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#Post#: 2040--------------------------------------------------
Re: Power Structures in Human Society: Pros and Cons Part 1
By: AGelbert Date: October 16, 2014, 1:13 am
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Goldman Sachs Moral Compass
HTML http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-27/goldman-sachs-moral-compass
[img width=300
height=300]
HTML http://cdn.socialtrade.com/comsys/imgs/Goldman-Sachs-moral-compass_Z9166M_m.jpg[/img]
Protecting Power & Privilege Has Doomed Regimes Throughout
History
HTML http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-26/protecting-power-privilege-has-doomed-regimes-throughout-history
#Post#: 2214--------------------------------------------------
To Abandon or not to Abandon all hope
By: AGelbert Date: November 16, 2014, 3:47 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
The following article is related to the conscience free behavior
by those pretending hypocritically to have one in this country.
Too much has been forgotten CONVENIENTLY by those, like Pfaff,
an excellent political analyst, that have written about the
tyranny of this country against minorities in general and Blacks
in particular in a vain search for a time when we were more
civilized in this country. Of course they are right that WHITES
were more civilized with WHITES before (post Civil war and
reforms during the Teddy Roosevelt administration), so you might
say things have deteriorated for non-rich whites.
My answer to that is, WTF? Evil doesn't give three hoots about
color, creed, family, honor, tribe or whatever. Evil rewards
those with the LEAST conscience and the most predatory
instincts. Evil has INERTIA that accelerates. Any fool can see
that. Oh, but the average white thought we were going to get a
pass while the plutocracy was built step by evil step. LOL! THAT
bit of magical thinking STUPIDITY was, and is, part and parcel
of the evil rich modus operandi used on poor whitey in the
South before the Civil War and throughout this country AFTER the
Civil War (don't let the BROWNS AND BLACKS take yer jobs! Gotta
keep em' DOWN or they will bang yer wives and daughters!). It
never occurred to these DUMB AS A POST average whites that THEY
would eventually feel the scourge of plutocratic tyranny as much
as the minorities and blacks. Oh no, they were too busy FARMING
that "free" land that ONLY European WHITE immigrants and WHITE
Merikans after the Civil War could farm for "free", never mind
what the injuns thought about THAT. As Nicole Foss infamously
said about another obscenity called fracking, "THERE"s MONEY TO
BE MADE".
So it goes. I have sat here and watched Doomers dance around the
FACT that the ISSUE is EVIL for years now. They just DO NOT WANT
TO ACCEPT that the problem is a moral one, not a resource,
economy, jobs, police, political system, government, military,
blah ,blah ,blah problem. Hell many here don't even believe EVIL
exists! And that is JUST THE WAY the EVIL fucks running this
tyranny for the people and gravy train for them want it.
:evil4:
Like the CHUMPS at TBP that have embraced racism and bean
counting exercises about resources, the economy and so on, they
REFUSE to look in that mirror and see how EVIL is making a world
class sucker out of them.
HTML http://zerotoboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/graphic_z2b_barkley_title.gif
William PFAFF makes a valiant attempt at giving us hope that the
plutocracy can be "defeated" in the following article by
pointing out our history (leaving a few things out... ;)).
Here's what William does not get. Machines do not require a
large population. A large WORK FORCE was NECESSARY after the
Civil War and while the US and the world was switching to mass
production. Computers have now become cheap enough to BUILD
THEMSELVES along with building just about everything else and
even mining for and refining the raw materials! The "reforms"
post Civil War and early 20th century were a trade off that is
NO LONGER REQUIRED to keep the 1% happy. The INERTIA is to GET
RID OF US so the 1% piggies can have more of the planet to
pollute at their leisure. Anyone that thinks otherwise is
willfully STUPID.
All that said. IF morality takes hold among my fellow fallen,
fucked up Homo Saps, there IS hope that real reforms along the
lines of William PFAFF's hopeful article can come to pass. I am
not holding my breath but then I'm part minority so what do I
know? :icon_mrgreen:
Defeating Plutocracy
Date 2014/11/12 17:00:00
Paris, Nov. 12, 2014 – A week ago this column asserted that the
present electoral system in the United States now places the U.S
government on sale every two years -- the presidency and
congress every four years, and the entire House of
Representatives and a third of the Senate, as well as assorted
state governors, judges, and other officials, every two years,
as in the mid-term election that took place on November 4th.
The argument I made and make is that since national elections
now are largely won or lost by the quantity of paid and
unregulated television advertisements (or so politicians and
professional observers are convinced, a possibly self-fulfilling
expectation), those who have the largest amount of money at
their disposal win the elections. There are few exceptions.
This is not as things should be, but overall it was the result
of the November 4 vote. The success of big money was even
greater than widely expected. Hence Americans now live in a
plutocracy: the country that claims to lead the world is largely
controlled by major American corporations and financial groups,
and exceedingly rich individuals.
The question posed is can anything be done to reverse this
situation, in which money has steadily accumulated national
political power until reaching the seemingly decisive position
it possesses today. The international economy’s present
tendency, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has recently
argued, is to augment the fortunes of the already rich, since
the rate of return on investment tends to run ahead of the rate
of growth in the overall economy.
The rich are not, as mainstream economists (and Republican Party
candidates and supporters) have argued for years, “the creators
of jobs.” Industry does not, as assumed for many years, support
an enlarging workforce. What it does produce is enlarging return
for investors.
In the economy of the past three decades, technology has tended
to destroy jobs – that, after all, is one of its principal
purposes, cost-reduction. The globalized economy has tended to
export those fields of manufacture that still require human
employees to poor countries, where wages are low and working
conditions poor. As governments of countries thus favored by
globalization tend to do what they can to maintain conditions
that attract foreign investment, industry moves to where
conditions are worse and wages lower : thus the competitive race
to the bottom.
There are countertendencies, of course. There are enterprises
convinced that a well-paid and skilled labor force is an asset.
Public opinion tends to oppose the most sinister consequences of
globalized manufacturing and services. But there is as yet no
convincing evidence that forces exist in the United States today
to reverse the conditions that now prevail. That is a condition
in which the economy has awarded one single family – the owners
of Walmart stores – 37% of U.S. national wealth, virtually the
same amount of wealth possessed collectively by the poorest 40%
of the nation’s population. (These figures, which are well
known, were cited again by Senator Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.] in a
recent interview with Bill Moyers).
In theory, this distribution of wealth affords such a family
(let us say the Koch brothers, to take one of the most
politically active families), the possibility of wielding as
much electoral power -- measured in television political
advertising -- in national elections than a major part of the
total electorate.
I asked in my last column if there is “no way out” of this
situation -- other than by revolutionary change in the way the
economy and political system function, a change which is against
the material interests of the dominant business, investor, and
existing political classes, who may be expected to fight against
any such challenge, or effect alteration in the existing
government to prevent it, conceivably by force.
Change has, however, happened in the past, against severe
resistance -- three times since the Civil War, for example.
During the American “Gilded Age” that accompanied the great
economic and industrial boom in the North that followed the
defeat of the South in the Civil War, when the transcontinental
railroad was built, accompanied by modern industrial
development, and the Homestead Act had opened the western states
to settlement by offering free federal land to those willing to
farm it, Washington during the two Grant administrations
experienced notorious corruption, as did the booming cities of
the northeast, ruled by manipulative political machines.
The depression of 1873-79 inspired a popular reaction and the
first American trade union movement, which rapidly acquired 700
thousand members (in a population of 50 million). Agricultural
depression inspired Farmers’ Alliances demanding nationalized
railroads, a graduated income tax and “Free Silver” (meaning
unlimited coinage).
These popular movements found their leader in the great popular
orator and preacher, William Jennings Bryan, who ran for the
presidency in 1896 and 1900, losing both times but exciting the
enthusiasm of the nation, and in 1900 electing by default the
Republican McKinley-Roosevelt ticket.
William McKinley’s assassination within months made Theodore
Roosevelt president and inaugurated a period of reforms – of the
civil service, anti-trust legislation, regulation of interstate
commerce, food and drug inspection and regulation, national
resource conservation, and establishment of the nation’s
national park system -- that shaped much of the United States’
economic and agricultural regulatory framework that survives to
the present day.
The first Roosevelt was a romantic nationalist and believer in
heroic leadership, contemptuous of class interest. He declared
that “a patrician’s politics should be reform, and that reform
[means] broad federal powers wielded by executive leadership.”
His nephew, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who confronted the Great
Depression, shared and acted upon those beliefs, characterizing
the rich who despised and fought him – the “one percent” of the
1930s -- as “malefactors of great wealth,” an expression that
fit major figures in the election that has just passed, and
identifies the vulnerability of democracy to the plutocracy that
now exists.
© Copyright 2014 by Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.
This article comes from William PFAFF
HTML http://www.williampfaff.com
HTML http://www.williampfaff.com
The URL for this article is:
HTML http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=703
HTML http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=703
HTML http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/095/5/b/Abandon_All_Hope_by_Hjoranna.png
#Post#: 2300--------------------------------------------------
Who Will Police The Police?
By: AGelbert Date: December 1, 2014, 8:45 pm
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Who Will Police The Police? ???
Dec. 1, 2014 1:13 pm
By Thom Hartmann
As the nation continues to react to the events in Ferguson,
Missouri, many people are asking themselves, “Where do we go
from here?”
In a piece published over the weekend in The New York Times,
Nicholas Kristof says that, in the wake of Ferguson and the
increase in racial tensions, America needs a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. Kristof writes that, “We feud about
the fires in Ferguson, Mo., and we can agree only that racial
divisions remain raw. So let’s borrow a page from South Africa
and impanel a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to examine
race in America.”
While Kristof may have a point, there’s another - and, I
believe, more urgent and pressing question that we should all be
asking in the wake of Ferguson: Who will police the police? The
Constitution and our Founders provide us with some insight on
that very question.
When our Founders sat down to write the Constitution, they had a
big debate over whether America should have a standing army.
They had that debate because armies had a nasty habit of
overthrowing elected governments, all the way back to the time
of the Greeks. Our founders didn’t want a military under the
control of a military official, because they knew how badly that
could turn out.
As James Madison told the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention
in 1787, “A standing military force… will not long be safe
companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign
danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.
Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite [start] a
war, whenever a revolt was apprehended [whenever the population
was calling for political change]. Throughout all Europe, the
armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the
people.”
So, our founders wrote in the Constitution that the chief
executive of the military and armed forces had to be an elected
civilian, the president, who would be replaced every so often.
(They also time-limited military appropriations to a maximum of
2 years to force Congress every session to re-evaluate the
military.)
That same principle - that the head of the police should be an
elected civilian, not a cop or a prosecutor - is needed for
oversight of police in America. All across America, we need
police oversight boards that are independent of police
departments, complete with subpoena and indictment powers, and
that can impartially rule on police actions and matters. But the
changes can’t stop there.
We need to also bring back good old-fashioned community
policing. Back in 1994, the Clinton administration created
something called the COPS program. COPS, or the Community
Oriented Policing Services program, provided resources for local
police forces around the country, and put 100,000 police
officers on America’s streets - literally walking patrol. The
idea was to get officers out into the community where they could
form relationships with everyday people and "serve and protect"
rather than occupy and control communities as if they were
simply armed soldiers.
Madison, Wisconsin Police Officer Katie Adler is a great example
of the kind of police officer the COPS program was meant to
create. She is a neighborhood officer in the crime-ridden North
Side area of Madison. Unlike regular patrol cops in Madison,
neighborhood officers like Officer Katie work in at-risk
communities to make a difference and build relationships with
citizens - and it even prevents future crime.
Officer Katie is beloved in the communities that she patrols, so
much so that kids follow her wherever she goes. And, she’s even
inspiring children in the communities she patrols to become
police officers when they grow up.
Unfortunately, police officers like Officer Katie are few and
far between. That’s largely because ever since the Bush
administration stepped foot in Washington, funding for the COPS
program has been slashed year after year. And, over the past few
years, things have gotten even worse.
In 2010, $792 million was allotted in the form of federal grants
under the COPS program for local police forces across the
country; by 2012, that number shrank to just $199 million. If
the events in Ferguson have taught us anything, it’s that
community policing efforts in America need to be expanded, not
slashed.
Programs like COPS help law enforcement agencies to do more than
just catch criminals. More importantly, they encourage street
officers to work with communities to create a culture of trust
that breaks down the barrier between cops and civilians. And, by
establishing police oversight boards, we can make sure that
police officers and police departments are held accountable for
their actions by independent and impartial bodies.
It’s time to bring community policing back to America, and add
an impartial system for accountability when a cop goes rogue.
Agelbert Comment:
Thom,
The problem is one of perspective. If you go back to the days
the Constitution was written and learn how they policed in those
days, there was simply no comparison to modern police. That is,
what we HAVE NOW is, for all practical purposes, a STANDING ARMY
in every town called a "police force"!
If you disagree, read this free online book or listen to it free
online. It was written about 100 years ago and thoroughly covers
the habits, housing, clothing, crafts, farming, governing and
infrastructure from colonial days on.
During those days they had "watchmen" that would do just that
during the night. During they day they could have any
profession. They watched, property, animals (to make sure loose
hogs didn't get into grain fields and such) and warned of fires
or thievery. You even get a detailed description of items stolen
from Benjamin Franklin's residence in a robbery.
The book is called:
Home Life in Colonial Days by Alice Morse Earle
Down load free here:
HTML http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22675
Listen free here:
HTML https://librivox.org/home-life-in-colonial-days-by-alice-morse-earle/
The SO CALLED "latitude" given by the corrupt dysfunctional
Court system we have in this country to the police officers in
their ROUTINE violation of the Constitutional rights of
we-the-people is a Stare Decisis (case law) contrivance that
ignores the Constitution.
Indiana actually has a "stand your ground" law that entitles a
citizen to use force in defense of illegal assault with a deadly
weapon by a police officer. Pennsylvania, on the other and more
brutally normal "hand", REQUIRES that you NOT defend yourself
from a legal or ILLEGAL assault by a police officer because the
court will "take care of your grievance later" when you have
your "Day in Court". LOL!
But the issue is not the law per se. The POINT is that the
police now are acting like an army of occupation and courts have
gone fully, and fascistly, out of their way to ignore their
brutality. EXACTLY what the founding fathers were afraid of HAS
COME TO PASS. >:(
All this BALONEY about how a police officer has to "defend"
himself in the course of his duties is not now, or EVER was,
justified as an excuse for routine assault and battery when
verbally challenged or not instantly obeyed.
SINCE WHEN are citizens NOT allowed to ARGUE with a police
officer? I'll tell you "since when"! Since the courts made us
believe the FAIRY TALE that our "Day in Court" would settle the
grievance.
You know the "DAY IN COURT" is for those with PRIVILEGE in this
country and probably ALWAYS WAS! Over 90% of the people in jail
RIGHT NOW in the USA never had a "day in Court"! They were
pressured and threatened and intimidated to accept a PLEA
"Bargain" (such a deal!). :P
We DO NOT have a functional Court System. It is THERE for the
corporations and the rich (SEE definition of Corporations PLUS
Government COERCIVE power = FASCISM).
Right now Darrell Wilson is busy getting his named changed or
obtaining a nice security officer job in a "proud bigots 'R' us"
corporation someplace. THAT is the UNJUST modus operandi that
our Corrupt Court System ENABLES.
The incredibly calloused brutality towards minorities in general
and African Americans in particular is part and parcel of the
MILITARY mindset our soldiers have been indoctrinated in from
the Phillipines to Iraq! Our police are SOLDIERS, not "watchmen"
like our founding fathers considered towns men that protected
people and property at night were.
This problem goes WAY BEYOND the police. It includes the
accepted exploitative, conscience free mentality of our
Predatory C(r)apitalst profit over people and planet suicidal
paradigm.
But recognizing that our Courts are a TOOL of Fascism that has
ushered in this police brutality is a start.
For those who labor under the ridiculous wishful thinking that
we are entilted to a "Day in Court" and that our Court System
practices their preached claim of Ubi Jus, Ibi Remedium (where
there is injustice there is a remedy), read how the victims of
the Exxon Valdez fared after 20 years of litigation when EXXON
was OBVIOUSLY at fault for damaging the health and environment
of people and animals to the point of sickness and death. This
was a NO BRAINER but our Court System "awarded" a PITTANCE to
the victims to the great pleasure and joy of one of the richest
corporate planet polluters in the world!
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013201314.png
And the victims were WHITE PEOPLE! Imagine if that town had been
all black like some towns that GE ravaged long ago (and the Koch
brothers more recently) who's victims never did get justice.
That's the way Fascism creeps in. First you are lulled into
thinking it's just this or that OTHER group getting targeted and
you remain asleep until one day you wake up and the cops are a
standing army that can justify, in the HANDMAIDEN of the
corporations (the Courts), any and all behavior, no matter how
brutal and murderous.
We don't NEED more "laws" on the books. We NEED to have courts
that don't enforce the laws SELECTIVELY. The "latitude" given
police officers is UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
Cops are American citizens. Its time they were bound by the same
laws the rest of us are. But since the corporations OWN our
Government and our Courts, I'm not holding my breath waiting for
our unlawful and corrupt Fascist Court System to act Lawfully.
Pass it on. It's time for people to stop pretending we are a
democracy. Day in Court, my ARSE!
Links below:
It's time to listen to Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Kajieme
Powell, Chris Hedges and Will Allen. If we don't mankind is
doomed.
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/mechanisms-of-prejudice-hidden-and-not-hidden/msg2136/#msg2136<br
/>
The Mike Brown Shooting - What You're Not Being Told
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/mechanisms-of-prejudice-hidden-and-not-hidden/msg2137/#msg2137
The Exxon Valdez PITTANCE of a settlement: PROOF we have a
Fascist Fossil Fuel Government AND the irreparably DYSFUNCTIONAL
Court System is its HANDMAIDEN
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg2122/#msg2122
　
Fascist Big Ag uses Food Disparagement Law and the Patriot Act
to threaten Truth tellers
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/sustainable-food-production/msg2033/#msg2033<br
/>
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on what the LAW
is ALL ABOUT
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2045/#msg2045<br
/>
　
The Lady Justice Legal Scales mean the OPPOSITE of what you
think they mean
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2041/#msg2041
Don't count on our Court System to defend Americans from Fascism
- Here's why the solution to Corporate Profit over Planet is EX
CURIA
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2019/#msg2019<br
/>
HTML http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2014/12/who-will-police-police#comment-295520
#Post#: 2301--------------------------------------------------
Re: Power Structures in Human Society: Pros and Cons Part 1
By: AGelbert Date: December 1, 2014, 10:05 pm
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[img width=640
height=480]
HTML http://aattp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/aattp-police-brutality.jpg[/img]
UN report documents torture, police violence in US
The United Nations Committee Against Torture issued a lengthy
report today assessing the performance of the 156 countries
whose governments have ratified the Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,
which took effect two decades ago.
The report subjected a major country to a wide-ranging critique,
indicting it for a long list of human rights violations
including:
◾ Refusal to prosecute officials who engage in or sanction
torture of prisoners
◾ Detaining prisoners indefinitely without trial or other
judicial proceeding, or any hope of release
◾ Kidnapping individuals overseas and torturing them in
secret prisons
◾ Approving a manual for interrogation of prisoners that
includes methods classified as torture under the Geneva
Conventions
◾ Imprisoning immigrants under degrading conditions and
refusing to acknowledge their claims as refugees fleeing
persecution
◾ Imposing the death penalty on hundreds of prisoners,
many of them from oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, many
of them demonstrably innocent or unfairly tried
◾ Widespread use of solitary confinement, considered a
form of torture, at all levels of the prison system
◾ Severe abuse of juveniles, pregnant women and other
vulnerable groups both in police custody and in prisons
◾ Maintaining a regime of police violence, particularly
against young men from racial and ethnic minorities, and
refusing to restrain or punish police who kill, wound or torture
It will not come as any surprise to readers of the WSWS that the
country named is not China, or Russia, or Iran, or some other
target of the American ruling class, [size=18pt]but the US
itself.[/size] The government that claims the right to bully,
blockade, and attack any country in the world in the name of
“human rights” and “democracy” is guilty of the most heinous
crimes.
The language of the report is both cautious and bureaucratic,
and there are strained efforts to congratulate the Obama
administration on alleged improvements, compared to the Bush
administration, on such practices as extraordinary rendition and
waterboarding. But the overall impact of this indictment is
damning.
There are some significant revelations. The committee notes that
the US government had filed reservations to the Convention on
Torture at the time of ratification, indicating that some
practices condemned by the treaty would continue, and that the
Obama administration has refused to alter this “restrictive
interpretation”
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp<br
/>of the anti-torture treaty or introduce a prohibition of tortu
re
into federal law.
The Obama administration has revoked Bush administration legal
opinions declaring that waterboarding and other forms of torture
were permissible, but it has not done the same to Bush-era
claims that the US is obliged to observe international norms
only at facilities within US borders, not at detention
facilities on the soil of other countries. In other words, the
legal basis for torture at secret CIA and military prisons still
remains fully in effect.
The report also notes that the US government is in violation of
its commitment under the Convention on Torture to “Ensure that
alleged perpetrators and accomplices are duly prosecuted,
including persons in positions of command and those who provided
legal cover to torture, and, if found guilty, handed down
penalties commensurate with the grave nature of their acts.”
Obama directly repudiated this legal obligation, in his
directive to “look forward, not backward” on allegations of
torture.
While this remains a closed book to the American political
establishment, the report underscores the seamless connection
between military violence overseas and militarized police
violence at home—though its criticisms are couched largely in
racial terms. It condemns “racial profiling by police and
immigration offices and growing militarisation of policing
activities.” A spokesman said the committee members “voiced deep
concern at the frequent and recurring police shootings in fatal
pursuit of unarmed black individuals.”
The document is the product of a three-week session in Geneva
that included testimony from the parents of Michael Brown, the
unarmed 18-year-old African-American who was shot to death by
Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson on August 9. The
report was made public four days after a St. Louis County grand
jury whitewashed the killing and dismissed all charges against
the killer cop.
The timing of the report is also significant, coming at the
culmination of the protracted effort by the White House and CIA
to suppress a major US Senate report on torture at CIA secret
prisons between 2002 and 2006. The 6,000-page report was
completed two years ago, but release of even a censored version
of its 500-page executive summary has been blocked by CIA
demands that so much of the document be redacted that it is
almost incomprehensible.
Two days before the report was made public, seven UN human
rights experts issued an open letter to Obama that, while
couched in friendly, even obsequious language, called for “the
fullest possible release” of the CIA torture report and warned
that Obama’s decision on the document would have “far-reaching
consequences for victims of human rights violations everywhere
and for the credibility of the United States.”
HTML http://www.desismileys.com/smileys/desismileys_6869.gif
The White House, however, has worked closely with the CIA in
suppressing the document. Or more exactly, the CIA made its
demands, and the White House has followed suit obediently. After
initially agreeing with Senate investigators to use pseudonyms
to mask the names of CIA operatives, including the torturers,
the agency is now demanding that even the pseudonyms should be
blacked out of the document. Foreign Policymagazine reported
last week that the White House was “fiercely resisting the
release of an executive summary of a 6,300-page Senate report on
the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.” One Senate aide
told the magazine, “Ideally, we should be closing ground and
finalizing the last stages right now so that we can release the
report post-Thanksgiving. But, despite the fact that the
committee has drastically reduced the number of pseudonyms in
the report, the White House is still resisting and dragging this
out.”
An additional factor is the impending takeover of the Senate by
the Republican Party in January. Senator Richard Burr of North
Carolina, who would become chairman of the Intelligence
Committee once the Republicans take control, is on record as
opposing any public release of any information on CIA
activities, regardless of their criminal nature. If the
wrangling over release of the report is prolonged another month,
the new Republican majority may well vote to withdraw the report
entirely, saving the Democrats from having to do the job
themselves.
The Senate report is hardly a real indictment of the CIA.
Lawyers for the Guantanamo Bay prisoners who were waterboarded
dozens of times say that Senate investigators never took
testimony from them. In other words, the only account of the
torture comes those who participated in the torture, or
sanctioned it, not from those who were its victims. It also
reportedly does not level any accusations against the top
executive, military and intelligence officials who drew up and
sanctioned the criminal policy.
That even such a document, with thousands of lines blacked out
and vital information withheld, cannot be made public, speaks
volumes about the decay and collapse of American democracy. The
US ruling elite is incapable of coming clean about the period
when, as Obama admitted, “We tortured some folks.” That is
because the entire state apparatus is preparing for the use of
similar methods against a much-feared upheaval among workers and
young people at home. >:(
Patrick Martin, wsws.org
HTML http://www.strategic-culture.org/pview/2014/11/30/un-report-documents-torture-police-violence-in-us.html
HTML http://i.imgur.com/siGMkUI.gif
#Post#: 2415--------------------------------------------------
Re: Power Structures in Human Society: Pros and Cons Part 1
By: AGelbert Date: December 19, 2014, 12:12 am
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgbqXsA62Qs&feature=player_embedded
About 737 Fascist Oligarchs with their profit over people and
planet fingers EVERYWHERE! [img width=30
height=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-300714025456.bmp[/img]<br
/>
#Post#: 2434--------------------------------------------------
A word of advice to TPTB
By: AGelbert Date: December 22, 2014, 7:11 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Does ANYBODY out there believe that the majority (99% or more
;D) of Americans have EVER taken to heart, or given ANYTHING
more than LIP SERVICE to the passage in the Bible that states:
[font=times new roman]Never take your own revenge, beloved, but
leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “VENGEANCE
IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord. Romans 12:19? [/font]
I didn't think so.
A word of advice to TPTB about a "quality" that only methodical,
intelligent people seem to have ;). Consider the life history
of a certain fictional character in "A Tale of Two Cities"...
[font=times new roman]Experience doesn't just teach; it
stimulates planning for future score settling. If the experience
is good, those who benefited from it reciprocate in kind, when
the occasion arises, to those responsible for providing that
socially beneficial experience. If the experience is of cruelty
and brutality, Madame Defarge types are created. They too
reciprocate in kind. Se La Vie A.G. Gelbert [/font]
HTML https://embarrassedzebra.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/a-tale-of-two-cities_2_sj.png
[quote]"Defarge represents one aspect of the Fates. She knits,
and her knitting secretly encodes the names of those people she
will have killed. The Fates used yarn to measure out the life of
a man, and cut it to end it. "
"Madame Defarge is one piece of work. If anyone has a right to
be upset about the abuses that the aristocracy heaps upon the
commoners, she’s the person. After all, her sister was ****d by
the Marquis St. Evrémonde. Her father died of grief. Her brother
was killed trying to avenge his sister's honor. All in all, she
didn’t have the happiest of childhoods. It’s completely
understandable that she’d want to play a big part in the
revolutionary attempts to overthrow the power of the
aristocracy."[/quote]
[move][i]HOW MANY Madame Defarge's are being created 24/7 by our
Police State BRUTALITY? Only their hairdresser (and knitting
club) knows. 8)[/i][/move]
HTML http://www.shmoop.com/tale-of-two-cities/madame-defarge.html
HTML http://www.shmoop.com/tale-of-two-cities/madame-defarge.html
#Post#: 2515--------------------------------------------------
Days of Destruction Days of Revolt
By: AGelbert Date: January 7, 2015, 8:19 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_dkEgNGpzY&feature=player_embedded
Chris Hedges paraphrased: [quote]From the START, our country was
NOT set up as a popular democracy.[/quote]
Agelbert Comment: Most people in the USA do not understand what
is meant by the type of economic model that is defined by asset
stripping.
This was the economic model used in the Southern US before the
Civil War. It's an extractive process that commodifies
everything and everybody except the owners of the
corporate/company/elite extractive force. Anybody that can add
and subtract can see that this process is unsustainable.
But two hundred years ago, the bounty of slaves, animals and
soil products looked endless.
When industrialization really got going in the USA after the
Civil War, there was a battle that raged for several decades
between a sustainable, seed corn saving type economic model that
had the upper hand in the Northern Sates and the conscience free
extractive one.
Taylor's Theory of Management even postulated that a CEO MUST
take good care of his employees and look after their health and
well being in order to ensure that a quality product was
produced. The so-called "Good Will" accounting entry in balance
sheets that gives added value to a corporation included LOW
employee turn over.
But the unsustainable, brutally extractive "model" that
increased short term profits gained the upper hand as the power
of the vote in this country got more and more watered down and
the power of big money in government increased.
This Fascist, Empire loving, greed based and unsustainable
economic "model" predatory world view is now widespread. It is
the reason things just get worse.
The book discussed in the video goes a long way towards
explaining how STUPID this greed ball thinking is and how much
horrific damage and death it brings.
[i]Unsustainable is as unsustainable does, PERIOD
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/gen152.gif
[/i]
[img width=640
height=380]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-070115205550.bmp[/img]
Pictorial metaphor of the extractive economic "model"
#Post#: 3287--------------------------------------------------
Re: Power Structures in Human Society: Pros and Cons Part 1
By: AGelbert Date: June 12, 2015, 1:07 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[img width=640
height=480]
HTML http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tfbOYAlDMcg/U0KnLTFxeyI/AAAAAAAABog/BRjG6ltO71A/s1600/quote-Barbara-Kingsolver-empathy-is-really-the-opposite-of-spiritual-170642.png[/img]
Flipping the Script: Rethinking Working-Class Resistance
Posted on Jun 11, 2015
By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout
SNIPPETS:
[quote]Neoliberalism has created a ruling-class society of
monsters for whom pain and suffering are now viewed as
entertainment. [/quote]
[quote]Barbarism is not simply a political concept; it is a
practice forged in war and violence. Incapable of
self-reflection, it smothers ethical considerations in the
language of tactics so that the killing of children at home and
abroad through the mechanisms of state terrorism is justified
under the pretext of a military necessity - a notion of fear
forged in the bowels of the rising surveillance and punishing
state.[/quote]
[quote]... what we are witnessing in the United States is the
legacy of slavery and the criminalization of people of color
reasserting itself in a society in which justice has been
willingly and aggressively replaced by racial injustice. And it
is precisely this militarization that should inform any analysis
about the growing dangers of totalitarianism in the United
States.[/quote]
[quote] came alive as a youth when I realized that what the
ruling class called my deficits were actually my strengths: a
sense of solidarity, compassion, a merging of the mind and the
body, a willingness to learn and take risks, embracing passion,
connecting knowledge to power, being attentive to the injuries
of others and embracing a sense of social justice.[/quote]
[quote]... the alleged strengths of ruling-class types, such as
their, cold, hypermasculine modes of embodiment, along with
their ruthless sense of competitiveness, their suffocating
narcissism, their view of unbridled self-interest as the highest
virtue, their ponderous and empty elaborated code, and their
often savage and insensitive modes of interaction, were actually
poisonous deficits. [/quote]
[quote]... a neoliberal ethic in which self-interest becomes the
organizing principle of one’s life and a survival-of-the fittest
ethic breeds a culture that at best promotes an indifference to
the plight of others and at worse a disdain for the less
fortunate and a widespread culture of cruelty.[/quote]
HTML http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/flipping_the_script_rethinking_working-class_resistance_20150611
Agelbert NOTE: Henry A. Giroux identified Empathy Deficit
Disorder long before I did. He clearly does NOT suffer from it.
He clearly recognizes how deleterious to our society the
celebration of Empathy Deficit is.
Notice that he is NOT a Christian. Notice that he disdains
Creationism. I don't blame him. With so many Empathy Deficit
Assholes calling themselves "Christians" and wailing and moaning
about abortions while celebrating war, and cruelty, he is
justified to disdain those hypocrites and their selective
empathy. He GETS IT about what is REALLY important; I.E. our
WALK, not our TALK.
Even though Henry does not share my Christian Faith, I say God
Bless Henry A. Giroux. People like him are the only hope
humanity has.
HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/emoticons/tuzki-bunnys/tuzki-bunny-emoticon-036.gif
#Post#: 3302--------------------------------------------------
Re: Power Structures in Human Society: Pros and Cons Part 1
By: AGelbert Date: June 15, 2015, 4:32 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Sanders wins South Carolina labor backing
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191456.bmp
Press Release Jun. 14 2015, 10:53 pm
News Release — Bernie 2016
June 13, 2015
Contact:
Michael Briggs
(802) 233-8653
BernieSanders.com
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa – Speaking at a union hall here, U.S. Sen.
Bernie Sanders on Saturday welcomed news that the South Carolina
AFL-CIO executive board passed a resolution supporting his
candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination and
recommending his endorsement by the state and national labor
organization.
“We call on the AFL-CIO, union members and working people
everywhere to unite behind Bernie Sanders and elect the
president Americas’ workers desperately need,” the resolution
said. The resolution “strongly urges” the national AFL-CIO to
endorse Sanders.
To read the entire resolution, click here (at link).
Erin McKee, president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, said the
executive board member who recommended Sanders said “nobody in a
very long time has stood up for working people and labor like
Bernie sanders has.”
South Carolina is among the first four states in the nation to
hold primaries or caucuses to begin the process of selecting the
Democratic Party presidential nominee. The action by the South
Carolina executive board made it the second state, after
Vermont, to back Sanders.
Sanders learned the news while campaigning in Iowa, home of the
first-in-the nation caucuses.
“We are very pleased to have received the support of the
executive board and their recommendation that the South Carolina
and national AFL-CIO follow their lead,” Sanders said as he
prepared to address an audience at United Auto Workers hall.
HTML http://vtdigger.org/2015/06/14/sanders-wins-south-carolina-labor-backing/
#Post#: 3303--------------------------------------------------
Re: Power Structures in Human Society: Pros and Cons Part 1
By: AGelbert Date: June 15, 2015, 5:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=agelbert link=topic=559.msg78151#msg78151
date=1434405407]
[quote author=Surly1 link=topic=559.msg78147#msg78147
date=1434403728]
[quote author=agelbert link=topic=559.msg78134#msg78134
date=1434396245]
[quote author=agelbert link=topic=238.msg78133#msg78133
date=1434395696]
[quote author=Surly1 link=topic=238.msg78130#msg78130
date=1434394288]
[img]
HTML https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/t1.0-9/1606920_10152496224438908_5893566920904555019_n.jpg?oh=3243eadceef3d816f894a3234dee65c1&oe=55F3FBBC[/img]
[/quote]
Yep. :(
There may be a method in profit over people and planet madness,
but it's still madness.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/p8.gif<br
/>
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/126fs2277341.gif
[/quote]
I watched a free video at the Economist the other day. Colorado
is making money hand over fist with the relaxed laws. Portugal
has been wildly successful at decriminalizing all drugs. The
bean counters that benefit from decriminalization are putting
the heat on the ****s that don't. Good. ;D
Global Compass: “Drugs: War or Store?” (Video) [img width=25
height=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080515182559.png[/img][b]
HTML http://www.economist.com/content/global-compass-drugs-war-or-store?cid1=e/exedm/email/top/DrugsFILMpage/20150430-00:00am/owned/Drugs/Economist-Films/Films-/none/none/Global/none
HTML http://www.economist.com/content/global-compass-drugs-war-or-store?cid1=e/exedm/email/top/DrugsFILMpage/20150430-00:00am/owned/Drugs/Economist-Films/Films-/none/none/Global/none
[/quote]
Seems to me the mitigating argument on the other side is the
private prison system in which states, having contracted with
private corporations for incarceration of their incorrigibles,
have a vested interest in seeing those prisons filled. As do the
private companies, who profit nicely from prison slave labor
(yes, quite legal) sold to defense contractors and billed at
many multiples. When you create a market for prisoners, you get,
uh..,. distortions. But profits. Watch the TWID space next week.
And then there is the asset forfeiture piece, the province of
police departmental funding and private riches for many of our
Boys in Blue. Part of securing operating funding, along with
fee-mining the poor, a la Ferguson and hundreds of other
****house burgs in this country.
If we decriminalize victimless crimes, what will the cops do? Go
back to walking a beat?
[/quote]
As the video at the Economist shows, the economics math, even
for governments, favors decriminalization. The prison slave
labor benefits ONLY the elite in corporations that contract with
local governments, not the people[b] that must pay taxes to
support prison buildings and prison guard jobs AND PAY all the
social costs of the drug war (corrupted judiciary, brutalized
police, degraded democracy, MORE addicts, MORE health care
costs, MORE theft and MORE violent crime, etc. ). Asset
forfeiture also does NOTHING to benefit we-the-people or reduce
our tax burden.
With decriminalization, the judiciary has no incentive to profit
from their power to imprison as in the graphic you posted. The
cops then will return to doing what they have mostly stopped
doing since Reagan, addressing crimes that do have victims,
including those committed by the cops.
According to the Economist, there is no mitigating argument
justifying a continued war on drugs. The overall economic facts
are on the side of decriminalization. [img width=25
height=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080515182559.png[/img]
[quote] "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
-- Aldous Huxley[/quote]
[/quote]
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