Octafish
Octafish's Journal''The oldest Swiss bank...''
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/u-s-charges-swiss-bank-employees-with-tax-evasion/Great place to start. Now let's get to Phil Gramm's UBS and the more modern offshore havens for the tax dodging connected blueblood set. Did I ever mention Phil's the Meyer Lansky of the War Party?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4055207
So's his analysis of the BFEE and Prescott Bush's role in the fascist Wall Street Coup Against FDR.
Bush Fulfills His Grandfather's Dreamby David Swanson | Jul 28 2007 - 2:01pm |
It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.
Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.
If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business dealings went better, and he entered politics.
Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.
DETAILS: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1468311
LINK to BBC programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml
Like Danziger, I don't find the BFEE funny.
The Problem with NDAA, Lieberman, Signing Statements and Everything Eating Up the Bill of Rights...
They all don't matter. It's whatever is in the USA PATRIOT Act that goes.
That's the unnamed, pre-existing law all these new laws and bills serve to clarify and strengthen. What's worse:
Not even our elected representatives can tell us what's in that law that gives them concern. That's classified Top Secret.
Ask Sen. Udall and Sen. Wyden. They want to tell you, but they can't. It's also now against the law for them to say why they can't:
Two Senators have been warning for months that the government has a secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act so broad that it amounts to an entirely different law — one that gives the feds massive domestic surveillance powers, and keeps the rest of us in the dark about the snooping.
SOURCE: http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/despite-attempts-wyden-and-udall-secr
Something else we should remember, while it's still legal to do so: This isn't democracy -- "government of the people by the people and for the people" -- if We the People aren't in charge.
David Swanson is an oustanding DUer.
He contributes information of value and accurate analysis. He also calls the wars for what they are: immoral, illegal, unnecessary and disastrous.
If you disagree with him, great. Say "Why." Don't call his work "diarrhea" that "rightfully ended up in the conspiracy dungeon back at DU2."
As for you wanting to toss his work into the dungeon: That shows exactly where you are coming from, SidDithers. You'd like to shut people up for what they think by shutting down the number of people who get to read their thoughts. That is most un-democratic.
Turley stood up to the BFEE
A secret CIA assassination policy for citizensDecember 27, 2002|By Jonathan Turley. Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University Law School.
In a season of lists, last week's disclosure of the assassination list by the Bush administration may be the ultimate gift idea for the agency that is close to having everything. After a post-Sept. 11 windfall of expanded budgets, personnel and power, it was inevitable that CIA officials would return to the one item that they have most coveted: the discretionary use of assassination. Not only does the CIA have a specific wish list of two dozen targets, it is not confined to this list for targets and even citizens could be subject to this lethal form of agency action.
In 2001, President Bush issued a secret order to the CIA that generally authorized the use of assassination as an anti-terrorism tool. When disclosed last month, it was noted that the order conspicuously did not limit assassination to non-citizens, a fact that the White House has never denied. The order signaled a radical change in U.S. policy. In the 1970s, the Church Committee found that the United States had used assassination extensively with often disastrous results. It turns out that (to our credit) we stink at assassination.
While assassinations were sharply curtailed, the United States occasionally dabbled in the dark art. During the Reagan administration, a hit was reportedly ordered on Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a fanatical cleric with terrorist ties. On March 8, 1985, the CIA used a Lebanese team and money from Saudi Arabia to explode a car bomb outside his mosque. The bomb was detonated when hundreds of Muslims were leaving services, killing more than 80 people and wounding more than 250. One fact in the bombing instantly pegged the attempted hit as a likely CIA operation: The one person left unscathed was Sheikh Fadlallah. It is something of a signature element of past CIA hits: Many die but the target remains.
It is not clear whether the CIA will return to the use of car bombs, which has taken on a certain pejorative tint of late. However, it now has authority to engage in a level of assassination that we have not seen since before Nixon.
CONTINUED...
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-12-27/news/0212270378_1_cia-assassination-al-qaeda
It's a case for convergent evolution.
The principal environmental factor being money.
Joe Lieberman Wants Power To Strip Government Opponents of Their Citizenship.
Then, they can name, lock up and punish anyone they want as an enemy combatant without due process or trial.
S. 1698: Enemy Expatriation Act
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-1698
I'm sure the bill won't make it out of committee. Even if it does, President Obama will not sign it. Right?
Corporate McPravda Represents One of Our Biggest Problems
...Especially FOX News. That outfit is run on behalf of Rupert Murdoch by one Roger Ailes, former toady to the likes of George Herbert CIA in Dallas Walker Bush, Ronald Arms to Terrorists Reagan, and Richard Nixon the Crook. They have no love for real Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, or anyone interested in peace, justice, civil rights, and making life better for everybody other than the 1-percent.
A little backstory on Mr. Ailes, above in the Oval Office with Bebe Rebozo's best buddy. The fellow's been around and as much as any CEO, lowly clerk or hireling is responsible for producing the stinking heap of rightwing crap people see, hear, read, think and believe:
Richard Nixon and Roger Ailes 1970s plan to put the GOP on TV
Melissa Bell
Washington Post
EXCERPT...
A memo entitled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News,” buried in the the Nixon library details a plan between Ailes and the White House to bring pro-administration stories to television networks around the country. It reads: “Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. [font color="red"]The thinking is done for you.[/font color]”
CONTINUED...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/richard-nixon-and-roger-ailes-1970s-plan-to-put-the-gop-on-tv/2011/07/01/AG1W7XtH_blog.html
Rolling Stone provides another good read:
How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525#ixzz1i4D2slCf
So. Does anyone else have a problem with this or with understanding why the nation is so screwed up for the 99-percent and so few answers are in sight?
For that matter, does anyone remember why Liberal Democrats appreciated the Fairness Doctrine and were furious when our Democratic Party's leaders let it fall by the legislative wayside?
It's not you, originalpckelly. Traitors have been in charge since Nov. 22, 1963...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6544843&mesg_id=6547792
“Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” -- Sir John Harrington
Sorry, America. No Peace Dividend for You.
Wonder why it seems there's never any money to make life better for the 99-percent?
It must be going somewhere, all that tax money and all that borrowed money.
Oh, here's something...it's a question of discretionary spending and who's exempt from what.
Why Is the Most Wasteful Government Agency Not Part of the Deficit Discussion?
EXCERPT...
Indeed, the Republican government battering ram appears to have stopped at the Pentagon door. This was evident early on. As soon as they took over the House of Representatives, Republicans changed the rules so that military spending does not have to be offset by reduced spending somewhere else, unlike any other kind of government spending. It is the only activity of government they believe does not have to be paid for. Which brings to mind a bit of wisdom from one of their heroes, Adam Smith. “Were the expense of war to be defrayed always by revenue raised within the year … wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken.”
SOURCE: http://www.alternet.org/economy/151617/why_is_the_most_wasteful_government_agency_not_part_of_the_deficit_discussion/
From my perspective, We the People used to be the government -- you know, "Government of the people, by the people for the people."
Nowadays, the government is somebody -- no, something -- else. We serve those who, figuratively and literally, call the shots.
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