they HATE It. And, hate us for carrying it. But, they are convinced they can resonate It out of us. They have the Power over the Air, they will resonate this dimension, this Hades, of any and all patterns of the Cause’s existence.

The minute handful of worn-thin souls, light-bearers some call them, huddle by the fires wherever they can find them. Resolved, like the champions of Middle Earth, to hold only to hope in this battle to the death.

But, Cause has no death. Whose fear is this? What happens when the lid to Dracula's coffin is opened in the light of day? He, and all he has bitten return to what they really are -- dust. The coffin, though, happens to encompass an entire dimension of existence. The wheat and the tares can no longer be easily separated. The wheat must learn to know itself as the energy that it truly is.

As the adherents of any true Teacher will tell you, we are not the body. We are energy beings encased in this dimensional body. As the old admonishment says, "Know thyself.” “Where your mind is, that's where you are." These words are no longer nice sayings or things to think about. They are the requisite, our tools, our ... only hope."

What Matrix?

2008-04-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

The only real freedom that exists can only be experienced in the present. Whether you feel good or bad about the past, the certainty is we can't do anything about it... except emote. In our left-brain linear thinking we look into the future just as the IRS and the Marxists do: the past indicates the patterns of the future. We are all fated by our past with only a sprinkling of environment thrown in to juice-up the statistics.

Social engineers and behaviorists have proven to their satisfaction that our human behavior is as easy to read as ... well ... lab rats. They know which bar we will push, what maze we will avoid, and which stimulus causes which conditioned result. Anything less than Chaos, the behaviorists (including any and all marketing) can give a high degree of certainty to what our responses will be to our conditioning.

And it is understood by these "scientists" that all of us with IQs over 80 firmly believe that we, as individuals, are not case-hardened in our behaviors and reactions. That we believe that we are free from being conditioned is in fact our conditioning. This delusion of individuality is nothing more than a variable in the experiment: "buy a dodge or a ford pick-up" "vote for this or that candidate" "react to this or that world event." These are all variables to determine the success rate of the particular operant conditioning.

Those in the industry of modifying our behaviors count on our belief that we have "independent thoughts and actions." They rely on our pseudo independence because they know (it has been proven)we will not look past this glass ceiling of assumed individuality. We will not look at ourselves as we really are. If our conditioning were a machine, its engine would be our infinite capacity for self delusion.

If you study Operant Conditioning (our very own Matrix), there is an axiom bordering on scientific law that holds all of our conditioning together. What makes it all work is the fact that "the most difficult thing for any living thing with a brain to do is to UNDO their conditioning."

Our masters function under the assumption that our conditioning is analogous to a perpetual motion machine. Any psych department in the last century that received generous grants almost always referenced/couched B.F. Skinner's remarks about the purpose of Behaviorism: it is not sufficient to have people and societies perform duties and react predictably, no, the purpose of Behaviorism is to have them all as slaves and have them fight to the death to maintain their slavery. Where do you think old Dr. Joe Mengele got all of his ideas?

So, how in the world is it possible for anyone to break out of this Conditioning? Given that one regards the human condition as conditioned ... If we see ourselves as we really are -- just as in the Matrix movie -- we are asking for it. We see no coinage in the proposition of freeing our souls. Most of us don't even believe we have one.

Even though our conditioning has convinced us that we are not conditioned, that we are soulless, that money is everything, that God is to be feared and worshipped ... there are elements of consciousness that behavior modification and operant conditioning cannot touch.

Every great spiritual teacher -- whose words and actions always get substantially manipulated by the conditioners -- have all said the same things. The all say to study the Cause, not the effect. Science (distorted beyond belief) has us all watching only the effect. The Cause is irrelevant to them because they do not have the measuring devices to analyze the Cause. However one does it, get to know the Cause, leave the Matrix of Effect behind for someone else to bury.

Have a nice day.

We Are All Insurgents

2007-09-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

We have more in common with the occupied citizens of Iraq than we realize. In 1776, the American Colonies were occupied by the British Empire, who's hubris of invincibility lasted well into the Twentieth Century, basically until the Pound Sterling no longer occupied the position of the World's "Reserve Currency." The United States now, like the British Empire then, has had limited success in quelling sedition and self-determined revolution where the fields of battle are rooftops, backyards and bedrooms.

You could be commuting over the Delaware River every morning and you would miss the connection. Few of us associate the place with the historical event two-hundred plus years ago. Our entire warp and woof of "freedom" "independence" and "democracy" like a pebble in a pond, resonates out from an "insurgency" center. It appears that we have forgotten the essence of “the” American holiday of July Four. Who did what to whom and why is no longer part of the marketing strategy for that day.

General G. Washington, and his collection of insurgents ("rag-tags" they were called) paddled through the ice flows on a pre-dawn Delaware, to surprise the "private contractors" aka Hessians, fighting for an over-extended British occupying army. This bold insurgent act surprised the mercenaries, and they retreated.

Ask any mercenary, then or now, what is their prime motivation for fighting. It’s always money. Ask any rag-tag insurgent, then or now, what they are fighting for, and almost always the response is the same: they want to be left alone to determine their own fate, regardless of the outcome. If their world is going to go to hell, they want to be the responsible party, not some occupier.

Yes, history is written by the occupier, the “winner.” The obvious reason that history continues repeatedly to be written in the theme of war is that war does not work. It’s a great tool for wealth generation, but a lousy mechanism for expanding the evolutionary potential of the human race.

Re: SCIENTISTS CLAIM CELL PHONES BEHIND BEE COLONY COLLAPSE“

2007-04-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

"Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees.”

This is an example of what I call “Asymmetrical Human Engineering” -- creating massive “sea changes” that can result in quantitatively massive results. To do this -- without having your plans detected -- requires “strategies” that are irregular,
and hence go unnoticed.

It makes complete sense that “their” operational objectives -- carried out in plain-sight -- go unnoticed by the masses. If you are part of this “team”, and, say your objective is to eliminate “1/3” of the world’s population, what are your options? How do you ratchet-up to “Biblical Proportions” without drawing attention to yourself? War? Brutality? Man-made catastrophes?

You go after the “nail” . . . as in “For want of a nail the kingdom was lost.” You do this because you and your cohorts are well aware -- and the masses are not -- that the Butterfly Effect is in fact true. If you find the “right nail” in ANY system, and you extract it, you will collapse the entire system, and it will look as if this was a natural (read not engineered on purpose) occurrence.

Even though you can readily find out, say what bees do, and how critical they are to the propagation and maintenance of our food system, we have been entrained not to do that. We will accept, and yes, demand, the wide-spread use of genetically engineered “food.” We will do anything in order to eat. And whatever is provided, we will gladly consume.

In the ol Hegelian construct, having the public demand genetically-engineered food has been the desired synthesis. And yes, there will be masses who will not be able to get to the new food in time. Those living outside the sphere of influence -- the untouchables -- will be left on their, as per design.

Asymmetrical Human Engineering has many applications, and requires very little stealth. It is done right in front of us -- just look up at the sky. It is also being implemented in the world of the Patriots and Survivalist. The Second Amendment folk. You don’t have go through the tedium experienced by the Nazis to disarm the people, to take their guns away. Simply restrict, then eliminate the flow (the nail) of the material that goes into the ordinance required for the guns to have any effectiveness.

The first book I ever read of B.F. Skinner’s stated quite openly the objective of what is now known as “Social Psychology.” (originally known as Human then Social Engineering). To paraphrase: It is not enough to have the subjects desire the conditioning. The subjects have to want, desire, then demand their conditioning, even to the death.

And, that’s where we are today. We are at war with anyone or anything that gets in the way of our conditioning. We will demand EXACTLY what our conditioners want us to demand. Simply read the newspapers to keep score as to how successful our modification is going.

It's Hard out Here for a Pimp...

2007-02-11T08:39:00.000-08:00

We should all be troubled that America and American Empire can be posited in the same breath. But, as a nation, we could care less. There is a plethora of analogies to use to define this obvious, though justifiable, sarcastic perspective on our reality today. Empires always seem to indicate helplessness, impotency. In the microcosm of hiphop, the world is comprised of bitches, 'hoes, dogs, and the man. This is how empires are structured.

The 'man' in the empire is the smallest piece in the pie-chart, but carries the most weight because the man has the baddest weapons, the most wealth, and the baddest dogs guarding the castle. The rest of the society (easily 90%) is made up of dogs (crackers), bitches and hoes. The difference between our empire and say the Soviet empire is in ours, we can (still) bitch in writing read-by-the-public, whereas they would go to the gulag if they posted written complaints about their empire.

We here in amurika can (still) bitch and whine in public/in writing, they could not. And the only forum left to bitch and whine is the Internet, which the man is working fulltime to turn our Net into the Chinese model (crime families, because they are basically stupid, steal ideas from each other so that their bitches and hoes don't figure it all out, turning first on their own dogs before coming after the man.).

Hiphop, like true gangstas, take it all down to the basics, to the street-level of life. They existentially accept the ground rules: don't fuck with the man, but you can fuck anything and everyone else. In fact the man encourages and promotes this divide-and-conquer motif, knowing that the dogs, bitches and hoes will come after him if they stopped fighting among themselves.

So, we’ll keep doin what all punks do: pretend'n to be bad, pretend'n to be a big dog, pretend'n to keep our bitches and hoes in line, fine-tuning the hydraulics on our Escalades … just like the man wants.

Quote:

You know it's hard out here for a pimp
When he tryin to get this money for the rent
For the Cadillacs and gas money spent
[1] Because a whole lot of bitches talkin shit
[2] Will have a whole lot of bitches talkin shit

Pain and the Bill of Rights

2006-10-28T08:03:00.001-07:00

You see, if we have a problem, it would be that we are not aware of what has been taken from us. Because we are not experiencing the actual pain from the actual event (like using a local, and in some cases, general, anesthetic to block pain) we fail to feel, sense, or see what is happening to us.

Is there any hard and fast statistical data that shows the percentage of Americans on meds which dull, anesthetize, or block various physical and psychological pain? I don't know, somewhere I'm sure there is. But it would seem there is a correlation between the percentage of Americans who are medicated and the percentage of Americans who see nothing wrong with what is happening to what our Forefathers bequeathed to us, with their lives and sacred freedoms.

I would imagine that a case could also be shown that the percentage of Americans who use strictly "natural" (i.e., not pharmaceutical) remedies for pain and long-term malaise, would equal the percentage of people (for numerical explanation purposes) who are currently experiencing the pain of loss, the loss of our core morality. And, what is this core morality?

America, divinely inspired (yes, by a “Christianity” that present-day Christians would, without objection, burn-at-the-stake), was created as a society that would not, could not, revert back to what had plagued the Western World since the days of Hammurabi.

You remember the Code of Hammurabi: the earliest set of laws initiated in the hell-hole we are creating in modern-day Iraq. It was all about cause and effect: you commit a crime, you pay for it. This was Babylonian Law, for better or worse it has been with mankind since 1780 BC.

And, around 1780 AD, the Founding Fathers, after three thousand years of elitist abuse of the basic laws of behavior, came up with a conglomerate codification that would set the stage for the equality of mankind. Yes, they had slaves, yes they were basically the aristocracy of the Colonies. But among them, there was enough foresight to demand the placement of the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. If it were not for these Jeffersonian initiatives, the new American Constitution would have quickly degenerated back into a system of aristocratic exploitation. Read the Constitution -- without the Bill of Rights -- what do you have? A garden variety set of rules and regs to maintain a status quo with force, money or religion.

The Bill of Rights set a new standard, a new code of ethics and morals, that spoke to the requirements of goodness. Take the time to read them. They were given to you as a hard-earned gift by enlightened souls who declared their independence -- not from a British Monarchy -- but from thousands of years of monarchies, and eons of religious determinism. When they signed their name to it, they signed their death warrant. When was the last time you took a stand like that for the betterment of your fellow man?

Some of the Founding Fathers saw to it that the base inclinations of man could be thwarted when (not if) avarice, dishonesty, wickedness, and all the other indications of the base and self-absorbed centralization of government creeps in. The use of the phrase enemies foreign and domestic meant exactly that. When the government no longer serves the people, but the people are forced to serve it, the Bill of Rights gave us the Right and the DUTY, to expel these interlopers from our midst.

So, how do you KNOW that there are interlopers in our midst? That we are living and working for the government, not the other way around? How do you know? The only way to know if and when requires a sense of goodness, of decency, and to regard the Bill of Rights as a checklist. If our (our meaning anyone of us citizens) basic Freedoms are being curtailed, withheld or removed, we are no longer living in the Republic for which the Bill of Rights stands. And, it was understood at the Founding, and for many years afterwards, that the PAIN of experiencing oppression, or the absence of the gifts inherent in the Bill of Rights, would cause an uprising; actions to throw the yoke off. The Founding Fathers assumed that living without the yoke was of a sufficient positive moral experience that oppression would not be tolerated. They realized intuitively one of the maxims of Behaviorism: taking away causes the greatest pain.

So what has happened? Why have we passively allowed the current systematic neutralizing of our inalienable Bill of Rights? Where’s the reaction? There is very little reaction because it appears that whatever medications we are collectively on has deaden our sensitivities to the soul-pain that we should be feeling. We are anesthetizing not only the pain, but we are blocking out the ability to see the cause of the pain.

Ignoring or desensitizing ourselves to Natural Law does not suspend Its operation. The sowing has been done, it’s time now for the reap.

Bumper Sticker Truism

2006-10-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

It's The Pancho Villa Thing

2006-09-01T05:46:00.000-07:00

It's the Pancho Villa thing

I get confused. Is it Pancho Villa or is it Usama Bin Laden? Both very popular anti-establishment rebels, fighting the powers that be. Throwing off the yoke of the international oppressors for the sake of their beliefs. Their themes coexist in the same lexicon as the other “freedom fighters” throughout history. Not too long ago, we encouraged, funded and armed Bin Laden and the Afghanistan Freedom Fighters to rid their mountains of the Soviet tyrants.

For several years Villa spent most of his time in the Mexican mountains running from the law. Villa had an intimate knowledge of the mountainous terrain and knew how to survive on his own in the wilderness. “Villa underwent a transformation after meeting Abraham González, who opened Villa's eyes to the political world. Villa then believed that he was fighting for the people, to break the hacendados over the poverty stricken peones and campesinos (farmers and sharecroppers). At the time, Chihuahua was dominated by hacendados and mine owners. The Terrazas clan alone controlled haciendas covering 7,000,000 acres (28,000 km²), larger than the state of Maryland.”

But, as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave follows the whited seplecurs into whatever grand exploitation they have planned, the rest of the world no longer seems to get our message. We have been kicked-off the moral high-ground. We are no longer the hero, the protagonist in the story. We have become the antagonist, hell-bent on having things go our way (or no way).

We are not fighting alongside Pancho as he champions the least-of-these, as he stands in the way of the oppressors torturing and whipping those who have no one to save them. We are not rooting for the underdog, freeing the oppressed from the pain and misery of aristocracy, standing up for what is right and just no matter what the consequences.

Sadly, we have become what Pancho was fighting. We have fallen into the trap(pings) of empire, and like Narcissus, we have fallen in love with the image of ourselves that we alone have created. But, are we not the Rough Riders, the “who was that masked-man” faster-than-a-speeding-bullet for truth justice and the American way? Are we not the champion of the oppressed? The guys in the white hats, angels with dirty faces, deriving contentment in helping those in need? No, we are not.
Bin Laden, like Salahadin, and very much like Pancho Villa, was/is a folk hero in the Muslim world. It doesn't matter if he died years ago from kidney failure, he's still very much alive to the tens of millions of young boys chomping at the bit to slay the Great Satan. Usama, like Pancho, has stood up to the power of the hacienda owners, and the Great Satan! And what white fundamentalist isn't silently fuming in envy that Bin Laden and his followers get to grapple with the Great Satan, while all they get to do is fight tur'ism [sic]??

The reason that all of this is so discombobulated to our scrambled over-amped brains is that we still think of ourselves as Panco Villa types, champions of the underdog and the oppressed . . . But it now seems that no one else on the planet shares our delusion.

Enemies Foreign and DOMESTIC!!

2006-08-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

To look back on the McCarty era with fondness may seem to be oxymoronic. The negative guffawing about commies-in-the-woodpile went beyond the pale, but one thing was quite apparent then, that you don't see today: government employees took their oath of allegiance (to the Constitution) quite seriously. "... just following orders" no longer had any currency. The Nuremberg Trials were in recent memory, and the weight of the massive loss of WW II still left that cordite taste in everyone's mouth.

But today, the Land of the Aquisitor and Home of the Expedient is embarrassing to behold and leaves one squeamish to live within it. It is being legislated and executed by a breed of larvae that usually never make it into the light of day. And, the reason that this larvae slithered past the natural insecticides (checks and balances) is all of our faults. How to get rid of the problem, though, lies squarely on the shoulders of the US armed forces personnel! Yes, the voting process is corrupted, the media is corrupted and the populi appear to be narcotized. There is no one else who can right this.

Historically, the military, taking all they could stand, would squash the bugs-in-our-midst, and be done with it. Where are they now? Why have they fallen in with this creeping crud of aggrandizement? You can find them at the Army Navy Country Club sipping mint juleps talking about the good ole days. Or spending time with their financial consultants making sure that they won't lose their second home down on the Bay, if the citizens get tired of having to eat cake. They have become infected with the pandemic that always tails along with the larvae when it manages to ooze out into the light.

The reason that the US of A is so badly cluster-fucked is because those in and recently out-of uniform are allowing it. They are allowing it, in complete disparity to their sworn oath to uphold the Constitution against enemies foreign and DOMESTIC!! Foreign and domestic!!

A suggestion: stop watching old John Wayne movies, take a ride through any US barrio, turn up the gangsta rap, and get angry. When banana republics and Islamic theocracies have more integrity than your own country, don’t you think it’s time to strap-on the old Hudson Duster and go after the REAL enemy of this once-fine Republic?

PSYCHOPATHS

2006-05-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

Psychopaths need approval. Pick any old psychopath off the street, rummage through their things, and you would find that someone somewhere gave a smidgeon of tacit approval to their abhorrent behavior. The Rodney Dangerfield of world-class psychopaths, old Adolph, sought and secured approval for every hideous thing he
did. He and his minions hid nothing; if you looked, it was there, in writing, no less.

Today, a clinical case is being made that we have in our midst a corporate/conglomerate psychopath, who's nonsensical blabbering head happens to be the president of the US of A. Calling the Straussian neocons clinical psychopaths may be a stretch for some, but, the wonderful thing about abnormal psychology is that you determine condition by behavior, not by implied intent (by their fruits you shall know them.). To pick but one example from many -- is it a well and healthy nation, a supposed adherent to Judeo/Christian principles, that would be arguing about acceptable levels of "torture"? Not debating the issue of torture itself, but making arguments about the “best” utilitarian use of cruelty in the context of the end justifying the means?

The following warning signs are based on observation but primarily research conducted by Robert Hare, Ph.D - the leading expert on the Psychopathic Personality.

Characteristics of a Psychopath

- need for stimulation & prone to boredom
- deceptive behavior & lying
- conning & manipulative
- little remorse or guilt
- shallow emotional response
- callous with a lack of empathy
- living off others or predatory attitude
- poor self-control
- early behavioral problems
- lack of realistic long term goals
- impulsive and irresponsible behavior
- blaming others for their actions
- varied criminal activity

Psychopaths have a built-in cloaking mechanism (sorry Klingons)that is the same aura associated with spousal abuse. That is, the people within the orb of the abuser/psychopath cannot believe (i.e., they deny) that their "choice" is inherently malefic, and will continue harming them until the psychopath is restrained and removed. This victim behavior is classified as "enabling". With psychopaths, one is either enabling them or restraining them. Ignoring the wife-beating/child-molesting behavior next-door simply provides an atmosphere of enabling.

If we were really honest with ourselves, we would take the German-in-the-30s questionnaire as it applies to our situation today. Before speaking up about pre-WWII Germans, we usually rush to the top of the moral high ground, shouting, "Can't happen here!!" When Time Magazine made Hitler their Man-of-the-Year, the Germans who were not completely preoccupied with eking out a living, believed the propaganda -- as did Americans at the time -- that "happy days are here again!"

Perhaps a first step in the dis-enabling process would be to honestly answer the question we all fiddle with when judging the average German in the 30s: "Would we have done anything . . . would we have taken a stand against state Fascism? Would we have stood up to the Nazis?"

An Anti-War Move

2006-04-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

At the Nuremburg Trials, it was determined that obeying and following orders were not excuses for immoral/criminal behavior on the part of the subordinate. We all understand that. One is culpable for following an illegal/immoral order.

Today, because the justification/rationale (both legal and moral) for attacking the sovereign nation of Iraq was based upon proven forgeries, lies, and malfeasances of all sorts, it should be concluded that every soldier, regardless of rank, who is willfully inflicting death and harm on any Iraqi citizen should be in violation of the Nuremberg accords, and is criminally liable. The (popular) idea of "supporting our troops" is aiding and abetting an international crime. Is it not? We either have laws or we don't.

The anti-war movement of the 60s -- yes pinko at its core, but so what -- had it right. Viet Nam was an illegal "war", we had no legal or moral business being there. And (painfully) any soldier killing a Vietnamese citizen was in fact a "murderer". That was the logic. That's what all of the marching was about. It had nothing to do with advancing some commie agenda. It was an illegal, immoral war, and as citizens we had the RIGHT and OBLIGATION, to oppose it (if you like, using the Nuremberg Trial as the precedent). If you going to have a war, declare a war. The US of A (whoever that is?) has not declared "war" since 1941. To "pretend" to be at war, without declaring such is what? What is it?

Today, as a republic, what can we do about Strangelove and Merkin? By supporting (again) an illegal, immoral excursion into another country based upon lies and deceit, we are de facto aiding and abetting criminal behavior. We are all criminals. And as criminals, what should we do?!

We need to turn ourselves in! Millions of us need to go to Washington, make a mass citizen’s arrest, and turn ourselves over to the authorities. If this gesture were to be carried out (like it would have in the 60s), this pretend war, and their next great adventure into Syria or Iran, would be thwarted. You end it by being moral and lawful.

When the accumulation of money and prestige is the motor driving a society, it becomes self-consumptive. Because we are all so busy consuming and acquiring, the energy and CREATIVITY necessary to stand up as a Republic has been plowed under. In the 60s, it was in full bloom.

A Simple Thought With Complex Consequences

2006-02-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

How about new ground rules for the selection of our House of Representatives ? No more special interests, no more big business determining our fate, no more PACS and all their money-with-strings-attached.

Section. 2. Clause 1, of the US Constitution states:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature."

We the People, via state referendum, can agree to choose the 435 members of the House of Representatives as we damn well please. And, what is the way that would be absolutely non-partisan, and the way that cannot be readily compromised?!

We choose our Representative the same way that jurors are chosen for court duty -- by lottery. Becoming a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives becomes a civic DUTY, not an inroad to wealth and power. The benefits (i.e., great salary and perks) still remain. But, after tenure, there is a mandatory retirement, and a new member, unattached to ANY K Street group, agenda or preconceived ideology is chosen to represent his/her neighbors.

Simple and doable.

How Hitler Became a Dictator

2006-02-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

by Jacob G. Hornberger, Posted June 28, 2004 [with permission]

Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.

But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. I’d also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a democratic republic.

The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.

In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler, and two minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were:

Hindenburg 49.6 percent
Hitler 30.1 percent
Thaelmann 13.2 percent
Duesterberg 6.8 percent

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, almost 70 percent of the German people voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Joseph Goebbels, who would later become Hitler’s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, “We’re beaten; terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected.”

Since Hindenberg had not received a majority of the vote, however, a runoff election had to be held among the top three vote-getters. On April 19, 1932, the runoff results were:

Hindenburg 53.0 percent
Hitler 36.8 percent
Thaelmann 10.2 percent

Thus, even though Hitler’s vote total had risen, he still had been decisively rejected by the German people.

On June 1, 1932, Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of Germany, whom Shirer described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” Papen immediately dissolved the Reichstag (the national congress) and called for new elections, the third legislative election in five months.

Hitler and his fellow members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who were determined to bring down the republic and establish dictatorial rule in Germany, did everything they could to create chaos in the streets, including initiating political violence and murder. The situation got so bad that martial law was proclaimed in Berlin.

Even though Hitler had badly lost the presidential election, he was drawing ever-larger crowds during the congressional election. As Shirer points out,

In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in the giant Grunewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard his voice by loudspeaker.

Hitler’s rise to power

The July 31, 1932, election produced a major victory for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany’s largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member body.

On the basis of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg appoint him chancellor and place him in complete control of the state. Otto von Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg,

Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.

Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in November 6, 1932. In that election, the Nazis lost two million votes and 34 seats. Thus, even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest political party, it had clearly lost ground among the voters.

Attempting to remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German chancellor. Unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag, however, Schleicher finally tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had been appointed.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the Nazis set out to to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that proved to be a fairly easy task.

The Reichstag fire

On February 27, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Goebbels home when the telephone rang with an emergency message: “The Reichstag is on fire!” Hitler and Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Goering, who would later become Hitler’s air minister. Goering was shouting at the top of his lungs,

This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up.

The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found communist publications stating,

Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down... . Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups.... The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war.... It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.

So how was Goering so certain that the fire had been set by communist terrorists? Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe. Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without his realizing it.

Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending terrorist attack on their national congressional building or actually assist with such a horrific deed? Because they knew what government officials have known throughout history — that during extreme national emergencies, people are most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties in return for “security.” And that’s exactly what happened during the Reichstag terrorist crisis.

Suspending civil liberties

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and 84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as the “Enabling Act” made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and constitutional constraints.

The judiciary under Hitler

One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer points out,

Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent, subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law.

In fact, in the Reichstag terrorist case, while the court convicted van der Lubbe of the crime (who was executed), three other defendants, all communists, were acquitted, which infuriated Hitler and Goering. Within a month, the Nazis had transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out,

soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents were invited to attend.

One of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, who had angered Goering during the trial with a severe cross-examination of Goering, did not benefit from his acquittal. Shirer explains:

The German communist leader was immediately taken into “protective custody,” where he remained until his death during the second war.

In addition to the People’s Court, which handled treason cases, the Nazis also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or “insidious attacks against the government.” These courts

consisted of three judges, who invariably had to be trusted party members, without a jury. A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons. Defense lawyers before this court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials. Sometimes even if they were approved they fared badly. Thus the lawyers who attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they formally withdrew the action.

Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for the defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered when he was acquitted of major political charges and sentenced to time served for minor charges. Leaving the courtroom, Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and taken to a concentration camp.

The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schutzhaft or “protective custody” which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without charging them with a crime. As Shirer put it,

Protective custody did not protect a man from possible harm, as it did in more civilized countries. It punished him by putting him behind barbed wire.

On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and the title of president was abolished. Hitler’s title became Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor. Not surprisingly, he used the initial four-year “temporary” grant of emergency powers that had been given to him by the Enabling Act to consolidate his omnipotent control over the entire country.

Accepting the new order

Oddly enough, even though his dictatorship very quickly became complete, Hitler returned to the Reichstag every four years to renew the “temporary” delegation of emergency powers that it had given him to deal with the Reichstag-arson crisis. Needless to say, the Reichstag rubber-stamped each of his requests.

For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very unlikely.

Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, Shirer writes,

The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.... The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed.... On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

This article originally appeared in the March 2004 edition of Freedom Daily.

Econ-Endgame

2006-02-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

‘The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast,
The first one now
Will later be last…”
Bob Dylan

From my perspective, it appears as if we are hyper-driving into an inevitable econ-endgame, that will manifest as the greatest diminishment and exchange of wealth the world has ever seen . . . And, simultaneously witnessing a real-time unification of unlikely bedfellows who are thumbing their collective noses at the Powers-That-Be, the beloved Establishment that has had its way with us for centuries.

This economic end-game is all about the “control” of commodities, the corralling and distribution of the world‘s natural resources, all with the same branding. It is not geopolitical in the “ideological” sense, like freedom vs. despotism, or capitalism vs. some other ism. No, this is not about conflicting isms. This is about micromanaging the Sanctuary of what is most holy to our culture -- our consumptive way of life and the massive debt that maintains it. But, like Richard in the hands of Saladin, are we to be saved only by the graciousness of our enemy?

What is ironically intriguing about this entire scenario is that the real enemy of (all) the People, collectively known as the NWO, are being legitimately threatened by an atheistic plutocracy (China) in cahoots with Islamic theocracies and Russian Rascals, while almost all of Western Christendom is busily scurrying to fill the Temple with as many money-changers as can be mustered.

The recent bravado of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (resurrecting that ol’ Persian flair of empire) making anti-Zionist statements like shots across the bow of Israel and the West, signals the players to the field. Iran does this with all the support and reserves they could possibly need (from China, Russia, Islamic World, etc.). President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently expressed doubt that the Holocaust occurred and suggested that Israel should be moved to Europe. Wars are started with such comments, but Ahmadinejad knows full well the West will do nothing to overtly counter his salvo.

So, how can the likes of the Iranians (who somehow managed to wheedle their way into our lexicon with the biblical Zoroaster Magi business) , backed by the Oriental anathema of Episcopalianism (i.e., China), and loaded to the hilt with Russian super-weapons, make a twit of difference in the NWO plan for world hegemony and a planet-wide Empire?

As powerful and entrenched as they could be, there is a distinct vulnerability in the NWO/PTB DeathStar. With their flair for utter distain, the elite always underestimates the great unwashed. Their hubristic masters-of-the-universe persona shields them from any self-doubt, but it is double-edged, setting them up to be blind-sided.

If you were China, what would you do to insure your future? You know that your real "enemy" is the NWO and, regrettably by proxy, the US, as it has become synonymous with the NWO Agenda. How do you turn a world-power into a sub-power, and at the same time eliminate your true enemy, and roll-in a bit of revenge-resolve for the pangs of having your culture opiated?

The USA (and to a lesser degree the Brits) are the "mechanics" who do the bidding of the NWO Dons. China and the Islamic World want no part of the NWO. They are well aware of the necessity of preventing its degenerative philosophies into their cultures.

America's prosperity/economy is Debt (A = C)
Excluding the various FED flimflams, China and Japan (and to a lesser extent the oil providers) control our Debt (B = C)
Therefore, China and Japan control America's future economy (B = A).

To extract themselves from this equation, and to do so without losing their shirts internally, China and its allies (including Japan) are in the process of doing what the NWO crime families have always done. They don't need fleets of tankers and elaborate wars to initiate this. By putting-up their present and future requirements for crude, China has helped capitalize the "setting up" of the 1st successful Commodity Market (Bourse) outside of the dollar-based markets. This is a coup extraordinaire for these American Debt Holders. This plan places China and its allies outside the NWO sphere of influence, not to be burdened with the any threat of protection “vig” demanded by the PTB.

Through our massive debt and psychopathic consumption, America has directly funded this New World power. The major commodity that America has offered the world is debt -debt based upon its demographic ability to consume commodities. Americans are addicted to over-consumption, and hence actuarially guaranteeing the consumption of the world's premier commodity, crude oil. Movements in the price of crude always initiate the movement in all the other commodities, even the Derivative Markets make predictive assumptions based upon some underlying asset; and the king and queen of assets is crude, black gold.

China and Japan hold major positions in America's premier commodity, i.e., Federal Debt. For China and Japan to currently maintain their pro-forma, they will play along with the NWO / FED's game of hiding the money (as opposed to "... showing us the money...") UNTIL it no longer serves their purpose.

Our creditors, not OPEC, or some debtor nation (such as ourselves) will decide when the price of Crude will no longer be pegged to the dollar. At some point in the near future, Americans' ability to wantonly consume the basic underlying commodity (crude oil), will no longer have any strategic importance. The USD (and the consumptive economy we have all grown to love) will go the way of the Pound ... But this time there may will be a hell of a price to pay.

Americans, and most of the West are now being faced with new competitors for copious consumption. China, India, Brazil and South America (via Chavez) and the other pejorative third world countries are going to be driving, not walking or horse-carting their way into their futures. And, this process has already started. And short of annihilating billions of people via WWIII, this cannot be stopped.

In the Winter of 2006 -- barring an Israeli attacked -- the world will be able to purchase Crude Oil contracts in a currency other than the Dollar. We will get to witness an historical change, like the Continental Divide we will see the flow going down the other direction.

What will be the parity ratio with the Euro-based Iranian Bourse? Can I bring my USDs to Iran, and get a market exchange value on the Euro-reserved crude oil contracts? In my simplistic perspective, when China and Japan are legitimately exchanging their present and future USDs for crude oil without being penalized with devaluations, premiums, etc., we will have a new ball game. It is in fact this theocratic government in the Middle East that portends the success of the Chinese-Arab/Islamic global dominance.

Then, as all true believers do, they may well drive the USD out of business. Subsequently, with the objective of creating a gold backed Oil Currency (stuffed and folded neatly in China’s currency basket), we can then toss the Euro in the back seat as well . . .

Get your Dinars while they’re cheap …

Crime Families in Politics

2006-01-31T18:48:00.001-08:00

Yes, yes, it is ALWAYS about the money … OUR money by the way -- our Light the retardant energy has purloined and possessed since the chiming in of Time. Why are we so resistant to believing what EVERY avatar, saint and wise person has admonished our feeble brains and well-worn souls about? Why are we so afraid to call these “people” to task for stealing our Light?!

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Yes, we are all guilty of denying our true essence.
Genetically programmed we are, believing that we are as weak and as ineffectual as these usurpers continually remind us. Can you imagine a God-being, infilled with the vast unimaginable, so willingly joining-in and embracing our child-like awe and adoration of these various crime family figures who control our government and our lives?

Can you imagine God-beings framing arguments over appropriate torture techniques and choosing which of the lesser of evils is most appropriate? Can you hear the celestial orchestras tuning-up for a performance of these usurpers’ new mantra, "Let us do evil so that good may come!!" Yes, God Almighty, Let’s do evil so that good may come!!”

When we look at most of our political, religious and banking leaders, are we seeing public servants, or dons, hit-men, bagmen and numbers-runners? We have long ago tossed away our lying eyes to fend off the pangs of having to see our own dissonance. Of having to admit that we have placed our Light, and the Light of our grandchildren in the hands of these usurpers.

Yes, we should be as glib as Capt. Renaud -- "... shocked, I tell you, shocked that there's gambling going on here!" But fear is our mentor now, and the Light has gone out from us. And, as pointed out, how many times can we stomach seeing the same old BCCI crowd two-facing their way to yet another round of sucking the Light from our very marrow?

Back in the good ole days of Bush I, the system was working quite well for the Crime Families Extraordinaire (CFEs). For example, Bush I sent Saddam billions in U.S.-backed "agricultural credits" through BNL, an Italian bank tied up with BCCI -- the international "financial consortium" that was actually "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history," according to the U.S. Senate. As we all know, BCCI laundered money and financed arms dealing, terrorism, smuggling and prostitution, while corrupting government officials worldwide with bribes and extortion. Senator John Kerry, btw, led inquiries into the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), which broke open a tangled web that included organized crime, international terrorists, and members of both the Bush family and the Bin Laden family.

There are many (ad nausea) examples of the various international crime families utilizing the services of BCCI et al. A BCCI offshoot bank had bailed out one of Bush Junior's many business failures with $25 million in cash. That deal had been brokered by mysterious Arkansas tycoon Jackson Stephens, one of the Bush family's biggest campaign contributors. Curiously enough, Stephens was also a top money(bag)man for another leading politician: Bill Clinton. When Clinton took office, he obligingly deep-sixed the continuing probes into BCCI, Iraqgate and Iran-Contra.

So what's changed?! Not much. They CFEs (Crime Families Extraordinaire) unabashedly work both sides of the street (‘K’ St.). Only the store-fronts have changed. Meanwhile, while waiting for our next assignment from the Liars and the Lie, we Americans, anxiously await the hoped-for presidential candidate announcement from, perhaps a retired Professional Wrestler, or some other contemporary hero figure !! Arnold is on the outs. It’s NASCAR or Professional Wrestling as I see it. How 'bout the “Rock” for prez?!

PUT OPTIONS & 9/11

2006-01-31T12:48:00.000-08:00

Between August 26 and September 11, 2001, a group of speculators, identified by the American Securities and Exchange Commission as Israeli citizens, sold "short" a list of 38 stocks that could reasonably be expected to fall in value as a result of the pending attacks. These speculators operated out of the Toronto, Canada and Frankfurt, Germany, stock exchanges and their profits were specifically stated to be "in the millions of dollars."

Short selling of stocks involves the opportunity to gain large profits by passing shares to a friendly third party, then buying them back when the price falls. Historically, if this precedes a traumatic event, it is an indication of foreknowledge. It is widely known that the CIA uses the Promis software to routinely monitor stock trades as a possible warning sign of a terrorist attack or suspicious economic behavior. A week after the Sept.11 attacks, the London Times reported that the CIA had asked regulators for the Financial Services Authority in London to investigate the suspicious sales of millions of shares of stock just prior to the terrorist acts. It was hoped the business paper trail might lead to the terrorists.

Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a clandestine but official effort to resolve the market manipulations There has been a great deal of talk about insider trading of American stocks by certain Israeli groups both in Canada and Germany between August 26 and the Sept.11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Lynne Howard, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), stated that information about who made the trades was available immediately. "We would have been aware of any unusual activity right away. It would have been triggered by any unusual volume. There is an automated system called 'blue sheeting,' or the CBOE Market Surveillance System, that everyone in the business knows about. It provides information on the trades - the name and even the Social Security number on an account - and these surveillance systems are set up specifically to look into insider trading. The system would look at the volume, and then a real person would take over and review it, going back in time and looking at other unusual activity."

Howard continued, "The system is so smart that even if there is a news event that triggers a market event it can go back in time, and even the parameters can be changed depending on what is being looked at. It's a very clever system and it is instantaneous. Even with the system, though, we have very experienced and savvy staff in our market-regulations area who are always looking for things that might be unusual. They're trained to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even if it's offshore, it might take a little longer, but all offshore accounts have to go through U.S. member firms - members of the CBOE - and it is easily and quickly identifiable who made the trades. The member firm who made the trades has to have identifiable information about the client under the 'Know Your Customer' regulations (and we share all information with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)"

Given all of this, at a minimum the CBOE and government regulators who are conducting the secret investigations have known for some time who made the options puts on a total of 38 stocks that might reasonably be anticipated to have a sharp drop in value because of an attack similar to the 9/11 episode. The silence from the investigating camps could mean several things: Either terrorists are responsible for the puts on the listed stocks or others besides terrorists had foreknowledge of the attack and used this knowledge to reap a nice financial harvest from the tragedy.

Adam Hamilton of Zeal LLC, a North Dakota-based private consulting company that publishes research on markets worldwide, stated that "I heard that $22 million in profits was made on these put options..."

Federal investigators are continuing to be so closed-mouthed about these stock trades, and it is clear that a much wider net has been cast, apparently looking for bigger international fish involved in dubious financial activity relating to the 9/11 attacks on the world stock markets.

Just a month after the attacks the SEC sent out a list of stocks to various securities firms around the world looking for information. The list includes stocks of American, United, Continental, Northwest, Southwest and US Airways airlines, as well as Martin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corp., AIG, American Express Corp, American International Group, AMR Corporation, Axa SA, Bank of America Corp, Bank of New York Corp, Bank One Corp, Cigna Group, CNA Financial, Carnival Corp, Chubb Group, John Hancock Financial Services, Hercules Inc, L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc., LTV Corporation, Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., MetLife, Progressive Corp., General Motors, Raytheon, W.R. Grace, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., Lone Star Technologies, American Express, the Citigroup Inc. ,Royal & Sun Alliance, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., Vornado Reality Trust, Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter & Co., XL Capital Ltd., and Bear Stearns.

The Times said market regulators in Germany, Japan and the US all had received information concerning the short selling of insurance, airlines and arms companies stock, all of which fell sharply in the wake of the attacks. City of London broker and analyst Richard Crossley noted that someone sold shares in unusually large quantities beginning three weeks before the assault on the WTC and Pentagon.

He said he took this as evidence that someone had insider foreknowledge of the attacks. "What is more awful than he should aim a stiletto blow at the heart of Western financial markets?" he added. "But to profit from it? Words fail me."

The US Government also admitted it was investigating short selling, which evinced a compellingly strong foreknowledge of the coming Arab attack. There was unusually heavy trading in airline and insurance stocks several days before Sept.11, which essentially bet on a drop in the worth of the stocks.

It was reported by the Interdisciplinary Center, a counter-terrorism think tank involving former Israeli intelligence officers, that insiders made nearly $16 million profit by short selling shares in American and United Airlines, the two airlines that suffered hijacking, and the investment firm of Morgan Stanley, which occupied 22 floors of the WTC.

Apparently none of the suspicious transactions could be traced to bin Laden because this news item quietly dropped from sight, leaving many people wondering if it tracked back to American firms or intelligence agencies.

Most of these transactions were handled primarily by Deutsche Bank-A.B.Brown, a firm which until 1998 was chaired by A. B."Buzzy" Krongard, who later became executive director of the CIA.

Government investigators have maintained a diplomatic silence about a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe of possible profiteering by interested parties with advance knowledge of the attack.

On Sept. 6, 2001, the Thursday before the tragedy, 2,075 put options were made on United Airlines and on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks, 2,282 put options were recorded for American Airlines. Given the prices at the time, this could have yielded speculators between $2 million and $4 million in profit.

The matter still is under investigation and none of the government investigating bodies -including the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and DOJ -are speaking to reporters about insider trading. Even so, suspicion of insider trading to profit from the Sept. 11 attacks is not limited to U.S. regulators. Investigations were initiated in a number of places including Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Spain. As in the United States, all are treating these inquiries as if they were state secrets.

OUR VERY ONE ENABLING ACT ?

2006-01-30T18:27:00.000-08:00

Under the US Constitution, the president’s role is to “… take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The President does not make the laws, Congress has that power. The President does not interpret the laws, that responsibility is the purview of the judiciary. Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense:

“ In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

The Unitary Executive Doctrine, now fully embraced and exploited by President Bush, conflicts with Paine's principle which is fundamental to our constitutional system. If Bush can ignore or evade laws, then the law is no longer king. It is also relevant to keep in mind that the Colonial Legislature, as well as the people basking in their newly won Independence, wanted to make General George Washington an “Emperor” or President for life. He was the first to discount this, but graciously agreed to be the Republic’s first limited-term President. Washington and his peers carefully constructed a country of laws. If we are to maintain this honored tradition, we need to decide whether a President -- who has determined to ignore or evade the law -- has not acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive to our constitutional government.

Hitler's Enabling Act

On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the German Parliament (the Reichstag) met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's Enabling Act. It was officially called the “Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich.” If passed, it would effectively mean the end of democracy in Germany and establish the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

The “distress” had been secretly caused by the Nazis themselves in order to create a crisis atmosphere that would make the law seem necessary to restore order. On February 27, 1933, they had burned the Reichstag building, seat of the German government, causing panic and outrage. The Nazis successfully blamed the fire on the Communists and claimed it marked the beginning of a widespread uprising.

The Act was envisioned as the mechanism to circumvent the Reichstag by granting the chancellor and his cabinet authority to enact legislation without the Reichstag. . .

He also promised an end to unemployment and pledged to promote peace with France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. But in order to do all this, Hitler said, he first needed the Enabling Act.

At Hitler's first post-election Cabinet meeting, the first order of business was to plan how to obtain absolute power in a constitutional way. Hitler decided upon enacting the proposed "enabling act" that would give the cabinet legislative power for four years. The Reichstag Fire Decree had already given the government the power to arrest opposition delegates, and Hitler felt certain that he could convince the Christian Catholic Center to give their support to the act and provide the needed two-thirds majority.

Just before the vote, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag in which he pledged to use restraint. "The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures ...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one." - Hitler told the Reichstag.

Hitler's speech, which emphasized the importance of Christianity in German culture, was aimed particularly at assuaging the Centre Party's sensibilities. How the Third Reich utilized the Enabling Act burned a black hole in the middle of the 20th Century.

Bush’s Unitary Executive

It is genuine concern that motivates paralleling the Reich’s Enabling Act with the current Unitary Executive Doctrine. Perhaps resonating to the spirit of the Enabling Act, the Bush Administration’s claim that it has the authority to decide what is or is not the law is most manifest in its decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions to certain persons. A 2003 memo on torture written by Department of Defense lawyers stated that “criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president’s ultimate authority” as commander-in-chief, and prohibitions on torture “must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations.”

White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions were “obsolete” and “quaint” and argued that Bush had the constitutional authority to determine that Geneva did not apply to al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Charles Gittings, founder of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, asserts that the President’s decision not to apply Geneva, or to apply it selectively, is a grave breach of the Convention and thus a violation of the War Crimes Act of 1996. “The President has no Constitutional authority to commit crimes,” he said.

It is critical to secure the proper perspective in framing this argument as to the legal efficacy of the Unitary Executive. Simply, is this Doctrine of unilateral executive power consistent with our Constitutional Republic of distinct governmental separations? Can our government remain true to its nature, yet also embrace this doctrine?

Judge Samuel Alito, Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, has attested that he believes in the unitary executive. The most recent and blatant presidential intrusions on the law and Constitution (e.g., ignoring the FISA Laws) supply the verse to a very uncomfortable refrain.

Signing Statements

It is clear that the phrase "unitary executive" is a code word for a doctrine that favors the ever-expanding inflation of nearly unlimited executive power. Bush has used the doctrine in his signing statements to quietly expand presidential authority.

President Bush has used presidential signing statements more than any previous president. From President Monroe's administration (1817-25) to the Carter administration (1977-81), the executive branch issued a total of 75 signing statements to protect presidential prerogatives. From Reagan's administration through Clinton's, the total number of signing statements ever issued, by all presidents, rose to a total 322.

In striking contrast to his predecessors, President Bush issued at least 435 signing statements in his first term alone. And, in these statements and in his executive orders, Bush used the term "unitary executive" 95 times. It is important, therefore, to understand what this doctrine means.

According to Dr. Christopher S. Kelley, professor of political science at the Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, the unitary executive doctrine arose as the result of the twin circumstances of Vietnam and Watergate. Kelley asserts that "the faith and trust placed into the presidency was broken as a result of the lies of Vietnam and Watergate," which resulted in a congressional assault on presidential prerogatives.

For example, consider the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which Bush evaded when authorizing the NSA to tap without warrants -- even those issued by the FISA court. FISA was enacted after the fall of Nixon with the precise intention of curbing unchecked executive branch surveillance. (Indeed, Nixon's improper use of domestic surveillance was included in Article 2 paragraph (2) of the impeachment articles against him.)

According to Kelley, these congressional limits on the presidency, in turn, led "some very creative people" in the White House and the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to fight back, in an attempt to foil or blunt these limits. In their view, these laws were legislative attempts to strip the president of his rightful powers.

The unitary executive doctrine arises out of a theory called "departmentalism” or "coordinate construction." According to legal scholars Christopher Yoo, Steven Calabresi, and Anthony Colangelo, the coordinate construction approach "holds that all three branches of the federal government have the power and duty to interpret the Constitution." According to this theory, the president may (and indeed, must) interpret laws, equally as much as the courts.

Bush's Signing Statement for the McCain Anti-Torture Bill

In his most recent signing statement, Bush asserts not only his authority to internally supervise the "unitary executive branch," but also his power as Commander-in-Chief, as the basis for his interpretation of the law -- which observers have noted allows Bush to create a loophole to permit the use of torture when he wants.

Clearly, Bush believes he can ignore the intentions of Congress and by proxy, we the people. Not only that, but by this statement he has revealed his intent to do so, if he so chooses.

On top of this, Bush asserts that the law must be consistent with "constitutional limitations on judicial power." But what about presidential power? Does Bush see any constitutional or statutory limitations on that? And does this mean that Bush will ignore the courts, too, if he chooses - as he attempted, recently, to do in the Padilla case?

Does The Unitary Executive Doctrine Violates the Separation of Powers?

As Findlaw columnist Edward Lazarus recently showed, the President does not have unlimited executive authority, not even as Commander-in-Chief of the military. Our government was purposely created with power split between three branches, not concentrated in one.

Separation of powers, then, is not simply a talisman: It is the foundation of our system. James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, No. 47, that:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

The most effectual guard which has yet been discovered against the abuse of power, is the division of it. It is indeed our blessing to have a constitution which contains within it a sufficient limitation to the power granted by it, and also a proper division of that power. But no constitution affords any real security to liberty unless it is considered as sacred and preserved inviolate; because that security can only arise from an actual and not from a pretense of limitation and division of power.

Yet it seems that a pseudo limitation and division of power - with real power concentrated solely in the "unitary executive" - is exactly what President Bush seeks. His signing statements make the point quite clearly, and his overt refusal to follow the laws illustrates that point. In Bush's view, there is no actual limitation or division of power; it all resides in the executive.

And for this, we should take pause. History periodically provides the opportunity to reassess past failings with current knowledge. If we yet again repeat the previous inactions and distract ourselves from the gravity of this scenario, we may well be faced with a collective reprobation that future generations will be unable to comprehend or justify.

Metaphysical Materialism

2004-08-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

There has been something about Ayn Rand that has bothered me, that, until now, I haven't been able to put my finger on it. Her philosophy is what I would call Metaphysical Materialism, which contends that Man(kind) in all his techno-materialistic ethical splendor has finally reached the culmination of evolutionary development. You are not going to find a more refined evolutionary manifestation because we have reached the zenith of maturation. That the billions of years that it took the handmaidens of evolution to turn a "lesser god" into a "perfected ape" were well-spent. And like a new car shining in splendor on the showroom floor, you can't get any better than this!

For me, this thinking leads to an existential malaise, because it circles or confines everything within the boundaries of this physical universe. . . a universe processed and viewed through the disposable thought patterns of this perfected ape. Where's the Source? Who drew-up the Plans for this objective universe? Where, then, is the subjective universe? What was going on before the beginning of time? What was the consciousness that initiated the big bang thinking that triggered the creation of this magnificent chaos?

Like accountants with too much time on their hands, Ayn Rand and Carl Marx waxed rhapsodic about the grandiosity of finitism, and how neatly everything fit into their well-ordered patterns. And like Darwin, Spencer et al, Ayn and Carl believed (to paraphrase the dead Door, Jim Morrison) that he who controls the numbers controls the whole shebang. It's not about anything else other than control. Control every commodity on the planet, control the Ecos (management of the house), and control the minds of the masses, and there you have it! You have the perfect species in its proper place -- usurping the power and authority of the Creator.

If these "managers" destroy this evolutionary platform (earth) in the process of amassing total control, that's just the chance they will have to take. Isn't risk at the heart of good ole capitalism anyway?

For how would a man be profited if should gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If one has no soul to begin with, whats the problem?!

Separation of church & state

2004-08-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

The phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution. It stemmed from a personal letter of Thomas Jefferson in which he used the phrase. The Constitution requires that there be no state (government) religion, and simultaneously, that the state (government) does not restrict the free exercise thereof. There's was to be no "American" church as there was an "Anglican" church. Per the Bill of Rights, Amendment I:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There is NOTHING that prohibits the state from being religious and to be so in the context of its natural Judeo-christian tradition (one of its foundational pillars, by the way). The modern notion that this may "offend" some sensible souls who have a different world view, matters not one iota, so long as they aren't forced to adopt a "state religion" as a condition of citizenship and of its privileges. The interdict is there to allow and protect the freedom of worship for OTHER non-Jude-christian religions. NOT to stifle the expression within the halls of the state of the very religion upon which this state drew most of its inspiration.

The core fundamental Truth of this Nation (expressed with an eloquence shadowed by the potential for the gallows) is that our freedoms (endowed by our Creator) are ipso facto instilled in the citizens. These "freedoms" are deemed inalienable (i.e., incapable of being surrendered or transferred). The individual citizen then extends these rights to the individual state in which he/she lives. These states in turn empower the federal government. This is what all of our forefathers fought and died for. The Oath was to the Constitution, not to a federal government
of to a president.

The state/federal government works for us, we do not work for it. Citizens, through their States, created the Federal Government, not the other way around !!! The Bill of Rights, Amendment Ten states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

So, here we have Alabama’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Judge Roy S. Moore struggling for Liberty and his personal faith in God, and the real Constitutional element is ignored by the mainstream. The truth in this situation now is no different than an earlier truth that split our Republic. The War Between The States (American Civil War) was fought for one thing and one thing only: STATE'S RIGHTS ! The current issue with Judge Moore should be framed as an issue of State's Rights. This fight over the Ten Commandments has little to do with religion and EVERYTHING to do with who determines our fate. Are we subjects of the FEDERAL CROWN or are we sovereign citizens within our own sovereign states?

On The Road To Armageddon

2004-08-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

There are so many disparate and monumentally discordant factions vying for prominence in the upcoming war with Iraq that one realizes that none of the participants have a clue as to how it will eventually resolve. It is almost impossible to rectify all of the contingencies. You have the neo- conservative’s Pax Americana replete with neotech symbols and Teutonic emblems (reminiscent of you-know-who) ready to clash with the “towel-headed” Muslims. Supporting them in every way are the millions of Armageddonists praying that this war is the war that will see that the Israelis are sufficiently fire-and-brimstoned to warrant the Rapture and Second Coming.

In the Muslim world, various factions are positioning and grooming themselves to be the Saladin incarnate or the next imam for a billion or so believers. They are salivating at the possibility of immense collateral damage to the Iraqis to justify their Jihad to end all Jihads. The Bush administration's fixation on Saddam seems to have blinded it to the possibility that Usama might be perversely encouraging America in this war. The administration and Al Qaeda both have a purpose for invading Iraq, and both want a regime change.

"Both talk about "liberating" the Arab people, but Usama's vision is apocalyptic, but so also is the Rapturists, who can’t wait for Armageddon either. Usama wants the Middle East — Israel and the Arab monarchies — to go up in flames. By Zionizing our battle with Iraq and promising an anti-American theocracy, he hopes to radicalize recruits for a jihad against an American occupation of Arab land." Usama's own fanaticism was forged by foreign occupations — the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and American forces stationed in Saudi Arabia.

What is deeply troubling is the inordinately shrill cacophony of “prayer”, blaring out from the minds and hearts of Christians, Muslims and Jews alike, all imploring the One God to bless their own personal Armageddon agenda. Meanwhile the Pope and the various other factions of sane humans are praying for the cosmic commodity of Peace to be place like a cold cloth on the heads of all of these warmongers.

The PNAC’s Secret (Pax Americana)
- The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) -

In September 2000, before the election and one year before the attack on America, the PNAC released a report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” The report is a blueprint for an American “empire” and goes a long way in explaining the Bush “National Defense Strategy.” Membership in the PNAC is overflowing with the usual neo-conservative suspects: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and various upper-staff bigwigs.

The members are basically the talking heads for the sprawling, voracious, military- industrial complex which has constituted anything but free enterprise from its very inception during World War II. These are the great arms firms which have managed to slough off much of the normal risk of doing business in a genuine market, passing on many of their excessive costs to the taxpayers while still realizing extraordinary rates of return on investment.

“At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals,” the report says. “The challenge of this coming century is to preserve and enhance this ‘American Peace.’” The report promotes escalating world-wide military bases including an increased presence in the Middle East.

The report calls for control of the world’s energy resources and the targeting of Iraq to achieve our goals because “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

To create the environment to achieve these objectives, the report says that what America needs is “some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like Pearl Harbor.” The people who wrote the PNAC report make their intentions very clear. These people are now in power and with the “event” they needed to kick things off, i.e., the 9/11 attacks.

The CIA’s former head of counterintelligence, Vincent Cannistraro, has said, “Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there’s a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA.”

World War Armageddon

Conjoined at the hip with these neocons are the “dispensationalists,” who spun off from the ranks of Christian Fundamentalism to a more radical cult status of Armageddonists. The book and movie phenomena, LEFT BEHIND, is a good portrayal of this “philosophy.” These are ultra-fundamentalists who mimic their Muslim counterparts quite well, as noted by the Washington Post calling this belief "Christian jihadism," to indicate the followers determination to drive their country into World War Armageddon.

There are millions of people praying daily that modern day Israel be utterly annihilated at the great battle of Armageddon – signaling the End of History and the Return of Christ the King. According to the "Dispensationalists", what’s left of Israel will take the place of the Church on earth, and a new "dispensation" (or era) will be inaugurated, as mankind approaches the "End Times." Millions of Americans pine for a nuclear Armageddon because it will fulfill their "prophecies." Somewhat schizophrenically, while ignoring the national interests of their own country, they have become a potent political force in the U.S., and practically dominate the Republican party.

These days, the partnership is benefitting from the sense of a mutual enemy: Islam. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who has said Islam "teaches hate," went further on "60 Minutes" when he asserted, "I think Muhammad was a terrorist."

A grim comedy of mutual condescension

Evangelicals fervently support Israel for theological reasons of their own, based on a literal reading of the Book of Revelation that entwines the Jewish commonwealth with the Apocalypse and Second Coming. As Mr. Falwell instructs: "You and I know that there's not going to be any real peace in the Middle East until one day the Lord Jesus Christ sits on the throne of David in Jerusalem."

When the Rapture comes, they grouse, the holy alliance between Christians and Jews will suddenly become unholy, with Christians levitating and Jews left behind to deal with the Antichrist, plagues, sores, boils, frogs and locusts from the "bottomless pit," each with a human face, horse's body, scorpion's tail and a sting that torments for five months.

"This is a grim comedy of mutual condescension," says Leon Wieseltier, the Jewish scholar and literary editor of The New Republic. "The evangelical Christians condescend to the Jews by offering their support before they convert or kill them. And the conservative Jews condescend to Christians by accepting their support while believing that their eschatology is nonsense. This is a fine example of the political exploitation of religion."

Meanwhile Back at Home

Many believe that the government’s fast-paced shell game of swiftly changing our concentration from one nut shell to another, is simply a rue. They see this entire scenario as the Orwellian grab of the millennia. If ever you wonder what was going through the minds of the Germans in the 1930s that they “allowed” the ascent of Nazism, simply ask an American what they are thinking today.

The opportunists is this administration have shown that the hand is quicker than the eye, as draconian legislation breezes through the somnolent Congress. According to Rep Ron Paul, "The second Patriot Act is a mirror image of powers that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganizes the entire Federal government as well as many areas of state government under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM military command. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as the Second Patriot Act is by its very structure the definition of dictatorship.”

God forbid, but it looks as if we might start pining for the “the good old days” of the Clintons. And wouldn’t it be weird, if all of this warring backfires on Bush the younger just as it did on his dad, and we find another Clinton in the White House in 2004?! And take a look now at all of the executive power that she will have at her disposal. . . and can you, or your grandparents for that matter, remember the last time the government ever willingly unwound one of its “programs” ?!

Torturing as Policy

2004-08-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

We have an issue to face. As an individual and as a Country, we need to look squarely at the corner in which we have painted ourselves.

The floor we are in the process of refinishing is planked with over two hundred years of Republican Democracy. The paint we used is saturated with over two thousand years of ethical precepts now popularized by the phrase “Judeo-Christian" Ethic.

Yes, there have been incidences of erroneous thinking, resulting in violent episodes in our past -- everything from the displacement and killing of Native Americans to 200 years of slavery from the mid-1600s to 1865—and that's not even counting our actions in Iran, South America and elsewhere in the 20th century.

But, in fairness, America has also done incalculable good in the world, everything from the Marshall Plan after the Second World War to providing an example for the world of free speech, civil rights, the rule of law and a long-lived democracy.

But America now finds itself in the desert. We are being tempted – not with all the riches of the world – but with the “justification” to flatten and neutralize our moral conduct. Winning the War on Terror now seems like such a crucial goal in certain quarters that almost any means may seem justified. If we have to abuse some prisoners in the pursuit of vital intelligence, this argument goes, well, so be it.

But this argument is a fallacy. If in the pursuit of high ideals we use low means we'll be remembered primarily for the low means—just as the iconic images of the U.S. in Iraq are now the photos coming out of Abu Ghraib.

The tempter continually adds fuel to this fire as he senses our waxing and waning. Our ire is stoked with bizarre images of beheading and other atrocities. The disgust, hate and anger generated from these images severs our tie to our divinity. We can be manipulated into almost any abhorrent action if we disconnect from our Source. (See how well the scheme is working?!)

How easy is it then to accept the premise that the end does justify the means, and that we can do evil so that good may come? We will all be asked to choose, or the choice will be made without us. Take care.

Going to War

2004-08-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

Going to war

This administration (top-heavy with Houston energy whozits) can go to war over oil without having or even wanting ownership of the attacked nation's oil reserves. Ownership is not the issue. Control of the flow is the issue. Maintaining the strategic status-quo is the issue. These modern-day energy conglomerates have put old man Rockefeller to shame. The US Government forced father John's Standard Oil to break off (some would say mastesize) into Esso and other smaller entities. Today, the hand-in-glove relationship with energy and government is so intertwined that you cannot have one without the other.

To get a clear picture of this, research James Baker, whom Bush recently sent abroad seeking help to reduce Iraq's debt. Does Baker represent the US Government? The Saudis? His other clients? Just look at the cases Baker's Houston-based law firm, Baker Botts, represents. Also take a look at Enron’s political contributions.

We would all be better off -- and less fog-headed -- if these energy people (from the President on up) simply told us the truth; simply said that energy (oil) maintenance has become the job of our government. It has become the mandate of the military to make certain that political instability (present or future) in no way effects the flow of our energy needs. Energy, the military industry, and the bureaucracy now unabashedly determine our political fate.

This rationale should stand on its own merits. We don’t need the pretense of WMDs, terrorists, or bringing “enlightened” government to the hapless natives who happen to walk over all that oil which we have laid claim.