Sold Out Again

Yep...we elected them for change. To stop the Bushco assault on our Constitutional rights. We got change alright....they changed the speed at which Congress rolls over for Bushie from lightening speed to warp speed, and threw in a little hemming and hawing about it to try to appear to give a damn. Apparently defending the Constitution is "off the table" as well.

Compromise (SELLOUT)reached on government wiretaps

Senate leaders announced a compromise Thursday on legislation to expand the government's eavesdropping authority and protect telephone companies that cooperate from being sued.

If approved, the compromise would give U.S. spy agencies sweeping power to siphon international e-mails and phone calls from fiber-optic networks in the United States.

Update: Big surprise...the House has indeed approved the Sellout Agreement: House Approves Spy Bill Protecting Phone Firms

John Yoo, Totalitarian, By Paul Craig Roberts

John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the US can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving US citizens of habeas corpus protection. A US attorney general informed by Yoo’s memos even went so far as to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to US citizens.

Yoo’s animosity to US civil liberties made him a logical choice for appointment to the Bush Regime’s Department of Justice (sic), but his appointment as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, shatters that university’s liberal image.

Habeas corpus is a centuries-old British legal reform that stopped authorities from arbitrarily throwing a person into a dungeon and leaving him there forever without presenting charges in a court of law. Without this protection, there can be no liberty.......



.....Writing on the Wall Street Journal editorial page on June 17, Yoo denounced the five Supreme Court justices who defended the US Constitution against arbitrary “energy in the executive.”

Yoo believes that the Constitution and liberty rank below “the nation’s security.” Fortunately, Yoo wrote, a fix is at hand. “The advancing age of several justices” means that President McCain can give us more judges like Roberts (no relation) and Alito who will make certain that mere civil liberties don’t get in the way of arbitrary executive power justified by national security.

In a Yoo-McCain regime, the terrorists you will have to fear are those in your own government, against whom you will have no protection whatsoever.

Unfortunately, I don't think much will change even should McCain be defeated. The Democrats have made no attempt to restore our civil liberties, wanting to be sure that arbitrary executive power is available to them should they win the presidency. Civil liberties are quite inconvenient to the ruling class...whether they happen to call themselves Rethuglicans or Demofacists. We really are screwed aren't we...those of us who care about freedom.

How Much More Will We Take?

Ex-State Dept. official: Hundreds of detainees died in U.S. custody, at least 25 murdered

At yesterday's House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights hearing on torture, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody, with up to 27 of these declared homicides:

NADLER: Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?

WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108.

Maj. Gen. Taguba Accuses Bush Administration of War Crimes

Retired General Antonio Taguba who led the US army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib abuses has accused the Bush administration of “a systematic regime of torture” and war crimes. Taguba’s accusations appear in the preface to a new report released by Physicians for Human Rights. The report uses medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of eleven former prisoners who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay.

Taguba writes “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Bushco and the complicit criminals in Congress should surely be held to account....but won't be since it seems the self involved American Sheeple think its all OK as long as it's just "those people" being tortured. Well, they're just warming up folks...allowing it to go on unchallenged is sure to embolden these thugs....they will come for you too.

Black Clouds Continue to Gather

Central bank body warns of Great Depression

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the organisation that fosters cooperation between central banks, has warned that the credit crisis could lead world economies into a crash on a scale not seen since the 1930s.

In its latest quarterly report, the body points out that the Great Depression of the 1930s was not foreseen and that commentators on the financial turmoil, instigated by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, may not have grasped the level of exposure that lies at its heart.

RBS Says Switch to Cash to Avoid 'Nasty' Selloff

The Royal Bank of Scotland issued a stark warning to investors Wednesday, stating global stock and credit markets could be on the verge of a steep market sell-off as central banks have their hands tied by soaring inflation, the Telegraph reported. "A very nasty period is soon to be upon us - be prepared," Bob Janjuah, credit strategist at RBS, told the UK daily paper.

Morgan Stanley warns of 'catastrophic event' as ECB fights Federal Reserve

The clash between the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve over monetary strategy is causing serious strains in the global financial system and could lead to a replay of Europe's exchange rate crisis in the 1990s, a team of bankers has warned.

Not many reports about these things in the American mainstream media, nor are they reporting much about the growing food crisis. How many Americans will be caught totally off guard when the depression hits? Most I think, and it is going to be a horribly ugly situation. So much information available today, right at our fingertips, and yet so many of the sheeple are oblivious to the real world. How very sad, as intellectual laziness will likely be the downfall of this country. Suicide by willful ignorance.

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

For an industry being frozen out of new ventures in the world’s dominant oil-producing countries, from Russia to Venezuela, Iraq offers a rare and prized opportunity.

And just how many lives were lost to provide Busco's big oil cronies with this rare and prized opportunity? I hope there is a special place in Hell for the entire bunch, and that they find the path to it sooner rather than later.

Florida at the Precipice of Depression

The banks will fail, just as they failed in 1929 . . . but worse because this time some of this leverage is as high as 40:1. Insurance? Where is that going to come from? There is no insurance that can cover the cost of the coming bank failure, unless we just print more money. We are two generations removed from 1929. I am talking about Biblical 40 year generations. And when you look at who we were in 1929 and who we are now, you'll realize just how ugly it is going to be. In 1929 there was a stronger base of family values. There was a work ethic that we don't see today. The generation from 1929 - 1969 grew up with a totally different set of values than the generation from 1969 - 2009. The first generation worked their way out of the Depression. Today's generation doesn't understand work. We only understand creative financing and how to live off the next generation. And sadly, that is where we are today. We are at the precipice, and we are going to push our children over the edge because we lived so far above our means and ignored all of the warning signs. We lived just like the Romans in their final days.


Another interesting viewpoint ...great article and don't miss the comments section that follows...the link is, as always, in the title

Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism

The traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”

“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”

Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.

Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.

They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.”

How interesting, the prepare for the worst crowd seems to be gaining momentum..and hitting the main stream media an awful lot lately. Perhaps a few folks who still have some semblance of a conscience are thinking its time for a subtle warning to the masses....