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By Peter Barus (about the author)
Become a Fan -- Page 2 of 3 page(s)
Why would they not have seen this coming and built backup systems to handle the sheer volume of raw data? Besides the simple answer, that there really is just too much to process by any known means, I would guess that this arises because the leadership believes so passionately in their theory of universal greed. They justify their compulsive acquisitiveness with the theory that all human beings are only looking out for Number One. They do not, and cannot, imagine anyone seeing all this bizarre and compulsive criminality from any other point of view than what might be in it for them. People with a functioning moral sense, people who have no interest in cutting themselves a piece of the action, simply do not exist in the Cheney experience. So jerking the chains of their reactionary true believers makes enough noise for them to conclude they are still getting away with it all, still in line for the big payoff.
But Approval ratings plummet and scandals proliferate. Why are they getting so careless? Any school kid with mediocre Chess skills would conclude they simply don't expect to have to buy much more time; they expect to hit the jackpot any minute now. They hope to make the Big Score before the con is blown. That's when the cover-ups won't matter anymore. That will be the time people refer to with metaphors about barn doors and stolen horses.
If it is not so, why all the hasty delaying tactics to cover so many blatant and actionable crimes? Almost none of the latest generation of replacement alibis will withstand serious scrutiny when the people get around to launching a real, independent criminal investigation, and the whole house of cards will fall. Have they almost finished looting the Treasury? Or are they preparing some big surprise that will render the ever-lengthening list of charges moot? Or both?
When all the agencies of the government are exposed like FEMA after the hurricane, with their pants down, their hands in the cookie jar, their fingers flying with invisible needle and thread to cover a little Emperor's pathetic nakedness, what horrendous knowledge keeps them maintaining the pretense of normality - well, you know, normality in "wartime"? What has them hanging on even now, mouthing falsehoods while watching the exits? Don't they see that the jig is up?
Because either we are seeing the culmination of the greatest scam ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting world, or these people are just plain nuts and plan to go down in a hail of bullets like it was a James Cagney movie. There has to be something they know, that we don't. If we're not at least bracing for it, we're as dumb as they think we are, and deserve whatever we are about to get for allowing them to take office in the first place. And that was pretty dumb. It's going to take a long time to live that one down.
Or will the Cheney/Bush Era come to an end with a whimper, a colossal anti-climax, like a man on the brink of sexual ecstasy whose lover begins to snore? (In the literal case one doubts very much that they would even notice, and maybe it doesn't stretch a simile too much to suggest that they would not notice the end of their Empire until long after the fact.)
Despite my own belief in the essential impotency of Cheney,Bush & Co after their usual formulaic shock'n'awe performances, I can't help but anticipate some event so awful, so future-changing that it will supersede the next Presidential election, bringing down martial law, State of Emergency, all the rather drab old totalitarian methods and means that have so plagued our battered world.
The looming horrors loom, and the schemers scheme, and the subplots converge upon a dramatic denouement, and then converge and converge, and then converge some more. Are we cowering under an ax that is ever more and more poised to fall, but somehow never does? The bodies are now so real and piled so high that this is not credible.
That ax, or whatever it might be, is about as awful and dangerous as it has ever been in human history. And the ever more thinly disguised lies, and the ever more blatant insults to basic intelligence, and the ever higher stakes, and the ever more bellicose threats - perhaps it's all just sheer empty imminence they have managed to create in our minds - it all points to an administration so desperate and cornered that a very small event could bring catastrophe.
We will very likely get catastrophe, if for no other reason than the juggernaut of expectancy Cheney and Bush have drummed up like some clay monster from mythology. They continue to bet on the worst in us, and they continue to be vindicated in this cynical assessment in a fawning press. They are hellbent on destruction, and they have their hands on all the controls. It is a serious question whether the controls are responding any more to their frenzied commands.
I would much prefer to be judged parenoid about this. I am terribly afraid I'm not. I wish it were just a bad dream.
Peter Barus
12/10/2007
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The Haiti/USAID story:
The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, a remarkable source of information about Haiti, sent this:
Ezili Danto's Note: USAID's former mission director tries to give the US credit for the lowering of diseases in Haiti when President Aristide was in office
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed6.html#usaid, December 9, 2007
USAID's David Adams writes about how Haitian medical doctors in Haiti and abroad have been at the forefront of fighting the aids virus, but ruins the rare USAID truth trajectory on Haiti by rewriting history and taking CREDIT, on behalf of the US government, USAID and "foreign aid" to Haiti, for the lower rate of HIV/AIDS in Haiti when the facts are CLEAR that from 2001 to 2004 when David Adams was the USAID Mission Director to Haiti, the Internationals were MORE obstructive than helpful in the struggle to reduce diseases in Haiti, they were, in fact, obstructing and undermining the humanitarian and health works of Haiti's first lady, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, as chair of Haiti's National AIDS Commission.
Become a Fan -- Page 2 of 3 page(s)
But Approval ratings plummet and scandals proliferate. Why are they getting so careless? Any school kid with mediocre Chess skills would conclude they simply don't expect to have to buy much more time; they expect to hit the jackpot any minute now. They hope to make the Big Score before the con is blown. That's when the cover-ups won't matter anymore. That will be the time people refer to with metaphors about barn doors and stolen horses.
If it is not so, why all the hasty delaying tactics to cover so many blatant and actionable crimes? Almost none of the latest generation of replacement alibis will withstand serious scrutiny when the people get around to launching a real, independent criminal investigation, and the whole house of cards will fall. Have they almost finished looting the Treasury? Or are they preparing some big surprise that will render the ever-lengthening list of charges moot? Or both?
When all the agencies of the government are exposed like FEMA after the hurricane, with their pants down, their hands in the cookie jar, their fingers flying with invisible needle and thread to cover a little Emperor's pathetic nakedness, what horrendous knowledge keeps them maintaining the pretense of normality - well, you know, normality in "wartime"? What has them hanging on even now, mouthing falsehoods while watching the exits? Don't they see that the jig is up?
Because either we are seeing the culmination of the greatest scam ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting world, or these people are just plain nuts and plan to go down in a hail of bullets like it was a James Cagney movie. There has to be something they know, that we don't. If we're not at least bracing for it, we're as dumb as they think we are, and deserve whatever we are about to get for allowing them to take office in the first place. And that was pretty dumb. It's going to take a long time to live that one down.
Or will the Cheney/Bush Era come to an end with a whimper, a colossal anti-climax, like a man on the brink of sexual ecstasy whose lover begins to snore? (In the literal case one doubts very much that they would even notice, and maybe it doesn't stretch a simile too much to suggest that they would not notice the end of their Empire until long after the fact.)
Despite my own belief in the essential impotency of Cheney,Bush & Co after their usual formulaic shock'n'awe performances, I can't help but anticipate some event so awful, so future-changing that it will supersede the next Presidential election, bringing down martial law, State of Emergency, all the rather drab old totalitarian methods and means that have so plagued our battered world.
The looming horrors loom, and the schemers scheme, and the subplots converge upon a dramatic denouement, and then converge and converge, and then converge some more. Are we cowering under an ax that is ever more and more poised to fall, but somehow never does? The bodies are now so real and piled so high that this is not credible.
That ax, or whatever it might be, is about as awful and dangerous as it has ever been in human history. And the ever more thinly disguised lies, and the ever more blatant insults to basic intelligence, and the ever higher stakes, and the ever more bellicose threats - perhaps it's all just sheer empty imminence they have managed to create in our minds - it all points to an administration so desperate and cornered that a very small event could bring catastrophe.
We will very likely get catastrophe, if for no other reason than the juggernaut of expectancy Cheney and Bush have drummed up like some clay monster from mythology. They continue to bet on the worst in us, and they continue to be vindicated in this cynical assessment in a fawning press. They are hellbent on destruction, and they have their hands on all the controls. It is a serious question whether the controls are responding any more to their frenzied commands.
I would much prefer to be judged parenoid about this. I am terribly afraid I'm not. I wish it were just a bad dream.
Peter Barus
12/10/2007
---
The Haiti/USAID story:
The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, a remarkable source of information about Haiti, sent this:
Ezili Danto's Note: USAID's former mission director tries to give the US credit for the lowering of diseases in Haiti when President Aristide was in office
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed6.html#usaid, December 9, 2007
USAID's David Adams writes about how Haitian medical doctors in Haiti and abroad have been at the forefront of fighting the aids virus, but ruins the rare USAID truth trajectory on Haiti by rewriting history and taking CREDIT, on behalf of the US government, USAID and "foreign aid" to Haiti, for the lower rate of HIV/AIDS in Haiti when the facts are CLEAR that from 2001 to 2004 when David Adams was the USAID Mission Director to Haiti, the Internationals were MORE obstructive than helpful in the struggle to reduce diseases in Haiti, they were, in fact, obstructing and undermining the humanitarian and health works of Haiti's first lady, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, as chair of Haiti's National AIDS Commission.
I'm an old Pogo fan. For some unknown reason I persist in outrage at Feudalism, as if human beings can do much better than this. Our old ways of life are obsolete and are killing us. Will the human race wake up in time? Stay tuned...
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