Remembering 100 Years of Conquered Rule

Ron Holland

"A people should know when they are conquered." Maximus responds, "Would you, would I?" – From the movie, "Gladiator"

One hundred years ago the American republic was overthrown and captured by financial elites and money power during the Taft and Wilson administrations, the first Republican and the second Democrat. Both the Federal Reserve and federal income tax were born and you know the rest of the story consisting of two world wars, the Great Depression and stock market crash, the rise of communism and fascism and the Cold War. Since that time directed current events, history and financial markets have ruled at the expense of free markets and free people.

The minor policy differences with one agenda shared by two different parties and their presidents back during the Taft and Wilson presidencies are somewhat similar to Obama and Romney today, should the GOP win this election. The only real difference is in the political rhetoric preceding the election. The America and republic established by our founding fathers effectively died 100 years ago and real, productive Americans have been a conquered people since that time.


It's Just Parchment, Get Over It

David Michael Green

Last week America engaged in one of its perennial paroxysms of constitutional cogitation – this time over the Obama health care bill – with (mostly) predictable results.

Four of the great legal priests on our High Temple’s Council of Scriptural Interpretation said that, yes, the Affordable Care Act was within the boundaries of what a small collection of men riding horseback to a meeting in Philadelphia one summer two-and-a-quarter centuries ago allow us to do today as a continent-wide superpower society of 300 million people in the age of atom bombs, space travel, heart transplants and genetic engineering. George and John and Thomas say it’s okay, we can have health care. Whew. That’s a relief.

But then four other priests insisted, “Oh, no, this is fundamentally not allowed. Not at all.”

And one apparently went both ways, voting against it before he was for it.

Such, in “the greatest country in the world” – as regressives, doing their national equivalent of Allahu Akbar, seek to assuage their insecurities and reassure themselves by constantly shouting at the rest of us – is the way we determine whether tens of millions of children will or will not receive pediatric care. This – by pondering what would John Hancock do? – is how we figure out whether one-sixth of our population deserves to have their lives lengthened by early cancer detection and intervention, or must instead resort to ‘treatment’ of their already metastasized masses in hospital emergency rooms.

The very fact of this debate and the questions on which it turns tells you far more than you’d care to know about just how great your greatest country is, the one which spends vastly more on health care than any other, but delivers the least to its citizens. But that is the subject of an essay (or six) for another day.


Syria, the story thus far

William Blum


Syrian Rebels/Free Syrian Army/CIA Death Squad
hold up their rifles as they "secure" a street in Saqba,
in Damascus suburbs.
(Reuters/Ahmed Jadallah)

"Today, many Americans are asking — indeed I ask myself," Hillary Clinton said, "how can this happen? How can this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated, and at times, how confounding the world can be." [1]

The Secretary of State was referring to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya September 11 that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans. US intelligence agencies have now stated that the attackers had ties to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.[2]

Yes, the world can indeed be complicated and confounding. But we have learned a few things. The United States began blasting Libya with missiles with the full knowledge that they were fighting on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. Benghazi was and is the headquarters for Muslim fundamentalists of various stripes in North Africa. However, it's incorrect to claim that the United States (aka NATO) saved the city from destruction. The story of the "imminent" invasion of Benghazi by Moammar Gaddafi's forces last year was only propaganda to justify Western intervention. And now the United States is intervening — at present without actual gunfire, as far as is known — against the government of Syria, with the full knowledge that they're again on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. A rash of suicide bombings against Syrian government targets is sufficient by itself to dispel any doubts about that. And once again, the United States is participating in the overthrow of a secular Mideast government.

At the same time, the Muslim fundamentalists in Syria, as in Libya, can have no illusions that America loves them. A half century of US assaults on Mideast countries, the establishment of American military bases in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, and US support for dictatorships and for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians have relieved them of such fanciful thoughts. So why is the United States looking to forcefully intervene once again? A tale told many times — world domination, oil, Israel, ideology, etc. Assad of Syria, like Gaddafi of Libya, has shown little promise as a reliable client state so vital to the American Empire.


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