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The Military-Industrial Complex is Ruining the Economy
- Afghanistan
- China
- Congressional Budget Office
- Czech
- Dean Baker
- ETC
- FBI
- Global Economy
- Global Warming
- Gross Domestic Product
- Iran
- Iraq
- Joint Economic Committee
- Joseph Stiglitz
- Krugman
- Middle East
- Mohammad
- national security
- New York Times
- Paul Krugman
- Rand Corporation
- Recession
- Somalia
- Unemployment
- White House
- World Trade
Everyone knows that the too big to fails and their dishonest and
footsy-playing regulators and politicians are largely responsible for
trashing the economy.
But the military-industrial complex shares much of the blame.
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the Iraq war will cost $3-5 trillion dollars.
Sure, experts say that the Iraq war has increased the threat of terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this. And we launched the Iraq war based on the false linkage of Saddam and 9/11, and knowingly false claims that Saddam had WMDs. And top British officials, former CIA director George Tenet, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and many others say that the Iraq war was planned before 9/11. But this essay is about dollars and cents.
America
is also spending a pretty penny in Afghanistan. The U.S. admits there
are only a small handful of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As ABC notes:
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.
With
100,000 troops in Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30
billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda fighter, the U.S. will
commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year.
Sure, the government apparently planned the Afghanistan war before 9/11 (see this and this). And the Taliban offered to turn over Bin Laden (see this and this). And we could have easily killed Bin Laden in 2001 and again in 2007,
but chose not to, even though that would have saved the U.S. hundreds
of billions of dollars in costs in prosecuting the Afghanistan war.But this essay is about dollars and cents.
Increasing the Debt Burden of a Nation Sinking In Debt
All of the spending on unnecessary wars adds up.
The U.S. is adding trillions to its debt burden to finance its multiple wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.
Two
top American economists - Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff - show
that the more indebted a country is, with a government debt/GDP ratio
of 0.9, and external debt/GDP of 0.6 being critical thresholds, the
more GDP growth drops materially.
Specifically, Reinhart and Rogoff write:
The
relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for
debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90
percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth
falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is
similar in advanced and emerging economies...
Indeed, it should be obvious to anyone who looks at the issue that deficits do matter.
A PhD economist told me:
War always
causes recession. Well, if it is a very short war, then it may
stimulate the economy in the short-run. But if there is not a quick
victory and it drags on, then wars always put the nation waging war
into a recession and hurt its economy.
You know about America's unemployment problem. You may have even heard that the U.S. may very well have suffered a permanent destruction of jobs.
But did you know that the defense employment sector is booming?
As I pointed out
in August, public sector spending - and mainly defense spending - has
accounted for virtually all of the new job creation in the past 10
years:
The U.S. has largely been financing job creation
for ten years. Specifically, as the chief economist for BusinessWeek,
Michael Mandel, points out, public spending has accounted for virtually
all new job creation in the past 1o years:
Private sector job growth was almost non-existent over the past ten years. Take a look at this horrifying chart:
Between
May 1999 and May 2009, employment in the private sector sector only
rose by 1.1%, by far the lowest 10-year increase in the post-depression
period.
It’s impossible to overstate how bad this is. Basically
speaking, the private sector job machine has almost completely stalled
over the past ten years. Take a look at this chart:
Over
the past 10 years, the private sector has generated roughly 1.1 million
additional jobs, or about 100K per year. The public sector created
about 2.4 million jobs.But even that gives the private sector
too much credit. Remember that the private sector includes health care,
social assistance, and education, all areas which receive a lot of
government support.***
Most
of the industries which had positive job growth over the past ten years
were in the HealthEdGov sector. In fact, financial job growth was
nearly nonexistent once we take out the health insurers.Let me finish with a final chart.
Without
a decade of growing government support from rising health and education
spending and soaring budget deficits, the labor market would have been
flat on its back. [120]Raw Story argues that the U.S. is building a largely military economy:
The
use of the military-industrial complex as a quick, if dubious, way of
jump-starting the economy is nothing new, but what is amazing is the
divergence between the military economy and the civilian economy, as
shown by this New York Times chart.
In
the past nine years, non-industrial production in the US has declined
by some 19 percent. It took about four years for manufacturing to
return to levels seen before the 2001 recession -- and all those gains
were wiped out in the current recession.
By contrast, military
manufacturing is now 123 percent greater than it was in 2000 -- it has
more than doubled while the rest of the manufacturing sector has been
shrinking...It's important to note the trajectory -- the military
economy is nearly three times as large, proportionally to the rest of
the economy, as it was at the beginning of the Bush administration. And
it is the only manufacturing sector showing any growth. Extrapolate
that trend, and what do you get?The change in leadership in Washington does not appear to be abating that trend...[121]
So
most of the job creation has been by the public sector. But because the
job creation has been financed with loans from China and private banks,
trillions in unnecessary interest charges have been incurred by the U.S.
So
we're running up our debt (which will eventually decrease economic growth), but
the only jobs we're creating are military and other public sector jobs.
PhD economist Dean Baker points out that America's massive military spending on unnecessary and unpopular wars lowers economic growth and increases unemployment:
Defense
spending means that the government is pulling away resources from the
uses determined by the market and instead using them to buy weapons and
supplies and to pay for soldiers and other military personnel. In
standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the
economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs.
A
few years ago, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned
Global Insight, one of the leading economic modeling firms, to project
the impact of a sustained increase in defense spending equal to 1.0
percentage point of GDP. This was roughly equal to the cost of the Iraq
War.Global Insight’s model projected that after 20 years the
economy would be about 0.6 percentage points smaller as a result of the
additional defense spending. Slower growth would imply a loss of almost
700,000 jobs compared to a situation in which defense spending had not
been increased. Construction and manufacturing were especially big job
losers in the projections, losing 210,000 and 90,000 jobs, respectively.The scenario we asked Global Insight [recognized as the most consistently accurate
forecasting company in the world] to model turned out to have vastly
underestimated the increase in defense spending associated with current
policy. In the most recent quarter, defense spending was equal to 5.6
percent of GDP. By comparison, before the September 11th attacks, the
Congressional Budget Office projected that defense spending in 2009
would be equal to just 2.4 percent of GDP. Our post-September 11th
build-up was equal to 3.2 percentage points of GDP compared to the
pre-attack baseline. This means that the Global Insight projections of
job loss are far too low...The projected job loss from this increase in defense spending would be close to 2 million.
In other words, the standard economic models that project job loss from
efforts to stem global warming also project that the increase in
defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to 2 million
jobs in the long run.
The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has also shown that non-military spending creates more jobs than military spending.
So we're running up our debt - which will eventually decrease economic growth - and
creating many fewer jobs than if we spent the money on non-military
purposes.
But the War on Terror is Urgent for Our National Security, Isn't It?
For
those who still think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are necessary
to fight terrorism, remember that a leading advisor to the U.S.
military - the very hawkish and pro-war Rand Corporation - released a
study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida".
The report confirms that the war on terror is actually weakening national security. As a press release about the study states:
"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative". And Newsweek has now admitted that the war on terror is wholly unnecessary.
In
fact, starting right after 9/11 -- at the latest -- the goal has always
been to create "regime change" and instability in Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon; the goal was never really to destroy
Al Qaeda. As American reporter Gareth Porter writes in Asia Times:
Three
weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of
not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning
the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the
Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under
secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's recently published
account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's account further indicates
that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by
military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the
country's top military leaders.
Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling
for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a
series of states...
***
General
Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars
being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list
of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz
wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and
Somalia [and Lebanon].
***
When
this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark
list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."
***
The
Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military
aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to
terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to
isolate and weaken those states and to "disrupt, damage or destroy"
their military capacities - not necessarily limited to weapons of mass
destruction (WMD)...
Rumsfeld's paper was
given to the White House only two weeks after Bush had approved a US
military operation in Afghanistan directed against bin Laden and the
Taliban regime. Despite that decision, Rumsfeld's proposal called
explicitly for postponing indefinitely US airstrikes and the use of
ground forces in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in order
to try to catch bin Laden.
Instead, the
Rumsfeld paper argued that the US should target states that had
supported anti-Israel forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
***
After
the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa [in 1988] by al-Qaeda
operatives, State Department counter-terrorism official Michael Sheehan
proposed supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan
against bin Laden's sponsor, the Taliban regime. However, senior US
military leaders "refused to consider it", according to a 2004 account
by Richard H Shultz, Junior, a military specialist at Tufts University.
A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".
If you still believe that the war on terror is necessary, please read this.
Torture is Bad for the Economy
For those who still think torture is a necessary evil, you might be
interested to learn that top experts in interrogation say that,
actually:
- Torture actually reduces our national security and creates new terrorists
- Most of those tortured were innocent
Indeed, historians tell us that torture has been used throughout history - not to gain information - but as a form of intimidation, to terrorize people into obedience. In other words, at its core, torture is a form of terrorism.
Moreover, the type of torture used by the U.S. in the last 10 years is of a special type. Senator Levin revealed that the U.S. used torture techniques aimed at extracting false confessions.
McClatchy subsequently filled in some of the details:
Former
senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue
said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq
collaboration...
For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and
Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al
Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and
others had told them were there."
It was during this period that CIA
interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees
repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid
Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released
Justice Department document...
When people kept coming up empty,
they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he
continued."Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA
. . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that
pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .
A
former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army
investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties
between al Qaida and Iraq.
"While we were there a large part of
the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida
and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al
Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The
more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . .
. there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might
produce more immediate results."
"I think it's obvious that the
administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link
(between al Qaida and Iraq)," [Senator] Levin said in a conference call
with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."
Levin
recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer
had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech
Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.
In
other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied
about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they
pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods
aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false
linkage. See also this and this.
Paul Krugman eloquently summarized the truth about the type of torture used:
Let’s
say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a
pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
There’s a word for this: it’s evil.
But since this essay in on dollars and cents, the important point is that terrorism is bad for the economy.
Specifically, a study by Harvard and NBER points out:
From an economic standpoint, terrorism has been described
to have four main effects (see, e.g., US Congress, Joint Economic
Committee, 2002). First,
the capital stock (human and physical) of a country is reduced as a
result of terrorist attacks. Second, the terrorist threat induces
higher levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in
counter-terrorism expenditures, drawing resources from productive
sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to affect
negatively specific industries such as tourism.
The Harvard/NBER concludes:
In accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of
terrorist risks are associated with lower levels of net foreign direct
investment positions, even after controlling for other types of country
risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk
is associated with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP.
So
the more unnecessary wars American launches, the more innocent
civilians we kill, and the more people we torture, the less foreign
investment in America, the more destruction to our capital stock, the
higher the level of uncertainty, the more counter-terrorism
expenditures and the less expenditures in more productive sectors, and
the greater the hit to tourism and some other industries.
Terrorism has contributed to a decline in the global economy (for example, European Commission, 2001).
So military adventurism and torture, which increase terrorism, hurt the world economy. And see this.
For the foregoing reasons, the military-industrial complex is ruining the economy.
- advertisements -
What a buffoon you are GW...you have the leftist talking points down, have to give that to you. The left makes up shit as it goes and gets fools like you to parrot them around the web.
Guess Tyler and Marla wanted to double down on your idiocy which means they too believe this nonsense which makes much of their own commentary much more suspicious now.
Pierre wouldn't know his ass from a $5 trillion dollar bill. That I can assure you.
Pierre, quit spouting nothing but disinformation and go back to your day job.
As soon as people figure out that the only thing dead is capitalism, and as long as there is money there will not be peace the better.
PierreLegrand you are a stupid fuck, and your wisdom will die with you.
Do you have an actual argument? Any evidence to refute what GW has written?
Didn't think so.
Blowhard. Idiot. Microencephaletic.
Here is what the TimesOnline article used as proof that we "knowingly false claims that Saddam had WMDs. " (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6932597.ece)
- Inspectors in Iraq had also told the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that they believed that Saddam might not have chemical and biological weapons.
- get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn’t yet ordered their assembly,”
- “There was also a suggestion that Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents.”
- Iraq’s nuclear programme was believed to have been stopped by UN inspectors in the 1990.
- The chemical and biological weapons Iraq was thought to possess were not regarded primarily as battlefield weapons, he said.
When the lefties stop foaming at the mouth whenever Bush, Cheney or Iraq Invasion are mentioned, then we might be able to have a civilized discussion about why we were forced to invade Iraq. My guess is it will take more than a generation, because we still can't get pass the PC bullshit to discuss what really happened in Vietnam.
George Washington's ranting about the war are almost as credible as Al Gore ranting about global warming or Paul Krugman ranting about more stimulus.
Stop trying to confuse them with the facts. They are too far gone to recognise their own self-defeating behavior.
Here's how I see it:
I've often pointed out that those of us who (at least initially) supported the war did so on the grounds Saddam might well have WMDs, certainly wasn't acting like he *didn't* have WMDs (he could have just opened his doors and let the inspectors flood in, but instead he fought it), and besides which, he was clearly belligerent and aggressive (he tried to annex Kuwait by force), and had even tried to assassinate GHW Bush http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/longroad/etc/assassination...
So to me, that was cause enough. Fine. Take him out. Regime change. OK.
What turned me against the war, and using the military this way in the future, was the absolute lack of will and desire to WIN THE WAR QUICKLY and get the fuck out.
Instead, they CLEARLY REFUSED TO IMPOSE LAW AND ORDER FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE OCCUPATION, SUBSEQUENTLY DRAWING THE CONFLICT OUT INDEFINATELY.
I can't back that, and I won't back any future use of force until there has been a generational change in the military to prevent future occurrences of this nature.
This is purely a practical matter, here's why:
You don't start a war you can't win. If after exhausting all other means you do start a war, you must win it quickly and then get the hell out. If war is treated as an open ended contract funded by the US taxpayer, and if it is prosecuted as such, when moral and/or financial support is exhausted, it will end in defeat.
Hey, I agree. The original plan with Chalabi coming in from Turkey riding on tanks and then the US getting the hell out of Dodge was the only reasonable plan.
Unfortunatly, the Turncoat Democrats (like "I voted for it before I voted against it" Kerry) realized that if they could create a quagmire by forcing PC rules of engagement on the military then they would be able to bash the Republicans with it for years. Later on they had the revelation (like "the war is lost" Reid), that if they could lose the war, then they were guaranteed a landslide in 2008.
Democratic Party=The enemy from within.
Exactly how I feel about the Iraqi war...nation building is for fools. We had a legitimate need to take Saddam out of the picture. We should have done that then left with a warning that if they allowed terrorists back in we would be back.
"might, believed, thought" - those are word games, lawyers tricks, CYAs because you know it's a lie when you tell it. Oldest trick in the book. Iraq has always been and always will be about Peak Oil. I was going to say history will bear that out, but it already has.
so the rightwing warmongers, didn't make up shit, as they went along?
Mr. LeGrand,
Most of those cited are conservatives, sir.
REAL conservatives - and REAL military heros, many of whom I admire, and some of whom I've interviewed - are opposed to torture and unnecessary wars.
I have tremendous respect for REAL military men and REAL counterterrorism officials. They are heroes. Many of them put their lives on the line to defend our country. Many of them work their butts off without much pay and without much thanks to actually do the right thing and save lives (as hard as that might be for Cheney-followers to understand).
On the other hand, I don't have very much respect for chickenhawk keyboard warriors of the type desribed below ...
Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists.
The New York Times discusses in a matter-of-fact way the use of mainstream writers by the CIA to spread messages.
A 4-part BBC documentary called the "Century of the Self" shows that an American - Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays - created the modern field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his techniques.
The Independent discusses allegations of American propaganda.
And one of the premier writers on journalism says the U.S. has used widespread propaganda.
And an expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations (the expert has an impressive background).
And while the U.S. government has repeatedly claimed that it was launching propaganda programs solely at foreign enemies, it has actually used them against American citizens. For example:
The U.S. government long ago announced its intention to "fight the net".
And CENTCOM announced in 2008 that a team of employees would be "[engaging] bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information."
And the Air Force is also engaging bloggers. Indeed, an Air Force spokesman said:
</Rant>
i was wondering who would bring that up about the military pys ops operations. i remember hearing about and reading that i think a couple of years ago. i remember when they hit liveleak. anyone who said anything criticizing why we were in iraq or afghanistan was immediately attacked as a "leftist" these silly left/right arguments are passe' it is time , way time, to get past this sort of idiocy. we have not had a constitutional type war since the war of 1812. this is how long this kind of military industrial complex activity has been going on unabated. it is giant squid sucking the life blood out of a country and its people , and all for the love of money and profits. sometimes these companies are lauded by the little jimbo cramer too. i sit there and think, wow...people buying the stock of a company that is in the business of killing innocent human beings, what have we become? the light on the hill is flickering now. the world is taking notice. the world hates us now and well they should. i remember a time when the world loved us because we stood (falsely of course but nevertheless in their eyes) for freedom, liberty and justice. but those days are gone now. we have become what we used to hate. i say to people like Mr. LeGrand, will it be worth it sir? will it all be worth it when the shtf? i say to you sir. come out from her now while you still can. do the right thing. i rememember reading about the hungarian revolution of 1956. government buildings came under attack and as they were burning, communist bureaucrats came running out of them begging for their lives. as they stood in the crowds, pleading, men calmly walked up to them, and stuck ak47's in their stomachs and pulled the trigger. case in point pierre. i assure you sir, that government retirement you think you will get, will never happen. on this you can make bank. all traitors will be found and dealt with as the namesake of this post, george washington would have it.
I know it's Wikipedia... but there is much more and many references to them here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA
I can cite more.
Also, Mr. Perkins would certainly back Mr. Washington. Interesting, as he was front and center during the last twenty years...
http://www.johnperkins.org/
You sir are a liar. And no I won't suffer to go individually through each of your links and spend my valuable time refuting them. But NONE of your links are to someone that anyone I know calls a real conservative. And NO real conservatives use the term Chicken Hawk that is primarily a term used by the left, your butt buddies, to stop arguments. But lets take a couple of your "links" and destroy them.
CENTCOM did no such thing...the email you cite, perhaps without reading, does not say they are posting disinformation. YOU imagine this because to YOU there are BLACK-HELICOPTERS circling your fucking house you freak.
Well you fucking clown, when assclowns like you read the foreign press and BELIEVE things like US Special Forces, Friends of Mine, are handcuffing children and executing them it is quite understandable that the US Armed Forces need to combat the propaganda being fed to clownfucks like you.
Nope you clown John Pilger does not qualify as one of the PREMIER writers on journalism, he qualifies as someone who admires Chavez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba and the various tin horn communists in central America, he qualifies as someone who has been praised by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk. He is, like you, a communist stooge who wouldn't know good journalism if it bent him over and spanked him.
Here you lie by implication...you imply that this CIA control over journalists is something they did in our country when in fact it was the CIA's attempt to get inside of the Soviet Union that is being discussed. The journalists involved understood the need and did it willingly...because they were something you have no conception about...they were patriots you clownfuck.
I suspect you are happy now that the American Press is such a den of traitors and anarchists that NO secret is safe with them. Now they actively work to kill Americans and our soldiers. I suppose that makes asswipes like you happy. Fucktard.
The rest of your links are written by folks whose grasp of reality and ability to relate to the rest of us mirrors your own. Nother words for the slow fuckers like you they have zero ability and no they are not conservatives.
We have not discussed my views on the Iraq war and how I believe it should have been conducted. But the idea that Saddam had to go was a pretty obvious conclusion given his links to terrorism and support of it. And yes arguing that he had no WMD's is pretty fucking hilarious given it is all based on the idea that the UN could actually tell, which given the fact that they have recently gotten Iran all wrong is hilarious.
Let the system work as intended:
We have allowed a relatively small group of people to seize the powers of government for their own selfish purposes. Our elected representatives have turned over our government and it's coercive powers to private transnational corporate interests that have absolutely no allegiance to this country. In fact, they are systematically destroying our nation to achieve their global agenda. Through their control of our government they have been able to impose their will on all of us. This control of government also extends to the take over the monetary system, the media, health care, agriculture, education, and the military, virtually everything at this point.
They have also taken control of all governmental agencies and bureaucracies as well. They have placed their own people in all the highest agency positions. There has been a revolving door between government positions and corporate positions for a very long time. (Example: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is former CEO of Goldman Sachs for crying out loud!) Our government is literally not our government any more. It is the private enforcement arm for those that own the most powerful corporations. Whatever the corporations' want, the government makes legal and enforces through laws, regulations, taxation and threat of jail time, something corporations could not do on their own.
In order to stop these people, we must understand how they accomplished the hostile takeover of our government in the beginning. First, they took control of Congress by making it legal for their corporations to interfere. They accomplished this by planting a loophole in the Constitution. Then the loophole was exploited to award "human rights protections" for artificial corporate entities, which gave corporations the right to directly interfere with government and elections.
Once they had control of Congress, they took over the monetary system by getting the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 passed into law, setting up their central banking scam. Most Americans have no idea that the Federal Reserve is not a government agency. It is, in fact, a private corporation that it's totally controlled by the private bankers.
So, once they had control of Congress, they had the power to create every law and regulation they needed to make all their crimes legal. And, once they controlled our currency they literally had the power to do anything they wanted. The bottom line is, the wealthiest people on the planet, who literally think they have some divine right to rule over us, have stolen the coercive powers of government to impose their selfish will on all of us and literally gave themselves the power to create "unlimited wealth" out of thin air, on top of it.
The Bankers are the only people on the planet that are legally allowed to say they have money they don't really have. Through the fractional reserve banking scam they cooked up, all they are required to have on deposit is 10% or less of actual cash they lend. For example, all they need is $20,000 or less on deposit to be able to write you a check for $200,000 for your mortgage. How long would you stay out of jail if you did that? What is even worse, if you don't pay back the money they never had to begin with, they take your house. The bankers get all the "real cash" you've paid for years on your mortgage, AND they get your house if you suddenly can't pay. You lose everything. They get it all. The scale on which this is happening every single day is almost incomprehensible. The bankers are "legally" allowed to create TRILLIONS of dollars out of thin air and lend it out at interest with nothing more than a flick of a pen. Slick huh?
This is massive, institutionalized fraud and it is the primary source of power for this group of unelected individuals that have taken control of our government and aspire to rule over all of us without that troubling thing called accountability to the citizens. If we eliminate their ability to create unlimited wealth, we take away their primary source of power, just like that!
So, our plan is to do the exact same thing that the S.O.B.'s ruining our nation did, and, in the exact same order. First, we take back control of our Congress. We do this by imposing our undeniable will on Congress in the upcoming election by Kicking Them All Out! We FIRE them! Then we simply demand that the new Freshman Congress permanently revoke human rights protections for corporations. Once we do that, we make it illegal for corporations to interfere in government and then we can legally kick out the bulk of the lobbyists. Then we won't have corporate wealth and power standing in the way when we take the next crucial step, shutting down the FED. This will effectively dry up the private banker's ability to create unlimited wealth and their ability to control the entire economy through the power to issue currency and credit. Then we end the fraud of Fractional Reserve Banking, which has allowed bankers to literally counterfeit unlimited amounts of money and lend it out at interest.
We must return the authority over our currency and monetary policy to the Congress where it is supposed to be and where there will be accountability to the People. Right now, the Fed, the private bankers, are totally unaccountable to anyone or anything. Then, and only, then will we be able to clean up the government and the mess these criminals have deliberately created. If we do these few, specific things we can land a lethal blow to the criminals currently in control of our nation and finally hold them accountable for their crimes against humanity.
The simple truth is, we only have one direct power over our government, the power to hire and fire. Until the powers of our votes are FELT, we have no power. Those in control of our political system con us into believing the whole point of elections is to determine which party will control Congress, which effectively splits the power of our votes right down the middle. So our power to effect change is virtually eliminated by this one simple con job.
For our votes to have the power necessary to "really" take back control of Congress, we must unite our votes and cast them in a way that will be FELT! We have to set aside the superficial, partisan differences and vote to accomplish something far more important than which party controls congress. We cast our votes against ALL INCUMBENTS in order to clean house and let it be known business as usual is over and politics is no longer a path to personal wealth and power.
Then we must demand the new Congress ratify the amendment to the Constitution necessary to revoke human rights protections for corporations, making it illegal for corporations and their lobbyists to interfere in government or elections, on every level, local, state and federal. The Amendment to revoke human rights protections can be found on the KTAO Project web site in the "Simple Two Step Plan" posted there. Once we close that loophole, we can legally kick out all the corporate lobbyists.
Until we accomplish this, no meaningful change is possible. The powers-that-be will simply use the powers of government, their lawyerly minions and control over the courts to squash any attempt to end their reign. We have to first take back control of our government. Then, we have to eliminate their ability to create unlimited wealth out of thin air by taking away their total control over our monetary system. Once we do these few things, it will then be possible to seriously discuss how to undo the damage they have done.
Nothing of consequence can be solved until we take these powers away from these people. And, we can't do that without a plan. The people we are up against have plans within plans. They need plans within plans because they rely on the power of deception in order to prevail. The good news is, we only need the simple truth and this simple plan to defeat them and turn things around.
We have empowered the Congress to put a stop to a great deal of the corruption that grips our government and our nation. We just need to fill it with people that are actually interested in stopping that corruption and return the United States to the Constitutional Republic we are supposed to be. So, please, join or start a Fire Congress Meetup Group and help us recruit enough voters (and inspire non-voters) to vote against their incumbents in the upcoming elections. We CAN unite the power of our votes to effect sweeping change and put an end to corporate rule of our country and our lives.
Clownfuck, ...that's the guy in the whitehouse, right?
Let the system work as it was intended:
http://www.kickthemallout.com/
We have allowed a relatively small group of people to seize the powers of government for their own selfish purposes. Our elected representatives have turned over our government and it's coercive powers to private transnational corporate interests that have absolutely no allegiance to this country. In fact, they are systematically destroying our nation to achieve their global agenda. Through their control of our government they have been able to impose their will on all of us. This control of government also extends to the take over the monetary system, the media, health care, agriculture, education, and the military, virtually everything at this point.
They have also taken control of all governmental agencies and bureaucracies as well. They have placed their own people in all the highest agency positions. There has been a revolving door between government positions and corporate positions for a very long time. (Example: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is former CEO of Goldman Sachs for crying out loud!) Our government is literally not our government any more. It is the private enforcement arm for those that own the most powerful corporations. Whatever the corporations' want, the government makes legal and enforces through laws, regulations, taxation and threat of jail time, something corporations could not do on their own.
In order to stop these people, we must understand how they accomplished the hostile takeover of our government in the beginning. First, they took control of Congress by making it legal for their corporations to interfere. They accomplished this by planting a loophole in the Constitution. Then the loophole was exploited to award "human rights protections" for artificial corporate entities, which gave corporations the right to directly interfere with government and elections.
Once they had control of Congress, they took over the monetary system by getting the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 passed into law, setting up their central banking scam. Most Americans have no idea that the Federal Reserve is not a government agency. It is, in fact, a private corporation that it's totally controlled by the private bankers.
So, once they had control of Congress, they had the power to create every law and regulation they needed to make all their crimes legal. And, once they controlled our currency they literally had the power to do anything they wanted. The bottom line is, the wealthiest people on the planet, who literally think they have some divine right to rule over us, have stolen the coercive powers of government to impose their selfish will on all of us and literally gave themselves the power to create "unlimited wealth" out of thin air, on top of it.
The Bankers are the only people on the planet that are legally allowed to say they have money they don't really have. Through the fractional reserve banking scam they cooked up, all they are required to have on deposit is 10% or less of actual cash they lend. For example, all they need is $20,000 or less on deposit to be able to write you a check for $200,000 for your mortgage. How long would you stay out of jail if you did that? What is even worse, if you don't pay back the money they never had to begin with, they take your house. The bankers get all the "real cash" you've paid for years on your mortgage, AND they get your house if you suddenly can't pay. You lose everything. They get it all. The scale on which this is happening every single day is almost incomprehensible. The bankers are "legally" allowed to create TRILLIONS of dollars out of thin air and lend it out at interest with nothing more than a flick of a pen. Slick huh?
This is massive, institutionalized fraud and it is the primary source of power for this group of unelected individuals that have taken control of our government and aspire to rule over all of us without that troubling thing called accountability to the citizens. If we eliminate their ability to create unlimited wealth, we take away their primary source of power, just like that!
So, our plan is to do the exact same thing that the S.O.B.'s ruining our nation did, and, in the exact same order. First, we take back control of our Congress. We do this by imposing our undeniable will on Congress in the upcoming election by Kicking Them All Out! We FIRE them! Then we simply demand that the new Freshman Congress permanently revoke human rights protections for corporations. Once we do that, we make it illegal for corporations to interfere in government and then we can legally kick out the bulk of the lobbyists. Then we won't have corporate wealth and power standing in the way when we take the next crucial step, shutting down the FED. This will effectively dry up the private banker's ability to create unlimited wealth and their ability to control the entire economy through the power to issue currency and credit. Then we end the fraud of Fractional Reserve Banking, which has allowed bankers to literally counterfeit unlimited amounts of money and lend it out at interest.
We must return the authority over our currency and monetary policy to the Congress where it is supposed to be and where there will be accountability to the People. Right now, the Fed, the private bankers, are totally unaccountable to anyone or anything. Then, and only, then will we be able to clean up the government and the mess these criminals have deliberately created. If we do these few, specific things we can land a lethal blow to the criminals currently in control of our nation and finally hold them accountable for their crimes against humanity.
The simple truth is, we only have one direct power over our government, the power to hire and fire. Until the powers of our votes are FELT, we have no power. Those in control of our political system con us into believing the whole point of elections is to determine which party will control Congress, which effectively splits the power of our votes right down the middle. So our power to effect change is virtually eliminated by this one simple con job.
For our votes to have the power necessary to "really" take back control of Congress, we must unite our votes and cast them in a way that will be FELT! We have to set aside the superficial, partisan differences and vote to accomplish something far more important than which party controls congress. We cast our votes against ALL INCUMBENTS in order to clean house and let it be known business as usual is over and politics is no longer a path to personal wealth and power.
Then we must demand the new Congress ratify the amendment to the Constitution necessary to revoke human rights protections for corporations, making it illegal for corporations and their lobbyists to interfere in government or elections, on every level, local, state and federal. The Amendment to revoke human rights protections can be found on the KTAO Project web site in the "Simple Two Step Plan" posted there. Once we close that loophole, we can legally kick out all the corporate lobbyists.
Until we accomplish this, no meaningful change is possible. The powers-that-be will simply use the powers of government, their lawyerly minions and control over the courts to squash any attempt to end their reign. We have to first take back control of our government. Then, we have to eliminate their ability to create unlimited wealth out of thin air by taking away their total control over our monetary system. Once we do these few things, it will then be possible to seriously discuss how to undo the damage they have done.
Nothing of consequence can be solved until we take these powers away from these people. And, we can't do that without a plan. The people we are up against have plans within plans. They need plans within plans because they rely on the power of deception in order to prevail. The good news is, we only need the simple truth and this simple plan to defeat them and turn things around.
We have empowered the Congress to put a stop to a great deal of the corruption that grips our government and our nation. We just need to fill it with people that are actually interested in stopping that corruption and return the United States to the Constitutional Republic we are supposed to be. So, please, join or start a Fire Congress Meetup Group and help us recruit enough voters (and inspire non-voters) to vote against their incumbents in the upcoming elections. We CAN unite the power of our votes to effect sweeping change and put an end to corporate rule of our country and our lives.
Clownfuck, ...really, The guy in the WH, right?
You are absolutely right. For example when 36% of the population is in favor of this health care deal, Congress inists on pushing it through anyway. Just because the Dems have a majority they think anything they do is right. They are all captured by Wall St., etc. The last thing on any of their minds are the people and their wishes. For example the risk of sovereign default all to save the insolvent banks. Go figure.
Don't worry though, things have a way of righting themselves. Once the dollar collapses due to loss of confidence and the Treasury auctions fail and the gov implodes I am pretty sure we will either evolve to a dictorship under marshall law or we will have anarchy. When everyone's wealth is wiped out, there will be some protests in the streets.
Either way, the US and business as usual, as we know it today are going to be short lived. If our gov survives it will then be forced to live within its means, no more borrowing.
Not to get you down but you can't fight the current system, the incumbents have way to much money and support from the TBTB to vote them all out. Good luck anyway.
The last time the world to any extent tolerated filth like you, Legrand, in the end they were pulled out of the rubble in Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw, and Bucharest and given a peoples' justice. In Milan, they were hung upside down in the piazzas. In Paris, they were shorn of their hair like sheep and forced to wear signs identifying them as collaborators. Ah, yes, that's what you are, slug, a collaborator, a collaborator with every diseased Nazi impulse that has ever soiled this country. Take your hate, your torture and your warmongering and crawl back into the hole you came out of. Lice like you're aren't welcome in civilization any longer.
I am glad to read your posts.Excellent and accurate.As opposed to the crypto-fascist jingoist crap posted by the troll king.Nice job of correctly painting them for what they really are.
Great job Andrei.
Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies)[1][2] is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."[3][2]
Now aren't you just the most monumental jackass that ever drew breathe. The use of analogy requires the comparison of two realities, for God's sake. I wasn't simply comparing you to a Nazi, I was calling you a Nazi, which is precisely what you are, pig. Two hundred forty eight thousand Americans died fighting your kind in World War II. Don't you ever dare come here impuning the patriotism of anyone, you just don't have that right.
Washington Times 2/5/99 Letters to the Editor June 7 - Arlington, VA.
"During the past several months in the American press, the Democrats have frequently denounced the Republicans as ‘Nazis’ due to their attempts to control runaway federal spending. How very ironic. I remember the Nazis. Let me share a little about them and recall some of their exploits. First of all, 'Nazi' was gutter slang for the verb 'to nationalize'. The Bider-Mienhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. The official title of the Nazi Party was 'The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany'. Hitler and the Brownshirts advocated the nationalization of education, health care, transportation, national resources, manufacturing, distribution and law enforcement. Hitler came to power by turning the working class, unemployed, and academic elite against the conservative republic. Being a Nazi was 'politically correct'. They called themselves 'The Children of the New Age of World Order' and looked down their noses at everyone else. As Hitler acquired more power, he referred to his critics as 'The Dark Forces of Anarchy and Hatred'… The Nazi reign of terror began with false news reports on the Jews, Bohemians and Gypsies who were said to be arming themselves to overthrow the 'New World Order'. Hitler demanded that all good people register their guns so that they wouldn't fall into the hands of 'terrorists and madmen'. Right-wing fanatics of the 'Old Order' who protested firearms registration were arrested by the S.S. and put in jail for 'fomenting hatred against the Government of the German people'. Then the Reichstag (government building) was blown up and Hitler ram-rodded an 'Emergency Anti-Terrorist Act' through Parliament that gave the Gestapo extraordinary powers. The leader then declared that for the well-being of the German people, all private firearms were to be confiscated by the Gestapo and the Wermotten (federal law enforcement and military). Public schools rewrote history and Hitler youth groups taught the children to report their parents to their teachers for anti-Nazi remarks. Such parents disappeared. Pagan animism became the state religion of the Third Reich and Christians were widely condemned as 'right wing fanatics'… Evil was declared as being good, and good was condemned as being evil. World Order was coming and the German people were going to be the 'peacekeepers'. Yes, indeed, I remember the Nazis and they weren't Republicans, or 'right wing', or 'patriots' or 'militias'. They were Socialist monsters…"
Furthermore, as Robert Proctor showed in "Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis" (1988), the Nazis were health fanatics who banned cigarette smoking, promoted vegetarianism and organic gardening, engaged in abortion and euthanasia, frowned on all capitalist excess, and even promoted animal rights. They were environmentalists who locked up land from development to promote paganism. The Nazi government introduced socialized medicine and government-mandated vacations at government spas, imposed handgun control, and expanded unemployment "insurance" and Social Security. The Nazis opposed the traditional calendar and wanted to replace it with one centered on race and nation rather than faith and family..."
Pierre:
Godwin's Law approximates reality because as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of participation in it of crypto-Nazi assholes like you approaches 1.
Also, godwin's law seems non-applicable when talk of actual Nazis is necessary.
You don't have any friends.....zero. and.... you don't have any brains ...... zero.
What frosts me is that, leftist-like, he chooses as a nom de guerre the first President, a man so utterly opposite in world view as to be from another planet. Typical for leftists to say black is white. Liars from first to last.
I suspect you are happy now that the American Press is such a den of traitors and anarchists that NO secret is safe with them. Now they actively work to kill Americans and our soldiers.
Exactly which American Press have you been reading? They've been doing an overall good job of keeping an significant news under wraps for TPTB. Instead we get endless coverage of Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods, et al to entertain and distract us.
BTW, I am curious. Have you ever served your country in the armed forces?
I have not; my stepson did a tour in Iraq. Having talked with/corresponded with him and his battle buddies, I am struck by the difference between their views and the repeating themes in your various posts. Your posts read like those of a classic, armchair, never-fought-myself warmonger when compared to my stepson and his buddies. If you have served, mea culpa and thank you for your service to our country.
Mr. Washington, thank you for the excellent article. I would also like to thank you for the superb comment that you made in response for the subhuman psyops/troll that somehow managed to be the first to post. I hereby award you a cyber "Speaking Truth" medal. I hope you still have room on your dress uniform to wear it.