Greg Palast: Rove Has Already Fixed the 2008 Election

"The Republican Political Machine has not only united the most stupid and selfish people in the country, they are prepared to steal the 2008 election."

Mike Caddell, Editor, Fightin' Cock Flyer, Kansas, USA.

The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning ... a message from Michael Moore

MichaelMoore.com, Monday, September 29th, 2008

Friends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

"Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

"Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

"At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

"Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions."

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.

The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?

It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people's home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage "crisis" may never have happened.

This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something -- NOW! Here's what you can do immediately:

1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what's the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.

2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).

3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.

When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.

P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we'll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say "NO!" If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House.

THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM.

CALL CONGRESS NOW!

The End of 'Free-market' Capitalism?

Where is American Capitalism Headed?

Amid the chaos and chatter about this week's financial bailout, one clear theme emerged in some quarters: The era of 'free-market' capitalism is over. But is it, really?

The present trend to nationalize bad debts is being described as 'Socialism for the Rich and the Devil-take-the-Hindmost Capitalism for the Poor'. While the rich will try to maintain their privileges how long will the rest of us put up with such a gross injustice?

People are angry. What next?



American News Project

Morons Rescue Assholes -- Deek Jackson's FKN News



American Dream-Delusion and Death -- Deek Jackson's FKN News



Link to FKN News

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Dive of Death

"It really is true what they say: Those that do not study the past get an exciting opportunity to repeat it" ~ Jon Stewart




The Daily Show, September 25, 2008

Once in a century rip-off
September 26, 2008
The Real News Network

Economist Michael Hudson: The bailout is a giveaway that will cause hyperinflation and dollar collapse



Panic the people, make them think there's an emergency. There's no emergency at all. The debts of the very rich people—you know, it's just in the last five years that the richest 1 percent of the American population have increased their wealth from 37 percent to 57 percent of all the returns to wealth—dividends, interest, and capital gains in the economy, they vastly increased it. They don't want it to go back to normal. They'd like to keep on increasing it. And you can only do this kind of a ripoff—this is a once-in-a-century ripoff, and you can only do this kind of thing under emergency conditions, usually with the kind of bloodshed you saw when Pinochet introduced free markets at gunpoint in Chile. (More ...)

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

* #1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
* # 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
* # 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
* # 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
* # 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
* # 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
* # 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
* # 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
* #9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
* # 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
* # 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
* # 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
* # 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
* # 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
* # 15 Worldwide Slavery
* # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
* # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
* # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
* # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
* # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
* # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
* # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
* # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
* # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
* # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

From Project Censored

"Project censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are practising thorough and ethical journalism." — Walter Cronkite

Cynthia McKinney: an American Matriarch Pleads for Her Country



An extraordinary speech presented by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney from the Alex Jones film "Matrix of Evil." Included is a clip of Mario Savio's fiery, "gears of the machine" speech he delivered at Berkeley.

Rory's Note: I was going to put this video up anyway. But when I heard the Savio quote my heart leapt as it's one my blog, Chimes of Freedom, has been carrying for over a year now.

Welcome to the Final Stages of the Coup ... Resist it Now or Kiss Your Liberties Goodbye Forever

In 2000, the long fought for and long admired democracy of the United States of America began a slow and steady decline toward fascism - a Bush family tradition - with the installment of a president - a man the citizens overwhelmingly rejected (although the funny math told a still believed myth) - by a few corrupt judges on the US Supreme Court. That coup is now nearly complete and checkmate is all but unavoidable.

(Now read on ...)

The Middle Class Must Not Be Forced to Bail Out Wall Street Greed

Now, we are being told that if Congress does not act immediately and approve the $700 billion Wall Street bailout proposal these "free marketers" have just written up, there will be an unprecedented economic meltdown in the United States and an unraveling of the global economy.

This proposal as presented is an unacceptable attempt to force middle income families (and our children) to pick up the cost of fixing the horrendous economic mess that is the product of the Bush Administration's deregulatory fever and Wall Street's insatiable greed. If the potential danger to our economy was not so dire, this blatant effort to essentially transfer $700 billion up the income ladder to those at the top would be laughable. (more)

Take back America! Take back the Planet!



Register, download the free movie, burn some DVD's and pass them around. Courtesy Michael Moore and the Slackers of America, get out there and get'em in November!

***This message comes to you from a Red State rebel, my compañero in Kansas, Mike Caddell, editor of Fightin' Cock Flyer, Discomfit Magazine and Storming Heaven's Gates***

"Slacker Uprising" is the new film by Michael Moore and is available for a FREE download at http://slackeruprising.com starting September 23rd 2008. Sign up now!

$1 Trillion Fix: US Government goes Kamikaze

While US Treasury Secretary Henry 'Kamikaze' Paulson seeks Congress permission to spend a further $700 billion of taxpayer's money to chase after bad debts, Bloomberg reports that public borrowing will soon go over $1 trillion and that this will crush the US Dollar.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to end the rout in U.S. financial markets may derail the dollar's three-month rally as investors weigh the costs of the rescue.

The combination of spending $700 billion on soured mortgage-related assets and providing $400 billion to guarantee money-market mutual funds will boost U.S. borrowing as much as $1 trillion, according to Barclays Capital interest-rate strategist Michael Pond in New York. While the rescue may restore investor confidence to battered financial markets, traders will again focus on the twin budget and current-account deficits and negative real U.S. interest rates.

Bloomberg, 'Dollar May Get `Crushed' as Traders Weigh Up Bailout', 22/09/08

It's all complete madness and exposes a panicking government that has no idea what to do in the face of the impending collapse that many of us in the global blogging fraternity have been warning about for years now. And neither the US or UK governments appear to be looking at any longer term strategies than trying to bail out a rapidly-sinking Titanic showing us all how incapable and incompetent they and their so-called neoliberal 'free market' chums really are.

Meantime both Russia and China are beginning to talk of setting up an alternative, global monetary system. They will, no doubt, soon find allies in other parts of the world such as Venezuela and South America. The Russians and French have taken the first steps towards a pan-European security pact.

Congressman Ron Paul (R) has described 'Kamikaze' Paulson's move to be akin to giving a drug addict yet another fix. Here's his take on events:

Al Qaeda or Al-CIA-duh?

Rory's Note: Whenever I hear an atrocity blamed on Al Qaeda my internal crap-detector invariably changes the phrase to Al-CIA-duh. Seems so again. I found this and thought to send it on in its original form. The English may not be perfect but it seems Pakistanis are far more alert to this kind of thing:

What Was Mysterious Activity Going on in the Marriott Hotel Islamabad by United States Marines?

Pakistan Daily, Sunday, 21 September 2008

12:18 www.daily.pk

Marriott Hotel has now become a ghost house which was yesterday the most beautiful and prestigious hotels in the Islamabad. While the condemnation of the blasts and the deaths and the loss of property is going on from all the quarters, some intriguing news is also pouring in.

After the blast, mysteriously fire was started at the fourth and fifth floors. It was said that this fire was the result of gas pipeline burst running through the hotel. The million dollar question is that was the gas pipeline not running through the other floors? Why the fire broke out from the fourth and fifth flours? That is the question which perhaps holds the key to the mystery as why the hotel was targeted yesterday, in which more than 60 people died including many foreigners.

Though it would never get confirmed but the fire on the fifth and fourth floor of the hotel broke out because those flours were housing the mysterious steel boxes under the heavy guard of United States marines and no one including the Pakistani security forces and the security men of the hotel were allowed to go near with the them. These boxes were shifted inside the hotel when the Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

It is said that one member of parliament Mumtaz Alam who belongs to the PPP, the ruling party was there eye witnessed the whole scene when the white truck of US embassy came to the gate of Marriot Hotel and US marines themselves unloaded the steel boxes from the trucks and shifted them to the fourth and fifth floors without passing through them the scanners at the entrance of the hotels. When the truck was there, all the entrance and the exit passage way to the hotels were closed.

And now this blast has occurred at the Marriott, while that mysterious activity was going on.

US Ambassador expelled from Venezuela

CARACAS, September 11.—Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has ordered the U.S. ambassador in Caracas, Patrick Duddy, to leave the country within 72 hours, a measure that was adopted in solidarity with Bolivia, and at the same time informed Washington of Venezuela’s decision to cut off supplies of crude oil to that nation, the AFP reported.


Evo & Hugo

President Hugo Chávez"As a gesture of solidarity with Bolivia, from this moment on, the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela," the president said during an election campaign rally in Puerto Cabello, 120 kilometers west of the capital, for his party’s candidate for regional elections in November.

The Bolivarian leader expressed his support for Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose government is experiencing a crisis that has been incited by reactionary forces in the country. Morales had also expelled Washington’s representative in La Paz, accusing him of being behind the opposition’s maneuvers.

Chavéz’ announcement came just hours after the Venezuelan administration presented taped recordings of conversations and denounced an attempted coup d’état against Chávez, planned by active and retired military officers with the full support of the U.S. administration.

Likewise, the President announced that he would halt oil sales to the United States if the Latin American country is to become the target of an attack by the White House.

Speaking live on television, Chávez also gave instructions to his Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro to arrange for the immediate return of the Venezuelan ambassador in the United States.

The president stated that "when there is a new government in the United States," Venezuela will send an ambassador but as long as President Bush is in power, Caracas will have no diplomatic representation in that country.

The Bolivarian leader placed responsibility for the tense situation on the U.S. government, which is "behind all the maneuvers of political destabilization currently underway in Latin America," he stated.

Translated by Granma International •

Venezuela Expels Human Rights Watch Director for “Meddling Illegally”
September 19th 2008, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, September 19, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- The Venezuelan government expelled two employees of the U.S-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco and Americas Deputy Director Daniel Wilkinson, after the two presented a report that praised Venezuela's 1999 Constitution but harshly criticized the "government's willful disregard for the institutional guarantees and fundamental rights that make democratic participation possible."


Vivanco

In a press release, the Venezuelan Foreign Relations Ministry said Vivanco and Wilkinson "have done violence to the constitution" and "assaulted the institutions" of Venezuela by "meddling illegally in the internal affairs of our country."

The ministry also said the HRW report is linked to the "unacceptable strategy of aggression" of the United States government. The ministry said the expulsion of Vivanco and Wilkinson was in the interest of "national sovereignty" and "the defense of the people against aggressions by international factors."

Constitutional lawyer and National Assembly Deputy Carlos Escarrá explained to the press, "The constitution of Venezuela expresses that a foreigner with a tourist visa cannot make commentaries against the President of the Republic."

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro warned in a press conference that "any other foreigner... who attempts to come to Venezuela and use our democratic order, with the total freedom of expression, to assault our institutions in a rude manner... will receive the same reply."

HRW's report, titled "A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela," says the two-day coup against President Hugo Chávez in April 2002 was the "most dramatic setback" to the human rights guarantees of the 1999 Constitution, but that the Chávez administration has since used the coup as a pretext to undercut those rights.

Specifically, the government has engaged in "discrimination on political grounds," "open disregard for the principle of separation of powers," and has "undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela," according to the report, which bases its conclusions on interviews conducted over the past two years.

Expulsión del Director de Human Rights Watch (En Español)

The Gaian Apocalypse is Upon Us

Some of us --this writer included-- have been warning for some years that another huge collapse of the capitalist system was on its way. Looking back on those early days the collapse has been like a rail-crash in slow motion. It's something that has had a long, drawn out process of manifestation.

But, my friends, it's really happening now in front of our very eyes. And, as one of the commentators in the video below observes, these are indeed interesting times. Times when even a popular programme on BBC Radio asks the question, Is capitalism finished?

Well you can guess what my answer is. But just to be sure, I'll spell it out: yes, capitalism is rapidly winding up but let's not fool ourselves that this was a momentary thing. Its decline has been going on for decades now but, rather like a melting ice-floe, there comes a moment in the process of meltdown when the momentum begins to vastly accelerate. We have reached that moment it seems.



And so we must ask, what next? Where are the signs of a global revolution against capitalism? The revolution, as has been said, will not be televised, so don't look for it there, you won't find it in the artificial bubble of unreality which the apparatchiks, the nomenklatura of the capitalist system, try to fool us is consensus reality. All of that was and is a lot of wishful thinking from which they are now being rudely woken.

Despite appearances what we are facing today is the Mother of All Revolutions:

What we see all about us is the corporate capitalism of a 'New World Order' spiralling increasingly out-of-control mimicking a planetary biosystem also, apparently increasingly in chaos.

That's the reality, forget the endless torrent of words for which the talking heads are paid to spew out. It is in the enactment of nothing less than a tremendous planetary paradigm shift that we find ourselves now.

War from the Perspective of a Paradigm Shift, Chimes of Freedom, 12/01/06

I wrote that some years ago, comparing the breakdown of capitalism to that of the planet's biosystem. When you think about it, there's nothing fanciful at all in that. Human behaviour, including its behaviour in the world of economics, is but an aspect of the greater, planetary biosystem. When human behaviour goes out of kilter with the biosystem and acts, instead, like a cancer cell it ends up destroying itself. That is no doubt what Karl Marx was thinking of when he predicted that capitalism, through its own success, would bury itself.

Now look around us: can we not see that Marx was right? Or are we so addicted to worshipping the illusory Golden Calf that we shall continue to deny the obvious and fish around, ever more desperately, for excuses and rationales? It's much easier to do nothing while it all happens around us ... just so long that it is we who are not suffering from the consequences. But that is no longer the case. The big collapse is pulling us all in with it.

This is a thing of planetary consequences. In a time of what the Native Americans describe as the Earth Changes, the Apocalypse has arrived. Of course I don't mean the simplistic nonsense espoused by fanatical Christian Fundamentalists or Bushco and his bandits.

Living in a world where the predominant archetypes are of a judeo-christian nature, it surprises me not at all that we should find ourselves in what appears to be the endgame of Armageddon. Except that, in the real world, Armageddon is not being played out by Man but by Nature, Gaia herself. And compared to the machinations of the New World Order the Armageddon that is already all around us is the one so effetely described by the War Party's media as the "Climate Changes."

War from the Perspective of a Paradigm Shift, Chimes of Freedom, 12/01/06

In reality and outside their artificial bubble it is something far more real. Something which could be described as a Gaian Apocalypse, a phenomenon which is taking place on many levels of experience, macrocosmic and microcosmic. It is a holistic phenomenon precisely because of the technological outreach that capitalism has achieved. Whether we appreciate it or not we all live in a global village, something of which the collapse of capitalism is once more reminding us. It is, more than ever, a time when we shall all have to Think Global and Act Local. Those two are both part of the same reality we now need to address.

And in the language of old-time socialism, the time for international revolution has come. The Revolution is taking place amongst global humanity: in the anti globalist movement, in South America, in the food riots taking place world-over, in the growing resistance to the Chinese elite as the videos below illustrate. All we have to do is to join the dots together ...

Wall Street Teeters, the Empire & China Shake



Now Read Mike Ruppert's 'Life after the Oil Crash' here

China & the West: A Story of Converging Authoritarianism at War with the People

China forsook Mao's socialism (really state capitalism) for unfettered 'neoliberalism' and the worship of market forces ruled over by a surveillance state. As Naomi Klein has observed there is a curious convergence between what is happening in China and in the West. The two are moving closer together.

But this is not taking place without resistance from the grassroots. China has its dissidents as does the US and Europe. That you don't hear about them through state-controlled mainstream media (MSM) doesn't mean they don't exist and that a battle is not going on.

Books like Red State Rebels provide us with an insight into the battle going on against the creeping fascism of the US corporate state. Europeans would do well to educate themselves with such books and to ask themselves exactly what lies behind the confrontations such as those we saw recently (on the Net at least) at the Democratic and Republican conventions.

And in China? These videos will give you a clue:

The New Left in China



The New Left in China, Pt II



Protest Movement Growing in China



Protest Movement Growing in China, Pt II



China's authoritarian Capitalism: A Global Trend?



China security tech supplied by US companies

Fidel warns that it would be a disaster if Chávez was assassinated

CARACAS.—The assassination of President Hugo Chávez would be a disaster for the homeland of Simón Bolívar, warned Cuban leader Fidel Castro in a letter read out on television by the Venezuelan president on Sunday, September 14.

In his letter, Fidel referred to the recently-revealed plan to effect a military coup and the assassination of the president in Venezuela, with the participation of retired and active military officers. (more)

Medvedev's Address to the Valdai Club