WMD MOMENT endlessly déjà vu

Madness incarnate

By Carolyn Bennett

Nothing is more illustrative of the fact that inbreeding (incest, entrenchment, nepotism, keeping company exclusively with a select few) breeds madness than U.S. global relations particularly with Asia, and acutely in this moment with the Near/Middle East, and with Africa.

 

In contemporary times, some of the most insane examples start with the film actor, Ronald REAGAN (U.S. president number 40, 1981-1989). Whether it is

   

Illegally arming “insurgents” (“rebels”, “militants”, “freedom fighters”, call them what you like, expediency changes the names) against rising political parties in Reagan's IRAN-CONTRA affair (the U.S. has continuously armed hostile elements against democratic governments and people’s struggles in the Americas); or

Former U.S. darling in Iraq
taken down
"taken out"

Forcing neo-liberal economics on a people as in the (1993-2001 Lewinskied) William Jefferson CLINTON/NATO war on Yugoslavia on a claim that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was “ethnically cleansing” Kosovar Albanians, a claim later altered to a U.S. war against Yugoslavia’s resistance to regional "liberalization" and deregulation of markets; or

U.S. soldiers in
chemical weapons gear

Birth defects in Iraqis

Overthrowing governments, bombing and looting cities and treasures, massacring and maiming and causing health defects in surviving men, women and children, even newborns (where were/where are the U.S. “right to lifers”?) in (George W. BUSH’s AFGHANISTAN/IRAQ and (Barack Hussein Obama’s LIBYA/SOMALIA/EGYPT/Sudan/Congo et.al., now arming, threatening, invading SYRIA, imposing deepening illegal sanctions warfare, inflicting lethal injury on Iranians for a nonexistent nuclear weapons industry); or  

U.S. drone attacks on AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN and YEMEN and on the poorest of all, SOMALIA, as some of its people commit “piracy” on the high seas (as Palestinian youth throw rocks) in a desperate and  pathetic response to the nuclear-powered rich’s ageless, unending  pillaging and plundering of their land and peoples ─

The root, branch and driving force in all of these moments and the attending unspeakable cruelty have been U.S.-initiated, U.S.-led widely publicized propagandist falsehoods about nonexistent WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION pointed at the West, its “interests” and or “allies”, stories often manufactured out of whole cloth and wrapped in contrived urgency ─

 

…often against a “Noriega,” some former U.S. allied-dictator/strongman/warlord/drug lord turned U.S.-declared “demon” or demonic terrorist depressing “women” or “killing his own people”

U.S.
Kabul
Afghanistan

Former U.S. darling
in the Americas
Manuel Noriega

U.S. education
protesters
U.S. force

U.S. surveillance
paranoia
control

U.S.
failure to care
for its own

…just as U.S. invaders in their acts of foreign invasion and occupation not only kill and repress foreigners; they simultaneously criminally neglect, kill and repress “their own people” into submission to the will of war: the manufacturers, sellers and traffickers in the materiel of war; the makers of and lobbyists and propagandists for war, the warmongers, and the office-holding (incestuously entrenched nepotistic keepers-of-company-with a select few) inbreeds who perpetrate madness.

Chemical weapons on Iraqis

ENDLESSLY déjà vu

How much will it take?

How many lives must be lost before we toss the bums and their bombs out?

A bit of liberty with my apology to Dylan

U.S. neglect
destruction of
public education

How many times must cannon balls fly before they are forever banned?

How many deaths will it take ‘til we know too many people have died?

How many times must we look up before we see the sky?

How many ears must we have before we hear people cry?

How many years can a mountain exist before it’s washed to the sea?

How many times can we turn our heads pretending we do not see?

How many years can some people exist before they can be free?

  

Notes and news

“Blowin’ in the Wind” was written by Bob Dylan in 1962 and released on his album “The Freewheelin’” Bob Dylan in 1963. In 1994, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame; in 2004 Rolling Stone magazine ranked it Number 14 in its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” [Wikipedia note]

Dylan’s complete lyrics as written reproduced at http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+dylan/blowin+in+the+wind_20021159.html

Syrians protest
foreign meddling

In today’s news from PressTV

  

The U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel today said the U.S. military was ready to take action against Syria if President Obama gave the green light to which Alexei Pushkov, head of the International Committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, responded that the Obama government is

‘Inescapably moving towards war in Syria just like Bush was [moving] towards war in Iraq [and] Just like in Iraq, this war will not be legitimate and Obama will become a Bush clone.’

Syrians protest
foreign meddling

“Obama clones Bush in drive for war: Russian MP,” August 25, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/25/320432/us-closer-to-war-in-syria-russia-mp/

According to a statement issued today by the Syrian Foreign Ministry

‘An agreement was concluded today in Damascus between the Syrian government and the United Nations during the visit of the UN High Representative for Disarmament Angela Kane.’

The accord would ‘allow the UN team led by Professor Aake Sellstroem to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use in Damascus Province… effective immediately.’

“Syria gives green light to UN chemical weapons team,” August 25, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/25/320446/syria-allows-un-chemical-arms-probe/

“International opponents push for offensive in Syria: The international opponents of the Syrian government [France, Israel, U.S.] are pushing for an offensive against the Arab country under the pretext of an alleged chemical attack near the capital, Damascus.” August 25, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/25/320433/syria-opponents-push-for-offensive/

“Potential U.S. military intervention in Syria suicidal: Analyst,” August 25, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/25/320473/us-military-act-against-syria-suicidal/

Political analyst Webster Griffin Tarpley said yesterday in an interview with Press TV that given the “changed military landscape” surrounding Syria and “the presence of Russia on the side of Syria ... and the presence of Iran [and] other new powers,” the United States’

‘…constant adventurism that was criminal in 2003 [now becomes] suicidal adventurism’

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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U.S. Pres junkets as East/West descends into Cold War 2

Syrian opposition to
 U.S. interference

Leader-impersonators throw away years: Result: regression

Editing, re-reporting, commentary by Carolyn Bennett

The Reagan and post-Reagan years failed to seize a gaping opportunity begging for the founding of a more progressive era. Officials particularly in Washington wasted critical years, choosing instead an ever-expanding siege of violence: global, perpetual wars.

Today's news

 

Further destabilizing Middle East

Provocation USA on Jordan/Syria border 

Though Washington and Amman have imposed a news blackout on U.S. deployment of troops on Jordanian soil, news sources are reporting that more than “1,000 U.S. troops arrived in the Jordanian port of Aqaba via Israel earlier in the week”; and “under heavy Jordanian military escort,” these troops (members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Force)… have headed toward the kingdom’s (Jordan’s) border area with Syria.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced in April that Washington was sending 200 military troops to Jordan “to help contain the violence in Syria,” increasing speculation among international media that the United States “is setting the stage for intervention” in another Middle Eastern country.

Russia echoes Cold War

For the purpose of shoring up the nation’s security, Russian officials said this week that their country has deployed a permanent naval unit ─ 16 warships and three ship-based helicopters to the Mediterranean Sea region. Russian president Vladimir Putin while denying mere “saber-rattling” noted that the Mediterranean Sea is “‘a strategically important region” and his nation has “tasks to carry out” in the region “to provide for the national security of the Russian Federation.”

Russia’s revitalization of its military power was also indicated in an earlier announcement that the country intends “to resume patrols by nuclear-armed submarines in the southern seas.”

Cold War 2 ─  The first nuclear-powered Russian Borei-class submarine was put into service in January and five months later an anonymous source on the Russian General Staff tells the Itar-Tass news agency that “Moscow is planning to deploy submarines equipped with nuclear ballistic missiles to southern international waters for the first time since the collapse of the former Soviet Union.”

Expanding, Deepening Conflict spells Regression

The continuing U.S. aggression against and destabilization of the Middle East region is at odds not only with the needs of the inhabitants of this region but with concerns of Eastern Europe and South/Central Asia and the Middle East.

Kofi Annan
Peace Envoy, Mediator
Former UN Secretary-General

Despite proposals time and again calling for relations of inclusion of all affected nations and proposals for nonviolence, political resolution of conflict, peaceful negotiation and conversation, U.S. officials have as many times obstructed these attempts ─ this includes relatively recently the attempts by UN envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan. U.S. officials one after another have effectively destroyed the unity, principles and conventions of “United Nations” and continued a foreign relations policy in violence: arrogance and condescension, belligerence, invasion and occupation.

Jordanians protest
44th U.S. President Barack Obama

Jordanian official’s dissent

On the U.S. ratcheting up of violence on the Jordan/Syrian border, Jordan’s opposition party, the Islamic Action Front, has denounced the presence of American troops in the kingdom and asked the government to review its decision to authorize the deployment of foreign troops on Jordan’s soil.

Russian official’s dissent and reprimand

Leading into the Geneva 2 conference on Syria tentatively scheduled for July, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, Jennifer Psaki, reportedly claimed that participants in a preparatory meeting  ─ the trilateral meeting held on Wednesday with the participation of UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and representatives from Russia and the United States ─ had agreed that the Geneva conference should focus on overthrow and replacement of Syria’s head of state: “the forthcoming talks on Syria should focus on the formation of a transitional government to which the current administration should give up all powers.”

Speaking to the press the following day (yesterday), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov essentially said the U.S. official was lying or, more kindly, had misrepresented what had occurred in the preparatory meeting. “If this was really said by the U.S. State Department,” Lavrov said, “it is a very strong distortion of what the talks were about.”

Also contrary to U.S. and other Western obstructionism and arrogance, Lavrov reemphasized Moscow’s “push for Iran’s participation in the upcoming Geneva conference.

UN official’s dissent

 

Though the preparatory meeting failed to set a firm date for the Geneva meeting and U.S. officials have again been stalling on peaceful resolution to the conflict, the UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, expressed hope that the Geneva conference will convene in July.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire

Northern Irish peace activist

Co-founder of Peace People 

(Community of the Peace People)

Assessment and a way forward

A corrupt, distracted and inept national leadership in Washington over the past several years (Reagan onward) has given up the chance to change the ethos and character of U.S. foreign relations. The world is neither the enemy of World War II victor-states nor the enemy of the Cold War West nor should the West be afraid or paranoid about leaders or factions of the East and South. A flawed sameness has gone on for far too long and, for all its technological gadgetry (or because of it), the West has entered a sharp descent into regress (Is this the intent of the “take back America-ites” or sundry nationalists and “Patriots” or the “occupiers”?).

I think nations of the West and particularly my country (land that I love) should: 

Start accepting leaders and nations, without judging or lecturing them

Start engaging leaders and factions nonviolently, respectfully, as equals

Instead of ridiculing, lecturing, condescending to and disparaging difference, seek understanding directly from the rich varieties of cultures and peoples of which we are pathetically lacking, dangerously ignorant, and stupidly dismissive.

Sources and notes

“U.S. Marines deployed along Jordan border with Syria: Report” (Press TV latest update), June 7, 2013 2:5PM GMT, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/307672.html

“Russia deploys permanent naval unit to Mediterranean Sea,” June 7, 2013 8:22AM GMT,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/307620.html

“Russia slams U.S. for distorting results of trilateral talks on Syria,” June 7, 2013 5:38AM GMT, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/307605.html

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Government and Corporation meet in Fraud

Plunder authorized, glorified

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

University of Missouri law, ethics and economics Professor William K. Black spoke about government/corporate fraud in an interview broadcast Monday on KPFA’s “Letters and Politics.” His ideas were compelling so I went in search of further of his thoughts on the financial crisis and its roots in the 1980s Savings and Loan scandal. What I found, again, is a depressingly entrenched and corrupt line of administrations and congresses.

Savings and Loan era

Recalling the 1980s Savings and Loan scandal, William Black writes that Richard (Dick) Pratt’s cover up strategy is what made the Savings and Loan (S&L) fiasco so expensive to resolve.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981 had appointed academic finance expert Richard Pratt to head the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (Bank Board).  In that position, Black says, Pratt “gimmicked the accounting rules, cut the number of examiners, and de-supervised the industry, thus allowing saving and loans to hide real losses and create fictional income.” Pratt “championed the entry of  ‘entrepreneurs,’ primarily real estate developers with intense conflicts of interest.”

Executive and Legislative branches of government as well as mass media “treated Pratt’s fictional ‘resolutions’ and claims of brilliance as real.” 

Allowing Savings and Loans “to hide real losses and create fictional income, deregulating, de-supervising, closing none of the control frauds (which were growing in assets at an annual rate of 50 percent), and making virtually no criminal referrals (which meant there were no prosecutions) — Richard Pratt created an intensely criminogenic environment, welcoming hundreds of control frauds into that industry

The National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement report in 1993 found ‘fraud invariably present.’  “The report explained how deregulation, de-supervision, the lack of prosecutions, the accounting scams that hid real losses and created fictional income, the manipulation of professional compensation for appraisers and outside auditors by the fraudulent savings and loan executives [had produced] a … dynamic, in which bad ethics drove out good ethics of the professions.

“Perverse incentives caused by modern executive compensation, moreover, allowed CEOs to create guaranteed, record (though fictional) profits and to become wealthy by looting ‘their’ Savings and Loans.

Current banking era Thirty years on

Professor William Black continues, “For reasons only [U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Franz Geithner, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Henry Summers, and [President Barack] Obama can know, they [the Obama administration has chosen] to adopt [Reagan’s] Richard Pratt’s disastrous and dishonest anti-regulatory strategy and to parrot his dishonest claims of brilliance and success.”

At the behest of the Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association (ABA), and Chairman Bernanke, Congress “successfully (and shamefully) wrested from the Financial Accounting Standards Board a change in the accounting rules — so that banks no longer had to recognize losses on their toxic mortgage paper appropriately until they sold the assets.

“Covering up the losses had three real (carefully unstated) purposes:

1.     Permitting evasions of the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) law enacted by Congress in 1991;

2.     Allowing the banks to remove themselves from the strictures of the TARP program even if they are, in reality, insolvent; and

3.     Allowing insolvent and impaired banks to pay their senior executives huge bonuses based on the  (fictional) income that results when a bank does not recognize its losses.

“Each of these purposes,” he says, “is unprincipled and indefensible; but taken together, they are also dangerous…

“The administration and its odd bedfellows, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association, have maximized the perverse incentives that will drive future fraud epidemics, bubbles, and severe recessions.” All told, “the administration’s banking policies” have thus achieved … terrible economics, terrible ethics, and terrible politics.”

CRONY CAPITALIZATION RULES

Corporate and government conspire in fraud

“The most common reason that firms can cheat with impunity,” Professor William Black wrote in a Benzinga article in April, “is that their CEOs are cronies of powerful politicians.  


The defining characteristics of crony capitalism are that the cronies receive subsidies, favors, and immunity from normal rules and laws. 


The cronies dominate the big corporations and provide reciprocal benefits to controlling politicians.

Managerial incompetence and wealth flourishes under crony capitalism.

Merit and efficiency suffer, income inequality surges, and class and who one knows [who not what you know] become the primary determinants of economic and political success and power. The elites become pervasively corrupt.

Crony capitalism is the antithesis of “free enterprise.” The best way to destroy free enterprise is to allow CEOs to commit control fraud with impunity because that maximizes the perverse Gresham's dynamic.

Quoting the 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat, Black sums up: “‘When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes [plunder] and a moral code that glorifies it.’”

Sources and notes

William Black was interviewed May 30, 2011, on Letters and Politics, KPFA-Berkeley: As Congress faces such burning issues as healthcare, global warming and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pacifica's Mitch Jeserich hosts “Letters and Politics” a look at national politics from a progressive perspective. http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/70193

“The Powell Memorandum's 40th Anniversary: Impunity for Control Fraud” (William K. Black, Benzinga Columnist), April 25, 2011, http://www.benzinga.com/be-your-own-boss/11/04/1029309/the-powell-memorandums-40th-anniversary-impunity-for-control-fraud

“If Obama Thinks the Response to the S&L Debacle Failed, Why Is He Adopting It?”  (William Black, November 1, 2010, Tweet,   http://my.firedoglake.com/williamblack/2010/11/01/if-obama-thinks-the-response-to-the-sl-debacle-failed-why-is-he-adopting-it/

Frederic Bastiat

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (b. 1801, Mugron, near Bayonne, France; d. 1850, Rome, Papal States [Italy] French economist, best known for his journalistic writing in favor of free trade and the economics of Adam Smith.[Britannica note]

War hero John Sidney McCain III (Senator, Arizona) became embroiled in the most spectacular case to arise out of the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, as a result of his connections with Charles Keating Jr., the head of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, California, who had engaged in fraud. Although cleared by the Senate in 1991 of illegalities in his dealings on Keating's behalf, McCain received a mild rebuke for exercising ‘poor judgment.’ [Britannica note]

William K. Black

Professor William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One (2005), “developed the concept of ‘control fraud’ – frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a ‘weapon.’ Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined and kill and maim thousands.” He has helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae’s former senior management.  

Black is Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law (UMKC) where he teaches “White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law and Economics (all joint, multidisciplinary classes for economics and law students), and Latin American Development (co-taught with Professor Grieco, UMKC – History).”

He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from (2005-2007); taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Black was litigation director of the U.S. Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Senior Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan, University of Michigan Law School, and University of California-Irvine.   http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/black.htm

“The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was legislation passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush (October 3, 2008). “It was designed to prevent the collapse of the U.S. financial system during the subprime mortgage crisis, a severe contraction of liquidity in credit markets worldwide brought about by widespread losses in the subprime mortgage sector.

“The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) sought to restore liquidity to credit markets by authorizing the secretary of the treasury to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-backed securities and other troubled assets from the country’s banks, as well as any other financial instrument the secretary deemed necessary ‘to promote financial market stability.’

“The act also included provisions to minimize foreclosures on federally owned mortgages, to recover possible future losses on the government’s mortgage investments, to prevent windfalls for executives of banks that benefit from the act, and to monitor the investments of the Treasury Department through reports to Congress and a specially created oversight board.

“The EESA authorized the treasury secretary to establish a Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to protect the ability of consumers and businesses to secure credit.…” Britannica note

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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