From the Emirates Business 24/7 magazine
By Insead Knowledge on Sunday, December 27, 2009
A new global currency should replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency, as the long-term deterioration of America's economy and the greenback is fuelling a "currency-regime crisis", says Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator of the Financial Times.
Wolf, who has honorary doctorates from three universities, bases his argument in part on the Triffin dilemma, an economic paradox named after economist Robert Triffin. The paradox shows that the US dollar's role as a global reserve currency leads to a conflict between US national monetary policy and global monetary policy. It also points to fundamental imbalances in the balance of payments, particularly in the US current account.
Account deficit
Speaking at an event organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Wolf said Triffin believed that the host nation of a global reserve currency will inevitably run up a huge current account deficit that would consequently undermine the credibility of its currency and adversely impact the global economy. "You can't have an open globalised economy that relies for its ultimate liquidity on the currency of one country. That was his [Triffin's] argument. And, therefore, he said the Bretton Woods system would break, which it did. And exactly the same thing happened with Bretton Woods II, which is the system of pegging.
"So I agree with this. And I'm absolutely convinced now, in a way that I was not three or four years ago, that we cannot continue with a genuinely global economy which relies on national money, and that's not sold by just adding another couple (of currencies). It actually means having a global money."
Indeed, Wolf said he's in complete agreement with China's Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, who has argued for a new global currency "most credibly and convincingly".
"On the dollar, there is nothing to support this currency except the Chinese government and a few other governments that are prepared to buy it," said Wolf. "Anybody can look at the arithmetic of the fiscal deficit, the monetary policy, the external balance, which has improved but largely because of the recession, the dollar is not adequately supported." The US currently has a national debt in excess of $12 trillion (Dh44trn) or almost $40,000 per citizen, with a debt to GDP ratio of more than 85 per cent. In the July-September quarter, the US current account deficit rose sharply by 10.3 per cent from the previous quarter to $108bn. In the past year, the US dollar index, which measures the performance of the greenback against a basket of currencies, has also fallen significantly.
Click Here to read the rest of the article
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
New Contract for America? Or same old crap again?
The Republican leadership has come up with a new Contract for America that continues to offer a counterpoint of big government to the Democrats' version of big government. Here are the ten points of the Contract for America drawn up by Dick Army:
BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:
(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.
RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy positions of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.
By including numbers 6 and 7 the Republicans have flatly stated that they will not reduce DoD or intelligence expenditures. The only way that thay can continue to fund two wars and massive presence around the globe is to deal with the Democrats in Congress. That means that the Republicans will not be able to cut any social spending programs and therefore their number 1 point is absolutely impossible.
The rest of the points do not greatly impact the budget and are there mostly to attempt to differentiate mainstream Republicans from Democrats. Some of the points are important, but do not address the existential problem of an out-of-control Federal behemoth. This list of points will result in more unpayable debt and more government, not less.
Now I saw a list on digg.com to replace the list that the Military Industrial Complex wrote for Dick Armey. Here it is:
1. Balanced Budget
2. Tort Reform
3. Repeal the 17th Amendment
4. Term limits
5. End the War on Drugs
6. End all funding of other nations
7. Exit strategy for all miltary involvement overseas
8. Abolish the IRS/Tax code and institute a progressive flat tax for everyone living above poverty level. No exemptions!
9. All congressional salary, benefits require 2/3 vote from public.
10. Any civillian conviction requires dismissal of the Congressman or Senator from Congress
That got me thinking....
I haven't had time to write a list yet, but I might change a couple of Mr. h8f8kes points. In the meantime, what do you think?
BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:
(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.
RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy positions of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.
By including numbers 6 and 7 the Republicans have flatly stated that they will not reduce DoD or intelligence expenditures. The only way that thay can continue to fund two wars and massive presence around the globe is to deal with the Democrats in Congress. That means that the Republicans will not be able to cut any social spending programs and therefore their number 1 point is absolutely impossible.
The rest of the points do not greatly impact the budget and are there mostly to attempt to differentiate mainstream Republicans from Democrats. Some of the points are important, but do not address the existential problem of an out-of-control Federal behemoth. This list of points will result in more unpayable debt and more government, not less.
Now I saw a list on digg.com to replace the list that the Military Industrial Complex wrote for Dick Armey. Here it is:
1. Balanced Budget
2. Tort Reform
3. Repeal the 17th Amendment
4. Term limits
5. End the War on Drugs
6. End all funding of other nations
7. Exit strategy for all miltary involvement overseas
8. Abolish the IRS/Tax code and institute a progressive flat tax for everyone living above poverty level. No exemptions!
9. All congressional salary, benefits require 2/3 vote from public.
10. Any civillian conviction requires dismissal of the Congressman or Senator from Congress
That got me thinking....
I haven't had time to write a list yet, but I might change a couple of Mr. h8f8kes points. In the meantime, what do you think?
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Larry Wilkerson Talks About The End Of The American Empire
Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former assistant to Colin Powell and Pentagon war-planner speaks truth to empire. This half hour video is an intelligent analysis of the future of the USA and its debt-based, militaristic government.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Do Dead Men Make Videotapes?
There is a question that I have been asking myself for a few years now and I do not understand why this question isn’t asked by someone in media, at last in alternative media.
First I’ll write the question and then the reasoning behind it, then I would like as many people as possible to give their opinions as to which is the right answer.
Here’s the question:
Are the US military and intelligence services totally incompetent or is the CIA producing the Osama bin Laden videos and audio recordings?
A or B. Are we pathetically unable to achieve a relatively simple objective or have we killed the chief terrorist and now cynically make him speak from the tomb in order to justify the endless war?
The reason that this question should be asked is that since the 11th of September of 2001, 24 Osama bin Laden tapes have been released and at least some of the tapes have been confirmed by the CIA as authentic.
We have spent well over a trillion dollars and have killed or been the direct cause of the deaths of somewhere between 150,000 and over a million deaths in our far-ranging War on Terror™. We have overthrown a couple of governments, destabilized a few more and are currently threatening another. We have imprisoned tens of thousands, have tortured hundreds and have had at least one hundred men die in our captivity as a result of torture in order to pursue this “war”.
The goal of the War on Terror™ has been changed over the 8 years since it officially began, but its central tenet has always been the destruction of the international Islamic terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. Although there is considerable doubt in some quarters if the organization has ever really existed, the US and British governments have released thousands of press releases over the last 8 years that, when compiled, identify an incredibly capable and powerful organization determined to bury Western liberal civilization. The Al Qaeda we have come to know in released CIA reports has done its job; it is terrifying.
So if the purpose of our brutal and economically ruinous War on Terror™ is the annihilation of al Qaeda, why haven’t we been able to keep Osama and his handsome sidekick from making all those videos that exhort the faithful to keep killing the infidels? And why have George Bush and Dick Cheney and Robert Gates all said the bin Laden is “irrelevant”? Why do we continue to hear that al Qaeda is the reason for our war from Mr. Obama while at the same time we are told that Mr. bin Laden (the leader of al Qaeda) is irrelevant? It does not make any sense whatsoever to think that an organization is dangerous enough to warrant 8 years of war, but the leaders of that organization are irrelevant. Osama was considered irrelevant in 2002 and he still is today . The war against al Qaeda goes on and on and new bin Laden tapes are still distributed three or four times a year. Can't we find this fellow and end his propaganda campaign?
Please step back, clear your mind and look at this anew. We kill thousands, occupy foreign countries, waste trillions of dollars, to dismantle enemy forces, but the leadership of those enemy forces is considered irrelevant. Every time that enemy leadership releases a video it is immediately front page news around the world. This is absurd. It needs to be questioned. It would be side-splittingly funny if so much death and suffering were not involved.
So are we incapable of using our drones and satellites and eavesdropping equipment and data mining and torture and bribery to find a 6´4” Arab in Pakistan? Is the combined might of the US military machine incapable of shutting down his video production? If so, I submit that all our military is suited to do is to kill and menace civilians (thereby creating an endlss supply of "terrorists") and all our intelligence services are capable of is listening in on Americans’ private phone conversations and cobbing together falsified justifications for war.
On the other hand, Osama might just be dead as Benazhir Bhutto made clear a number of times. . But if Osama is dead, then his videotapes must be made by the CIA. The CIA is reputed to be more skilled in video and digital imaging verification than anyone else in the world. So they could not be fooled by a couple of Arabs with a copy of Macromedia. If they say the tapes are real, they are real or the CIA is lying. Why would they lie? Because they want the tapes to justify the Endless War. And in that case, who made the tapes? The CIA of course.
What do you think? A or B?
A.- The US intelligence services are pathetically incompetent
b.- Osama is as dead as a doornail and his tapes are made by the CIA to keep the Endless War going.
Update: Jan 9th 2010:
The BBC has just written an article with the same theme, that Osama is either:
1.- dead and someone is faking the tapes
or
2.-alive and US Intelligence can't find him
However the BBC fails to come to the obviou conclusions that in case #1, the only possibilty of faked tapes is from the CIA and NSA and that in case #2 that US military and Intelligence have spent trillions and have not found Osama bin Laden. They are therefore incompetent.
First I’ll write the question and then the reasoning behind it, then I would like as many people as possible to give their opinions as to which is the right answer.
Here’s the question:
Are the US military and intelligence services totally incompetent or is the CIA producing the Osama bin Laden videos and audio recordings?
A or B. Are we pathetically unable to achieve a relatively simple objective or have we killed the chief terrorist and now cynically make him speak from the tomb in order to justify the endless war?
The reason that this question should be asked is that since the 11th of September of 2001, 24 Osama bin Laden tapes have been released and at least some of the tapes have been confirmed by the CIA as authentic.
We have spent well over a trillion dollars and have killed or been the direct cause of the deaths of somewhere between 150,000 and over a million deaths in our far-ranging War on Terror™. We have overthrown a couple of governments, destabilized a few more and are currently threatening another. We have imprisoned tens of thousands, have tortured hundreds and have had at least one hundred men die in our captivity as a result of torture in order to pursue this “war”.
The goal of the War on Terror™ has been changed over the 8 years since it officially began, but its central tenet has always been the destruction of the international Islamic terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. Although there is considerable doubt in some quarters if the organization has ever really existed, the US and British governments have released thousands of press releases over the last 8 years that, when compiled, identify an incredibly capable and powerful organization determined to bury Western liberal civilization. The Al Qaeda we have come to know in released CIA reports has done its job; it is terrifying.
So if the purpose of our brutal and economically ruinous War on Terror™ is the annihilation of al Qaeda, why haven’t we been able to keep Osama and his handsome sidekick from making all those videos that exhort the faithful to keep killing the infidels? And why have George Bush and Dick Cheney and Robert Gates all said the bin Laden is “irrelevant”? Why do we continue to hear that al Qaeda is the reason for our war from Mr. Obama while at the same time we are told that Mr. bin Laden (the leader of al Qaeda) is irrelevant? It does not make any sense whatsoever to think that an organization is dangerous enough to warrant 8 years of war, but the leaders of that organization are irrelevant. Osama was considered irrelevant in 2002 and he still is today . The war against al Qaeda goes on and on and new bin Laden tapes are still distributed three or four times a year. Can't we find this fellow and end his propaganda campaign?
Please step back, clear your mind and look at this anew. We kill thousands, occupy foreign countries, waste trillions of dollars, to dismantle enemy forces, but the leadership of those enemy forces is considered irrelevant. Every time that enemy leadership releases a video it is immediately front page news around the world. This is absurd. It needs to be questioned. It would be side-splittingly funny if so much death and suffering were not involved.
So are we incapable of using our drones and satellites and eavesdropping equipment and data mining and torture and bribery to find a 6´4” Arab in Pakistan? Is the combined might of the US military machine incapable of shutting down his video production? If so, I submit that all our military is suited to do is to kill and menace civilians (thereby creating an endlss supply of "terrorists") and all our intelligence services are capable of is listening in on Americans’ private phone conversations and cobbing together falsified justifications for war.
On the other hand, Osama might just be dead as Benazhir Bhutto made clear a number of times. . But if Osama is dead, then his videotapes must be made by the CIA. The CIA is reputed to be more skilled in video and digital imaging verification than anyone else in the world. So they could not be fooled by a couple of Arabs with a copy of Macromedia. If they say the tapes are real, they are real or the CIA is lying. Why would they lie? Because they want the tapes to justify the Endless War. And in that case, who made the tapes? The CIA of course.
What do you think? A or B?
A.- The US intelligence services are pathetically incompetent
b.- Osama is as dead as a doornail and his tapes are made by the CIA to keep the Endless War going.
Update: Jan 9th 2010:
The BBC has just written an article with the same theme, that Osama is either:
1.- dead and someone is faking the tapes
or
2.-alive and US Intelligence can't find him
However the BBC fails to come to the obviou conclusions that in case #1, the only possibilty of faked tapes is from the CIA and NSA and that in case #2 that US military and Intelligence have spent trillions and have not found Osama bin Laden. They are therefore incompetent.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Profile of a Bully - The American Empire
Last week I had the opportunity to attend a seminar about school age bullying. This has become quite a problem in the modern politically correct school system and we have decided to avoid using the tools that we once had to combat bullying.
But what struck me at the conference was the characteristics of the bully. I can't include the conference here on my blog, so I found a youtube video that describes what I heard at the conference.
The following video was produced by J Richard Knapp to identify the characteristics of the school age bully.
He lists nine characteristics to help us identify bullies. Those characteristsics are:
1.- Extremely Confident
2.- Physically Agressive
3.- Pro-violent Behavior
4.- Hot tempered
5.- Frustrates Easily
6.- Dominate Others
7.- Lack of Empathy
8.- Bigger and Stronger
9.- They Get Into Serious Trouble
I couldn't help but notice that these are exactly the characteristics of the new United State (spelling intentional) of America. In every single one of the nine examples, the personality that is exhibited by the government of our country towards other countries is exactly that of the bully.
We need to be careful with #9. We are already getting into serious trouble by not considering the incredible cost of our bullying. That cost will eventually bring the government down.
Please watch the video and comment if you think that these characteristics apply to the USA.
To learn more about bullies, please read this article
But what struck me at the conference was the characteristics of the bully. I can't include the conference here on my blog, so I found a youtube video that describes what I heard at the conference.
The following video was produced by J Richard Knapp to identify the characteristics of the school age bully.
He lists nine characteristics to help us identify bullies. Those characteristsics are:
1.- Extremely Confident
2.- Physically Agressive
3.- Pro-violent Behavior
4.- Hot tempered
5.- Frustrates Easily
6.- Dominate Others
7.- Lack of Empathy
8.- Bigger and Stronger
9.- They Get Into Serious Trouble
I couldn't help but notice that these are exactly the characteristics of the new United State (spelling intentional) of America. In every single one of the nine examples, the personality that is exhibited by the government of our country towards other countries is exactly that of the bully.
We need to be careful with #9. We are already getting into serious trouble by not considering the incredible cost of our bullying. That cost will eventually bring the government down.
Please watch the video and comment if you think that these characteristics apply to the USA.
To learn more about bullies, please read this article
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The Power of Nightmares
This three hour BBC video was produced in 2005 and has never been presented on broadcast TV in the United States. It has the clearest and most honest history of the radical Islamist movement in general and Al Qaeda in particular. The history is not what the American propaganda organs would like us to believe.
The video also describes the origin and development of the neo-conservative imperialist doctrine in America. The juxtaposition of these two nihilistic philosophies is well done and fascinating.
The film is long. Each sgment is almost an hour, but it is well worth it. Take the time an watch a segment now. If you want to see the three section in higher definition then follow these links to the first, second and third parts, otherwise just watch them below.
First Segment
"Baby Its Cold Outside"
Second Segment
"The Phantom Victory"
Third Segment
"The Shadows in the Cave"
The video also describes the origin and development of the neo-conservative imperialist doctrine in America. The juxtaposition of these two nihilistic philosophies is well done and fascinating.
The film is long. Each sgment is almost an hour, but it is well worth it. Take the time an watch a segment now. If you want to see the three section in higher definition then follow these links to the first, second and third parts, otherwise just watch them below.
First Segment
"Baby Its Cold Outside"
Second Segment
"The Phantom Victory"
Third Segment
"The Shadows in the Cave"
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Ron Paul defines and names the neocons.
Do not be fooled that the Israel-first neocons are actually conservatives. They are not in favor of small government or strict adherence to the Constitution. They are not in favor of truly free-market economics. They are the big-government party in favor of global hegemony.
Tell David Frum and Bill Kristol to stop pretending they are conservatives.
Tell David Frum and Bill Kristol to stop pretending they are conservatives.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Response to Government Motors' Troy Clarke by GM parts supplier, Gregory Knox
Troy Clarke, government employee
Dear Employees & Suppliers,
Congress and the current Administration will soon determine whether to provide immediate support to the domestic auto industry to help it through one of the most difficult economic times in our nation's history. Your elected officials must hear from all of us now on why this support is critical to our continuing the progress we began prior to the global financial crisis.
As an employee or supplier, you have a lot at stake and continue to be one of our most effective and passionate voices. I know GM can count on you to have your voice heard.
Thank you for your urgent action and ongoing support.
Troy Clarke
President,
General Motors North America
Response from:
Gregory Knox, Pres.
Knox Machinery Company
Franklin , Ohio
Troy Knox, free man and President of Knox Machinery Comp.
Gentlemen:
In response to your request to contact legislators and ask for a bailout for the Big Three automakers please consider the following, and please pass my thoughts on to Troy Clarke, President of General Motors North America.
Politicians and Management of the Big 3 are both infected with the same entitlement mentality that has spread like cancerous germs in UAW halls for the last countless decades, and whose plague is now sweeping this nation, awaiting our new "messiah," President Obama, to wave his magic wand and make all our problems go away, while at the same time allowing our once great nation to keep "living the dream." Believe me folks, The dream is over!
This dream where we can ignore the consumer for years while management myopically focuses on its personal rewards packages at the same time that our factories have been filled with the worlds most overpaid, arrogant, ignorant and laziest entitlement minded "laborers" without paying the price for these atrocities. This dream where you still think the masses will line up to buy our products forever and ever.
Don't even think about telling me I'm wrong. Don't accuse me of not knowing of what I speak. I have called on Ford, GM, Chrysler, TRW, Delphi, Kelsey Hayes, American Axle, and countless other automotive OEM's throughout the Midwest , during the past 30 years and what I've seen over those years in these union shops can only be described as disgusting.
Troy Clarke, President of General Motors North America, states: "There is widespread sentiment throughout this country, and our government, and especially via the news media, that the current crisis is completely the result of bad management which it certainly is not."
You're right Mr. Clarke, it's not JUST management. How about the electricians who walk around the plants like lords in feudal times, making people wait on them for countless hours while they drag ass so they can come in on the weekend and make double and triple time for a job they easily could have done within their normal 40 hour work week. How about the line workers who threaten newbies with all kinds of scare tactics for putting out too many parts on a shift and for being too productive. (We certainly must not expose those lazy bums who have been getting overpaid for decades for their horrific underproduction, must we?!?)
Do you folks really not know about this stuff?!? How about this great sentiment abridged from Mr. Clarke's sad plea: "over the last few years we have closed the quality and efficiency gaps with our competitors." What the hell has Detroit been doing for the last 40 years?!? Did we really JUST wake up to the gaps in quality and efficiency between us and them? The K car vs. the Accord? The Pinto vs. the Civic?!? Do I need to go on? What a joke!
We are living through the inevitable outcome of the actions of the United States auto industry for decades. It's time to pay for your sins, Detroit .
I attended an economic summit last week where brilliant economist, Alan Beaulieu, from the Institute of Trend Research , surprised the crowd when he said he would not have given the banks a penny of "bailout money."
"Yes, he said, this would cause short term problems," but despite what people like politicians and corporate magnates would have us believe, the sun would in fact rise the next day and the following very important thing would happen. Where there had been greedy and sloppy banks, new efficient ones would pop up. That is how a free market system works. It does work if we would only let it work."
But for some nondescript reason we are now deciding that the rest of the world is right and that capitalism doesn't work - that we need the government to step in and "save us". Save us my ass, Hell - we're nationalizing and unfortunately too many of our once fine nation's citizens don't even have a clue that this is what is really happening.
But, they sure can tell you the stats on their favorite sports teams.
Yeah - THAT'S really important, isn't it.
Does it ever occur to ANYONE that the "competition" has been producing vehicles, EXTREMELY PROFITABLY, for decades in this country? How can that be??? Let's see: Fuel efficient; Listening to customers; Investing in the proper tooling and automation for the long haul; Not being too complacent or arrogant to listen to Dr. W Edwards Deming four decades ago when he taught that by adopting appropriate principles of management, organizations could increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs; Ever increased productivity through quality and intelligent planning; Treating vendors like strategic partners, rather than like "the enemy."; Efficient front and back offices; Non union environment.
Again, I could go on and on, but I really wouldn't be telling anyone anything they really don't already know down deep in their hearts.
I have six children, so I am not unfamiliar with the concept of wanting someone to bail you out of a mess that you have gotten yourself into - my children do this on a weekly, if not daily basis, as I did when I was their age. I do for them what my parents did for me (one of their greatest gifts, by the way) - I make them stand on their own two feet and accept the consequences of their actions and work through it. Radical concept, huh? Am I there for them in the wings? Of course, but only until such time as they need to be fully on their own as adults.
I don't want to oversimplify a complex situation, but there certainly are unmistakable parallels here between the proper role of parenting and government. Detroit and the United States need to pay for their sins.
Bad news people - it's coming whether we like it or not. The newly elected Messiah really doesn't have a magic wand big enough to "make it all go away." I laughed as I heard Obama "reeling it back in" almost immediately after the final vote count was tallied. "We really might not do it in a year or in four." Where the Hell was that kind of talk when he was RUNNING for office.
Stop trying to put off the inevitable folks. That house in Florida really isn't worth $750,000. People who jump across a border really don't deserve free health care benefits. That job driving that forklift for the Big 3 really isn't worth $85,000 a year. We really shouldn't allow Wal-Mart to stock their shelves with products acquired from a country that unfairly manipulates their currency and has the most atrocious human rights infractions on the face of the globe. That couple whose combined income is less than $50,000 really shouldn't be living in that $485,000 home.
Let the market correct itself folks - it will... Yes it will be painful, but it's gonna' be painful either way, and the bright side of my proposal is that on the other side of it all, is a nation that appreciates what it has and doesn't live beyond its means and gets back to basics and redevelops the patriotic work ethic that made it the greatest nation in the history of the world and probably turns back to God...
Sorry - don't cut my head off, I'm just the messenger sharing with you the "bad news". I hope you take it to heart..
Gregory J. Knox, President
Knox Machinery, Inc.
Franklin , Ohio 45005
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Secession May Be The Peaceful Answer
Many of us Americans believe that freedom is necessary for us to live happy, fulfilled lives, and we think that our individual freedom and a giant central government are mutually exclusive. So we advocate for smaller government, but the government gets increasingly bigger and more intrusive while Americans' standard of living declines.
It is probably impossible to shrink the Federal government through the legal means available. Given the size that the Federal bureaucracy has attained, it has probably achieved a critical mass where it will only grow larger. Crises will give it the excuse to grab more power that will never be surrendered. We can't even trim one insignificant program.
If our freedom is necessary for our happiness and well-being and if there is no realistic hope of ever recovering our freedom within a monstrous Federal system that controls everything in our lives, then we have to choose between secession and revolution.
It is probably impossible to shrink the Federal government through the legal means available. Given the size that the Federal bureaucracy has attained, it has probably achieved a critical mass where it will only grow larger. Crises will give it the excuse to grab more power that will never be surrendered. We can't even trim one insignificant program.
If our freedom is necessary for our happiness and well-being and if there is no realistic hope of ever recovering our freedom within a monstrous Federal system that controls everything in our lives, then we have to choose between secession and revolution.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Is the GOP Too Conservative?
The Southern Avenger answers the question being asked in Washington.
Does the terrible polling data indicate that the Republicans have to move to the "center", or does it indicate something completely different?
If the Republicans do not reclaim their role as the Constitutionalist, small government party that advocates for limiting Washington in all things and returning power to the States, then the GOP will continue to be the Democrat Party with a bad attitude. The only difference between the two is that the Republicans advocate war with more enthusiasm.
Does the terrible polling data indicate that the Republicans have to move to the "center", or does it indicate something completely different?
If the Republicans do not reclaim their role as the Constitutionalist, small government party that advocates for limiting Washington in all things and returning power to the States, then the GOP will continue to be the Democrat Party with a bad attitude. The only difference between the two is that the Republicans advocate war with more enthusiasm.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Missing Mea Culpa
The Republican Party seems to be coming to its senses after the insanity of the Bush years. This moment in history is like one of those mornings when you wake up on a couch somewhere, with a throbbing head and a powder dry mouth, unsteady on your feet, the world reeling around you, with no idea where you are and certain that something terrible happened last night. “How in the world did I end up Here?”
So now in April, three months after George Bush the Lesser slunk out of Washington, the Republicans have staggered out to the street, figured out where they are, caught a bus home and in light of the mess they are in, have decided to turn over a new leaf. “We’re never gonna drink again…..” All of a sudden the Republicans are acting like the Party that they are supposed to be. They are opposing all the insane spending; they are listening to real fiscal conservatives. Ron Paul and Mark Sanford are now in demand as speakers. They are even speaking up against warrantless wiretapping. They are furious to discover that the Dept. of Fatherland Security has been spying on Americans and has written a booklet describing abortion oponents and gun rights activists as “domestic terrrorists”. They are no longer in favor of the Endless War; they don’t even mention it. They glommed onto the Campaign for Liberty’s Tea Party idea and came out en masse to protest runaway taxation and spending. Halellujah! They woke up!
The sentiments of millons have coalesced into a thing that has taken life and everyone can feel it. The ether tingles with energy and emotion. The Republicans are finally motivated to learn and in their polite, suburban fashion they are protesting. The Democrats also sense this awakening and they understand that it threatens what is to be their greatest moment: the comeback of America from the Bush years. The change of atmosphere makes them feel that a thing still unseen looms over them. One can see by their over-reaction to the Tea Parties that they are worried about the expected danger and they are prepared to use the might of the State to protect their turn in charge of things. They are not going to let the Republicans or the economy spoil their day in the sun.
The Republicans who four months ago didn’t have any opinions beyond what Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh said on the TV are beginning to understand that our country is in great danger, not the ludicrous, artificial danger churned out by those propaganda organs of the unfortunate administration that just wasted an eight year opportunity to practise real conservatism, but existential danger to our economy, our money and our civil rights. The scales have fallen from Republicans' eyes and they see that the economy is worse than we are being told. They see the wholesale theft that is funnelling billions to criminals and sticking our next generation with unpayable debt. The Republicans are beginning to think for themselves, perpared to fight back.
Meanwhile the Democrats feel like their precious moment is being stolen before it comes to fruition. They tell us to be patient, to give Mr. Obama time to work his magic as the economic indicators just keeping getting worse. Its not fair, Bush destroyed the economy with out-of-control capitalism and now we have to clean up the mess. And they shovel another 100 Billion dollars of generational debt towards Wall Street. They gleefully pass the Bills they’ve dreamed of: University grants and solar investments and fast rail corridors and embryonic stem cell research, Wow, Far out, its our turn now and we can do things right. But the economy keeps intruding and Iraq and Obama’s refusal to prosecute anybody for torture and Afghanistan and unemployment are all intruding on their dream. “Its not fair” and they are getting angry.
Now I want to talk to the Republicans who are so upset. You have no right to be upset.
None.
You voted for the men and women that spent us into penury. You elected the men and women who facilitated aggressive, unnecassary war, you empowered the men who tortured and jailed innocents for years without a right to face their accusers, and you gave the authority to a spendthrift President to double our national debt and to set precedents for his successor to follow. You gave the power to the President to spy on Americans, to train American soldiers to control crowds of Americans and even to jail Americans as terrorists without access to the legal recourse that our Constitution guarantees.
Now all this government power is going to be harnessed against you. And it’s your fault. I heard the truly vile Mr. O’Rielly still trying to make the case for torture today on a youtube video from yesterday. That power to torture is now in other hands, which may use it in ways that would infuriate you and it’s your fault. You are now angry as you watch America close upon the precipice and you shout in protest, but your protests ring hollow. They clang with the sour peal of mendacity because you carry the burden of guilt for the terrible government of the last eight years.
As a Christian I thank God daily because I can leave my sins behind and start anew. That happens when I acknowledge my sins to God and ask for forgiveness. Then I can walk with my head held high again, if I truly repent for what I did. Before I ask for pardon and before I repent, my advice to others, and all of my works are hollow and false.
The Republicans need to ask forgiveness and they need to repent. You will be not believable until you do.
America needs to hear prominent Republicans vocalize a collective mea culpa. America needs to hear prominent Republicans repent publicly for the disaster that they caused during the Bush years. When America hears prominent Republicans rebuke their big-government mistakes, when we hear a vow to truly follow sound policies that are always in accord with the Constitution then the Republican renascence will be complete.
The Mea Culpa is missing and it is essential for us to confront the real dangers that jeopardize our future.
So now in April, three months after George Bush the Lesser slunk out of Washington, the Republicans have staggered out to the street, figured out where they are, caught a bus home and in light of the mess they are in, have decided to turn over a new leaf. “We’re never gonna drink again…..” All of a sudden the Republicans are acting like the Party that they are supposed to be. They are opposing all the insane spending; they are listening to real fiscal conservatives. Ron Paul and Mark Sanford are now in demand as speakers. They are even speaking up against warrantless wiretapping. They are furious to discover that the Dept. of Fatherland Security has been spying on Americans and has written a booklet describing abortion oponents and gun rights activists as “domestic terrrorists”. They are no longer in favor of the Endless War; they don’t even mention it. They glommed onto the Campaign for Liberty’s Tea Party idea and came out en masse to protest runaway taxation and spending. Halellujah! They woke up!
The sentiments of millons have coalesced into a thing that has taken life and everyone can feel it. The ether tingles with energy and emotion. The Republicans are finally motivated to learn and in their polite, suburban fashion they are protesting. The Democrats also sense this awakening and they understand that it threatens what is to be their greatest moment: the comeback of America from the Bush years. The change of atmosphere makes them feel that a thing still unseen looms over them. One can see by their over-reaction to the Tea Parties that they are worried about the expected danger and they are prepared to use the might of the State to protect their turn in charge of things. They are not going to let the Republicans or the economy spoil their day in the sun.
The Republicans who four months ago didn’t have any opinions beyond what Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh said on the TV are beginning to understand that our country is in great danger, not the ludicrous, artificial danger churned out by those propaganda organs of the unfortunate administration that just wasted an eight year opportunity to practise real conservatism, but existential danger to our economy, our money and our civil rights. The scales have fallen from Republicans' eyes and they see that the economy is worse than we are being told. They see the wholesale theft that is funnelling billions to criminals and sticking our next generation with unpayable debt. The Republicans are beginning to think for themselves, perpared to fight back.
Meanwhile the Democrats feel like their precious moment is being stolen before it comes to fruition. They tell us to be patient, to give Mr. Obama time to work his magic as the economic indicators just keeping getting worse. Its not fair, Bush destroyed the economy with out-of-control capitalism and now we have to clean up the mess. And they shovel another 100 Billion dollars of generational debt towards Wall Street. They gleefully pass the Bills they’ve dreamed of: University grants and solar investments and fast rail corridors and embryonic stem cell research, Wow, Far out, its our turn now and we can do things right. But the economy keeps intruding and Iraq and Obama’s refusal to prosecute anybody for torture and Afghanistan and unemployment are all intruding on their dream. “Its not fair” and they are getting angry.
Now I want to talk to the Republicans who are so upset. You have no right to be upset.
None.
You voted for the men and women that spent us into penury. You elected the men and women who facilitated aggressive, unnecassary war, you empowered the men who tortured and jailed innocents for years without a right to face their accusers, and you gave the authority to a spendthrift President to double our national debt and to set precedents for his successor to follow. You gave the power to the President to spy on Americans, to train American soldiers to control crowds of Americans and even to jail Americans as terrorists without access to the legal recourse that our Constitution guarantees.
Now all this government power is going to be harnessed against you. And it’s your fault. I heard the truly vile Mr. O’Rielly still trying to make the case for torture today on a youtube video from yesterday. That power to torture is now in other hands, which may use it in ways that would infuriate you and it’s your fault. You are now angry as you watch America close upon the precipice and you shout in protest, but your protests ring hollow. They clang with the sour peal of mendacity because you carry the burden of guilt for the terrible government of the last eight years.
As a Christian I thank God daily because I can leave my sins behind and start anew. That happens when I acknowledge my sins to God and ask for forgiveness. Then I can walk with my head held high again, if I truly repent for what I did. Before I ask for pardon and before I repent, my advice to others, and all of my works are hollow and false.
The Republicans need to ask forgiveness and they need to repent. You will be not believable until you do.
America needs to hear prominent Republicans vocalize a collective mea culpa. America needs to hear prominent Republicans repent publicly for the disaster that they caused during the Bush years. When America hears prominent Republicans rebuke their big-government mistakes, when we hear a vow to truly follow sound policies that are always in accord with the Constitution then the Republican renascence will be complete.
The Mea Culpa is missing and it is essential for us to confront the real dangers that jeopardize our future.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Why is Washington so corrupt?
How can we control corruption? By reducing the size of government.
How do we do that, and what are the challenges? Read this.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Character of Americans
Avarice and ambition would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
Upon applying Mr. Adams lesson to modern America, it becomes clear why this country no longer works. It becomes clear why our guaranteed liberties have atrophied away to a useless remnant of what they were intended to be. We are no longer a moral or religious people. There is no base of shared values that keeps us from harming each other, instead it is the naked threat of state violence that keeps the populace from open brigandage.
We have become the Roman Empire, and like the Empire, peace can only be achieved by force. The dream of America was realized for a time, but now that aspiration to civility and freedom as symbolized by the flag and the eagle is as false as the Senate that approved Caesar's every dictate.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The Deck Chairs Are Fine Where They Are
Tom Woods from The Campaign For Liberty talks to a group of real conservatives at CPAC
Please ditch the false conservatism of foreign domination, of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and help save the Republic.
Please ditch the false conservatism of foreign domination, of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and help save the Republic.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Ron Paul Introduces Bill to Audit the Federal Reserve
February 26,
2009Madame Speaker,
I rise to introduce the Federal Reserve Transparency Act.
Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy.
How long will we as a Congress stand idly by while hard-working Americans see their savings eaten away by inflation? Only big-spending politicians and politically favored bankers benefit from inflation.Serious discussion of proposals to oversee the Federal Reserve is long overdue. I have been a longtime proponent of more effective oversight and auditing of the Fed, but I was far from the first Congressman to advocate these types of proposals. Esteemed former members of the Banking Committee such as Chairmen Wright Patman and Henry B. Gonzales were outspoken critics of the Fed and its lack of transparency.
Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight of its operations. While the conventional excuse is that this is intended to reduce the Fed’s susceptibility to political pressures, the reality is that the Fed acts as a foil for the government. Whenever you question the Fed about the strength of the dollar, they will refer you to the Treasury, and vice versa. The Federal Reserve has, on the one hand, many of the privileges of government agencies, while retaining benefits of private organizations, such as being insulated from Freedom of Information Act requests.
read more | digg story
2009Madame Speaker,
I rise to introduce the Federal Reserve Transparency Act.
Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy.
How long will we as a Congress stand idly by while hard-working Americans see their savings eaten away by inflation? Only big-spending politicians and politically favored bankers benefit from inflation.Serious discussion of proposals to oversee the Federal Reserve is long overdue. I have been a longtime proponent of more effective oversight and auditing of the Fed, but I was far from the first Congressman to advocate these types of proposals. Esteemed former members of the Banking Committee such as Chairmen Wright Patman and Henry B. Gonzales were outspoken critics of the Fed and its lack of transparency.
Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight of its operations. While the conventional excuse is that this is intended to reduce the Fed’s susceptibility to political pressures, the reality is that the Fed acts as a foil for the government. Whenever you question the Fed about the strength of the dollar, they will refer you to the Treasury, and vice versa. The Federal Reserve has, on the one hand, many of the privileges of government agencies, while retaining benefits of private organizations, such as being insulated from Freedom of Information Act requests.
read more | digg story
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Ron Paul - End the Fed
This is the clearest and most complete explanation of why the Federal Reserve Bank has to go.
Take a look.
Monday, February 23, 2009
An American Miracle
A friend of mine told me an incredible story that can teach important lessons. I will try to relate it with the same honesty with which it was told to me.
The events in this true story happened in January and February of 1973, shortly after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It is shocking how fast the State took advantage of the new law to advocate and even order the killing of innocent people.
This is the story of a miracle. Like all miracles performed by our God, the non-believer just sees a series of unrelated events. That is because God has decided that He can only be known through our faith in Him. I pray that non-believers have the opportunity to need God so strongly that they let their pride fall away, admit their weakness and ask for new life.
Leanne was the first-born in her family, and she grew up with her stepfather, her mother and 5 or 6 stepbrothers and stepsisters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her real father showed her the value of education, and he instilled in her a reverence for books, but she only met him a few times that she can remember. He worked for the railroad and at one point he left Michigan and didn’t go back.
School and church and family gatherings filled Leanne’s childhood. She was always a good student and a devout Catholic like her mother. She would have been happy but for the constant criticism and the meanness of her stepfather. Leanne feared taking her report card home to be signed, not because the grades were bad, but rather because her stepfather felt threatened by Leanne’s love of learning. He would look at her report cards full of As and Bs. “You tink you’re bedder’n the rest of us, doncha?”, and he would toss it on the floor.
He was an abusive man and he would beat Leanne’s mother violently when he was drunk. She was taken to the hospital on many a frozen night, bleeding from the nose and mouth, the car pushing through the drifting snow. The Parish priest spoke with the man and he was always contrite and repentant when sober, but he just got meaner the next time that he was drunk.
Leave it to say that Leanne’s childhood wasn’t sparkling, but she had big plans. She dreamed of studying English at the university. She was going to be a teacher and maybe write a book or two.
Her dreams were not fulfilled. There was no money for college, so she got a job and did what everyone does in the UP. She started to hang out in the bars in the evening although she never drank alcohol. She looked for hope and a future among the denizens of the dead-end world of drunks and their unrealized dreams. She met a man that impressed her and she had two children with him right out of high school.
Because of the terrible abuse that her mother suffered at the hands of her drunken stepfather, Leanne had decided to never marry and she did not marry the father of her two boys. They lived together and she was trying to make a happy home, but he followed in the footsteps of Leanne’s stepfather and drank his way through life, finally disappearing for a couple of days with another woman. Leanne decided that she was not going to repeat her mother’s life and she and the boys moved out.
Work was scarce for a single mother with two kids, and although she made every effort possible, she could not find a job that would either pay for a baby sitter or would allow her to take her kids to work. All she could find was work part-time at a bar. She could not make ends meet. So she went to Michigan Social Services and they helped her sue the dad for child support. They also signed her up for AFDC, At that time the child support checks were paid directly to Social Services and the agency would give the mothers their child support money and money from AFDC each month after they came in for a scheduled interview.
Leanne was living in a cheap apartment over the bar where she worked part-time. One night after the bar closed she was sleeping in her bed with her older son who was four while her one year old was asleep in his crib. A loud knocking came at the door. A voice that she thought she recognized said that it was an emergency and that it was terribly cold outside, please open up. So she unlocked the door and looked to see what was wrong. The man, who was a wealthy businessman from town, was drunk and he slurred that he needed to come in and he just wanted to spend some time with her. She tried to shut the door, but he had his foot in it and he overpowered her. He pushed the door open and came in. She didn’t want to frighten her boys so she didn’t scream. The apartment had no phone and no close neighbors. He sat down at the kitchen table and said something incoherent and then looked around and said he just needed to lay down for a bit. She went to her bedroom and carried her four year old to his bedroom and tucked him into his own bed, then told the drunk to go to sleep in her bed. She figured that he would be passed out soon. It was an uncomfortable event, but no harm done.
She lay down to sleep with her boy and was woken by the drunk. “Come ere. Come on” He took her hand and was pulling her out of her bed. He grabbed her leg and began to haul her physically from the bed. Her son started to awaken. “Either come with me or we’ll do it right here in front of the kids”. She followed the man to the other bedroom. He left before dawn.
The next morning she called a friend who was married to a police officer and the police officer drove over to Leanne’s apartment. Leanne told him what had happened, and said that she wanted to file charges for rape. He listened to her story, then he told her: “Leanne it’ll just be his word against yours. You’ll never make it stick. You’re just gonna have to learn to live with this. Put a chain on your door. I’m sorry, but you won’t win.” That was that, the man raped her and walked away, still a pillar of the community. And there was Leanne; all alone and now she was pregnant again.
One of the questions that Social Services asked her every month was whether she was pregnant, so after being raped and missing her period she told the lady that interviewed her that she was expecting and also told her about what had happened. “Well Leanne, it is too bad what happened to you, but you’re just not going to be able to keep that baby. Now that abortion is finally legal, we have a solution to your problem. You can’t take care of the two that you have, so you are just going to have to have an abortion”. Leanne said that she didn’t want an abortion and she was told that if she didn’t get an abortion she wouldn’t get her monthly check from the state. “But why do I have to have an abortion?” “Because if you don’t the state is going to determine that you are unfit to be a mother and will take your other two boys away from you. Now don’t you worry about this. It will all be paid by Social Services, even your travel”.
Leanne felt completely helpless, trapped like a little mouse in a mousetrap. The lady from Social Services became more insistent. While Leanne was sitting there terrified of losing her children, the lady from Social Services made an appointment at a clinic an hour away in Marquette for Leanne to get an exam prior to her abortion. “You are going to do this Leanne and it is all for the better. You can’t raise another child.” Leanne went home defeated and waited to go get her exam the next day.
Leanne had no idea that the lady from Social Services didn’t have any authority to do or say the things that she was doing. Leanne knew another single mother, also separated from an abusive drunk, who had just been forced to have an abortion because she was taking State aid and according to Social Services she already had too many children. But it never occurred to either Leanne or her friend to doubt whether Social Services really had the authority to force them to kill their unborn babies. Leanne had lived all of her life, like most Americans, with respect for any official of the government. Like most Americans she just did what she was told.
She went home and told a couple of friends. She cried and suffered and finally convinced herself that the State knew what they were doing and that her pregnancy wasn’t really a baby yet, that it was just some tissue that would be discarded, that the Catholic decree against abortion was old fashioned and that she would be forgiven anyway if she confessed her sin. She woke up numb in the morning.
The drive to Marquette, watching the white fields and leafless woodlots slide by, felt distant as though it was happening to someone else. Nothing seemed to matter. Upon arriving in Marquette she was admitted into the clinic and the doctor came in and examined her. He said that her pregnancy was about four weeks along, which coincided with the night that Leanne was raped. The doctor said that everything looked good and he explained that the procedure would be done by vacuum aspiration. He explained that the tiny fetus would be sucked out painlessly and she would be on her feet and back home. He stressed that this was not a baby, just a little mass of tissue. She shouldn’t feel any guilt at all.
But, he said, there were no facilities for the procedure in the UP as yet; she would have to drive down into Lower Michigan to Grand Rapids. Could she do it the next day? Yes, Leanne nodded, let’s get it over with.
Going to Grand Rapids involved an eight hour drive around the north shore of Lake Michigan and then south about two hundred miles. It would have been a lot closer to drive down to Green Bay, but that was Wisconsin, and the State of Michigan was going to pay the bill. Since Social Services was going to pay for the gas, a friend agreed to drive her the next day. She went back to her apartment to spend another horrible night waiting, but by now she felt resigned to her fate. She felt as though she were in a fog and watching uninterested what she herself did.
The next morning long before dawn, Leanne dropped off her boys at the house of another friend. She got in her friend Billy’s car for the long drive. She says that she doesn’t remember anything from the long trip, not even going over the Mackinac Bridge. Some time in the afternoon Billy parked across the street from the abortion clinic. Leanne says that she remembers walking across the street and a little way up the block to where a gate gave entrance to the abortion clinic, hiding back behind a fence of tall steel bars. There was a small group of protestors dressed in white near the fence, but away from the gate. Before she entered, two of them, a man and a woman approached her and asked if they could pray for her. She was so numb that without even thinking about it she nodded and they took her hands and said a short prayer.
This was early February in Michigan. It was not terribly overcast, but the day was cold, freezing cold. Leanne says that when she opened the door to the abortion clinic instead of feeling the blast of warmth that one expects when entering a building in winter, she suddenly felt a deadly chill. She says that she still remembers the shock of that cold that entered deep into her body upon entering the building. As she walked into the clinic her numbness began to recede. It was as though she were slowly waking from a dream. She began to see clearly again.
The waiting room was large with four or five sofas upon which waited a number of women and two young teenagers that were there with their mothers. There was only one man in the waiting room; he was accompanying a young woman. There was a very heavy air to the room. No one looked up. No one spoke. Each was an island floating in her own misery.
Leanne made her way to the reception window and gave her name to the nurse. She was told that they had been waiting for her; please take a seat. The heavy, cold feeling deepened and Leanne’s numbness began to change to fear and revulsion.
The nurse called and Leanne got up and followed her down a long hall with four recovery rooms on the right, in each of which she a saw dour-faced woman in a hospital gown. None looked up.
After the fourth recovery room the hall turned left and Leanne brushed up against a laundry cart. A towel fell off the mound of linens in the cart and opened as it hit the floor. It was saturated with blood and held a couple of masses of coagulation or tissue. Leanne stopped dead and could not lift her eyes from that towel.
“It hit me at that moment. I saw clearly that here was death. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t have it in me to turn around and walk out of there. So I closed my eyes and prayed to God and asked that He send a miracle to stop this because I couldn’t.”
The nurse led Leanne into the abortion room in which there were a couple of machines and a gynecologist’s table. Now she felt revulsion and panic but she still could not muster the will to walk out. She prayed in her mind’s voice. “Dear God, this is wrong Lord. Forgive me for coming here Lord, but end this Lord. Please end this now.” The nurse had her take off her clothes and put on a gown and Leanne kept praying, praying for a miracle. She was told to lie down on her back on the table and a doctor and two more nurses came in wearing gowns and caps and surgical masks. Leanne remembers thinking “Is that for sanitary reasons or because they don’t want to be seen?” Her mind had cleared, but she still couldn’t sit up and stop the process, so she prayed.
The doctor began by taking the chart that Leanne had brought from her exam the day before in Marquette. He set the chart across her stomach and read it and then kneeled down and examined her. Within a moment he stood up rapidly and spoke with anger. “What the hell is this? This woman has an enlarged uterus already. She is at least eight weeks along, probably more. Dammit.” He looked at a calendar. “The way her uterus is enlarged I’d say that this baby is due around the end of August. Who is this idiot in Marquette anyway? Damn!” He pulled off his gloves made a note on the chart and told the first nurse to get Leanne dressed and take her to the psychiatrist to plan the next step. The doctor and the two masked nurses stomped out.
A tremendous weight evaporated from Leanne and she felt the warm caress of the Holy Spirit. She felt that she would float up off the table. The colors and sounds were crisp and clear. “Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord,” All she wanted to do was to get out of the horrible abattoir, but the nurse waited for her to dress and told her that she had to see the psychiatrist. She followed the nurse but inside she thought, I don’t care if I lose all the money from the State, I don’t care if I have to work three jobs Lord, I am not going to kill my baby”. The hand of God was upon her and her fear disappeared like the frost when the morning sun hits it directly.
And praying great thanks in her mind she was led into a small office with a desk and couch. She sat in a chair in front of the desk. She sat straight up and looked at this doctor right in the eyes. “Well Leanne, apparently you were wrong about the date that you became pregnant.”
She answered directly, not with sarcasm but completely without fear. “I’m so sorry, but I’m not wrong, as you can see from the chart that I brought from Marquette. Also, I am not going to forget he date when I was raped.”
“Hmmm, well, be that as it may, we are going to have to schedule you for a saline solution abortion, because you are too far along for the suction evacuation. Now listen, you have to follow through, because otherwise you will lose custody of your children” Leanne said nothing but held the psychiatrist’s eyes, so she continued. “We are not equipped for this procedure as yet so you will be sent to New York State.”
“And what is this saline abortion please?” Asked Leanne.
“Well, when the uterus is enlarged the suction method cannot be used, so we inject saline solution into the fetus and then induce labor.” Leanne just looked at her, feeling stronger, feeling more resolve with each moment. The psychiatrist seemed intimidated by Leanne’s gaze and continued. “The baby will have died with the saline solution and will be stillborn. You will recover quickly and go home.”
“I was told that abortion doesn’t kill a baby, that it is just tissue, that it isn’t human and now you are talking about labor and dead babies. I am going now.” Leanne stood up and so did the psychiatrist.
“Leanne if you don’t go through with this you will lose your two children”
“No, I won’t” Leanne opened the door walked out of the abortion clinic a completely different woman than when she had walked in. The afternoon sun shone and the patches of snow sparkled, the wind caressed her face. She walked out of the gate and the two protestors who had prayed with her asked if she was OK.
“I didn’t do it. I still have my baby”
One shouted to the other protestors a ways down the sidewalk, “Hey! She didn’t do it! God be praised!” They all shouted and smiled and hugged each other.
Leanne walked to Billy’s car. “Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord,” She saw Billy and he came over to her with an inquisitive look on his big face.
“That was pretty quick Leanne”
“They didn’t do it Billy!” He grabbed her in his big doofus arms and spun her around the parking lot. Haleluyah.
The ride back was long but beautiful and Leanne made a promise to her Creator. “I will not abort this baby Lord. I will work all day every day because when I asked for a miracle, you gave me a miracle”
When she got to her friend’s house to pick up her kids she found a group of eight or ten there who whooped and shouted and jumped around when they heard the news They all hugged Leanne and she found out that they had been there all day praying for her and her baby.
A week later she went back to Social Services and abortion was never mentioned again.
Leanne’s third son, who was saved from abortion by Divine intervention, was born on October 11th 1973 and is now a Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy. He won the Bronze Star for saving other sailors’ lives in Iraq. He is happily married and has two beautiful teenage girls..
Question authority, live as virtuously as you can and have faith in God.
The events in this true story happened in January and February of 1973, shortly after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It is shocking how fast the State took advantage of the new law to advocate and even order the killing of innocent people.
This is the story of a miracle. Like all miracles performed by our God, the non-believer just sees a series of unrelated events. That is because God has decided that He can only be known through our faith in Him. I pray that non-believers have the opportunity to need God so strongly that they let their pride fall away, admit their weakness and ask for new life.
Leanne was the first-born in her family, and she grew up with her stepfather, her mother and 5 or 6 stepbrothers and stepsisters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her real father showed her the value of education, and he instilled in her a reverence for books, but she only met him a few times that she can remember. He worked for the railroad and at one point he left Michigan and didn’t go back.
School and church and family gatherings filled Leanne’s childhood. She was always a good student and a devout Catholic like her mother. She would have been happy but for the constant criticism and the meanness of her stepfather. Leanne feared taking her report card home to be signed, not because the grades were bad, but rather because her stepfather felt threatened by Leanne’s love of learning. He would look at her report cards full of As and Bs. “You tink you’re bedder’n the rest of us, doncha?”, and he would toss it on the floor.
He was an abusive man and he would beat Leanne’s mother violently when he was drunk. She was taken to the hospital on many a frozen night, bleeding from the nose and mouth, the car pushing through the drifting snow. The Parish priest spoke with the man and he was always contrite and repentant when sober, but he just got meaner the next time that he was drunk.
Leave it to say that Leanne’s childhood wasn’t sparkling, but she had big plans. She dreamed of studying English at the university. She was going to be a teacher and maybe write a book or two.
Her dreams were not fulfilled. There was no money for college, so she got a job and did what everyone does in the UP. She started to hang out in the bars in the evening although she never drank alcohol. She looked for hope and a future among the denizens of the dead-end world of drunks and their unrealized dreams. She met a man that impressed her and she had two children with him right out of high school.
Because of the terrible abuse that her mother suffered at the hands of her drunken stepfather, Leanne had decided to never marry and she did not marry the father of her two boys. They lived together and she was trying to make a happy home, but he followed in the footsteps of Leanne’s stepfather and drank his way through life, finally disappearing for a couple of days with another woman. Leanne decided that she was not going to repeat her mother’s life and she and the boys moved out.
Work was scarce for a single mother with two kids, and although she made every effort possible, she could not find a job that would either pay for a baby sitter or would allow her to take her kids to work. All she could find was work part-time at a bar. She could not make ends meet. So she went to Michigan Social Services and they helped her sue the dad for child support. They also signed her up for AFDC, At that time the child support checks were paid directly to Social Services and the agency would give the mothers their child support money and money from AFDC each month after they came in for a scheduled interview.
Leanne was living in a cheap apartment over the bar where she worked part-time. One night after the bar closed she was sleeping in her bed with her older son who was four while her one year old was asleep in his crib. A loud knocking came at the door. A voice that she thought she recognized said that it was an emergency and that it was terribly cold outside, please open up. So she unlocked the door and looked to see what was wrong. The man, who was a wealthy businessman from town, was drunk and he slurred that he needed to come in and he just wanted to spend some time with her. She tried to shut the door, but he had his foot in it and he overpowered her. He pushed the door open and came in. She didn’t want to frighten her boys so she didn’t scream. The apartment had no phone and no close neighbors. He sat down at the kitchen table and said something incoherent and then looked around and said he just needed to lay down for a bit. She went to her bedroom and carried her four year old to his bedroom and tucked him into his own bed, then told the drunk to go to sleep in her bed. She figured that he would be passed out soon. It was an uncomfortable event, but no harm done.
She lay down to sleep with her boy and was woken by the drunk. “Come ere. Come on” He took her hand and was pulling her out of her bed. He grabbed her leg and began to haul her physically from the bed. Her son started to awaken. “Either come with me or we’ll do it right here in front of the kids”. She followed the man to the other bedroom. He left before dawn.
The next morning she called a friend who was married to a police officer and the police officer drove over to Leanne’s apartment. Leanne told him what had happened, and said that she wanted to file charges for rape. He listened to her story, then he told her: “Leanne it’ll just be his word against yours. You’ll never make it stick. You’re just gonna have to learn to live with this. Put a chain on your door. I’m sorry, but you won’t win.” That was that, the man raped her and walked away, still a pillar of the community. And there was Leanne; all alone and now she was pregnant again.
One of the questions that Social Services asked her every month was whether she was pregnant, so after being raped and missing her period she told the lady that interviewed her that she was expecting and also told her about what had happened. “Well Leanne, it is too bad what happened to you, but you’re just not going to be able to keep that baby. Now that abortion is finally legal, we have a solution to your problem. You can’t take care of the two that you have, so you are just going to have to have an abortion”. Leanne said that she didn’t want an abortion and she was told that if she didn’t get an abortion she wouldn’t get her monthly check from the state. “But why do I have to have an abortion?” “Because if you don’t the state is going to determine that you are unfit to be a mother and will take your other two boys away from you. Now don’t you worry about this. It will all be paid by Social Services, even your travel”.
Leanne felt completely helpless, trapped like a little mouse in a mousetrap. The lady from Social Services became more insistent. While Leanne was sitting there terrified of losing her children, the lady from Social Services made an appointment at a clinic an hour away in Marquette for Leanne to get an exam prior to her abortion. “You are going to do this Leanne and it is all for the better. You can’t raise another child.” Leanne went home defeated and waited to go get her exam the next day.
Leanne had no idea that the lady from Social Services didn’t have any authority to do or say the things that she was doing. Leanne knew another single mother, also separated from an abusive drunk, who had just been forced to have an abortion because she was taking State aid and according to Social Services she already had too many children. But it never occurred to either Leanne or her friend to doubt whether Social Services really had the authority to force them to kill their unborn babies. Leanne had lived all of her life, like most Americans, with respect for any official of the government. Like most Americans she just did what she was told.
She went home and told a couple of friends. She cried and suffered and finally convinced herself that the State knew what they were doing and that her pregnancy wasn’t really a baby yet, that it was just some tissue that would be discarded, that the Catholic decree against abortion was old fashioned and that she would be forgiven anyway if she confessed her sin. She woke up numb in the morning.
The drive to Marquette, watching the white fields and leafless woodlots slide by, felt distant as though it was happening to someone else. Nothing seemed to matter. Upon arriving in Marquette she was admitted into the clinic and the doctor came in and examined her. He said that her pregnancy was about four weeks along, which coincided with the night that Leanne was raped. The doctor said that everything looked good and he explained that the procedure would be done by vacuum aspiration. He explained that the tiny fetus would be sucked out painlessly and she would be on her feet and back home. He stressed that this was not a baby, just a little mass of tissue. She shouldn’t feel any guilt at all.
But, he said, there were no facilities for the procedure in the UP as yet; she would have to drive down into Lower Michigan to Grand Rapids. Could she do it the next day? Yes, Leanne nodded, let’s get it over with.
Going to Grand Rapids involved an eight hour drive around the north shore of Lake Michigan and then south about two hundred miles. It would have been a lot closer to drive down to Green Bay, but that was Wisconsin, and the State of Michigan was going to pay the bill. Since Social Services was going to pay for the gas, a friend agreed to drive her the next day. She went back to her apartment to spend another horrible night waiting, but by now she felt resigned to her fate. She felt as though she were in a fog and watching uninterested what she herself did.
The next morning long before dawn, Leanne dropped off her boys at the house of another friend. She got in her friend Billy’s car for the long drive. She says that she doesn’t remember anything from the long trip, not even going over the Mackinac Bridge. Some time in the afternoon Billy parked across the street from the abortion clinic. Leanne says that she remembers walking across the street and a little way up the block to where a gate gave entrance to the abortion clinic, hiding back behind a fence of tall steel bars. There was a small group of protestors dressed in white near the fence, but away from the gate. Before she entered, two of them, a man and a woman approached her and asked if they could pray for her. She was so numb that without even thinking about it she nodded and they took her hands and said a short prayer.
This was early February in Michigan. It was not terribly overcast, but the day was cold, freezing cold. Leanne says that when she opened the door to the abortion clinic instead of feeling the blast of warmth that one expects when entering a building in winter, she suddenly felt a deadly chill. She says that she still remembers the shock of that cold that entered deep into her body upon entering the building. As she walked into the clinic her numbness began to recede. It was as though she were slowly waking from a dream. She began to see clearly again.
The waiting room was large with four or five sofas upon which waited a number of women and two young teenagers that were there with their mothers. There was only one man in the waiting room; he was accompanying a young woman. There was a very heavy air to the room. No one looked up. No one spoke. Each was an island floating in her own misery.
Leanne made her way to the reception window and gave her name to the nurse. She was told that they had been waiting for her; please take a seat. The heavy, cold feeling deepened and Leanne’s numbness began to change to fear and revulsion.
The nurse called and Leanne got up and followed her down a long hall with four recovery rooms on the right, in each of which she a saw dour-faced woman in a hospital gown. None looked up.
After the fourth recovery room the hall turned left and Leanne brushed up against a laundry cart. A towel fell off the mound of linens in the cart and opened as it hit the floor. It was saturated with blood and held a couple of masses of coagulation or tissue. Leanne stopped dead and could not lift her eyes from that towel.
“It hit me at that moment. I saw clearly that here was death. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t have it in me to turn around and walk out of there. So I closed my eyes and prayed to God and asked that He send a miracle to stop this because I couldn’t.”
The nurse led Leanne into the abortion room in which there were a couple of machines and a gynecologist’s table. Now she felt revulsion and panic but she still could not muster the will to walk out. She prayed in her mind’s voice. “Dear God, this is wrong Lord. Forgive me for coming here Lord, but end this Lord. Please end this now.” The nurse had her take off her clothes and put on a gown and Leanne kept praying, praying for a miracle. She was told to lie down on her back on the table and a doctor and two more nurses came in wearing gowns and caps and surgical masks. Leanne remembers thinking “Is that for sanitary reasons or because they don’t want to be seen?” Her mind had cleared, but she still couldn’t sit up and stop the process, so she prayed.
The doctor began by taking the chart that Leanne had brought from her exam the day before in Marquette. He set the chart across her stomach and read it and then kneeled down and examined her. Within a moment he stood up rapidly and spoke with anger. “What the hell is this? This woman has an enlarged uterus already. She is at least eight weeks along, probably more. Dammit.” He looked at a calendar. “The way her uterus is enlarged I’d say that this baby is due around the end of August. Who is this idiot in Marquette anyway? Damn!” He pulled off his gloves made a note on the chart and told the first nurse to get Leanne dressed and take her to the psychiatrist to plan the next step. The doctor and the two masked nurses stomped out.
A tremendous weight evaporated from Leanne and she felt the warm caress of the Holy Spirit. She felt that she would float up off the table. The colors and sounds were crisp and clear. “Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord,” All she wanted to do was to get out of the horrible abattoir, but the nurse waited for her to dress and told her that she had to see the psychiatrist. She followed the nurse but inside she thought, I don’t care if I lose all the money from the State, I don’t care if I have to work three jobs Lord, I am not going to kill my baby”. The hand of God was upon her and her fear disappeared like the frost when the morning sun hits it directly.
And praying great thanks in her mind she was led into a small office with a desk and couch. She sat in a chair in front of the desk. She sat straight up and looked at this doctor right in the eyes. “Well Leanne, apparently you were wrong about the date that you became pregnant.”
She answered directly, not with sarcasm but completely without fear. “I’m so sorry, but I’m not wrong, as you can see from the chart that I brought from Marquette. Also, I am not going to forget he date when I was raped.”
“Hmmm, well, be that as it may, we are going to have to schedule you for a saline solution abortion, because you are too far along for the suction evacuation. Now listen, you have to follow through, because otherwise you will lose custody of your children” Leanne said nothing but held the psychiatrist’s eyes, so she continued. “We are not equipped for this procedure as yet so you will be sent to New York State.”
“And what is this saline abortion please?” Asked Leanne.
“Well, when the uterus is enlarged the suction method cannot be used, so we inject saline solution into the fetus and then induce labor.” Leanne just looked at her, feeling stronger, feeling more resolve with each moment. The psychiatrist seemed intimidated by Leanne’s gaze and continued. “The baby will have died with the saline solution and will be stillborn. You will recover quickly and go home.”
“I was told that abortion doesn’t kill a baby, that it is just tissue, that it isn’t human and now you are talking about labor and dead babies. I am going now.” Leanne stood up and so did the psychiatrist.
“Leanne if you don’t go through with this you will lose your two children”
“No, I won’t” Leanne opened the door walked out of the abortion clinic a completely different woman than when she had walked in. The afternoon sun shone and the patches of snow sparkled, the wind caressed her face. She walked out of the gate and the two protestors who had prayed with her asked if she was OK.
“I didn’t do it. I still have my baby”
One shouted to the other protestors a ways down the sidewalk, “Hey! She didn’t do it! God be praised!” They all shouted and smiled and hugged each other.
Leanne walked to Billy’s car. “Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord,” She saw Billy and he came over to her with an inquisitive look on his big face.
“That was pretty quick Leanne”
“They didn’t do it Billy!” He grabbed her in his big doofus arms and spun her around the parking lot. Haleluyah.
The ride back was long but beautiful and Leanne made a promise to her Creator. “I will not abort this baby Lord. I will work all day every day because when I asked for a miracle, you gave me a miracle”
When she got to her friend’s house to pick up her kids she found a group of eight or ten there who whooped and shouted and jumped around when they heard the news They all hugged Leanne and she found out that they had been there all day praying for her and her baby.
A week later she went back to Social Services and abortion was never mentioned again.
Leanne’s third son, who was saved from abortion by Divine intervention, was born on October 11th 1973 and is now a Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy. He won the Bronze Star for saving other sailors’ lives in Iraq. He is happily married and has two beautiful teenage girls..
Question authority, live as virtuously as you can and have faith in God.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Las Desnudas de Carlos Paredes
Here are a smattering of Carlos' nudes from the last ten years. I will try to add more as I get digital photos.
If you are new to this blog, look at the article below this one first.
Unfortunately the digital images of Carlos' earlier paintings are not in high resolution, in fact the image quality is really bad. Those pictures were converted into food and firewood for the cookstove a long time before any of us had a decent digital camera.
Comments would be highly appreciated.
La Hija Del Dios Danego c. 2000
Angel Guerrera c. 2000
Top_3.jpg c. 2005
LA CRUZ Y LA MARIPOSA...PARTE 1.jpg c. 2007
Belleza Divina c. 2007
bellezas divinas....parte 1.jpg 2008
Construyendo las nuevas Esfinges...parte 1 2009
If you are new to this blog, look at the article below this one first.
Unfortunately the digital images of Carlos' earlier paintings are not in high resolution, in fact the image quality is really bad. Those pictures were converted into food and firewood for the cookstove a long time before any of us had a decent digital camera.
Comments would be highly appreciated.
La Hija Del Dios Danego c. 2000
Angel Guerrera c. 2000
Top_3.jpg c. 2005
LA CRUZ Y LA MARIPOSA...PARTE 1.jpg c. 2007
Belleza Divina c. 2007
bellezas divinas....parte 1.jpg 2008
Construyendo las nuevas Esfinges...parte 1 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
El Artista, Carlos Paredes Colín
I am blessed to have a great friend in Puerto Montt Chile who is a true artist. If suffering is a requirement in order to attain the vision and the dissatisfaction with mediocrity that gives a true artist the compulsive need to create, then Carlos has fulfilled the requirement. I have seen him struggle to feed his family for years as his paintings were sold to buy milk and diapers and a chicken for the cazuela. But he hasn't ever given up, he hasn't tossed his brushes and his easel into the trash and taken some mind-numbing job selling cell phones or feeding salmon. He has stuck with it for years and his art has never stultified. It evolves rapidly, organically, shooting off into new directions that Carlos pretends to control, but which surprise him as much as they do anyone else.
Carlos Paredes
I draw and paint because I like to, but I don't pretend to be an artist. Many people learn to paint a certain style that patrons will pay for and they mat consider themselves artists, but their works are only decoration. There are very few artists that actually mix fire and emotions and story and rage into the paints on their palette. But Paredes does, and he even abides by a rule now scoffed at as antiquated and quaint: his paintings are not only powerful and emotive, they are beautiful.
He considers himself a surrealist and can wax eloquent on the theory behind his creations, but I wonder if like many artists, the explanations do not come until after the creation.... Many of his paintings depict dreamings of metaphysical confusion, or the rage of innocent victims at an uncaring and ludicrous divinity. Many of his creations use the visions he has seen in epileptic seizures suffered by him for years. Many paintings are without a direct connection with the reality of the palpable world, but if you stop trying to identify and analyze, you can see the swirling movements and pulsations of the emotions. You can see order strive against chaos and the beauty of both.
Movimiento de la Luz, Primera Parte
Other paintings by Paredes are tremendously realistic, but the other world of mystic chaos always lurks within or around the figures. There is no escape from the dangerous clowns that run the universe that Carlos paints. In all there is lust and riotous life. There is the rapid decay of tropical death with its shiny hues of greens and blues, the recycling of the dead by an explosion of other living matter, be it fungus or bacteria or vines and algae. In Paredes' work nothing is static, nothing is expected to stay as it is, but everything is alive and ready to give birth or to die and transform.
Sirena
I will make a monthly entry of paintings and poetry by Carlos and will post each segment in English and Spanish.
Without much sense of order I am going to present paintings from various periods of Carlos' works. Click here to watch him create the painting "Sirena"
Angel Crucificada
Carlos Paredes
I draw and paint because I like to, but I don't pretend to be an artist. Many people learn to paint a certain style that patrons will pay for and they mat consider themselves artists, but their works are only decoration. There are very few artists that actually mix fire and emotions and story and rage into the paints on their palette. But Paredes does, and he even abides by a rule now scoffed at as antiquated and quaint: his paintings are not only powerful and emotive, they are beautiful.
He considers himself a surrealist and can wax eloquent on the theory behind his creations, but I wonder if like many artists, the explanations do not come until after the creation.... Many of his paintings depict dreamings of metaphysical confusion, or the rage of innocent victims at an uncaring and ludicrous divinity. Many of his creations use the visions he has seen in epileptic seizures suffered by him for years. Many paintings are without a direct connection with the reality of the palpable world, but if you stop trying to identify and analyze, you can see the swirling movements and pulsations of the emotions. You can see order strive against chaos and the beauty of both.
Movimiento de la Luz, Primera Parte
Other paintings by Paredes are tremendously realistic, but the other world of mystic chaos always lurks within or around the figures. There is no escape from the dangerous clowns that run the universe that Carlos paints. In all there is lust and riotous life. There is the rapid decay of tropical death with its shiny hues of greens and blues, the recycling of the dead by an explosion of other living matter, be it fungus or bacteria or vines and algae. In Paredes' work nothing is static, nothing is expected to stay as it is, but everything is alive and ready to give birth or to die and transform.
Sirena
I will make a monthly entry of paintings and poetry by Carlos and will post each segment in English and Spanish.
Without much sense of order I am going to present paintings from various periods of Carlos' works. Click here to watch him create the painting "Sirena"
Angel Crucificada
Friday, February 6, 2009
HS 833 - Ron Paul's Bill To Abolish The Federal Reserve
The revocation of the Fed's authority to manage our economy and issue our money will be the first step towards recovering an economy based on production rather than an economy based on Ponzi scemes.
Only through production is wealth created and only with savings is production possible. This bill will set us back on the road to a sustainable economy. If this passes, there will be pain sooner, but it will not last as long nor hit the poor as badly as what will happen if we let the Fed destroy the dollar.
Please contact your Congressman to support this bill in committee, to co-sponsor this bill and to vote for it on the floor of the House. To write your Congressman follow this link and just type in your State and Zip code.
Here is text that you can copy to request that your Congressman supports Dr. Paul's bill:
Dear ___________
I firmly believe that the irresponsible policies of the Federal Reserve Bank have created the economic disaster that we are facing today. I also believe that in our Constitutional Republic, comprised of free men and women, we cannot have a body that sets economic policy but does not answer to the people or the people's representatives in Washington.
It is wrong that a private bank is making life and death decisions for free American men and women in secret. It is time to abolish the Federal Reserve Bank and give the responsibility of coining our money back to the Congress as is stipulated in the Constitution.
Please support HS 833 that was introduced by Congressman Ron Paul on the 3rd of February. Your support will guarantee my vote.
Thank you,
__________________
Following is the body of this overdue bill.
HR 833 IH
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 833
To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 3, 2009
Mr. PAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services
A BILL
To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act’.
SEC. 2. FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD ABOLISHED.
(a) In General- Effective at the end of the 1-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal reserve bank are hereby abolished.
(b) Repeal of Federal Reserve Act- Effective at the end of the 1-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Reserve Act is hereby repealed.
(c) Disposition of Affairs-
(1) MANAGEMENT DURING DISSOLUTION PERIOD- During the 1-year period referred to in subsection (a), the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System--
(A) shall, for the sole purpose of winding up the affairs of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks--
(i) manage the employees of the Board and each such bank and provide for the payment of compensation and benefits of any such employee which accrue before the position of such employee is abolished; and
(ii) manage the assets and liabilities of the Board and each such bank until such assets and liabilities are liquidated or assumed by the Secretary of the Treasury in accordance with this subsection; and
(B) may take such other action as may be necessary, subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, to wind up the affairs of the Board and the Federal reserve banks.
(2) LIQUIDATION OF ASSETS-
(A) IN GENERAL- The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall liquidate all assets of the Board and the Federal reserve banks in an orderly manner so as to achieve as expeditious a liquidation as may be practical while maximizing the return to the Treasury.
(B) TRANSFER TO TREASURY- After satisfying all claims against the Board and any Federal reserve bank which are accepted by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and redeeming the stock of such banks, the net proceeds of the liquidation under subparagraph (A) shall be transferred to the Secretary of the Treasury and deposited in the General Fund of the Treasury.
(3) ASSUMPTION OF LIABILITIES- All outstanding liabilities of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks at the time such entities are abolished, including any liability for retirement and other benefits for former officers and employees of the Board or any such bank in accordance with employee retirement and benefit programs of the Board and any such bank, shall become the liability of the Secretary of the Treasury and shall be paid from amounts deposited in the general fund pursuant to paragraph (2) which are hereby appropriated for such purpose until all such liabilities are satisfied.
(d) Report- At the end of the 18-month period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall submit a joint report to the Congress containing a detailed description of the actions taken to implement this Act and any actions or issues relating to such implementation that remain uncompleted or unresolved as of the date of the report.
Only through production is wealth created and only with savings is production possible. This bill will set us back on the road to a sustainable economy. If this passes, there will be pain sooner, but it will not last as long nor hit the poor as badly as what will happen if we let the Fed destroy the dollar.
Please contact your Congressman to support this bill in committee, to co-sponsor this bill and to vote for it on the floor of the House. To write your Congressman follow this link and just type in your State and Zip code.
Here is text that you can copy to request that your Congressman supports Dr. Paul's bill:
Dear ___________
I firmly believe that the irresponsible policies of the Federal Reserve Bank have created the economic disaster that we are facing today. I also believe that in our Constitutional Republic, comprised of free men and women, we cannot have a body that sets economic policy but does not answer to the people or the people's representatives in Washington.
It is wrong that a private bank is making life and death decisions for free American men and women in secret. It is time to abolish the Federal Reserve Bank and give the responsibility of coining our money back to the Congress as is stipulated in the Constitution.
Please support HS 833 that was introduced by Congressman Ron Paul on the 3rd of February. Your support will guarantee my vote.
Thank you,
__________________
Following is the body of this overdue bill.
HR 833 IH
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 833
To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 3, 2009
Mr. PAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services
A BILL
To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act’.
SEC. 2. FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD ABOLISHED.
(a) In General- Effective at the end of the 1-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal reserve bank are hereby abolished.
(b) Repeal of Federal Reserve Act- Effective at the end of the 1-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Reserve Act is hereby repealed.
(c) Disposition of Affairs-
(1) MANAGEMENT DURING DISSOLUTION PERIOD- During the 1-year period referred to in subsection (a), the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System--
(A) shall, for the sole purpose of winding up the affairs of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks--
(i) manage the employees of the Board and each such bank and provide for the payment of compensation and benefits of any such employee which accrue before the position of such employee is abolished; and
(ii) manage the assets and liabilities of the Board and each such bank until such assets and liabilities are liquidated or assumed by the Secretary of the Treasury in accordance with this subsection; and
(B) may take such other action as may be necessary, subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, to wind up the affairs of the Board and the Federal reserve banks.
(2) LIQUIDATION OF ASSETS-
(A) IN GENERAL- The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall liquidate all assets of the Board and the Federal reserve banks in an orderly manner so as to achieve as expeditious a liquidation as may be practical while maximizing the return to the Treasury.
(B) TRANSFER TO TREASURY- After satisfying all claims against the Board and any Federal reserve bank which are accepted by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and redeeming the stock of such banks, the net proceeds of the liquidation under subparagraph (A) shall be transferred to the Secretary of the Treasury and deposited in the General Fund of the Treasury.
(3) ASSUMPTION OF LIABILITIES- All outstanding liabilities of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks at the time such entities are abolished, including any liability for retirement and other benefits for former officers and employees of the Board or any such bank in accordance with employee retirement and benefit programs of the Board and any such bank, shall become the liability of the Secretary of the Treasury and shall be paid from amounts deposited in the general fund pursuant to paragraph (2) which are hereby appropriated for such purpose until all such liabilities are satisfied.
(d) Report- At the end of the 18-month period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall submit a joint report to the Congress containing a detailed description of the actions taken to implement this Act and any actions or issues relating to such implementation that remain uncompleted or unresolved as of the date of the report.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
FED UP - The popular uprising against central banking
Ron Paul introduced HS 833 today. This bill is an act to retract Congressional authorization for the existnce of the Federal Reserve Bank.I will post more about that when I get a copy of the bill itself.But in the meantime ¡Halleluyah! Maybe we have reason to hope!Following is an article from the American Conservative about the growing acceptance of the idea that the Federal Reserve Bank has to go. Check it out.“The Fed simply does not care whether its actions are illegal or not. The Fed is operating under the principle that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. And forgiveness is just another means to the desired power grab it is seeking.”
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Maybe Its Time To Open The Fed's Books
A Freshman Congressman, Alan Grayson, asks "what has the Fed done with 2 Trillion dollars in the last six months?"
He is told that it is none of our business.
Inform yourself about the Federal Reserve Bank. When you do, you will think that you misunderstand because it seems impossible that:
1.- The Federal Reserve Bank is not part of the US government
2.- Although the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is appointed by the President, he is under no obligation to disclose anything that the Fed does.
3.- The Fedral Reserve is a private corporation, and its ownership is secret. We have no idea who owns the Federal Reserve Bank.
4.- The Federal Reserve Bank has the exclusive authority to create new dollars by loaning them at interest. The Fed pays no taxes on that immense income. Actually the Fed pays no taxes at all.
This man, Andrew Jackson, thought that his greatest accomplishment as President was the deconstruction of the American central bank. In fact he wanted it carved on his gravestone. This great American hero is now suffering in his grave as we allow the Fed to destroy our economy through Keynesian manipulation.
Read Edward Griffin's book, "The Creature From Jekyll Island"
Watch this hour and a half long video about monetary economics and the Federal Reserve.
Read Ron Paul's "The Revoultion: A Manifesto"
Sunday, February 1, 2009
CBS 60 Minutes, Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?
This is an excellent piece of reporting by 60 minutes. This video will help anyone who doesn't understand the Palestinian position learn that there is very good reason to blame Israel for the troubles in this conflict. Watch with an open mind:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 1
Part 2
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Peace By Theft and Ethnic Cleansing
January 2009
There is a hopeful trend of thought towards peace and fairness for Israel and Palestine, but that trend is NOT happening in Israel. To the contrary, Israel is turning increasingly towards the One-State ethnically cleansed solution to the Palestine-Israel conundrum.
Today it is unclear if the Palestinians will ever have a country of their own, or even be able to live in peace with a little dignity.
Jimmy Carter has been the wisest, most open and humble voice in the Mid East. He is the only President who managed to negotiate a real peace for Israel. That was with Egypt and he had intentions of completing the negotiations with Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the PLO but then he was voted out of office. Now Mr. Carter has laid out the three possible denouements of the tragic situation in Palestine.
1.- The Two State Solution, Being a wise man, Jimmy Carter realizes that it will be impossible to dislodge most of the "stubborn" settlers. So his suggestion is to let the majority of the settlements stay, especially those closest to the Israeli border, and then have Israel trade an equal amount of quality land (such as land around Nazereth) to the Palestinians.
Here is a map for reference
2.- The One State Solution that incorporates the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. The common understanding in the press and the Foreign Service is that this is the outcome that will transpire if #1 is not achieved soon. Many Palestinians who have given up hope for the Two State Solution favor One State in which both Jews and Arabs would have equal rights. The Israelis fear that they would lose their Jewish State.
3.- The third possible outcome of this long struggle is the One State Solution that does not incorporate the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. Personally, I think that this is clearly the goal of the Israeli government and it explains why Israel never really negotiates, but rather just drags things out for years. Years in which the settlements continue to expand ("the number of new structures in the West Bank settlements and outposts increased by 69 percent in 2008, compared to 2007"), years in which more checkpoints are built, more settler only roads cut the West Bank into tiny isolated enclaves.
To achieve this "solution" the Israelis could force a confrontation in the West Bank like what just happened in Gaza, but this time they would force the Palestinians out of the country. The IDF would clean out each Palestinian enclave killing the Palestinians or force-marching them across the river into Jordan. The whole world would scream bloody murder, but by the time anyone would actually organize to do anything the operation would be over. It would be a fait accompli. Once the Palestinians are gone, they will never get back in. Who has the power to force Israel to do what they don’t want to do? Only the United States and the United States won’t do anything. Israel would suffer for a while, but the US will always forgive Israel. The US will pay billions to the homeless Palestinians in Israel's name and gradually the world will forget.
OK, I'm not a mind reader, but I'll bet a month's wages that #3 is the Israeli hard-line plan. They will never accept #1 and certainly not #2
Here’s a little more information that leads me to believe that I am on the right track. Bibi Netanyahu said that he “would let Jewish settlements expand in the West Bank if he’s elected prime minister” will probably win the election. He is definitely not leaning towards peace. In fact today (January 30th) he stated that he would not evacuate any settlers if he is elected next week.
I heard on NPR last week that over a third of the IDF's officer corps now comes from the settler families or the hard-line religious groups. Other articles state that over half of new officers come from the hard-line religious parties. In all probability if the IDF (Israeli “Defense” Force) were to attempt to dislodge a number of settlements, they would see a mutiny in the Officer Corps.
I think that Israel will want to work fast, before Obama can organize world leaders to impose a peace deal. I imagine that they will take advantage of the worldwide economic collapse that will have people’s attention focused away from the Middle East. Expect something very ugly in the next twelve months.
Pray for the Palestinians.
Update March 2010
The Israeli advance towards the third outcome is on schedule. Slowly, inexorably Israel builds more settlements and locks more Palestinians out of their farmland and builds more checkpoints and steals more land.
But what is most shocking to me is that Israel just expropriates land and farms and water rights and homes at gunpoint without even considering paying for what it has taken. That is theft. It is in fact armed robbery.
Israel is rich, partly becuase of its own efforts and partly because of billions in transfer payments from other countries. If the goal is to expropriate all the West Bank and Jerusalem, why don't we ever hear that the Israelis offer to pay for what they grab at gunpoint?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy
WASHINGTON--While companies across the board were losing record amounts of money and laying off employees last year, at least one industry seemed to weather the recession: lobbying. Special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008, more than any other year on record and a 13.7 percent increase from 2007, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found.
Analyzing 4th Quarter disclosure reports filed Jan. 20, the Center calculated that interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying for every day Congress was in session in 2008, or $32,523 per legislator per day.
"In this economy, most industries would have been elated to grow even half as much as the lobbying industry reported growing last year," Center for Responsive Politics Executive Director Sheila Krumholz said. "The federal government is handing out billions of dollars by the day, and that translates into job security for lobbyists who can help companies and industries get a piece of the payout."
Click here to read the rest of this sickening report.
Analyzing 4th Quarter disclosure reports filed Jan. 20, the Center calculated that interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying for every day Congress was in session in 2008, or $32,523 per legislator per day.
"In this economy, most industries would have been elated to grow even half as much as the lobbying industry reported growing last year," Center for Responsive Politics Executive Director Sheila Krumholz said. "The federal government is handing out billions of dollars by the day, and that translates into job security for lobbyists who can help companies and industries get a piece of the payout."
Click here to read the rest of this sickening report.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Gaza Horror: Large Photo Gallery of Gaza Massacre
This link goes to a website full of photos of the Gaza massacre. These pictures are graphic and very disturbing, but all Americans should take a look and see what the weapons that we give Israel do to women and children. America, this blood is on your hands.
read more | digg story
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
WSJ.com - Opinion: The World Won't Buy Unlimited U.S. Debt
Peter Schiff writes a great article that asks the question: for how much longer will the rest of the world finance our trillion dollar deficits?When the rest of the world (principally China and Japan) decides that they have better things to with their money, then the gig will be up. US interest rates will spike and the dollar will collapse.But there are a lot of economists telling the junkie to shoot some more dope. Paul Krugman in particular thinks that we need to run a 2.5 trillion dollar deficit this year. He and the rest of the Keynesian idiots don't seem to understand that sooner or later other countries will stop financing our debt. Read the whole article please and comment.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Map of Jewish owned land in Palestine 1947
As part of the official mythology of Israel, Americans and Israelis are taught that Jews had bought most of land in what is now Israel before the Nakba (as the 1947 war is known to the Palestinians). As with most of the official mythology of Israel, this is simply not true. Not even close. Click on the map for a large scale view of how little land the Zionists actually owned before they expropriated the rest of the country.
For more detailed information click here.
For more detailed information click here.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Desmond Tutu Speaks To The Cowed Americans
"People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment. We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers."
(Desmond Tutu, April 2002)
(Desmond Tutu, April 2002)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Punishing the Palestinians
by Ralph Nader
Common Dreams
January 19, 2006
In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.
There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.
The latest illustration of this Washington puppet show, backed by the most modern weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars annually sent to Israel, was the grotesquely one-sided Resolutions whisked through the Senate and the House of Representatives.
While a massive bombing and invasion of Gaza was underway, the resolution blaming Hamas for all the civilian casualties and devastation-99% of it inflicted on Palestinians-zoomed through the Senate by voice vote and through the House by a vote of 390 to 5 with 22 legislators voting present.
There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.
The reasons for such near-unanimous support for Israeli actions-no matter how often they are condemned by peace advocates such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, United Nations resolutions, the World Court and leading human rights groups inside and outside of Israel, are numerous. The pro-Israeli government lobby, and the right-wing Christian evangelicals, lubricated by campaign money of many Political Action Committees (PACs) certainly are key.
There is also more than a little bigotry in Congress against Arabs and Muslims, reinforced by the mass media yahoos who set new records for biased reporting each time this conflict erupts.
The bias is clear. It is always the Palestinians’ fault. Right-wingers who would never view the U.S. government as perfect see the Israeli government as never doing anything wrong. Liberals who do not hesitate to criticize the U.S. military view all Israeli military attacks, invasions and civilian devastation as heroic manifestations of Israeli defense.
The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No problem to Congress.
Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the Palestinians deserved it.
Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis-they were unable to pay their civil servants and police.
In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The natives became restless. Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters “wildly inaccurate” were fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets. Civilians-especially children, the infirm and elderly-died or suffered week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis.
Then the Israeli bombing followed by the invasion during the past three weeks with what prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called “a brutal and violent operation…far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south.” Mr. Levy observed what the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called a war against “a helpless and defenseless imprisoned population.”
The horror of being trapped from fleeing the torrent of the most modern weapons of war from the land, air and seas is reflected in this passage from Amira Hass, writing in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz:
“The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.”
Ms. Hass is pointing to the use of new anti-civilian weapons used on the Gazan people. So far there have been over 1100 fatalities, many thousands of injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, pharmacies, granaries, farmer’s fields and many critical public facilities. The clearly marked UN headquarters and UN school were smashed, along with stored medicines and food supplies.
Why? The Congressional response: “Hamas terrorists” everywhere. Sure, defending their Palestinian families is called terrorism. The truth is there is no Hamas army, airforce and navy up against the fourth most powerful military in the world. As one Israeli gunner on an armored personnel carrier frankly said to The New York Times: “They are villagers with guns. They don’t even aim when they shoot.”
Injured Gazans are dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to death because rescuers are not permitted to reach them or are endangered themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians are stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press out of the Gazan killing fields.
What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this month - “state terrorism.” Already about 400 children are known to have died. More will be added who are under the rubble.
Since 2002, more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations have had a standing offer, repeated often, that if Israel obeys several UN resolutions and withdraws to the 1967 borders leaving 22 percent of the original Palestine for an independent Palestinian state, they will open full diplomatic relations and there will be peace. Israel has declined to accept this offer.
None of these and many other aspects of this conflict matter to the Congress. Its members do not want to hear even from the Israeli peace movement, composed of retired generals, security chiefs, mayors, former government ministers, and members of the Knesset. In 60 years these savvy peace advocates have not been able to give one hour of testimony before a Congressional Committee.
Maybe members of Congress may wish to weigh the words of the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, years ago when he said:
“There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinian's] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”
Doesn’t that observation invite some compassion for the Palestinian people and their right to be free of Israeli occupation, land and water grabs and blockades in the 22 percent left of Palestine?
Common Dreams
January 19, 2006
In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.
There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.
The latest illustration of this Washington puppet show, backed by the most modern weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars annually sent to Israel, was the grotesquely one-sided Resolutions whisked through the Senate and the House of Representatives.
While a massive bombing and invasion of Gaza was underway, the resolution blaming Hamas for all the civilian casualties and devastation-99% of it inflicted on Palestinians-zoomed through the Senate by voice vote and through the House by a vote of 390 to 5 with 22 legislators voting present.
There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.
The reasons for such near-unanimous support for Israeli actions-no matter how often they are condemned by peace advocates such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, United Nations resolutions, the World Court and leading human rights groups inside and outside of Israel, are numerous. The pro-Israeli government lobby, and the right-wing Christian evangelicals, lubricated by campaign money of many Political Action Committees (PACs) certainly are key.
There is also more than a little bigotry in Congress against Arabs and Muslims, reinforced by the mass media yahoos who set new records for biased reporting each time this conflict erupts.
The bias is clear. It is always the Palestinians’ fault. Right-wingers who would never view the U.S. government as perfect see the Israeli government as never doing anything wrong. Liberals who do not hesitate to criticize the U.S. military view all Israeli military attacks, invasions and civilian devastation as heroic manifestations of Israeli defense.
The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No problem to Congress.
Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the Palestinians deserved it.
Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis-they were unable to pay their civil servants and police.
In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The natives became restless. Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters “wildly inaccurate” were fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets. Civilians-especially children, the infirm and elderly-died or suffered week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis.
Then the Israeli bombing followed by the invasion during the past three weeks with what prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called “a brutal and violent operation…far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south.” Mr. Levy observed what the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called a war against “a helpless and defenseless imprisoned population.”
The horror of being trapped from fleeing the torrent of the most modern weapons of war from the land, air and seas is reflected in this passage from Amira Hass, writing in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz:
“The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.”
Ms. Hass is pointing to the use of new anti-civilian weapons used on the Gazan people. So far there have been over 1100 fatalities, many thousands of injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, pharmacies, granaries, farmer’s fields and many critical public facilities. The clearly marked UN headquarters and UN school were smashed, along with stored medicines and food supplies.
Why? The Congressional response: “Hamas terrorists” everywhere. Sure, defending their Palestinian families is called terrorism. The truth is there is no Hamas army, airforce and navy up against the fourth most powerful military in the world. As one Israeli gunner on an armored personnel carrier frankly said to The New York Times: “They are villagers with guns. They don’t even aim when they shoot.”
Injured Gazans are dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to death because rescuers are not permitted to reach them or are endangered themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians are stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press out of the Gazan killing fields.
What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this month - “state terrorism.” Already about 400 children are known to have died. More will be added who are under the rubble.
Since 2002, more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations have had a standing offer, repeated often, that if Israel obeys several UN resolutions and withdraws to the 1967 borders leaving 22 percent of the original Palestine for an independent Palestinian state, they will open full diplomatic relations and there will be peace. Israel has declined to accept this offer.
None of these and many other aspects of this conflict matter to the Congress. Its members do not want to hear even from the Israeli peace movement, composed of retired generals, security chiefs, mayors, former government ministers, and members of the Knesset. In 60 years these savvy peace advocates have not been able to give one hour of testimony before a Congressional Committee.
Maybe members of Congress may wish to weigh the words of the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, years ago when he said:
“There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinian's] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”
Doesn’t that observation invite some compassion for the Palestinian people and their right to be free of Israeli occupation, land and water grabs and blockades in the 22 percent left of Palestine?
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