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Archive for category Corruption

Elective Amnesia: Why does George W. Bush get a free ride?

Mar 17

Posted by Michael Collins in Bush, Constitution, Corruption, Election Fraud | Comments off

photo bushwikipedia_zps61602900.jpg

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

George Bush lost the 2000 election by half a million votes.  When the state of Florida wanted to recount votes, Bush operatives disrupted the disreputable Florida elections commissions that held the key to a fair count.  But there was no point. Lists of felons from the Governor Bush Texas government were used to knock 50,000 legally registered voters off the Florida voting lists.  Many of whom were minority voters.  Turnout in Florida was very high.  Without that preemptive strike, there would have been no recount necessary.  Bush would have lost Florida outright.  The 2000 election was stolen. (Image)

Bush got in and immediately planned an invasion of Iraq, the greatest foreign policy disaster in the history of the country.  The true cost is over three trillion dollars.

Commander in chief Bush presided over a profound command failure leading up to 9/by failing to acknowledge overwhelming intelligence evidence of a plot to attack U.S. skyscrapers with airplanes.  The military command was so disarrayed; the U.S. Air Force could only mount a few fighters in defense and they arrived late.

Bush took Clinton era deregulation and allowed Wall Street to set up a big casino scam that brought the economy and many of the people to their knees financially.

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Al Akahbar: Syria – Damascus Repels Another Rebel Attack

Feb 8

Posted by Michael Collins in Arab Spring, Corruption, Middle East, Syria, War (endless) | Comments off

A Syrian rebel takes position with a heavy machine gun on the Jabal al-Turkman mountain in Syrian's northern Latakia province on 5 February 2013. (Photo: AFP - Aamir Qureshi)

A Syrian rebel takes position with a heavy machine gun on the Jabal al-Turkman mountain in Syrian’s northern Latakia province on 5 February 2013. (Photo: AFP – Aamir Qureshi)

Remember all those articles over the last few months – Syria to fall soon; what will post-Assad Syria look like?  Soon, we were lead to believe, the demands of Former Secretary of State (and neo-colonialism) Hillary Clinton would come true.  When didn’t she say – “Assad must go!”  Ironically, Assad is  still around and Clinton is  gone. That’s one big step for mankind and an even bigger step backwards for the Syrian rebels, particularly the very Al Qaeda fighters operating under the name Al Nusra.  They fight and win but rely on direct or indirect funding, weapons, and technical assistance from NATO and the Gulf plutocrats.  In fact, we now know that Ms. Clinton and the disgraced General Petraeus were pushing for the United States to openly arm the rebels.  Cooler heads prevailed.  Weapons and other items were stalled.  Assad’s military made some changes.  And now, voila!, the Syrian Arab Army is defending the capital.

 

  Was any of this dreadful, deadly conflict worth it?
– Michael Collins

From Al Akahbar-English
Creative Commons

By: Anas Zarzar, Marah Mashi

Published Thursday, February 7, 2013

The armed Syrian opposition declared yet another “zero hour” to take Damascus on Wednesday. By nightfall, however, the army managed to restore order in the capital and widen its offensive against the rebels in the countryside. Read the rest of this entry »

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Belgian MP Laurent Louis Tears Down Empire Project – Amazing!

Feb 2

Posted by Michael Collins in 9/11, antiwar, Arab Spring, Corruption, Violence, War (endless) | Comments off

Speech by Laurent Louis – Posted by Michael Collins

“It is about time to stop lying to us and treating people like imbeciles.”

Tearing Down the Empire Project:  This speech represents a moment of extreme truth for the NATO powers. The United States, Great Britain, France and the lesser powers have been throwing their weight around Asia and Africa without regard to the norms of civilized behavior Their drill includes attacking countries that pose no threat to any NATO member; engaging in ruinious sanctions as a negotiating tool; threatening war; and, engaging in military actions as a matter of routine. Laurent Louis, a Belgian MP and crusader for human rights, spoke to parliament and laid out the truth behind naked aggression and the lies that justify it. Michael Collins
(Originally found at Kenny’s Sideshow)

============

LAURENT LOUIS, MP: Thank you, Mr President. Dear Ministers, dear Colleagues.

Belgium is indeed the land of surrealism.

This morning we learned from the media that the Belgian army is incapable of fighting some extremist soldiers having radical Islamist beliefs existing within its own ranks but who cannot be dismissed for lack of legal means.

However, at the same time, we decide to help France in its war against “Terror” by providing logistical support for its operation in Mali. What wouldn’t we do in order to fight against terrorism outside our borders? I just hope we took care not to send for this anti-terrorist operation, in Mali, these much talked about Belgian Islamists soldiers!

I seem to be joking, but what is going on in the world today does not make me laugh at all. It doesn’t make me laugh, because without any doubt, the leaders of our Western countries are taking the people for imbeciles with the help and support of the Media which are nothing more today than an organ of propaganda of the ruling powers.

Around the world, military actions and regime’s destabilization are becoming more and more frequent. Preventive war has become the rule.

And today, in the name of democracy and the fight against terrorism, our states grant themselves the right to violate the sovereignty of independent countries and to overthrow legitimate leaders. Read the rest of this entry »

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Goldman, Other Welfare Queens Tell Us Forget Social Security-Medicare Until 70

Jan 22

Posted by Michael Collins in Austerity, Big Money, Corruption, Populism, Wall St | 4 Comments

Michael Collins

(Washington, DC 1/21)  A long standing  Money Party front, the Business Roundtable, wants you to wait until you’re 70 years old before you get Social Security and Medicare benefits.  This is just a reprise of the November 2012 dictate from the king of corporate cronyism, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.  (Image: DonkeyHotey)  (Greenspan statement)

The boss announced, “So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.”  Lloyd Blankfein, CBS News, November 2012

That’s easy for Lloyd to say.  He makes tens of millions of dollars a year without so much as lifting a finger.  You can be sure that Blankfein has a deluxe health insurance and retirement plan. Read the rest of this entry »

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Debt Ceiling Disaster – Crazy or Criminal?

Jan 9

Posted by Michael Collins in Austerity, Big Money, Corruption, Financial Crisis | 1 Comment

By Michael Collins
Photobucket

(Washington, DC 1/9/13) Let’s say that on a Monday, you sit down and take a hard  look at your finances.  Your bills exceed your income, assets are just a feint memory, and there is no relief in sight.  Reluctantly, you decide that your only choice is to declare bankruptcy.  On Tuesday you say, I think I’ll do some  shopping before it’s all over.  You proceed to charge $2,000 on  your VISA card for some jewelry and other non essentials.  On Wednesday, you get a lawyer and file for bankruptcy.

Guess what? You still owe the $2,000 since the court will conclude that you made the purchases  fraudulently. You knew you were filing for bankruptcy and made the charges anyway. Even worse, the court may refuse to grant the bankruptcy filing all together as a result of the obvious fraud.

That is exactly what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are doing with their open announcement that they will vote against raising the debt ceiling without their solution to government spending. Since that announcement, has one single deficit hawk stood up and said, We must stop all spending as of this moment since we are proposing to default on those expenditures?

They haven’t said any such thing and they won’t. That would mean an end of all Federal spending in their districts and states. They are more than happy to incur expenditures that they have no intention of paying anywhere close to on time.

Why is the refusal to raise the debt ceiling such a threat to the good faith and credit of the United States of America? Simple. The majority party in the House is engaged in flat out fraud. That party is spending money as it promises to default on the very amounts spent.

It is fraud, pure and simple.  The behavior of key leaders attacks the credit worthiness of the country.

You may say, Look, it’s only a temporary default. The loss of confidence still attaches to the action. In fact, the fraud of purchasing after declaring an intention to default is compounded by the grotesque insincerity of the threat. It’s enough to make your head spin.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives are involved in a very real, common conspiracy to commit fraud based on their statements and actions. In addition, they’re lying to the public since a real declaration default is not just extremely improbable, it is impossible. Sovereign states have the ability to issue currency.  That unique ability and asset can’t be denied due to a legislative tantrum.  Just like individuals and businesses, sovereign states have the very real option to develop a viable plan to work out of a financial crisis

The ever present double standard emerges. It is not OK for us to defraud creditors when we declare bankruptcy but the House can acquire goods and make promises to pay after openly declaring their intention to not pay. Nothing will happen to these politicians as a result of this conspicuous contempt for the law. If it looks like it might, they’ll just pass a law to make their crimes legal.

Every day, we suffer the undeserved indignity of being ruled by fools and fraudsters.

END

This article may be reposted with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

The Money Party

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Totalitarianism in the US: An Accident Waiting to Happen

Sep 1

Posted by Michael Collins in Big Money, Censorship, Constitution, Corruption, Criminal Justice, Election 2012, Election Fraud, Financial Crisis, Romney, Wall St | Comments off

By Numerian
First appeared in The Agonist

Listening to Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention, I couldn’t place where I had come across something quite like this before. Then it struck me – Pravda! I used to subscribe to Pravda in high school and college, first to learn Russian, and second, to pursue a college program in Soviet studies. Pravda was a newspaper that specialized in the Big Lie – the Five Year Plan was always ahead of schedule, Soviet industrial capabilities exceeded that of any other country, people were starving on streets all across America. The newspaper was a non-stop stream of lies, just as Paul Ryan’s speech was studded with Big Lies – lies that were easily disprovable, such as Barack Obama did nothing about the Simpson-Bowles recommendations to reduce the budget deficit (Paul Ryan didn’t mention he voted against these recommendations when the House killed any chance of enacting them); or that Obama made it easier for people to live off welfare (the President altered the enrollment rules of welfare at the request of Republican governors); or the Romney favorite – Obama cut over $700 billion of Medicare benefits for individuals (the cuts were imposed on hospitals and insurance companies, not beneficiaries, and Romney has the same cuts in his economic plan).  (Image:  Wikipedia) Read the rest of this entry »

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Polite Fascism Contracts The Right To Vote – The turning point for VoterID legislation

Aug 29

Posted by Michael Collins in Big Money, Constitution, Corruption, Criminal Justice, Election 2012, Election Fraud | Comments off

Introduction: The article below was written right after the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision upholding Indiana’s Voter ID law.  By upholding that law, the court allowed subsequent laws restricting the right to vote throughout the country. 

Voter ID laws require that citizens present a photo identification before they cast their ballot.   This requirement solves a fictional problem, “voter fraud,” individuals voting illegally.  I review the court’s decision based on totally inadequate evidence and provide background on the little-discussed origin of laws like this.   As Civil War Reconstruction ended, the KKK and other white supremacist groups in the Old South sought to stop black Americans from voting.  The laws did just that for decades until the Voting Rights Act helped correct the problem.

There is no more reason for Voter ID laws now than there was in 2008, unless the goal is to suppress voting by the poor, the young, and minorities.  These groups are far more likely to be without an acceptable photographic identification than the rest of the population.

Michael Collins, August 30, 2012

(Links to core documents and scholarship on this subject are provided at the end of the document.)

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Polite Fascism Contracts The Right To Vote

Scoop Independent News (First Published)
Tuesday, 13 May 2008, 8:45 pm
Column: Michael Collins

Another Supreme Outrage


Justices Stevens, Kennedy, and Roberts combined with Scalia, Alito, and
Thomas to take voting rights back to1898. Image (left), Image (right)

Polite Fascism Contracts The Right To Vote

William Crawford, et al, Petitioners 07-21 v.
Marion County Elections Board et al.

Indiana Democratic Party, et al., Petitioners 07-25 v. Todd Rokita,
Indiana Secretary of State, et al.
U. S. ____ (2008) Opinion of STEVENS, J.

By Michael Collins

They wear their robes but leave the hoods off, the polite justices of the Supreme Court. They write decisions then issue them in a formal setting, behind the columns of a capitol monument, with a history that confers a dignity not deserved. The Court embodies the dilemma of our modern culture. The most awful acts are committed with bland justification by polite people who hide behind institutional trappings; for the sake of the few, at the expense of the many. Read the rest of this entry »

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