War and Profits

by Stephen Fleischman

We know why there are wars, and we’ve known it for a long time. Good wars, that is, necessary wars, not wars by powerful foreign invaders, wars that might threaten our country.

Everybody knows we’re in the process of old-hat empire building, the kind designed by the British and for which they took hits around the world by the likes of George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi.

No lessons learned there. President Obama is about to make a momentous decision on Afghanistan. He has been mulling over, for the last few weeks, how many more troops he will be sending to McChrystal, to further his counter-insurgency in that country. It’s a process of foregone futility and everybody knows it. But the mainstream media, heavy with punditry, spends endless hours hashing over every detail, combination and permutation. The propaganda circle from government handout to media coverage is complete.

These graphs are provided by The Center for Public Integrity whose mission is to produce original investigative journalism to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. Just an example at random:

The Top 100 PRIVATE CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN, 2004–2006

* Unidentified Foreign Entities $20,435,870,190
1 KBR Inc (formerly known as Kellogg Brown and Root) $16,059,282,020
2 DynCorp International (Veritas Capital) $1,838,156,100
3 Washington Group International Inc $1,044,686,850
4 IAP Worldwide Services Inc (Cerberus Capital Management LP) $901,973,910
5 Environmental Chemical Corp $899,701,070
6 L-3 Communications Holdings Inc $853,535,680
7 Fluor Corp $736,853,200
8 Perini Corp $720,859,110
9 Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) $617,089,510
10 Parsons Corp $579,265,450
11 First Kuwaiti General Trading And Contracting Company Wll $495,404,500
12 Blackwater USA $485,149,590
13 Tetra Tech Inc $362,107,010
14 AMEC PLC $317,171,280

Here’s a nice little interactive site showing how the circle of influence works

We elected Barack Obama to change all that, didn’t we?

But Obama took over from Bush without missing a stroke. The faceless corporate oligarchy that runs this country and that ran Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush, now runs Obama.

Who are these oligarchs?

Yes, there are factions within the oligarchy. They have their differences. They don’t all agree. They represent different entities of industrial and corporate power. They are the pillars of capitalism. They are mostly unheard and unseen, but occasionally you may get a glimpse of a face…

Obamastocks.net says this:

Zbigniew Brzezinski – Puppet Master of Obama?

Zbigniew Brzezinski is the puppet master of Obama. This is a fact. Brzezinski is an 80-year old man from Poland who despises Russia. He was behind the catastrophic Carter administration. Brzezinski has the ultimate plan of preventing China from gaining access to African oil. China must have access to African oil or else the Chinese economy will recess rapidly. Brzezinski figures this will force China to invade the oil rich fields of southeast Russia just above North Korea. If China were to militarily take these oil fields from Russia, the two would obviously war which is what Brzezinski seeks. That plan is perfect in his eyes as it will weaken those two super-powers thus enabling American imperialism to regain strength. The real problem with this plan is that the Russians and Chinese are well aware of it. They know what Brzezinski intends to do. Unfortunately, the end result will most likely back fire on the west and produce world war III. China, and Russia against the US, and Europe.

The strategy of the George W. Bush administration to keep war going was to keep the American public in a state of fear. Obama is continuing that strategy. We must keep an enemy in the cross-hairs.

Al Qaeda, of course, is the one that does the trick—an Islamic group calling for global jihad. They claimed responsibility for 9/11—blowing up the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City—for blowing a hole in the USS Cole, for bombing US embassies in Africa. Al-Qaeda has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries. They have instilled fear in many places. When you hear the words “Al Qaeda”, think bogeyman.

The demonizing of the word “terror” didn’t originate with George W. Bush. Ariel Sharon, army general and a former Israeli Prime Minister, and others before him, used the technique quite effectively. They turned just about every Palestinian into a “terrorist” which put the mission of Zionism on the road to a Greater Israel. Sharon’s own government found that he bore personal responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre of Palestinians in September of 1982.

Acts like these notwithstanding, the United States has been a staunch ally and supporter of Israel in this special relationship, through the years, despite its war-like moves against the Palestinians, Gaza and Lebanon. According to Kathleen and Bill Christison, writing in Counterpunch, the United States is committed to giving Israel $30 billion over the next decade. The only stipulation imposed on Israel’s use of this cash gift in that it spend 74% of it to purchase U.S. military goods and services. Israel is, by far, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

Not bad for our war industry. We can keep our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan going, and then some.

Do you like the idea of your son or daughter giving his or her life for the profits of KRB or DynCorp International?

I don’t think anyone could call that “service to my country”.

The Tea-Party System

by Stephen Fleischman

In the first Boston tea party, the colonists dumped the British tea into Boston Harbor because of taxation without representation.

The tea-baggers, today, are making a fracas because they want corporation representation without taxation.

Michelle Bachman, Congresswoman from Minnesota, also known as the “Crazy Lady”, is leading the tea-bag movement against the health care reform bill and right into the arms of the health insurance industry.

“It was Thomas Jefferson who said a revolution every now and then is a good thing”, she says, as she slams a two-foot stack of paper representing the bill.

The main-stream media, as is there wont, are picking up the oligarchy’s propaganda beat. The issue they’re beating around the bush about now is the pubic option. Another issue is more de-troupes for Afghanistan.

The oligarchy is pushing the pundits, and the punditry is bringing out their big guns—David Gergel and Wolf Donner Blitzer. They have panels, too, with Leslie Stalled, Lucrezia Borgia and her sister Gloria, Keith Globerman and Rachel Rachel. They can talk a hatful.

AC-DC 360, Gloria Vanderbilt’s son, has a firm grip on the teats of the cash cow at CNN. They know, over at Ted Turner’s barnyard, that if you put an hour’s worth of programming together, you can snowball that into a 24-hour news cycle on a cable-grable channel.

Over at 13th Century Fox, you’ve got Bill O’Pig and his piglets, Insanity Hannity, Glenn Beckish and Crispy Wallace under the aegis of Rupert In-The-Dock Murderock and Roger Beerandailes.

Now, Barry Obama, with his chief henchman, David Axelgrease, have an important decision to make and they’re not making it. Will they, won’t they, will they, won’t they, will they send the troops?

You’ve got twenty four hours of prime time chawed right there. The military pundits, chief among them Armchair General Barry McCaffrey, who’s probably the preeminent military analyst for NBC and MSNBC, are having their crack at it, too.

The profusion of talk about the pubic option coming up for a vote maybe next week or maybe not, is almost as good as Michael Jackson dying but comes nowhere close to the O.J. Simpson romp.

There were times when we used to have third parties kicking around; most recently, Monkey Wrench, Ralph Nader and his raiders. He kept running for president (of the United States, that is) and getting about 0.02% of the vote, giving the Democrats the perfect excuse for losing the elections.

We had Texas business man Ross Perot, candidate for president in 1992 and 1996, the second time under the banner of the Reform Party that got him absolutely nowhere, not even onto the platform with the tea party candidates in the presidential debates.

In 1955, the Communist Party (CPUSA) finally dissolved because its membership consisted solely of FBI agents.

Ah, but there was a time when Third Parties struck!

Wikipedia says, “Labor Party was the name or partial name of a number of United States political parties which were organized during the 1870s and 1880s.

The Social Democratic Workingmen’s Party of North America was formed in 1874. By 1877 the party changed its name to the Socialist Labor Party of North America, and continues under that name.

In 1877, the racist Workingman’s Party was formed in California, led by Dennis Kearney; by 1879 it was powerful enough to help re-write the state constitution of California, inserting provisions intended to curb the powers of capital and to abolish Chinese contract labor.

In 1878, the Greenback Party, under the influence of leaders of organized labor, changed its name to the Greenback Labor Party, and continued to operate in some states, electing a congressman as late as 1886; but by 1888 had dissipated. In 1886, a United Labor Party was organized in Chicago under the leadership of that city’s Central Labor Union; It drew over 20,000 votes for its county ticket in the fall of 1886, and in the following spring elections garnered 28,000 votes for its candidate for Mayor; but by 1888 it had merged with the Democratic Party in that city.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party split the Republican Party in 1912, long before Sarah Palin got around to it..

So, you see, there is still hope for America!