Mr. Colbert's Smile File + Suicide by Eric Bolling

Good News from Moveon.org

Sometimes there is good news which needs to be shared.  Moveon.org is dedicated to making this country live up to its promise, to righting the wrongs and the unjustices that are pervasive and detrimental to so many of our fellow citizens.

One of the ways the Moveon organization does this is by helping people start petitions to bring something that is wrong into public view.  This video explains, in dramatic fashion, what can happen when one person decides to take a stand.  Enjoy!

Islamic Society files grievance in Tampa Bay

Down Tampa Bay way in Florida, the Islamic Society of the Tampa Bay Area has filed a grievance with school administrators to allow children of Muslim parents to leave school early once a week for religious services.

We've heard before that this is the kind of thing we can expect to happen when an area's Muslim population increases beyond a certain level.  The larger the number of Muslims the greater the demands.

In England, Muslims have demanded a variety of special privileges for their children in public schools; indeed they've insisted that taxpayers fund Muslim schools.  In Sweden, Muslims have gone so far as to demand that the Islamic faith be taught in public schools.  France has experienced similar problems.

And now it's happening here.

According to Hemant Mehta of the Friendly Atheist blog, the Islamic Society, referencing Florida laws regarding respecting the religious beliefs of students, are demanding that Muslim students be allowed to leave school at 12:30 every Friday to attend "mandatory Khutbah (sermon) and prayers."  According to Islamic teaching, such attendance is required and failing to attend is a sin.

It is true that other religions receive recognition at different times during the year for religious observance.  But not once a week.  As Mr. Mehta notes, the time involved in this request means Muslim students would miss about 20% of their educational requirement.


Let us hope that the school officials in the Tampa Bay Area gracefully but firmly deny this request!  Unfortunately, I'll bet this is just the beginning.  It won't be long before there will be other demands, perhaps even the demand, on the grounds of "fairness," that Islam in all its glory, be presented to public school students by local Imams.


Final comment:  I see no reason why public schools need to "accommodate" any student's religious beliefs.  And it is probably unconstitutional to shut down public schools so that students may observe religious celebrations.  If not, it should be.  Religion is about indoctrination.   Education is about inculcating a desire to know what is real and true as opposed to what is unreal and merely pious rubbish. 


Read Mr. Mehta's complete post here.

The GOP Clinging to God and Guns in Caldwell County, Texas.

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if at least parts of Texas seceded from the Union.  Those good ol' boys could redo the U.S. Constitution so it's more to their liking, and they could fix the Bible with an 11th Commandment:  "Thou shalt cling to both your God and your guns lest you git shot in the ass by a Democrat." 

Thanks to Christian Nightmares.

For Mr. Kerry, the right war just came along!

From Kapshen.nethttp://kapshen.net/september-4-2013/

Shanah Tovah - Happy New Year

Rosh Hashana being celebrated in Berlin, 1945.

Rosh Hashana began at sundown, September 4.

Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew: ראש השנה‎, literally "head [of] the year"), is the Jewish New Year. It is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im ("Days of Awe") which usually occur in the early autumn of the Northern Hemisphere. Rosh Hashanah is a two-day celebration, which begins on the first day of Tishrei. The day is believed to be the anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve or Adam and Lilith, the first man and woman, and their first actions toward the realization of mankind's role in God's world. Rosh Hashanah customs include sounding the shofar (a hollowed-out ram's horn) and eating symbolic foods such as apples dipped in honey to evoke a "sweet new year".

-- Wikipedia

An alternative way to deal with the Syrian crisis

"A grassroots progressive in Oklahoma, Tom Guild, is an independent thinker and is going to have an open mind. 'Syria is a basket case,' he told us, 'with heartbreaking tragedies piled one on another. The [Assad] government is evil and much of the opposition is affiliated with enemies of the United States. We should tread carefully and make sure we are not drawn into another war without end. American cannot be the world’s policeman, and we have paid a heavy price trying to do so.'

"Nick Ruiz, a professor who once ran as a Green, is the progressive Democratic candidate in the Orlando area running against GOP warmonger John Mica, also gave us a position just before Obama announced he would ask for a congressional vote before attacking.

'Why not conference and engage the Syrian leadership and factions-- and Iran, along with Russia and China for good measure? Before drones and Tomahawks, bombs and killing; as an alternative to the stereotypical language of violence that the world is so tired of hearing. Let's talk about it; not naively, but intensely; let's argue about what's happening in Syria, with the Syrian leadership and rebellion, their neighboring ally Iran, and advocates of sovereignty: Russia and China. We get it. We understand boundaries and sovereignty. And we ought to thoroughly understand rebellion, having been borne of it... The world's interests are better served with an eye toward de-escalation, rather than aggravation and aggrandizement... My vote would be NO on assaulting Syria.

'As Democrats we know better than to fight unjust wars; we do not leave the poor defenseless, nor erode civil rights or ignore social injustice. We helped to define these vital, democratic concepts in the modern era. When our leaders change for the worse, and seek to lead us toward the lowest common denominator, then we should thank them for whatever good they've done in the past-- but must tell them 'No, we will not follow you there, and further, you will not lead us any longer.' It is a crucial time when one must have the good sense to choose new leaders. But it's now true: that time is upon us.'"

From Crooks & Liars here.

Stupid people in large groups

Could it be...

   there is a correlation...

      between the message on this sign...

         the U.S. Congress...

            and the need to punish

               Bashar al-Assad of Syria?

The Ten Commandments - by NonStampCollector

One wonders if the wingnuts who want to post this nonsense on the halls of our judicial palaces have even read them!

Here's more of these delicious satires on YouTube - the NonStampCollector's creations.

The Arab world ignores Syrian pleas for help.

From:  Today's News.  Captioned.

Jon Stewart - Obama, Syria and The Red Line

Jon Stewart was back from his summer vacation with a vengeance this Tuesday and he let the Obama administration have it for the push for military intervention in Syria. Stewart, like a lot of us, wanted to know why the push now to go in there when we've already seen a hundred thousand Syrians slaughtered by other means than chemical weapons, and thinks he found his explanation.
After pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of the United States making an issue of another country using chemical weapons, Stewart showed several clips of pundits and Sen. Ted Cruz saying we're going to look weak, and "that bullies and tyrants don't respect weakness," Stewart responded:

STEWART: Oh right! We have to bomb Syria because we're in seventh grade! And the red line... the red line that they crossed is actually a dick-measuring ribbon.

Why does holding back look like weakness? Isn't it maturity? It's like when a guy's picking on Clark Kent and he doesn't do anything, even though he knows he could throw that guy into the sun.

I'll tell you what would be real weakness, Clark Kent laying waste to a town because someone called him a pussy.

You know what else is weakness? Asking the advice of a plague of idiots who got the same issue completely wrong in Iraq -- or as those people are known on cable... experts.

Cue Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld and Bloody Bill Kristol doing just that.

STEWART: Hey everybody! The idiot parade is in town! Shut the f**k up! Shut the f**k up!....

And on he went. My thoughts exactly any time I see one of them on the television. Welcome back Jon.

Thanks to Crooks & Liars.  The above commentary by Heather.

So what's changed?

Nine years ago, Uncle Rummy spoke of the need to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

So, what's changed?

The names.  Today it's Syria that needs our intervention to rid Syria of Bashar al-Assad and his chemical weapons and it's Uncle Kerry preaching the same old crap.

Let's be damned for not blowing up the world!

One of the surest signs we ought to step back and reconsider Obama's desire to send the American military to blow Syria apart is the fact that Boehner and Cantor and McCain approve.  There's something seriously wrong with this picture!

The picture got even more dismal when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her support for Obama's plan of military action.  It darkened some more when Ms. Pelosi also climbed aboard the military juggernaut! 

When I read of these things a creepy realization dawned:  there's no hope.  When push comes to shove, there's not much difference between the Democrats and Republicans.  They both follow the path of least resistance -- morality or goodness or just plain common sense be damned.

We are told by Democrats in whom we have believed that if we do not send rockets into Syria the consequences will be horrific!  Shades of Iraq.  Again, we're not told what those consequences will be--just that they will be bad, very bad.  We must start shooting now!  Fire up those missiles!


We've heard all these rationales before.  Kerry says it's not like Iraq.  Why not?  How not?  It's not like Afghanistan, he said.  Again, he didn't, so far as I know, explain the difference.  We're not going to war he said.  Well, when the hell did bombing another country not constitute a state of war?

And then later today, he hemmed and hawed about putting boots on the ground.

This is the way it always begins.  And it always ends with our young American men and women dying in the trenches while the rich and the powerful and the mighty sit home sipping martinis, getting deferments for their kids, collecting bonus checks from the companies that provide the resources to fight the war.

[Here's a thought:  Follow the money!  Who or whom will benefit from military action in Syria.  It won't be the American taxpayer!!!!]

Well, where the hell is the money coming from?  We've got a sequester going.  All kinds of necessary things, like education, are suffering from that particular bit of stupidity which was the "gift" of Boehner, Cantor, McCain and other nogoodniks in our Congress.  We haven't begun to pay China for the Iraq war!  Isn't it strange that all these folks in our government who have been weeping and whining about our debt, claiming it is strangling us and will be the death of us, can somehow find the money to go off on military misadventures but never can find a cent rebuild a few bridges that are falling down, or hire more teachers or put more cops on the beat?


Norm Chomsky says that if we do what Obama wants we will be guilty of committing war crimes.  Of course, that fact doesn't get a lot of traction seeing as how there isn't anyone or any country powerful enough or stupid enough to try to stop us.  And we remember too clearly how the Bush-Cheney gang got off scot-free even though there was no question under the law that our militaristic adventures in Iraq were illegal and based upon a series of lies and evasions which means that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al., are clearly war criminals. 


But let's turn this around.  Let's say our treatment of "illegal" immigrants and our treatment of minorities was thought to be horrendous by another country, Mexico, for example.  So, Mexico, in its sovereignty, decided to shoot a few rockets into Border Patrol stations along the Rio Grande to teach us a lesson

We would scream bloody murder and bomb Mexico into little bitty tacos. 

Now perhaps our treatment of minorities and "illegals" does not measure up to the same standard of dastardlyness that Assad's chemical weapons do, but that really isn't the point.  The point is encompassed this way: 

By what right does an American president and an American Congress, against the majority will of the people of these United States, shoot rockets or missiles or whatever the hell they've got planned into another country to "punish" the leader? 

There is no such right, even though George W. Bush attempted to create one. 


But there's more.  Why did we not intervene when 100,000 people were killed by Assad's forces?  Is it OK to kill by automatic weapons, bombs, grenades, etc., but not by using other weapons we find particularly distasteful?  A few hundred Syrians killed by "chemical" weapons justifies American intervention?  What nonsense! 

And more.  We don't even know who the "good" guy rebels are and who the "bad" guy rebels are?  We do know, however, the al Qaeda wants Assad gone and other terrorist groups are actively present in Syria!  So, will our military might assist them in reaching their goals, whatever such goals might be?

And more.  If we really cared about the Syrian people, we should find some creative ways to assist the thousands upon thousands of refugees who have fled the country and are now living in despair and misery.

And finally:  It's a no-win situation for the United States.  We are hated in the Middle East for our interventions and not one Arab anywhere gives a damn about our good intentions.  Whatever we do or don't do we will be damned. 

So let's be damned for not blowing up the world for a change!

After The Rapture

Is the US working with al Qaeda against Assad?

 [World War I gas masks]

According to an article appearing in the Daily Beast "Cheat Sheet," U.S. spies intercepted various phone calls and other communications in Syria immediately following the attacks which killed so many people and these communications gave indication that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons.  Our spies were unable, however, to accumulate any physical evidence of such use.

Furthermore, there is some indication that the one responsible for using the chemical weapons was Assad's brother and not Assad himself.

This use of chemical weapons has angered al Qaeda and the terrorist group has vowed to hit the Syrian government with a "volcano of revenge".

What an interesting scenario.  In this instance, we are now on the same side as Al Qaeda and if we attack Syria with rockets or other weapons, we have become al Qaeda's accomplice and partner in "crime" as that organization instigates it's revenge volcano!

Read the entire article here.

Climate Name Change

A good friend in France brought this video to my attention.  It is a perfect retaliatory response to those dunderheads in the U.S. who continue to deny the facts of Global Warming.

Chemical Weapons Used In Syria

Knowing the value our government puts on "truth," I'm not ready to accept Secretary of State John Kerry's assertion that chemical weapons were used in Syria.

But giving Senator Kerry the benefit of the doubt - so what?

Why does this become our problem?  Chemical weapons may kill in a different way, but are we mostly concerned with the mode of murder or with the fact of murder?  People have been dying in horrendous ways for many weeks in Syria.  If their dying is the concern of the United States, then it makes no difference how they died. 

If we believe that killing civilians is cause for American intervention, we should have intervened a long time ago.

But if the method of killing civilians, e.g., chemical weapons, is the determining factor, then the United States once again becomes a miserable model of hypocrisy! 

Recently disclosed CIA files have exposed another of "The Gipper's" moral failures.  During the Iraq/Iran war, we supported Iraq!  How ironic is that?  Not only so, but Reagan knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran and approved such use, or, at the least, did nothing to discourage it!

Fast-forward to 2001.  G. W. Bush, appointed president by the U.S. Supreme Court, led our country to war against our former ally based upon the big LIE that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, i.e., chemical weapons. 

It all stinks.  Our hands are dripping blood.  Let's not add to the flow by military action in Syria. 

Enough of our young men and women have died for no good cause by our leaders' dalliance with stupidity in the Middle East.  Enough of our country's treasure has been destroyed by the American war machine's misadventures around the world.  

Enough, already!
 

Plutocrats' New Pitch: Let Us Rob You Now So You Can Plan Ahead for Poverty

(Note:  This article is reprinted from Alternet and is used with permission.)

Pete Peterson & Co. kindly want to take your Social Security away to prevent you from imagining a dignified future.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

August 22, 2013  |

Somehow, I’ve wound up on the mailing list for a group of oligarchs campaigning to swindle Americans out of their hard-earned retirement insurance. Hedge fund billionaire Pete Peterson, the budget buffoons Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and the rest of their merry band of hustlers over at the hilariously named Committee for a Responsible Budget have asked me to consider their latest proposal.

So I thought I’d oblige them, what the heck.

Judging from the shrill headline in their mailing [full text here], these men (and a token woman or two) wish to sell me on the idea of “Social Security Reform and the Cost of Delay.”

The cost of delay? Boys, I hear you on that. Any delay in ripping me off must be very costly — for you.

Social Security, the most prudently managed and economically sound retirement program the country has ever seen, and with the very lowest costs, is preventing you from piling up even more money in your bank accounts. Trust me, I really do understand how you feel:  Financiers desperately wish to get their mitts on American retirements so they can charge all sorts of outrageous fees. And you hate the prospect of having to pay higher taxes in the future if you don’t “fix” Social Security.

I know how diligently you've tried to privatize America's best-loved program in order to get this show going. You must be bone tired! And I also fully get that as rich people interested far more in the size of your bank accounts than anything so trifling as, say, the strength and health of your country, you hate paying taxes of any kind. You deeply resent such citizen responsibilities, and so you want to cut Social Security as quickly as possible (calling your cutting “reform,” you clever marketing devils!) because doing so will lessen your already minuscule tax burden. Your aim is to hurt America’s retirement program to the point where you can bring up your privatization hustle again.]

Does that about sum it up?

The thing is, though, cutting Social Security does not make any economic sense for the other 99 percent of the country. The program is in very good shape, hard-working Americans have paid into it, and if (and that’s a big if) any adjustments need to be made a decade or two down the road, we can talk about it then. For now, the only real justification for cutting seems to be the prospect of fattening your bank accounts. Sorry, not sold. I know that's one less yacht for you but I think you can live with it.

Your fear-mongering pitch to me is filled with all sorts of extraordinary economic predictions, which are all the more amazing as none of you had so much as the ghost of an idea that the financial crisis was coming. But never mind, you in your infinite wisdom know that based on your calculations, if you don’t rob me by cutting Social Security now, I will lose benefits in the future. You may not realize I actually read economic projections written by legitimate economists, who inform me that your predictions are worth about as much as those of a carnival fortune-teller. Probably less.

In their paper, “Deficit Fantasies in the Great Recession,” Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson, both of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, write:

“Current discussions of Social Security [fall] into two groups: One rails on about how ‘runaway entitlements’ are leading to a deficit explosion; while the other advises patronizingly that Social Security can be saved in the long run by timely changes, typically involving a mix of taxes and benefit cuts, including, notably, yet another rise in the age of eligibility for the program. Neither point of view is persuasive.”

The authors explain how the “deficit explosion” story can be immediately dismissed, but you’re probably aware that that particular line isn’t really working anymore, since more Americans have figured out that 1) Social Security has nearly nothing to do with the deficit; and 2) the deficit is rapidly shrinking. Bummer for you!

So you’ve turned to the old lie about Social Security solvency. Unfortunately for you, economists who have looked closely at the issue do not buy it. Ferguson and Johnson write:

"It is true that Social Security tax receipts declined during the Great Recession, so that for the first time since 1983, the program’s outlays exceeded revenues by a small amount. But this in no way threatens the program’s basic solvency. In 1983, Congress enacted into law recommendations of the Greenspan Commission to raise Social Security taxes to cover the retirement bulge coming from baby boomers. Since then, the program has piled up enormous surpluses. These have been invested in government bonds, thus helping to finance the rest of the government.

As the baby boomers mature, the surplus funds will be drawn down. The 2010 Report of the Trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund projects that the Trust Fund and interest earnings from it will suffice to cover all benefit payments until 2037. Even then, the Fund will not be empty – the Trustees Report projects that the Trust Fund would still cover 75% of all benefits due.” [The latest report from 2012 says more or less the same thing].

So listen up, fellas, if we do need to make a little tweak down the road, let’s make a deal. Since taxpayers like me funded the bank bailouts, how about raising the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security tax, which is currently just a little over $100,000? Wait, what’s that you say? You don’t like that because it means that you would pay your share and I would not get screwed. Well, that's not very sporting of you, is it? Seems like the 1 percent has done pretty well over the last few decades.

Overall, though, I must say I am impressed by the consistency of your crystal-ball reading, because your predictions always point miraculously to the same conclusion: “We’ve got to take your money now, because the future is going to be very bad!”

I appreciate your concern. Mugging me now allows me to better plan ahead for a bleak and ill-funded future. Thanks to your consideration, I could go ahead and start purchasing cat food now and perhaps develop a taste for it. But I think I’d rather just hold on to my Social Security if it’s all the same to you. I kind of think that robbing me of a dignified retirement (which, frankly, looks pretty paltry compared to the rest of the civilized world) is not going to do much for the health of the economy or the cohesion of society.

I have this funny feeling that young people forced to take time away from their jobs to care for poverty-stricken parents and more strain on disability rosters (which you are always complaining about, remember?!?) and less money in the pockets of elderly consumers to pay for healthcare and food doesn’t really sound like a good idea.

Let’s be real, boys. You already got away with murder with your swindles leading up to the Great Recession, and you’ve sucked a lot more money out of the pockets of regular folks in the years since then, spreading your embarrassingly discredited austerity messages (how funny was that Stephen Colbert bit on your favorite debunked economists, Reinhart and Rogoff!). You've triumphed in getting teachers laid off and pensions stripped and whatnot. You have been very successful, and you can raise a glass of bubbly to the financial coup you’ve pulled off. There’s not really much more left to rob, in case you haven’t noticed.

But there are limits. A look at history might suggest to you that pillaging too many people of too much for too long may actually result in said people deciding they have had enough of you. Occupy was a hint.

Yet despite the fact that survey after survey reveals Americans do not want to see cuts to Social Security, and in the face of studies by political scientists who prove that such policy views as yours only reflect the designs of the wealthy, you are undeterred. Time, you warn me, is running out if I don’t start playing your tune and ask policy makers to enact these “changes” you insist upon to make you richer.

Here’s a warning from me: With profits for the wealthy at Gilded Age levels, the population looks to be waking up. Time may be running out for you.

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' She received her Ph.d in English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.

On Intervention in Syria - by Art Woodstone

A  Republican senator figures the President will retaliate "in a very surgical and proportional way"  against Assad, sometime in September.

Would that delayed military response be to stop further chemical attacks by the Syrian head man  or simply to get even by killing his supporters too?

Are we so forgetful that we cannot remember where U.S. military intervention in the Middle East  has led us so far? Sure, Assad's  dangerous, a dictatorial madman, but so was Saddam Hussein.   And look where our armed response to that bastard led us: twelve years of warfare in Iraq and thousands of American dead.  Oh, yea, you might argue that we nailed  Saddam, hiding in a hole, surgically and  after months of  delay.  Big satisfaction from small pickin's,

You will be right if you say that we also surgically removed that other madman, Osama bin Laden. We did. He's dead and gone, but his gang of landless live assassins  grows and remains a constant threat from  all points on the globe.

I can find no rational reason we took him out by sending American soldiers to kill him in his Pakistani mansion, unless it was to satisfy  our own  lust for blood and revenge.  We did not lose a single American soldier and that's wonderful but didn't we put them at great risk in order to kill one creep? Where's the logic?

Is it America's job to go around killing symbols?

I can find  no rational reason [unless you trust our military and political leaders to be rational all, or even half, the time] why we are still fighting and dying in Iraq. 

Can you?

We cannot argue [correction: many of you will argue, despite overwhelming evidence of head-on failure and  futility] that  by "policing" villains we gained ground in our quest for the safety and  freedom of Arabs anywhere.  Bush's declared purpose in invading Afghanistan was to stop Taliban cruelty and suppression against its own countrymen and women;   we never did stop the Taliban and the  cruelty  and suppression and murder continue,  yet we're still there, fighting and dying.

What makes Obama so different in that respect from Georgie? Suppose he gets surgical on or after September 9, as the Republican senator expects, what will a surgical strike accomplish? Will that destroy Assad's chemical weapon capability?  Maybe, yes. 

Will it stop the elusive Assad himself, will it end the killing?  On both counts: maybe--probably--no.

Will it give the rebels the push they need to  bring down Assad?  Can we even trust victorious Syrian rebels to align themselves  with the west, or will they, as many reportedly already have, join forces  with terrorists and repay our help  with intensified and expanded hatred and terror against  Americans and our allies?

I exclude our defenses against Al Qaeda and fellow terrorists. Searching out terrorists is not  foolish.  The difference between attacking an Arab country and those  savages is those savages are spread everywhere; their primary aim is to kill us any way and from anywhere they can inhumanly devise.  Will surgery kill them before they kill us?

So I have one last question: what do we have to gain by  militarily taking sides in a single country,  in another uncivil Arab war, for the third time in twelve years,   when the first two prolonged attempts have failed miserably to halt death in Afghanistan and Iraq or the increasingly deadly export  of Muslim  fanaticism?

Art

Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo - by Greg Palast

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine
Thursday, 22 August 2013

When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn't believe it.

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy:  that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet.  When you see 26.3% unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers.  Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank.  If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.

The memo is authentic.

To get that confirmation, I would have to fly to Geneva  and wangle a meeting with the Secretary General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy. I did.  Lamy, the Generalissimo of Globalization, told me,

“The WTO was not created as some dark cabal of multinationals secretly cooking plots against the people…. We don’t have cigar-smoking, rich, crazy bankers negotiating.” 

Then I showed him the memo.

It begins with Summers’ flunky, Timothy Geithner, reminding his boss to call the then most powerful CEOs on the planet and get them to order their lobbyist armies to march:

“As we enter the end-game of the WTO financial services negotiations, I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs….”

To avoid Summers having to call his office to get the phone numbers (which, under US law, would have to appear on public logs), Geithner listed their private lines.  And here they are:

Goldman Sachs:  John Corzine (212)902-8281
Merrill Lynch:  David Kamanski (212)449-6868
Bank of America, David Coulter (415)622-2255
Citibank:  John Reed (212)559-2732
Chase Manhattan:  Walter Shipley (212)270-1380 

Lamy was right: They don’t smoke cigars.  Go ahead and dial them.  I did, and sure enough, got a cheery personal hello from Reed–cheery until I revealed I wasn't Larry Summers.  (Note:  The other numbers were swiftly disconnected. And Corzine can’t be reached while he faces criminal charges.)

It's not the little cabal of confabs held by Summers and the banksters that’s so troubling. The horror is in the purpose of the "end game” itself.

Let me explain:
The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  “derivatives trading.”  JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as “assets.”
Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five:  eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move.    It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous.

How could they pull off this mad caper?  The bankers' and Summers' game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization. 

Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods–that is, my cars for your bananas.  The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in "bads" – toxic assets like financial derivatives.

Until the bankers’ re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders.  The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products.”

And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.

The job of turning the FSA into the bankers’ battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization.

Bankers Go Bananas
Why in the world would any nation agree to let its banking system be boarded and seized by financial pirates like JP Morgan?

The answer, in the case of Ecuador, was bananas.   Ecuador was truly a banana republic.  The yellow fruit was that nation’s life-and-death source of hard currency.  If it refused to sign the new FSA, Ecuador could feed its bananas to the monkeys and go back into bankruptcy.  Ecuador signed.

And so on–with every single nation bullied into signing.  

Every nation but one, I should say.  Brazil’s new President, Inacio Lula da Silva, refused.  In retaliation, Brazil was threatened with a virtual embargo of its products by the European Union's Trade Commissioner, one Peter Mandelson, according to another confidential memo I got my hands on.  But Lula’s refusenik stance paid off for Brazil which, alone among Western nations, survived and thrived during the 2007-9 bank crisis.

China signed–but got its pound of flesh in return.  It opened its banking sector a crack in return for access and control of the US auto parts and other markets.  (Swiftly, two million US jobs shifted to China.)

The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora’s box of worldwide derivatives trade.  Among the notorious transactions legalized: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been Co-Chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation.  Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots.  Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans.  Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swim–and the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany.

Of course, it was not just threats that sold the FSA, but temptation as well.  After all, every evil starts with one bite of an apple offered by a snake.  The apple:  The gleaming piles of lucre hidden in the FSA for local elites.  The snake was named Larry.

Does all this evil and pain flow from a single memo?  Of course not:  the evil was The Game itself, as played by the banker clique.  The memo only revealed their game-plan for checkmate.

And the memo reveals a lot about Summers and Obama.

While billions of sorry souls are still hurting from worldwide banker-made disaster, Rubin and Summers didn’t do too badly.  Rubin’s deregulation of banks had permitted the creation of a financial monstrosity called “Citigroup.”  Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup—which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million.

Then Rubin took on another post:  as key campaign benefactor to a young State Senator, Barack Obama.  Only days after his election as President, Obama, at Rubin’s insistence, gave Summers the odd post of US “Economics Tsar” and made Geithner his Tsarina (that is, Secretary of Treasury).  In 2010, Summers gave up his royalist robes to return to “consulting” for Citibank and other creatures of bank deregulation whose payments have raised Summers’ net worth by $31 million since the “end-game” memo.

That Obama would, at Robert Rubin’s demand, now choose Summers to run the Federal Reserve Board means that, unfortunately, we are far from the end of the game.

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