The truth is plain to see. It doesn’t happen quite so much here, but all across the blogosphere people sit in front of their computers all day and argue about which national political party is “better”. Which one is more likely to give the people what they want.

On the “left” blogs people talk about one party being tools of multinational corporations and the ultra rich, and say the other party is somehow “better” because it promises “hope” for the future somewhat in the same way religion promises salvation in some heaven, but only after death and only if you’ll “believe” (clap) hard enough, and don’t ask questions.

On the “right” blogs people talk about one party being tools of evil socialists and sex fiends and dopers who hate “freedom”, and say the other party is somehow “better” because it promises “freedom” someday in the future somewhat in the same way religion promises salvation in some heaven, but only after death and only if you’ll “believe” (clap) hard enough, don’t ask questions, and kill anyone who gets in your way.

The truth is plain to see. Big money did not take over any one party at all. Big money took over politics and the media so they could carry on happily while people unwittingly play their game by choosing between between coke or pepsi – and like a Vegas casino, the house always wins in the long run. Always.

There is no ‘reason’. This is not a ‘reasonable’ choice, and it is not ‘reasonable’ to get sucked into making it.

David Swanson’s review of TruthDig.com’s Editor in Chief and veteran journalist Robert Scheer‘s new book “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street”:

Here’s the short answer that Scheer provides: Reagan announced the robbery but couldn’t pull it off. Clinton robbed us blind. Bush Jr. and Obama drove the get-away car, with Obama disguised as a security guard.

[snip] [snip] [snip]

Candidate Barack Obama campaigned for the restoration of Glass-Steagall, and then put in place all the same people who’d destroyed it. He’d been made an insider. The day after a special election in Massachusetts to replace Senator Ted Kennedy, President Obama briefly pulled out his old rhetoric. Wall Street immediately shifted its “donations” from Democrats to Republicans, and that settled that. Obama pushed corporatized “health insurance reform,” which distracted from his absolute subservience to Wall Street on matters financial. He drew on the “expertise” of those who’d created and collapsed these mega-corporations in building on President George W. Bush’s accountability-free bailouts at public expense. It was the same pattern Obama followed in every department: Where he didn’t leave Bush’s people in charge he brought back Clinton’s. Anything to be an insider.

[snip]

“The dispiriting lesson of both the Clinton and the Obama White Houses is that the Democrats proved to be as eager to please Wall Street as their Republican rivals. The influence of big corporate money far overwhelms that of labor, environmental, consumer, or grassroots organizations, making a mockery of the American ideal of self-government when it comes to reining in the antics of the largest conglomerates of wealth.

read it all here…

Former Chief of Staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson is now adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. Wilkerson is also Professorial Lecturer in the Honors Program of the “National Security Decision Making” senior seminar at George Washington University.

His last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02).

Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army, including as Deputy Executive Officer to then-General Colin Powell when he commanded the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and as Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired from active service in 1997.

Here Wilkerson discusses with Real News Network’s Paul Jay what he terms “the culpability, the negligence of the [Bush] administration” over what happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher. His most recent books are Drugs, Oil, and War (2005), The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (2007), The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11 and the Deep Politics of War (2008) and Mosaic Orpheus (poetry, 2009).

Scott has studied and written widely on what he calls the “deep state”, or “deep politics”  – terms he uses to describe the deeper level of machinations that go on in politics beyond the awareness of the majority of people, about the corrupted mindset in Washington that produces for profit government, intelligence gathering, foreign policy and wars.

Here Scott talks with Paul Jay of the Real News Network about the many unanswered questions over what happened and did not happen at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

This is todays webcast with Sen. Mike Gravel, and with Richard Gage from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth Present: Explosive Evidence at World Trade Center on 9/11 Press Conference and Mock Debate, that FreeSociety posted his essay about here yesterday.

To stream this and listen to it you are supposed to register – and I’d strongly suggest you do that if you’re going to watch this – mainly to help A&E for 9/11 Truth build their email lists, by clicking through on the image above (they want names and email addresses):

I’ve already registered and extracted the embed code, however this webcast uses Windows Media Player, and it may not work embedded here for all browsers or all operating systems, but I thought I’d post it here for easy access. I hope it works for you – if you see a blank white area instead of a player below, or if it does not play, there is probably nothing I can do to make it work for you, and you’ll have to click the image above and register to watch it.

While the webcast is playing you might have some blank new windows open occasionally, as the speakers display some slides – if so there is probably nothing I can do to stop that from happening. I think I have that problem fixed.

^{btw, embedding this here may be copyright violation – so if I’m asked to remove this post I will do so}

^{Note: I originally posted this in January 2008.}

Why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why Democrats and Republicans are not listening to us.

Peak Oil could trigger meltdown of society

By: Energy Watch Group

Published: Oct 23, 2007

Also at Antemedius

Yesterday in Part 1 of this conversation between veteran journalist Chris Hedges and Paul Jay of The Real News Network we heard Hedges talk about the collapse of the liberal classes as the main driver and mechanism for change in America.

Today in Part 2 Hedges gives us his thoughts on what we can do about it, beginning with clear recognition of what the current political/social system is and how it developed as well as acceptance that because of the nature of the current system “traditional mechanisms for reform within the system, within the political process, no longer function”, and moving to some suggestions of the kinds of fundamental starting point actions we could take to plant the seeds for causing real change in and reforming American society.

In case you missed it, RawStory on September 01 published an article by Daniel Tencer.

German military report: Peak oil could lead to collapse of democracy

Peak oil has happened or will happen some time around this year, and its consequences could threaten the continued survival of democratic governments, says a secret Germany military report that was leaked online.

According to Der Spiegel, the report from a think-tank inside the German military warns that shrinking global oil supplies will threaten the world’s economic foundations and possibly lead to mass-scale upheaval within the next 15 to 30 years.

International trade would suffer as the cost of transporting goods across oceans would soar, resulting in “shortages in the supply of vital goods,” the report states, as translated by Der Spiegel.

The result would be the collapse of the industrial supply chain. “In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse,” the report states.

Also at Antemedius and at dKos.

This is Part 1. I’ll post each part of this interview as they become available.