Decades of class war leaves most Americans nearing retirement woefully unprepared.
Since the mid-1970s, real wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. Benefits steadily eroded. High-paying jobs disappeared. Improved technology forces wage earners to work harder for less.
So-called “free” markets work only for those who control them. A handful of winners benefit at the expense of most others. Conditions get progressively worse.
Wealth disparity extremes are unprecedented. Neoliberal harshness force-feeds austerity when stimulus is needed. Public needs go begging.
American inequality is institutionalized. Bipartisan complicity assures it. Class war rages. America’s social contract is targeted for destruction.
Both sides agree. They support giving bankers, war profiteers, other corporate favorites, and super-rich elites greater wealth at the expense of most others.
A template for the story of our mis-steps as it will be told for generations.
Phi Beta Iota: The complete story has been posted below. Technology is not a substitute for thinking. US policymakers, driven by the arm sales imperative and its 5% kick-backs, have refused to be educated by intelligence professionals that do know what they are doing, but cannot be heard. It is time we begin serving the public with public intelligence — an Open Source Agency (OSA) whose finished decision-support cannot be ignored precisely because it is public.
For the United States and its allies, the tribes across the Muslim world remain a mystery. Because they were outside the realm of globalization, they were easy to see as natural allies of al Qaeda. Without an understanding of these tribes' social and religious values, writes Akbar Ahmed, the U.S.-led war on terror will not end in any kind of recognizable victory.
Drone launched from the USS Lassen in September 2010. Credit: Roberto Ruvalcaba/US Navy-Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
By 2012, the United States, in a move typical for its propensity to opt for excess in any matter of security, had commissioned just under 20,000 drones. About half of these are in use.
Ignoring the moral debate, drone operators are equally infatuated with the weapon and the sense of power it gives them. It leaves them “electrified” and “adrenalized.” Flying a drone is said to be “almost like playing the computer game Civilization,” a “sci-fi” experience.
A U.S. drone operator in New Mexico revealed the extent to which individuals across the world can be observed in their most private moments. “We watch people for months,” he said. “We see them playing with their dogs or doing their laundry. We know their patterns, like we know our neighbors' patterns. We even go to their funerals.”
Another drone operator spoke of watching people having sex at night through infrared cameras. The last statement, in particular, has to be read keeping in mind the importance Muslim tribal peoples give to notions of modesty and privacy.
The victims of all drone attacks are, in effect, treated like insects. That description is not my invention, but a reflection of the military slang for a successful strike. The victim that is blown apart on the screen in a display of blood and gore is called “bug splat.”
Muslim tribesmen were reduced to bugs or, as David Ignatius put it in a Washington Post op-ed, cobras to be killed at will. Any compromise with the Taliban in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, officially designated as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), is “like playing with a cobra,” he wrote. And do we “compromise” with cobras? Ignatius rhetorically asked. “No, you kill a cobra.”
Bugs, snakes, cockroaches, rats — such denigration of minorities has been heard before, and as recent history teaches, it never ends well for the abused people.
There is now a petition for a Wall Street Sales Tax online at: http://wh.gov/ARGi
The petition was initiated by the United Front Against Austerity. It has started off strong, and we want to keep the momentum building, so the more it's shared, the better. Thank you!
We've got until April 10 to get 100,000 signatures. Twitter people, can you put this in front of people like Robert Reich, Dean Baker and others to ask them to mobilize their networks?
Getting an official White House response would be huge, but this is also a way to push the concept in front of more people.
CHARGE!!!!!!
Phi Beta Iota: Wall Street transactions (both stock and currency) are among the most numerous in the economy, and they are tax free. The Tobin Tax and the Automated Payment Transaction Tax both call for the widening of the economic revenue “pie” beyond income taxes — indeed, an honest Congress and an honest Executive could eliminate all income taxes by applying either of these taxes (a fraction of a penny) across the economy starting with the financial transactions — including the shadow banks (hedge funds) — that are now completely outside the revenue stream. The FACT that the US Government has been BORROWING $1 trillion a year since 1980 in order to fund BOTH a grossly over-extended entitlements program and a grossly under-performing national security corporate welfare program, should be — but is not — a major public grievance.
Last year, DC District Judge Richard W. Roberts ordered the U.S. Trade Representative to disclose a classified document to a FOIA requester because, he said, the classification of the document was not properly supported. That ruling in Center for International Environmental Law v. Office of the U.S. Trade Representative was a startling judicial rebuff to executive classification authority of a sort that had not been seen in many years, and the government quickly appealed.
In oral arguments in the DC District Appeals Court last month, government attorneys all but declared that a court has no power to overrule an executive branch classification decision. The transcript of that February 21 hearing has just become available.
Judge Roberts’ “substitution of [his] judgment about likely harm to foreign relations [that could ensue from disclosure] fails to give the deference that’s due to the Executive in this sensitive area of foreign relations and national security, and is entirely inconsistent with this Court’s consistent case law over many decades that emphasizes the need for such deference,” argued H. Thomas Byron, III, on behalf of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh asked Mr. Byron whether there were any circumstances in which a court could reject a classification claim.
“When do you think a Court could ever disagree with the Executive’s determination in this kind of case?” Judge Kavanaugh asked.
Mr. Byron that if the agency’s declarations in support of classification are logical and plausible, then the agency is entitled to judicial deference.
“Isn’t that going to cover 100 percent of the cases?” Judge Kavanaugh asked.
“I certainly think, Judge Kavanaugh, that the Executive would not submit a declaration that was not logical or plausible,” Mr. Byron replied.
Then he went even further and suggested that the executive branch has exclusive constitutional authority over classification policy.
Judge Kavanaugh was inquiring how the government would respond to an argument made in an amicus brief filed by media organizations contending that Congress had mandated judicial review of classification when it amended the FOIA in 1974 in order to enable Courts to review executive classification judgments. Not only that, but when President Ford vetoed the measure, Congress overrode the veto.
Mr. Byron said, “The question is whether those changes [i.e. the 1974 amendments] altered the constitutionally required deference to the Executive in this area under the Separation of Powers Doctrine,” suggesting that the congressional override of President Ford’s veto was meaningless and without effect.
“That’s interesting,” said Judge Kavanaugh. “You don’t think Congress could put the courts in the position of second guessing” the executive?
“Well, when it comes to predictive judgments about harm to national security and foreign relations I think that’s a very difficult question,” Mr. Byron said.
“I agree,” Judge Kavanaugh replied.
Cogent arguments to the contrary were made by attorney Martin Wagner on behalf of the Center for International Environmental Law at the hearing and can be found in the transcript. An account of the hearing from the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press is here.
Working Hypothesis – AQ and the Muslim Brotherhood
Ayman al-Zawahiri, current head of AQ, was an instrumental figure of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), the armed wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Zawahiri was imprisoned following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. He came to power within AQ following the death of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (for which he has been occasionally implicated). With the death of bin Laden, he assumed the role of leader of AQ.
My hypothesis is that Zawahiri was instrumental in developing AQ toward its global stature, although bin Laden had always said that America was his primary focus. Bin Laden, however, was targeting America's economic stature more than anything else, with the current economic status of the US, it would seem he may have succeeded. The hypothesis continues that Zawahiri wanted to hijack the movement and use it as a tool to re-establish the Caliphate. The attached document, prepared prior to the turn of the century, suggests that the Arab Spring and all other efforts have been closely orchestrated to bring down those governments that have failed in their Islamic duties……..
Still working this line, however, nobody believes it. I have passed the attached around folks within the IC, nobody has seen it….their take, propaganda more than anything else. I found the document while downloading the current version of AQ's English language magazine from the IntelCenter….so I would think that it should be taken at face value. Further, it was published on IntelCenter's website in 2008, so if it is propaganda it still mirrors current activities….another reason most in the IC rejected it, it is Open Source and therefore suspect. Of course nobody can tell me why something obtained through second parties (clandestine activities) makes it more reliable…..
