The New Form of Slavery

The New Form of Slavery

“Debt slavery is where your debt load dictates your life. You would like your wife to be able to stay at home with the kid(s), but your monthly expenses are too high to allow that. You find yourself restricting the number of children you have, blaming it on your economic situation. In short, Debt Slavery is paying more than 5% of your income for interest on debts. Being poor is one thing. But being poor because some banker is getting all your money is another thing altogether! Being debt free brings a wonderful peace, a lack of worry that those who owe their lives away to the bank never get to experience.

Debt Slavery is NOT the same as being poor. A poor, retired couple might be able to live well on $700 a month Social Security, because they have no debts. Meanwhile a young couple with much debt might not seem to be poor, but they are in Debt Slavery nonetheless because they give away hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in interest. They might live well, but they should be able to live even better. It is more desirable to "live with less" than to pretend to a higher standard of living than you can actually afford, and consequently become shackled with debt.” How to Avoid Debt Slavery http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/OriginalArticles/debtslavery.html

As Africans in AmeriKKKa we often are suffer from what I call “the canary in mine syndrome”. In the mining communities during the 19th and 20^th centuries the coal miners would carry canaries into the shafts with them to detect the odorless but noxious gas levels in the mine. If the canaries died they knew the levels were too high. We are like social canaries for Euro-AmeriKKKans. The ruling elites test out their nefarious plans and schemes on us (and in the case of the man made AIDS epidemic, white homosexuals, who the ruling elites viewed as a throw away populous) they watch to see the results, tweak them and then unleash them on the larger white community.
The plutocratic shot callers have long known the effects of music on the human psyche. They saw how the Black Consciousness and Black power movements influenced art and artists like Larry Neal, Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets, Curtis Mayfield and James Brown inspired and galvanized a whole generation of Africans in AmeriKKKa to “fight the powers that be”. As part of COINTELPRO the reactionary police state and the corporate arm of the ruling elites moved simultaneously to quash/co-opt the Black Arts, Black Power and Black Revolutionary movements by undermining independent black record companies, co-opting political R&B and later suppressing the conscious and hardcore political creativity the youngsters called Hip Hop, by promoting apolitical, watered down commercial versions and ultimately spawning and promoting the genre of music called Gangsta Rap. The police state went into action with COINTELPRO by framing, slandering co-opting and killing off members of radical and some not so radical organizations.
“What has happened with L.A. gang culture, after the FBI and LAPD’s concerted effort to annihilate any form of empowered political articulation from the community, is a reversal of the previous transition from gangster to revolutionary. Instead we have seen the one time revolutionaries accept the violent tropes of political resistance without the informed ideology that separates gangsters from freedom fighters. In a similar fashion, the move from the politicized domain of East Coast rap championed by Public Enemy to the celebrity nihilism of West Coast rap demonstrates the current death of acknowledged political activism in contemporary culture. This political decline is also consistent with the position advocated by Dr Dre. In an interview with Brian Cross when discussing his entrance into gansta rap as a producer, Dre says, ‘I wanted to go all the way left, everybody trying to do this black power and shit, I was like, let’s give ‘em an alternative.’ It is interesting that the alternative comes in the form of celebrating the antithesis of politics through gangsta rap.” Todd Boyd Am I Black Enough For You? page 78-79 Seeing the success they had with this pathological genre the elites then pumped it along with crack cocaine into the African community with disastrous affect. As the African community canaries self-destructed from the lethal combination of crack cocaine and psyche destroying gangsta rap the elites soon replicated it in poor white communities using rap, heavy metal and methamphetamines in the place of crack cocaine.
In addition to the music and drugs the elites also pumped and promoted crass materialism, reckless consumer spending and conspicuous consumption. By promoting television programs like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, My Crib, How You Living? and similar programs on regular and cable television; the banks were setting working class and middle calls folks up for the kill using “easy credit”. Working class and poor blacks have long suffered from usury and exploitation. Part of the ubiquitous “Black Tax” is we pay more for everything we purchase. Remember the line in the television show Good Times theme song, “… easy credit rip offs, good times, ain’t we lucky we got um, good times?” Well the easy credit scam and trap was sold to the whole country. Every class and strata of AmeriKKKan society bought it hook line and sinker. “Americans are notoriously deep in debt—and not just for their home and car. The average adult carries a balance of thousands of dollars on any number of retail and bank credit cards. Personal loans—including home equity, debt consolidation, and student loans—also contribute to this debt load. What is important about this, is that all of these sources of debt contribute to the draining of a family's budget. A monthly budget is a snapshot of how a family is doing. If the income is greater than the expenses, the family is doing well financially because they have money left over—which can be saved for future needs. This is called a net surplus. But if the monthly expenses are greater than the monthly income, the family is doing poorly, because it is sinking deeper into debt with every passing month. This is called running a deficit. If there were one single law of ‘how to not be a debt slave’ it would be: avoid debt at all costs. Even going into debt for necessary things (house, car) can be done wisely. Choose a house that you can live in for a while, but do not buy as much house as the realtor says you can afford. The realtor is paid a 3 to 6% commission on the house you buy. Take a calculator and see which house will bring a greater commission: an $80,000 house, a $150,000 house, or a $200,000 house. This should put you on your guard as to what the realtor is going to be pushing for. (Hint: the more expensive house, always.) Tell him how much you are comfortable spending, and he will be forced to oblige you. If you do not intend to go over your head, the realtor cannot force you.” http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/OriginalArticles/debtslavery.html
The key to being truly free is thinking for yourself. Think freedom! We are targets of sophisticated psychological warfare and manipulation by the media, the corporations and the government. We need to turn off the TV especially during commercials and be more critical in our thinking about the world around us. Don’t go for the okey-doke and hype!! Begin to use your imagination and visualize yourself worry and debt free. See yourself in your mind’s eye as healthy and prosperous and begin to handle your existing finances is ways that are consistent with this image. You cannot visualize prosperity and behave in ways that put or keep yourself in debt!
Debt liberation will not be easy. All of us have been conditioned to respond like Pavlovian dogs to recklessly spend and consume (the word consume means to waste, use up or destroy) so we must begin to reprogram ourselves to act in ways that are beneficial to us rather than the banks. We must initiate actions that promote financial health and prosperity. Stop being outer directed and begin being more mindful using our own full minds (conscious and subconscious); rather than allowing ourselves to be manipulated. We must become more consistent in our efforts to free ourselves and avoid debt servitude. “The key is to pay as little interest as possible, because that takes away from your net worth. Paying interest is a form of slavery. Any other use of your money can be justified (home improvements, giving to charity, new car, food, utilities, etc.) because you are doing something good with it. But interest is a complete theft of your hard-earned money. No one likes paying an occasional $100 traffic ticket—why should they happily give up $1000 or more in interest every month?” http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/OriginalArticles/debtslavery.html We must also learn to use compound interest in our favor through savings earnings and sound investments. The ore we get out of debt the more disposable income we will have to save, invest and tithe (not in the religious sense but in doing charitable and philanthropic works). But it all begins with our thinking. Think freedom. Think prosperity and act accordingly. Free your mind the rest will follow.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 3:46 PM 0 comments

They Are Attempting To Drive Us Crazy

They're trying To Drive Us Crazy


"We must look at the psychopathy of everyday life and must recognize we cannot have it both ways. We cannot about a people who have enslaved us, who discriminate against us, who insult us, who do all manner of other things against us and then use them as models of normality. We cannot use these people who are criminals, who have the world on the edge of suicide, who are now getting ready to negotiate about how many bombs they are going to keep for destroying the earth- how they are going to distribute death to the rest of the world as models of normalcy." Dr. Amos N. Wilson The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness Eurocentric History, Psychiatry and the Politics of White Supremacy page 70

We are the ongoing targets of an extremely sophisticated and cunning psychological war waged upon us by the ruling elites of the nation. The plutocracy that runs AmeriKKKa is by no means a monolithic body, yet they do have much in common both in their values, objectives and modus operandi. Their goal is to lord it over the rest of us, even their own and reduce us to peons, surfs and slaves in their global plantation/prison/laboratory system. Under the guise of spreading "democracy" and freedom around the world, a relatively small group of families and the multinational corporation executives plan to usher in a totalitarian regime that dominates and expropriates the world's wealth, human and natural resources for themselves. In order to accomplish this they must make the rest of humanity think their agenda (which for the most part is a hidden one) is normal, that it is the way things should be, that this is "progress". In the process they are attempting to alter the way the rest of us perceives reality, they way we behave and the way we conduct our lives.
Not only are the ruling elites attempting to bum rush the world, steal it's resources, and abrogate the natural order which in itself tells us a lot about Aryan psychology; these Europeans are in a very real sense attempting to debauch and desecrate humanity by driving us mad and reducing us to an animalistic consciousness. "The material wealth and the political-economic advantages that accrue to the non-Afrikan, as well as the psycho-social underpinnings of its/hi/her reality, white supremacy/racism are the intended outcomes of the denial and domination of the Afrikan world. The predator has attempted to reorder the world and reality to service its profoundly distorted conception of itself and reality. The desacrelization of nature, the denial of the Afrikan's humanity and disruption f Afrika's historic dynamic, the imposition of an intrinsically immoral economic and political system upon the world's populations, and the perpetuation of historic lies and distortions are stratagems of war." Kwame Agyei and Akua Nson The Sankofa Movement ReAfrikanization and the Reality of War page 234
Due to the Aryan's military (at least temporarily) economic and cultural hegemony over the world, they have exalted and lionized their barbaric behavior and socio-political systems as the ultimate form of civilization . Whether it is Greeco-Roman imperialism, capitalist or Marxist colonial and neo-colonial imperialism the European basks in his legacy of rapine pillage plunder and exploitative oppression. They have made invasion and plunder the definitive human paradigm. They propagate and celebrate their long history of conquest, social and ecological disruption as if they were the norm for human evolution and progress. In millennia past during their sojourn in the Steppes of Eurasia they originally developed their individualistic and predatory dog eat dog "culture" to survive (they were too lazy, backward or immoral to collectively gather, hunt or plant ,harvest and share their food the way First World people did). Subsequently the Eurasians employed and expanded their predatory norm, as a succession of elites (the tribal leaders, the monarchs, the Pope, the mercantile class, capitalists and corporations) over the centuries mastered manipulating the masses to get rich off of the wealth, resources and labor of the rest of humanity, including their own subgroups.
Today this predatory culture is promoted and flaunted around the world as the paragon of human deportment. Television soap operas canonize ruthlessness, covetousness and deceit. Eurocentric history makes icons of Indo-European invaders and holds them up as examples of statesmanship (Phillip of Macedonia and his son Alexander for example). The African form of creativity called Hip Hop has been high-jacked and surreptitiously used to promote alienation, predation, misogyny and self destruction within the African community. And the performers propped up by the white supremacist mass media are embraced and held up as icons in the black community?! As the victims of this cultural warfare, we must begin to see if for what it is; an imminent threat to the natural order and all humanity. "European nationalism is therefore dangerous to the rest of the world... But the content of Europan nationalism becomes problematical: 1) because it implies imperialistic aggression; and 2) because it is usually not recognized as the expression of group interest, thereby making it difficult for other groups to defend themselves against its effects." Marimba Ani Yurugu An African Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. page 22
We must keep in mind that what we see is the expression of a group interest; the plutocrats (and their flunkies and stooges) who are the shot callers of AmeriKKKan society. We must wake up and connect the dots. Their behavior today in Iraq is no different than their behavior five hundred years ago when they set foot outside of Europe. We must recognize the psychology that motivates them today is no different then the psychopathy that motivated them to do what they did all around the globe to the First World People they encountered. They are insane, we must recognize them as such and act accordingly. As our venerated ancestor Amos Wilson reminded us, "We cannot look and shake our heads in sadness at the enslavement of our people, the death and killing of the Amerindians, the creation of the holocaustic weapons, the wars that have been perpetuated by an imperialistic people and split that kind of information off from the ideologies put forth by those people. They are one and the same and are part and parcel of the same reality. And it is the attempt on our part and the attempt by this system, to segment and cut off these things one from the other, to compartmentalize life and to compartmentalize reality, that to a great extent forms the basis for our mental, physical and other kinds of problems that are existent in our community today." The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness Pages 72-73 If we recognize we are in a war and we fail to act to protect of defend ourselves we have violated the first rule of nature: self-preservation, which in itself is a symptom of insanity. If on the other hand we have been brainwashed and programmed to self-destruct by not seeing the truth, it is incumbent upon those of us who have gleaned a glimmer of truth, those of us who are sane (no matter how uncomfortable and painful that may be) those of us who know the real deal to attempt to deprogram and reprogram the rest of us into a self-preservation self-transforming and self-actualizing mode. Amos Wilson said it succinctly, "The White man cannot be what he is unless we are what we are as a people. And one way of transforming the White man is through self-transformation. He cannot be what he is if we are not what we are. Therefore we must take responsibility for that part of our personality, that part of our community and that part of ourselves over which we have control and change that part." ibid page 94. If we fail our enemies will succeed. In order for them to succeed they must continue to drive us insane and we must continue to allow them to do so.
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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 5:55 AM 0 comments

Most People Know The Truth

Most People Know The Truth*

"Many adults in the United States believe the current federal government has not been completely forthcoming on the issue of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News. 53 per cent of respondents think the Bush administration is hiding something, and 28 per cent believe it is lying. Only 16 per cent of respondents say the government headed by U.S. president George W. Bush is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks, down five points since May 2002." http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13469

A new public opinion poll taken by the New York Times and CBS two elitist media organs that were thoroughly co-opted by the power elites of this country following WWII indicate most AmeriKKKans believe the Bu$h administration has not told the truth about 9-11, what it knew before hand, that it is hiding something (a round about way of saying they are lying). Only sixteen per cent of the people polled stated they believed the Bu$h administration was telling the truth about what they knew and acted upon prior to 9-11! What I want to know is, who are the sixteen per cent who still believe anything the Bu$hites say? How in 2006 does any sane person think the official government version of 9-11 is anything but a fairy tale or worse?
Most thinking people intuitively knew there as more to 9-11 than the government and their mainstream media sock puppets propagated. No one in their right mind actually believes nineteen highjackers could overcome flight crews on four separate commercial airliners on the same day a few minutes part /and/ successfully circumvent the US military and civilian security, safe guards and long standing protection protocols on their own, without some kind of inside help!!! One or two isolated highjackings are plausible, but four simultaneous coordinated highjackings and the maneuvering of the approach to the attack on the Pentagon by an unskilled pilot who even according to the “official government” fairytale could not fly a single engine airplane well enough to get a license makes the government account of 9-11 totally unbelievable. No wonder the majority of AmeriKKKans are skeptical. The whole government story stinks to high heaven!
The military response from the US government was totally insufficient; the US government spends billions annually on defense, developing sophisticated fancy fighter jets, radar, and telecommunications systems; what happened? Why were there no fighters scrambled in enough time to respond to the highjackings? How did the highjackers know there were several all day simulated war games, terrorist scenarios and emergency management tabletop exercises being conducted that day? Did the “Muslim fanatics” know that and if so, how? The AmeriKKKan public wasn’t told about these simulated disaster scenarios during the 9-11 Commission investigation, why?
The official Bu$h administration version of 9-11 is; the attack was unforeseen and came out of nowhere. Their tall tale has been shattered by the revelations in Bob Woodward’s new book State of Denial. In his latest book which departs markedly from his previous flattering depictions of the Bu$h White House, Woodward states former CIA Director George Tenent briefed Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld about imminent terrorist attacks on US soil! Not only are the three of them backpedaling and doing a major amnesia and denial act about this; the revelation they had foreknowledge of the attacks in addition to the CIA’s Daily Presidential Brief in August of 2001 is also causing major problems with the 9-11 Commission. Why didn’t the 9-11 Commission include this information in their report? Why didn’t Condoleezza Rice’s associate Philip Zelikow who was on the 9-11Commission include this information in any drafts of the 9-11 report he wrote? The mainstream media provided a few isolated reports about foreign governments warning the US about pending attacks. Countries like Russia, Israel, Germany, Egypt, Morocco and Argentina provided warnings in enough time for the Bu$h administration to act. Why didn’t the mainstream media connect the dots about this and call the Bu$hites on this?!
In light of all these and additional anomalies in adition to a host of other unanswered questions about 9-11; a sane public would be skeptical about its’ government and why things went down the way they did that fateful day. This is why even though an elitist sponsored poll like the New York Times CBS (both were infiltrated and made part of the CIA propaganda machine see Operation Mockingbird) doesn’t hit the nail squarely on the head, it still resonates with thinking people. Most of us have long stopped uncritically entertaining or believing the official government version of what happened. “Second, the wording of the poll is, to say the least, insufficient. It is not specified what Bush and crew are ‘hiding’ exactly. Are they hiding their participation in LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) or MIHOP (Made It Happen On Purpose)? If the former, the September criminals may be chalked up as merely incompetent buffoons, incapable of stopping Osama and his dour cave-dwelling Muslims with boxcutters. In effect, this posits and strengthens the absurd official version of events, that nineteen hijackers were not only able to take over the planes, but make NORAD stand down and, as well, change the laws of physics. If the second, people should be outraged enough to demand impeachment, criminal proceedings, and execution of the September criminals in the same manner as Nazi war criminals were tried, convicted, and sent to the gallows.” http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=606
The only question I have about all this is why now? Why are corporate media icons like Bob Woodward, the New York Times and CBS breaking ranks and turning on Bu$h when they were the main culprits promoting the 9-11 fairy tale and the war in Iraq? Is there a new ruling elite agenda afoot? Have sections of the power elite soured on the Bu$hites’ crusade to reshape the “Middle East” to expropriate their natural resources and maintain US dollar hegemony? Are these latest revelations about 9-11 an effort to further undermine NeoCon credibility and forestall the nuclear Armageddon the NeoCon psychopaths seem bent on initiating? Whatever the reason, the good news is more and more AmeriKKKans question the veracity of the Bu$hites about 9-11. I wish more AmeriKKKans were willing to put these criminals behind bars or on the gallows where they belong.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 9:20 AM 0 comments

Bu$h Continues To Accrue Negative KARMA

Bu$h and his flunkies’ denials aside, even if the figures are off by several hundred thousand, we are talking about a massive loss of life based on lies! These psychopaths and their media cohorts have trivialized murder, killing and war crimes so they and their buddies at the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, Bechtel, GE and Lockheed Martin can get richer off of Bu$h’s warmongering and imperialist policies. The NeoCon crazies are so driven by their hubris and they are so focused on world domination and hegemony they actually believe they can violate UNIVERSAL spiritual LAWS with impunity! They couldn’t care less about the Law of KARMA. Or the fact they will inexorably reap what they have sown as long as their bank accounts remain fat and they have “power”. They are insane having drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid laced with ego and megalomaniacal distorting properties, to the degree they are now totally divorced from reality. Their madness is just one aspect of the negative KARMA they have attracted to themselves and by extension AmeriKKKa. Every day they lose more credibility with revelations like the Iraqi mortality study, the ongoing Mark Foley hypocrisy/scandal and the consequences of their ongoing class war against middle and working class AmeriKKKans! Even CNN’s Lou Dobbs has had enough and recently published a book about the class war in AmeriKKKa.

The Bu$hites are delusional. As their response to the Iraq mortality study clearly indicates. Hugo Chavez said it succinctly when he called George W Bu$h El Diablo, the devil. Bu$h and Co. are increasingly reviled around the world and countries are moving to neutralize their aggression and warmongering either by creating and stockpiling WMDs or forming economic alliances independent of the US and its’ dollar. All around the world AmeriKKKa is seen as a rabid wolf and people are taking extreme precautions to defend themselves as best they can. But Bu$hites aren’t the only ones who will suffer. Joe and Jane Sixpack will suffer just as ordinary Germans suffered because they went along with Hitler. “What is America's reward for Bush's illegal wars that have killed 655,000 Iraqis, an uncounted number of Afghans, and disabled as many as 400,000 U.S. troops? According to the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate and to practically every Middle East expert, Bush's invasions have radicalized the Muslim Middle East, created legions of recruits for extremists, undermined America's puppet rulers, imperiled Israel, and destroyed America's reputation… Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to Hitler's drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany's right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people. Neoconservatives use ‘American exceptionalism’ and ‘the war on terror.’ There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American troops, and 2,747 dead ones. ” Bush Has Achieved America's Demise Paul Craig Roberts http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=9844

Time is of the essence. Will the Nazification of AmeriKKKa continue unabated? Or will the requisite few stand up, speak out and do what is necessary to stop these madmen from wrecking more havoc on the world, incurring even more negative KARMA debt (that must/shall be paid) upon AmeriKKKa?

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 10:59 AM 0 comments

Second Thoughts About Current Events

Second Thoughts About Current Events

“Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion. Each problem appears to feed on the others, making the stakes higher and requiring Bush and his advisers to make difficult calculations, analysts and U.S. officials said. The deteriorating situation in Iraq has undermined U.S. diplomatic credibility and limited the administration's military options, making rogue countries increasingly confident that they can act without serious consequences. Iran, meanwhile, will be watching closely the diplomatic fallout from North Korea's apparent test as a clue to how far it might go with its own nuclear program.” Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, October 10, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901130_pf.html

Stop, take a deep breath, relax don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the hoopla and hype about North Korea testing a nuclear bomb last week. Don’t go for the okey-doke the mainstream corporate media mind control apparatus uses to make us fearful; this is exactly what the Bu$hites want. They want and need us to be afraid. Bu$h, drunk off of the NeoCon mind control Kool-Aid foolishly painted North Korea as one of the Axis of Evil along side Iran and Iraq during his 2002 State of the Union address. The sycophantic media made much of Bush’s assertions at the time; as they too were bibbing freely on the NeoCon war Kool-Aid. But when we stop and look at the facts rather than the disinformation and lies the Bu$h administration and their corporate media sock puppets put out there, we see the only countries waging preemptive wars of aggression around the world are: the US, Britain and Israel. Keep in mind, George W Bu$h told the world what he was going to do. He invaded Iraq for no legitimate reason; he’s threatening to invade Iran and has made overtures about attacking North Korea. The man is mad and by now most of us should realize this.

If you were the leader of a nation targeted by a madman like Bu$h for pre-emptive attack would you sit idly by and allow it to happen? If you saw what the US did to Afghaistan and Iraq, and you thought he was coming after you, what would you do? Would you grovel and beg for mercy? Would you attempt to appease him and give him what he wants? Or would you seeing how abysmally disastrous things are going for Bu$h in Iraq; decide to stand up to him and defy him? If you’d seen India and Pakistan develop nuclear capabilities and the US did nothing to deter or stop them and you know Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and would not hesitate to use them on your or your people, what would you do?

It’s no secret the US was about to chastise Pakistan for gaining membership in the nuclear club but backed off once Pakistan sided with the Bu$hites in their invasion of Afghanistan and their bogus “Global War on Terror”! In fact the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf claims in his latest book, the US threatened to bomb his country into the stone age if he didn’t’ go along with them on the hunt for Osama bin-Laden. “President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that after the Sept. 11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America's war campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show ‘60 Minutes’ that will air Sunday, said the threat came from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was given to Musharraf's intelligence director. ‘The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,’ Musharraf said.’ I think it was a very rude remark.’ The Pakistani leader, whose remarks were distributed to the media by CBS, said he reacted to the threat in a responsible way. ‘One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did,’ Musharraf said about the cooperation extended by Pakistan. Musharraf said some demands made by the United States were ‘ludicrous,’ including one insisting he suppress domestic expression of support for terrorism against the United States. ‘If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,’ Musharraf said.” Reuters http://agonist.org/20060921/us_threatened_to_bomb_pakistan_after_9_11_musharraf

Remember at one point tensions were high between India and Pakistan and both nations had acquired nuclear weapons. But the US did nothing to either nation publicly! Why? The US did nothing to Pakistan even when it was revealed a Pakistani scientist gave Pakistan’s nuclear secrets to several nations including supposed rogue states Iran, North Korea and Libya! “On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan’s misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan 'my hero')… Musharraf, who seized power in a coup d’état in 1999, has been a major ally of the Bush Administration in the war on terrorism. According to past and present military and intelligence officials, however, Washington’s support for the pardon of Khan was predicated on what Musharraf has agreed to do next: look the other way as the U.S. hunts for Osama bin Laden in a tribal area of northwest Pakistan dominated by the forbidding Hindu Kush mountain range, where he is believed to be operating. American commanders have been eager for permission to conduct major sweeps in the Hindu Kush for some time, and Musharraf has repeatedly refused them. Now, with Musharraf’s agreement, the Administration has authorized a major spring offensive that will involve the movement of thousands of American troops.” THE DEAL Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers? by SEYMOUR M. HERSH http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040308fa_fact

Yet Iran a country that was being bombed on a regular basis for twelve years straight by the US and Britain, a nation that was being starved through US led economic sanctions, a nation that had no weapons of mass destruction and even if they did have them, they posed no threat to anyone except perhaps Israel (a nation that has hundreds of nuclear weapons) was targeted for “Shock and Awe”! Why? I ask you again, if you were the leaders of Iran or North Korea what would you do? Would you capitulate like Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya did or would you stand fast and do what you thought was necessary to protect your people. Remember Musharraf of Pakistan (according to him) actually toyed with the idea of resisting and fighting the US too; but thought better of it after running war game simulations against the US. Keep in mind also this key fact; the US is the only nation in the history of mankind to actually use nuclear weapons against a civilian population! Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilian cities not military targets as the US propagandists like to tell us. We have seen how ruthless and relentless the AmeriKKKan aerial bombardments were in Vietnam, Kosovo and Iraq, slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians along the way. The “Shock and Awe” of the US assault on Baghdad was criminal! Having said all that, we need to remember the US lost on the ground in Vietnam and they are not winning on the ground in Iraq! So what makes any sane person think the US military and its war planners could win on the ground in Iran or North Korea?
As strange as it may seem, perhaps Kim Jong Il of North Korea and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran are willing to bluff the US until they get what they want; direct talks and concessions. Or maybe they actually are ready to throw down against the US? The latter option isn’t as loony as it seems, given the present US troop realities in Iraq and Afghanistan and given the fact North Korea just might have nuclear weapons to go along with their army, missiles and other WMD gizmos. It may not be as impulsive or crazy when you stop to remember the US ran out of Somalia after their most elite forces got thumped in Mogadishu. Or, when you consider the US military has their handa full in Iraq now and some very knowledable folks are saying the US military is stretched way too thin and is near exhaustion and demoralization, standing up to Bu$h doesn't seem so crazy. Time will tell how this all plays out. Perhaps cooler, saner heads will prevail and Bu$h will stop trying to bully the rest of the world.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 8:21 AM 0 comments

Carrying On the Cultural Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Carrying On the Cultural Legacy of Christopher Columbus

“Columbus introduced two processes of race relations that transformed the modern world: first, the taking of land, wealth and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their extermination; and second, the transatlantic slave trade. As Sale poetically sums up, Columbus’s “second voyage marks the first extended encounter of European and Indian societies, the clash of cultures that was to echo down through five centuries.” The seeds of that five century conflict were sown in Haiti between 1493 and 1500. These are not mere details that our texts omit- they are basic information, crucial to understanding American and world history.” The Truth About Columbus A Subversively True Poster Book for a Dubiously Celebratory Occasion by Professor James W Loewen page 25

As the West celebrates another anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ unleashing waves of violence, rape, pillage and plunder that would have made the Vandals, Vikings and Huns proud, I can’t help but make a modern day connection between those barbarians, Columbus and a succession of whites from George Washington to George W Bu$h. When we look at the history of this country we are looking at an extension of the global brutality and virulent rapine of Europeans against people of color. This cultural pattern did not start out as just whites against melanated people. The Europeans carried their unique cultural proclivity for wars, bloodletting and pillage everywhere they went on planet Earth. Their history of inter and intra tribal warfare when they lived in the Steppes of Central Asia, when they migrated into Europe and later diffused everywhere they went on this planet was the same, an intense and ongoing pattern of violence and warmongering. In fact to this very day there is only one land mass on this planet they have not invaded and wrecked havoc upon, that is Antarctica; and that is only because they didn’t find any human settlements who had natural resources they could steal! The impact of Christopher Columbus on the Tianos and Arawaks set the stage for five hundred years of continuous culture clash.

We are witnessing the continuation of this clash of cultures in the AmeriKKKan invasion and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq not to mention what they’ve done in other places around the world over the years. Europeans, from their ancient to their modern history, have produced a culture of war. War, violently and cunningly expropriating other people’s goods while desecrating their personhood and space are the Europeans' norm. Marimba Ani calls the core values of a collective culture of a tribe or people Asili. In her seminal book Yurugu An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior she says, “The idea is that the asili is like at template that carries within it the pattern or archetypical model for cultural development; we might say that it is the DNA of culture. At the same time it embodies the ‘logic’ of the culture. The logic is the explanation of how it works, as well as the principle of its development ... It is a compelling force that will direct the culture as long as it remains intact: i.e. carried in the ‘cultural genes.’ In order for the culture to change (and this includes the collective thought and behavior of those within it), the asili itself would have to be altered. But this would involve a process of destruction and the birth of a new entity. Cultural asili(s) are not made to be changed.” page 12

I share Dr. Ani’s insights because it is obvious that the archetype or asili of European culture is a veneration of violence in a myriad of forms and manifestations : gender violence, xenophobic violence as well as a rigid leadership, caste and class stratification based upon the will and power to exercise violence as a means of domination of others. European history is a history of wanton violence. An unbiased reading of European history would conclude they are a group of warmongers, socio and psychopaths. Dr. Amos Wilson once said, “the European’s psychology is not found in their psychology books, we find their true psychology in their history because their history is one of violence and predation which is an outgrowth of their psychology and core values.” Europeans love war but they call it peace, they love to rob and steal but they call it progress when they can loot and plunder large swaths of territory of their human and natural resources. That is why they hold up empires in their history books.

Christopher Columbus was a soldier of fortune. He set out to find gold and riches and he didn't care how he acquired them. In his first contacts with non-Europeans his European asili revealed itself. According to Columbus’ own journal after assessing two or three native villages he wrote. “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased.” Columbus returned to Spain and informed his sponsors of the prospects of easily conquering the natives. The Europeans responded according to their asili, “Upon his return to Spain Ferdinand and Isabella outfitted Columbus for a second voyage with twelve hundred to fifteen hundred men, seventeen ships, cannon, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs.” The Truth About Columbus A Subversively True Poster Book for a Dubiously Celebratory Occasion by Professor James W Loewen page 22. The European asili of warmongering, bloodlust and rapine immediately moved to wage war on the Arawaks, the natives of the island we now call Haiti. When Colombus returned he instigated hostilities that eventually wiped out all the natives and as a result he then proposed the importation of Africans to provide the free labor the lazy Europeans needed to extract and expropriate the natural resources of the islands. The rest as we say, is history!

We see the same asili manifesting itself over five hundred years later as the Anglo-AmeriKKKan (and in some parts of the world the Israeli) axis wage imperialist campaigns against smaller less technologically developed nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Haiti. Just as Columbus instigated his wars in the name of the Spanish monarchs and the Pope of his day, George W Bu$h is waging his campaigns of ethnic cleansing and rapine in the name of “freedom, liberation and democracy.” We most see this in historical as well as cultural terms as opposed to the propaganda and hype used by the corporate mind control apparatus to justify the carnage of the ruling class. AmeriKKKa as a white nation (or more precisely a multi-ethnic nation ruled by whites) is merely continuing the cultural legacy of Christopher Columbus as well as the earlier legacy of the Huns, Goths, Jutes, Vandals, Normans, Vikings, Saxons and Anglos. They can’t help it, its in their genes, their physical and cultural DNA. The truth of the matter is, if the majority of AmeriKKKans really wanted peace, they would pay whatever individual and collective price needed to be paid to alter their asili, but they won’t. The proof is in the pudding. And the proof is, their asili is manifesting itself once again big time!

posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 5:43 AM 0 comments

There Is Nothing Hidden That Won't Be Revealed

There is Nothing Hidden that Will Not Be Revealed

“A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.The account by Sean McCormack came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall the specific meeting on July 10, 2001, noting that she had met repeatedly with Mr. Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Ms. Rice, the national security adviser at the time, said it was “incomprehensible” she ignored dire terrorist threats two months before the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. McCormack also said records show that the Sept. 11 commission was informed about the meeting, a fact that former intelligence officials and members of the commission confirmed on Monday. When details of the meeting emerged last week in a new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, Bush administration officials questioned Mr. Woodward’s reporting. Now, after several days, both current and former Bush administration officials have confirmed parts of Mr. Woodward’s account.Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff.” Records Show Tenet Briefed Rice on Al Qaeda Threat By PHILIP SHENON and MARK MAZZETTI http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fuj/nytimes24a.htm

Have you ever heard any older black folks refer to the Hell hounds? They were the vicious blood hounds that tracked our escaped ancestors trying to return them to a hellish existence during slavery or to the convict leasing chain gangs back in the day. The term is also a metaphor for fast approaching bad Karma; try as one may, escape from the dire consequences of or action is unlikely. Well the Hell hounds are on the loose and on the trail of the Bu$hites. After six years of being given a virtual free pass by the corporate main stream media on just about every gaff, every debacle and every lie imaginable, it appears the worm has turned. At lest for the time being it seems the ruling elites are doing everything they can to ruin Boy George and his NeoCon cabal. A new book by Washington insider Bob Woodward entitled State of Denial has revealed what many of us intuitively believed about 9-11 all along; the Bu$h administration or at least several key insiders were warned well in advance about attacks against the US and they did nothing!! The Bu$hites are like cornered wounded rabid animals, they are desperate right about now as Woodward’s book is making huge waves in the marketplace. Usually when this occurs the ruling elites or “powerful” people in the hot seat go into a damage control mode and trot out a diversion to distract Joe and Jane Sixpack in order to take the focus and heat off of them. Often they resort to PR and other Jedi mind tricks (tricknowlogy) to get a weak minded and gullible populous to go for even more okey-doke.

The only diversion on the scene now is the revelation about Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s predilection for sending inappropriate sexual E-mails to underage Congressional pages and the shootings in the Pennsylvania Amish Country. The Foley revelations do not help the Republicans. They even increase their woes as news about record September job losses just hit the news. From a metaphysical point of view, there is a saying, “there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.” All the lies Bu$h told, all the deception and all the wanton killing he unleashed on the world is coming to light and back to haunt him. Now he and his staff are scrambling feebly to put their counter-spin on Woodward’s assertions. Little do they know things will get worse before they get better. If the rest of the mass media picks up on this story they will be in deep cow dung.

Condoleezza Rice has denied Woodard’s assertions she was briefed by CIA Director George Tenet about pending terrorist attacks. But official White House records contradict Rice’s denials. “Now, after several days, both current and former Bush administration officials have confirmed parts of Mr. Woodward’s account. Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff. According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Tenet told those assembled at the White House about the growing body of intelligence the Central Intelligence Agency had collected pointing to an impending Al Qaeda attack. But both current and former officials took issue with Mr. Woodward’s account that Mr. Tenet and his aides left the meeting in frustration, feeling as if Ms. Rice had ignored them. Mr. Tenet told members of the Sept. 11 commission about the July 10 meeting when they interviewed him in early 2004, but committee members said the former C.I.A. director never indicated he had left the White House with the impression that he had been ignored. ‘Tenet never told us that he was brushed off,’ said Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the commission. ‘We certainly would have followed that up.” Mr. McCormack said the records showed that, far from ignoring Mr. Tenet’s warnings, Ms. Rice acted on the intelligence and requested that Mr. Tenet make the same presentation to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Atttorney General John Ashcroft. But Mr. Ashcroft said by telephone on Monday evening that he never received a briefing that summer from Mr. Tenet.” http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fuj/nytimes24a.htm

Everyone is back peddling now, claiming they weren’t briefed, they can’t recall or they weren’t told this or that. Even the bogus 9-11 Commission is caught in the salad of lies, finger pointing and denials. Sounds ominously like the Watergate scandal in which by the way Bob Woodward played a crucial part in exposing the cover up of the burglary by the Nixon administration. Ironically Woodward and his fellow Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein became icons as crusading idealists going after the truth about a sitting US president’s role in a minor office break in. From there Woodward went on to become a Washington insider, a chronicler of the inner workings of the beltway crowd. Up until this latest book Woodward’s main claim to fame was being a shill for the Bu$h administration and the NeoCon agenda. What made him change? Why is Woodward all of a sudden the lead Hell hound snipping at Bu$h’s heels? Sooner or later the truth will be revealed.

The Bu$hites are so desperate they will probably apply pressure to their corporate media buddies to focus on the Foley scandal or the Amish Country shootings to divert our attention from more potentially damaging revelations about Bu$h’s malfeasance and/or treason. But with all the hoopla about Foley, with the Republicans finger pointing at each other and Democrats accusing the Republicans of a cover up, the Republicans are on the defensive big time. Their armor has plenty of chinks in it. Now they won’t even be able to steal the upcoming 2006 elections without an even fouler stench filling the air and people becoming even more suspicious and determined to get answers about 9-11.

Could this be what the ruling elites want, a subtle coup and the ousting of the current NeoConcrazies? Stay tuned for this one. The Hell hounds are on the loose. Will Bu$h be like Teflon Ronald Reagan and escape the clutches of the Hell hounds or will the media turn the people against him like they did Clinton and Nixon? Time will tell.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 2:08 PM 0 comments

Random Thought About Current Events

Random Thoughts on Current Events

Robert Woodward the “ace” Washington Post reporter gained fame with his investigation and unraveling of the Watergate cover up conducted by Richard Nixon and his White House minions. Once this was done and Nixon was forced to resign, Woodward became a media icon and an insider given open entree into the halls of Washington power and influence. His latest book entitled State of Denial is making national noise and waves with his revelations Bu$h is delusional in his response to the debacle in Iraq. My question is when did Woodward have his epiphany because the previous two books he wrote about the Bu$h administration were flattering and present Bu$h in a favorable light? Bush At War and Plan of Attack Woodward previous books on the Bu$h administration were written by a consummate Washington insider who had access to transcripts of official documents such as National Security Council meetings, hundreds of interviews with those in the presidential inner circle, including four hours of interviews with Bush himself ad the book was favorable towards Bu$h and the NeoCon agenda immediately following 9-11 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq respectively. In these books Woodward who is a Washington Post assistant managing editor tended to promote Bu$h as a man of resolve action and determination. Like his newspaper his previous books were supportive of Bu$h, the NeoCon agenda and their “Global War on Terrorism”. But according to his latest book, Bu$h and his staff have somehow lapsed into a siege mentality as the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate into a debacle of major proportions.

What happened? Why all of a sudden did Woodward author and publish a book that contradicts his previous works? What’s up with that? How did Bu$h go from being so optimistic and resolute about his War on Terror to being insular, delusional and deceptive about what is going on? In his latest book Woodward even chronicles a supposed incident where CIA Director George Tenet informed Condoleezza Rice about pending/potential attacks on US soil by terrorists and Rice blew him off! Why didn’t Woodward reveal this in his other books? As an insider granted open access to much of what goes on in Washington and supposedly such a creak investigative reporter, Woodward could have either gleaned or gathered some information to show the real deal. There were no WMDs in Iraq and the resistance was fierce shortly after Bu$h declared Mission Accomplished and uttered his famous 'Bring Em On" challenge. Woodward is receiving maximum exposure for his latest book, he was on CBS Sixty Minutes Sunday and the major mainstream media outlets are making a huge issue about Woodward’s assertions the Bu$h White House is now in disarray and that they continuously lie to the AmeriKKKan people about the assessment of the situation in Iraq.

Has the worm turned, have the ruling elites decided it's time to shift away from their failed agenda, dump the NeoCons and execute in a more benign form of imperialist globalization? Keep in mind Woodward is an insider; he is one of the good ol’ boys. He is in Washington at the Washington Post every day. He knows the real deal. Woodward has written numerous books about Washington politics and policies over the years including: All The Presidents Men and Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA. My question is, which book tells the truth, which book about Bu$h shows the real deal, Bush At war or State of Denial? Does Woodward have an agenda, is he being used to facilitate shift in perception about the Bu$hites or is he telling the truth?

* * *

The flap about Florida Congressman Mark Foley being a pedophile gives us a glimpse into the sordid workings of the Washington political process. The thing about Foley E-mailing teenaged boys inappropriate messages was bad enough; but the fact his Republican and Congressional colleagues knew about it for months and did nothing is an even greater indictment of the system. The Foley camp are now spinning it that he is an alcoholic, not a pedophile. Yeah right! When you consider the Hookergate scandal of last spring which was suppressed by the mainstream media (which I found odd because the mainstream media loves to promote and feature stories about sex and politics) which resulted in the resignations of CIA Director Porter Goss and several of his lower level underlings. Hookergate was squashed because it would have revealed the connection between our congress critters, defense contractors and lobbyists of all stripes. “While the mainstream media trod carefully, the blogosphere jumped in with both feet. Building on the reliable reporting of the San Diego Union Tribune, bloggers began cataloguing arcane details and trying to finger the targets of the widening investigation. The more the bloggers raked, the more muck they found. Shirlington Limousine, for example, Wilkes’ connection to a ready supply of prostitutes, turned out to have sweetheart contracts with Homeland Security and other federal agencies, even though its ex-con owner had a 62-page rap sheet. Scrutiny soon settled upon the highest echelons of the CIA. Kyle 'Dusty' Foggo, a bosom pal of Wilkes, and a mysterious person known as 'Nine Fingers' were identified as frequent guests at Wilkes’ bacchanals. They turned out to be, respectively, the No. 3 man at the CIA and a former staffer for CIA Director Porter Goss when he was chair of the House committee on intelligence. Goss lasted a few days before tendering a hasty resignation. Foggo followed the next week. Such is the power of Hookergate, and the best is still to come. It’s too early to say how damaging it will be, but it bids fair to become a campaign-season train wreck. As scandals go, it’s certainly a twofer, casting a harsh light on both the Bush administration and congressional Republicans. It’s unknown exactly who, or how many, but more congressmen are reportedly under investigation for their ties to Wilkes and co-conspirator Mitchell Wade. GOP strategist Ed Rollins opined—perhaps tactically—that as many as 15 members could eventually face grand juries.” http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2652/

Because Hookergate had close ties to both the Republican leadership and the Bu$h administration, the story and investigations were torpedoed and hushed by the mainstream media. If we go back to the Jeff Gannon fake journalist flap in 2005 (Gannon was a homosexual who operated a male escort service and he was a frequent after hours guest at the Bu$h White House who posed as a journalist at Bu$h press conferences who asked Bu$h sickeningly soft questions) and rumors of pedophilia in the first Bu$h White House cogent people would logically conclude: the very people who run a game on us about being so moral and champions for "American family values” and “culture wars” are at least hypocrites and at worst perverts and pedophiles. What makes all this even more alarming is, with the wars and shift to open and obvious fascism; these patterns appear to be the way things are in today’s Washington.

posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 12:57 PM 0 comments

Justice For $ale

Justice For $ale

“Thirty-nine states elect judges, and 30 states are holding elections for seats on their highest courts this year. Spending in these races is skyrocketing, with some judges raising $2 million or more for a single campaign. As the amounts rise, questions about whether money is polluting the independence of the judiciary are being fiercely debated across the nation. And nowhere is the battle for judicial seats more ferocious than in Ohio. An examination of the Ohio Supreme Court by The New York Times found that its justices routinely sat on cases after receiving campaign contributions from the parties involved or from groups that filed supporting briefs. On average, they voted in favor of contributors 70 percent of the time. Justice O’Donnell voted for his contributors 91 percent of the time, the highest rate of any justice on the court. In the 12 years that were studied, the justices almost never disqualified themselves from hearing their contributors’ cases. In the 215 cases with the most direct potential conflicts of interest, justices recused themselves just 9 times.” Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Rulings http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/us/01judges.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

A report in today’s New York Times looks at apparent corruption in the Ohio Supreme Court where justices accept monies from political action committees representing litigants with cases before the Ohio Supreme Court and in the overwhelming number of cases the justices did not recuse themselves from hearing the cases and in fact sided with the parties that contributed the money! This coming from a state that was pivotal in the 2004 presidential that gave the election to George W Bu$h. In AmeriKKKa the exorbitant costs of elections and the fact candidates, political parties and operatives are forced to raise millions of dollars just to be competitive undermines the integrity of the election process. It is not always the brightest person, the candidate with the best platform or ideas that wins. All too often it is the candidate that has the largest war chest, who has raised the most money, hired the best “consultants” and made the most inside connections who wins. It is exactly this process and the fact high court justices are often beholden to their political benefactors that gave us George W Bu$h! The notion that AmeriKKKa is a country “of the people for the people and by the people” is a cruel myth. As the Times article points out AmeriKKKa is a country where money talks while everything else walks including morality and ethics. “Judges are required by codes of judicial ethics to disqualify themselves whenever their impartiality might reasonably be questioned over financial or other conflicts. Even owning a few shares of stock in a defendant’s company or seeing a relative’s name on a brief generally requires automatic disqualification. But there is an exception to this strict rule: campaign contributions. Very few judges in the states that elect the members of their highest court view contributions as a reason for disqualification when those contributors appear before them. Many judges said contributions were so common that recusal would wreak havoc on the system. The standard in the Ohio Supreme Court, its chief justice, Thomas J. Moyer, said, is to recuse only if ‘sitting on the case is going to be perceived as just totally unfair.’” What does “totally unfair” mean in a system where there are already color and class biases inherent in the judicial process? What does ‘totally unfair” mean when the masses unfamiliar with the way the system works go to court seeking justice and fairness but are opposed by lawyers and litigants who have made contributions to the campaigns not only of Supreme Court justices but a plethora of lower court judges as well? Where is the fairness and lack of bias in that? “Indeed, according to a survey of 2,428 state court judges conducted in 2002 by Justice at Stake, a judicial reform organization, almost half said campaign contributions influenced decisions. And more than half agreed that ‘judges should be prohibited from presiding over and ruling in cases where one of the sides has given money to their campaign.’”
In most cases where judges are elected by popular vote lawyers tend to be major contributors to their election campaigns. This insures favorable treatment if they appear before the judge after he or she is elected. Often the lawyers contribute because they know the candidate personally but in most cases it is purely a business decision. Now according to the New York Times the trend has changed, “The study looked at contributors who gave $1,000 or more in the six years preceding the decision, the term length for justices. It also considered, for the most part, only the contributors most directly affected by a ruling: the parties themselves and groups that filed supporting briefs urging the court to rule a certain way. Contributions from lawyers were excluded from the study’s main findings. Lawyers are far more likely than other contributors to give to judges across the ideological spectrum, and — because their firms often handle a wide variety of cases — they generally do not have the intensely focused interest in the outcome of a particular case that their clients do. More than 200 times, moreover, justices sat on cases after receiving contributions from lawyers on both sides. (Emphasis mine). This is the way the system works. The whole notion that justice is meted out based upon the fervor, wiles and acumen of attorneys is just not true. More and more the rulings of courts are based upon who has paid the judges and how much.
We should not be surprised at this. This is not new. In fact the US judicial systems were set up to review legislation and arbitrate civil cases primarily of economic importance. The poor man, due to costs did not have access to the civil courts. That is how class action suits became popular it was a sort of collective way to get the courts attention spread and share the costs of litigation. But class action suits cannot compete with the dollars the trial lawyers, special interests groups and corporations can ante up. “Interest groups on the other side give, too, and the justices they support overwhelmingly vote their way. But Justice Pfeifer says the balance of financial power has shifted to business groups. ‘I don’t care how well a trial lawyer does or how big a pot a labor union has,’ he said, ‘they can’t begin to match the business corporations. It’s not a fair fight.’” That is the crux of the issue, the way the system is now, is not fair or just because money rules. In other words in AmeriKKKa justice is for $ale to the highest bidder.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 8:46 AM 0 comments