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Today’s America is not a democracy:

“Dark Money Groups Are Funded By Dark Money Groups That Fund Dark Money Groups That Fund…”

That terrific investigative news report by Paul Blumenthal at Huffington Post, on 9 November 2013,penetrated beyond what the U.S. oligarchy — or more traditionally called aristocracy — requires its dark-money groups to disclose to the Federal Election Commission; and so Blumenthal researched also into what dark-money groups are required to report to the IRS (America’s tax-authorities).

This way, Blumenthal was able to discover, for example, that a “dark-money shell game allowed the Wisconsin Club for Growth to influence the elections with both its own ads and those of seemingly unrelated conservative groups with different public agendas. … The trail of cash moving from dark money nonprofit to dark money nonprofit can be traced, in part, through public records of the groups contributing it,” but only by accessing both FEC and IRS public records. And, even then, the picture was incomplete, because the 5-Republican bare majority, on the infamous pro-aristocracy 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision, by five traitors to the U.S. Constitution (which all judges are sworn to protect), prohibits public access to a complete picture of how (like in that Wisconsin election) a few psychopathic billionaires, plus millions of faith-driven fools they sucker with myth-affirming lies, can destroy government of the people, by the people, for the people, and turn it instead into government of the people, by the aristocracy, for the aristocracy. Blumenthal also showed the same billionaires+suckers system replacing democracy in other states. (Today’s Greece is a more extreme case of the same thing. Perhaps what’s today in Greece will betomorrow in America.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama: TPP a secret treaty because ‘US War on Terror requires secrecy’

June 24, 2015

Obama: TPP a secret treaty because ‘US War on Terror requires secrecy’

(Satire): President Obama announced at a White House press conference today that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade treaty details must remain secret because the now 14-year-old US War on Terror requires secrecy from terrorist enemies, secrecy is the founding principle of American freedom, and that secrecy equals safety. Press conference excerpts:

President Obama: As you know, secrecy is a foundational principle of American freedom. From the Founding Father’s secret “Committees of Correspondence,” to Boston’s Old North Church spy signal of “one if by land, two if by sea,” to Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay using the secret name, “Publius,” to publish The Federalist Papers to win support for our Constitution, American patriots have used secrecy to protect our great nation. Secrecy equals freedom.

This is why the current Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty, TPP, is a classified national security secret that cannot be disclosed to the public, even four years or more after it is passed into law. Secrecy keeps Americans safe.

I also remind everyone that America is fighting a War on Terror, and that even after 14 years of brave combat and support of the American public, the terrorists are not defeated. War requires secrecy to keep our troops as safe as possible. TPP makes America stronger, which supports our troops.

Q: Sir, what about the “fast track” that violates the US Constitutional requirement that all treaties be ratified by the Senate under at least 2/3 vote?

Obama: The United States is a democracy. Fast track authority was passed into law by Congress. When Congress has the votes and the President approves, that’s the law of the land.

Q: I’m sorry, Mr. President; but how can Congress and you violate the Constitution by ignoring the 2/3 vote requirement just because you say so?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TPP: Unconstitutional tribunal for .01% oligarchs to dictate what is ‘fair trade’

June 15, 2015

TPP: Unconstitutional tribunal for .01% oligarchs to dictate what is ‘fair trade’

“The corporations have bribed the political leaders in every country to sign away their sovereignty and the general welfare of their people to private corporations. Corporations have paid US senators large sums for transferring Congress’ law-making powers to corporations.” – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary to US Treasury, former editor of the Wall Street Journal

Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP) is “secret national security legislation” that President Obama and both parties’ “leaderships” refuse to disclose to the American public, and only visible from WikiLeaks. President Obama attempted “fast track” dictatorial power for Congress to vote for TPP without access to full text or public consideration. “Fast track” violates the US Constitution’s requirement for the Senate to ratify all treaties with 2/3 vote by claiming that 50% is somehow the same (a tie is broken by the VP, so 50% is enough). President Clinton’s justification of “fast track” is here.

TPP is Emperor’s New Clothes’ unconstitutional because it allows a foreign three-person tribunal chosen by the same .01% oligarch powers that created TPP to have power to tax Americans billions of our dollars for claimed “damages” of corporations. These three persons appointed by TPP interests would have dictatorial power to protect corporate claimed “future profits.” From Ellen Brown:

“To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Two Contending Visions of World Government

June 14, 2015

The Two Contending Visions of World Government

The Origin & Broader Context of Obama’s ‘Trade’ Deals

U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed ‘Trade’ deals are actually about whether the world is heading toward a dictatorial world government — a dictatorship by the hundred or so global super-rich who hold the controlling blocks of stock in the world’s largest international corporations — or else toward a democratic world government, which will be a global federation of free and independent states, much like the United States was at its founding, but global in extent. These are two opposite visions of world government; and Obama is clearly on the side of fascism, an international mega-corporate dictatorship, as will be documented here in the links, and explained in the discussion.

Also as a preliminary to the discussion here is the understanding that if Obama wins Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, then all of his ‘trade’ deals will be approved by Congress, and that if he fails to receive this Authority, then none of them will.

“Fast Track,” as will be explained in depth here, is, indeed, the “open Sesame” for Obama, on the entire matter. Without it, his deals don’t stand even a chance of passage.

I previously wrote about why it’s the case that “‘Fast Track’ Violates the U.S. Constitution.” The details of the case are presented there; but, to summarize it here: “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority,” which was introduced by the imperial President Richard M. Nixon in the Trade Act of 1974, violates the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty Clause — the clause that says “The President … shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” (In other words: otherwise, the President doesn’t have that power, the President cannot “make treaties.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

March Toward Global War

June 9, 2015

March Toward Global War

Obama = McCarthy + Dulles Brothers

The New York Times (NYT) is a trusted source of Administration thinking, particularly in foreign policy, more, an uncanny, sensitive barometer of deep-lying structural-military-diplomatic events which are presently culminating, beyond the New Cold War brewing since Clinton’s international posture in Europe and the Pacific, in the actuality of heated confrontation directed against both Russia and China. Under Obama, the page has turned. No longer can we pretend a chess match in which tough rhetoric and vast expenditures form a comfortable (and highly profitable) surrogate for open warfare, a stage of inner discipline favorable to the suppression of dissent, the creation of industrial-financial-commercial fortunes, and the habituation to violence (transmissible in spirit and acquiescence from urban settings to foreign interventions). Now is different. Capitalism in America has reached the point of definitive sclerosis, a terminal, pathological hardening of the ideological arteries, in which the overgrowth of the fibrous/ interstitial tissue of profit-madness, hubris, and conquest for its own sake, has won out, has defeated whatever has been left of the Constitutional rights of the American formative context. We are a long way from the late 18th century, and with brief exceptions, notably, those brought on by the struggles of the exploited and the persecuted themselves, the progression has been downhill all the way, coinciding with the falsification of government’s public trust and the concentration of private wealth and power.

So what is happening now is not surprising. Upper groups, in their narcissistic death wish, want it all, the entire globe at their feet—and sensing ultimate defeat are prepared to bring the curtain down.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Revolution and American Empire

May 30, 2015

Revolution and American Empire

When the Left Promotes the Political Economy of the Far-Right

The American preference for ideological, or ideologically based, explanations of world events frames them as both self-generated and inexplicable— self-generated because causal relations recover history and thereby clutter ideology and inexplicable in that ideology didn’t exist until it did, again recovering history. Through an ideological frame the American Revolution was driven by the desire for ‘freedom’ and the Russian and Cuban Revolutions were driven by Marxist ideology, the desire for socialist or communist political economy. When history is recovered the Russian and Cuban Revolutions were rejections of intolerable— factually unlivable, circumstances whereas the American Revolution was a plutocratic rebellion intended to formally install unlivable circumstances— slavery and genocide against indigenous populations, into local rule against distant colonial (British) economic extraction.

While three centuries of racist chatter leave some ambiguity around when kidnapped Africans (local societies, Africa is a continent, not a people) forced into slavery were considered human beings by White settlers, the political question was answered in 1787 with three-fifths a ‘political’ person assigned to slaves to accrue to the political representation of slaveholders. The indigenous population was excluded from Constitutional political representation entirely. This brief and greatly simplified history is presented for three reasons: 1) American ‘freedom’ as political privilege is the opposite of its generalized form as freedom from it; 2) its political meaning is tied through history to Western imperialism—U.S. history is of overthrowing democratic regimes to support U.S. economic interests and 3), ‘globalization’ presented in the present as historically unique is tied through this history to Western imperialism.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America has no enemy more dastardly and lethal than the Neoconservative

May 29, 2015

America has no enemy more dastardly and lethal than the Neoconservative

Those men who wrote our Constitution made it perfectly intelligible to anyone who cared to read it. They also left some flexibility in its articles to ensure that as time passed and circumstances changed the document would remain viable as the indispensable protector of the republic they created and of the liberty of citizens who delegated a limited amount of their sovereign power to the national government through its provisions. And after a long and often angry ratification debate, the first congress added a bill of rights to the Constitution as that document’s first ten amendments. These amendments were fully as clear as the text — perhaps more so — but less flexible than the body of the document because they dealt with the tenets of republican liberty which, if regularly and deliberately violated by the national government, would require that Americans, to paraphrase Jefferson, demolish the existing government and erect a new one that would better safeguard their liberties and their republic’s security.

In recent decades, however, Americans have been treated to an endless stream of politicians, academics, lawyers, and pundits who describe the opaqueness of the Founder’s Constitution and the need for “experts” to decipher or infer what the document means. As a result, we now have presidents who take the country to war on their whim; politicians who are legally bribed by “campaign contributions” from rich individuals, corporations, labor unions, and foreign lobbies and governments based on an absurd reading of the Constitution; a public that is increasingly endangered by flamboyant blasphemers who seek violence and war under the protection of the First Amendment; and the routine criminality of executive branch officials who refuse to obey their oath of office to execute the laws.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Emergency Powers Give Barack Obama Authority Over Just About Everything During A Major National Crisis

May 28, 2015

Emergency Powers Give Barack Obama Authority Over Just About Everything During A Major National Crisis

Presidents have always exercised emergency powers, but now thanks to dozens of new laws, regulations, court decisions and executive orders, Barack Obama is the most powerful president in all of U.S. history. Of course the U.S. Constitution does not actually give the president any special powers during a time of national emergency, but over time presidents have decided that they should be able to exercise such powers and the courts have generally agreed with them. During World War II and prior to that, these emergency powers were largely uncodified and were primarily used during times of war. But since World War II things have completely changed, and this has particularly been true since 9/11. Over the past decade or so, a whole host of extraordinary powers have specifically been given to the office of the president, and all that it takes to exercise them is a major “national emergency”. So if we do have a full-blown economic collapse, a historic natural disaster, a significant war or a massive pandemic, Barack Obama could use the emergency powers that he has been given to essentially take authority overeverything.

There is not a single document or series of documents that contain all of the emergency powers that Barack Obama could potentially wield during a major national emergency. As I mentioned above, these powers come from literally dozens of laws, regulations, court decisions and executive orders. But in this article I will discuss a few important documents. One of these is a presidential directive that was issued during the second term of George W. Bush. It is entitled NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD – 51/HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD – 20, and you can take a look at it on the FEMA website right here. This document is primarily concerned with the continuity of our federal government in the event of a catastrophic emergency. So precisely what would constitute a “catastrophic emergency”? The following is how the document defines that term…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Free speech on the run, even in the home of the brave

May 25, 2015

Free speech on the run, even in the home of the brave

You can offend, sure, and the courts will protect you, but there are consequences

Legally protected speech, no matter how offensive, is a glorious and uniquely American invention, a gift to the marketplace of ideas and an example to the world.

Coming from a journalist — me — that statement should not be even mildly controversial.

Increasingly, though, such a statement is being reviled even here in the U.S. as archaic, revanchist, bigoted, paternalistic, reactionary, sexist, probably tinged with racism or just out of tune with modern thought.

That would be no surprise in Canada or European nations where the impulse to regulate real or imagined insult, using hate speech laws, human rights commissions and the like, can trump free speech.

But in today’s America, the domain of constitutionally protected expression, anti-free-speech forces are stepping up co-ordinated attacks.

Most of these freelance censors seem to be politically left of centre, and range from the “social justice warriors” to — and I’m ashamed to say this — many in the mainstream media, which once celebrated the right to offend established norms and ideas.

There are bags of examples in a new book by Kirsten Powers, the columnist and longtime Democratic Party operative, titled The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.

Powers argues that left-of-centre activists (she calls them the “illiberal left”) are leading a “forced march towards conformity,” striving to control and punish anyone who disagrees with the groupthink in which they wallow with such certainty.

The academic and writer Fredrik DeBoer has called it the “We Are All Already Decided” phenomenon.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How The Media Deceive The Public About “Fast Track” And The “Trade Bills”

May 22, 2015

How The Media Deceive The Public About “Fast Track” And The “Trade Bills”

The way that “Fast Track” is described to the American public is as an alternative method for the Senate to handle “Trade Bills” (TPP & TTIP) that the President presents to the Senate for their approval; and this alternative method is said to be one in which “no amendments are permitted, and there will be a straight up-or-down vote on the bill.”

But, in fact, the “Fast Track” method is actually to require only 50 Senators to vote “Yea” in order for the measure to be approved by the Senate, whereas the method that is described and required in (Section 2 of) the U.S. Constitution is that the President “shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” That’s not 50 Senators; it’s 67 Senators, that the Constitution requires.

In other words: “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority” (which was invented by the imperial President Richard Nixon in 1974, in order to advance his goal of a dictatorial Executive, that the Presidency would become a dictatorship) lowers the Constitutionally required approval from 67 Senators down to only 50 Senators.

This two-thirds rule is set forth in the Constitution in order to make especially difficult the passing-into-law of any treaty that the United States will have with any foreign country. The same two-thirds requirement is set forth for amending the Constitution, except that that’s a two-thirds requirement in both the House and the Senate: it can be done “by either: two-thirds (supermajority) of both the Senate and the House of Representatives …; or by a national convention assembled at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (at present 34) of the states.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Martial Law Justified If ISIS Attacks?

May 20, 2015

Is Martial Law Justified If ISIS Attacks?

A group of foreign militants infiltrates the U.S. using student visas, weak borders, bribery and cooperation with drug cartels. Secret cells integrate within metropolitan areas and blend with the populace. At the precise moment, they activate, unleashing small attacks across the country in coordinated blitzkrieg-style terror campaigns against everything from suburban neighborhoods to public schools to shopping malls, striking fear into the citizenry, which now believes no one is safe, even in the heartland. With normal law enforcement overwhelmed, the economy on the brink and the populace ready to riot, the military is deployed domestically; curfews, price controls and rationing are initiated; and special operations agents act as infiltrators in order to subdue the terrorist factions. The loss of common liberties is welcomed by most as safety and security become the paramount motivator.

A glimpse into the future? Well, perhaps. Actually, it’s the plot narrative to a Chuck Norris movie called “Invasion U.S.A.” The terrorists in that movie were communists from places like Cuba and Venezuela (hey, it was the 80s, and we had no idea that the communists were elitists that had already taken over from within), but the premise is strangely not far from what the government is trying to sell to us as a potential real-life scenario today.

As Americans, we have been bombarded with propaganda for decades, which conjures rationalizations for domestic military operations. This propaganda always presents us with an all-or-nothing option: relinquish liberty and beat the enemy, or “cling” to the “outdated” Constitution and fall as a society. There never seems to be a third option, an option that does not require the loss of freedoms and allows for security. In the film “Invasion U.S.A.,” I suppose we had Chuck Norris as a third option, which is not a bad third option in the world of cinema; but I’m sorry to say that Chuck alone cannot save us from what is coming in the real America.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘We the People’ Need to Circle the Wagons: The Government Is on the Warpath

May 16, 2015

‘We the People’ Need to Circle the Wagons: The Government Is on the Warpath

“The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.” ― Mark Twain

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do. Yet it was not always this way. It used to be “we the people” telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NSA Spying Ruled Illegal, But Will Congress Save the Program Anyway?

May 12, 2015

NSA Spying Ruled Illegal, But Will Congress Save the Program Anyway?

This week the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA’s metadata collection program was not authorized in US law. The PATRIOT Act, under which the program began, was too vague, the court found. But the truth is the Act was intended to be vague so that the government could interpret it in the broadest possible way.

But this is really more of a technicality, because illegality and unconstitutionality are really two very different things. Even if Congress had explicitly authorized the government to collect our phone records, that law would still be unconstitutional because the Constitution does not grant government the power to access our personal information without a valid search warrant.

Even though the court found the NSA program illegal, it did not demand that the government stop collecting our information in this manner. Instead, the court kicked the ball back in Congress’ court, as these provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire at the end of the month and the Appeals Court decided to let Congress decide how to re-authorize this spying program.

Unfortunately, this is where there is not much to cheer. If past practice is any lesson, Congress will wait until the spying program is about to expire and then in a panic try to frighten Americans into accepting more intrusions on their privacy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already put forth a new bill as a stop-gap measure to allow time for a fuller debate on the issue. His stop-gap? A five year re-authorization with no changes to the current program!

The main reform bill being floated, the FREEDOM Act, is little better. Pretending to be a step in the right direction, the FREEDOM Act may actually be worse for our privacy and liberties than the PATRIOT Act!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

CFR Says China Must Be Defeated And TPP Is Essential To That

May 6, 2015

CFR Says China Must Be Defeated And TPP Is Essential To That

Wall Street’s Council on Foreign Relations has issued a major report, alleging that China must be defeated because it threatens to become a bigger power in the world than the U.S.

This report, which is titled “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” is introduced by Richard Haass, the CFR’s President, who affirms the report’s view that, “no relationship will matter more when it comes to defining the twenty-first century than the one between the United States and China.”

Haass gives this report his personal imprimatur by saying that it “deserves to become an important part of the debate about U.S. foreign policy and the pivotal U.S.-China relationship.” He acknowledges that some people won’t agree with the views it expresses.

The report itself then opens by saying: “Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western hemisphere, and finally globally.” It praises “the American victory in the Cold War.” It then lavishes praise on America’s imperialistic dominance: “The Department of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration presciently contended that its ‘strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor’—thereby consciously pursuing the strategy of primacy that the United States successfully employed to outlast the Soviet Union.”

The rest of the report is likewise concerned with the international dominance of America’s aristocracy or the people who control this country’s international corporations, rather than with the welfare of the public or as the U.S. Constitution described the objective of the American Government: “the general welfare.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Turning America into a Battlefield: A Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation

April 29, 2015

Turning America into a Battlefield: A Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the American people of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead?

It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

Unfortunately, with the Constitution under constant attack, the military’s power, influence and authority have grown dramatically. Even the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it a crime for the government to use the military to carry out arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other activities normally handled by a civilian police force, has been weakened by both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who ushered in exemptions allowing troops to deploy domestically and arrest civilians in the wake of alleged terrorist acts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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