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What it's ALL about... (Original Post) Octafish Aug 2013 OP
In other words, he knows which side his bread is buttered jsr Aug 2013 #1
Well-buttered... Octafish Aug 2013 #2
No matter how much butter they use truedelphi Aug 2013 #14
The Venus Project -- TBF Aug 2013 #3
Incredible mind, his and yours, TBF. I heard him in Ann Arbor in 2009... Octafish Aug 2013 #4
Thanks Octafish - TBF Aug 2013 #5
Jacques Fresco was amazing. 90 year old talked standing up for 60 minutes. Octafish Sep 2013 #22
If it was all about money, we wouldn't be wasting trillions of dollars spinning our wheels on wars Snake Plissken Aug 2013 #6
You are right. Money and Power. Octafish Aug 2013 #7
So it isn't just Money. It's Money & Power. Money, Power, Oil. Money, Power, Oil, Small Penises. KittyWampus Aug 2013 #12
Wasn't my idea. I prefer the Democratic approach of the New Frontier. Octafish Aug 2013 #13
Follow the money. The WH is just the frontman. blkmusclmachine Aug 2013 #8
Profits make for Buy Partisanship Octafish Aug 2013 #15
K & R AzDar Aug 2013 #9
It's like a business, this thing of ours. Octafish Sep 2013 #20
Yup it's been that way since the beginning of time! gopiscrap Aug 2013 #10
Absolutely. Anyone remember James R Bath? The guy links Houses of Bush and bin Laden... Octafish Sep 2013 #21
It's a racket alright. reusrename Aug 2013 #11
Have we stopped selling arms to Syria? tecelote Aug 2013 #16
Or.... my sig might have the answer. cui bono Sep 2013 #17
I like your sig line, but it's no dance or game. Octafish Sep 2013 #19
Oh, I know. Didn't mean to offend or upset or anything. cui bono Sep 2013 #23
Smedley was a brave whistleblower... chervilant Sep 2013 #18

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
2. Well-buttered...
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 10:55 AM
Aug 2013

...to the point there's not much butter for the rest of us.

From WikiLeaks:



Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies'

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.

SNIP...

Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html



Lots of guns.

truedelphi

(32,324 posts)
14. No matter how much butter they use
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 03:36 PM
Aug 2013

to sweeten things up for folks in the inner circle, it still smells fishy to the folks on the street.

TBF

(32,017 posts)
3. The Venus Project --
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 12:20 PM
Aug 2013
http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Been reading on this lately - they have a website and are on Facebook. Some great ideas from this guy Jacque Fresco. Obviously a huge paradigm shift, but he is talking about things we should all be considering.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
4. Incredible mind, his and yours, TBF. I heard him in Ann Arbor in 2009...
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 12:25 PM
Aug 2013
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7025785&mesg_id=7038666

We can transform the planet, explore and colonize the solar system, and our children the stars. Alas, we have, "more will than wallet" as George Herbert Walker Bush made clear to the nation during his inaugural address in 1989.

TBF

(32,017 posts)
5. Thanks Octafish -
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 12:28 PM
Aug 2013

and how awesome that you were able to hear him speak. I'm sure he's fantastic in person.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
22. Jacques Fresco was amazing. 90 year old talked standing up for 60 minutes.
Sun Sep 1, 2013, 12:12 PM
Sep 2013

The only thing, he's only got so much time left, so he asked everybody to leave him alone. If they have good ideas, put them into action. From something I posted on DU (can't find the OP, for some reason):



On March 5, futurist Jacques Fresco addressed a group of people at U-M in Ann Arbor. The former NASA engineer described how his current company had been commissioned by the then-flush Saudis to design the city of the future.

Fresco showed us an animated film of their work. The projected communities were organized in a circular shape, with city services in the center, the next ring being housing, then parks and recreation, then the outermost rings were for farming. Robots could be built to do all the dangerous, dirty jobs and heavy lifting. Robots even could do the assembly of buildings and the city itself. People were freed to do the work they wanted, each contributing.

The guy's 91-plus and he stood and talked for an hour. He indicated that our current model is one where corporations hold sway. And that, at their core, corporations are fascistic. "Who votes? Nobody. The CEO decides." He said, governments, whether commie or fascistic, similarly, are all the same. At heart, these organizations are faulty and corrupt with land stolen from the original people and a society geared toward war -- a process that makes some rich and the rest conscripted in their service.

True democracy, he said, results when We the People can decide. The people hear one leader speak. Another gives her or his side of the issue. A neutral nation debates and opines and decides. That's what democracy is all about -- people deciding. And people never decide for war. And we must stand up to those who would move us to war -- except when, as in World War II -- evil forces wanted to dominate and enslave the world and destroy all who opposed them.

[font color="blue"]Fresco said he sees no hope for the nation and planet unless people decide to stop today's fascists. [/font color]He said, to end war and survive, we must share resources. We must sustain and treat each life with dignity: food, water, education, political rights, etc. We have the resources to do it. And the resources we have can create an abundance -- not the shortages that we see all around under the current system.





Thanks for grokking what it's all about, TBF!

Snake Plissken

(4,103 posts)
6. If it was all about money, we wouldn't be wasting trillions of dollars spinning our wheels on wars
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 12:39 PM
Aug 2013

It's all about idiots with more money than brains and very tiny penises controlling the agenda of this country

It's all about very insecure obscenely wealthy dirtbags who need control and power over others as much as a crackhead needs a hit off a crack pipe.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
7. You are right. Money and Power.
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 12:48 PM
Aug 2013

The formula has worked since Machiavelli was buttering up the Prince: "Money to get the power, power to keep the money."



Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush, sharing a moment and a bit o' information in this small world.



Rothschild and Freshfields founders’ had links to slavery, papers reveal

By Carola Hoyos
Financial Times

Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.

Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.

Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.

JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.

CONTINUED (with registration, etc) ...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html



Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Why would they feel that way? The Privilege of Birthright, of course:

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection
 

KittyWampus

(55,894 posts)
12. So it isn't just Money. It's Money & Power. Money, Power, Oil. Money, Power, Oil, Small Penises.
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 01:57 PM
Aug 2013

Money, Power, Oil, Small Penises, Revenge.

Money, Power, Oil, Small Penises, Revenge, Tribalism

Money, Power, Oil, Small Penises, Revenge, Tribalism, Freedom


Maybe it isn't all reduced down to a neat, one size fits all little package?

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
13. Wasn't my idea. I prefer the Democratic approach of the New Frontier.
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 03:25 PM
Aug 2013

Be the strongest, but try peace first. That's why JFK could say ''No'' to those wanting war at least four times:

Even though they knew their invasion plans were compromised, the CIA and Pentagon tried to force Kennedy to make war over the Bay of Pigs.

While an attack on Soviet missile bases in Cuba and on ships at sea would escalate to nuclear war, the Pentagon and most of the Cabinet tried to force Kennedy to make war, nuclear if necessary -- the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Pentagon and the Hawks in Congress and his Cabinet recommended war in Vietnam and southeast Asia to stop the spread of Communism, Kennedy sent volunteers -- which he ordered out by the end of 1964 -- but said he would never commit U.S. draftees to fight in another country's civil war, Vietnam.

Most troublesome to me, seeing how the Hawks lied America into invading Iraq twice in the last 22 years, DCI Allen Dulles and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Lyman Lemnitzer counseled Kennedy to order an all-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in Fall of 1963 -- the optimal time for a successful pre-emptive war.

You know what happened next, which leads to today's complicated story.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
15. Profits make for Buy Partisanship
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 04:21 PM
Aug 2013

Halliburton has a reputation for being in the forefront of the privatized warmaking business, thanks to Sneering Dick Cheney and Poppy Bush.



Cheney's Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door

News: As Bush Sr.'s secretary of defense, Dick Cheney steered millions of dollars in government business to a private military contractor -- whose parent company just happened to give him a high-paying job after he left the government.

By Robert Bryce
Mother Jones
August 2, 2000

EXCERPT...

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. BRS specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

After Bill Clinton's election cost Cheney his government job, he wound up in 1995 as CEO of Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services giant -- which just happens to own Brown & Root Services. Since then, Cheney has collected more than $10 million in salary and stock payments from the company. In addition, he is currently the company's largest individual shareholder, holding stock and options worth another $40 million. Those holdings have undoubtedly been made more valuable by the ever-more lucrative contracts BRS continues to score with the Pentagon.

Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/08/cheney.html



Kellogg, Brown and Root, Halliburton's parent company, helped make Vietnam into a money maker for a certain Texas politician who, uh, was fooled into war when the NSA and CIA lied about the Gulf of Tonkin.



Halliburton Deals Recall Vietnam-Era Controversy

Cheney's Ties to Company Reminiscent of LBJ's Relationships

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1569483



I wonder if President Kennedy would have seen war as a form of welfare for the wealthy? I do know after the Bay of Pigs thing he could see right through the warmongers:

JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL

What's news to most Americans, President Kennedy had opposed war in Vietnam and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops. About a week after the assassination, President Johnson countermanded those orders. Here are links to NSAM 263 and NSAM 273 so readers can see for themselves.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
20. It's like a business, this thing of ours.
Sun Sep 1, 2013, 11:48 AM
Sep 2013

"To the people who work for it, the CIA is known as The Company. The Big Business mentality pervades everything. Agents, for instance, are called assets. The man in charge of the United Kingdom desk is said to have the 'U.K. account'..." -- Philip Agee



The Origins of the Overclass

by Steve Kangas

EXCERPT...

The Business Origins of CIA Crimes

Although many people think that the CIA’s primary mission during the Cold War was to "deter communism," Noam Chomksy correctly points out that its real mission was "deterring democracy." From corrupting elections to overthrowing democratic governments, from assassinating elected leaders to installing murderous dictators, the CIA has virtually always replaced democracy with dictatorship. It didn’t help that the CIA was run by businessmen, whose hostility towards democracy is legendary. The reason they overthrew so many democracies is because the people usually voted for policies that multi-national corporations didn't like: land reform, strong labor unions, nationalization of their industries, and greater regulation protecting workers, consumers and the environment.

So the CIA’s greatest "successes" were usually more pro-corporate than anti-communist. Citing a communist threat, the CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mussadegh government in Iran in 1953. But there was no communist threat — the Soviets stood back and watched the coup from afar. What really happened was that Mussadegh threatened to nationalize British and American oil companies in Iran. Consequently, the CIA and MI6 toppled Mussadegh and replaced him with a puppet government, headed by the Shah of Iran and his murderous secret police, SAVAK. The reason why the Ayatollah Khomeini and his revolutionaries took 52 Americans hostage in Tehran in 1979 was because the CIA had helped SAVAK torture and murder their people.

Another "success" was the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacabo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Again, there was no communist threat. The real threat was to Guatemala’s United Fruit Company, a Rockefeller-owned firm whose stockholders included CIA Director Allen Dulles. Arbenz threatened to nationalize the company, albeit with generous compensation. In response, the CIA initiated a coup that overthrew Arbenz and installed the murderous dictator Castillo Armas. For four decades, CIA-backed dicatators would torture and murder hundreds of thousands of leftists, union members and others who would fight for a more equitable distribution of the country’s resources.

Another "success" story was Chile. In 1973, the country’s democratically elected leader, Salvadore Allende, nationalized foreign-owned interests, like Chile’s lucrative copper mines and telephone system. International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) offered the CIA $1 million to overthrow Allende — which the CIA allegedly refused — but paid $350,000 to his political opponents. The CIA responded with a coup that murdered Allende and replaced him with a brutal tyrant, General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet tortured and murdered thousands of leftists, union members and political opponents as economists trained at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman installed a "free market" economy. Since then, income inequality has soared higher in Chile than anywhere else in Latin America.

Even when the communist threat was real, the CIA first and foremost took care of the elite. In testimony before Congress in the early 50s, it artificially inflated Soviet military capabilities. A notorious example was the "bomber gap" that later turned out to be grossly exaggerated. Another was "Team B," a group of hawkish CIA analysts who seriously distorted Soviet military data. These scare tactics worked. Congress awarded giant defense contracts to the U.S. military-industrial complex.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html



PS: Old news to you, AzDar. Big news to 99-percent of the USofA.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
21. Absolutely. Anyone remember James R Bath? The guy links Houses of Bush and bin Laden...
Sun Sep 1, 2013, 12:04 PM
Sep 2013

The short version: Back in the day when George W was defendin' Texas from the Air Force of North Vietnam, he met a man by the name of James R Bath. They both were drummed off the flight line for failing to take physical exams -- coincidently, no doubt, right about the same time the government starting testing pilots for illegal drugs 'n' such. Note how the Bush White House redacted a proper noun here and there. Here're two versions of the document:



Now this document shows that the House of bin Laden selected James R Bath to be their official U.S. business agent.



Isn't it something? Why no one in the press corpse ask Bush about this is understandable considering the subject must be off-limits to those without the necessary Top Secret clearance. In our day, they've got the media. Got to keep things fresh, Kardashian, and away from anyone suspecting Capitalism's Invisible Army.

tecelote

(5,122 posts)
16. Have we stopped selling arms to Syria?
Sat Aug 31, 2013, 04:41 PM
Aug 2013

Or, are we making money from all sides here plus getting the oil if we win?

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
19. I like your sig line, but it's no dance or game.
Sun Sep 1, 2013, 11:44 AM
Sep 2013


New NSA docs contradict 9/11 claims

“I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released," an expert tells Salon

By Jordan Michael Smith
Salon.com
Tuesday, Jun 19, 2012 04:24 PM EDT

Over 120 CIA documents concerning 9/11, Osama bin Laden and counterterrorism were published today for the first time, having been newly declassified and released to the National Security Archive. The documents were released after the NSA pored through the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission and sent Freedom of Information Act requests.

The material contains much new information about the hunt before and after 9/11 for bin Laden, the development of the drone campaign in AfPak, and al-Qaida’s relationship with America’s ally, Pakistan. Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

SNIP...

Former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has taken credit for the drone program that the Bush administration ignored. “Things like working to get an armed Predator that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important, working to get a strategy that would allow us to get better cooperation from Pakistan and from the Central Asians,” she said in 2006. “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida.” Rice claimed that the Bush administration continued the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policies, a claim the documents disprove. “If the administration wanted to get it done, I’m sure they could have gotten it done,” says Elias-Sanborn.

Many of the documents publicize for the first time what was first made clear in the 9/11 Commission: The White House received a truly remarkable amount of warnings that al-Qaida was trying to attack the United States. From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency. One from June called “Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” writes that “[redacted] expects Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” The famous August brief called “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US” is included. “Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here,” it says. During the entire month of August, President Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas — which tied with one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest vacation ever taken by a president. CIA Director George Tenet has said he didn’t speak to Bush once that month, describing the president as being “on leave.” Bush did not hold a Principals’ meeting on terrorism until September 4, 2001, having downgraded the meetings to a deputies’ meeting, which then-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has repeatedly said slowed down anti-Bin Laden efforts “enormously, by months.”

CONTINUED w LINKS...

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/new_nsa_docs_reveal_911_truths/

Who benefits from war?

cui bono

(19,926 posts)
23. Oh, I know. Didn't mean to offend or upset or anything.
Sun Sep 1, 2013, 12:26 PM
Sep 2013

I bookmark your posts all the time as reference. Really appreciate the info you provide here.

It was late... just tossed that one out there before going to bed.


chervilant

(8,267 posts)
18. Smedley was a brave whistleblower...
Sun Sep 1, 2013, 05:57 AM
Sep 2013
"The story of how Gen Smedley Butler exposed an American Fascist conspiracy to overthrow FDR NEVER GETS MENTIONED in the contemporary college curriculum or what passes for journalism, nor historic context on the nightly news, either.

And that is a shame.

Those Democrats -- and pukes and pindependents -- who give a damn about democracy will see that his story is told, which is why DU is so important. This place spreads the Truth about the fascist bastards, whose sons and grandsons, and those of their cronies continue to haunt America.


Thanks for this OP.
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