Kafkaesque

In the twenty-odd-page short story, The Penal Colony, the Apparatus traps most of us. The metaphor turns the abstract concept into a tangible machine of harrows, designer, chains and wheels. As a metaphor, Kafka's Apparatus invites various interpretations enriching the story.

One reader might interpret it as a means to supply Kafka with many punishment fantasies. Another reader might delve into the contrasts between redemption, suffering, and guilt. Yet another reader will see how the voyager, or the old commandant who died as a folklore prophet expected to resurrect, resembles the new compassionate world of Christ in contrast to the old Testament. Or the new commandant's "moderate tendency," sounding like "let them eat cake" as a solution for the peasants. Another reader finds how language is too far detached from real-named things and requires words to be writing in a person's flesh to make any real sense. Some readers focus on Kafka's alleged masochistic tendencies.

Yet we can discover more from Kafka than a particular, personal condition. The story reveals universal behavior about raw power, political power, social power, the kind that includes torture, execution, judgment, and punishment without any due process. Let's keep in mind that Kafka trained as a lawyer. He also knew that Dostoevsky had been put up against a firing squad for sedition but was granted a reprieve. "'And what in fact is the sentence?' said the officer in astonishment, biting his lips: 'Forgive me if my explanations may appear disorderly,...?' "

The Apparatus draws a line between condemning a man by due process or without any rule of law or by guilt simply. We find these flaws in human behavior all through history in almost all countries over time, including Kafka's own homeland in the Austrian-Hungry Empire and WWI.
Kafka's short story helps us to contrast what we learn today about U.S. exceptionalism as in the neocon propaganda phrase: indispensable nation. Kafka's Apparatus helps us to discover gaps between propaganda that we learn in youth at school about freedom and justice and what we later learn as adults--or not.

We need only remind ourselves of U.S. detention camps or penal colonies like Guantanamo Bay or Camp Bucca where advisers view it as "an appalling miscarriage of justice where prisoners were not charged or permitted to see evidence against them and freed detainees may end up swelling the ranks of a subdued insurgency."

"It's a peculiar kind of apparatus," said the officer to the voyager, and he surveyed the apparatus, which was after all quite familiar to him, with a certain admiration. It seemed to have been no more than politeness that had prompted the voyager to accept the invitation of the commandant,..."

In the first sentence of the story, the voyager from another country surveyed the apparatus..."with a certain admiration." The voyager seems to know about the Apparatus or at least something like it and "walked up and down behind the condemned man with almost visible indifference...." The voyager seems accustomed to this Apparatus or at least its similar imposing raw power in his more northern county, presumably in Europe, and especially in an empire. Nevertheless the voyager does show some surprise that the condemned man doesn't know his sentence much less his defense. The officer explains that "guilt is always beyond question."

As a new-comer to the nondescript, generic setting, a valley with uniforms "too heavy for the tropics...." The voyager already knows about the Apparatus, mostly because a similar authoritarian power, like the Apparatus in Europe or the new world, exists. The voyager operates among the higher class of the military hierarchy. Meanwhile, the condemned man "wore an air of such hangdog subservience that it looked as if he might be allowed to run free on the slopes and would simply have to be whistled for when the execution was due to begin."

The authorities--the voyager, the officer, the commandant--view the condemned man as ignorant and subject to their judgments like a dog on a leash. Although Kafka wrote this story in 1914, it still applies to any country today imposing authoritarian power over the people, the great unwashed or simply the vast middle class.

Now in U.S. the Patriot Act and the NDAA (the National Defense Authorization Act) allow authorities to detain indefinitely suspicious looking citizens, including dozens of whistle-blowers or protest leaders. The FBI evoked the Patriot Act in order to arrest Susan Lindauer for talking publicly about her knowledge of 9/11. They incarcerated her without trial, and diagnosed her mentally incompetent. When she demanded to stand trial, authorities eventually released her. The FBI applied the State's Secret Privilege in order to muzzle Sibel Edmond's birth place, birth date, and language skills as secrets of state while she was about to bear witness regarding 9/11.

A part of the Apparatus, called the Designer, crawls under our skin before we know that it writes our fate, our beliefs. It writes our values in unintelligible longhand. It uses harrows to engrave into our flesh about how we must behave and believe. It imposes its program, unlike our popular, trendy tattoos that mark our skin in a superficial technique. It brainwashes us before we have time to pick and chose our preferences and thoughts.

The new commandant "would find it impossible to alter any part of the old system, at least for many years to come."

Powerful people, elites, craft the Designer carefully much like persuasion of the oldest, classical rhetoric. Here in America this Designer started as soon as the British aristocrats and the nascent bourgeoisie first put foot on the New World. By the time of Kafka, the Designer--propaganda--became more precise, more effective in manufacturing public consent. Kafka's contemporaries like Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann made a science of successful propaganda as an overwhelming source of power. The Apparatus can persuade us that even the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is a fight for our own freedoms and rights. Since then the raw power, the Apparatus, refines by subtle and sophisticated market categories, enabling a divide-and-conquer approach, a breaking up the citizens into small, manageable subgroups.

Most of us go along with the sweet-smelling, sugar-coated lies that the Designer conjures up for the benefit of those in power. Kafka's stories deal with personal freedom while facing a world of conform. Kafka's world swelled in conformity during WWI, Austrian-Hungary Empire when Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche and other writers dealt with nascent fascism in Europe, "special measures were necessary here, and that military procedures had to be adhered to throughout," the officer said.

And we now see in the U.S. where a corporate, inverted totalitarianism takes control and owns the government. As a metaphor, the Apparatus can represent various types of control. The elites in the U.S. can pay millions of dollars to buy advertisements for certain candidates in the same way they market a breakfast cereal or a cell-phone.

Most of Kafka's novels and stories center on personal freedom as it does in The Penal Colony. Kafka parses freedoms into various dichotomies: the Officer vs. the Soldier, powerful class vs. dominated class, enlightenment vs. ignorance, living by default vs. living originally, guilt vs. innocence, orthodox vs. personal spirituality, and so forth.

If you have not yet read any of Kafka's stories, The Penal Colony serves as an introduction to a world-shuddering fiction. There is much to consider in the twisted plot.

Larry Summers Still Living Large

Early this morning, when NPR broadcasted an interview with the infamous Larry Summers, I almost choked on my coffee, shocked that people still listened to this hoodlum. But then, an entire wealthy class applauses his destructive policies. Summers embodies the elitist class.(1)


In his youth, he learned how to manipulate and obfuscate the truth for the sake of promoting Big Business agenda and at the detriment of the greater good of society. He is a member of the American aristocracy like G.W. Bush—you remember that president who lied and deceived Americans in order to obliterate Iraq for the sake of Big Business and Big Oil?


In the early 1980s, Summers was an economic advisor for Ronald Reagan. In the capacity, Summers was instrumental in deregulating the banking and financial industries and this despite the three important financial crises in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan.


Like most elites, Summers played a key role in the free-wheeling, free market. Under Summers' tutlege, Ronald Reagan, a former spokesman for GE, said government is not the solution, government is the problem. Among the barons of industry, the cult belief since the 70s was a conforming dance to the tune that unregulated markets would always automatically correct any problems  and without government intervention. In 1999 Summers cheered the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Summers was happy to help dismantle the Glass-Steagall Act and its six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services.


While working in Clinton's administration, Summers argued against U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol to decrease carbon emissions. "During the California energy crisis of 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Summers teamed with patsy Alan Greenspan and the felon Enron executive Kenneth Lay to lecture California Governor Gray Davis on the causes of the crisis, explaining that the problem was excessive government regulation." (2) Summers stand on this environmental policy may cause the extinction of civilization as we know it.


Summers relied on his old buddies and fellow Big Business courtiers, in the ilk of former Carlyle Group as well as Goldman Sachs adviser Arthur Levitt, Fed Chairman Greenspan--another patsy in the cult of neocons, and Secretary Rubin, a former executive of Goldman Sachs for 26 years, a bona-fide shark. Summers destroyed any attempts to regulate the derivatives that many blame for bringing the financial market down in Fall 2008. This deregulation led directly to the Great Recession.


Early in this new millennium, Summers lost his job as  Harvard president for suggesting that women lack a natural aptitude for math and science. (3)


Larry Summer's track record resembles that of the Devil in carnate. The man has a bold talent for making the most destructive policies of any man in our times, second only to G.W. Bush and his cabinet. Society would be more secured and prosperous if Summers were banned on a desert island. It would be dangerous even to put him in prison as he might persuade hardened criminals to practice his form of terrorism.

Most people probably had forgotten Summers. Most practical people probably never heard of him at all. He is a man with a triple chin and a behind that doesn't fit in any chair. That's why he's always slouching. He has a smile that terrifies hardened street criminals.



If you want to learn the easy ways to make money without working, you do not have to enter a prison to learn the trade of a professional criminal. If you can afford an extremely high tuition fee, you can enrol at Harvard and take notes from Satan himself. Several ivy league universities employ business and economic grifters as full-tenured professors like Summers.


How Summers and his friends still retain any credibility is a mystery. Their cancerous careers threw the nation and most of the planet into dangerous waters. We can say the same for the likes of G.W. Bush.


Very few journalists have dared to report how the Bush Wars into Eurasia combined with the financial collapse caused the on-going Great Recession and its high unemployment. Now the focus is on reducing the great deficit. In particular, Republicans are keen on reducing entitlements for the middle class while maintaining the entitlements for the wealthy, including low or no taxes and bailout bonuses for financial executives at Goldman Sachs...Citi Bank.....



(1) Interview with a Vampire on NPR: Larry Summers: Economic downturn will leave 'permanent scar' >>  http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/larry-summers-economic-downturn-will-leave-permanent-scar
(2) Wikipedia, Larry Summers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers
(3) Secrets and Lies of the Bailout, Taibbi, Matt, Rolling Stone Magazine, January 2013. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104

 

War and Corruption Deficits: Insects and Leviathans

Huge defense contractors and oil corporations avoid taxes through loopholes while they profit from the recent invasions into Eurasia. They lobbied our government to destroy Iraq and then to rebuild it. In the case of Dick Cheney, Halliburton enjoyed a non-bid contract. The wars and the bank frauds cost Trillions of dollars, a deep fiscal deficit. To pay for these extravagant escapades the government now forces the general public to sacrifice by austerity policies and sequester. The shrinking middle class pays heavily for the war and the banking frauds that the industrial barons trumped up for profit's sake.

Economic inequality destroys every square inch of a society and the psyches of individuals. Inequality stems from extreme materialistic ambitions by which the wealthy want more than more. In the U.S. unbridled, unregulated capitalism has taken over the entire country where there once were laws applied to restrain abusive corporate powers. Remember the antitrust laws applied to AT&T. Massive corporations in banking, energy, healthcare, defense and other industries have seized political power in the U.S. Industrial barons pull the strings of whatever is left of our government, now a spineless puppet.

Some people, like D. S. Jones, say that an economic doctrine arose in the 1970s. F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman described this doctrine and called it neo-liberalism. A salesman for GE who became a U.S. president, Ronald Reagan supported this trendy doctrine.

This doctrine favors privatization, deregulation, and unfettered free markets over government regulations or the slightest over sight. Historical narratives, like this new book, Masters of the Universe, by D. S. Jones, might help clarify this trend as some neat, rational economic solution. But this historical narrative sits framed in merely small thinking. This trendy fashion, neo-liberalism, is not a useful economic doctrine. It is not even a viable economic policy. Rather it is simply a human trait otherwise known as greed. Neo-liberalism is dreck, useless for any real economics. And yet in the U.S. it is the dominant ideology. The money elite revel in it.

Powerful people have always made government a doormat for their own expanding power. Consider the emperors of Rome, monarchs of Europe, the modern dictators, and the barons of industry of the Gilded Age, the Roaring 20s. They all use their power to mold government for their own self-aggrandizing ambitions and at the cost of the greatest good of society.

A small group of people acquire wealth by various means, most often by unethical practices. Once these people obtain wealthy, they use its influence to gain more and more riches. This fact has made human history what it is, a struggle to garner more strength over others less fortunate. This power has always created inequality in society. 

In modern times we should hope for a more rational, common sense approach to equality. It benefits everyone. Now we have fallen backwards where the wealthy take power and corrupt the rules to accommodate their greed. The clear signs of this regressive movement appear in the U.S. justice system where we often find a double standard.  

A handful of wealthy bankers commit fraud that brings the global economy to its knees. Yet, the judicial system fails to investigate them as if they are "too-important-to-jail," as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claims. Individual bankers are responsible for plunging the global economy deep in recession and for creating an enormous, national deficit. 

Meanwhile a regular guy on the street goes straight to privatized jail for peddling marijuana. 
The shareholders and top managers of privatized prisons profit from increasing the number of inmates. Ironically, inequality is one of the main reasons why the downtrodden take drugs. 

The owners of capital--the barons of industry--can crush the peasants on the street by more ways than one. Today the 1 percenters have used their powerful financial influence  to style their own new world order which started in a "free market" ideology and grew into today's corporatocracy.

This tiny number of patricians among the population holds influence over the supreme court. The supreme judges support the powerful elite in many decisions. Consider the overturn of Citizens United v. FEC which allows the leviathan, global corporations to buy our elected officials in the form of campaign contributions. Surprisingly these global corporations are often not even grounded in the U.S. as they warehouse their cash in offshore Cayman or Swiss banks. 

In this new world order, "our government" has only more incentives to legislate laws for the interests of these 1 percenters, the global elites, who rarely have any real loyalty to the U.S. Our public officials broker legislation with hardly any interest in the greater good of the country. We now see the results in the trend to weaken public infrastructures such as healthcare, retirement, education, and energy. 

Extreme right-wing congressmen, like John Boehner or Senator Scott Brown, do their best to destroy these entitlements for the general public good. Meanwhile they work for the interests of huge corporations. Many of our elected officials, especially the Republicans, fight for the entitlements for the ultra-wealthy. In exchange for huge campaign contributions, politicians work for those rolling in dough. 

These entitlements for billionaires and multi-millions come in the form of huge tax loopholes and impunity for massive crimes and competencies. Individual bankers caused the enormous financial break-down. Individual managers of defense contractors and their lackey politicians--like G.W.Bush--pillaged the national coffers for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. None of these high-ranking moguls and politicians has been as so much as investigated for these catastrophes. Meanwhile the war in Iraq and the colossal financial scams costs the country trillions of dollars. Now austerity policies cut social infrastructure--healthcare, retirement, education, and energy--as a means to repair the national deficit. Those responsible for the deficit continue to profit from the damage they cause and are not even held responsible for taxes. They have become the untouchable rotting, cancerous tumors of our society. 

Consider the case of banks laundering billions of dollars for the Mexican narcos and Al Qaeda. This voracious greed has always existed. However, in our times the obsession for money and power has broken through the normal legal restraints and much less the limits of ethics. Emblematic of this is today's statement from Attorney General Eric Holder's unwillingness to prosecute powerful bankers or to mention antitrust laws. The cronyism and corruption between government and the leviathan corporations sets the entire country backwards at least a century to pre-New Deal times. 

The examples of this corporate coup d'etat abound. Though most often the mainstream media ignore the truth and report only what the private owners decide the general public should hear. This control of journalism only enables the barons of industry to conceal their disdain of laws and morality. Ironically, at the same time the right-wing religious groups claim moral purity.   

The world has split into two. One tiny part is the plutonomy, the super-rich; the other part is the precariat, the masses, insignificant, fungible humans, living in precarious conditions, dependent on whims or needs of employers.   

Unfortunately, the government has lost all control over the lawless industrial moguls. It now mostly forfeits power to the corporatist status quo. This mostly silent political movement against the middle class had retooled after the Roaring 20s, after the Great Depression, and after FDR's New Deal.

By exception, FDR created a more equitable society as a means to remedy the Great Depression, like our own Great Recession. The economic solution included, for the most part, nurturing a middle class in the U.S., which really did not exist in such a high standard of living until then, culminating in the 1960s (see Figure 1 above), and now crumbles and dies under the weight of austerity policies designed to pay for the misadventures of defense contractors and bankers' greed. 

Once FDR was gone--and a lot of corporatists aggressively wanted him dead, those with the overwhelming financial influence began to undo the government's public service programs, including the judiciary and the political law-making functions. Now organizations like ALEC enable corporations to set the nation's policies and to hell with the democratic process. Perhaps the overturn of Citizens United v. FEC represented the last nail in the coffin of a reasonably balanced economy. 

Plutocrats have always fought and won to dominate society. This recent power grab, the transformation over the last five decades, took hold on a slow path such that few people saw it happening as depicted in the Figure 1 above. One bolt at a time, the Gilded Class dismantled the cultural zeitgeist of the New Deal. The 1-percenters have always been destroying governmental functions that benefit the better good of society.  

To wit: our healthcare system has become almost entirely owned by the wealthy business owners. The for-profit health care system in the U.S. is unique and increases costs by two and a half more than any other industrialized country. 

As in the healthcare industry, many other private industries run more efficiently when the government manages them. All other industrial countries provide a highly efficient government managed health care system. This excessive, wasteful cost arises from the high-profit driven corporations. Compared to other industrialized countries, health care in the U.S. is two and a half times less efficient.  

This metamorphosis grew in its own Kafkaesque pattern, mutating human beings into insects. Instead of communities, now we have ant farms, furnished with cubicles and stab-in-the-back job environments fraught with abusive bosses. 

In the American way, this "free-market" ideology grew and altered our entire culture. Now we have to deal with our own extremism. It has grown into a demented, devouring Leviathan, an overwhelming power of a corporate reign  without restraint. The privatizing, corrupting giant, a Leviathan, consumes everything that once was beneficial to the greater good of society.

"Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?" Job: 41.

Breaking News: Lt. Col. Shaffer Accuses Former CIA Dir. Tenet

The 9/11 catastrophe had seemed to take the path of many other national mysteries like JFK's assassination, but now Lt. Col. Shaffer accuses Former CIA Dir. Tenet for blocking the military's efforts to stop 9/11 terrorists.

Many books, documentaries and Internet videos clearly present the unresolved issues about the 9/11 attack. The official report says one thing while clear observation and science tells a different story entirely. At least this topic might serve as a good background for a thriller, well, like my upcoming novel, Mexican Trade, available this Spring.

Yet now more secrets climb out of the darkness.(1) Just yesterday, a news-breaking report indicates that a line of high level government officials continue to reveal more evidence. Among many other whistle-blowers, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer now accuses former CIA Director George Tenet for taking some part in the 9/11 attacks as well as duping federal investigators.

Once the Judicial Watch successfully forced the DOD to declassify the Able Danger  documents in late 2011 through a FOIA lawsuit, Shaffer is now able to disclose more information about how the CIA played a role in hindering the military's efforts against terrorist plots. 

In mid-2005, a year after the 9/11 Commission, Congressman Curt Weldon delivered a special speech in Congress about how the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) blocked the military and the FBI from using important information garnered from the Able Danger, a sophisticated program to track down terrorists. Once Weldon's colleagues began to attack Weldon's credibility, five Pentagon whistleblowers backed up his statements. The DIA also lifted Shaffer's security clearance and even remove his pay and healthcare benefits. Weldon requested an investigation into this "problem" as he called it. And without an investigation, no one would discover exactly why top-level managers in the DIA did not want to use any of this highly useful information to prevent the 9/11 attacks. 

The question remains, though, when will our officials carry out serious, unbiased investigations? As time goes on, we learn more details that contradict the official narrative.  

Various credible people and organizations have investigated this catastrophe and discovered evidence totally contrary to the Bush Administration’s official investigation, The 9/11 Commission Report. 

This controversy has become so frustrating and contentious that many Americans are exhausted and disappointed about not getting answers from elected officials. Some of the best documentaries on this event, 9/11: Press for Truth covers many of the questions and suggests some answers. 

A handful of Bush cronies produced the unsatisfying "official investigation" of 9/11. Several public intellectuals, such as Gore Vidal, questioned if 9/11 were an inside job. Governor Jesse Ventura, in his TV series, Conspiracy Theory, found many holes in the official investigation. 

Governor Ventura interviewed several eye-witnesses and learned how G. W. Bush's friends at the CIA and elsewhere had classified many pieces of evidence--such as the aircraft black boxes--that might reveal new facts about the 9/11 event. It appears that G. W. Bush's account of the catastrophe might also be just another set of lies, an official Conspiracy Theory from the White House, like the various justifications to bomb Iraq. A red flag arises now as the government withholds important evidence.

A Majority Demanded the Truth
We so easily forget how a majority of Americans demanded the truth about 9/11. 

The polls show that a majority of Americans believe that 9/11 is an inside job. The lowest rates are in the 50% range. A collection of polls from Zogby, Scrips, Time Magazine, MSNBC, Scientists for 9/11 Justice, and other organizations show that Americans believe at the polling rates of over 60% and 80% that 9/11 was a set-up. 

The view of these authentic witnesses agree that the World Trade Center buildings were demolished in a controlled and prepared manner. Some of the best presentations of these views are detailed in the videos produced by the independent organizations like 9/11 Consequences and also Zero: The Investigation into 9/11 among others.

Some of these documentary videos are less than an hour. Others are two or three-hour documentaries on YouTube. 

Every American should watch one of these at least as a new perspective on the 9/11 attack. If you don’t have the time to watch any of videos, the text below serves as a skeleton summary, based on several investigative documentaries. However, these documentaries are thorough and include detailed testimonies from eye witnesses as well as expert, scientists.

Chomsky Weighs in
A highly respected public intellectual, Noam Chomsky says, in paraphrased form here: 'G. W. Bush and his cabinet do not care about terrorist attacks. Bush and his cabinet would have to be insane to plan and execute such a horrible plot. There would be leaks from insiders. Also there would be scientists who examine the evidence to reveal the truth in scholarly journals.' Chomsky's criteria about uncovering the facts about 9/11 have surfaced. Chomsky seems to dance around the topic as if he were worried about losing credibility by speaking frankly.  

Well, Chomsky's criteria for an inside plot has come to light. Insider whistle-blowers like Susan Lindauer, Tony Farrell, Annie Macho, Sibel Edmonds, and others have leaked insights and hidden facts. There are also many scientists, architects, and engineers, like Dr. Steven Jones, who have testified in documentaries and written articles for science journals about many aspects of the 9/11 catastrophe, such as the highly suspicious way the buildings collapsed so swiftly and neatly.

The Bush Strongbox
Officials close to the Bush Administration try to discredit the facts that other independent  organizations have discovered and presented from out of the secrets and darkness. Those close to the Bush Administration—mostly a group of neo-conservatives—consider any other perspective as a conspiracy theory. They strongly attack any independent analysis of the evidence. 

Friends of the Bush Administration established a tightly packaged case of their official story—The 9/11 Commission Report. A longtime friend of the Bush family, Phillip Zelikow micromanaged The 9/11 Commission Report so much so that many officials in D.C. and others call it the Omission Report.

No matter how you understand the 9/11 attack, it was a carefully planned catastrophe. 

PNAC Strategic Plans
Was it a coincidence that the neoconservative cabal created the PNAC, the Project for a New American Century? Was it a coincidence that they had laid out a plan to dominate areas of the world? Rove, Rumsfeld, Bush, Libby, Cheney, Kristol, Kagan, and many others are members of PNAC. Three years before 9/11/2001, they had already written and published an extremely right-wing manifesto to take control of the world. Did these elected officials and industry leaders ask the American people if we wanted to expand our empire into the oil rich Eurasia? Empires are costly. The American empire is now growing at the cost of domestic development. 

In his book, The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski contributes as one of the main architects of the PNAC’s plans. One of the first steps in this project consists of paving the path for occupying Iraq. In order to justify this aggressive invasion, the PNAC needed a massive catastrophe. Despite a 70% majority public opinion that the U.S. should follow the UN leadership and resolutions, the Bush/Cheney cabinet pushed to attack Iraq urgently and immediately after 9/11.

A false-flag attack on the U.S. would create some popular consensus for the military invasion. This approach to gain public opinion to wage war has worked in several other U.S. wars. The Bay of Tonkin incidence serves as only one of many such well known examples.

The neocons were driven to implement their PNAC goals as expressed in their manifesto: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor."

Was it a coincidence that the Twin Towers and Building 7 appeared to be a terrorist attack—like a new Pearl Harbor? Or like the Bay of Tonkin incident to justify the war in Vietnam? By carrying out such a horrible plot, most people would find it possible. The very boldness of the idea makes it unthinkable. 

Follow the Money Trails:
Insurance Claims Recently Setup before 9/11

Was it a coincidence that the World Trade Towers and Building 7 were demolished or “pulled” down in a free-fall by thermate explosives on each floor in a timed sequence after the planes had hit the two towers? Firefighters in the buildings heard large explosions in sequence and on sequenced floors. Videos also show explosions on each floor.

Was it a coincidence that Larry Silverstein increased the "terrorists attacks" insurance only a few months before the event? It was Silverstein who used the phrase “pulled” when journalists asked him about how Building 7 was destroyed. The word “pulled” in this context, is a trade term for controlled demolition. No plane, no significant debris or fire hit Building 7, nevertheless it fell exactly as any other demolition. 

The WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7, as the other towers, were not generating enough leasing income to cover the costs. Maintenance and other liabilities, such as the asbestos inside the buildings added another large financial burden on Larry Silverstein. Many offices stood vacant.

In the Spring of 2001, not long before 9/11, Silverstein had arranged to add extensive insurance policies on the WTC Towers and Building 7, including insurance for any acts of terrorism. The insurance and lease agreements include Silverstein’s right to rebuild the buildings if they were demolished.

After the destruction of the towers, Silverstein earned several billions of dollars from insurance claims. His original investment was $15 Million. No airplane or any other significant debris had struck Silverstein’s Building 7, yet it collapsed in a free-fall manner and in the same time (6.5 seconds) as a controlled demolition, complete with a “classic crimp” or wedge that blows a seam in the building’s midsection so that it falls perfectly in its own footprint rather than falling outward onto neighboring buildings. The same type of “controlled demolition” occurred in the other WTC buildings.

Controlled Demolition of the Towers
Many witnesses have reported that unidentified maintenance men had been working extensively on the buildings for more than a month before 9/11. Were they setting up a demolition (with thermate)?

The official report claims that the jet fuel caused the extreme heat required to melt the steel beams. However, engineers and other experts from around the world say this official report is not plausible. With a maximum of 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, jet fuel does not generate enough heat to cut or melt the steel beams. However elements of thermate was present in the Twin Towers, in the dust, in the smoke. Los Alamos scientists developed thermate, a concoction made to melt thick steel at degrees of heat far beyond temperatures generated by jet fuel—more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Compared to thermite, thermate reaches extremely high heat quickly and it generates a huge amount of gray clouds like those during collapse of the Twin Towers. Steel melts at 2,750 degrees Fahrenheit. Thermate has a unique ability to heat quickly to over 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing else could have melted the steel beams in the Twin Towers.

Six weeks after 9/11, molten, liquid steel was found beneath the rubble of WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7. Many of the supporting beams in the Towers were cut—melted—diagonally exactly as in any other controlled demolition.

In the case of Building 7, there was no jet fuel to cause the demolition. But Building 7 housed the CIA and FBI among other organizations.

Was it a consequence that demolishing Building 7 destroyed piles of criminal evidence regarding all sorts of corporate fraud cases, such as Enron, WorldCom and others of this ilk?

Was it a coincidence that these types of steel-beam buildings had never collapsed in a demolition style before in the more than hundred-year history of this type of this construction? Experts recognize that these buildings were set up as a controlled demolition with a free-fall into each building’s footprint.

No Boeing Jet Struck the Pentagon
The Pentagon has the largest network of surveillance of most any building on earth. Yet the Pentagon officials will not release any video footage to confirm what exploded part of the Pentagon. The amateur videos made by civilian bystanders show no airplane at all, least of all a Boeing 747. Not a single piece of any airplane appears in the rubble. The holes left in the wall of the Pentagon are far too small (16 feet in diameter) to be caused by a Boeing 747 which has a diameter of more than four times the actual hole in the wall. The most likely cause of the explosion is some sort of missile.

Stand-Down Command on 9/11
On 9/11/2001, NORAD was already on day two of a week-long terrorist prevention exercise, called Vigilant Guardian. This exercise was a simulation of a real terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, including the use of hijacked commercial airliners.

At the time, Dick Cheney took sole command of NORAD. This was the first time in U.S. history that a president or vice president took control of the Air Force or an agency like NORAD.

Generals always had the authority to shoot down any hijacked or menacing aircraft, except on 9/11 and for the previous three months. Generals were not allowed authority to shoot down any aircraft during that period.  Coincidence? 

For two years before 9/11, NORAD had been carrying out exercises to deal with scenarios identical to the 9/11 attack. This contradicts what Bush and his cabinet members had said, "No one ever imagined such a terrorist attack by the use of planes." 

With a guilty demeanor, G. W. Bush said, “No one envisioned anyone flying airplanes into buildings.” Bush also mentioned in passing and seemingly in the slip of his tongue—on CNN TV, Sept. 15, 2006—that explosives were planted in the WTC buildings.

All fighter jets were ordered far afield from the real 9/11 attack. Only 15 fighter jets were left at Andrews Air Force Base, near the Pentagon. But these planes were ordered to fly long only after the Pentagon was struck.

Hours lapsed between the time the WTC buildings were hit and when the Pentagon was hit by something—a Boeing commercial airline according to the official story. This is a staggering lack of any Air Force intervention while Cheney was in a unique moment of commanding the Air Force.

The Congressional Investigation on 9/11
The Bush Administration had made every effort to avoid any investigation into the 9/11 catastrophe. Once the Congressional investigation did start, Bush and Cheney refused to testify under oath. Instead Bush and Cheney agreed to discuss casually the event only together and not separately. Obviously, they were concerned of providing any differing accounts of the events.

Bush and Cheney attempted to appoint Kissinger to lead the Congressional investigation. Once the family members of 9/11 posed tough questions regarding Kissinger’s clients in the Middle East, he bowed out from any involvement in the investigation.

Former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former Congressman Lee Hamilton then took a lead in the investigation, while Phillip Zelikow took the executive lead. All three men were Republicans with longtime collaboration with the Bush I and the Bush II Administrations. This created a leadership in the Congressional investigation that was not in any way independent or unbiased. Zelikow had authority to decide which areas were worthy or not of any inquiry.

In other words, the Congressional Commission to investigate the 9/11 event was a complete hoax. Harper’s Magazine called it a "white wash."

Zelikow made sure that the FBI, CIA, the Pentagon, and the Justice Department were not investigated. Zelikow’s loyalties remain with the Bush Dynasty. For this reason, the investigation was made by and for the interest of Bush and his cabinet and not for the Congress or any other branch. The Commission members were free to write their own story, their own conspiracy theory.

Who Benefits from the 9/11 Attack?
Osama bin Laden gained no benefit by the 9/11 attack. On Sept. 16, 2001, Osama bin Laden had said he had nothing to do with the attack. He was in need of medical care. In the Summer of 2001, he was treated in an American Hospital in Dubai, and around that time CIA agents had spent time with him in talks. He was a fugitive after 9/11, his life only became tougher as his stay in Afghanistan became more difficult. Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset since the 1980s. The CIA used al Qaeda members as field agents in the U.S.A. as well as in Eurasia.

Sadam Hussein gained no benefit from 9/11. He was accused of producing WMDs and of participating in Al Qaeda—an organization created by the CIA to fight the Soviet invasion. No one ever found any link between Sadam Hussein and al Qeada.

The Money Trail: Larry Silverstein, on the other hand, would gain billions of dollars from the demolished WTC buildings, as mentioned above.

Dick Cheney continues to benefit from the invasion of Iraq. As a shareholder in Halliburton, Cheney receives over a million dollars a year in dividends as Halliburton’s business drastically increases from war and restoration revenues.

The Defense Contractors benefit greatly from the wars as the demand for weapons only increases.

The Bush family has large investments in the Carlyle Group, a defense contractor brokerage. The Bush family has had business relationships, partnerships with the Saudi Monarchy for decades. Saudi princes have funded several businesses for the Bush family. The Saudi Monarch had no love for the Hussein regime.

American oil companies benefit greatly as the U.S. military occupies the strategic areas in Eurasia. The military provides safe access to the oil reserves in the region for the American oil companies which had planned to build oil pipelines through Afghanistan before 9/11.

Defense contractors, the Bush family, Cheney, and American oil companies gain huge amounts of money for the invasion of Eurasia. The 9/11 attack served as a spring board, justifying the new and highly lucrative wars. And all this while current alternative sources of energy are available to replace the need for petroleum (solar, wind, wave, geothermal).

The extreme right-wing in the U.S. Government benefits from the specter of terrorism. It allows the neo-conservatives in particularly to expand their PNAC goals to control foreign countries as well as the domestic control over the U.S. citizens as they limit civil and constitutional rights by such new laws as the Patriot Act and the NDAA.

People working in the secret services in Germany, England, in Saudi Arabia, in Israel, and in the U.S.A. and others, bought “put options” on American Airlines and United Airlines only a few days before 9/11. A put option means that someone can make a profit by buying a bet on a company’s stock value when it decreases. More than four thousand put options were made days before 9/11, while only about 700 “call options” were made in that time period. This only reveals that a number of people near or in the secret services agencies of certain countries had inside knowledge about the turn of events before 9/11.

What Happened to the Planes and Hijackers?
Pentagon Crash
American Airline, Boeing 757, flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon according to the official report. But there is no debris of any airplane crash. No pieces of any Boeing commercial aircrafts were present anywhere. The hole in the side of the Pentagon was approximately 16 feet wide. A Boeing commercial aircraft is at least 100 feet in width.

The FBI confiscated some 86 videos of the area. Only after a subpoena, the FBI released 4 videos. No airplane appears in any of the videos provided to investigators and expert witnesses.

Expert witnesses state that it is possible, a fighter jet crashed into the Pentagon or, even more feasible, a missile. Whatever it was that crashed into the Pentagon could have been controlled via remote control like a drone or a missile.

According to many expert witnesses, the official explanation of the explosion at the Pentagon makes no sense at all.

Flight 93 Crashed in Pittsburgh
The official investigation claimed that Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pittsburgh  where a whole in the ground was found but no airplane debris.

Two Flights Crash into the Twin Towers
The two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175,that crashed into WTC1 and WTC2, could have been guided by GPS remote control, like drones. Technology to enable this type of flight was developed as early as 1984. In 2001, Raytheon Corporation had developed a refined and sophisticated remote control system for large commercial aircraft.

Many eyewitnesses and videos show that these planes were painted gray and without any commercial logos or identifications. Many witnesses on the videos say that the plans looked like military planes. There were also large black devices attached to the underbelly of the planes, clearly shown in the various videos available.

The Terrorist Hijackers
Three days after 9/11, the FBI Director Robert Mueller claims to know exactly the names of all 19 hijackers. In smaller, less complicated crash of commercial aircraft, the FBI has taken weeks to resolve the cause of crashes and any people involved.

Miraculously the passport of one of the hijackers was found on the street near the World Trade Center on 9/11. Somehow the passport slipped out of the terrorist's pocket or travel bag only to survive the explosion and flames from the commercial airliner. Did the terrorist roll down a window in the aircraft and drop it out on the side walk below just before crashing? 

The FBI claimed that the 19 hijackers were Islamist fundamentalists, and extremely puritan in their belief. Yet many witnesses had seen these men drinking heavily and acting up as if they wanted everyone to notice them. Witnesses said that the men used cocaine frequently.

The FBI claims that Mohammed Atta was the leader of the entire hijacking team. Nevertheless  Mohammed Atta was on the FBI payroll for decades.

There are witnesses who saw Mohammed Atta and one of his hijacker partners, Ali Mari, drive from Boston to Portland, Maine, on 9/10 where they did everything they could do to make everyone notice them. There was an airport surveillance video of these hijackers presented all over the mainstream news. But the video is false—it was not a video from the Boston airport.

On 9/12/2001, Atta called his father and said he was alive and well.

Shortly after 9/27, Salam Alhasbi was found working in Saudi Arabia. The FBI claims that, like the other hijackers, Salam Alhasbi, was one of the 19 hijackers. Another 6 of the 19 hijackers were found in various countries in the Middle East. More than another 5 of the 19 hijackers were mercenaries on the CIA payroll. They were trained on various military bases in the U.S., but they were not trained to fly.

Months after 9/11, Former FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that there was no evidence to prove who the hijackers were. There was no evidence that the alleged 19 hijackers had any anything to do with the 9/11 catastrophe. In September 2002, Mueller told CNN twice that there is "no legal proof to prove the identities of the suicidal hijackers."



       ***‡*** 
1) Ex-Army Officer Accuses CIA of Obstructing Pre-9/11 Intelligence-Gathering, Truthout.com, Sunday, January 20, 2013.  I did not create a link for this reference because the Website went down for some strange reason and for this particular article. 


YouTube censored many parts of the video produced by 9/11 Consequences. But you can find the full, uncensored video at: YouTube.com/NufffRespect2

And at: LiveVideo.com/NuffRespec See also: Zero: Investigation into 9/11:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XRMrMdn0NQ Where did the commercial flights go?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC9KZ2Yy5g4

Where did the passengers and airplanes go?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue-MLMnlTzY

Robert Mueller says there is no evidence regarding the alleged 19 hijackers: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/06/16/122289/-Robert-Mueller-let-the-cat-out-of-the-bag-and-no-one-noticed#

Movie Review: Zero Dark Thirty

The director of this movie, Bigelow, demonstrates how skilled she is in putting a story on the screen. She masters the art and technique of creating an intense world that will probably reel in some box-office profits. However, she lost track of the big picture surrounding bin Laden.

Bigelow is not much of an artist in search of the truth about Osama bin Laden’s role in the 9/11 attack and much less the neoconservatives’ PNAC plan to colonize Eurasia, starting with some “catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor."

Instead, she seems to ride on the surface of all sorts of issues associated with the alleged assassination of Osama bin Laden. We do know for a fact that Osama bin Laden was a CIA scion since the 1980s. The history of that relationship should not be lost in all the wild-west assassination of the man.

In her previous movie, The Hurt Locker, Bigelow mastered the search for some glimpse of truth and she triumphed in movie-making technique. In The Hurt Locker, we learned how a blue-collar, factory worker, Sergeant First Class William James, found some higher meaning in his life. Defusing bombs gave Sergeant William James a sense of purpose, mostly derived from a narcotic type adrenaline high that consumed him and his family life. We see in this great movie just how “War Is the Force that Gives Us Meaning.” This phrase is the title for a book by Chris Hedges who begins by saying, "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

In Zero Dark Thirty Bigelow demotes herself to a mere technician in search of captivating an audience without considering big questions, particularly about evil torture. She succeeds in this approach. Although self-respecting movie-goers should demand more than the mere reenacting a stealth operation.

Whether intentionally or not, Bigelow gets caught up in the details of how the Special Operations soldiers carry out their business—in this case an assassination—just as she is blinded by her movie-making techniques.

In Bigelow’s new movie, she looks only at the trees and loses view of the forest. As a result she plays up to torture that the neo-conservatives want us all to believe as a useful, even noble tool.

It’s the muck that Dick Cheney proudly flaunts on mainstream media. He confesses to torture policies. Surprisingly he does so with impunity. Likewise, Jose Rodriguez, former director of NCS, was responsible for destroying the videotapes of the CIA’s interrogations. Both men are yet to face investigation for their actions.
Bigelow ignores so much more about the flawed and destructive invasion into Iraq. It’s a pity to see such talent miss the bigger view or moral controversy or even just a bit of truth. For starts, many, if not a majority, of CIA and military personnel condemn torture.

Bigelow and her script writer, Boal, had a golden opportunity at least to present any one of several mysteries about Osama bin Laden and, more important, about the highly dubious official story about the 9/11 attack. Most people believe the 9/11 attack was an inside job, considering the evidence.

We know that Osama bin Laden had a relationship with the CIA since the 1980’s. Questions arise from reports that the Hospital in Dubai provided bin Laden for kidney dialysis treatment during 9/11. A week or so before 9/11, CIA agents spent several days meeting with Osama bin Laden. The French daily newspaper Le Figaro confirmed this fact and reported it on October 2001. See Alexandra Richard, at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIC111B.html , the source of this information: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO311A.html .

A CBS Anchorman ( http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-325887.html ), among others, confirm this. Most other “facts” about bin Laden and just about everything pertaining to 9/11 have not been clarified officially. (see: http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Bin_Laden_met_the_CIA ).

There are many unsettled questions about America’s destruction and occupation of Iraq and other parts of Eurasia. And then there's that entire controlled demolition of the World Trade Center Towers with the use of thermate (a highly incendiary explosive, patented by the U.S. military).

This story of Osama bin Laden's assassination pales in comparison to even considering the thought that 9/11 was in inside job, a plan conjured up in the PNAC manifesto. By focusing on the mere choreographic of a Spec Ops' mission, the audience might feel thirsty for some higher purpose as to why our taxes pay for the killing.

Director Bigelow and Script Writer Boal could have developed one or two main characters to focus a controversy, like they did successfully in The Hurt Locker .

Instead they seem inadvertently to portray the good guys, the CIA agents and others, as thugs who apply torture like underground mafia criminals. In the movie, Ammar seemingly provides the location of Osama bin Laden, but torture looms over his head like a bucket of water. The scene advocates torture as a useful tool. This approach undermines the story line. The audience cannot sympathize with "the good guys," assuming that the audience does not identify with brutal torturers. Boal’s script drips of such story flaws. The plot is as torturous as America's diplomatic policies.

In a time of our history when regular Americans rightfully have little trust for their government officials and much less for large corporations, many people even doubt that this Seal Team actually did kill Osama bin Laden. And even if they did kill him, did he really have any input into to total demolition of the Twin Towers and Building 7?

Note the word—demolition. Note also how "the experts" never found any plane that allegedly exploded part of the Pentagon. Nor do we dare ask why Building 7 was demolished neatly in a free-fall and into its own footprint. No plane, no parts of the Twin Towers crashed into Building 7. So did Osama bin Laden do that?

Instead of questioning at least one major issue bundled up in Osama bin Laden's story, Bigelow and Boal merely reenact an assassination that you and I paid for in taxes while we still wait for the truth in a real 9/11 investigation.

Most Americans smell the filth of the corporatist power and dominance over our government, torture being only one of many symptoms of a corrupted justice system and government. Many Americans have learned to doubt our national moral compass as it spins helter-skilter. The corporatist form of empire has already bamboozled us long enough.

Most Americans did not just fall of the turnip truck. They are smart. They know that torture is as wrong as the false justifications for obliterating and occupying Iraq.

Maybe Bigelow and Boal were swept up in the excitement of working with a couple of hot-shot Spec Ops dudes. Maybe they have joined up with the extreme right-wing neocons who advocate many strange things like torture or lying to justify the bombing of a country without any legitimate reason other than a self-inflicted Pearl-Harbor type catastrophe.

Wild Sex, Drugs, Howling in the Desert

As the every-man-for-himself capitalism grows stronger, the demand for drugs climbs higher.(1) America ranks number one for its guns, for its financial coup d’état and for Wall Street terrorist bums. Domestic shock and awe, a doctrine Friedman wrought, keeps the privileged at the top.

The robber barons profit by turning the country into the land of calamity. They ride high on bubbles and bursts of opportunity, while the drug trade shines most appealing
to the middle class. The breaking-bad, big-dollar industry provides jobs in Amexican crassness. Cocaine, marijuana, meth—it’s the new opiate for the masses.(2)

With howling voices in the desert, we suffer highest rates of mental confusion, anxiety, loneliness, depression. The meaningless, dizzy disconnect spins people in the hectic congestion.

Inequality drives up the burning craving for drugs, legal or illicit.(3) Advertisements push us to purchase more stuff, guzzling cars, the clothes, and a trinket. Buy some bling, impress the girls or enjoy wild sex on a junket.

At the glow of my own sweat at night I howl in the desert. The Wall Street storm blew us into a wasteland of dirt. Millions of people walk the streets homeless by foreclosures. We look for comfort in a drug that reassures.

The 99 percenters run a treadmill for the dwindling carrot. We gravel and crawl for shiny chariots. For decades the frenzy continues to spin down an endless rabbit hole lost. It drives more souls caught up in the feel-good drugs in exchange for love. You just can’t win when you’re dealt a losing hand unless you bluff.

When Ryan came back from missions in Iraq, his mom found a shell of a man.(4) Among the millions unemployed like him, many opt in to fight the endless wars for oil in the sand. They learn to become an Army of one, all gung-ho, or so the recruitment
commercials go. The Pentagon creates a brave, warrior brand of honor and duty. Young men from the lower rungs join up for dignity. It feels better than flipping Big Macs. Ryan liked to wear that manly uniform, shiny buttons and a big hat. Ryan graduated from No-think High School without a goal, where they taught him nothing about the neocons. So he still believed in bravery and leprechauns.

These days the military hardly does more than serve corporate greed, securing reliable access to crude and other profit needs. It’s the new patriotism. For many out of a job, it’s a way to make a buck in our empire’s nihilism.

Meanwhile the Wall Street terrorists bomb the global economy. It’s a laissez-faire market made by and for the neocons to count their money. Following that sick crowd only shows our blind insanity. It’s healthier to break free from behind the lies to reality.

Like the shadow of a cloud, hardly anyone notices what happens over time, but the results become clear. History comes back to haunt us with the Gilded Age so near. “It’s just business,” says the Trump, “nothing personal.” The military recruits only fleshy machines for the arsenal. And when the soldiers return home and settle, they look for jobs and often pick up a needle.(4)

Take a few Xanax pills. It makes a bad job feel like sliding down hills. Wash them down with vodka to deaden the verve. A little smack can go a long way, calming shattered souls and spliced nerves. It’s the elixir for the shell shocked.

Overdose on smack, and all your nightmares are shot. Your sweaty tremors, your spirit-eating flashbacks vanish. Soldiers return home and get locked out, go off their leash.

More soldiers leave this world by suicide than by combat.(5) They fly over the cuckoo’s nest on the wings of a bat. Civilians try to keep up with the numbers with forty thousand a year. Overdose on smack, coke, meth, crack, or on Zoloft, Prozac, Ambien, Zyprexa, just to shut off the voices in your ear.

In our self-proclaimed freedom we all hustle like one-dimensional zombies. We conform more than any other countries. We sing and salute along to the tune of party lines. The lords bully us like Big Brothers, got us all heads down in the paradigms. The trend rushes face first into the abyss of trillions of dollars. We get high to feel normal and cope with our tight collars. We do our best to blend into this insane asylum. The patricians spend billions to stop drugs, stop Occupy Wall Street protesters with war drums.(5) America’s primo solution to any problem is the Pentagon’s droning hums.

The nobles wage war on American workers. But us, the servants, we enjoy the mind-escaping drugs, like good midnight tokers. I demand to trip out with TV, zone out on pot. It’s the new portal to infamy. Only the barons can make a move in a world of inequality. Floating on meth’s smoke, we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, defy gravity and fly over the crushed mobility.

The robber barons wage war, police guns hot, against the very drugs that Americans crave to survive in their failing lot. The dog-eat-dog corporate state took all the power and now reigns. While the corporate-owned elected officials give Big Oil and Wall-Street terrorists free rein. The bandits have been plundering the middle class for decades. Mex-American druglords and officials have been trafficking even before renegades.

The country ranks first in child poverty. The poor, the uneducated, prefer the use of crack to tread through the stormy waters of inequity where the Fates determine their harsh horizons.(6) They buy crack at discount basement bargains. The poor can’t afford a legal pharmaceutical. They might as well drink through the darkness with mescal.

Crack nurses the growing numbers of outcasts to feel good from time to time. It gives us delusions of hope and a sense of rhythm and rhyme.

The upper middle class prefers cocaine. The attorneys, architects, and Wall Street brokers enjoy pure snow to play the game. They snort a line when they have to meet a short deadline. They work hard for their lifestyle, worshiping Bacchus’ behind.(7)

Bounding from the top of the tall buildings, the 1 percenters never mingle with the rabble below. Big Jim Dimon stops at Wall St. and Board, howling and steps from his limo. He does a little blow, flanked by his entourage of Senators protecting his hoard.(8) With his presidential cuff-links, Big Jim has diamonds embedded in his teeth. A felon holding a silk purse of impunity, Big Jim chews on a pig’s ear as he claims he’s not a cheat. His buddies gamble billions with taxpayer bucks. Big Jim sits on a pyramid of blackmail and risky luck. One senator told how farmers lost it all in Big Jim’s derivative schemes and how entire towns like Birmingham and Stockton became graveyards of dreams.

The senators called Big Jim to a hearing, but he’d already bought all the senators in the Banking Committee. Big Jim just rolls his eyes saying, “It’s a pity.”(9) Big Jim has a lot of friends at the top of tall buildings. They take exclusive elevators up to avoid contact with proletarian landings. Reagan, Bush, Kissinger, Mozilo, Geithner, Summers, Greenspan, Paulson, Bernanke, Romney. So many neocons love that rush of the card deal and racketeered money.

It’s a high like a cocaine feel. When they win, they reel in the gold pot. When they lose, they win; they take the taxpayers’ lot. Either way Big Jim stays at the top with his mansions, jets, islands and yachts. He and his buddies own the Federal Reserve and the keys to Fort Knox. He and his friends like their blow pure and their escorts dirty and tight. They can crank it up, chill on boo, and ride young ponies all night.(10)

Beyond laws, neocons thrive in their secured penthouse in clouds. They are players, gamblers swingers, hiding behind their self-serving shrouds. They own Congress and the circus of public hearings. Their power soars beyond Gods’ blessings. They fly without limits and swoop near the sun without scorching a feather. They prop up the country’s debt and decide Greece or Iceland’s weather.

The world kneels down to these lords of unbridled enterprises. They are the aristocracy and the monarchy taking the prizes like the Spanish kings. They want America to work just like Mexico where for them the bell rings. It does not toll for you or for me. The lords own their own feudal islands—entire and for themselves and against the good of the lands.

Each one is a maker of the market. Their lobbyists clothe and launder their fraud and profit. They blow up the World Trade Towers and then party until late hours. They are the heirs of oligopoly and monopoly and crush any innovations and mobility. They regulate individual behavior—abortion, contraception, speech and protests—while keeping their corporations covered in secrets of self-interests.(11)

Us regular folks, most of us, are savages and respect nothing more than those in power. I dream of becoming just like them every hour. When I become aware of my impotence, I anguish under the weight of cement and iron and turn a blind eye sour. I look for escapes that allow me to give up my dreams by burning them in the sacrificial fires. I crave drugs and get high. It calms my own desires. Without the drug prohibitions, my sex drive would run like wolves wild. I lose myself in alternate universes, working hard to become a good consumer with debts piled.

So we ignore how the privileged loot our coffers. The crowd respects nothing more than those money mongers. We invite these vampires to suck the blood from our minds as they claim to let it trickle back down to us, a tiny drop at a time. The rich piss down on us from their high towers and call that economic policy so fine.

We sacrifice our children, if not their lives in endless wars, then in their education, health and in a failed environment. We prostrate before these medieval lords as if they were the lineage of royal sacrament. We hardly inquiry whether they are worthy of our worship.

Moloch raises his hands, the bestial, horned god, grabbing for sacrificial lambs,
eating raw flesh and rot.

Heirs of Moloch, the barons practice a long history of war crimes, torture and demonic lordship.

We deny our own thoughts and tremble to the core in the hope to placate these demi-gods. We pull the oars for the ship of state but lose sight in all the fogs.

We grow up in this world of cheats and remain penniless. As believers in what the schools teach, we are clueless. We easily give up what is most precious—our own conscience. We strive to appease these banksters and generals and officials without common sense.

We empower those born into the high places, loaded with blood money. The more we give up our freedoms, the patricians demand more honey. They say universal healthcare only makes government bloated. In the same breath they call for more bailouts whenever they engorge their cookie jars sugar-coated.

The robber barons want more military machinery, and more profitable private prisons to lock us up—those who sell and buy drugs on the streets. They send in the plebs, the well-intended police, to wage war in the dark-alley beats, but never to touch the cartel lords and the cash laundering discreet.

Banker Bagley washes that blood cash for his vaults too big to fail, while they send the little dopers deep into jail. Banker Bagley grants loans to build private prisons, while attorneys, police and paramilitary make up a new industry to chain us down. They make prohibition profitable while they protect the drug lords in the nice parts of town.(12)

This is the source of Moloch’s power. The cringing slaves of the working classes create the platform for Moloch’s heirs and they stand and pronounce their demands. We, slaves, build the schools and then we teach our children the nation’s history according to Moloch’s versions.(13) We plebs build their high towers, their yachts, planes and mansions. We pay the taxes. We shrug our shoulders like Atlas. Meanwhile they read a book by Aryan Rand and recite it like some bible-cult full of greed and twisted religious rant.

1. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level, New York, Bloomsbury Press, 2009. “To understand our vulnerability to inequality means discussing, some of our common psychological characteristics” pg. 31.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Veteran Suicides: A Predictable Epidemic? Truthout.com, 15 June, 2012: http://truth-out.org/news/item/9808-veteran-suicide-a-predictable-epidemic
5. Veterans Suicides, New York Times, 14 April, 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
6. Tom Feiing, Cocaine Nation, Pegasus Books LLC, New York, NY; 2009. See chapter 9, The Demand for Cocaine, starting on page 217.
7. Ibid.
8. There are many stories about Wall Street Executives (brokers) consume cocaine and other drugs, living the life of excess. New York Times, March 25, 2000; http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/25/nyregion/broker-admits-selling-drugs-on-floor-of-stock-exchange.html Wall Street turns a blind eye to drugs, The Vista, Nov. 3, 2011: http://www.theusdvista.com/business/wall-street-turns-a-blind-eye-to-drugs-1.2682973#.T-StpxdfHNo
9. Why the Senate Won’t Touch Jamie Dimon: How JPMorgan props up the US Debt, 19 June, 2012; http://truth-out.org/news/item/9876-the-jpmorgan-derivatives-propping-up-us-debt-why-the-senate-wont-touch-jamie-dimon
10. Inside Job, a Documentary, Charles Ferguson, 2010.
11. William Deresiewicz, Capitalists and Others Sociopaths, Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/fables-of-wealth.html pp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyarchy . And see also: Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World, p. 247, London: Vintage UK Random House. ISBN 0-09-944839-4 Also see the video of Noam Chomsky describe polyarchy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaFozS93Syo
12. There are numerous articles in the press about this topic of how the too-big-to-fail banks are desperately increasing their assets by laundering—mostly Mexican—drug cartel cash. Here are a few articles: The Guardian / The Observer, How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs, 2 April, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs The Costs on the War on Drugs: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2012/04/20124158040361814.html And there’s always more: San Francisco Chronicle, HSBC Executive Steps Down at Money-Laundering Hearing, July 23, 2012
http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/HSBC-Executive-Steps-Down-at-Money-Laundering-3728171.php

13.  Howard Zinn, The People’s History of the United States, Harper Perennial Modern Classics (August 2, 2005). Consider reading this book by Howard Zinn to obtain a more realistic version of the U.S. history. Most public and private schools in the U.S. teach the history with a sugar coated perspective.