If you are sitting in class taking a test, and you’ve chosen to sit amongst your bone-headed, slacker friends, don’t turn to them for help when you can’t figure out of any of the answers. They may all tell you the same thing, but they’ll all be wrong.

That’s the situation President Obama finds himself in today in the White House. Having surrounded himself with the very Wall Street con men who set up the crooked game that led to the current financial crisis and economic collapse, and finding that the lousy advice they have been giving him since last January has left the country still mired in deepening economic decline, with the banks still not lending and unemployment still mounting, and with growing signs that instead of bottoming out and starting to recover, the economy is threatening to fall a second time, to new lows and higher unemployment, Obama has turned to the same rotten advisors for answers.

A few days ago, in an interview with Fox-TV while he was in China off all places (a country that has made a stupendous stimulus investment to create domestic jobs!) Obama warned, for the first time, that America faces the possibility of a “double-dip” recession. That’s fine as far as it goes. I agree. But what did he say the risk was? Not that the government has been failing to put significant numbers of people back to work, but that the government keeps piling up deficits.

This has to be the lamest economic thinking since Herbert Hoover started tightening the screws on government spending at the onset of the Great Depression in 1930.

Clearly the American government needs to do just the opposite of worrying about deficits. The only growth the US economy has seen to date has been the result of government funding—the cash-for-clunkers program gave a brief restoration of pulse to the auto industry, and the $8000 tax credit for buying a first home kicked up home sales briefly. We know this because when the clunkers program ended, auto sales crashed, and when the deadline approached for the end to the new home tax credit, home building plunged almost 11 percent. The hundreds of billions of dollars poured into so-called “shovel-ready” state and local projects like roads, schools, etc., may have added or saved as much as a million jobs, but the economy lost many times that many jobs over the same period.

The problem with these stimulus programs is that they are inefficient ways to create jobs or preserve jobs. If roughly one million jobs were created through the stimulus spending of say $200 billion (assuming that the February $800-billion stimulus program, to mollify Republicans, consisted of one-half tax cuts and only one-half actual federal spending, and that this federal spending was spread evenly over a two-year period, that’s $200,000 per job!

If, instead, Obama had chucked the dunces at Treasury and in his Council of Economic Advisors, and instead asked your Labor Secretary to initiate a wide-ranging $200-billion-per-year jobs program, hiring the unemployed at perhaps $20-25,000 per person to do everything from teach in overcrowded urban schools to laying high-speed rail trackbeds, from cleaning up parks to putting insulation in homes, he could have given jobs to close 8 million people—people who would have then spent their money on goods and services and helped rally the economy from the bottom up.

Deficits? Who gives a damn about deficits at this point! The country is up to the gills in debt without creating any jobs. (It’s kind of like my mortgage. Why would I worry about using my credit card to buy food for the week if I was low on cash, when my mortgage has me deep in the red for the next ten years? Obama’s financial advisors, on the evidence, would tell me I should let my family go hungry, because I need to worry about my total debt load.)

If you’re worried about deficits, Mr. Obama, end the god-damned wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is costing one million dollars a year to send one lousy grunt to Afghanistan or Iraq. And you want to have at least 100,000 guys over there. That’s $100 billion a year right there—enough to hire four million unemployed Americans back here at home!

This president is well on the way to rescuing President Hoover from history’s crap heap by one-upping him in the realm of economic mismanagement. We already have Obamavilles springing up around the country. We haven’t started calling them that, but Naming Day isn’t far off.

At least Hoover didn’t mire the country in another war while the economy was collapsing around him.

President Obama is on a short leash at this point. His fans, and I was one of those who was willing to give him a shot last November, are mostly giving up on him. Activists are already turning on him. My union friends are disgusted. My African-American friends just shake their heads in dismay. Liberal friends act embarrassed.

A leftist friend, retired, who devoted a month to campaigning for Obama full time in Pennsylvania last fall now writes angry letters almost weekly to Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe and others, blasting Obama’s handling of the bank crisis and his Afghan War plans. Clearly Obama cannot continue to appease Republicans and cater to Blue Dogs in Congress and expect to be re-elected in 2012.

Indeed, if he doesn’t toss the crooks and charlatans in the Fed, the Treasury and his Council of Economic Advisers out, and doesn’t stop listening to the self-serving crazies in the military, he won’t even have a Democratic majority in Congress by the end of next year.

President Obama, aren’t you tired of being an embarrassment to your friends and family? Aren’t you tired of being mocked by your foes?

Come on. We’re sick of your speeches! Suck it up, be a leader finally and kick some butt. Do something unconventional and daring. End the wars, bring the troops home, announce a huge jobs program, issue an executive order expanding the Medicare program, raise taxes on the wealthy to back where they were in the 1960s, and let’s get the country moving forward again.

SCHULTZ: Welcome back to THE ED SHOW.

Goldman Sachs has been getting some bad press for dragging us into a recession, being a part of it, taking taxpayer money, and then giving it to employees. I mean, outlandish bonuses. So now they‘re trying to buy their way back into the problem by throwing a bone to small business?

First, Goldman‘s CEO apologized, saying, “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret.” I guess so.

He then announced the company is investing $500 million to help out small businesses. Of course, that‘s still only three percent of the $16.7 billion Goldman set aside for their employee bonuses this year.

Meanwhile, some Democrats in the Congress are pushing to direct the unspent TARP money to small business, homeowners and infrastructure projects.

Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon is with us on that issue tonight.

Congressman, good to have you on.

REP. PETER DEFAZIO (D), OREGON: Thanks, Ed.

SCHULTZ: Now, what kind of progress can be made to make sure that TARP money goes where it‘s really going to stimulate the economy—small business and infrastructure?

DEFAZIO: Well, that‘s our money. It was borrowed in the name of the American people. It was borrowed to bail out Wall Street, which has worked famously for Goldman Sachs and others.

You know, we think it‘s time, maybe, that we turn our focus to Main Street. We reclaim the unspent funds, reclaim some of the funds that are being paid back, which will not be paid back in full, and we use it to put people back to work.

Rebuilding America‘s infrastructure is a tried and true way to put people back to work. Unfortunately, the president has an adviser from Wall Street, Larry Summers, and a treasury secretary from Wall Street, Timothy Geithner, who don‘t like that idea. They want to keep the TARP money either to continue to bail out Wall Street if there are future problems or maybe…

SCHULTZ: So Geithner does not want to give the money to small business the TARP money?

DEFAZIO: No, they‘re saying they‘re got to keep the money. There may be more needs on Wall Street, or maybe they should use it to pay down the deficit. That‘s absurd. We borrowed the money. How do you pay down the deficit?

SCHULTZ: Should he stay in his job, Congressman?

DEFAZIO: No.

SCHULTZ: You think Tim Geithner should be gone as treasury secretary?

DEFAZIO: I do, especially if you look back at the AIG scandal and Goldmans and the others who got their bets paid off in full. Instead of saying, well, you bet, you lost, they got paid back in full with taxpayer money through AIG. We channeled the money through them.

Geithner would not answer my question when I said, “Were those naked credit default swaps by Goldman or were they a counter party?” He said, “I will not answer that question.”

I think they were naked credit default swaps. They were bets. They should not have gotten their money back.

SCHULTZ: So he‘s not coming clean with the Congress?

DEFAZIO: Absolutely not.

SCHULTZ: OK. So have you asked the Obama administration to remove him, or will you?

DEFAZIO: The populist caucus is considering questions regarding both him and some other members of the economic team in the near future.

SCHULTZ: OK. So, there has been talk in the halls of Congress amongst some progressive Democrats that maybe it‘s time to ask the Obama administration to remove Tim Geithner. Am I hearing that correctly?

DEFAZIO: Yes. He‘s being failed by his economic team. Their total orientation is Wall Street, not Main Street, not real jobs.

I mean, OK, let‘s get past all the Goldman bailout and all that stuff. I‘ve got firms in my district that are solvent, very little debt, and they can‘t get money out of bailed-out firms…

(CROSSTALK)

SCHULTZ: No, credit is tight. It‘s incredible.

DEFAZIO: Yes. Like Wells Fargo.

SCHULTZ: It‘s absolutely ridiculous.

Well, what was this announcement a few weeks ago that they were going to get money to the community banks? Where the hell‘s that?

DEFAZIO: Good question. I can‘t tell you. It‘s lost somewhere…

SCHULTZ: So, they made an announcement that they were going to get this TARP money to community banks, but you don‘t know where that is right now?

DEFAZIO: Nope. We‘re still waiting. There‘s no new lending to my small businesses in my communities.

SCHULTZ: And how many congressmen in the House do you think would go along with Geithner‘s removal?

DEFAZIO: Well, when you mention either Geithner or Larry Summers, as they were mentioned in the Democratic Caucus on jobs on Monday night, there is—there are boos and cries of derision. I think there‘s a growing consensus in the caucus, we need a new economic team that cares more about jobs, Main Street and the American people than it does about Wall Street and huge bonuses.

SCHULTZ: I‘ll tell you what, Congressman, this jobs summit thing coming up in the White House in December, it‘s like the Super Bowl of the economy. Or at least a major playoff game. That‘s how I see it.

DEFAZIO: Well, we may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans.

SCHULTZ: I hear you.

Congressman Peter DeFazio.

Good to have you with us tonight. Thank you.

DEFAZIO: Thanks, Ed.

This image of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was taken in July 2009 under an agreement with Guantanamo prison camp staff that lets Red Cross delegates photograph detainees and send photos to family members.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate “mainstream” media make quite a pair.

We’re hearing a very “balanced” debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We’re not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime.

We’re not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the “war on terror” might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis.
What effect might that have had on Americans’ willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren’t hearing about that.

Aside from a column by my friend Ray McGovern, not of course published by the corporate media, what are we hearing or seeing about KSM’s motive?
Isn’t motive a traditionally important element in a criminal investigation? We’re told that putting KSM on trial would give him a platform for propaganda, but we’re not told what that propaganda might be.

If it were really so pernicious, why not expose it and refute it? Isn’t that what societies that believe in free speech do with misguided speech? Don’t they defeat it with more and better speech? Or is that only when it can be done without using the word “Israel”?

Outside of progressive blogs, we’re not hearing that giving a somewhat fair, if less than speedy, trial to those most likely to plead guilty or be convicted, and a less fair military trial to others, and no trial at all to others still, reveals this show of justice to be a sham.

If KSM were acquitted, President Obama would order him imprisoned outside the rule of law until he dies. If he is found guilty, as everyone universally expects, he may be officially murdered by the United States, motivating others to take up arms against a nation that wages and funds illegal wars, imprisons people without charge, tortures, kidnaps, renditions, and executes.

If the justice system is bent to ensure that KSM is convicted or permitted little opportunity to speak, will that bending have any permanent repercussions for our justice system? Or, to move in the other direction, having determined that “military justice” is not good enough for alleged mass murders, must we continue to pretend that it is good enough for members of the military?

Can we not admit everyone into a single and improved justice system? We’re not hearing that discussion.

An improved justice system would require the admission into court of videos of all confessions and interrogations. This would not include admissions made to a journalist prior to imprisonment, as in the case of KSM and Al Jazeera, but would include all interrogations since that time.

And in KSM’s case it might include video of the “interrogation” of his children. Years ago, allegations were made that the United States had tortured his children, including in little-heard-of manners, such as locking a child in a box with a supposedly deadly insect.

More recently, secret memos emerged showing the United States to have authorized just those techniques. If this were a story about missing sex tapes, the media would be all over it. A story about the possible torture of children is far less interesting.

It might open up difficult questions, such as whether someone who has been endlessly tortured, and whose children may have been tortured, can — while still in the custody of the torturers — give an un-coerced confession.

Questions might even have to be asked about leniency in sentencing for someone who has already served time and been horribly tortured.

If this were a story about a singer or actor or athlete, we’d see investigations of the time KSM spent attending college in North Carolina. Why didn’t the Americans he lived among persuade him of how horrible it would be to murder people in this country?

Our media pundits are completely incapable of asking such a question without either blaming KSM’s American acquaintances for his crimes or declaring KSM to be an inscrutable monster whose thinking is of absolutely no interest.

Other questions might be asked as well, such as why Dick Cheney and his supporters never talk about the two memos anymore. Remember the two memos that Cheney claimed would show that the torture of KSM and others revealed important information that saved lives.

The memos are now public and show nothing of the sort.

Nor was torture needed in order to prosecute KSM himself. In fact, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the ability of the government to prosecute him without using evidence obtained through torture demonstrates that torture was not needed for that purpose.

But why are we not talking about the two purposes torture actually serves? We know it does not produce useful information, but we also know that it produces desired lies, such as agreement to false rationales for war. And we know that it scares people, both people who fear they might be tortured and people who fear the wild beasts depicted as reachable only through torture.

As Glenn Greenwald has touched on, behaving as though terrorized, irrationally unable to believe an alleged terrorist can be held in a cell and tried in a court, is to give in to the terrorism. Worse, it is to advance it.

More Americans are more terrorized following TV discussions of KSM’s possible prosecution than were beforehand, because the voices on the TV promote the terror rather than the prosecution.

We are hearing about the need to avoid evidence obtained through torture. But at the same time we are hearing absolutely nothing about the need to prosecute the torturers and the creators of the torture program, at least one of whom, John Yoo, is given a platform as one of the disinterested media commentators in the MSM.

This failure is an ideal way to create more KSMs. Why don’t we talk about it?

David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press.  You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book. [This article previously appeared at Afterdowningstreet.org.]

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sharply rejected a call to resign from his job Thursday and told Congressman Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the House Joint Economic Committee, during heated testimony, “You gave this President an economy falling off the cliff.”

“Again, it’s just a basic fact: A year ago, this economy was falling at the rate of 6 percent a year,” Geithner told Brady after the GOP lawmaker ticked off a list of economic failures he said Geithner is responsible for. “We were losing between half a million and three-quarters of a million jobs a month.”

Brady, who asked Geithner if he would step down, then responded:

“Mr. Secretary, the public has lost all confidence in your ability to do your job. Conservatives agree.. liberals agree… it is time for a fresh start.” The failures, Brady told Geithner, is starting”to reflect on your president.”

Geithner fired back:

“If you look at any measure of consumer and investor confidence today, if you look at any measure of the stability and health of the economy … it is substantially stronger today than when the president of the United States took office,” he said. “And that did not happen on its own.”

“Tell all of that to the millions of American who no longer have jobs because of your decisions,” Brady said. “At some point you have to take some responsibility for your decisions.”

According to a report Wednesday in The Hill, progressive Democrats have also grown wary of Geithner:

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Wednesday that he and other liberal House members are becoming increasingly tired of Obama administration economic policies that they say are too focused on maintaining the stability of Wall Street firms and largely ignore “Main Street.”

“A growing consensus in the [Congressional Progressive Caucus [believe that Geithner should be removed],” DeFazio said on MSNBC this evening, adding that some lawmakers are “considering questions regarding him and other economic advisers.”

DeFazio said that lawmakers have not yet drafted a plan to remove Geithner. The lawmaker also took aim at top Obama economic adviser Larry Summers for furthering many of the same policies favored by Geithner.

DeFazio’s comments were made during an appearance on MSNBC’s The Ed Schultz Show. A video of DeFazio’s exchange with the Schultz can be seen HERE.

Report Contents:
———————I: U.S. Societal Breakdown
———————II: Environmental Crisis
———————III: The Obama Myth
———————IV: Economic Coup – Theft of Trillions
———————V: National Emergency

The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S.
public and society is unraveling at an increased rate.

I: U.S. Societal Breakdown

You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Before exposing the root causes of this breakdown, let’s look at some vital statistics and facts:

* The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The US already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top one percent, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high.

* As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and just surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefit the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Bloomberg reported: “Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, they are also benefiting by only paying 1% in taxes.

* The profits of the economic elite are “now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth.”

As the looting is occurring at the top, the US middle class is just beginning to collapse.

* Workers between the age of 55 – 60, who have worked for 20 – 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans went up by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion.

* Home foreclosure filings “hit a record high in the third quarter [of 2009]… They were the worst three months of all time… 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter” in this three month period. “3.4 million homes are expected to enter foreclosure by year’s end, with some experts estimating that next year will be even worse.”

President Obama has enacted a $75 billion taxpayer funded program that has been a spectacular failure in stemming the foreclosure crisis and has proven to be another massive waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.

* 25 Million people are unemployed or underemployed.

This means we have 25 million people who urgently need to increase their income, and they’re quickly running out of options. The unemployment rate is expected to rise further and remain high for several years. “The president’s chief economic adviser warned that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay ‘unacceptably high’ for years to come.”

The NY Times reports: “Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse. Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking…” As this ratio continues to grow, it will lead to a further reduction in wages – average worker wages have seen a sharp decline over the past year.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, a man who accurately predicted our current crisis, just reported on unemployment stating: “Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening…. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.”

* As the few elite banks thrive, there have been 123 US bank failures thus far this year. Recently, three banks that the government declared “healthy” and gave taxpayer money to have folded. The Wall Street Journal reports: “U.S. regulators have seized or threatened at least 27 banks that got capital infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, including some lenders government officials knew were troubled when they awarded the money. The troubles put taxpayers at risk of losing as much as $5.1 billion invested in the banks since TARP was launched in October 2008.”

* As bankruptcies surge across the board, 10 US states are on the verge of bankruptcy, with several ready to declare a financial state of emergency. California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are all “barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services.”

This is occurring at a time when the “federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before.” In total, “US public debt topped 12 trillion dollars for the first time in history… The public debt topped 10 trillion dollars in September 2008. The debt is quickly approaching the statutory limit of 12.104 trillion dollars, meaning Congress would have to raise the ceiling to prevent a shutdown of government operations.”

Economist Dean Baker explains the risk of running such a large deficit: “The debt limit must be increased at regular intervals in order to allow the government to function normally because the government is currently operating at a deficit. If the debt limit is not passed, then at some point the government will not be able to pay workers and contractors. It won’t be able to send out Social Security checks or make payments for Medicaid and unemployment insurance to state governments. And, it will not be able to make interest payments on government bonds, effectively defaulting on the national debt.”

Needless to say, all of this will make life drastically more difficult for citizens of the US. As the middle class continues on the path of economic decline, the number of citizens living in poverty has already hit an all time high.

* Although the government’s official figure tries to low-ball the number, 47.4 Million US citizens live in poverty, and the US poverty rate is the highest in the industrialized world.

Predictably, homelessness is rising at an increased rate as well. “The US government does not tally the numbers but interested organisations say that more than 3 million people were homeless at some point over the past year…. The fastest growing segment of the homeless population is families with children.”

Children have been hit especially hard by the economic crisis:

* 50% of US children, one out of every two children, will need to use food stamps to eat.

One out of every two children in the United States of America will need to use a food stamp… to EAT!

If you didn’t think starvation was a serious threat in the US, just read this new Washington Post report: “The nation’s economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people — including almost one child in four — struggled last year to get enough to eat… Several independent advocates and policy experts on hunger said that they had been bracing for the latest report to show deepening shortages, but that they were nevertheless astonished by how much the problem has worsened. ‘This is unthinkable. It’s like we are living in a Third World country,’ said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America.”

The United States Department of Agriculture released these findings in a study that was completed in December 2008, which means these numbers don’t take into account the millions more unemployed throughout 2009. The numbers of people living in poverty and struggling to eat has seen a significant increase since then.

This a national tragedy. But it gets much worse.

* In 2008, according to the Census Bureau, the number of US citizens without healthcare grew to a record 46.3 million. “The new figures, however, understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of nation’s job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey.”

* Lack of health Insurance has caused 45,000 preventable U.S. citizen deaths in the past year. The American Journal of Medicine recently released a study that stated “Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness.”

A Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study reported that 17,000 children have died due to lack of healthcare. You can also add in a recent report that revealed that 2,266 US Veterans have died in 2008 due to lack of insurance.

The 50 million now uninsured and the 45,000 preventable deaths per year statistics are expected to drastically rise over the next few years. As the Senate continues to strip meaningful amendments from a healthcare bill that wouldn’t even take effect until 2013, it has become clear that, despite the media hype, the healthcare bill is going to fall far short of meaningful reform and continue to rig the game in favor of large insurance company profits at the expense of the US population. With the highest cost healthcare in the world, current trends will continue and much needed change is not on the horizon.

Never before has the United States had so many citizens with so little means, little to no income and heavy debt. Debt and costs of living have now shackled US citizens just as it has shackled people throughout the world. The economic hit men have now hit the US as well and millions of US citizens are now effectively sentenced to a slow death.

Economic Imperial blowback has hit the mainland.

And the clock is ticking louder by the day…

Here’s another fact for you:

* The gun and ammunition manufacturing industry in the United States has over 200 companies producing billions of dollars in annual revenues. This huge manufacturing base cannot fulfill demand quickly enough. The demand for guns and ammunition has hit a record high and the gun industry cannot produce enough bullets to keep up with orders.

American’s are arming themselves to the teeth!

* In the past year, 100 new armed militia groups have been formed, as militia members have doubled in numbers. Federal authorities are gravely concerned about the “uptick in militia activities.” One federal authority recently said, “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

So let’s breakdown these numbers.

You have a population of 50 million people who are in desperate need of money, they most likely have no health insurance and can’t afford to get healthcare or help of any kind. Part of this population probably also has loved ones who can’t get life sustaining medical treatments, or loved ones that have already died due to lack of costly medical treatment. The clock is ticking loud for these people and they are running out of options fast, and time delayed is time closer to death.

While the richest one percent have never had it so good, a significant percentage of the US population now has firsthand experience in this. Millions upon millions of Americans are poor, broke, struggling, starving, desperate… and armed.

We are sitting on a powder keg!

We are now witnessing the critical unraveling of US society.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

II: Environmental Crisis

Add to this picture an environmental crisis the likes of which humanity has never faced.

Considering our current economy, what will happen when another extreme weather event like Hurricane Katrina hits a major US city? What will happen when storms, droughts and fires continue to spread with increasing intensity? How many have to die before even modest actions are taken to prevent environmental catastrophe?

Extreme weather events are pounding the globe, it is as if the environment has declared war on us as a species. Humanity has become a polluting cancer in the environmental system, and if we don’t urgently act to stop the bleeding, things are going to get drastically worse in a pace faster than anticipated. And this is not an opinion; it is happening now, there is plenty of empirical evidence that anyone can see before their own eyes, if they care to look.

US public opinion on the climate crisis has been distorted by the mainstream US media in stunning fashion. A recent Pew Research study revealed that only 36 percent of the US population thinks the climate crisis is a result of human activity.

Regardless of your beliefs, due to climate change, we are on the verge of experiencing major water shortages spreading “across the country. Sooner rather than later…” California has already been hit by extreme drought and water is in very short supply. As the Arctic continues to melt, California will continue to experience extreme drought. A new study revealed: “when Arctic sea ice disappears, the jet stream—high-altitude winds with a profound influence on climate—shifts north, moving precipitation away from California.” A recent “sweeping water-reform bill” in California temporarily eased public outcry, but the problem remains. The U.S. is confronted by a serious water crisis.

For a global example, there is currently an extreme drought in East Africa as well, which has 23 million people on the verge of dying from starvation. Due to the drought, crops have been killed in unprecedented fashion. Events of this nature are happening all over the globe.

Of the worldwide record one billion people going hungry, the leading cause is destroyed agriculture due to extreme weather.

As a significant percentage of humanity faces death due to climate change, we are in the midst of our planet’s sixth great extinction. Over 17,000 species are threatened with extinction, “more than one in five of all known mammals, over a quarter of reptiles and 70 percent of plants are under threat.”

For those of you unaware, the earth’s ecosystem is a very delicate balance. Being in the midst of the earth’s sixth great extinction is not a matter to be ignored.

The upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen was considered by leaders throughout the world to be the most critical environmental summit in the history of civilization. International headlines read: “We only have months, not years, to save civilization from climate change.”

However, the United States and the head of the United Nations just announced that no legally binding treaties are expected to come out of the summit. This is devastating news!

The reason why no deal will be reached at the summit: the United States is refusing to take necessary action.

In a PR move to calm criticism in advance of the summit, the US and Japan announced a vague agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions… in 2012. However, the “agreement on this ambitious reduction target could not be reached during the APEC summit, and so was dropped from the draft statement.”

It would be smart of the public relations department to at least get one photo op with Obama actually at the climate summit. Instead of being at the most important summit, perhaps in the history of civilization, it appears Obama will be blowing it off to give his speech on how it feels to win the Nobel Peace Prize… H E L L O.

We are living in an insane asylum.

The Goldman Sachs PR guy is out giving speeches on how cool it is to cast the illusion of peace and hope, while the earth burns.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

III: The Obama Myth

I don’t mean to dismiss the Obama myth, his words, the change we need is real, its just his actions don’t even come close to measuring up. Just read the legal documents he has signed his name to. Read them. His actions are most often the opposite of what he says. I venture to say a 10 year old can recognize that after doing a school day’s worth of research.

Obama is a national tragedy. He is a symbol of the times. He is not a leader, just a symbol. He projects the change we need. He was our shortcut to correcting our diseased political system, a way to rid it of corruption. He symbolized the change millions so desperately need. People came out in the millions for the first time “hoping” if they could work and organize to put him in office, we would have some representation to defend against the economic elite that have put the overwhelming majority of US politicians on the payroll and brought humanity to a breaking point.

People just need to research how the Obama myth was hatched. Goldman Sachs saw Obama early on and said, “He’s our guy!” When Obama became THE MAN in Iowa, he was on the Goldman Sachs pay roll. Goldman financed the psychological operation that is the Obama myth, the Illusion of HOPE – something to keep a suffering nation pacified just a little bit longer. Obama is truly a national tragedy. His failure and inaction has disillusioned millions upon millions of desperate citizens who turned to him as their best chance for justice.

As further evidence of Obama’s duplicity — beyond repeatedly signing his name to documents covering up the Bush Adminstration’s highest crimes and increasing an already bloated military budget — in one of his very first moves as President he put Goldman Sachs’ criminal mastermind Tim Geitner in charge of the treasury.

A new report from the TARP Inspector General further exposes Tim Geithner’s role “in overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.”

Which brings us to the ultimate theft of wealth in history, and to the root cause of our current crisis.

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IV: Economic Coup – Theft of Trillions

URGENT NATIONAL EMERGENCY: TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN PUBLIC WEALTH HAS BEEN STOLEN

This crime makes Bernie Madoff’s look like an elementary school lunch money stickup. No, I’m not talking about the hundreds of billions in the housing crisis scam cooked up by JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs that left millions homeless and investors suckered the world over, or even the $2.75 trillion oil futures market scam that has siphoned 50% of all our spending on gas and fuel.

These huge scams are just diversions from the ultimate crime.

Trillions of dollars, trillions of our money, of our tax money — the money that comes out of your paycheck every week of your working life, all the thousands upon thousands that have been taken away from you and your family and are supposed to fund our government and keep our society functioning — have been handed over to the economic elite, to the Llyod Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world.

Hank Paulson and his confidant Tim Geitner, the Goldman Sachs wonder twins, have looted the US treasury. There has been an economic coup in the United States!

Trillions of our dollars have vanished! You need to understand this!

We have just witnessed the greatest theft of wealth in history, the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class to the economic elite ever. An organized banking cartel has seized the US treasury and they are making up the “laws” and the rules to this rigged game. The covert economy has grown at a staggering rate due to taxpayer-funded injections. As a result of this, economic shackles are just beginning to fall upon the American public like never before. 99% of our nation is now sentenced to a slow death.

Just as economic hit men have done to governments throughout the globe, they have gained complete control of the US government and have now shackled US citizens as well. The economic elite do not want to deal with “spoiled Americans” anymore, that’s how they see it. To them the middle class was always an annoying nuisance to be tolerated so the economy could keep functioning well enough to allow their scams to perpetuate. But once their scam known as the US stock market came crashing down, and they were threatened with losing their ultimate power, they turned to the US middle class and opened fire. “Enough with you, we are taking over your government and stealing your tax money!”

This is exactly what happened!

The economic elite are operating under the belief that the world is theirs, they own it, and to hell with everyone else. They also take the view that as the environment grows more destructive, they don’t want us around to compete for resources.

This is self-evident after some research into policy actions that have been carried out. Research it for yourself!

Recent investigations into the illegal practices of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have revealed the US economy and stock market to be a fraud. As more of the world becomes aware of this, the dollar will continue to plummet and the U.S. public will pay a devastating price – things are just beginning to unravel.

The US economy has been hit by a deathblow, it lay in ruins naked and exposed to “Too Big Too Fail” thieves who have raped and pillaged, who are looting public wealth in unprecedented fashion.

The economic elite are vultures feeding off the carcass that is the US economy. The whole political structure has been gutted by corruption. Democracy was the façade that this house of cards was built on – a pyramid scheme that was built on the illusion of law and freedom.

Historians will look back at this time as a period in which corrupt despots ruled the masses with utter short-sighted greed and casted an illusion over the base population to keep the scam rolling along, until the end of the American empire, until the public driven economy came crashing down in a thunderous economic cloud of greed and corruption.

The smoke is still in our eyes, but the masses are beginning to see, to realize.

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V: National Emergency

Many middle class US citizens don’t realize all of this yet, I understand their lack of action and confusion because I have also been bred as a middle class American in the propaganda system known as the US mainstream media, but I’m writing this to let you know…

Our survival instinct has to quickly override our conditioned naiveté and passivity that has been bred into us. We are threatened as a country and a species at the same time.

We, as a nation, must overcome heavy doses of propaganda administered by the mainstream media for hours a day, every day of our existence. Shake off your conditioned naiveté and passivity. This is a brutal world we live in, and we are now at war…

The American dream state is over. It’s time to get real, time to sound the alarm.

I am of the sincere hope that we will be able to rise up as a counterweight to the economic elite. In the overall scheme of things, history has placed us in a pivotal position. We are a vital countervailing force to the economic elite and must immediately start exercising our rights of redress.

People throughout the world understand that the US middle class has to serve as a counterweight to an economic cartel that has brought humanity to a breaking point.

The economic elite also understand this, this is why they have launched a war on us.

Now that our existence is directly threatened as well, people are awaking from a propagandized existence and realizing the gravity of our crisis.

We must sound the alarm and discard our illusions.

It is time to evolve from a state of “Hope” to a state of “Action.”

We desperately need intelligent leadership, free from the shackles of the banking cartel.

We, as a nation, cannot continue to settle for the politics of corruption. We must begin by addressing the root cause of our troubles and hold accountable those directly responsible for the greatest theft of wealth in history.

We must flood the halls of Congress; we must engage our House of Representatives and begin to rein in the economic elite.

This Is A… NATIONAL EMERGENCY…

Economic justice is possible, it may be hard to believe here in the US, but a nation of law is still possible. It is possible only if YOU begin to act.

We are 99% of the population, they are only 1%.

The outcome is not assured; we must start organizing on a mass scale.

Take your plight to your representative. SOUND THE ALARM!

We must understand “the fierce urgency of now!”

David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com and director of MediaChannel.org. You can reach him at David@AmpedStatus.com.

This report was originally published on AmpedStatus.com.

Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden released the following statement regarding the announcement today by the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue (IRS) regarding the results arising from previous settlements of civil and criminal cases against Swiss banking giant UBS AG.

The Justice Department and IRS announced that over 14,700 taxpayers have come forward to report previously-undisclosed foreign bank accounts under the voluntary disclosure program the IRS implemented following the settlement. This figure represents almost double the initial numbers the IRS announced in October and dwarfs the number of voluntary disclosures received in 2008.

“The Department of Justice is pleased with the extraordinary results achieved from this landmark settlement,” said Deputy Attorney General Ogden. “The message to American taxpayers is clear: the era of bank secrecy and hidden assets is over. We will continue to work closely with the IRS and our international partners to ensure that our tax laws are enforced fully and fairly, and that the rule of law is vindicated. We congratulate the IRS and the Department’s Tax Division, as well as our partners in the Swiss government, for this achievement.”

These voluntary disclosures, while extremely significant, are but one more step in the IRS and the Department’s efforts to hold those U.S. taxpayers who have undisclosed foreign accounts responsible for their actions. These efforts began in February 2009, with UBS AG’s agreement to enter into a groundbreaking deferred prosecution agreement, admitting guilt on charges of conspiring to defraud the United States by impeding the IRS. As part of the agreement, UBS immediately provided the United States with the identities of, and account information for, a number of U.S. UBS customers and paid $780 million in fines, penalties, interest, and restitution. The Department’s Tax Division worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida to obtain these unprecedented results.

To date, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted six U.S. customers of UBS whose information was provided pursuant to the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, and is conducting investigations of dozens of other UBS customers.

In addition to the deferred prosecution agreement, in August of this year, the IRS, the Justice Department, UBS and the Swiss Government, entered into a similarly landmark agreement, in the John Doe summons action, whereby the IRS was to receive thousands of additional undisclosed UBS accounts.

These criminal and civil efforts have, for the first time, breached Swiss bank secrecy and prevented taxpayers from hiding from the IRS regardless of the cross border nature of their accounts.  Within the United States, there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of taxpayers who have come forward to voluntarily disclose the existence of their foreign bank accounts and agree to pay tens of millions of dollars to the treasury.

The Department of Justice and IRS also made public the criteria set out in the settlement reached in the civil John Doe summons suit against UBS, which governed the selection of account holders to be identified as part of the settlement. The criteria cover accounts of various amounts and types, including bank-only accounts, custody accounts in which securities or other investment assets were held and offshore company nominee accounts through which an individual indirectly held beneficial ownership.  These criteria allow the IRS and the Justice Department to target the most egregious foreign account holders.

A campaign poster for incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karza. Photo/Radio Free Europe

The last time I was on Laura Flanders’s GRIT TV I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest — some Washington, D.C., “progressive” — argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn’t know anything about Afghanistan.

When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan.  I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don’t know any better.

When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.

Let’s set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people’s countries is to impose democracy on them.  Let’s assume we’re imposing the rule of elite experts.  Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.

1.-While spokepeople for the U.S. military (including television news experts) are certainly the experts at war, they are not the experts at peace.  If the question is one of choosing between war and peace, or deciding whether warlike or peacelike means will best reach some desired end, then why only include one type of expert opinion?

2.-While U.S. experts on war and peace could provide two different views, there are experts, including historians, from around the world whose knowledge should be utilized.  And the experts on Afghanistan ought, by any understanding, to include the Afghan people.  If the US public is irrelevant because it does not know Afghanistan (and somehow this is an argument for bombing the place rather than refraining from doing so), surely the Afghan public knows something about their nation.  And they want the occupation ended.  How can we so easily dismiss THAT expert opinion?

3.-Don’t trust Afghan opinion?  Want to save Afghanistan from the Afghans?  Well, what about this: Howard Hart, a 25-year CIA veteran who ran operations in Afghanistan for three-and-a-half years during the Cold War, spoke at the University of Virginia and argued that the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan.  He said that the original goal had supposedly been to destroy al Qaeda, which had long since left, and that creating a legitimate government (something most people and the law hold that a foreign occupation can NEVER do) would require hundreds of thousands of troops, cost “umpteen billion” dollars, and still be next to impossible.  Watch three former high-ranking CIA officials say the same thing, and a lot more worth watching, at http://rethinkafghanistan.com

4.-Too out-dated for you?  The current U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, General Karl W. Eikenberry, who was responsible for building and training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003, and who was top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, has told President Obama he opposes sending more troops.  He argues for sending civilians to assist with agriculture and other useful projects that would give Afghans an alternative to violence.  This is a direction supported by US activist groups that have visited Afghanistan and studied the problem, such as http://jobsforafghans.org

5.-New York Times reporter David Rohde was held hostage for seven months by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and upon release reported on what motivates Afghans to engage in violence.  The reasons he provided suggested that (as with most foreign occupations in any other time or place) the occupation was motivating the violent resistance to it rather than helping to ease unrelated tensions:

“Some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charge. . . .

“They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges.

“To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law.  When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?”

6. The senior U.S. civilian diplomat in Zabul province, a former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq named Matthew Hoh, not only agrees with the U.S. Ambassador that escalating the war in Afghanistan makes no sense.  He resigned in September in protest of the continued occupation.  He wrote in his resignation letter:

“The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified.  In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.

“The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.  In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. . . . Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency’s true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam.”

7. A career diplomat and former Army Colonel who helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Ann Wright, similarly resigned in protest of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  She now agrees with Hoh’s assessment on Afghanistan.  It is to such authorities, who have been right years ahead of any permissible schedule, that we should turn for guidance.  Also of note, the United Nations has withdrawn much of its international staff and threatened to withdraw entirely from Afghanistan.  NATO allies are scheduling the end of their participation as well.

8. U.S. President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, says there is no guarantee that sending troops to Afghanistan would accomplish anything useful, and that they could just be “swallowed up”.  Is the National Security Advisor’s advice worthless?  What about Vice President Biden who never saw a war he didn’t like?  He doesn’t like this one and wants to move it somewhere else (like Pakistan).

9. Mikhail Gorbachev has some experience with occupations of Afghanistan.  He advises withdrawal.

10. Increasingly, U.S. military veterans are advocating for withdrawal, and — in small but rapidly growing numbers — active duty soldiers (in the UK as well as the US) are refusing to comply with the illegal order to participate.  If the military is an authority, are its members — rather than its top commanders alone — not a part of that authority?

11. The money to pay back the loans and the interest on those loans that are used to fund this war must come from the American people.  There is no higher authority on where the American people choose to spend their money than the American people.  So, at some point we must return to them as the rightful deciders.

12.  Those who opposed attacking Afghanistan in the first place, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and those who opposed attacking Iraq as well, included long-time diplomats, historians, public commentators, journalists, bloggers, activists, politicians, and scholars.  The extraordinary degree to which they got things right is routinely treated as reason to exclude them from public debate.  We take as authoritative the opinions of people who are usually wrong, but censor the latest views of those who are usually right.  We do this at our peril.  Instead, we would be well advised to get some real news from RealNews.com: http://tr.im/ETuV And if we have to watch television, watch Bill Moyers who says he would support a draft if it would end these wars.  Or listen to Norman Solomon, Ray McGovern, Tom Hayden, Gareth Porter, and all the valuable reports not shown on Fox or MSNBC: http://afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/term/110

13.  Ought not the highest authority for non-criminals to be the law?  It is illegal to invade and occupy other nations.  It is illegal to target civilians.  It is illegal to use depleted uranium.  It is illegal to imprison people without charge or trial.  It is illegal to torture.  An unelected government supported by a foreign occupying army has no legitimacy.  The damage we are doing to the rule of law cannot be overstated.  The United Nations has warned the United States about its ongoing illegal use of drones.

14. Just ask some of the more courageous members of the Afghan Parliament, who have been locally elected.  Ask Malalai Joya.

15. Ask experts on occupations and insurgencies like William Polk, who says the United States should withdraw.

16. Ask Congress, where members are speaking out for withdrawal, signing bills in support of exit plans and against escalation, and committing to voting No on any funding bills to continue the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq: http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars Even former Congressman Charlie Wilson says: Get out of Afghanistan.  Even Congressman David Obey has expressed concern, and he chairs the committee that writes the checks.

17. Shouldn’t reverse experts be considered as well?  Those pushing to continue and escalate our wars have been endlessly wrong and indisputably dishonest.  Shouldn’t any elite in-the-know expert think twice before agreeing with Dick Cheney?

I’m not accepting the notion of just rule by experts.  I favor majority rule, with minority rights protected, and freedom of the press made real.  My point is that even on its own terms defending the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq as validated by experts is a miserable failure.

David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press.  You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book. [This article previously appeared at Afterdowningstreet.org.]

Photo: Flickr/Secretly Ironic

Every time the young stick-up man tugged at my companion’s purse with his left hand, she would pull back, causing the muzzle of the pistol he held in his right hand to swing back and forth.

Its line of fire each time was directed across my chest and if he accidentally or deliberately squeezed the trigger this piece might never have been written.

“Give him your purse!” I insisted, meaning that hanging on to it wasn’t worth our lives. Still, she refused and the tug-of-war in the parking lot of my apartment building continued.

“Here!” I said to the gunman, pitching my wallet to him, “take this!” He caught the wallet, turned and fled across a wide, deserted ballpark.

Even in the darkness, we could follow him running for a long way, silhouetted in the lights of the U.S. Capitol, lit up at night ahead of him like a giant white cake.

A few days later I received a call from a Maryland department store inquiring if I had sent a young man to buy a TV set on my credit card. A store detective arrested the youth and I dutifully showed up in court on the day of the trial only to learn he had skipped.

Not long afterwards, a judge who lived in my building made page one of the Washington Star for resisting the gunmen who jumped him in the same parking lot. From his hospital bed he told reporters we Americans had to “stand up” to armed robbers, a noble sentiment spoken through his pain, considering all the bullets they pumped into his body.

We were lucky, my friend and I. We could have been killed, as so many others are being killed each day.

As Jill Lepore writes in The New Yorker of Nov. 9, the U.S. “has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom and six times that of Germany.”

UK averages about 60 gun homicides annually and Germany averages fewer than 200. More Americans are being murdered on our city streets than in all our foreign wars.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert estimated 12,000 Americans are shot dead each year, 2,000 of them children, and 70,000 more are wounded but, like the D.C. judge, survive.

Do the math: the total number of Americans shot dead each year is three times that of all U.S. troops killed in Iraq in six years of fighting. There is rage in our hearts; there is war in our streets.

A big factor in the homicide rate is the availability of guns. In a typical year, guns are responsible for two of every three murders. There are 238 million privately-owned firearms in the United States.

Big city mayors and police chiefs favoring curbs on hand guns and automatic weapons seem unable to overcome the clout of the gun lobby in Congress. Americans have modified or ignored much of the U.S. Constitution over the years yet the National Rifle Association insists that the 2nd Amendment phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” is sacrosanct, even as innocent people are mowed down by the thousands.

Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, writes, “One of the ugly truths about many gun-control advocates is that they’re more concerned about pushing for gun control than they are about reducing violence.”

Note how LaPierre disparages motives, when, in fact, some people become gun-control advocates only after the murder or wounding of a family member or friend. It’s quite likely that if homicidal waves of handgun violence did not occur nearly every day, as they do, nobody would bother chalking the slogan “Gun Control Now!” on the NRA wall.

“A vastly disproportionate number of murders and murder victims are young adult men,” writes The New Yorker’s Lepore. “When baby boomers reached that age bracket, the homicide rate soared. Now that they’ve aged out of their most lethal years, the rate has fallen.”

Fallen, yet still unacceptable. Marcus Baram of ABC News reported last April 23 that teenagers in Chicago are 10 times more likely to be the victims of gun violence than their counterparts outside the city limits.

Between 2002 and 2006, more than 650 Chicago teens were shot and killed! This is nearly as many as all U.S. troop deaths since the start of the war in Afghanistan. Are defenders of “gun rights” blind to the fact we have a war raging in our city streets?

Surely, one factor contributing to the homicide rate is poverty. How many times have you read about youths from affluent suburbs arrested for armed robbery? Can you think of one?

Not only are children in blighted cityscapes – where supermarkets and chain retail outlets fear to tread – deprived of legitimate job opportunities but if they commit crime, do time and are set free, their criminal past makes it tough for them to find gainful work.

It’s not uncommon for six or seven out of every 10 ex-cons to be returned to the Big House within three years of their release, the Justice Department reports.

Worse, as “economy measures,” legislators right now are closing down prison drug rehab, educational, and vocational programs that would give ex-cons a fighting chance to succeed. There’s money for wars in three countries in the Middle East and money to operate a thousand military bases around the world but we short-change our domestic priorities.

Another contributing factor to the high homicide rate may be the stiff sentences politicians’ mandate, enacting laws that limit the sentencing discretion of judges.

In his treatise “On Crimes and Punishments,” published in 1764, Italian nobleman Cesare Beccaria wrote, “The countries and times most notorious for severity of punishment have always been those in which the bloodiest and most inhumane of deeds were committed.”

Famed Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow argued harsh laws did zero to deter crime. In 18th Century England, he noted, pickpockets worked the crowds at public hangings even though picking pockets was punishable by hanging.

Today, stiff sentences have contributed to putting a record 2.3 million Americans behind bars, so many that judges from Alabama to California are ordering governors to make their prisons livable. Legislators are considering paroling oldsters rather than building more lock-ups.

In Congress, bills are being debated (1) to require criminal background checks for all would-be buyers at gun shows, reversing the no-questions-asked practice; (2) to limit bulk sales of handguns; and (3) to ferret out that small minority of reckless licensed gun dealers whose sales account for 60 percent of crime scene weapons.

Such laws can work. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, claims since enactment of his bill preventing domestic abusers from buying a gun, more than 150,000 attempted gun purchases have been blocked.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger recently signed a law obligating sellers of handgun ammunition to record the names of buyers and other information about their purchase. A similar law in Sacramento, from mid-January 2008 through August 2009, helped police find 229 prohibited people who had illegally bought ammunition – 173 of them with previous felony convictions.

And by matching ammo purchases with names on the state’s prohibited persons file, the Sacramento D.A. could charge 181 illegal ammunition buyers with felonies, according to an article on the Huffington Post.

Californians are reacting to a series of horrific shooting murders in recent years. For one, there was the Los Angeles city worker on Feb. 25, 2005, who sprayed his boss and another employee with AK-47 bullets after being reprimanded for showing up late for work.

For another, there was the murder at a traffic stop of four Oakland police officers last March 21 by a shooter with a long criminal record. Other states need to follow California’s initiative.

Another anti-violence step would be to pay children to stay in school. This could put money into the pockets of young males who might otherwise pull stick-ups, such as the one in Washington referred to above.

One organization, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, (NIF-ty for short) advises public school children on how to earn money buying and selling, and many trained kids open their own retail outlets.

NFTE founder Steve Mariotti, a former Ford auto executive, got the idea after he was mugged jogging in Manhattan by some youths for the few bucks he was carrying. His outfit reports it has helped 230,000 young people run businesses in 22 states and 13 countries.

Beyond these steps, educators need to press for courses to teach non-violence in our public schools. After all, American children are deluged with violence-filled Hollywood movies and video games where killing is trivialized.

The Non-Violence Project USA Inc., whose symbol is a handgun with a knotted barrel, is one non-profit that engages teens in pro-social activities, recognizing the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi’s observation, “If we are to achieve real peace, we shall have to begin with children.”

Executive Director Diane Landsberg of the Miami chapter in Coral Gables, Fla., says, “We have become a very rude and impatient society. We are taught to rush but not to wait. Courtesy and politeness matters. In order to get respect you’ve got to give respect.”

One positive action might be for the NRA’s LaPierre to show his critics some respect, to give their ideas a chance, as in Sacramento, to make a difference.

Sherwood Ross formerly worked for The Chicago Daily News and other major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for “worthy causes”. You can reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com

It wasn’t unusual that Rush Limbaugh went ballistic on his show, Nov. 13. He does that several times a day.

It wasn’t unusual that he mixed a few facts with opinion and outright lies in his three-hour daily show. Fact checking for the man who calls himself “America’s Truth Detector” is as rare as union organizers working for Walmart.

What is unusual is that Rush Limbaugh, whose web site shows a picture of him carrying a large gold-fringed American flag on a six-foot staff, spoke out against the Constitution of the United States.

Because logic and reason avoids his black-clad bouncy body, he may not have even known he was attacking the history of the United States and its Constitution. But on this Friday the 13th, the forces of evil spewed forth from his unfettered microphone mouth.

The United States had announced it was removing five persons accused of plotting the 9/11 terror from Guantanamo Bay and putting them into the federal judiciary system. Attorney General Eric Holder, at a press conference in Washington, D.C., had announced, “After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. . . . I am confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial just as they have for over 200 years [before] an impartial jury under long established rules and procedures.”

He announced that the Department of Justice would “prosecute these cases vigorously,” and would seek the death penalty in each case. President Obama had said earlier that day he was “absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheik Mohammad [the alleged mastermind behind 9/11, and the other defendants] will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people insist on it, my administration will insist on it.”

Limbaugh called the decision a “disgusting travesty perpetuated here by Barack Obama.” That was just the beginning of his rant. Over the next few minutes, Limbaugh said the decision to bring terrorists to trial was solely “to satisfy the rabid, radical, far left that hates this country; that hates George W. Bush; that hates the U.S. military.”

Limbaugh opposed the use of lawyers; several times he branded them as leftist and Marxist, disregarding the reality that membership in the American Bar Association skews to the right. Although he came from a family of lawyers, he disregarded Constitutional guarantees that require even the most heinous of criminals to be assured their rights, including the right to be represented by an attorney. While erroneously claiming that terrorists have no rights, Limbaugh also objected to providing the defendants “fairness,” because in what he called the “new America,” fairness is something created by “a bunch of radical leftists.” He claimed that the defendants didn’t even deserve lawyers because, in the world of Rush Fairytale Logic, the lawyers would use the courts to attack the United States.

He attacked the federal judiciary, claiming, “There are a bunch of radical leftists on our federal bench,” all of whom apparently, if you believed the Mouth That Roared, are governed by such mundane and useless rules like—well—the Constitution of the United States. What Limbaugh didn’t say, possibly because the facts didn’t agree with his own distorted version of reality, is that there are more conservative judges than liberal judges in the federal judiciary. About one-third of all federal judges were appointed by George W. Bush, with a majority of all judges appointed by Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes.

Limbaugh, in his deliberate distortion of facts also didn’t point out that 62 percent of all appeals court judges were appointed by Republican presidents, and that conservatives are the majority on 10 of the 13 appeals courts. He also failed to point out that six of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. The Republican-dominated federal courts have cut down several unconstitutional provisions of the PATRIOT Act; the Republican-dominated Supreme Court has twice rebuked the Bush–Cheney Administration for procedures that are blatantly unconstitutional.

In one major decision, conservative Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, speaking for the majority, ruled, “Any process in which the Executive’s factual assertions go wholly unchallenged or are simply presumed correct without any opportunity for the alleged combatant to demonstrate otherwise falls constitutionally short . . . [T]he constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties . . . remain vibrant even in times of security concerns.”

Like most conservative radio hosts and their teabag party followers, Limbaugh several times had blasted the Department of Justice for even thinking about bringing the terrorists onto the mainland, claiming the men were so evil that they would endanger all Americans. Unsaid by the talking mouths and empty heads was that the Department of Justice successfully prosecuted numerous gangsters, serial killers, and terrorists, and then successfully imprisoned them without danger to civilians.

For emphasis about how he thought a trial for the 9/11 terrorists would be unfair, Limbaugh threw veiled anti-Semitic attacks upon a possible jury pool. “Before it’s all said and done you’re going to find some whack nut jobs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that are going to be on this jury,” said Limbaugh. The Upper West Side is largely identified as a community that was settled by refugee Jews, and which still has a significant percent of Jews.

Several times, Limbaugh stated that since the defendants had already “confessed,” the need for a trial was not necessary, and would only embarrass the U.S., placating those “leftists,” and exposing the entirety of the American intelligence community. This, said Limbaugh, is the “hidden agenda” of the Obama Administration. “They want the United States on trial,” Limbaugh cried out. Disregarding the absurdity of his own remarks, Limbaugh never acknowledged that the “confessions” were made only after severe torture. Bringing criminals, who have been subject to torture, to trial, who have confessed, said Limbaugh “is yet another internal assault on the fabric, the traditions, the institutions that have made this country great,” he told his equally rabid listeners.

Having attacked the President, the Attorney General, lawyers, judges, the Department of Justice, and Jews, Limbaugh put Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) into his cross-hairs. Sestak, said Limbaugh, is “a dangerous left-wing radical ideologue.”

What drew Limbaugh’s rage was that Sestak not only supported the prosecution of the 9/11 terrorists in federal court, but that on Fox News, he argued that “Most studies have shown that [torture] does not give you evidence as readily or as credible as other means.” Persons who are tortured, said Sestak, raising concerns about the legitimacy of the terrorists’ “confessions,” will often confess to anything in order to stop the torture.

What Limbaugh didn’t tell his audience was that Sestak was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a retired vice-admiral who had led a carrier battle group, and was the first director of the Navy’s anti-terrorism unit after 9/11. Sestak’s views are the same as John McCain’s, also a Naval Academy graduate who had led an air squadron.

Listeners could now choose between two war heroes, one of whom had suffered torture as a prisoner of war, and a college drop-out who, said his mother, flunked almost all of his classes in his only year in college, was declared 4-F in the draft, and now hails on 600 radio stations as the mouthpiece for the right-wing fringe.

“We are in the process of destroying American ideals; we are in the process of subordinating America’s greatness, America’s exceptionalism,” Rush Limbaugh wailed.

The reality is that flag-waving fact-impaired Rush Limbaugh has no idea what American ideals are, nor does he have respect for the legal history of the United States or the power of the Constitution.

Walter Brasch is a professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. His most recent book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He can be reached at brasch@bloomu.edu.

In an unprecedented town hall in Shanghai, the President takes questions on the most pivotal issues in U.S.-China relations directly from students and via the internet. Photo: White House photographer Pete Souza

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian style control over information.

Let’s just take the issue of depleted uranium weapons, over 1000 tons of which have been expended in the US invasion of Iraq, most of it in populated areas where millions remain exposed to the radioactive dust of the burned material. There is almost no reporting on this topic in the US media. The Pentagon has for years lied about and hidden the effects of this deadly substance, used in shells, bombs and bullets because of its unique ability to penetrate hard steel armor and concrete bunker walls.

It has refused to disclose where the weapons were fired, and has denied US troops the tests that would show if they have been contaminated. It has even resorted to having paid Pentagon hacks surreptitiously libel, slander and otherwise undermine those military sources and journalists who have tried to expose this scourge (this reporter has been the target of such disinformation attacks).

But censorship in the US goes beyond these crude efforts at government-directed control of information. In America, some of the most potent censorship is done by the privately owned media—supposedly a bastion of freedom of expression.

There is no reason why the US media cannot report on depleted uranium and its deadly legacy in places where it has been used, such as Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Kosovo, or on and around American military bases from Maryland to Hawaii. And yet it does not. Just recently, stories have appeared both on Britain’s SkyTV and in the Guardian newspaper, reporting on an alarming rise in unusual birth defects and infant cancers in Fallujah as well as in other Iraqi cities like Basra, Najaf, Baghdad and Samara—all urban areas where there were major assaults by US forces both in the initial invasion, when most of the DU weapons were used, and later during fights against holed-up insurgent groups.

In Fallujah, the Guardian reports that birth defects are up by a staggering 15 times normal—an increase of 1400%!  While the article doesn’t mention depleted uranium specifically,  and says that doctors in Fallujah have been reluctant to attribute the astonishing number of birth defects to the massive assault on that city by US forces in late 2004, they do cite “radiation and chemicals” which were dumped on the city.

There is no such report about this in the US media.

Is that censorship?  Of course it is.

The American government doesn’t tell CBS News or CNN not to report this story, which amounts to a US war crime. It does not (at least generally), contact the editors at the New York Times or the Washington Post and say, “Don’t report on the infant mortality crisis in Iraq, or on the possible connection to US weaponry.” The editors of those news organizations themselves simply decide that either the story is of no importance to readers or they worry that they may be criticized either by the government or by other media organizations for being unpatriotic, or biased.

The end result of such a process, however, is that the American public is as ignorant about certain things as someone in China.

More ignorant in fact.

One thing I learned from living and working as a journalist and journalism teacher in China back in the 1990s is that the Chinese people, with their long experience of living in a totalitarian dictatorship in which all media are owned and tightly controlled by the state and the ruling Communist Party, are acutely aware that they are being lied to and that the truth is being hidden from them. Accordingly, they have learned to read between the lines, to pick up subtle hints in news articles which honest journalists have learned how to slip into their carefully controlled reports. They have also developed a sophisticated private system of person-to-person reporting called xiaodao xiaoxi or, literally, “back-alley news.”

This system used to be word-of-mouth between neighbors and friends. As telephones became ubiquitous, it was done by phone, allowing transmission over long distances quickly. Now there is the internet, which, while it is systematically controlled via what has become known as China’s “Great Firewall”—effectively all of China is like a vast corporate “intranet” which blocks access to outside websites—still allows the flow of email. This is nearly impossible to monitor, particularly when the messages are not bulk mailed to large numbers of addressees.

So in China, reports of corruption, of local rebellions or strikes, or of important news about the outside world that the government wants to keep at bay, manage to circulate widely inside China despite a huge state censorship apparatus.

It works because the Chinese people know they are being lied to and kept in the dark, and they want to break through that official shroud of secrecy and control.

In the US, in contrast, we have a public that for the most part is blissfully unaware of the extent to which our news is being censored, filtered and controlled.  We boast of our “free press,” and our open society, and indeed, as a journalist, I am free to write what I want to write.

But given that most people get their news either from corporately owned newspapers or from corporate radio and TV stations,  it doesn’t really matter what I or other journalists critical of the Establishment write because it won’t appear in the corporate media.  Since most Americans, unlike most Chinese people, assume that they live in a society with a free press and no censorship or control of information, they don’t even bother to look beyond the information that is spoon-fed to them by corporate media sources.

The result is that in my experience I have found peasants in rural Jiangsu or Anhwei Province to in many cases be better informed about their own country and the world than are typical American suburbanites. Certainly if an American wants to be informed, all the information you could want is available, but you have to be first of all aware that you aren’t getting certain information via the obvious sources, and then you have to want to get it, and make the effort to find it.  For most Americans, all three of these elements are missing.

The list of censored stories and issues in the US, about which the American public knows almost nothing is staggering, going well beyond just the use of nasty weapons.

Do Americans know that all the other modern western Democracies in the world have some form of national health care—either a state-run system like that in the UK or a single-payer model like that in Canada, or some hybrid like they have in France or Switzerland—and that in all those countries, the systems are so popular that they have survived decades of conservative governments? No. Our corporate media instead report on the crank critics of those systems and allow us to believe they are hated by their citizens.

Do Americans know that the US no longer boasts the best standard of living in the world—or even close? No. Because the American media continue to portray the US as “number one.”

Do Americans know that Al Qaeda was actually a creation of the CIA? No. This important bit of information doesn’t get mentioned in the US media, which always starts the organization’s history at 1988, when it got its name, when actually, its early origins date to the arming of the mujahadeen by the CIA and the CIA-linked Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the US wanted to create and support resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

And of course, we rarely get to see the slaughter of women and children that our beloved soldier “heroes” are conducting in Iraq and Afghanistan in our name.

No censorship in America?

Mr. President, please. You may fool us, but at least don’t insult the intelligence of your Chinese audience.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net