No authorization for more war. "AUMF"... No New "Authorization to Use Military Force"

I would encourage you to sign and pass this petition along to your friends and fellow workers.

This page may not be viewable on your browser. If such is the case, simply click on the link "Click here to oppose any new AUMF" and you will be able to view the entire page.

Sorry about the formatting problems but this is an important issue so I did the best I could.

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The U.S. Congress is considering another "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" -- a broad approval for more war. Click here to oppose any new AUMF  This is the last thing we need. These wars are not making us safer but are generating enemies. They are not surgical operations, but mass killings, as well as assaults on the natural environment and the public budget -- not to mention excuses for curtailing civil liberties. Please click here to sign the following statement for delivery to the media and Congress: We oppose any new authorization for the use of military force and call for the immediate repeal of the authorizations passed by Congress in 2001 and 2002. P.S. This petition is jointly promoted by U.S. Labor Against the Warin partnership with Conference of Major Superiors of Men, Iraq Veterans Against the War, KnowDrones.com, Military Families Speak Out, Peace Action, Peace Action Montgomery, RootsAction.org, United National Antiwar Coalition, Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones,  and World Beyond War.

In general, I don't waste my time with these on-line petitions any more but this is one I support. It certainly can't do any harm to sign it. Add your own comment, too; I did.

What is really needed, though, is organized, united and militant action action in the streets and at the ballot box.

Voting for the Democrats is useless as the election of Obama has proven. Never again will Wall Street allow or tolerate its Democratic Party to be used as a voice for peace as progressive George McGovern did.

We need a new working class based anti-monopoly progressive people's party for peace, social and economic justice which will make as its main priority challenging Wall Street for political and economic power... This is something that can't be put off any longer as the phony liberals, progressives and leftists tell us this must not be done now and we should put off doing this until later. They always tell us, "Wait for the next election" but when the next election comes they play the same tune. The time is now. The struggles for real reforms required to meet the needs of the people for jobs, real health care reform and peace must be merged with challenging Wall Street for political and economic power. Real system change is what is required.

Capitalism is Wall Street's system, a system breeding endless wars; socialism is the system of the working class, a system for peace--- socialism is what we need to be building towards as we fight for reforms while challenging Wall Street for political and economic power. What we need is a socialist cooperative commonwealth which finally puts the needs of people and our living environment before Wall Street's profits.

We must not be afraid to state all of this--- not at some distant point down the road as the apologists for the sleazy, warmongering Democrats say we need to do; but today, here and now.

These Democratic apologists are trying to set us up to support Hillary Clinton; one more worthless warmonger supporting the Israeli killing machine (and every single reactionary government in the world propped up with our tax dollars) who will try to hide her support for Wall Street and its dirty imperialist wars behind a phony "economic populism" from which she and her supporters would have us believe financing all this militarism and these dirty wars is of little consequence to the economy when just the opposite is true. Don't buy into this crap of "economic populism" being peddled and pushed by the Democrats and their over-payed party hacks and these millionaire labor leaders who have no sense of urgency in solving the problems of working people.

These millionaire labor leaders waste our resources electing these Dumb Donkeys to make wars but won't take the time to file a grievance or fight for justice and a voice at work.

Feel free to forward this e-mail on to your friends and post it anywhere. Add your own thoughts, too.

Just a note to inform you since many have been asking why I am no longer on FaceBook. FaceBook shut me down... So much for democracy; just more hypocrisy.

I invite you to share your thoughts and ideas.

One last thing. A very few Democrats have said they are not for giving authorization for this war against ISIS... Don't be surprised when most of these Democrats change their tunes and go with the flow of Wall Street bribes. Militarism and wars are among Wall Street's most profitable ventures--- hence there is this massive Military-Industrial Complex presided over by these Wall Street masters of war.

We have a capitalist system that is in the "advanced stage" of decay--- this advanced stage of capitalism is called imperialism.  Imperialism is when these huge monopolies have merged with the government and their one and only concern is for Wall Street's profits, the "bottom line," which never takes into consideration the lives, livelihoods and problems of working people.

We, the people, are paying for these dirty wars in many ways. We are living with a run-away "cost-living-crisis" eroding our standard of living and dragging us all into poverty--- all fueled by militarism and wars along with monopoly price fixing---- all maintained through a thoroughly corrupt political process as rotten to the core as is the capitalist economic system itself.

Another way we pay for this mess Wall Street has us entangled in is the loss of democracy and loss jobs in spite of endless talk by these hypocrites about how the United States is the world's greatest bastion of democracy and all the talk about "jobs, jobs, jobs" at election time but as these very same politicians go goose-stepping backwards in the footprints of Joe McCarthy and his accomplice Hubert H. Humphrey (who was the primary author of the Communist Control Act of 1954) in trampling our democratic rights they fail to assign themselves the task of attaining and maintaining full employment.

The jobs being created are a bunch of poverty wage jobs no one can raise a family on.

We need jobs paying real living wages.

We need Minimum Wage legislation legislating real living wages based on all "cost-of-living" factors not this Minimum Wage legislation which assures business of being able to hire workers at low wages.

Low wages mean higher profits for employers.

It isn't the job of government to assure employers have a huge pool of cheap labor.

Rather, it is the job of government to provide legislation to improve the lives of the majority of the people who are working people.

Wall Street employers can fend for themselves; these greedy bastards don't need government intervention looking out for their bottom line.

Some suggestions for action you can take in addition to signing this petition:

* Start a peace committee in your neighborhood, where you work or go to school.

* Set up a table where there are lots of people and circulate this petition.

* Write a "letter to the editor" of your local newspaper, union newsletter, or student newspaper supporting this petition.

* Send your letter to the editor to public officials, circulate your letter among family, friends, neighbors.

* Consider running for public office or help support a real peace candidate breaking free from this two-party trap.

Again, I look forward to sharing ideas with you.

Please sign the petition not to authorize any more wars and check out and share my blog posts from time-to-time.

Yours in the struggle,

Alan L. Maki

No New Authorization for the Use of Military Force

The U.S. Congress is considering another "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" -- a broad approval for more war.

This is the last thing we need. These wars are not making us safer but generating enemies. They are not surgical operations, but mass killings, as well as assaults on the natural environment and the public budget -- not to mention excuses for curtailing civil liberties.

Please sign this statement for delivery to the media and Congress:

We oppose any new authorization for the use of military force and call for the immediate repeal of the authorizations passed by Congress in 2001 and 2002.

By taking action you agree that you may be contacted by one or more of the participating organizations. This petition is a joint project of:Conference of Major Superiors of Men, Iraq Veterans Against the War, KnowDrones.com, Military Families Speak Out, Peace Action, Peace Action Montgomery, RootsAction.org, United National Antiwar Coalition, Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones, U.S. Labor Against the War, World Beyond War.

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Please add a comment if you are so inclined. We'll include them all and quote the great ones.

"Crack down" on Wall Street or challenge Wall Street for political and economic power?

We need to remove Wall Street from power.

Health care for the Wall Street crowd and the politicians they bribe is a divide and profit proposition.

Democrats and Republicans, working under the guise of bi-partisan unity, have successfully used the divide and profit method for decades.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/opinion/hillary-clinton-and-bill-frist-on-health-care-for-americas-kids.html?_r=0

Here comes Hillary Clinton after never having supported single-payer universal health care or the better national public health care system now touting what is purported to be health care for children... a health care program that doesn't even universally cover all children--- division upon division all to secure greater profits for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies at the expense of health care for children and everyone else.

All the foundation-funded outfits just love this piecemeal approach to health care because it assures them job security employed at very lucrative paying jobs.

The real solution to this health care mess is a National Public Health Care System--- everyone in, nobody out; publicly financed, publicly administered and publicly delivered... just like public education. And put the doctors and all health care professionals on the public payroll, too, just like teachers.

No money Clinton and her Republican friends will say.

Well, just end militarization and these goddamn dirty imperialist wars and use the wealth of our Nation to finance the creation of a National Public Health Care System instead of wars... beating swords into plowshares is the only way to go.

Take the profit motive out of health care completely; health care for All the people not profits for the few.

In the process of creating a National Public Health Care System we create over twelve-million new decent and good-paying jobs.

No other program offers the American people so much... free health care, decent jobs and improved lives for less than the cost of this insane militarism and Wall Street's dirty wars.

Health care, according to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a human right.

Stop falling for this "divide and profit" crap being dished out and shoved down our throats by both Democrats and Republicans when it comes to health care.

No wonder Albert Einstein advocated socialism; capitalism is the epitome of insanity--- especially when it comes to health care.

Didn't know the great scientist Albert Einstein was for socialism with one of his reasons being the need to end the capitalist health care system? Well, read on:

http://socialismtheoryandpractice.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-socialism.html

And Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. obviously had no use for Wall Street's capitalist system and the for-profit capitalist approach to heath care either:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBodqhUGoq0

This from another blogger:

Martin Luther King and Health Care

As I remember his fight for human rights this weekend, I came across this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I could not have said it better myself:

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Health is a human right.

House Resolution 49 recogonizing and memorializing the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army deserves widespread support... but, what Auschwitz really represented requires much more investigation.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-114hres49ih/pdf/BILLS-114hres49ih.pdf


For some reason this resolution is going pretty much unnoticed.


In a joint press release the bi-partisan sponsors of this House Resolution 49 state, in part:


“More than 1.1 million men, women, and children, the vast majority of them Jewish, perished within the walls of the Auschwitz death camps before it was liberated by Soviet troops 70 years ago today. The horrific methods for systematic murder employed at Auschwitz, including mass executions, gas chambers, starvation, and torture, encapsulated the brutality of the Nazi regime that claimed the lives of over 11 million people and successfully exterminated more than 60 percent of the pre-war Jewish population in Europe.


“We offer this resolution today out of our shared responsibility to ensure the world knows what evil is possible when hatred and intolerance go unchecked and basic human dignity is denied..."


The reporting on this Resolution in one publication stated on January 29, 2015:


U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch (FL-21) announced the introduction of a bipartisan congressional resolution with Reps. Chris Smith (NJ-04), Eliot Engel (NY-16), Nita Lowey (NY-17), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27), Steve Israel (NY-03), and Peter Roskam (IL-06) recognizing the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz that took place on January 27, 1945. More than 1.1 million people lost their lives in the Auschwitz concentration camps, making it one of the deadliest manifestations of the Nazi’s Final Solution plan to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Today, millions of people around the world remember those who lost their lives in the Holocaust through the United Nations’ designation of January 27th as International Day of Commemoration.


Ironically, the U.S. Senate version (Resolution 35) omits the fact that it was the Red Army which liberated Auschwitz.


Not noted in either version is the fact that the final part of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, an IG Farben factory, was built by concentration camp inmates (some 7,000 that expanded to 35,000 as these concentration camp inmates and slave laborers from across Europe died).  The IG Farben factory was intended to produce a synthetic rubber to be used by Hitler in his war efforts. The construction of the plant ended up "employing" over 35,000 concentration camp inmates and slave labor from all over Europe, most of whose lives ended after approximately three months. IG Farben was a huge conglomerate corporation profiting from Hitler's wars. Perhaps this omission is made because someone might draw a comparison to the U.S. Prison-Industrial Complex? Another embarrassment not mentioned is the fact that the Rockefellers and DuPonts collaborated with IG Farben, a major financial backer of Hitler and his Nazis, in business ventures--- including various international monopoly price-fixing scams and collaborating with Hitler in ways that hindered efforts of the anti-fascists to stop Hitler.


It should also be noted that some Americans and their companies that were involved with the fascist Hitler backed regimes of Europe who worked in cahoots, politically and economically, with IG Farben were: William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Kennedy (JFK's father), Charles Lindbergh, John Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon (head of Alcoa, banker, and Secretary of Treasury), DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil (now Exxon), Ford, ITT, Allen Dulles (later head of the CIA), Prescott Bush, National City Bank, and General Electric. These wealthy Americans and their corporations working with Hitler and Mussolini helped bring Franco to power in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.


However, in many ways, the Senate version, also bi-partisan in nature, is better; and if the historical fact regarding that it was the Red Army which liberated Auschwitz were included in it, this Senate Resolution would become the better of the two since it emphasizes peace.


Both Resolutions have the short-coming of failing to point out the United States should withdraw from its involvement with the fascists now in power in the Ukraine before this counter-productive relationship and activity starts World War III. These "new age fascists" openly state their support for the Ukrainian collaborators with Hitler. In fact, many Ukranians, resistance fighters against the fascist occupation who fought alongside the Red Army, perished in Auschwitz and were used as slave labor in building Auschwitz. Anti-fascist Ukranians, like those now opposed to the present Ukranian regime, were among the Red Army soldiers which liberated Auschwitz.


In fact, Auschwitz was much more than an extermination camp; a fact all these Wall Street bribed politicians would probably rather evade.


Auschwitz stands as a monument to everything evil that is bred by the merging of state-monopoly capitalism where the corporations come to dominate the economic and political life of the country with democracy becoming a hindrance to their greedy drive for maximum corporate profits.


In Auschwitz we find big finance capital merged with industrialists and banking interests all managed by the government to carry out the "final solution" in the process of building an imperialist empire to dominate the world through building up a huge military-industrial complex intended to enable Nazi Germany to dominate the world.


Really, is it any coincidence that Wall Street was Hitler's biggest backer and these Wall Street politicians would rather not discuss what Auschwitz really was?


For some strange reason, it appears no one in Washington wants to talk about just how long Wall Street investors were profiting from their investments and activities, which included powers of decision-making, in IG Farben.


Also omitted from both the House and Senate Resolutions is the need to defend and implement the intent of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights which would further mobilize public opinion and sentiment against the re-occurrence fascism.


Here is Senate Resolution 35:

http://www.kirk.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1311


The text of the resolution is available below:


S. Res. 35

Whereas on January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland was liberated by Allied Forces during World War II after almost 5 years of murder, rape, and torture at the camp;

Whereas 1,100,000 innocent civilians were murdered at the Auschwitz extermination camp;

Whereas nearly 1,300,000 innocent civilians were deported to Auschwitz from their homes across Eastern and Western Europe, particularly from Hungary, Poland, and France;

Whereas 1,000,000 of the civilians who perished at the camp were Jews, along with 100,000 non-Jewish Poles, Roma and Sinti individuals, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, gay men and women, and other ethnic minorities;

Whereas these civilians included farmers, tailors, seamstresses, factory hands, accountants, doctors, teachers, small-business owners, clergy, intellectuals, government officials, and political activists;

Whereas these civilians were subjected to torture, forced labor, starvation, rape, medical experiments, and being separated from loved ones;

Whereas the names of many of these civilians who perished have been lost forever;

Whereas the Auschwitz extermination camp symbolizes the extraordinary brutality of the Holocaust;

Whereas the people of the United States must never forget the terrible crimes against humanity committed at the Auschwitz extermination camp;

Whereas the people of the United States must educate future generations to promote understanding of the dangers of intolerance in order to prevent similar injustices from happening again; and

Whereas commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp will instill in all people of the United States a greater awareness of the Holocaust: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Senate—

(1) commemorates January 27, 2015, as the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp by Allied Forces during World War II;

(2) calls on all people of the United States to remember the 1,100,000 innocent victims murdered at the Auschwitz extermination camp as part of the Holocaust;

(3) honors the legacy of the survivors of the Holocaust and of the Auschwitz extermination camp; and

(4) calls on the people of the United States to continue to work toward tolerance, peace, and justice and to end all genocide and persecution.

###

Obama hypocritically preaches to the world about democracy...

...when everyone knows big money controls all decision-making in this country.

Working people who voice their opinions are routinely silenced in all kinds of ways--- from being fired from their jobs to being banned from "social media" which is proclaimed to be the epitome of democracy.

This Wall Street dominated government can't tolerate democracy because if the people had any voice at all this entire rotten system would be brought down.

These people who own and control the media and the Internet can't even tolerate critical views and opinions of their corrupt system which is crumbling before our very eyes creating misery for so many people from which so few profit.

We don't live in a democracy; we constantly live on the edge of this country becoming a fascist dictatorship.

Corruption in government is all pervasive. Most politicians in this country are so thoroughly corrupt they belong in prison not at the helm of government making decisions affecting our lives and livelihoods and whether or not we have wars or live in peace..

http://nypost.com/2015/02/10/preet-bharara-promises-more-corruption-probes/





So, what's new?


Corruption is part and parcel of U.S. politics and the corruption begins with Wall Street's domination of the economy and politics.


Only a complete fool would deny the corruption that is American politics then passed off as the world's greatest bastion of democracy.


Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that the political process is thoroughly corrupt and unethical from township boards to city, county, state and federal government.


The news media picks up on a "scandal" here and there to sensationalize rather than examining the entire political process dominated by Wall Street lobbyists whose only reason for being involved in the political process is to assure big money buys corporations and business the government wanted no matter the harm caused to people and the environment.


If not for this corruption we would have no wars, no poverty and racism and discrimination would be well on their way to becoming things of the past.


Working people have no say in government.


The two-party system is a trap intended to make sure this corruption rules Wall Street's roost.


Democrats are every bit as corrupt and unethical as the Republicans.


There is no use struggling for reforms without simultaneously challenging Wall Street for political and economic power.


Capitalism is Wall Street's dirty, corrupt system which thrives on exploitation of workers; this is the very foundation and basis for the corruption and unethical behavior and conduct of these politicians and the corporate lobbyists whose job it is to bribe them.


Only a socialist cooperative commonwealth putting the needs of people first in a way in which production is carried on for the benefit of the entire society, instead of the profits of the few, will solve our problems.


What we need is a "clean sweep movement" that will clear all of these corrupt bastards out of the township halls, city and county councils, state and federal governments.


This will require massive militant struggles in the streets along with building a new working class based progressive people's party for peace, social and economic justice which brings forward open, honest, democratic government with the full participation of the American people... just like the Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution and Bill of Rights proclaims we are entitled to with the levers of power being used to make the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights a living reality for everyone.

Preet Bharara promises more corruption probes

By Carl Campanile

February 10, 2015 | 4:53pm

Modal Trigger

Preet Bharara Photo: William Farrington

Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara on Tuesday promised that more state corruption cases are in the offing after mocking Albany’s “three men in the room” decision-making and noting that Sheldon Silver has been deposed as Assembly speaker.


Bharara sidestepped a question on whether the other two men in the room — Gov. Cuomo and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos — would also be knocked out by scandal.


The feds are investigating Cuomo’s abrupt closing of his own Moreland Commission to Combat Public Corruption and Skelos’ dealings with a law firm that paid him between $150,000 to $250,000 last year.
“Membership of the room seems to be changing. It changed last week when a new Assembly speaker was put into power,” Bharara said in an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber.


Bharara filed a criminal complaint alleging Silver used his powerful position to amass millions of dollars in kickbacks through two law firms.


“We have a number of investigations going on. And we’ve had them for a long time,” Bharara added.
“It doesn’t seem like business will be abating any time soon in the public-corruption department.”
Speaking more broadly about the culture of Albany, Bharara said that the number of legislators who’ve been arrested recently for corruption should serve as a wake-up call.


“There are a lot of people who go into public service and are in for the right reasons and to do the right thing,” Bharara said.


At the same time, he noted that lawmakers “are more likely to be arrested as a state senator in New York than you are to be turned out at the polls.


And when you have a degree of corruption that is that deep and pervasive and frequent, that’s a big problem.”


In the past decade, more than 30 state officeholders have been convicted of crimes, sanctioned or accused of wrongdoing.


In the MSNBC interview, Bharara also took a jab at Cuomo’s claim last year he couldn’t discuss the Moreland Commission on advice of the US Attorney’s office.


“As I believe the US attorney has made it clear that ongoing public dialogue is not helpful to this investigation, we will have no additional comment on the matter,” Cuomo said in July.


He has commented since then.


But Bharara said the governor had no reason to zip it up last year.


“I don’t think that’s true because I’ve heard comments attributed to the governor,” he said.


“People shouldn’t be talking to potential federal witnesses in a case when the prosecutor and the FBI and other investigators are looking at something. But I don’t think I, or anyone else, ever said any particular person shouldn’t be talking about how he or she made decisions publicly.”

Thousands in California march and rally against fracking and global warming

Check out these articles and the videos accompanying the articles:

http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_27482290/thousands-march-and-rally-oakland-call-ban-fracking?source=rss


http://photos.mercurynews.com/2015/02/07/photos-march-for-real-climate-leadership-against-hydrofracking/#1


YouTube video of entire march and rally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8WLWI3XeBY



For more info, contact U.S. Labor Against the War:

http://uslaboragainstwar.org/



The streets of downtown Oakland were filled Saturday, Feb. 7, by an 8,000-strong crowd marching for Real Climate Leadership, the largest march against fracking in U.S. history.


A contingent of union members and labor organizers gathered around the fountain under the banner of "Labor Against Fracking," with representatives from three ASFCME locals, UNITE HERE, United Educators of San Francisco, U.S. Labor Against the War, Jobs With Justice, East Bay Up the Pay, OURWalmart, and EBASE (East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy).


"The planet is our workplace," stated Michael Eisenscher, the representative from U.S. Labor Against the War, setting the tone.


"There are no jobs on a dead planet," said Brooke Anderson of Climate Workers.

FaceBook

FaceBook shut down my page under the guise that I violated their policies without any explanation of the policies I supposedly violated.

So much for democracy.

Well-heeled Democrats have been complaining about my FaceBook page and this blog for years--- trying to shut them down.

No one should find this behavior by Democrats to be strange since it was Hubert H. Humphrey who was the primary author of the most repressive legislation in this country: the Communist Control Act of 1954 which is intended to repress freedom of thought, expression and association which the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights was intended to protect.

I was banned from posting or commenting on FireDogLake.

I have been banned from posting or commenting on Huffington Post, too.

Now I have been banned from FaceBook which has "deactivated" my FaceBook page.

In spite of all the talk about the great "free media," there is only freedom for those who own and control the media.

Whether it is FaceBook, FireDogLake or the Huffington Post posing as alternative media or social media, there is little room for working people to challenge the capitalist system while bringing forward the socialist alternative.

The upper-middle class intellectuals think they have the right to think for working people as they lay claim to being the voices for the "middle class."

I have always tried to merge my activism with tools available on the Internet but it seems that the powers that be will not tolerate this... this kind of activism is more than the phony proponents of democracy can handle as they choose censorship, blocking and banning over real democracy which provides a voice for working people.

In my opinion, person to person, face to face contact remains the best way to reach out to people.

Leafleting remains one of the most important ways to convey alternatives to capitalism to people.

I also think "Letters To The Editors" is a good way to share ideas and opinions... but, here again, one is at the mercy of those who own and control the media. The Duluth News Tribune and several other newspapers including the Minneapolis Star Tribune refuse to publish my "Letters To The Editor" as they hypocritically advertise that their pages are opinion to alternative views... so long as those views are not Marxist.

Isn't capitalist freedom great?

This is what we get when the dots don't get connected properly... a false solution no better than the original problem

http://idlenomorewisconsin.tumblr.com/post/110174013126/for-immediate-release-2-5-15-contact-reyna-crow


The problem with this is that Bob Shimek is a shill for the Indian Gaming Industry and refused to raise his voice in opposition to the building of the new Red Lake Casino Lake-of-the-Woods which was just recently built on one of the most pristine wetlands which was used by wolves over the centuries to cross Lake-of-the-Woods between Canada and the United States to hunt and breed.


How can the tribes whose Tribal Councils are controlled and manipulated by a bunch of mobsters who own the Indian Gaming Industry willing to destroy pristine wetlands (and forests--- just look how the Red Lake and Leech Lake forests [all wold habitat]) have been decimated to pay for casinos without one peep of protest from Robert Shimek or those foundation-funded outfits he has worked for.


The Northern Tribes can't be trusted any more than the State of Minnesota, the pulp and paper, mining or power generating industries to manage timber wolves or their habitat any more than they can be trusted to look after the health and welfare of the human beings they employ at poverty wages and without any rights to work in these smoke-filled casinos.


Robert Shimek has refused, over and over again, to connect the dots which when connected properly clearly demonstrate that those who seek corporate profits can't be trusted to manage anything where our living environment, human health and the welfare of plants, animals, wetlands, air or water are concerned.


Ask anyone living on a Reservation if any of these Tribal Councils can be trusted to work for the betterment of people, habitat or timber wolves--- the majority will say they can't be trusted.


In fact, capitalism isn't green... and these Tribal Councils are manipulated by the wealthy--- the exact same corporate money interests as state governments.

Surprise, surprise... the United States is no longer a democracy

Don't forget to read the full report at the end of the article:


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-democracy-america-tpm-interview



As if most of us have not known this... these people play us for fools when in fact they know full well all of this is maintained through the use of repression. After all, isn't this why "At-Will Employment," the "Communist Control Act of 1954," "Taft-Hartley," "Citizens United" and a "Minimum Wage" that enforces very profitable poverty wages along with a Military-Industrial Complex and never-ending imperialist wars exist in order to control the only class, the working class, capable of changing any of this by taking political and economic power away from Wall Street and putting us on the road to socialism?



The capitalist system which has morphed into monopoly control and domination during this epoch of imperialism is rigged against workers who produce all wealth and enables the wealthiest to exercise complete control over politics and the economy.



We can't win the struggle to defend, advance and expand democracy through voting for the Democrats or Republicans... we need massive struggles in our working class communities, in our places of employment, in the streets combined with building a new working class based progressive people's party for peace, social and economic justice in line with making the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights a living reality for everyone everywhere.

David Petraeus explains and states Wall Street's dirty, barbaric, cannibalistic, profit-driven imperialist agenda

Petraeus: The next American century

First Published Feb 02 2015 06:21AM    •    Last Updated Feb 03 2015 09:09 am

By David H. Petraeus

and Michael O'Hanlon

Special to The Washington Post

Short-term economic trends in the United States are encouraging. Unemployment is down, growth is up, deficits are less than half what they were during the "Great Recession," gas prices have plummeted, citizens have "deleveraged" their debt considerably and consumer sentiment is very positive.

For many, however, these realities are merely a soothing veneer over a troubled picture. They see America in decline, the middle class adrift, the world in shambles and political acrimony more entrenched than ever over issues ranging from immigration and U.S. policy on Iran and Cuba to taxes and health care. This pessimism is not limited to the home front. With major U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia enduring sustained economic malaise, worrisome demographics and declining power, many believe the Western world is in retreat.

Those sentiments are generally unfounded, however, when it comes to the United States and North America. Recent positive headlines have not masked deeper problems so much as they have heralded the kind of future this nation can enjoy - especially if political leaders can make a few sensible, non-Herculean compromises on issues that beg attention.

The United States is, in fact, better positioned than any other country for the next 20 to 30 years - and, very likely, beyond. Together with Canada and Mexico, the United States also enjoys mutually reinforcing sources of competitive advantages in geopolitics, demographics, energy and natural resources, manufacturing and industrial competitiveness and, above all, innovation and technology. If the 20th century was the American Century, the 21st is poised to be the North American Century.

Since we first offered this view some two years ago in The Post, a number of favorable trends have solidified or even accelerated:

• The United States is now the world's largest producer of both oil liquids and natural gas, with Canada and Mexico important players in the energy arena, as well.

• U.S. manufacturing, while still far from its heyday, has added hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past two years, and Mexico is now fully competitive with China and other Asian manufacturing hubs in a variety of industries.

• The United States leads the world in high-tech sectors such as aerospace and pharmaceuticals.

• The U.S. federal budget deficit, while still too high, is below 3 percent of gross domestic product, and publicly held debt as a fraction of the GDP has stabilized at around 75 percent.

• Relative to GDP, U.S. household debt is down significantly from pre-Great Recession levels.

• U.S. small business confidence is the highest it has been in nine years, and consumer confidence is at its highest in 11 years.

• Crime rates in America are the lowest in a generation.

• America's demographics are far and away the healthiest among the developed economies, as well as Russia, China and India, with a nice and steady 1 percent annual population growth rate.

• The U.S. military, while under budgetary strain and still in harm's way, has weathered not only the brunt of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but also the ax of "sequestration" and downward pressure on budgets for half a decade.

• The United States and Germany are, according to the World Economic Forum, neck and neck in respective claims to be the world's most competitive major economy. U.S. strengths in market size, entrepreneurial culture and financial networks roughly equal Germany's strengths in modern manufacturing and social cohesion.

• U.S. GDP growth is now exceeding 3 percent. Indeed, at present it appears that the U.S. economy may, for the first time in some nine years, grow more in absolute dollar terms than China's does. (China's growth rate, though declining, is likely to be nearly twice as fast; however, as measured in classic terms, its GDP is still only a bit over half as large as our own.)

This last point is crucial. China has recorded historic achievements, but its ascent to superpowerdom is not a given. Leaving aside the limited appeal of China's political and economic model, it faces the imperatives of transitioning from a low-cost labor provider to a value-added and services economy, reducing the world's largest debt-to-GDP ratio, cutting pollution and corruption, dealing with insufficiently competitive state-owned enterprises and addressing numerous other domestic challenges.


In fact, Brookings Institution scholar David Dollar has argued that, even if China overtakes the United States in absolute GDP within a couple of decades, the United States may regain the top spot later in the century, especially if China's political model remains autocratic.

There is, of course, much that the United States needs to do. We need comprehensive immigration reform. Our education system is highly uneven in quality and requires an overhaul to prepare students for the economy of the future. Our lower and middle economic classes have seen minimal real wage growth since the Great Recession. Crime is still high by Western standards. And the U.S. deficit will get worse again within a half-decade or so if nothing is done on entitlement spending and tax reform.


Beyond that, our infrastructure - which is central to future productivity gains - needs major improvement. And, of course, climate changes remain a threat, as do Islamic extremist groups and Iran, as well as Russia.

Regardless, more than any nation on Earth, and arguably more than any in history, the United States has the assets needed to confront its problems head-on. Indeed, however our nation's political parties differ on a variety of issues, Democrats and Republicans should agree on one proposition: This is another American century, and the future has seldom looked brighter. Washington policymakers do not need to rescue the nation from the precipice so much as to make reasonable, mid-size compromises on a number of policies and otherwise get out of the way.

David H. Petraeus is a retired U.S. Army general and chairman of the KKR Global Institute.
http://www.kkr.com/our-firm/kkr-global-institute

Michael E. O'Hanlon is senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.
http://www.brookings.edu/

Previously in 2007, Obama stated similar views in an article he wrote, exclusively, for Foreign Affairs Magazine:
http://wallstreetsfriend.blogspot.com/2011/04/renewing-american-leadership-by-barack.html

Social Security coming under attack by the Republicans--- can you trust Obama and the Democrats to defend it?

The attacks initiated on Social Security when Obama established his Cat Food Commission presided over by his hand-picked Co-Chair, the reactionary Republican bastard Alan Simpson, are now proceeding ahead full steam.


Next week, the Senate Budget Committee is holding its first hearing on Social Security benefits. Their plan is to declare a crisis and insist the only way out is to cut benefits now.


This invented myth of impending and catastrophic insolvency is well-worn and predictable, but still dangerous. The new Republican majorities are emboldened and anxious to show their Koch backers that they are serious. 


Of course, Social Security is not going broke. In fact, it has a $1.7 trillion surplus. Yet seniors who depend on the system they paid into find their benefits failing to keep up with their real expenses. We can fix this.


Obama fed these Republicans raw meat and now he pretends he had nothing to do with these impending attacks on Social Security.


Do you trust Obama and these Wall Street bribed Democrats to defend your right to Social Security?


Social Security has been paid for.


The only problem with Social Security is that these crooked and corrupt Democrats and Republicans have looted the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for militarism, wars and their boondoggles.


Tell these crooks and liars to end this senseless militarism and wars and pay back the IOU's left in the Social Security Trust Fund and to establish a full employment economy so everyone pays in and everyone gets out what they are entitled to... problem solved.


Social Security should have been raised long ago to meet the "cost-of-living crisis" working class retirees are the victim of along with all working class families.


Wall Street and its politicians created this "cost-of-living crisis" that has forced many senior citizens to go back to work in poverty wage Minimum Wage jobs many just to pay for health insurance and medications.


What kind of rotten government do we have that these bastards attack those people least able to fight back?


Don't buy into the lies being pushed by the Democrats that it is only Republicans attacking Social Security--- Democrats, Obama in the first place, are the culprits, too.

What is going on in Greece?

I have never seen so much discussion about Greece in the media; the MainStreamMedia and the alternative media.


But, with all the words being written and spoken, do we really know what is going on in Greece? And what do we really know about who is who and what is what?


What is Syriza; and who backs it?


What is the KKE; and what does the KKE advocate?


Lots of questions; few answers.


What we do know for sure is that when the Greek people went to the polls and voted for this outfit called Syriza, they were in fact voting for an end to austerity measures, for all the cuts to be restored and to get the international bankers (mainly Wall Street and its junior partners from the other imperialist financial centers) off their backs.


When all is said and done, the Greek people pretty much voted for what the American people voted for when electing Obama--- my hunch is that they will get from Syriza the same thing we got from Obama... Wall Street serving shysters.


The real question is this: Will the Greek people continue to insist that the Syriza government do what they demanded of the PASOK government... end austerity measures and restore the cuts?


The KKE (Communist Party of Greece), P.A.M.E. (All Workers Militant Front) and WFTU (Workd Federation of Trade Unions [the left, progressive and Red unions]) and its affiliates will continue to advance the struggle for ending austerity, restoring the cuts and improving the lives and livelihoods of working class families and insisting on rights and a voice at work and in government.


Can the ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation, a CIA front group) and its Greek affiliates be counted on to do the same? So far they have undermined the working class struggles in Greece and joined with the social democratic PASOK government which has been responsible for shoving Wall Street's austerity measures down the throats of Greek working class families, the middle class and small business community.


Will Syriza live up to its campaign promises of halting the austerity measures and restoring the cuts; or, will it renege and acquiesce to Wall Street dictate for more austerity?


And, finally, since there is much greater awareness of the situation in Greece here in the United States now that Greece is in the news explaining that the Greeks are struggling against Wall Street and its junior partners from the other financial centers around the world, the G-7/G-8, will our unions and working class movements join in solidarity with the Greek people by challenging Wall Street for political and economic power which would bring an end to these austerity measures and enable the people of Greece to solve their problems in a way that responds to the needs of the people rather than satisfying the profit margins of Wall Street bankers, financiers and industrialists?


We can speculate all we want about what Syriza might or might not do--- although, we do know, they have chosen to partner with a bunch of fascists--- but, when all is said and done we share a common enemy with the people of Greece: Wall Street.


Do we not have some responsibility to discuss how we intend to get this Wall Street beast off the backs of Greece and our own country?


And, if capitalism is a problem for Greece as even Syriza acknowledges; isn't capitalism a problem for us?


And, if socialism is the solution for Greece; isn't replacing capitalism with socialism the solution for us, too?


Capitalism is Wall Street's system; socialism is a system for the working class.


There are those in Syriza, including its new Finance Minister, who now intend to to try to saddle the Greek people with this poisonous thinking they are injecting into the working class movement that there must be some kind of very long and extended period of "inclusive prosperity/inclusive capitalism" which is part of some kind of "anti-monopoly economics." The ITUC is pushing this stupidity; the phony "leftist" supporters of Obama backing Syriza are pushing this poison here in the United States.


Honest socialists do not go along with injecting such poisons into the working class movements making such outrageous claims that the ideas spun by those pushing this "inclusive prosperity/inclusive capitalism" is part of some kind of "anti-monopoly economics" which will lead to the kind of reforms working class families require to improve their lives and livelihoods. This kind of warped and perverted thinking is intended to undermine and derail working class movements intended to end poverty which the purveyors of this new theory of "inclusive prosperity/inclusive capitalism" now want to call "economic inequality." The use of the terminology "economic inequality" rather than "poverty" is intended to obscure the urgency and immediate need to put an end to poverty here and now.


I get a kick out of how all these millionaire labor leaders and the multi-millionaire directors of these foundation-funded think-tanks together with all these over-paid "economists" and media pundits expect us to be patient in enduring our "cost-of-living crisis" and poverty which is all part of Wall Street's idea of how to end their capitalist economic crisis and they actually think we are so goddamn stupid that we will buy into this bullshit.


Put all these rich bastards to live out on some uninhabited island someplace out in one of the oceans and let them figure out how to live in a dog-eat-dog world and let them experience first hand how capitalism really works and let the rest of us live in peace and harmony with one another using the resources we have to create decent lives free from war and poverty.


Can't we manage to get by without a bunch of greedy Wall Street parasites and their bribed politicians and over-paid "thinkers" doing our thinking for us and dictating to us how we must live in poverty in order for them to solve their problems.


The Greeks are fed up with capitalism and we should be fed up with it, too.


Will Syriza put an end to these privatization schemes demanded by the world's financial centers for privatizing everything now public from Greek ports to water and sewage?


I think it is safe to assume that the information we are getting from the MainStreamMedia is nothing but a bunch of lies intended to bolster Wall Street imposed austerity upon Greece while what we are getting from the alternative media at this point is pretty much typical confused thinking from the foundation-funded crowd.


Don't be too surprised when we find out the KKE, the oldest political party in Greece, has led a socialist revolution bringing the working class to power with Wall Street and its junior partners getting kicked out.