Category: 09 Justice

Posted on

Josh Kilbourn: Trampling the Bill of Rights

09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement
Joshua Kilbourn

Found this provocative in its detail.

Guest Post – “Trampling The Bill of Rights”

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 4:19 pm

I think we can all agree that this best thing about this site is the collective knowledge and wisdom of its members. As such, last week I commissioned “CaliforniaLawyer” to research and author a “guest post” that would deal with the travesty and threat that is the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Fortunately for us, he obliged and his work is presented below.

“All Hail King Obama [Gingrich, Romney, et al.] – New National Defense Authorization Act Renders Constitutional Bill of Rights Mere “Tradition”

Is anyone concerned about the lawlessness and unconstitutionality of the movement to grant the President the power to detain, without trial or representation or due process of law, any citizen that is capriciously perceived to represent a threat to the United States?

Mr. Ferguson is.  I am.  I know you are, too.

Let’s get right to the issue.  The authors of this bill claim that the bill would not enlarge the universe of detainees eligible for indefinite detention in military custody.  FALSE.  The current Authorization for Use of Military Force, that is, the OLD LAW, confines the universe to persons implicated in the 9/11 attacks or who harbored those who were.  The detainee provision in the NEW LAW would expand the universe to include any person said to be “part of” or “substantially” supportive of al-Qaida or Taliban.

Read full analysis with many links.

 See Also:

5 Things to Know About Detention in the Defense Bill

Posted on

John Steiner: US Chamber of Commerce – Kill It?

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Non-Governmental, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
John Steiner

Click here to sign your name:
“Google, stand up for democracy and your users—quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce!”

Dear MoveOn member,

Right now we have a huge opportunity to deal what's being called a “serious blow to one of Washington's most powerful lobbies.”1

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an army of lobbyists for hire by mega-corporations like banks and those in the fossil fuel industry. In 2009, it spent more corporate money on lobbying than the next five biggest spenders combined.2 And 93% of its campaign spending goes to support Republicans and attack Democrats.3

Google is a paying member of the Chamber, which means that part of the money they make from Google users—ordinary people like us using Gmail, Google search, and other Google products—goes into the Chamber's pockets to fight for Wall Street and Big Oil. But the Washington Post and Politico recently reported that at Google headquarters, employees are intensely debating whether Google should quit the Chamber in the next few weeks.4

Continue reading “John Steiner: US Chamber of Commerce – Kill It?”

Posted on

Steve Denning: Itemization of How We Blew Up the World

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Steve Denning

Lest We Forget: Why We Had A Financial Crisis

Steve Denning

Forbes, 22 November 2011

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift

It is clear to anyone who has studied the financial crisis of 2008 that the private sector’s drive for short-term profit was behind it. More than 84 percent of the sub-prime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending. These private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year. Out of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006, only one was subject to the usual mortgage laws and regulations. The nonbank underwriters made more than 12 million subprime mortgages with a value of nearly $2 trillion. The lenders who made these were exempt from federal regulations.

How then could the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg say the following at a business breakfast in mid-town Manhattan on November 1, 2011?

It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I’m not saying I’m sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn’t have gotten them without that. But they were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will. They were the ones that pushed the banks to loan to everybody. And now we want to go vilify the banks because it’s one target, it’s easy to blame them and Congress certainly isn’t going to blame themselves.”

Barry Ritholtz in the Washington Post calls the notion that the US Congress was behind the financial crisis of 2008 “the Big Lie”. As we have seen in other contexts, if a lie is big enough, people begin to believe it.

Full Story Below the Line with BLOCKBUSTER Itemization

Continue reading “Steve Denning: Itemization of How We Blew Up the World”

Posted on

Josh Kilbourn: 46 Million Americans on Foodstamps

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Joshua Kilbourn

Over 46 Million Americans On Foodstamps For The First Time Ever

Tyler Durden

Zerohedge.com, 12/05/2011

While the capital markets may be cheering that in the past month 120,000 people supposedly found jobs, even if these were largely temporary or part-time just in time for the year end shopping sprees, we wonder how they will react when learning that according to the latest update from the Supplemental Nutrition

Click on Image

Assistance Program (SNAP), some 423,000 Americans found their way to minimum way subsistence, courtesy of Food Stamp handouts from Uncle Sam. Since the start of the Second Great Depression, food stamp participation has increased by 18.7 million, and is now at an all time higher 46.3 million. All Bush's fault, or something. At least the chart below appears to be plateauing… Actually, sorry, no isn't.

See Also:

Food Stamp Use Surges By Most In Years As Alabama Foodstamp Recipients Double In May

US Food Stamp Usage Hits New Record

6M young U.S. adults live with their parents

Cost of federal unemployment benefits so far: $434 billion

Posted on

Patrick Meier: Architecture and Calendars as Trojan Horses for Repressive Regimes [Cognitive Dissonance 101]

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Government, IO Impotency
Patrick Meier

Why Architecture and Calendars Are Trojan Horses for Repressive Regimes

by Patrick Meier

The simple thought first occurred to me while visiting Serbia earlier this year. As I walked in front of the country's parliament, I recalled Steve York's docu-mentary, “Bringing Down a Dictator.” In one particular scene, a large crowd assembles in front of the Serbian parliament chanting for the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic. Soon after, they storm the building and find thousands of election ballots rigged in the despot's favor. I then thought of Tahrir Square and how more than a million protestors had assembled there to demand that Hosni Mubarak step down. There was one obvious place for protestors to assemble in Cairo durin g the recent revolts. The word Tahrir means “liberation” in Arabic. That's what I call free advertising and framing par excellence.

These scenes play out over and over across the history of revolutions and popular resistance movements. In many ways, state architecture that is meant to project power and authority can just as easily be magnets and mobilization mechanisms for popular dissent; a hardware hack turned against it's coders. A Trojan Horse of sorts in the computing sense of the word.

Read rest of post.

Phi Beta Iota:  Understanding cognitive dissonance between a public and a regime (or between troops / officers and their corrupt chain of command) is not a competency of the national intelligence communities or their political “clients.”  What is so sad is that this is the PRECISE competency needed to avoid an all-consuming revolution.