March 11, 2014

Leaping to the defense of the warmongers and banksters of the BFEE.

Instead of mocking people for defending them, I'll do what I can to expose their treachery.

For those interested in the topic of what Bartcop termed the Bush Family Evil Empire:

Their trail as warmonger-banksters goes back at least to war profiteering during World War I, when Samuel Prescott Bush ran Remington selling rifles to both sides. Before that, there's evidence their ancestors were slave holders.

I've talked about his son, Prescott Sheldon Bush; grandson, George Herbert Walker Bush; and great-grandsons, George Walker Bush, John Ellis (Jeb) Bush, and Neil Mallon Bush.

I find it odd to read you use DemocraticUnderground to defend BFEE scum, which is odd for someone interested in supporting democracy.

Why you do so is your business, SidDithers. It is not mine.

March 10, 2014

It's not like they're organized.

They're super organized.



Bohemian Grove: Summer, 1967 at Owls Nest Camp. Around table, left to right: Preston Hotchkis, Ronald Reagan, Harvey Hancock (standing), Richard Nixon, Glenn T. Seaborg, Jack Sparks, (unidentified individual), Frank Lindine, Edwin W. Pauley.

March 10, 2014

U.S. Nuclear Agency Hid Concerns, Hailed Safety Record as Fukushima Melted

An excellent summation of Fukushima, where we are, and how it was covered up, from NBC News, of all places.



U.S. Nuclear Agency Hid Concerns, Hailed Safety Record as Fukushima Melted

by Bill Dedman
NBC News, March 10, 2014

In the tense days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission made a concerted effort to play down the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to America’s aging nuclear plants, according to thousands of internal emails reviewed by NBC News.

The emails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show that the campaign to reassure the public about America’s nuclear industry came as the agency’s own experts were questioning U.S. safety standards and scrambling to determine whether new rules were needed to ensure that the meltdown occurring at the Japanese plant could not occur here.

At the end of that long first weekend of the crisis three years ago, Scott Burnell, a manager in the agency’s media and public relations wing, thanked his colleagues for sticking to the talking points that his team had been distributing to senior officials and the public.

"While we know more than these say," Burnell wrote, "we're sticking to this story for now."

There are numerous examples in the emails of apparent misdirection or concealment in the initial weeks after the Japanese plant was devastated by a 9.0 earthquake and 50-foot tsunami that knocked out power and cooling systems at the six-reactor plant, eventually causing releases of radioactive material:

Trying to distance the U.S. agency from the Japanese crisis, an NRC manager told staff to hide from reporters the presence of Japanese engineers in the NRC's operations center in Maryland.

If asked whether the Diablo Canyon Power Plant on the California coast could withstand the same size tsunami that had hit Japan, spokespeople were told not to reveal that NRC scientists were still studying that question. As for whether Diablo could survive an earthquake of the same magnitude, "We're not so sure about, but again we are not talking about that," said one email.

When skeptical news articles appeared, the NRC dissuaded news organizations from using the NRC's own data on earthquake risks at U.S. nuclear plants, including the Indian Point Energy Center near New York City.

And when asked to help reporters explain what would happen during the worst-case scenario -- a nuclear meltdown -- the agency declined to address the questions.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/u-s-nuclear-agency-hid-concerns-hailed-safety-record-fukushima-n48561

"Say a prayer." Indeed.

March 9, 2014

Allen Dulles is the fellow who turned the intelligence outfit into ''Conspiracies In Action''

In the process, he created "Capitalism's Invisible Army" to serve Wall Street and the ownership class -- you know, the people who own the federal government.

March 9, 2014

Bartcop knew his BFEE

BFEE Scorecard



Bartcop coined the term "Bush Family Evil Empire" to denote the 60-year pre-eminence of one family in the formation of the political philosophy in the United States, that of the War Party. The first to do so to my knowledge on the World Wide Web, Bartcop chronicled their ascension to the top of the national security state by hook and by crook. At least three generations have held high national office, while also making big money off war and looting the public Treasury. The last president of the United States, a man who wasn't elected fair and square by any stretch of the imagination, actually said: "Money trumps peace" at a press conference. For some reason, not a single "journalist" had the guts to ask him what he meant by that.

Bartcop did. And We and Democracy are better for it.

March 8, 2014

Both deserve the honor and to be read.

Here are examples:

Scahill on Blackwater.

Greenwald vs Sunstein.

March 7, 2014

Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee, Sen. Udall claims

White House declines to comment after Mark Udall says agency spied on staffers preparing scathing report into CIA torture after 9/11

Spencer Ackerman in Washington
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 March 2014 12.06 EST

A leading US senator has said that President Obama knew of an “unprecedented action” taken by the CIA against the Senate intelligence committee, which has apparently prompted an inspector general’s inquiry at Langley.

The subtle reference in a Tuesday letter from Senator Mark Udall to Obama, seeking to enlist the president’s help in declassifying a 6,300-page inquiry by the committee into torture carried out by CIA interrogators after 9/11, threatens to plunge the White House into a battle between the agency and its Senate overseers.

SNIP...

Udall, a Colorado Democrat and one of the CIA’s leading pursuers on the committee, appeared to reference that surreptitious spying on Congress, which Udall said undermined democratic principles.

“As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal CIA review and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight powers and for our democracy,” Udall wrote to Obama on Tuesday.

Independent observers were unaware of a precedent for the CIA spying on the congressional committees established in the 1970s to check abuses by the intelligence agencies.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/obama-cia-senate-intelligence-committee-torture

"Separation of Powers" is just the tip of the lettuce.

Yeah. That time "observers were unaware" must be when the NSA spied on Frank Church and Howard Baker.

March 6, 2014

Big Oil, Big Loser As Russia Meddles

Wanna know why Washington's ready to take us to the brink of World War III?

It's the oil. It's always the oil. It's the only thing they know. It's extraction's currency of exchange, from Teapot Dome to Vietnam to Iran-Contra to the illegal and immoral Iraq invasion. It's the precious. The only thing that matters, money.

March 5, 2014

Yeah. They're the Moscow branch of Halliburton.

Engineering Failed States

The Strategy of Global Corporate Imperialism

by GILBERT MERCIER
CounterPunch WEEKEND EDITION FEB 28-MAR 02, 2014

Empires as National and Cultural Megalomaniac Dreams

Once upon a time, national entities and cultures aspired to build empires. The impulse was the erroneous assumption of being a superior civilization. It was about exporting an extensive set of aspirations, a culture, and a value system. Romans thought that bringing water through aqueducts and paved roads to the “savages” of the north were the selfless gift of a superior civilization. Much more recently, France’s empire built its colonial towns, such as Saigon and Algier, following exactly the architectural model of French towns of the XIX century. In what could be an indication that history is on an accelerated course, the life span of empires is getting shorter. For example, the Egyptian empire lasted more than 3,000 years; the Mayan empire survived 2,900; the Chinese empire more than 1,600; the Roman empire itself, as a united empire, remained for 500 years while the Eastern Roman empire or Byzantine empire lasted an extra 1,000 after the split from the Western Roman empire.

Empire strategy: destroy, rebuild, occupy and exploit Closer to the modern era, and following the progress of technology in weapons and transport, Great Britain or France, during the rule of Napoleon, and even more recently Nazi Germany and its Japanese ally, had the lofty borderline-psychotic goal of complete world domination. In the ruins of World War II emerged the two winning empires, the United States and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). To the winners belong the spoils of war, and in 1945 the world was de facto split in two. The two parts of Germany were rebuilt from complete wreckage in the image of their new respective masters; the US Marshall plan was the remedy prescribed to deal with West Germany’s ruins. In Japan, General MacArthur took charge of the mass murder, demolition and later reconstruction for the US empire. Germany and Japan were not rebuilt as free national entities but occupied vassals on a short leash. Almost 70 years after the end of World War II, US military boots are still on the ground in both countries. According to data from the US Department of Defense (DoD), more than 50,000 US troops were still in Germany and almost 40,000 were still occupying Japan in 2011. Overall, according to the DoD, the US military has troops stationed in almost 150 countries.

Global Corporate Empire: Sovereign Nations are the Only Obstacle

Imperialism has long been a collective disease for humanity. In its current perverse capitalist incarnation, imperialism’s methods have become even more brutal and ruthless. If the physical destruction of a country’s infrastucture is still in the foreground, this is used in conjunction with the creation or revival of civil wars, ethnic or bloody sectarian conflicts in previously stable national entities. Corporate imperialism aims to break the national spirit. The few remaining sovereign nations are the final obstacles to the looming threat of a global transnational corporate empire. Corporate imperialism’s only concern is the bottom line: it is on a permanent quest to maximize profit. It is not about bringing the supposed gift of civilization to savages anymore, unlike the old-fashioned imperialist adventures. In this context, why bother to rebuild the shattered countries when the only goal is to plunder resources, either natural or human? Public resources are allocated to reconstruction, but these resources usually disappear in black holes of corporate war profiteers such as Halliburton in the US. Wrecked countries are never rebuilt because they are easier to exploit while they are in a shambles.

Why bother with regime-change policy when failed states are so convenient? The model for transnational corporate imperialism was set up in Iraq, then applied to Libya. This global imperialist strategy is in the works in Syria, the Ukraine, Mali, Central African Republic, and Venezuela. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) usually acts as the armed fist for this process, but sponsored proxy agents such as Jihadists in Syria or fascist factions in the Ukraine and Venezuela are also used to destabilize governments. In Venezuela on February 7, 2014, before the not so spontaneous protests started, Japanese car giant Toyota abruptly announced it was closing a plant employing 1,700 people. Is this pure coincidence or part of an overall ploy to crash Venezuela’s economy? There is a saying in Lebanon, that the country is “always five minutes away from civil war.” This tragic Lebanese reality has spread to the entire Middle East, Africa and is gaining ground in Eastern Europe. The old imperialist adage “divide and rule” is obsolete, the new motto seems to be “divide and steal from those divided.” The new strategy is to fuel ethnic or sectarian conflicts as much and as long as possible, and ideally maintain a permanent state of low-intensity civil war. In the Central African Republic, the clashes between the majority Christian population and the 15 percent Muslims gave France the perfect opportunity to send 2,000 troops. French troops are still in Mali to protect mining interests. In Iraq, the low-level sectarian warfare is a disaster for Iraqis but has worked well for corporate interests. The oil is flowing, and of course, just like in Syria, weapons dealers, mercenaries, and “reconstruction” contractors are making a killing.

Corporate Imperialism’s Legal Framework

In the disastrous case that they would be ratified, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would provide the legal framework for the global corporate empire. When top elected officials travel abroad, they are supposed to represent and defend the national interests of their people; however, they function mostly as sale representatives of mega-corporations. For example, French President Francois Hollande travelled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Brazil to sell the fighter jets “Rafale.” One of the main goal of his recent trip to the US was to indicate to top technology executives from Google, Twitter and Facebook that, despite the misleading socialist label and such, France’s best friends are corporations, not people.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/28/the-strategy-of-global-corporate-imperialism/

March 2, 2014

''...he's doing what he's always done best: talking out of both sides of his mouth...''

By their works shall Thee know them. Dr. Froman's the guy tapped to do Big Things.

Thanks for the heads-up, Ichingcarpenter. I'd always wondered what happened to Stiglitz and Galbraith the Younger.