Posts Tagged ‘Government’

N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,
En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse;
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns
Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.
- BOILEAU

Whatever these crazy appointed sages of Greece,
In this world there is no perfect wisdom;
All men are mad, and despite all their care
Differ among themselves as more or less.

So reads the somewhat cynical inscription to Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, written in 1841 by Charles Mackay. It was a book about bubbles. The first two chapters are about financial bubbles.

Wikileaks just notified people that they are releasing over $1 billion dollars’ worth of reports gathered by the Congressional Research Services (CRS). These reports are provided to members of the US Congress and are legally in the public domain. However, they are only released to the public with the permission of Congress in a complex system of permissions and protocols. Needless to say, attempts to free this information from the ‘red tape’ that keeps it from actually being released to the public have been met with resistance.Well, leave it to Wikileaks to strike a blow for transparency.

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.

Is the United States of America is the world’s largest dealer of illegal drugs?  What about the world’s largest gun runner?  For years our government has used the CIA, NSA & other super-secret ‘intelligence’ agencies to cultivate drug harvest and distribution in SE Asia and Afghanistan.  We offer ‘aid’ and ‘trade’ to countries in the forms of weapons and ammunition.  The drugs come home to the US to poison and kill our own population.  The weapons we sell are used either against us directly by people to kill others, who then seek to kill Americans.  Did the founding fathers envision a country that would become the world’s largest debtor and blood merchant?

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.

From Wikileaks, comes the truth about Police Death squads operating under legal orders, to round up and kill young men. Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Report on Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances, Sep 2008 is documented evidence that over the last 18 months, the government has ordered the capture and murder of its own citizens at the hands of the police. The land of our next President’s father has become like pre-war Nazi Germany with government sanctioned murder and torture.

Yesterday, I wrote about my grandfathers and their contribution during WW2. As I finished it, I realized that it was incomplete – only half of the story. It is all too common that I think of only the soldiers from WW2 first and the families that stayed behind second. Sadly, the legacy of the children and wives of the soldiers consists of far greater numbers than all of the troops that left to fight. The people who stayed behind. They were mothers, fathers, younger brothers and sisters, children and wives.

My two grandmothers stayed behind with their children. The war was not kind or easy for them. For some, their sacrifices continue to this day.