In my reporting, I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie. But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
Our Banana Republic
Voter Non-comprehension & America's Continuing Descension
As a group, American voters are the most easily deceived and misled rubes on the face of the earth. Europeans, in general, possess a much greater perception of the disastrous course upon which this nation is being headed thanks to treasonous legislators, "infil-traitors", fifth columnists , and corporate opportunists who are steering this Ship of Fools straight onto the shoals of ruination.
Yesterday's election results revealed just how effective propaganda and spin can brainwash a largely dumbed-down nation into near total compliance with the agenda of those who are orchestrating the takedown of this country.
Robert Parry: Does sanity matter?
As satire has done through the ages, Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” has found a comedic way to focus national attention on a serious issue: Will the United States begin acting like a responsible force in the world or will it continue to wander off into its own ghastly dreamscape?
Millions of Americans have responded positively to Stewart’s message, with thousands arriving from all over the country to take part in Stewart’s semi-serious rally at the National Mall in Washington on Saturday. But other Americans are confused about why someone would call a march for “sanity,” and some who get the point are perturbed by its implicit criticism of their own craziness.
The Perfect No-Prosecution Crime
Did you know that in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan (Thrifts) scandal there were more than a thousand felony convictions of financial elites? The cost of the wrongdoing associated with the rip-off and closure of nearly 800 Thrifts cost taxpayers more than $160 billion. The current sub-prime/mortgage-backed security scandal is 40 times bigger according to Economics professor William Black. That means the size of the crime is $6.4 trillion by my calculation. Can you guess how many indictments there have been on financial elites who created this enormous mortgage crisis mess? Zero, none, nada, zip. Yes, not one single prosecution or conviction has been started of achieved.
How to Run a Conspiracy: Sex and Blackmail
This is a question that I have wondered about as well. How do they keep all those people quiet, or acting against their own and society's best interests? The fact that the Federal Reserve system is still fully "operational", like the Star Wars Death Star, is proof enough that a large number of people can somehow be persuaded to "keep their mouths shut".
In this series of articles I will explain how this is accomplished.
The Rage Won’t End on Election Day
CARL Paladino began his New York gubernatorial campaign by bragging he’d “clean out Albany with a baseball bat.” When an ally likened his main Albany target, the (Jewish) leader of the State Assembly, to “an antichrist or Hitler,” he enthusiastically endorsed the slur.
We also learned of Paladino’s repertory of gag e-mails — among them a pornographic picture of a woman having sex with a horse and a photo of an African tribal ritual captioned “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal.” How blind we were not to recognize that his victory in a Republican primary under the proud Tea Party banner was inevitable.
The Uses and Misuses of Intelligence in Four US Wars
President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 to ensure that the policy community would have access to independent intelligence analysis that was free of the policy advocacy of the Department of State and the Department of Defense.
The CIA's most important analytic mission was the production of national intelligence estimates (NIEs) and assessments that tracked significant political and military developments and provided premonitory intelligence on looming threats and confrontations.
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