- Signs of the Times for Mon, 23 Oct 2006 -

• Signs Editorials
• Israel - Psychopathic Nation
• Dictatorship Arrives In America
• Life In Fascist America - Does It Get Any Better?
• Butchering Iraq - US Style
• They Live
• Gangster's Paradise
• Planet Earth On The Edge
• The Age Of Unenlightenment
• Persian Persecution

1. British out now. This is possible, but as the events in Amara on Friday show, will be attended by instability.

2. US and Coalition troops out now: ' "We could pull out now and leave them to their fate," a [British] Foreign Office official said. "But the place could implode." '

3. Phased withdrawal. (Can be easily derailed by events.)

4. Talk to Iran and Syria.

5. Remove Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in favor of a strongman. (Iyad Allawi, the CIA asset and former Baathist thug has been mentioned.)

6. Break-up of Iraq

7. A US retreat to super-bases.

8. One last push.

The most promising thing on the list is talking to Syria and Iran, but apparently even that would be done not by the US but indirectly. I'm not sure indirect contacts are enough. I'm sorry that a continuous and inexorable phased withdrawal of US troops is not on the list. It could be done by making a rule that once the US force level falls to level X, it cannot again exceed that number no matter what. Otherwise, I don't see anything on this list that will help the situation much less resolve it. No. 8, "one last push" is the stupidest and most dangerous tactic of all.

Liz Sly reports on how the prospect of an ethnic and religious partition of Iraq terrifies local Middle Eastern elites, who fear the consequences for other Middle Eastern countries. Ethnically diverse Syria could go in the same direction. Or south Lebanon could become a Shiite mini-state. Sly quotes Syrian President Bashar al-Asad:

'"Imagine a necklace that breaks and all the pearls fall to the ground," he told the German magazine. "Almost all countries have breaking points, and when the ethnic-religious break occurs in one country it will not fail to occur elsewhere too. It would be as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, only much worse. Large wars, small wars: No one will be able to get a grip on the consequences." '

"there is also a risk that neighboring states will seek to pursue their own agendas and turn the country into a regional battleground, said Joost Hiltermann . . . "We'll have a replay of the Iran-Iraq War between the Iranians and the Arab states over what's left of Iraq," he said. And for a part of the world whose borders were drawn less than a century ago by British and French administrators, the consequences could indeed be dire, Hiltermann warned. "Everything here is new, a century old. The system has endured, but once it comes unstuck, anything can be challenged," he said. "It's madness, but if Iraq falls apart madness will rule the day." '

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Editor's Note: And we begin to see how the long-expected "war of Armageddon" will be provoked...
Comment on this Editorial

Editor's note: On Saturday, the Israeli Ambassador to Germany stated that he is concerned for Jews in Germany because of rising anti-semitism there. This claim has been made regularly in the past by Israeli officials in an effort to scare European Jews into returning to Israel. The simple fact of the matter however, and one which anyone with an ounce of common sense can see, is that Israel is the most dangerous place on the planet for any human being, Jewish or otherwise.

The danger presented to the lives of those living in Israel, Palestine and beyond is not, however, due to any so-called 'Arab terrorism' but rather it is the direct result of the oppressive and militaristic policies of the Zionist Israeli government, the very same government that wants to shepherd as many Jews as possible into Israel, apparently for the 'grand finale' when Jews and Arabs alike will be decimiated in the nuclear conflagration that has been a long time in the planning.
Comment on this Editorial

Goldberg got his start as an understudy for the eminent and thus infamous neocon Ben J. Wattenberg. He works behind the scenes at the American Enterprise Institute, the criminal organization in part responsible for the "worthy" mass murder of more than 600,000 Iraqis.

It is said the Los Angeles Times is a "liberal" newspaper, and yet Goldberg is a columnist there, and op-ed columnist Robert Scheer, described as a liberal, was fired for taking Bush to task for his illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq.

In fact, there is not a single "liberal" corporate newspaper in the country, as the entire corporate media is decidedly neocon, that is to say fascist, although occasionally neocon crimes are described as mere peccadilloes in passing, criticism that does not amount to a hill of fetid beans.

Most "liberals" are now neocons, as Goldberg notes.

Goldberg tells us the Iraqis should be allowed to vote up or down on the U.S. occupation of their country. "Polling suggests that they want us to go," avers the deluded neocon. "But polling absent consequences is a form of protest. With accountability, minds may change and appreciation for the U.S. presence might grow."

Of course, this process may be nudged along with the help of a few hundred Diebold voting machines strategically placed. "If Iraqis voted 'stay,' we'd have a mandate to do what's necessary to win, and our ideals would be reaffirmed. If they voted 'go,' our values would also be reaffirmed, and we could leave with honor. And pretty much everyone would have to accept democracy as the only legitimate expression of national will."

How utterly vomitous.

As a self-aggrandizing neocon sociopath, Mr. Goldberg is far more interested in his villainous "ideals" and their supposed reaffirmation, never mind the abominable war crimes-for instance the fact the United States is currently waging nuclear war on the children and unborn of Iraq through depleted uranium contamination. Never mind, as well, the multiple violations of humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, and the Nuremberg conventions, all violated repeatedly in Iraq.

As should be expected, the neocons have turned on Bush, accusing him of squeamishness and lack of intestinal fortitude.

"Those who say that it's not the central front in the war on terror are in a worse state of denial than they think Bush is in. Of course it's the central front in the war on terror. That it has become so is a valid criticism of Bush, but it's also strong reason for seeing our Iraqi intervention through. If we pull out precipitously, jihadism will open a franchise in Iraq and gain steam around the world, and the U.S. will be weakened."

As we know, this "jihadism franchise" was masterminded by the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and Pakistan's ISI, not that we can expect the "liberal" Los Angeles Times to tell us as much, even with the historical record smack dab out there under the unflattering light of day.

Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror" because the neocons declare it such, even though anybody with two brain cells to rub together-and that excludes a few million Americans-realizes with a scant fifteen minutes of research using the Google search engine that there are precious few jihadists in Iraq, only nationalists, albeit of the Ba'athist strain, and of course no shortage of U.S. sponsored black op teams masquerading as "al-Qaeda" and other Wahhabist nutcakes spawned and sponsored by the exceedingly corrupt and murderous monarchy in Saudi Arabia and shipped in for the explicit purpose of balkanizing Iraq.

Naturally, Mr. Goldberg, who obviously hates Muslims and subscribes to the "clash of civilizations" agenda for total and unremitting war, does not remind us that Saddam killed fanatical Islamist terrorists when and where he found them and hated Osama bin Laden (no doubt, as a former intelligence asset, Saddam recognized a CIA plant when he saw one).

If jihadist terrorism, as Goldberg claims, is the reason "we" are in Iraq-an excuse right behind weapons of mass destruction, followed by bestowing democracy of benighted Arabs, oh never mind-the neocons would have done much better by leaving Saddam Hussein in place.

But then the invasion and occupation has nothing to do with any of these things. It's all about Israeli hegemony and making damn sure the noxious war class, rife with mass murder profiteers, in connivance with oil barons, the whole lot of them scurrilous psychopaths, get what they came for, that is to dismember Iraq, chop it into three bloody and mutually hostile pieces, and steal everything of value while leaving behind the wholesale destruction of human infrastructure and scattering from top to bottom radiological death for a few billion years (the half life of depleted uranium is 4.5 billion years), crimes that indeed make the Nazis pale by way of comparison.

Not that any of this matters. Because, soon enough, truthful words such as these will be waterboarded away, as fascists and corporate authoritarians, when given the chance, invariably eradicate the truth tellers and those who stick their heads up, thinking not of self-preservation. Of course, that is what the Military Commissions Act is all about, not Muslim terrorists, most of them engineered by the CIA, the Pentagon, MI6, Mossad, and a vile sprinkling of others.

In fact, when you think about it, this blog is an exercise in futility, as even the supposed "liberals" opposed to Bush, who are neocons with a bit of sugar coating, will not allow voices of reason and sanity a scant moment of exposure on the corporate soap box.

It's not the policies of the neocons, per se, according to the neocon lib lites, but rather a managerial problem, as John "Skull and Bones" Kerry, Bush's distant cousin, told us during the last "election," that is to say the last time the Diebold voting machines, easier to hack than a standard PC with even a wimpy firewall, were rolled out in Ohio and, shamefully, here in New Mexico (shameful because nobody complained or did anything about the obvious thievery, including the Democrats who were ripped off, thus demonstrating their complete and utter spinelessness and criminal acquiescence).

No, none of this matters, and may be considered an exercise in mental masturbation, because the neocons are firmly in control of the horizontal and vertical.

I am, however, amazed they have allowed blogs such as this to exist-but then, as this blog gets around 2,000 unique hits per day, and the population surpassed 300 million the other day, and 50 or 60 million of these are rabid, plastic flag (made in China by slaves) waving zombies, it is so marginalized and unimportant as to not really pose a threat.

Of course, down the road, as the fascist state becomes more aggressive and fanatical, all opposition will be rubbed out in predictable fashion, as history repeatedly demonstrates.

On that day, as most of us disappear into the night and fog with nary a bleat, the neocons will raise a champagne glass in celebration.

In the not too distant future, after these monsters have reduced the planet to a smoldering nightmare, their children, instead of chorusing songs of praise, as the neocons promise, will instead be pissing on their gravestones, cursing the whole while.

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Comment on this Editorial

Are we moving towards a lawless world in which only countries with second-strike nuclear capability will have real national sovereignty? Some countries seem to think that the only way a country can be protected from the actions of international (nuclear) bullies is to acquire the deterrence that having nuclear weapons offers. Countries such as North Korea, Iran, Israel, Brazil and others seem to have reached the conclusion that in a world where international law is violated with impunity and where the United Nations Charter is a dead letter, a government that does not plan for the acquisition of nuclear armaments is derelict in its duties toward its citizens. In fact, it is estimated that between 30 and 40 non-nuclear countries have the technical skill, and in some cases the required material, to build an atomic bomb.-What is required for these countries to jump onto the nuclear wagon is a few more years of irresponsible U.S. foreign policy.

On October 9, 2006, the relatively small Communist country of North Korea (DPRK) (population 23 million) announced that it had completed its first test of a low-yield nuclear device in an underground facility, thus presumably entering the club of countries with nuclear capabilities (USA, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel). The North Korean government said that it conducted the test to demonstrate its military technology in the face of perceived threats from the United States. This led the U.N. Security Council to adopt sanctions against North Korea, under its U.N. resolution 1718, which in effect imposes a dangerous naval blockade of the country, but ironically rules out expressly military action against it. In fact, however, such an embargo may lead to a military conflict on the Korean peninsula. Therefore, even though only 5 percent of Americans favor a military conflict with North Korea, in the end, that is likely what the American people are going to get. Indeed, if the U.N. resolution about boarding and searching ships bound for and leaving North Korea is implemented too aggressively, the risk of a military incident is very high.

The Neocons in the U.S. administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, never believed in the use of negotiations, to settle conflicts. Their favorite way has always been the bullying way. -As a matter of fact, the U.S. government has refused to negotiate directly with the North Korean government since 2001, raising the worst fears in the latter. Indeed, in March 2001, then Undersecretary of State for Nonproliferation John Bolton willfully sabotaged any diplomatic effort to address North Korea's fears. Diplomatic talks with North Korea were suspended, and in his State of the Union Address of January 2002, George W. Bush labeled North Korea, in his inflammatory language, as one of the three legs of the "Axis of Evil." This brinkmanship approach to international relations was in clear contrast to the approach of the Clinton administration, which carried on productive bilateral talks with Pyongyang.

In 1994, for example, the U.S. persuaded North Korea to stop work on the nuclear power plant it was building, in exchange for the U.S. building cold-water reactors that would give North Korea the electric power it needed. But the Neocon Bush-Cheney administration was not interested in such a reasonable approach and went full speed ahead with its right-wing foreign policy agenda, even going as far as refusing to talk to North Korean officials.

Year after year, the club of nuclear-weapons countries keeps getting larger and larger as more countries embark upon a strategy of nuclear deterrence to protect themselves from larger countries that indicate openly their willingness to act as imperial powers, somewhat along the lines of the old empires of the 19th century. Understandingly, some governments think it is their paramount duty to protect their country from foreign imperial domination.

In principle, any nation is entitled to possess nuclear weapons for its own defense. But to avoid a dangerous proliferation of nuclear arms, many nations chose not to have them and elected instead to rely on international law to preserve national sovereignties. That is what happened in 1968 when most sovereign nations signed the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Today, 188 nations have signed the NPT, but India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korean are not recognizing it. The purpose was to simultaneously attempt to reduce and disarm existing nuclear stockpiles without blocking the production of peaceful nuclear energy. Indeed, the Treaty contained three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament, and the right to use nuclear technology peacefully. -This meant that non-nuclear nations accepted not to develop nuclear weapons on their own, while the existing so-called nuclear powers committed themselves not to "induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to ... acquire nuclear weapons." Implicitly, it was understood that no country would ever use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

In 1975, in a parallel agreement, some 44 nuclear-supplier states voluntarily accepted to coordinate their controls regarding the export of nuclear-related materials, equipment, and technology. These so-called NSG members, including the United States, are expected to forgo nuclear trade with governments that do not subject themselves to the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards regime, while the IAEA has the responsibility for verifying that these countries' exports are not used by the importing state for any military purpose.

The Bush-Cheney administration is the principal culprit behind the present rush toward nuclear weapons because it has violated both the spirit and the letter of the Non proliferation treaty (NPT). Indeed, it gave a very bad example in announcing, in its 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, that first, it was keeping its nuclear options wide open, including the use of nuclear weapons in response to chemical or biological attacks or unspecified "surprising military developments", and second, that the U.S could seek to develop, and possibly test, new types of nuclear weapons in the future, such as "mini-nukes" to attack underground bunkers.

Considering that the Bush-Cheney administration has adopted a policy of preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states as an integral part of its global military strategy, it should surprise no one that a nuclear weapons arms race is now going full speed ahead among some smaller nations, anxious to protect themselves from foreign interference or foreign blackmail.

Moreover, it can be argued that the United States has also violated the Non proliferation treaty (NPT) when it signed, on March 2, 2006, a nuclear cooperation agreement with India, which has obvious military applications. Indeed, by agreeing to supply nuclear reactors, fuel and expertise to help India produce larger quantities of plutonium, without insisting that India sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Bush-Cheney administration has given the appearance of 'rewarding' India for its non compliance with the NPT. This is on top of the fact that the U.S. has, for years, assisted the government of Israel in building its stockpile of nuclear bombs, without insisting that the latter country join the NPT. -Therefore, it can be said that the genie is out of the bottle and it is difficult to see how it could be put back in. -Other nuclear powers have followed on the American path. Great Britain and France, for example, have indicated that they may use nuclear weapons in response to a non-conventional attack by "rogue states". -The introduction of such preemptive-strike doctrines and the adoption of external threatening postures in the affairs of other sovereign states have considerably reduced the legitimacy and logic of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation (NPT). In fact, it may have emasculated it.

What is even more problematic is the fact that some of the countries that are not party to the NP Treaty (Israel, India, Pakistan) have developed nuclear weapons programs of their own, without being subjected to sanctions, while other countries trying to do the same thing (North Korea and Iran) have been threatened with pressures and retaliation. This smacks of a double standard and has considerably reduced confidence in the fairness of international agreements.

What would seem to be badly needed is some international political leadership along with some vision to convene an international conference with the main purpose of outlawing nuclear wars once and for all, and for destroying all stocks of nuclear weapons. Without such a bold move, the nuclear arms race will only intensify in the coming years, significantly raising the risk of a nuclear conflagration.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at tremblay.rodrigue@yahoo.com He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'

Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.

Author's Website: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/

Gold closed at 595.00 dollars an ounce on Friday, up 0.2% from $593.70 at the close of the previous week. The dollar closed at 0.7926 euros Friday, down 0.8% from 0.7992 euros at the close of the Friday before. That put the euro at 1.2617 dollars compared to 1.2513 at the end of the week before. Gold in euros would be 471.59 euros an ounce, down 0.6% from 474.47 for the week. Oil closed at 59.25 dollars a barrel Friday, up 0.9% from $58.70 at the end of the week before. Oil in euros would be 46.96 euros a barrel, up 0.1% from 46.91 for the week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 10.04 Friday down 0.7% from 10.11 at the close of the previous Friday. In the U.S. stock market the Dow closed over 12,000 for the first time, ending the week at 12,002.37, up 0.3% from 11,960.51 for the week. The NASDAQ closed at 2,342.30 Friday, down 0.6% from 2,357.29 at the close of the Friday before. In U.S. interest rates the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.78%, down two basis points from 4.80 for the week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average in the United States hit a record high this week. It was the same week that the Iraq War became so bad even the United States mainstream media couldn't ignore the complete disaster it has become. The media makes sure to keep news of the war and news of the economy separate, but the contrast became inescapable this week.

Surges: the Dow and the Death Count

By Missy Comley Beattie

October 20 / 22, 2006

The Dow Jones Industrial average is surging. So is the death count in Iraq. Ten U.S. troops were killed on Tuesday and two died Wednesday, bringing the total for October to seventy-one. Almost 1,000 Iraqis have perished in the last 18 days.

Yet investors are happy. And according to one heavily eye-shadowed television anchor, the man on the street will be as well. There is optimism about corporate earnings.

Twelve families have just heard the words, "We regret to inform you." The Dow could skyrocket to the ozone but life for these families is filled with pain. Life is painful for all families who have lost so much in this senseless war of deception. Sympathy cards say, "May your memories bring you comfort." They don't. They bring a longing for days when those children inside the flag-draped coffins were alive, living their dreams and looking forward to their futures.

The stock market is surging. Sectarian violence has been surging for months. Iraq is in a civil war and no matter what George Bush says about our mission there, he is a failed president with the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands. James Baker calls Iraq a 'helluva mess.' Bush says it's the central front in the war on terror. Experts now tell us that there will be no democracy in Iraq. They, also, have told us that this war has increased terrorism and we are less safe as a result...

Maybe the coincidence is more than dark irony. Maybe there is a direct relation between corporate profitability and wars. In fact, the line of causation probably goes in both directions. Wars are always good for corporate profits and corporate profits drive stock prices. But the disastrous Iraq War has created a political crisis in the United States just before an election. The entire political class (both parties), having spent over a decade pushing war on Iraq, must now be fearing a vengeful public. Better pump the economy with money and lower energy prices!

Where will the economy and the stock market go after the election? Some see more turbulence, with wild swings in different directions, sort of like what Earth's weather will do.

Going, Going, Gold

by The Mogambo Guru

With a bleary, jaundiced eye, I wearily note that Total Fed Credit is up $4.4 billion, to a total of $829.64 billion, making it look like they are moving back into the "inflation or die!" mode. But maybe not, since judging by their track record for the last decade, TFC should be up to around $850 billion or so. Or more. But it ain't.

But this seeming lack of new TFC is important because, if you care to check, you will notice that the Fed stopped increasing TFC in February 2000, clearly coincidental with the crash of 2000, where lots of people lost tons of money. Now, something bad may get ready to happen again, and if the Fed doesn't start jamming money down people's throats pretty soon (and making them spend it) the stock market will soon be toast.

Not surprisingly, I also note that foreign central banks put a whopping $13 billion into their accumulated Fed holdings of US securities last week. Thirteen billion dollars! In one week! After taking out $12 billion the week before! This is the same worrying kind of turbulence that fluid systems exhibit right before breaking up in a chaotic, catastrophic event.

Putting words in the mouth of Sol Palha of the Tactical Investor, he thus notes in his essay "Dow 14660 Has Come And Gone" that the handsome, dashing, charming Mogambo was right, both about how his blue eyes merrily twinkle under the starlight, and about this chaos/ turbulence/ volatility thing, too, when he says, "The next few months are going to be packed with extreme volatility; expect the volatility to increase by a factor of two to three."

If you want a real piece of Federal Reserve stupidity, then tune in to MarketWatch.com to read what Fed chief Ben Bernanke said in a speech about the lack of household savings in America: "Unfortunately, many years of concentrated attention on this issue by policymakers and economists have failed to uncover a silver bullet for increasing household saving." Hahaha! What a moron!

I have a Hot Mogambo Tip (HMT) for this Bernanke birdbrain: How about not constantly increasing money and credit, which makes the monetary aggregates go up, which makes prices go up, which strains the family budget so that they have to spend more and more (and thus can save less and less) just to stay at a standard-of-living standstill? How about trying that for a change, you Fed morons?

And as if to underscore my fear, consumers now owe so much money that they are even having a hard time going deeper into debt! As astonishing as that sounds, News@yahoo.com reports "consumer borrowing rose at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in August, compared to a 4.3 percent rate of increase in July. Borrowing in the category that includes credit cards rose at an annual rate of 4.2 percent in August, following a gain of 4.7 percent in July." Nevertheless, "Total consumer debt rose by $4.99 billion at an annual rate to an all-time high of $2.35 trillion in August."

...One reason that these foreigners are in the debt soup is because prices are up, which is because, as Jim Willie CB of the Hat Trick Letter newsletter reports, "Central banks worldwide have grown the money supply in reckless fashion in the last year. The pace ranges from a seemingly modest 8.5% in [the] European Union, a modest 7.5% in Australia, and roughly 9% in the United States. Check this! Money supply growth is up to 18.4% in China, 19.1% in India, and a whopping 23.2% in South Africa. These are staggering numbers. Without fanfare, Russia has increased its money supply by almost 45%."

And why is this happening? Perhaps Bill Bonner at DailyReckoning.com has hit the proverbial "nail on the head" when he notes, "We did not expect the market to hold up as long as it has. Our error was one of over-estimating the good sense of our fellow man. He is a bigger blockhead than we ever thought. Given the lure of easy credit, ARMs, and 'stated income' lending - he took the bait greedily. Now, he's on the line for more money than any man in history...with no greater income than he had before to pay it off."

He goes on to say that "poor Mr. Typical has not had a wage increase since 1972, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's website. He earned the equivalent of $334.60 a week back 24 years ago. Now, the figure is just $277.96." Hahaha! Welcome to the world of inflation, Mr. and Ms. Typical! What do you think of the Federal Reserve now? Hahahaha! I thought so! Now you are on the path to achieving True Mogambo Enlightenment (TME)!

And when you are paying those outrageous credit-card bills and higher taxes with less real (inflation-adjusted) income, you will more completely understand it when reader Ed informs us that "the word 'usury' in the Hebrew concordance means 'the sting of the serpent' or 'snakebite.'" Thus, he says, "The interest on our national debt, our mortgages, and our credit cards are killing us."

... [Axel Merk, of the Merk Hard Currency Fund] goes on to say that the imbalances in the economy are so severe, thanks to the loathsome Federal Reserve financing the explosion in the size of the government, that "in the absence of an agreement on entitlement reform, the politically most convenient solution is a devaluation of the dollar. In such a scenario, nominal promises can be kept, but the purchasing power[s] of benefits erode. While this is a likely scenario, it is a risky one as side effects may include significant inflation."

Hahaha! Did he really say "may include significant inflation"? I stand tall to tell you the Transcendent Mogambo Truth (TMT)! It WILL be inflationary, as there is no other possible result from all that new money chasing a static supply of goods and services!

Of course, all this bidding up of prices is the horror of inflation that compels me to hide under the stairs, heavily armed, wearing a tinfoil hat and whimpering in fear; and it's made worse by Richard Russell, of the Dow Theory Letters, when he writes "The current reasonably accurate inflation number is seven percent. The current estimation of the M-3 money supply is nine percent. The only thing holding back massive price inflation today is the massive over-supply of goods. So today we have the almost unprecedented situation of too much money confronting too many goods. The result is a highly unstable market with accompanying massive speculation and leverage."

But before I can really get up a good head of steam and vent some hysterical outrage about how massive deflation and roaring inflation will consume all of us in a bonfire of monetary stupidity, it suddenly occurs to me that not only can we smelly, stinky, lowlife peons now look forward to more and more suffering as inflation starts really catching fire, but we are ALREADY suffering. As Justice Litle Outstanding Investments newsletter reports, "U.S. corporations are bursting with cash, but that is because consumers' pockets have been voluntarily emptied. The talking heads have never bothered to examine this curious point: the biggest run of corporate profits in history and the biggest run of consumer borrowing in history happened at the same time. This is another monster imbalance, with [an] ultimately ugly consequence, that doesn't get much press."

...Jason Furman at CBPP.org is one the guys talking about the rise in the nominal Dow Industrial average, which conveniently neglects to adjust the Dow for the changes in the buying power of the dollar (inflation), or mention the other stock indexes.

Mr. Furman says, "The Dow Jones Industrial Average, adjusted for inflation, is down 17 percent from its all-time high on January 14, 2000. It would need to rise another 2,378 points to set a new record, adjusted for inflation. The broader stock market is even further below its 2000 peak. The Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, which tracks more than 5,000 stocks and is the most comprehensive measure of the U.S. Stock Market, is 23 percent below its record close on March 24, 2000, after adjusting for inflation."

Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital notes that, "priced in British pounds, Canadian or Australian dollars, or euros, at 11,850 the Dow is still below its 2000 peak by approximately 25%, 26% and 32% respectively."

Michael Nystrom at BullNotBull.com is pretty hip to this black-box/computer program trading jazz, and says "So much of today's program-based trading keys off momentum. This creates a positive feedback loop that sends stocks to new highs and buys any dips before they materialize...[so] after making a tentative new high on the Dow, phony or not, this market has the potential to move a lot higher." The lesson, he says, is to "never argue with new highs! Phony or not, what we have are new highs. If you're a bear, get out of the way."

Biz.yahoo.com reports "Congressional estimators" are saying that "the federal budget deficit estimate for the fiscal year just completed has dropped to $250 billion." Hahaha! Lies, smoke and mirrors are one thing, so let's take a look at the actual Gross National Debt. Instantly, you notice that we are, thanks to Congress, $620 billion deeper in debt over the same "fiscal year just completed." Hahaha! How in the hell can you be $620 billion deeper in debt and still say, without your tongue leaping out of your mouth in shame, that the "budget deficit" is only $250 billion? Do you mean that you meant to go into debt by $370 billion, and ended up borrowing $620 billion by accident or something?

But although they spent every dime and borrowed another $620 billion, tax receipts are up $253 billion, a big 12% over last year. What a lousy return on investment!

The budget is now about $2.7 trillion dollars, and with a population of only 300 million, that comes to $9,000 per man, woman and child in the country. So, for every family of three, the federal government is spending $27,000! And this does not even include how much money each little town, city, county or state is spending per capita by issuing bonds! And somehow we American idiots think that we can continue this stupidity indefinitely? I reiterate, "Americans are morons!"

Or, as Bill Buckler of the Privateer newsletter explains, with all the fudging, lying, and outright deceit running rampant today, "We are all in the middle of history's biggest ever 'Potemkin Village' - a prosperous looking facade designed and erected to disguise the financial ruins behind it."

For those who had the smarts to load up on gold in the recent downdraft, you did the right thing, as that trend will probably reverse, if I can surmise from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph UK. He writes "Central banks may have dumped far more gold on the markets over the last three weeks than officially reported, accounting for the sudden plunge in prices that has stunned investors. Barclays Capital said Europe's banks had sold an extra 100 tonnes from reserves in a rush to meet a quota deadline on Sept 26, but had done so by selling through forward contracts that disguised the effect. The huge sales would help explain gold's brutal fall from $640 an ounce in early September to $559 an ounce this week, an effect compounded in recent days by hedge fund liquidation."

Philip Klapwijk, chairman of the precious metals group GFMS, has the opinion that bullion would soon resume its five-year bull market. "The game is not over for gold," he said. "We've still got a big dollar devaluation ahead."

Reader Larry J. has been connecting dots, too, and says that he thinks that there is something weird involving Toronto Scotia Mocatta Bullion, the Bank of Nova Scotia, and the Royal Bank, who are he says, having a hard time getting, or filling small investor's orders for silver. "The fact remains that when one of the world's largest bullion banks - on COMEX and the LBMA - cannot supply these small orders, then we can safely say that we are, [for] all intents and purposes, out of the metal."

Roger Wiegand Trader Tracks writes "The American stock markets are peaking for several reasons. First and foremost is the non-confirmation of the transportation index. If transports are lousy, the stuff they normally haul is not being hauled. If goods are not moved, this means no sales as buyers are gone. This is fact, not guessing. CNBS reported this morning Wal-Mart was off two percent. Wal-Mart is a retail sales proxy for all of America as they are the largest in the USA both for employment and retail sales. Trends are screaming stagflation as the economy stagnates while prices of food, energy, real estate taxes and services are racing higher."

SafeHaven.com gives us an "Interesting Picture of the US Bond Markets" by Pinank Mehta of Metier Capital Management. He says, "The current Long 'Open' Interest in 10-year US treasury bonds is greater than SIX Standard Deviations (12 SIGMA)!!!!!!!" Please note the use of the extremely rare seven exclamation points, a literary device to denote particular emphasis, in this case to alert you to prepare for the next sentence, which is that "the odds of a 6-Sigma event are one in 500 million, or 1.37 million years, so it will be exponentially higher for a 12 Sigma event." I don't know about you, but when I read that, sphincters tightened up.

From John William's Shadow Government Statistics we learn that "the broad outlook for a deepening inflationary recession remains in place. Confirming the extremely bleak employment picture, the August help wanted advertising index dropped to 31, from 32 in July, and from 34 in June. The August level is the lowest reading since April 1961." I gasp! 1961?

"Risks of recession continuing to rise, economy is slowing, showing warning flags" says Will Deener of the Dallas Morning News. He reports that "new-car sales are down about 5 percent from a year ago. This has happened six times over the past 40 years, and in every instance the economy was either lapsing into recession or already in recession."

In a related story, reader Titus N. writes, "I received an email from a friend whose friend works in a credit union and does car loans. She said that they do 15 applications per day on a normal day. Last week they did ZERO."

James Stack, a market historian and editor of InvesTech Research hears us talking about this recession stuff, and adds "Not one recession in the past 50 years was forecast in advance by a major poll of economic forecasters", but that the inversion of the yield curve did, and that "The yield curve shows an 88 percent probability of a recession beginning sometime between now and the end of next year."

The prospect of much greater economic dislocation may be one reason why the government has been quietly eliminating citizen's rights under the guise of fighting terrorism: they may soon have to put down uprisings by foreclosed, unemployed, angry and hungry citizens, and not just in the United States, but also in social democratic Europe:

A devastating indictment of the former SPD-Green government

By Ulrich Rippert
20 October 2006

Stark figures from a still unpublished study by the Friedrich Ebert Institute (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung - FES), which has close ties to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), were revealed last weekend. The statistics immediately unleashed a torrent of debate. The FES report bears the headline "Society during the reform process" and makes clear that mass poverty is growing rapidly in Germany.

Eight percent of the population - i.e. 6.5 million people - are forced to live on an average monthly income of 424 euros (US$535) or less. Poverty is growing especially rapidly in the east of the country with up to twenty percent - other reports even speak of 25 percent - of the population living in poverty in the states of what was formerly East Germany (DDR).

Although the study originates from the SPD headquarters, the figures released so far represent a devastating indictment of the seven-year rule by Germany's former SPD-Green government (1998-2005). This government, led by Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer, was responsible for the most dramatic redistribution of wealth from the less well off to the rich and corresponding social disaster in the history of postwar Germany.

The job market "reforms" introduced by the SPD-Green government created conditions whereby those with relatively well-paid jobs, such as skilled workers, technicians or even engineers, could undergo a rapid descent into poverty should they lose their job. After just twelve or at the most 18 months of regular unemployment benefits, the jobless then become dependent on so-called Unemployment Pay 2, which corresponds to former levels of basic social welfare. At the same time such payments are only made if "need" is identified - i.e. when the unemployed person has expended all of his or her personal savings.

A thoroughly hypocritical debate

Following the publication of some of the FES report's findings, representatives from Germany's major political parties quickly expressed their concern and worries. The response to the report in the form of statements of concern and expressions of surprise over the extent of mass poverty in Germany has been characterised by utter cynicism and hypocrisy.

The chairman of the SPD, Kurt Beck, was one of the first to respond. He told the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung that he was "deeply concerned" about the emergence of a social "underclass," which is unable to break out of a vicious circle of inadequate education, unemployment, poverty and frustration. His comments simply ignore the fact that, as the prime minister of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate for many years, Beck played a key role in the SPD executive in developing, defending against criticism and vigorously implementing the party's so-called "Agenda 2010."

A response to Beck's comments came from the head of the conservative parliamentary fraction, Volker Kauder, who fulsomely stressed the importance of a debate over the "new socially deprived class." He regarded the term "underclass" for such people as inappropriate and strictly rejected it. "This expression stigmatises and ensures that one can no longer reach these people. I prefer to speak of people with social and integration problems," Kauder continued, and demanded "concrete assistance with integration."

While politicians were arguing about the term "underclass," the president of the German Chamber for Industry and Commerce, Ludwig George Braun, intervened in the debate to warn against any increase in social security benefits for the unemployed and the poor. The problem had to be tackled "at the root," he emphasised and that means "more education and not more social welfare payments." According to Braun the plight of those condemned to long-term unemployment and poverty has its origins in "an inheritance over decades of bad education."

In light of the obvious responsibility of the Schröder-Fischer government for this situation, the outgoing chair of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), Ursula Engelen Kefer, referred to that government's "misplaced labour policy." Kefer told German radio that the expansion of 400 euro (US$505) low-wage jobs and so-called "one-man companies" under the SPD and Greens had helped to expand "the low wage sector and poverty."

Kefer failed to mention, however, that the trade unions had largely supported all the social cuts incorporated in Agenda 2010. Instead she declared that as a member of the SPD's executive committee she was very pleased that her party was now beginning to address the problem. Another SPD deputy, Otmar Schreiner, who is speaker of the SPD working group for employee issues, made similar comments. He also spoke of a hopeful step being made by the SPD.

Fear of radicalization

In fact, the entire debate is politically farcical because the figures revealed by the FES study - based on what we know so far - are neither new nor surprising. The real reason for the phoney display of concern on the part of the politicians is due to the fact that the political consequences of the social crisis in Germany are increasingly obvious. Broad sections of the working population are turning away from the traditional parties.

Since the start of the "grand coalition" between the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats (CDU) at the end of last year - in fact, a conspiracy against the German working class - the two parties have lost a total of nearly 40,000 members. Since German reunification in 1990 the SPD has lost more than 40 percent of its membership (over 400,000).

In Senate elections held last month in Berlin, the SPD was able to improve its share of the vote by around one percent. However, when one takes into account the drastic decline in voter turnout, the party actually lost 57,718 votes. In elections in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania the SPD lost a total of 146,806 votes and in the national elections one year ago a total of 2.3 million votes.

For decades in Germany after the war political stability was guaranteed by a welfare state providing a large degree of social security, watched over by the so-called People's Parties - the SPD, the Christian Democrats and the Christian Social Union (CSU) - representing a broad variety of political programs. The latest figures over social inequality and mass poverty make clear that this period is finally at an end.

Last year, when the SPD and Greens were still in government, an official report was published on poverty and wealth, which revealed that the proportion of the population officially living below the poverty line had risen from 12.1 percent in 1998 (the start of the government) to 13.5 percent - i.e. every eighth household (around eleven million people). The poverty line is based on those earning less than 60 percent of average income, i.e. under 938 (US$1,185) euros monthly.

A few months later the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) actually estimated the level of poverty at 16 percent - based on statistics from the year 2004 - compared to 11.5 percent in 1999. That figure, according to the Institute, increased by half a percent in the course of 2005 alone - to 16.5 percent. And, according to the DIW, the newly incorporated states of the former DDR were even worse off, with poverty rates of 21.5 percent.

At the same time, the concentration of wealth increased at the top of society. The richest ten percent of households control approximately 47 percent of private wealth, an increase of approximately two percent since 1998. Meanwhile the number of indebted households has increased from 2.77 to 3.13 million.

When these figures were made known at the end of last year the main political parties unanimously declared there was no alternative to the existing policies.

Since then the social divisions in Germany have become even more pronounced. The salaries of executive board members of the 30 enterprises listed on the DAX (stock performance index) rose 11 percent last year to an average of three million euros (US$3.8 million). According to a study published by the leading German association of private investors (DSW) earlier this week, the Commerzbank increased the salaries of its executive board members by a staggering 175 percent.

The biggest earners were to be found at the Deutsche Bank, where an ordinary member of the board earns 3.83 million euros (US$4.84 million - an increase of 26 percent), and chief executive Josef Ackermann takes home 8.4 million euros (US$10.6 million) - not including his share options and retirement funds. In second place were executives at the software producer SAP (3.18 million - US$4.02 million), ahead of Daimler Chrysler (nearly 3 million euros - US$3.8 million).

In the case of many companies and banks, these increases for leading executives are the reward for their role in implementing mass redundancies and cuts for their own employees.

The fact is that social decline and the increasing pauperization of ever-broader layers of population is the result of a deliberate policy, which was implemented against fierce popular opposition. Thousands took part in demonstrations and protests against the Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV laws.

Following increasing opposition to its anti-social policies and drastic defeats for the SPD in a series of local elections, chancellor Schröder called early elections with the intention of handing over power to the conservative opposition. Following the creation of the "grand coalition" in the winter of 2005, the SPD subsequently took over key ministries in order to press ahead with the social and welfare cuts embodied in its Agenda 2010 program.

The current debate over increasing social decline and instability does not mean that any change of political course will be undertaken - quite the opposite. Above all, the issue at stake for the ruing elite is how to suppress the anticipated resistance to such policies.

Calls for a strong state

Public confidence in existing political relations is declining rapidly. According to a recent joint report by the Federal Statistical Office and the Federal Centre for Political Education, certain layers of the population are increasingly disappointed with "democracy" and all of the political parties. In a recent poll, just 38 percent of those living in the states of former East Germany regarded democracy as the best system of government.

The report concludes that the state must intensify its intervention with regard to education and job provision. The gaps in the existing social fabric are too large and have to be systematically closed. Any guarantee of state subsidies had to be increasingly coupled to the readiness to work. The arguments employed in the report increasingly make the case for a type of national labour service.

A development arising from the globalization of production, which has already far progressed in many other countries, is now taking affect in Germany - after some delay - and proving to have explosive force. The ruling elite is very conscious of the social implications of such a development and is making the necessary preparations. Working groups have been established in the Ministries of the Interior, Justice and Defence for the purpose of changing the German constitution and permitting the use of the army for domestic interventions "for direct protection against attacks on the foundations of the community."

Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Constitutional Law Professor, was Olbermann's guest. Olbermann asked him, "Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?"

Turley responded, "It does. And it's a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president . . . People have no idea how significant this is. What really a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values."

Although we have a free press, rather than follow Olbermann's good example, most television news reporters have responded to this nullification of America's fundamental principles by avoiding the subject. News networks, which voluntarily relinquish their right and duty to challenge government officials function more as the Soviet Union's Pravda or Hitler's Nazi press program than as a genuinely free press.

Just as the mainstream media failed to adequately question the Bush administration's many shifting rationales for invading Iraq in the lead-up to the war, they're now failing to challenge Bush's logic and motives as he justifies eviscerating the Constitution in the name of his ever-expanding "war on terror." How realistic is this so-called war, and is the Bush administration conducting it effectively?

Robert Dreyfuss covers national security for Rolling Stone. He interviewed nearly a dozen former high-ranking counterterrorism officials about Bush's approach to the war on terrorism. In his article, "The Phony War," (Rolling Stone, 9/21/06) Dreyfuss says these officials conclude:

• The war on terror is bogus. Terrorism shouldn't be treated as if it were a nation to be battled with the military, but should instead be fought with police work and intelligence agencies.
  
  
• Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method. Even if the United States were to wipe out every terrorist cell in the world today, terrorism would be back tomorrow.
  
  
• Bush lacks a clear understanding of the nature of the "enemy" and has no real strategy for dealing with it.
  
  
• The Bush administration confuses the issue by grouping "Al Qaeda" with everything from Iraq's resistance movement to states such as Syria and Iran.
  
  
• Today, there's virtually no real "Al Qaeda threat" to Americans.
  
  
• Bush's policies have spawned a new generation of "amateur terrorists," but there are few of them, and they're not likely to pose a major threat to the U.S.
  
  
• Though Bush has said he will fight his "war" until every last terrorist is eliminated, terrorism can never be defeated, merely "contained and reduced."

Dreyfuss says, "In the short term, the cops and spies can continue to do their best to watch for terrorist threats as they emerge, and occasionally, as in London, they will succeed. But they are the first to admit that stopping a plot before it can unfold involved, more than anything, plain dumb luck."

Not only has the Bush administration falsely characterized and exaggerated the threat of terrorism; they have gone out of their way to mislead the public by claiming credit for preventing attacks. Dreyfuss points out that although Bush has claimed we've fended off 10 terrorist plots since 9/11, "on closer examination all 10 are either bogus or were to take place overseas."

Dreyfuss also notes that although, in 2002, the Bush administration leaked to the press that Al Qaeda had 5,000 "sleepers" in the U.S., there were, in fact, none. (Or, as Dreyfuss says, not a single one has been found.) If the administration believes the facts bolster their case for a war on terrorism, why do they find it necessary to leak false information?

The administration has done little to secure U.S. borders, ports, airports and nuclear facilities. What could logically explain their inattention to these vulnerabilities if they believe a terrorist threat here is likely? Bush has said he'll do anything it takes in order to protect the American people. Why hasn't he secured our nuclear facilities?

Exaggerating the terrorist threat does give the Bush team an excuse to seize more power for the Executive and shred the Constitution. In an article for Foreign Affairs (September/October 2006), political science professor John Mueller supports Dreyfuss's view that the war on terrorism is bogus.

Mueller points out that not only have there been no terrorist incidents here in the past five years, but there were none in the five years before 9/11. Mueller asks: "If it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could be so easily exploited?"

He also bolsters Dreyfuss's conclusion that the Bush administration can't take credit for the fact that we haven't been attacked again. He says that "the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect to thwart all such plans. Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched."

Mueller addresses Bush's irrational argument that we're "fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here." He points out that terrorists with Al Qaeda sympathies have managed to carry out attacks in a variety of countries (Egypt, Jordan Turkey, the United Kingdom), not merely in Iraq.

He adds that a reasonable explanation for the fact that no terrorists have attacked since 9/11 is that the terrorist threat "has been massively exaggerated." He notes that "it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteorite."

Although Bush's justification for the war on terror has been illogical and deceptive, the administration has used it as an excuse to abuse the U.S. military in Iraq, tear down our system of government at home and seize power on his own behalf. As Jonathan Turley told Keith Olbermann on his October 17 program, with the signing of the Military Commissions Act, "Congress just gave the president despotic powers . . . I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking -- overtaking -- almost absolute power."

Bush's many power grabs and refusal to submit to usual constitutional checks and balances indicates he prefers monarchy or dictatorship to the government set up by America's founders. The framers of our Constitution provided checks on tyranny by writing into law separation of powers, granting the legislative and judicial branches of government the ability to curb abuses by the executive. Today, the Congress has abdicated its constitutional obligation and serves only as a rubber stamp for the despotic president, and to date, the courts have done much the same.

Can George W. Bush be trusted with absolute power? Here are some things he has done with his unchecked power:

• Stolen two presidential elections.
  
  
• Exaggerated and falsely characterized the terrorist threat.
  
  
• Misled the country into war with Iraq.
  
  
• Urged the U.S. intelligence agencies to fix the intelligence around the Iraq war policy (as confirmed by the Downing Street Memo and other sources) in order to mislead the Congress and public into supporting war with Iraq.
  
  
• Abused human rights by promoting the use of torture and setting up virtual gulags.
  
  
• Suspended habeas corpus for some.
  
  
• Tried to silence political opposition by pronouncing them "weak on terrorism" or somehow "with the terrorists," and
  
  
• Placed himself above the law by issuing more legislation-challenging signing statements (around 800) than all of his predecessors put together.

Bush's unnecessary invasion of Iraq alone has cost nearly 3,000 American lives. An October 11 article by Greg Mitchell in Editor & Publisher says that a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, "suggests that more than 600,000 Iraqis have met a violent or otherwise war-related end since the U.S. arrived in March 2003."

The Bush administration's policies have not only resulted in high death counts, but also in widespread, out of control torture. A September 22 Christian Science Monitor report says:

"The United Nation's special investigator on torture said Thursday that torture may now be worse in Iraq than it was during the regime of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. The Associated Press reports that Manfred Nowak, who was making a brief to the United Nations Human Rights Council about the treatment of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, said the torture situation in Iraq was 'totally out of hand.'"

The CS Monitor mentions the fact that the recent compromise between the Bush White House and dissident Republicans (including Senator John McCain) allows torture to continue. The article quotes a Washington Post piece:

"The bad news is Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects . . . It's hard to credit the statement by [McCain] yesterday that 'there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.' In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent."

Congress has given Bush a blank check as he's bulldozed toward an imperial presidency. We have the outward forms of democratic institutions such as Congress and a so-called free press. However, the people currently managing those institutions behave as if they're being forced to serve a totalitarian dictator.

A perfect example of this surrender to Bush's virtual despotism is Congress's and the mainstream media's compliance regarding Bush's Military Commissions Act. While Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley see the extreme danger posed by Bush's authoritarian moves, Congress has done little to challenge Bush, and, overall, the press is eerily silent.

In The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer said the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything which "tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich or offends the honor and dignity of Germany." According to Shirer, Max Amman, Hitler's top sergeant during the war and head of the Nazi Party's publishing firm and financial head of its press, said that after the Nazis seized power in 1933, it was "a true statement to say that the basic purpose of the Nazi press program was to eliminate all the press which was in opposition to the party."

The U.S. mainstream press doesn't have to be coerced by a government Press Law to avoid publicly opposing Bush's most egregious policies. Television news networks, in particular, have voluntarily held back serious scrutiny. They have not only failed to discuss the recent Military Commissions Act at length, but in the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal talk show host Phil Donahue and comedian Bill Maher were fired for challenging the White House spin about Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

Shirer also describes the ease with which the German Reichstag gave Hitler the power to change the nature of Germany's parliamentary democracy. He writes:

"One by one, Germany's most powerful institutions now began to surrender to Hitler and to pass quietly, unprotestingly, out of existence . . . It cannot be said they went down fighting. On May 19, 1933, the Social Democrats -- those who were not in jail or in exile -- voted in the Reichstag without a dissenting voice to approve Hitler's foreign policy."

Shirer concludes: "The one-party totalitarian state had been achieved with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance, and within four months after the Reichstag had abdicated its democratic responsibilities."

The U.S. Congress, like the German Reichstag, has abdicated its democratic responsibilities by granting Bush an inordinate amount of power -- "with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance." The U.S. press has abandoned its role as democracy's watchdog by failing to question this development. Both of these institutions have failed the American people.

Considering Bush is using the war on terror to justify seizing undue power, both Congress and the media should question his reasoning and offer opposition. Just as they didn't effectively challenge the administration's shifting excuses for attacking Iraq, these institutions haven't scrutinized Bush's claims about the need for the Military Commissions Act and the apparently endless war on terrorism.

Among things Congress and the media should challenge is George W. Bush's false claim that the United States does not torture. In an article published at the CommonDreams.org site, journalist Molly Ivins reports that in one case of death from torture by Americans, the military at first said the prisoner's death was caused by a heart attack. Ivins adds that the coroner later said the heart attack occurred after the prisoner "had been beaten so often on his legs that they had 'basically been pulpified.'"

She adds that the Bush administration's officially sanctioning torture "throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems necessary -- these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law." Ivins isn't inclined to hyperbole, yet she says of Americans' passive acceptance of this new law: "Do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis."

As Jonathan Turley said on Olbermann's program, "I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won't be kind to President Bush. But frankly, I don't think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, 'Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law?' There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps; there were people that protested these other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate."

Future generations will wonder why the U.S. Congress and mainstream press helped Bush build up an imperial presidency and eliminate constitutional protections. If they're able to sort through the administration's fallacies and lies and clearly see what went wrong with America during this time, they'll wonder why there were so few Molly Ivinses, Keith Olbermanns and Jonathan Turleys.

Coming generations will also ask why by comparison there were so many who failed to notice the obvious holes in Bush's logic and why so many turned a blind eye to his numerous false assertions and cruel policies. They'll wonder why so many supported, whether by direct action or by silence, the Bush administration's changing the fundamental nature of the democratic Republic we were given by America's founders, based on the flimsy excuse of fighting a war on terrorism -- a "war" Bush defines falsely and fights ineffectively.

"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"

The federal government keeps two sets of books. The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005. The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If social security and medicare were included - as the board that sets accounting rules is considering - the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion. Congress has written its own accounting rules - which would be illegal for a corporation to use because they ignore important costs such as the growing expense of retirement benefits for civil servants and military personnel. Last year, the audited statement produced by the accountants said the government ran a deficit equal to $6,700 for every American household. The number given to the public put the deficit at $2,800 per household ... The audited financial statement - prepared by the Treasury Department - reveals a federal government in far worse financial shape than official budget reports indicate, a USA Today analysis found. The government has run a deficit of $2.9 trillion since 1997, according to the audited number. The official deficit since then is just $729 billion. The difference is equal to an entire year's worth of federal spending.