Wall Street compra diputados y senadores

Las empresas que dominan Wall Street también controlan el Congreso estadunidense. Senadores y diputados reciben, cada uno, millones de dólares en “donación” de Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, la aseguradora American International Group y los gigantes hipotecarios Fannie Mae y Freddie Mac. Entre los beneficiarios se encuentra el exsenador y ahora presidente Barack Obama. Ésta es una investigación que censuraron los grandes medios de comunicación, rescatada por el Proyecto censurado.

Greg Gordon / Red Voltaire

Tal como lo hace Estados Unidos, muchos países han adoptado costosos planes para relanzar la economía, durante y después de la crisis financiera de 2008. Pero, como lo señala el investigador Greg Gordon, la concepción de estos planes y su aplicación en Estados Unidos fueron impuestas al Congreso por los mismos bancos que finalmente han sido los principales beneficiarios, gracias a la ayuda de los parlamentarios que han sido groseramente gratificados con dinero. Podemos identificar algunas personalidades conocidas que se han beneficiado como… Barack Obama.

Senadores y diputados responsables de supervisar la economía de Estados Unidos han recibido millones de dólares de las empresas de Wall Street.

Desde 2001, ocho de las empresas más debilitadas por la crisis han donado 64.2 millones de dólares a los candidatos del Congreso, a los candidatos presidenciales y a los partidos Republicano y Demócrata. En su calidad de senadores, Barack Obama y John McCain recibieron, entre ellos dos, un total de 3.1 millones de dólares.

Los donantes son los bancos de inversión Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, la aseguradora American International Group y los gigantes hipotecarios Fannie Mae y Freddie Mac.

Algunos de los beneficiarios más relevantes recibieron contribuciones de compañías que a su vez obtuvieron dinero fiscal aprobado en el paquete gubernamental de ayuda financiera Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), aprobado por los mismos miembros del Congreso que ocupaban cargos en los comités encargados de regular al sector financiero y de supervisar la eficacia de este programa de apoyo gubernamental sin precedentes.

En total, los miembros del Comité del Senado sobre Actividades Bancarias, Vivienda y Asuntos Urbanos, Comité de Finanzas del Senado y Comité de Servicios Financieros de la Cámara de Representantes recibieron 5.2 millones de dólares del TARP en el ciclo electoral 2007-2008.

El presidente Obama recogió por lo menos 4.3 millones de estas compañías para su campaña presidencial. Casi todos los miembros del Comité de Servicios Financieros de la Cámara de Representantes, que en febrero de 2009 supervisaron en audiencias públicas cómo serían gastados los 700 mil millones de dólares del TARP aprobados con urgencia, recibieron contribuciones asociadas a las corporaciones financieras durante el ciclo de elecciones de 2008.

“Podría decirse que la industria de las finanzas consiguió su dinero con el apoyo de los miembros del Congreso que estuvieron dispuestos a mirar hacia otro lado”, dijo Lawrence Jacobs, director del Centro de Estudios Políticos y Gobernabilidad de la Universidad de Minnesota.

Por ejemplo, en 2004, cuando la Comisión de Bolsa y Valores adoptó un cambio importante de la regla permitiendo a los bancos invertir decenas de billones de dólares en dinero prestado en hipotecas desvalorizadas (subprime) y otros juegos aventurados, los comités de actividades bancarias del Congreso no llevaron a cabo ninguna audiencia sobre este descuido.

La inactividad del Congreso impidió regulaciones para prevenir prácticas depredadoras de los prestamistas y también permitió que los agentes de hipotecas ganaran elevadas comisiones por la venta de préstamos hipotecarios de puerta en puerta a compradores de viviendas insolventes.

El periodista Matt Taibbi escribió, en la revista Rolling Stone, que parte de la venta más notoria del gobierno de Estados Unidos a Wall Street se concretó a fines de la década de 1990, cuando “los demócratas, cansados de morir barridos por los republicanos en la arena de la recolección de fondos, decidieron zafarse de su vieja dependencia de las uniones corporativas y grupos de interés y hacerse más amistosos hacia los negocios.

“Wall Street respondió inundando Washington con dinero, comprando aliados en ambos partidos”. De 1998 a 2008, las compañías financieras gastaron 1.7 mil millones de dólares en contribuciones para campañas federales y otros 3.4 mil millones en pagos a cabilderos o miembros de grupos de presión. Las sabias inversiones políticas de los grandes banqueros de Estados Unidos les permitieron desechar con eficacia cualquier control parlamentario significativo de la industria financiera.

En 1999, el senador republicano por Texas Phil Gramm copatrocinó una iniciativa que revocó los aspectos claves de la ley Glass-Steagall Act, que desde la Gran Depresión impedía que los bancos ingresaran al negocio de los seguros.

Al año siguiente, Gramm redactó una nueva legislación arrolladora llamada Commodity Futures Modernization Act, que hizo imposible regular los intercambios de créditos swaps (permuta financiera) y otras operaciones poco seguras.

Así se abrió la puerta para que el aventurismo en los intercambios y negociaciones de títulos de crédito a alto riesgo se imponga como cosa corriente. En 1997 y 1998 –los años iniciales de la reforma de Phil Gramm que destripó la ley Glass-Steagall–, las industrias bancarias, de agentes de bolsa y aseguradoras gastaron 350 millones de dólares en contribuciones políticas y en cabildeo.

Gramm, entonces presidente del Comité de Actividades Bancarias del Senado, recogió 2.6 millones de dólares en solamente cinco años. La ley 90-8 fue aprobada en el Senado con el apoyo de 38 demócratas, incluyendo a Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin y John Edwards.

La ley ayudó a crear los fracasados monstruos financieros del tamaño del Citigroup, de AIG y del Bank of America, y a la vez ayudó a esas compañías a demoler lentamente a sus competidores más pequeños, dejando a las principales empresas de Wall Street con aún más dinero y poder para cabildear en favor de más desregulación adicional.

A comienzos de 2009, se inventó toda una nueva serie de operaciones del gobierno para inyectar dinero en efectivo a la economía, la mayoría de ellas bajo control totalmente reservado al sector financiero. Taibbi señaló que “mientras el resto de Estados Unidos y la mayor parte del Congreso han estado alardeando sobre el programa urgente de 700 mil millones de dólares de ayuda denominado TARP, los nuevos organismos recientemente creados en el “zoológico” de la Reserva Federal (FED, por sus siglas en inglés) han estado bombeando discretamente, no miles de millones, sino millones de millones de dólares a favor de las empresas privadas (por lo menos, 3 millones de millones de dólares hasta ahora en préstamos, con otros tantos 5.7 billones adicionales en garantías de inversiones privadas)”.

Taibbi continúa: “Esta nueva y secreta actividad de la FED eclipsa totalmente el programa TARP en términos de su influencia en la economía… Nadie sabe quién se está llevando ese dinero o exactamente cuánto está desapareciendo a través de estos nuevos agujeros en el deteriorado casco de la solvencia de Estados Unidos.

“Por otra parte, nadie puede estar seguro de que estas nuevas instituciones sean realmente temporales o si las están poniendo como muletas permanentes del Estado para ayudar a Wall Street, diseñadas para chupar sistemáticamente malas inversiones desde los libros de prestamistas irresponsables.

“La realidad es que la fusión económica mundial y el vaciamiento que le siguió fueron juntos una suerte de revolución, un golpe de Estado. Solidificaron y formalizaron una tendencia política que se ha estado manifestando por décadas: se trata de la toma de posesión gradual del gobierno por parte de una pequeña clase de iniciados conectados, quienes utilizaron el dinero para controlar las elecciones, comprar influencia y debilitar sistemáticamente las regulaciones financieras”, concluyó Taibbi.

El fraude y la crisis continúan profundizándose y se expanden con conflictos de intereses significativos en el Congreso, en el Poder Ejecutivo y gobierno de Estados Unidos. Simon Johnson, economista, exjefe del Fondo Monetario Internacional, dijo: “La industria de las finanzas ha capturado con eficacia a nuestro gobierno”.

Actualización de Lindsay Renick Myer (de Capitol Eye)

Incluso, mientras el gobierno federal continúa inventando fórmulas para salvar al sector financiero y dar un impulso a la economía, el gobierno recibe consejos y recomendaciones de las mismas compañías que aceptaron dólares de los contribuyentes y que son, en parte, las principales responsables de la crisis actual.

Pero esto no es todo con respecto de las colectas del Congreso, que ha estado ocupado en obtener fondos del sector financiero, incluyendo a esas compañías que recibieron miles de millones de dólares en ayuda del gobierno a través del programa TARP.

Desde que se escribió este artículo en febrero de 2010, el sector financiero, por supuesto, ha continuado dando dinero a candidatos, a los comités de partidos y a los comités de acción política. Desde que comenzó 2009, Wall Street ha donado 12.6 millones de dólares, más que cualquier otro sector. Y el 58 por ciento de ese dinero ha ido a los demócratas, marcando quizás un cambio de estrategia política, pues desde el ciclo electoral de 1990, el mundo financiero, los seguros y las inmobiliarias no habían destinado más del 52 por ciento de sus donaciones totales a los demócratas, y desde 1991 a 2006, el sector financiero dio la mayor parte de su dinero a los republicanos.

Muchas de las compañías involucradas en este artículo han enviado a sus altos ejecutivos a atestiguar ante el Comité de Servicios Financieros de la Cámara de Representantes y, sin embargo, realmente han superado sus donaciones totales en el primer trimestre de 2009 en comparación con los primeros trimestres de 2007 y 2005.

Esto incluye a JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs (que este año ha sido la número uno en disminuir sus contribuciones, en comparación con el comienzo de 2008), Morgan Stanley, Citigroup y Wells Fargo.

Sin embargo, es importante recordar que todavía es muy temprano para el ciclo (del Congreso) y que las contribuciones para campañas generalmente comienzan a fluir con más intensidad en fechas más cercanas a una elección. Al igual que el resto de la industria, ahora estas compañías también apuntaron mayoritariamente a los demócratas como recipiendarios de sus donaciones políticas.

Por supuesto, una gran historia para conocer este año será si los legisladores sufrieron algún golpe en sus finanzas personales, como el común de los mortales de Estados Unidos, o si se beneficiaron personalmente tras sostener a las compañías de Wall Street con dinero en efectivo del contribuyente. Los casos más interesantes serán aquellos concernientes a los miembros de las comisiones encargadas de controlar las actividades bancarias y financieras.

Fuente: Contralínea 220 / 13 de febrero de 2011

Obama should resign if approved UN spying: WikiLeaks founder

It's not wrong to lie, cheat, steal, corrumpt, and torture. It's wrong to let people know about it.

Julian Assange

El Pais

MADRID — President Barack Obama should resign if it can be shown that he approved spying by US diplomatic figures on UN officials, the founder of WikiLeaks said in an interview published Sunday.

"The whole chain of command who was aware of this order, and approved it, must resign if the US is to be seen to be a credible nation that obeys the rule of law. The order is so serious it may well have been put to the president for approval," Julian Assange told Spanish daily El Pais.

"Obama must answer what he knew about this illegal order and when. If he refuses to answer or there is evidence he approved of these actions, he must resign," he added during an Internet chat interview published online.

WikiLeaks threw US diplomacy into chaos when it started releasing more than 250,000 classified State Department cables on November 28, creating an international firestorm as American diplomats' private assessments of foreign leaders and politics have been publicly aired.

According to one of the documents, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked for UN personnel's telephones, emails, credit card details and frequent flier numbers.

The United States and other governments said the release of the documents broke their laws.

Assange gave the interview to El Pais on Saturday from an undisclosed location. The 39-year-old Australian is believed to be in Britain, and a report said he could be arrested this week.

WikiLeaks has come under intense pressure to close since it began releasing the trove of US State Department cables.

The site has already been forced to change its domain name and hop-scotch to servers around the globe as successive companies and countries bent to US arguments branding its divulgations over the past week "illegal".

It has also come under repeated cyber-attack, through a tactic known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) in which thousands of computers connect to its servers in a concerted attempt to knock them off-line.

Mirror websites, which replicate WikiLeaks's data, have sprung up on servers in various countries.

Interpol, meanwhile, has issued a "red notice" against Assange alerting all police forces that he is a wanted person in Sweden, which wants to question him "in connection with a number of sexual offenses", charges he denies.

"The organisation is strong. We have a lot of support, however we also have many attacks of different forms. From ongoing mass DDoS attacks to smears and the legal issues," said Assange.

He said WikiLeaks had "dozens" of people who were helping the organisation deal with the cyber-attack and set up the mirror websites "but it takes a lot of time for us to manage the process".

"We are automating that process and will soon have hundreds. If there is a battle between the US military and the preservation of History, we have insured History will win."

Assange said he and others who work for WikiLeaks had received "hundreds" of "specific" death threats from "US military militants".

"That is not unusual, and we have become practiced from past experiences at ignoring such threats from Islamic extremists, African kleptocrats and so on. Recently the situation has changed with these threats now extending to our lawyers and my children," he added.

Assange said he believed the "ripples are just starting to flow throughout the world" from the release of the State Department cables.

"But I believe geopolitics will be separated into pre and post cablegate phases," he said.

Could a Sudden Collapse of Mexico Be Obama's Surprise Foreign Policy Challenge?

By Bill Weinberg, AlterNet.

Free-trade politics and the drug war created a social crisis in Mexico, and a militarized response to it may push events to an explosion.

A year-end report by the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command names two countries as likely candidates for a "rapid and sudden collapse" -- Pakistan and Mexico.
The report, named "JOE 2008" (for Joint Operating Environment), states:
"In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force, and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."
Mexican officials were quick to deny the ominous claim. Exterior Secretary Patricia Espinosa told reporters that the fast-escalating violence mostly affects the narco gangs themselves, and "Mexico is not a failed state."
Enrique Hubbard Urrea, Mexico's consul general in Dallas, actually boasted improvement, asserting that the government has won the war against the drug cartels in certain areas, such as Nuevo Laredo -- one of the border cities that has been the scene of recent nightmarish violence.
But U.S. political figures were also quick to react -- using the Pentagon's lurid findings to argue for increased military aid to Mexico. As President-elect Barack Obama met in Washington with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Jan. 12, the former U.S. drug czar, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, just back from a meeting in Mexico of the International Forum of Intelligence and Security Specialists, told a Washington press conference: "Mexico is on the edge of the abyss -- it could become a narco state in the coming decade." He praised Calderon, who he said has "launched a serious attempt to reclaim the rule of law from the chaos of the drug cartels." The International Forum of Intelligence and Security Specialists is an advisory body to Mexican federal law enforcement.
Also weighing in was Joel Kurtzman, senior fellow at the Milken Institute, who warned in a Wall Street Journal editorial: "It may only be a matter of time before the drug war spills across the border and into the U.S." He hailed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for his "plan to 'surge' civilian, and possibly, military law-enforcement personnel to the border should that be necessary…" He also lauded Calderon's deployment of 45,000 military troops to fight the drug cartels -- but raised the possibility of a tide of refugees flooding the U.S. Southwest. "Unless the violence can be reversed, the U.S. can anticipate that the flow across the border will continue."
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., joined the chorus. On Jan. 11, the day before Calderon arrived in Washington, Gingrich told ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos: "There is a war under way in Mexico. More people were killed in Mexico in 2008 than were killed in Iraq. It is grossly undercovered by the American media. It's is on our border. It has the potential to extend into our country side. … The illegal narcotics teams in Mexico are in a direct civil war with the government in which they are killing the police, killing judges, killing the army ... [I'm] surprised that no one in the American system is looking at it very much. It's a very serious problem."
Gingrich doesn't have his facts quite right. The Iraq Body Count Web site puts the number of just Iraqi civilian deaths last year at a maximum of 9,028 (compared to 24,295 in 2007). The Mexican daily El Universal reports that according to its tally, there were 5,612 killings related to organized crime in Mexico last year -- more than double the 2007 figure, and the highest since it started keeping track four years ago.
Yet even if Gingrich is exaggerating, and the Pentagon is paranoid, there is definitely cause for concern. The violence -- at its worst in the border cities of Juarez and Tijuana -- is reaching spectacular levels redolent of Colombia.
In Juarez (and elsewhere across Mexico), severed heads are left outside police stations in chilling numbers; mutilated, decapitated corpses left outside schools and shopping centers -- or hanging from overpasses as a warning to the populace.
A man recently arrested in Tijuana -- charmingly nicknamed the "Stew-maker" -- confessed to disposing of hundreds of bodies by dissolving them in chemicals, for which he was paid $600 a week. A barrel with partially dissolved human remains was left outside a popular seafood restaurant.
Bombs hurled into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence day in Michoacn on Sept. 15 left seven dead.
The mysterious wave of femicide, which has haunted Juarez for more than 15 years, has spiraled hideously. Authorities report that 81 women were killed in the city this year, breaking all previous records -- in fact, more than doubling 2001's record and bringing the total since 1993 to 508.
And the cartels' agents have penetrated the highest levels of Mexican federal power. Several high-ranking law-enforcement officials were detained last year in Operacion Limpieza ("Operation House Cleaning"), aimed at weeding out officials suspected of collaborating with the warring drug lords.
Cartel hit squads operate in the uniforms of Mexican federal police agents, and in towns such as Nuevo Laredo, the local police became so thoroughly co-opted that the federal government dissolved their powers. It is questionable whether the Mexican bloodletting is really a war of the cartels against the state or among cartels for control of the state.
State security forces are hardly less brutal than the drug gangs they battle (and overlap with). Mexico's National Human Rights Commission issued several recommendations last year calling on the defense secretary to punish those responsible for torture and gratuitous killings. Up until now, those recommendations have been ignored.
Despite the blatant corruption, the U.S. is pouring guns into Mexico -- an illicit trade from north of the border arming the cartels (and their paramilitary units like the notorious "Zetas," made up of military veterans) with assault rifles and rocket-launchers, while Washington is beefing up the Mexican army and federal police over the table. "Mexican law enforcement and soldiers face heavily armed drug gangs with high-powered military automatic weapons," warns McCaffrey, oblivious to the incestuous interpenetration of these seeming opponents.
McCaffrey, who was an architect of Plan Colombia 10 years ago, is today a booster of its new Mexican counterpart -- the $1.4 billion, multiyear Merida Initiative. At his Washington press conference, he decried that this is "a drop in the bucket compared to what was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. … We cannot afford to have a narco-state as a neighbor."
The first $400 million Merida Initiative package was approved by Congress in June, and the first $197 million of mostly military aid sent south in December. Although it differs in not actually introducing U.S. military advisors, the Merida Initiative is clearly modeled on Plan Colombia, and is dubbed "Plan Mexico" by its critics.
It has moved apace with the Homeland Security's ambitious plans to seal the border. And indeed, Plan Colombia's supposed success in bringing a tenuous "stability" to Colombia has done nothing to dethrone the nation from the dubious honor of both the hemisphere's worst rights abuser and biggest humanitarian crisis -- nearly 3 million internally displaced by political violence, with the rate of displacement growing since the intensive U.S. military aid program began in 2000.
With all eyes on Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, this is the grim situation that Obama inherits on the nation's southern border. But he also faces an active resistance to the "Plan Mexico" model and concomitant border militarization -- both sides of the line.
Obama, who was famously made an honorary member of Montana's Crow Indian nation last year, received a letter just before he took office from women elders of the Lipan Apache, whose small south Texas reservation is to be bisected by Homeland Security's border wall. The letter calls the land seizure unlawful, and urges Obama to call a halt to the wall. Texas ranchers also have litigation pending against the seizure of their lands for the wall.
Environmentalists are incensed at the border wall's exemption from EPA regulations, and one -- Judy Ackerman of El Paso, Texas -- was arrested in December for blocking Homeland Security's construction equipment in an act of civil disobedience.
Elvira Arellano, a deported Mexican woman, who in 2006 took sanctuary for weeks in a church in Obama's hometown of Chicago to highlight immigrants' rights, held a press conference at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City two days after he took office to ask the new president to call a halt to Homeland Security's coast-to-coast immigration raids.

In order to read the whole article HERE.

Zeitgeist: Addendum (Translated it in most of the languages)

Todo lo que el Presidente Legitimo de Mexico (AMLO) nos ha dicho que hagamos y seamos, esta en este documental.....ya el Mundo esta en una misma sintonia: "LA VERDADERA REVOLUCION, ES LA REVOLUCION DE LAS CONCIENCIAS" ("THE REAL REVOLUTION, IS THE REVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS")

IMPORTANTE, NO SE PIERDAN LOS ULTIMOS 15 MINUTOS DE ESTE DOCUMENTAL (traducido en casi todos los idiomas) Y UNANSE AL MOVIMIENTO MUNDIAL...en este enlace: www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

"It's just a ride and we can change it anytime we want.
It's only the choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money."
"I realised I had the game wrong.
The game was to find out what I already was."
"We were seeing how very important it is
to bring about, in the human mind, the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness.
A crisis that cannot, anymore, accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions.
And, considering what the world is now, with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression, and so on... Man is still as he was.
Is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive.
And, he's built a society along these lines."
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

J. Krishnamurti


http://dotsub.com/view/7281f5dc-d4b1-4315-abb7-143becd34f49

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

IS VERY IMPORTANT, THAT YOU DON'T MISS THE LAST 15 MINS. OF THIS DOCUMENTARY.....AND JOINT TO THE WORLD'S MOVEMENT , clicking the link:
http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/

How Will Obama Deal with Bush's Worst Abuses of Power?

Media and Technology

Provocative commentary on TV, film, print, radio; bloggers and journalists, truth and spin; plus media reform, news bias, Net Neutrality, corporate media control. Comprehensive coverage on Media & Technology here.

How Will Obama Deal with Bush's Worst Abuses of Power?

Posted by Nick Penniman, American News Project
AlterNet

From his perch at the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James Risen has been at the forefront of uncovering some of the Bush administration's worst abuses of power. As a result, he has been hauled before a grand jury and pressured by the government to name his anonymous sources. A few days after this interview was filmed, one of Risen's key sources, Thomas Tamm, was featured on the cover of Newsweek as "The Fed Who Blew the Whistle." Risen spoke with ANP about the rise in executive power during Bush's tenure and how the media failed to be vigilant in the wake of 9/11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv2K4EXt0fo

Can George W. Bush 'Self-Pardon' Himself?

Can George W. Bush 'Self-Pardon' Himself?

By Stephen M Brown, AlterNet.

There's no definitive legal consensus on whether a president can pardon himself. But Bush may well give the theorists an answer.

Charlotte Dennett promised that, if she won her race for attorney general of Vermont in the recent election, she would prosecute George W. Bush for the murder of 4,000 American soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians after he left office.
Unfortunately, Dennett did not become Vermont's attorney general. But it is possible (perhaps very possible) that one or more of our other 49 state attorneys general will take up that case after Jan. 20. Hopefully, that AG will appoint -- as Dennett promised to do --famed criminal attorney Vincent Bugliosi (author of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder) as special prosecutor.
However, there will be no prosecution or trial of George Bush -- or Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleezza Rice, or any of the others who deliberately deceived America into a war that should never have been waged -- if Bush decides to pardon not only his accomplices in crime but also himself.
We know that a president can pardon anyone, for any reason, and for any federal crime (except in cases of impeachment), not only after a conviction has been handed down in trial, but before any trial has even taken place, indeed before any charges have even been filed -- as Gerald Ford infamously pardoned Richard Nixon for Watergate; as George H. W. Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams and various CIA officials accused and/or convicted in connection with the Iran-Contra affair; as Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger, for drug trafficking and financier Marc Rich for tax evasion (after Rich's wife made a significant donation to the Clinton Presidential Library); and as current President George W. Bush more recently commuted "Scooter" Libby's prison term.
So -- can Bush do it? Can he pardon himself before leaving office?
According to attorneys whom I asked, there is no definitive legal answer.There is no case law on the subject and not even much legal analysis of the possibility. All there seems to be are three law review articles that analyze the self-pardon power with arguments for and against its legality. (I am convinced by the arguments against its legality, but given the present Supreme Court, who knows?).
You might be interested in a much less troublesome -- and perfectly legal -- route that Bush can take to avoid prosecution.
He can simply pardon Cheney (and everyone else) and immediately resign. Cheney then becomes president and pardons him. Short, sweet, and -- after consulting with an attorney -- perfectly legal.
Would the entire country freak out over such brazen self-dealing? No doubt. Would Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., care? Not a bit. After all, given the choice between a trial for high treason and murder (resulting in a possible death sentence) versus millions of people thinking badly of them (which 82 percent of the public already does), the answer is obvious.
But though the public might rise up in horror, politicians on all sides would secretly breath a sigh of relief. Especially Democrats. In fact, it is my guess that Obama and virtually every Democrat in Congress is secretly praying for Bush to "self-pardon" himself. Not because they wish him to escape justice, but because they don't want the politically dangerous, nationally divisive, and ultimately thankless task of having to administer it.
If Bush pardons himself, or gets Cheney to pardon him, he will let the Democrats off the hook, freeing them from the growing importuning of millions of Americans whose rage at Bush and Cheney will only grow greater as more and more insiders come forward to reveal the truth.
My only question is -- why is no one even discussing this?


See more stories tagged with: bush, pardon

Lula se lanza contra la irresponsabilidad de los paises que dejaron manos libres a financieros

Irresponsables Llama Lula a Países Ricos Durante Reunión G-20

Lula acusa a las naciones ricas de no asumir el control de sus mercados y arriesgar el futuro del mundo.

Sao Paulo, 8 Nov (Notimex).- El presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, calificó hoy como “irresponsables” a los países ricos por su incapacidad para regular los mercados y evitar la actual crisis financiera internacional.
En la apertura en Sao Paulo de la reunión de ministros de Finanzas y presidentes de los bancos centrales del G-20, Lula exigió a las naciones desarrolladas “tomar medidas para evitar mayores consecuencias de la crisis financiera global”.
“Las políticas de cada país no pueden transferir los riesgos y costos a otros países. Cada país debe asumir sus responsabilidades”, precisó Lula, quien añadió que las naciones ricas “deben adoptar medidas de liquidez para atraer liquidez a los mercados”.
Enfatizó que la actual crisis nació en las economías avanzadas debido a la “creencia ciega” en la capacidad de autorregulación de los mercados y una falta de control sobre las actividades de los agentes financieros.
“Por muchos años los especuladores tuvieron logros excesivos, invirtiendo el dinero que no tenían en negocios ingeniosos. Todos ahora estamos pagando por esa aventura”, afirmó el gobernante brasileño.
Los países miembros del G-20, que reúne a las mayores economías del mundo, la Unión Europea y a las naciones emergentes, iniciaron este sábado un encuentro en Sao Paulo para discutir las acciones que adoptarán para enfrentar la crisis financiera internacional.
Lula acotó que “no es justo” que las naciones en desarrollo paguen las inconsecuencias de los mercados financieros, por lo que pidió implementar una “acción coordinada, pero el ejemplo debe partir de los países ricos, ellos deben adoptar medidas”.
“El desorden que se instauró en las finanzas mundiales en los últimos años amenaza el funcionamiento de la economía real. Para nosotros, lo que importa es la amenaza de una recesión generalizada y la pérdida de millones y millones de empleos”, puntualizó.
El mandatario brasileño reiteró en varias oportunidades que las naciones desarrolladas deben asumir las consecuencias de sus prácticas de libre mercado.Los ministros de Finanzas y presidentes de los bancos centrales del G-20 analizarán en esta ciudad brasileña la reforma del sistema financiero mundial.Las autoridades discutirán la eventual reorganización del sistema financiero y de entidades como el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) y el Banco Mundial, que para varios países perdieron capacidad de operación.
El G-20 está integrado por Reino Unido, Canadá, Francia, Alemania, Japón, Italia y Estados Unidos, las mayores economías mundiales, a las cuales se suman la Unión Europea y 12 países emergentes, entre ellos Brasil, Rusia, India, China, Argentina, Australia y México.

The Hidden Water Costs of Our Industrial Economy

Manufacturing Thirst: The Hidden Water Costs of Our Industrial Economy

By Kari Lydersen, Earth Island Journal.

AlterNet

From the mining of raw materials to energy production to the manufacturing process itself, industry guzzles tons of water.

The Cananea Consolidated Copper Company -- one of the world's largest open pit copper mines, run by Grupo Mexico -- forms a beautifully surreal landscape. Carefully sculpted red and gold curves of earth hug pools of brilliant turquoise. Before the vast expanse of the mine flies a huge Mexican flag, a symbol of pride in the mine's significant contribution to the country's economy.
Cananea is often referred to as the cradle of the Mexican Revolution, in reference to a workers' uprising there in 1906. It has been a hotbed of militant labor activism ever since; the powerful miners' union has been on strike since July 2007. Among locals, the mine's reputation as a source of social injustices -- including the displacement of residents, the exploitation and endangerment of miners, and political repression -- is well known.
The overuse and contamination of water in the copper extraction is another destructive, though perhaps less obvious, effect of the mine. Copper mining and refining is a water-intensive process, and the mine draws liberally from the nearby Sonora and San Pedro aquifers and rivers, using at least 18 million cubic meters of water per year. Because of the mine, the San Pedro aquifer's depletion has exceeded its recharge annually since 1984, according to Anne Browning-Aiken of the Udall Center in Arizona.
The aquifer is reaching critically low levels and, as a result, the Sonora River's flow has been greatly reduced, a situation particularly disturbing for the downstream city of Hermosillo, which depends on the river for its very existence. Farmers in the arid region, who rely on irrigation to grow their crops, are now competing with the mine for water.
The rampant waste of freshwater for general public use -- lawn watering, the creation of suburban fake lakes, excessive bathing and household washing -- has been well documented, as has the politically charged use of water in US agriculture. But the use and abuse of water in various parts of the global industrial economy is often overlooked. From the mining of raw materials for manufacturing to energy production, to the manufacturing process itself, the US industrial economy uses a significant amount of water every year.
Exact numbers for the amount of water used outside of agriculture or home consumption are difficult to come by. The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that industry uses about five percent of all the water in the US, but does not include mining or electricity generation in that figure. A report from Dow Chemical puts the figure much higher, at around 20 percent. And perhaps more importantly, neither number takes into account the volume of water pollution that occurs in the course of industrial processes. At the very least, it's clear that every year, billions of gallons of water are used -- not to grow food or to meet physical human needs -- but to quench our society's thirst for the modern conveniences and technological devices we have come to rely on.
No Water in the Pipes
One place to see the consequences of industry's thirst is in Ciudad Juarez, a major maquiladora (factory) zone located just south of El Paso, TX, where workers labor around the clock to produce goods and components for export around the world. The maquila industry exploded after implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, and though it has since leveled off, factories in Mexican border towns like Juarez, Tijuana, and Reynosa still churn out products and parts (mostly for US citizens) that suck up or pollute much of the local water supply in the process.
Juarez is in the middle of a desert, so dry that little vegetation grows and spring winds sweep currents of stinging dust across shantytowns and scrubby fields. The once-proud Rio Bravo/Rio Grande, which flows through Juarez and forms part of the US-Mexico border, has been reduced to a slow, polluted stream. The Hueco Bolson aquifer, which supplies Juarez and El Paso, is at imminent risk of being pumped dry, according to local experts, and already over-pumping has led to the incursion of brackish groundwater that contaminates the fresh supply.
The Hueco Bolson is sucked up by both the maquilas themselves and the households of the city, which mushroomed from a small border town to a sprawling, chaotic metropolis of three million people as workers streamed north for jobs. Public infrastructure was not built to accommodate the massive population influx, leading to the ad hoc development of informal sewage and wastewater disposal -- and massive water contamination. Despite the obvious lack of water, plans are in the works to create a new industrial zone in the parched section of Juarez known as Lomas de Poleo. For the past few years, residents of this area have been terrorized by private security guards hired by the Zaragoza brothers, who own large local beer distributorships and dairies, and plan to develop additional factories.

In order to read the whole article HERE.

They are all the same......fuck' neoliberals!

The GOP-Terrorism Connection: It's Not 'Just' Palin

Posted by Paul Rosenberg, Open Left , AlterNet

Conservatives are perfectly willing to embrace terrorism -- if it's the "right" kind of terrorism.

Noxious though it may be, there's nothing aberrational about Palin's refusal to condemn anti-abortion violence as terrorism. The right has a long, long history of inciting violence, and excusing it, rather than condemning it. When Clinton was President, there were frequent examples of this. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the GOP Congress held hearings during which the "Militia" leaders were treated with deference and respect.
Then, just last fall, while Ron Paul was ramping up his "insurgent" presidential campaign--and in full denial about his past racist publications--he praised a couple who then engaged in an armed stand-off with federal officials. I wrote about it in a diary, "Ron Paul Equates Former Militia Wingnut Tax Evaders With Martin Luther King", which included this video, so there can be no mistaking Paul's position. The principle tax-evader in question, Edward Lewis Brown, was convicted of armed robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon in 1960, and was imprisoned until 1965. But Paul compared him not only to Martin Luther King, but to Ghandi as well:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1RQkhjV85M

Hey, they's not terra-ists! They's just Gandhi with a gun!

Here's a couple of passages from Brown's Wikiedia entry I presented in my original diary.

First, the "peaceful" actions that Paul was defending:

Edward Lewis Brown (born 1942) and his wife, Elaine Alice Brown (born c. 1940), residents of the American state of New Hampshire, gained national news media attention in early 2007 for not paying their federal income tax and refusing to surrender to federal government agents after having been convicted of tax crimes.[1] After the conviction and sentencing, a long, armed standoff with federal law enforcement authorities at their New Hampshire residence ended with the arrest of Edward and Elaine Brown on October 4, 2007.[2][3][4]

And his equally Ghandian past:

Earlier felony convictions and pardon

In order to read the complete article HERE.