Posts Tagged ‘corruption’

I am an alcoholic.

I got sober almost 20 years ago. Before that, I abused alcohol, drugs, sex and money in order to ignore the damage I had done to my life, deluding myself . I crawled through life in a cycle of being drunk or not yet drunk, making more mistakes that would need more drinking to erase. I am nobody special. Absolutely nobody. Everyone on this planet has problems and I have mine. I chose to deal with them by ‘feeling better’, one glass at a time. All day. Each and every day…week…month and year – until I turned to someone for help.

She helped me by asking me two questions.

… could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.
- Time Magazine

Wikileaks is the world’s #1 resource for publishing secret documents that are in the interest of public good. This site is a colossal pain in the ass for corporate criminals, corrupt governments, tax cheats and anyone out to abuse the general public. The site allows anyone in the world to submit secret documents anonymously so that the whole world can know what the criminals don’t want you to know. Whistleblowers and people of conscience who come across powerful secret information are able to make it public through Wikileaks. It is the only site of its kind.

(Image courtesy of Wikileaks)

This bulletin just came in from Wikileaks:

Wikileaks has released over 600 United Nations investigative reports, over 70 of which are classified. The reports expose sensitive matters from allegations of hundreds of European peace-keepers sexually abusing–and impregnating–refugee girls, to generals in Peru using Swiss bank accounts to engage in multi-million dollar procurement fraud.

A number of the reports have not only been marked "Strictly Confidential" but as an additional measure have had selected regions redacted before before internal distribution. Often these redacted regions can be "unredacted" by simply "cut and pasting" the blanked area. On the description page for each report, where possible, Wikileaks has provided a simple text version of the report that includes the redacted portions.

Since the number of reports is subtantial we ask that journalists, bloggers and other investigators take responsibility for those those reports closest to the month and day of their date of birth before considering the material at large.

They are looking for help from journalists and the blogosphere to help pore through this info, to further expose what the UN already knows and is hiding concerning the crimes of its own forces.  Here is a partial list of the items investigated:

• rape
• forced impregnation
• embezzlement
• extortion
• illegal weapons and ammunition dealing
• racketeering
• kickbacks
• fraud
• theft of food rations

Lest we forget that Bush & Cheney are not the only violators of human rights and public trust; there is a whole world of liars, thieves, rapists and murderers operating from the organizations that we ask to protect us from these crimes.  Someone stuck their neck out and did the right thing by exposing this information.  Let’s not waste that good effort.

If you have time and the will to help, you can start here.  The list of information is overwhelming.  Please help.

- gadfly

I read Bob Burnett’s excellent and timely post yesterday over at HuffPo, entitled "Bush’s Day of Reckoning."  I recommend reading it in its entirety.  The topic is whether or not to proceed with criminal investigations of Bush, Cheney & their ilk over torture and any other violations of the Constitution.  Bob does point out that incompetence is not a crime and focuses on things like ordering torture or illegal spying on Americans, which are crimes.

(Image courtesy of indiesocial.com)

I walked onto the train platform in downtown Chicago today.  A woman had just finished shopping at Macy’s and had several red shopping bags.  She was trying to put everything into one bag.  The wind picked up and blew some of the empty bags down the platform.  I took off running and stopped them from blowing out onto the street. 

Then, she yells to me that: "It’s OK!  They’re empty."  Then she sits down and waits for the train with her two bags full of stuff.  The 5 empty big red bags are just out there on the platform and she makes no effort to pick them up.  I told her that I didn’t want litter for a Christmas present, picked them all up and threw them in the trash (no recycling on CTA platforms…dammit!).

Hi everybody! 

Did you know that today is International Anti-Corruption Day?  I sure as hell did not (but I do now).  Just in case you forgot, corruption occurs when people pay money in a secret deal, in order to break the law…so they can make a lot more money.

Why don’t we look at how the world celebrated this wonderful new holiday.  Maybe we can even see some real corruption in action.  Wow!  This is so much fun.

This is one of those "little threads" that run through many of the crises facing our world today.  Like the Feds always say when tracking mobsters…"follow the money".  The money itself, in this case the Swiss banking industry is the story.  As you may remember, Bank Julius Baer managed to be in the middle of several BushCo scandals at once.  Namely:

“The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that standard, it ceases to be anything more than “the gang in possession,” and its days are numbered.” (H. G. Wells, as quoted in the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers.)

The enemies of democracy are the enemies of the rule of law.

“enemies both foreign & domestic…”

Our Presidents and our armed forces swear to protect the Constitution from this threat – with good reason. The Constitution is the rule of law and it is the one thing that can prevent tyrants, thieves and murderers from the ruinous world of their unchecked greed and brutality.

con⋅serv⋅a⋅tive
/kənˈsɜrvətɪv/ [kuhn-sur-vuh-tiv]
–adjective
1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
2. cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.
3. traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit.
–noun
1. a person who is conservative in principles, actions, habits, etc.
2. a supporter of conservative political policies.
3. a preservative.

The dictionary definition above does not make it sound so bad. I mean, it sounds like part of a spreadsheet on a CPA’s laptop or maybe something out of home economics class. How can anyone have any objection to conservative thinking if it’s this benign? Well the problem for me has always been the wide chasm of disparity between their simple sounding identity and the racism, corruption, bloodlust and tyranny that they promote.

That giant sucking sound that you hear, is the hole in the ground where the GOP used to be. The Christian Reich Right (CR) took them over and instead of spreading out to envelop the entire country, the greedy, intolerant, deceitful hypocrites have killed the GOP. Moderate and independent citizens have spoken with their votes. It turns out that Americans really do want equality for all.