You Might Be a Terrorist If..............

You happen to have the audacity to disagree with the government.....

400,000 still on terror watchlist, including author of book on Rove
Over 1 million records on government’s combined watch list

James Moore, a Texas journalist who wrote two searing books on former Bush White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, found himself included on a no-fly list, a component of the combined terrorist watch list, and has not been able to get his name removed. It is unclear why Moore was listed and why he remains on the list — but Moore told RAW STORY that the list hasn’t made anyone safer.

“The terrorist watchlist is an icon for government malfunction and abuse,” Moore wrote in an email message Wednesday. “Politicians can seemingly nominate their enemies for the list or have it done by proxy using their bureaucratic influence. And the lists are maintained using outdated matching software that is incapable of finding discrepancies in all of the various data formats used by federal agencies. The list has made a lot of work for a lot of bureaucrats but it hasn’t caught a single terrorist or made safer one American soul.”

These misidentifications are generally explained as affecting only individuals with common names which they might share with actual terrorism suspects. However, last year Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) called for a probe after learning that the name of CNN correspondent Drew Griffin had appeared on the no-fly list shortly after he had done an investigative report on weaknesses in the federal air marshal system. A TSA spokesperson insisted that any connection between the two events was “absolutely fabricated.”

And look what they can do to you.......

The most visible case of consequences for an individual wrongly placed on the watchlist was Canadian software engineer Maher Arar. In 2002, Arar was detained at a New York City airport, then rendered without a court order to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured—all because Canadian officials had wrongly asked for his name to be included on a watchlist.

Still think you live in a free country? Oh, right,I forgot.... we've been exporting freedom all over the world for years now, must be why we haven't got much left at home.

A Rare Bit Of Common Sense...Not to Be Found in the Corporate Media of Course.

Optimists on the Titanic
As we blindly sail farther into the twenty first century, we are just beginning to witness the unraveling of our economic foundations. Like the fabled HMS Titanic, the U.S. economy was thought to be invincible. And like the Titanic, our economy has drifted into dangerous waters and has mired itself on an iceberg.

Certainly a better solution than that proposed by the government....they seem to think that continuing to do things the same way will bring different results....Hasn't that method of doing things been cited as the "very definition of insanity?" Stepping back to the basics of community based economy is the common sense answer...and, it will happen as the global economy has become hopelessly corrupted and unsustainable.

Russian Analyst Predicts Decline and Breakup of U.S.

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily Izvestia published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

The paper said Panarin's dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year's events.

When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: "It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator."

When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: "Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia."

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

Could happen. One of the many possibilities we are faced with as our economy hits the skids. I wonder, would the federal government let loose the reins of power it holds on the states should they decide to strike off on their own? Or, will we have another civil war, with the Feds unleashing the armed forces against its own citizens. Or, perhaps martial law will be in effect by the time the economy has collapsed completely, the population largely disarmed. I also wonder how many of our citizens are aware of the extent of our financial and political crisis. Certainly it seems that there should be a larger and louder outcry by now....but then again, that should have been the case years ago. Very uncertain future for sure. And, still, so many are determined to believe that it can't happen here...sigh...discouraging.

The Dreaded D Word Hits the Mainstream Media

From CNBC:

Bailouts Will Push US into Depression

The end result of the global economic slowdown may be the U.S. announcing national bankruptcy as the government cannot afford the bailouts that it promised and the market will not bail out the government, Martin Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche, told CNBC on Thursday.

"We expect a depression in the United States. We expect a depression, very possibly, also in Europe," Hennecke said on "Worldwide Exchange."

Of course, many other sources have been predicting another US depression for quite some time, but the mainstream media has been busy aping the propaganda of the Chimp in Charge, telling Americans that our current problems are but a temporary blip in our otherwise "solid" economy. Imagine how ominous things must be if the mainstream is finally admitting that there is real trouble on the horizon.

Megabubble waiting for new president in 2009 'Numbers racket' exposes potential disaster for economy, markets

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RROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Remember that big ah-ha moment in the 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz?" Dorothy wants to see the Wizard. His voice booms: "Do not arouse the wrath of the Great and Powerful Oz! Come back tomorrow!" Afraid, Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow shake. Dorothy's dog runs up, tugs on a curtain. She chases Toto, pulls curtain open: "Who are you?" Dr. Marvel stutters: "Well, I - I - I am the Great and Powerful, Wizard of Oz." Dorothy: "You are? I don't believe you!" He replies: "No, it's true. There's no other Wizard except me." Dorothy's miffed: "Oh, you're a very bad man!" Wizard: "Oh, no, my dear. I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad Wizard."

2009 Sequel: Script exposes diabolical cover-up conspiracy Flash forward: Real life, Washington, new leaders, a new Congress, old wizardry. Be forewarned: No matter who's elected president, America will soon see a massive statistical curtain pulled back, exposing a con game of historic proportions. And when that happens, you and I will suffer another ear-splitting global meltdown, bigger than today's housing-credit crisis, dragging us deep into a recession and bear market for years.

Cast: New 'leading man' from old Nixon political machine Yes, the lead character pulling back the curtain is none other than Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist for Nixon, and today America's leading political historian. Phillips just published "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics & the Crisis of American Capitalism," everything you need to know about today's credit meltdown.

One of the things that is discussed in this article is the unbelievable way that inflation figures have purposely distorted by the government for years now...a subject that I have been following, and just one aspect of the smoke and mirrors which are used to hide the real economic condition of this country from the people. They cannot afford to clue us in, as consumer spending is the ONLY thing that keeps the elaborate facade intact. If you set aside the government propaganda and evaluate the facts and figures for yourself, you will realize very quickly that the US is bankrupt and we are in big trouble. Our economy is just a house of cards built on a shaky foundation of debt and worthless paper, like the layer upon layer of debt backed "securities" that are traded like currency....and the wind is picking up folks...the meltdown of those mortgage backed securities is just the beginning. The link to the entire article can be found in the title.

Yep, The Shocks Do Indeed Keep Coming...More Economic Headlines

Bank failures: How bad will it be? Washington Mutual, Wachovia and National City are among the financial institutions that have announced huge losses and are looking for billions of dollars from private equity firms or others in the industry just to keep their doors open.

Fed's Direct Loans to Banks Climb to Record Level May 15 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve's direct loans of cash to commercial banks climbed to the highest level on record in the past week as money-losing lenders increasingly turn to the central bank for funds.Funds provided through the so-called discount window for banks rose by $2.8 billion to a daily average of $14.4 billion in the week to May 14, the central bank said today in Washington. Separately, the Fed's loans to Wall Street bond dealers rose by $75 million to $16.6 billion.

Flood of Foreclosures Prove Loan Modification Isn't Working U.S. foreclosure filings climbed 65 percent and bank seizures more than doubled in April from a year earlier as mortgage industry efforts to modify loans fell short.
More than 243,300 properties were in some stage of foreclosure, the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of default data, began in January 2005. One in every 519 households received a filing and Nevada, California and Florida had the highest rates. Filings rose 4 percent from March.

Bank repossessions jumped 145 percent in April from a year earlier to 54,574, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac. The company has database of more than 1.5 million properties and monitors foreclosure filings including defaults notices, auction sale notices and bank seizures.

Banks will seize about 60,000 properties a month through December, when about 1 million U.S. homes, or a quarter of all homes for sale, may be bank-owned, Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac's executive vice president of marketing, said in an interview.

Farmers unable to cash in on soaring food prices All over the world, prices for basic foods -- barley for beer, milk for cheese, corn for tortillas, and the rice that serves as a staple for more than half the world's population -- are soaring.

But farmers aren't rushing to cash in on the boom by planting more of the crops.

The amount of corn planted in the U.S. is expected to dip this year. Rice acreage in California, which sells as much as half its crop overseas, is predicted to increase by only a small amount. Instead, farmers are planting cheaper-to-grow wheat and soy.

They say the reason is simple. The cost of planting some crops is rising as fast as their prices, and sometimes faster, leaving little incentive to increase production of some foods that remain in high demand around the world.

Global Food Shock With increasing world demand and poor weather in the Southern Hemisphere, the margin for error has become very thin. This year, global wheat supplies are projected to hit a 60-year low, and barley will plunge to a 42-year low. Corn stocks are expected to drop to the lowest level since 1984. Global grain supplies are down to 50 days, less than half the amount just 8 years ago.

What was discussed at a closed session of the U.S. House of Representatives? Last week's session was only the fourth time in 176 years that Congress has closed it's doors to the public.

Word has begun leaking from last weeks special, closed-door session of the United States House of Representatives.

Theorists wrote "Not only did members discuss new surveillance provisions as was the publicly stated reason for the closed door session, they also discussed: The imminent collapse of the U.S. economy to occur by September 2008, the imminent collapse of US federal government finances by February 2009, the possibility of Civil War inside the USA as a result of the collapse and advance round-ups of "insurgent U.S. citizens" likely to move against the government.

Oil prices spike to record near $128 a barrel, as retail gas and diesel hit new highs
Even more important, the traders placing the bets expect prices to just keep moving higher.
Goldman Sachs, one of the world's most influential investment banks, underscored that sentiment Friday when it hiked its oil price forecast for the second half of the year to $141 a barrel, up from $107 previously. Analysts at the bank argue that the oil market is undergoing a "structural repricing" that will continue to play out for some time to come.

The Bush Legacy: Journey to the Dark Side

As a people, we Americans have not faintly come to grips with how centrally the Bush Administration has planted certain practices in our midst--at the very heart of governmental practice, of the news, of everyday life. Many of these practices were not in themselves creations of this administration. For instance, the practice of kidnapping abroad --"rendition"--began at least in the Clinton era, if not earlier. Waterboarding, a medieval torture, was first practiced by American troops in the Philippine insurrection at the dawn of the previous century. (It was then known as "the water cure.")

Torture of various sorts was widely used in CIA interrogation centers in Vietnam in the 1960s. Back in that era, the CIA also ran its own airline, Air America, rather than just leasing planes for its torture capers from various corporate entities through front businesses. Abu Ghraib-style torture and abuse, pioneered by the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s, was taught and used by American military, CIA, and police officials in Latin America from the 1960s into the 1980s. If you doubt any of this, just check out Alfred McCoy's still shocking book, A Question of Torture. Even offshore secret CIA prisons aren't a unique creation of the Bush Administration. According to Tim Weiner in his new history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes, in the 1950s the Agency had three of them--in Japan, Germany and the Panama Canal Zone--where they brought double agents of questionable loyalty for "secret experiments" in harsh interrogation, "using techniques on the edge of torture, drug-induced mind control, and brainwashing."

And yet, don't for a second think that nothing has changed. Part of the Bush legacy lies in a new ethos in this country. In my childhood in the 1950s, for example, we knew just who the torturers were. We saw them in the movies. They were the sadistic Japanese in their prison camps, the Gestapo in their prisons, and the Soviet Secret police, the KGB, in their gulags (even if that name hadn't yet entered our world). As the President now says at every opportunity, and as we then knew, Americans did not torture.

Today, and it's a measure of our changing American world, a child turning on the TV serial 24dotermed a "no-brainer," a "dunk in the water" in the torture chamber. There is no deniability left in the movies --and little enough of it in real life. or heading for the nearest hot, new action flick at the local multiplex knows that Americans torture and that torture, once the cultural province of our most evil enemies, is now a practice that is 100 percent all-American and perfectly justifiable (normally by the ticking-bomb scenario). And few even blink. In lockdown America, it computes. The snarl at the border fits well enough with what our Vice President has termed a "no-brainer," a "dunk in the water" in the torture chamber. There is no deniability left in the movies --and little enough of it in real life.

For those who thought true bi-partisanship was a impossible, our descent into fascism is surely a model of seamless cooperation between the repuglinazis and demofascists capable of convincing the most stubborn skeptic. The rest of the article is well worth your time...just hit the link in the title.

An Alleged "Two Party System"

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

We must be clear about the following bitter realities:

1. "Every 10 minutes an Iraqi civilian is injured or killed in a war that George Bush says will not end until he leaves office. Every 10 hours an American soldier is killed in a war that George Bush says will not end until he leaves office. Every 10 days $2 billion is removed from the U.S. Treasury and placed in the accounts of Halliburton, Blackwater and all other war profiteers that are getting rich off the misery of Iraqis and Americans by a government that will continue to remove those amounts or more every ten days as long as George Bush is President of the United States" (from Sally B. Davidson at Veterans for Peace, NY).

While Bush and Cheney remain in office, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan will continue. Bush's recent announcement of his (probably illegal) "agreement" with the increasingly unpopular, discredited, U.S.-puppet Maliki regime to continue Iraq deployment of U.S. troops indefinitely shows Cheney/Bush's absolute and total contempt for our Constitution and the wishes of 3/4 of U.S. citizens. As even Alan Greenspan admitted in his recently-published book: the Iraq War was largely about oil. The U.S. power elite, Democratic as well as Republican, wants those permanent U.S. bases in Iraq to protect access to, and control of, "our" oil, especially as China, India, and Europe become stronger economic and trade threats to U.S. global hegemony.

2. Why do BOTH major parties agree that the U.S. "needs" access to, and control of, this oil? Because, implicitly, most Americans believe that we "need" this oil to live the way we have become accustomed to living in 2007. The one, true religion of all Americans is Consumerism, and we all practice it daily via TV & radio, the Internet, and in our mega-cathedral of consumption, the shopping mall. We need to be honest with ourselves and face up to how much our consumptive (pun intended) U.S. lifestyle depends on maintaining our oil and other fossil fuels addictions, and how complacent, if not comfortable, we are about expecting that our political and military leaders will continue to secure these foreign fossil fuels to support our lavish "American Dream" lifestyle. Then we need to ask ourselves how much we are truly willing to cut back, and how we can make this a part of our activism.

We are a shallow and materialistic society, and there is no doubt that the blood shed in Bushco's wars is about money...and power of course...as Americans sell out freedom for more things that we don't even need. We have become a society of spoiled and demanding children, too busy whining for more things to care about the loss of our rights and our humanity. I know people who literally go into a panic when the cable goes out...as if it were as serious as losing one's heat on a blustery winter night...You won't see these same people upset at the reports of more innocent children blown to bits in Iraq to make sure the SUV can have a full tank, or the reports of thousands more children here drugged up for the depression and other emotional problems that stem from being raised in the empty wasteland that our culture has become. Of course many of them never see those reports, consumed with celebrity gossip and the latest sale at the mall. We have the President and Congress we elected....and they are a remarkably accurate reflection of what our society has become. Despite all the hard times and suffering that it will bring, I won't necessarily be sorry to see the house of cards that our economy has become collapse. Unfortunately, an event that extreme may be the only way our society will ever get its priorities back in order....I hear many economists saying our recent economic woes are a huge market correction, and necessary to get the country back on sound footing....well, I think that what is much more necessary for a solid and sound America is a massive values correction....and perhaps that will be the good that will come from a financial catastrophe.

The Costs of War for Oil

Bonnie Bricker and Adil E. Shamoo

"We have to decide, as a nation, whether our need for Middle Eastern oil is more important to our future than our conduct as a moral and ethical people." Which brave presidential candidate would lay it on the line so clearly? None yet. And that's the problem with the national debate on the war in Iraq, and possibly, our foray into Iran as well.

Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve, has declared that "...the Iraq war is largely about oil" in his recently released memoirs. "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are," said the Republican Senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel to law students of Catholic University last September. "They talk about America's national interest. What the hell do you think they're talking about? We're not there for figs."

Yet, although anti-war activists decried the "blood for oil" connection from the beginning of the war, no honest conversations have occurred in the public to involve Americans in this discussion.

This is the debate that Americans should be having: on the one hand, America's economy is fueled by our use of energy to run our lives--fueling our cars and SUVs, our industry, our homes. The United States uses 25% of the world's oil and but we're only 4% of the world's population.

We like to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and we love the freedom of choosing to use as much energy as we want. We also don't like anyone telling us that we have to change our ways. If we keep using energy the way we always have, we're going to need a dependable source of it to ensure that our children and grandchildren have access to the same way of life. But we have competitors for oil in the world marketplace--China, especially--and many argue that if we don't lock up Middle Eastern oil for ourselves now, we won't have it for our use in the very near future. That will mean paying even more for energy and allowing other nations to rev up their economic engines at our expense.

On the other hand, the cost of ensuring this oil supply is a hefty one. Americans are losing lives. A generation of veterans will be suffering through the vast wounds of this war. Our actions in Iraq have led to as many as a million Iraqi deaths and many more wounded, and displaced 4.4 million Iraqis. We have, in the name of "The War on Terror", created so many U.S. enemies around the world, that our college-age students sew Canadian flags on their backpacks when abroad in the hopes of disguising their American identities.

As a result of this war, many Americans have come to accept that U.S. policy will include the moral and ethical disruptions of war--even when we have not been attacked by the people we invade, but rather are invading a weakened nation for the resource we desire.

We, as citizens of this country, bear the responsibility of our government's actions. We are not (yet) a country under the thumb of a tyrant, with no control over foreign policy. We look the other way as the government we elected does terrible, inhumane things to secure our standard of living...our desire for frivolous things. How many have died to make sure we can fill up the huge tanks on the monstrous SUV's that are so popular these days? We are a spoiled and shallow society ......a reality check is long overdue.

Reality Check......

Excerpts from:
Living in an Imperial World
by Karen Kwiatkowski

The republic is dead. Not sick, not dying, not failing, or in a gradual decline, not waiting to be resuscitated, but already stone cold dead.

This death probably occurred as we began to win the Cold War, but long before we realized we had prevailed. The professionalization of politics, of military and bureaucratic service to the state, of foreign policy making, and of business seems to have completely done in the old ideas. Simply federated, decentralized, self-depreciating government that once feared the people has self-actualized into a contemptuous, rapacious and iron-fisted murderer of freedom, and murderer of men.............

The founders worried that subsequent elites and factions would take over the republic they had birthed with every aspect of their power, as the gifted political elites of their time. Yet, as the 19^th century dawned, even the most pro-state among them loved freedom and hated tyranny.

They were right about government power and human nature, and their predictions true. New elites and government-dependent factions have ascended. Unfortunately, these political elites hate freedom and love the tyranny of government solutions...........

Recognize that the republic is dead, and that we owe its rotting bloated corpse no loyalty whatsoever.

This done, act accordingly. Publicly and privately, we should observe the corpse as a public nuisance, a pollutant both aesthetically and materially. When the yellow brick road leads us to the grand doors of government services, we should not avert our gaze but instead pull back the curtain, grandly, loudly, with the contagious laughter of a child, or the righteous anger of a soldier back in pieces from a war, like most wars, that was from the beginning a brutal political lie.

Will we insult a federal or state employee, a law enforcer or judge? Will we anger a politician, a lobbyist, a corporatist employer, or a government news organ for stealing our lives, our freedom of movement and thought, our productivity? We should certainly aspire to do so, with the zeal of missionaries.

To live in an imperial world, we must first, as survivors, recognize that it is an imperial world. History is filled with imperial/totalitarian states, as global graveyards are filled with those who were too late in recognizing what had already happened.

It’s over. The faithful and the hopeful may carry the corpse of the American republic, hoping that it can be brought back into normality, into life, and into power. I am afraid these nurturers will not survive the present reality of imperialism.

But some of us will look directly at the ugly, dangerous and very real empire. We will stare – with little hope but also with little fear – into the face of the FUBAR nation, and then roll up our sleeves and get started on the only life we may honestly live, as internal dissidents. We will no longer pledge allegiance, we will not obey old rules, we will make do and make it up as we go along. Our minds focused on surviving the empire, our talents and creativity unleashed against the state and its fantasist faithful, we will live as if we are free.

This simple prescription will not only make us survivors, but it will gradually cultivate a political landscape for a future of free republics where today we see nascent totalitarianism and bankrupt empire. This prescription was written for us in 1809 by revolutionary war general John Stark. He advised, "Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils."

We face a modern American state more overweening and dictatorial than even King George III could imagine, yet we have no declaration of independence, no privileged elite to demand it, no interested population to read and debate it. This time, our declaration will be made individually, every day, in calm desperate fearlessness, as we simply live free.

Sometimes it is very liberating to face the reality of a situation, no matter how harsh it may be, and move on...often a real solution becomes clear when hopes and illusions are no longer in the way, causing one to waste time and energy in the futile attempt to save something that is already long lost.