I’ve mentioned the planned coup against FDR before, but it’s worth revisiting especially since I found another site about it.
General
20
Aug 02
US tax dollars helped finance some Chavez foes, review finds
George Bush and the US Government has lied all about this. Here we go overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world and in the US. Boston Globe:
CARACAS – Over the two years preceding the thwarted coup in April against President Hugo Chavez, a US-funded prodemocracy group financed a range of antigovernment programs, including some that have come under scrutiny for the way they spent their money.
An examination of grants of more than $1 million, given to organizations in Venezuela by the National Endowment for Democracy, has found that US tax money financed several Chavez opponents, including two organizations prominent in the protests that led up to the coup. The documents and interviews also report that money sent to one US-funded organization never reached its intended target and that another organization apparently falsified its Venezuelan accomplishments.
18
Aug 02
Hypocrisy
Back when Saddam Hussein was ‘our guy’ we backed his use of chemical weapons against Iran. Isn’t this hypocritical in light of the way the US Government is trying to portray Hussein as a menace?
And now, the more sedate, calculating, war-mongering Republicans, people like Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger are coming out against the Bush Jr. invasion of Iraq. Scowcroft and Kissinger are advising a containment policy towards Iraq rather than a war. This will avoid the messy subjects of Kurdish independence and the discovery of US weapons sold to Hussein while justifying a continued American presence in the region. These are the same reasons Bush Sr. left Hussein during the last charade. With Hussein gone they would have had to find a new justification for the American buildup in the Mideast.
17
Aug 02
Military finding it hard to recruit
Smart kids. Great news. From the Seattle Times:
- WASHINGTON — Despite a threefold increase in advertising in recent years, efforts by the U.S. military to bolster its recruitment ranks are bearing little fruit, a study released yesterday says.
Why on earth would you want to work for some militaristic bureaucracy? Most of us have higher hopes. As the US no longer fights to defend itself, a ‘job’ in the military no longer has honor nor deserves respect.
15
Aug 02
What is populism?
Based on the Hicks definition of populism, it can therefore be stated that there are two fundamental propositions of conservatism:
(1) That government should stand aside and not protect the poor and the needy from exploitation by the rich and the greedy; and
(2) That in order to accomplish the first proposition, government must be plutocratic instead of democratic.
America’s corrupt system of legalized bribery to fund its public elections makes our system of government a plutocracy. Plutocracy simply means government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. But America’s particular brand of plutocracy is even more insidious to freedom and justice than a simple plutocracy. That’s because it’s not just based on power and privilege for the rich–it’s based on power and privilege for the corporate rich. That’s why I call the American system of government “corpocracy.” The conservative ideology supports and reinforces America’s corpocracy the same way the communist ideology supported that of the Soviet Union for over 70 years. It also employs the same propaganda techniques to fool the people.
The purpose of any ideology is to stop people from thinking. When people buy into an ideology, they have checked their brains at the door. They accept a package of beliefs based on the wrapping of the package rather than by examining the contents. That is what the conservative ideology seeks to accomplish–to get people to stop thinking, and to persuade them to accept the complete package without ever opening it and examining the contents. And it’s why people need to understand more about the conservative ideology in order to protect themselves and their interests from it, as well as to protect the interests of society as a whole.
15
Aug 02
Quotations on banking and the monetary system
“In the U.S. today, we have in effect two governments. We have the duly constituted government, then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve, operating the money powers which are reserved to congress by the constitution.” – Congressman Wright Patman
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken from the banks, and restored to Congress and to the people, to whom it belongs.
lf the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless and the continent their fathers conquered.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson
15
Aug 02
Your tax dollars at work..killing civilians
War in Afghanistan: A $28 Billion Racket. Old story, but nice mention of Smedley Butler among other things:
In 1919 Joseph Schumpteter described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2002.
“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest — why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours…The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.”
Ring any bells?
“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack.” Is there any known corner of the world the United States does not claim to have a vital strategic interest in, which it must aggressively safeguard?
“Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours.” And the United States, Washington assures us, is always under threat from evil-minded countries. Today, the threat is said to come from “the axis of evil.”
15
Aug 02
Here in Babylon
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN. The writing is on the wall.
- Act Would OK Snail Mail Searches
- US acting like Star Chamber, says judge The government has ruled that Hamdi has no right to see a lawyer, but Robert Doumar, a US district judge, said he could find no precedent “of any kind in any court” for the decision, and compared the government’s behaviour to that of 15th century English monarchs, laying down the law through the secret hearings of the Star Chamber.
- Bush ‘using language of Hitler’
- US ‘considers assassination squads’ A must read. Disgusting.
- US may seize Arab airports by force to attack Iraq: report
- Ashcroft Plans Camps for Dissidents
- Hapless Military Personnel Are Ordered to Use Plastic, Get Dunned by the Pentagon
- Concocted by Congress in 1998, the GTC was designed to privatize the accounting of federal travel expenses and touted to save taxpayer money. (It also reaps huge fees by the financial conglomerates that issue the cards.) It works like this: Servicepeople are ordered to apply for personal GTCs—interest-free credit cards issued exclusively by the Bank of America. Instead of requesting vouchers or getting cash to pay for travel expenses, servicepeople pay up front with the their own GTC cards—essentially floating interest-free loans to the government. As a result, they have to submit expense reports and wait for reimbursements.
Like I’ve said before, if you join the military kiss your self-respect goodbye.
- US Looks at Acceptance of Torture Unbelievable.
- The U.S. government, while denying it is doing anything wrong in having prisoners held elsewhere, last month made a decision to abstain from the United Nations vote to strengthen the U.N. convention against torture. …
U.S. officials have certainly taken into account, and sometimes, taken advantage of the more persuasive interrogation methods offered by countries with poor human rights records. Saudi national and alleged top al Qaeda official Abu Zubair was arrested in Morocco in June, but U.S. officials have been in no hurry to bring him to the United States, reported McWethy — in part because Moroccan authorities can use methods that would not be allowed under U.S. law.
13
Aug 02
Pentagon Desk Jockeys
13 Aug, Tue, 07:36:28 WCS1-PENT-2.NIPR.MIL Netscape 3 Other
13 Aug, Tue, 07:36:36 WCS2-PENT.NIPR.MIL Netscape 4 Windows NT