Confessions of a Common Man

Falling Uphill: 25,742 miles, 1461 days, 50 countries, 6 continents, 4 moments of enlightenment

Some individuals sip from the well-spring of life. A few dip their toes into life’s waters to test the temperature. Others tip the entire world into their lives while gulping every last drop of adventure into their beings.

For most of us humans, great tragedy causes us to change course in life: death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job, loss of a best friend and war.

Scott Stoll, author of Falling Uphill, lost his job and lady within moments of each other. Like many of us, he ran the corporate ladder, drove the nice car and enjoyed a steady income. But when that scenario hit the bricks, he hit the road.

J.K Rowling, author of Harry Potter, said, “Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

Falling Uphill rivets you to your own bicycle seat on a 25,742 mile, 50 country, four year trip across six continents. When Scott sweats, you sweat. When he fears for his life along the savannahs of Africa, you feel a chill run up your spine as a rogue elephant chases you through the bush. When he meets a gentle woman along the way, you meet her, too. And, the characters, good grief, you cannot forget the characters you meet along the highway.

Like anyone on an adventure, you confront self-doubt, loneliness and questions about your existence. On Scott’s expedition, he engages four moments of enlightenment. Additionally, he pursues the tale with a unique presentation, which of course, rendered the title of the book. Not only will you travel the world, but you will appreciate some unique emotional moments of understanding.

“During my long years of meditative cycling, despite moments of agony, months of chronic pain, illness, injury and overexposure, I realized my journey was many times more joyful than painful,” said Stoll. “Ironically, I discovered it was my misadventures that forged my character and revealed my truer self, like suffering from heat exhaustion and realizing everything I own was worth one glass of water, and if I had one wish before I died, it would be to say goodbye to the ones I loved. And like standing on mountain tops, I realized my entire knowledge and belief system didn’t work anymore. I discovered it was possible to survive with a totally different concept of reality.”

Why might this book review be unique? First of all, I have cycled across six continents, too. I felt the same things and suffered, too. I visited the same places and realized what Stoll realized—very much with a similar pattern of understanding. We share a kindred spirit for the “Zen of the Crank.”

That’s why I feel this bicycle adventure book represents one of the best I have ever read. Stoll sucker punches you with humor when you least expect it. Subtle, dry, funny! You’re sure to relate the tale to your office mates the next day.

Right off the front page, you see one devil of a beleaguered bicycle loaded with gear and spare tires, so much so, it looks like an overloaded donkey left on a rocky trail. Strangers asked Stoll, “Why are you riding a bicycle around the world?”

From that point, you discover why he decided to launch on his improbable journey into foreign cultures, languages, extreme temperatures and the unknown.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Stoll discovers a fellow touring rider on his test ride coast to coast while pedaling through the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.
“Scott, were you serious when you said you wanted to bicycle around the world,” asked Dennis, the touring cyclist.
“Of course, I’m serious,” replied Scott.
A friend named Vilma said, “Why don’t you guys just go sit on a beach in Mexico and have the cabana girls bring you umbrella drinks everyday for four years?”

As it happened, Dennis spurred Scott to make the ride around the world.They worked, saved money, planned the route, made preparations, purchased needed panniers and added their camping gear.
The first section of the book deals with “Survival.” El Sadat said, “He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.”

No question about life: you must make a decision to live it fully or slobber through it. Most folks, 9 to 5, stagger through it with a promise to travel the world when they retire. Harsh reality: the average retiree dies within five years of finishing his last day at work after a 40 year working trudge.

Stoll said to a question as to why he bicycled around the world, “To do something never done before. To see the world. A spiritual journey. A coming of age quest. Because I can’t stand being a rat in a cubicle maze, and I had nothing better to do.”

Stoll offers you an opportunity to discover your own quest whatever it might entail. You might quest to become an artist, singer, parent or athlete. Choose it and put every cell of your body into it. Create your passion. Live it! and pass it on.

##
Falling Uphill
Paperback
ISBN# 978-0-61523-045-0
Price: $18.95
www.Amazon.com
www.Goodreads.com
Website: www.theArgonauts.com
##
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as eight times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. In 2012, he bicycled coast to coast across America. His latest book is: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, copies at 1 888 280 7715/ Motivational program: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, click: www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com

General Smedley Butler’s words remain wise but apparently no one is listening.

War is a Racket.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• The Century Of The Self
• Trillions for Wars, None For Cancer Stricken Children
• 14. The Whitehouse Coup (1933) Plus War is a Racket by Smedley Butler and Ron Paul
• War Equals Profit (Full Version)
• War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler, 1935

I recently sent my Federal RICO lawsuit to Tom Horne that the state may pursue prosecutiion of those I accused of criminal wrongdoing but it appears that the Attorney General of the State of Arizona has his own issues to contend with. Typically, Cave Creek residents received letters from the AG’s office that the Attorney General is under staffed and under budget constraints and thus could not investigate Cave Creek’s corruption.

Tom facing a possible impeachment, submitted a bill to arm teachers to preclude a Sandy Hook which was a brilliant chess move by Tom and knowing how to read his constituency and the majority of Arizona voters are pro-second amendment.

Tom’s transgressiions appear minor. He had an affair with a co-worker and failed to report a bumped fender in a parking lot to avoid exposing his sexual liason. In other words, a typical perk of power and a cover up. Where this gets dicey is that Tom is the head Attorney of the state and his ethics, well, they need to be impeccable.

The Bar is looking into dis-barment but typically the State Bar is toothless. A reprimand, a cnesure… something to make the public feel like the Bar is actually there to support the integrity of the legal system as opposed to being a union for lawyers.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Bar confirms investigation of Horne
• State Bar of Arizona releases statement on death of Mark Hummels
• Arizona Criminal Defense Attorney Woodrow Thompson Chosen as Best Criminal Defense Attorney by Arizona Foothills Magazine

Moody thinks 6 of Canada’s big banks are not as strong as they should be due to high Canadian consumer debt and high home prices. Is Moody setting these banks up for play, or does it really think Canada’s economy is going to tank? And what does this say about BMO buying M&I Bank from the US Treasury, and consolidating it with Harris Bank of Chicago?

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Six Canadian banks downgraded by Moody’s
• Moody’s downgrades Canadian banks over high house prices, consumer debt
• Moody’s downgrades Canadian banks over high house prices, consumer debt
• Moody’s downgrades long-term ratings of 6 Canadian banks
• Here’s why Moody’s just downgraded six Canadian banks
• Moody’s downgrades 6 Canadian banks
• Moody’s Downgrades Canadian Banks, NBF Dissents
• Six Canadian Banks May Be Cut by Moody’s Next Week
• Moody’s downgrades long-term ratings of six Canadian banks
• BMO’s tips on avoiding personal debt

With the death of Aaron Swartz, Anonymous hacked a government website.
Operation Last Resort.

Frontline’s documentary on bankers too big to jail. Read between the lines, FBI moved all their resources to terrorism after 9/11.

This is a systemic failure but no one perceives this a fraudulent scheme?

No one seems to connect a corrolation between 9/11 and bank bubble fraud.

Oddly enough, Breuer never pursued a RICO complaint against the Banks where proof of fraud is only a preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt. Based on previous bubbles, DOJ had the goods to pursue a RICO complaint.

But why would anyone in DC bite the hand that feeds them?

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• 10 Highlights From Frontline Report On Why No Wall Street Execs Are In Jail Over Mortgage Mess
• “Fraud Was … the F-Bomb”
• Report: DOJ Criminal Chief Lanny Breuer Stepping Down
• The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street from prosecutions | Harry J Enten
• FRONTLINE | Preview “The Untouchables” | PBS -NO NOT MISS THIS FROM MSM; IT SHOULD BE AVAILABLE ONLINE!
• Dean Baker: Aaron Swartz, Financial Fraud, and the Justice Department
• Edokeda Trading files federal RICO lawsuit against credit card processing companies and their founder
• Aaron Swartz, financial fraud, and the Justice Department
• The Untouchables: Why No One On Wall Street has Been Prosecuted
• The Untouchables: PBS Asks Why U.S. Justice Department Isn’t Prosecuting Wall Street

Richard Gage gives a poignant explanation of why the government explanation of what happened on 9/11 is not just false, but criminal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZAHp_zSGd8&feature=share

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Richard Gage Presents to the 9/11 Revisited conference in Kuala Lumpur

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HqHXH3aCw2k

Want to know the common denominator in EVERY mass shooting of completely innocent people who happened to be in the wrong “Gun Free Zone” at the wrong time?

Look at this revealing table of information…

What is the common denominator? IT’S NOT GUNS.

Whenever you are trying to correct a bad statistic, you must analyze ALL of the factors that may be causing the unacceptable problem you are trying to correct. There may be several factors, but ONE, is the RIGHT TARGET to attack which will cause an immediate correction of the problem.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• A List of School Violence Committed by People On or Withdrawing From Antidepressants
• List of school shootings on antidepressants
• Complete Link to Ssri-assaults, Suicidal Behavior and Flipping Out Events
• Two Gun Manufacturers Killed In Two Days No Answers: Russia Warns America That Obama Death Squads Fan Out Across The U.S. As Gun Rebellion Looms!
• Study reveals new target for antidepressants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6HuzhMUHGM

this is the real set up of our economy.

This is old but buried news. A controlled demolition expert unequivocally described the collapse of Building 7 as controlled demolition, then dies in a one person car crash.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• The truth behind the second amendment
• How Totalitarian Government Snuck Up On Freud (and resulted in 4 of his sisters dying in Nazi gas chambers)
• Outside the Box Video Series: The Century of the Self
• Psychoanalytical Theory – Sigmund Freud
• Freud’s Last Session
• Whoa, This Floor-by-Floor Demolition of a Skyscraper Is Amazingly Peaceful
• Record wave heights recorded off of Sandy Hook during Hurricane Sandy

It was all a lie, one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in, only temporarily, to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: we committed American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system.

12 of the 13 banks loaned money in 2008 were insolvent.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Secrets and Lies of the Bailout
• Secrets & Lies Of The Bailout
• Taibbi / Rolling Stone: Secrets and Lies of the Bailout. The Worst Is Yet To Come
• The Great American Reset

A friend of mine in London sent me an interesting post on propaganda which can be viewed here:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33497.htm

I’m not into perpetual presidents or North Korea, but the film makes some interesting points. At the bottom of the Information Clearing House post is a direction to The Century of Self which is quite long but very revealing by Adam Curtis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis

As Stewart Brand claimed with his Whole Earth Catalog, its a closed system. Switching from self to collaborating with consensus is a simple shift with profound consequences.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• The Century Of The Self Part I: The Happiness Machines
• How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand. Brand, famous for…
• The Engineer’s Plot
• The Century Of The Self
• Save Your Kisses For Me | Adam Curtis | BBC | 30 November 2012
• Brainwashed

the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.  These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Documents Reveal FBI Teamed With Corporations To Spy On Occupy Wall Street, Classified As A “Terrorist Threat”
• FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street like a potential terrorist threat
• FBI Investigated Occupy Movement as ‘Domestic Terrorists, Criminals’
• FBI Documents Reveal Occupy Crackdowns WERE Coordinated, Assassinations Considered

The article wonders why more companies don’t follow Lincoln’s lead. I guess that wonder could be widened to countries– why don’t countries adopt Lincoln’s values?

• Lincoln Electric, Cleveland / Profit-Sharing and No Layoffs for 64 Years
• A Shocking and Shameful Lack of Imagination

I stumbled upon this website on values. values.com great site.

Integrity, pass it on.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Scottish independence: Scottish values shaped UK – Gordon Brown

just your average 80 year old man working in a cluttered home office, Gene Sharp took non-violent revolution to heart and wrote a manual From Dictatorship to Democracy, a 198 step guide to overthrowing dictators which is available free online in 40 languages.

Thanks Gene.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• How to Start a Non-Violent Revolution
• Get Occupied Stay Occupied. Non -Violent Revolution of Non-Compliance with ones conscience.
• It’s Dictators All the Way Down

This is a graphic portrayal of what it means to be $17 Trillion in debt. Welcome to the Wiemar Republic of the United States.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• PRAVDA: “If this keeps up for more [than] another year … America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.”
• Germany Imposes Weimar Republic on Greece.
• Billionaire Trump Tells Americans to Prepare For ‘Financial Ruin’
• U.S. Consumer Debt Hits All-Time High: Borrowing Rises To $2.7 Trillion

Here is a documentary on the Next Financial Crisis but to understand the message in this documentary, requires an understanding of what truly happened on 9/11. If Overdose: the Next Financial Crisis is watched in concert with Black 9/11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsDtvu2uTuA
then a slightly different conclusion emerges.

 A quick video on the origins of English.

For years, the building industry has resisted modular construction but here come the Chinese turning development timetables on their head. The tallest building in the world will be assembled in 90 days…

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• China’s Sky City: Tallest Building in the World in 90 Days
• China Will Build the Tallest Building In the World in Just 90 Days
• Developer reaffirms plan to finish world’s tallest building in 90 days
• Modular Building Institute Requests Presentations for World of Modular

The American Liberty League vs. Gen. Smedley Butler
Wall Street’s Failed 1934 Coup
by MICHAEL DONNELLY
“In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country…There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

– Report of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee

A Patriot, not the Traitor they wanted

You know the coup plot they teach all young Americans about in 10th Grade History class? Oh yeah…

In November 1934, famed double Medal of Honor winner Marine Gen. Smedley Butler gave secret testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein committee – a precursor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In it, Butler told of a plot headed by a group of wealthy businessmen (The American Liberty League) to establish a fascist dictatorship in the United States, complete with concentration camps for “Jews and other undesirables.”

Show Me the Money

Butler had been approached by Gerald P. MacGuire of Wall Street’s Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. MacGuire claimed they would assemble an army of 500,000 mostly unemployed WWI veterans and march on DC. The plutocrats wanted Butler to lead the coup, thinking that, like the Bolsheviks, taking one major city (DC as Petrograd) would lead to the fall of the government. They promised to put up $3 million as starters and dangled a future $300 million as bait. Butler went along with the plot until he could learn the identities of all the schemers. Not a one of them was ever called to testify or was charged with Treason. Virtually all of them were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The League was headed by the DuPont and J.P Morgan cartels and had major support from Andrew Mellon Associates, Pew (Sun Oil), Rockefeller Associates, E.F. Hutton Associates, U.S. Steel, General Motors, Chase, Standard Oil and Goodyear Tires.

Money was funneled thru the Sen. Prescott Bush-led Union Banking Corporation (yes, those Bushes) and the Prescott Bush-led Brown Brothers Harriman (yes, that Harriman) to the League (and to Hitler, but that’s another story). The plotters bragged about Bush’s Hitler connections and even claimed that Germany had promised Bush that it would provide materiel for the coup. This claim was entirely believable: a year earlier, Chevrolet president William S. Knudsen (who himself had donated $10,000 to the League) went to Germany and met with Nazi leaders and declared upon his return that Hitler’s Germany was “the miracle of the twentieth century.” At the time, GM’s wholly-owned Adam-Opal Co. had already begun producing the Nazi’s tanks, trucks and bomber engines. James D. Mooney, GM’s vice-president for foreign operations was joined by Henry Ford and IBM chief Tom Watson in receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler for their considerable efforts on behalf of the Third Reich.

The Whitewash

While the Committee found that Gen. Butler was telling the truth, discrediting such a stalwart was problematic for the plotters. Quickly, the corporate press weighed in and sought to raise doubts about the war hero, settling on branding him naive. The discredit Knudsen meme was: “it was all idle cocktail party chatter.” This red herring was trumpeted under the Associated Press headline “The Cocktail Putsch.” New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dismissed the plot as “someone at the party had suggested the idea to the ex-Marine as a joke.”

From 1934 through 1936, the League got thirty-five pro-League front page stories in the New York Times. TIME ridiculed Butler in a Dec. 3, 1934 cover story, even though Butler’s story was corroborated by VFW head James E. Van Zandt, who also said he was approached to lead the coup. Though, TIME did put a footnote on an early 1935 article stating; “Also last week the House Committee on Un-American Activities purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler’s story of a fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true.”

Solely, the Scripps-Howard papers backed FDR and presented the truth.

Whatever Happened to the “Economic Royalists?”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt labeled the plotters “economic royalists” and survived their, thankfully, ham-handed efforts. Jan. 3, 1936, FDR blasted the American Liberty League before a joint session of Congress where he announced the ban on military exports to Italy.

“Our resplendent economic aristocracy does not want to return to that individualism of which they prate, even thought the advantages under that system went to the ruthless and the strong. They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people’s government this power is wholesome and proper. But, in the hands of political, puppets of an economic aristocracy, such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people. Give them their way and they will take the course of every aristocracy of the past – power for themselves, enslavement for the public.”

FDR was never able to bring any of the plotters to justice. He wasn’t even able to rein in Prescott Bush until 1942 when the government seized the assets of Bush’s pro-Nazi enterprises – garnering Bush a $1.5 million windfall once the assets were returned in 1951! It’s obvious that the fascist mindset of the “economic royalists” has never gone away and is the driving force behind the modern-day ascent (and the ultimate demise of) of the American Empire, the attacks on worker’s rights and pensions, the attacks on our minimal safety nets, etc.

In its day, the League promoted itself as a bastion of all concerned about “burdensome taxes imposed upon industry for unemployment insurance and old age pension.” The League sought to “combat radicalism” and to “teach respect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.”

J.P. Morgan and Chase are now one. The fortunes of the Mellon, Rockefeller, DuPont, Pitcairn (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) and Pew families have sky-rocketed. Pew and Rockefeller have morphed into a cabal of foundations that fund/neuter progressive grass roots efforts.

1936′s Occupy Movement

William S. Knudsen was the sole inside plotter who turned against the plot, renounced Hitler and is credited with pushing GM into a settlement of the Flint Sit-Down Strike . Underpaid, overworked workers took over and stayed in their plants, starting with Flint’s Fisher Body #3 and fought off attacks by GM-controlled police and hired goons. FDR and Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy called out the National Guard, not to roust the strikers, but to form a cordon between the strikers and the goons. Murphy’s father and grandfather had been hung by the British as Irish revolutionaries and many of the strikers were ethnic Irish laborers, so he as very sympathetic.

After 44 days, Knudsen, now GM vice-president, declared that “Collective Bargaining’s time has come” With his ally, two-time Flint Mayor, life-long civic booster/philanthropist, GM’s top shareholder and fellow board member C. S. Mott assisting; GM settled, leading the way to the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, union organizing rights, pensions, etc. Mott even saw to it that health clinics were set up in the factories for the workers and their families. Coup plotter/GM President and Chairman Alfred P. Sloan, who had wanted to reclaim the plants with guns blazing stepped partly aside as GM head and Knudsen replaced him as president. GM went on to become the world’s top corporation for 40 years, the country saw the rise of a middle class and wealth disparity was at the lowest levels ever in the US.

It likely was not entirely altruistic of Knudsen, as two years later FDR put Knudsen in charge of the National Defense Advisory Commission. On his watch, some $12 billion in armament contracts were awarded to GM by the U.S. War Production Board, which also was conveniently chaired by Knudsen. At the same time, GM’s Opal factories built most of Hitler’s trucks and bomber engines. This part of the “win-win” did not lead to any charges against Knudsen or GM. Instead, it led to the Danish immigrant Knudsen becoming the first civilian commissioned as a U.S. Army General.

The Lesson

The take-away lesson to never forget is that, as Roosevelt noted, economic royalists have their own decidedly non-populist agenda. Since they paid no price at all for their coup attempt, they have never wavered from their elitist ideology. They now simply rig elections, set up massive “security” apparatuses and roust anyone who stands up to their dominance. (NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the 12th richest American worth $19.5 billion, recently bragged: “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance.”)

Union busting goes on unabated. The US has a greater percentage of its people incarcerated than any country at any time in history. And, thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions, no one can match the political clout of the financiers. The “royalists” now own the government, as well as the press and their own armies. War profiteering still tops the agenda, followed closely by attacks on workers’ wages, pensions, health care… FDR and the Sit-Downers’ hard-won safety net is under assault.

As the great populist Sen. Robert La Follette, Jr. said at the time, the American Liberty League (and all its following incarnations) cannot “be expected to defend the liberty of the masses of the American people. It speaks for the vested interests.”

The other lesson is: Occupying the Means of Production gets the goods.

MICHAEL DONNELLY lives in Salem, OR. He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/10/03/fdr-s-response-to-the-plot-to-overthrow-him/

FDR’s Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him
by ALAN NASSER

Perhaps the most alarming slice of twentieth-century U.S. political history is virtually unknown to the general public, including most scholars of American history.

In 1934 a special Congressional committee was appointed to conduct an investigation of a possible planned coup intended to topple the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace it with a government modelled on the policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The shocking results of the investigation were promptly scotched and stashed in the National Archives. While the coup attempt was reported at the time in a few newspapers, including The New York Times, the story disappeared from public memory shortly after the Congressional findings were made available to president Roosevelt. It was the recent release from the Archives of the Congressional report that prompted the BBC and Horton commentaries.

The Congressional committee had discovered that some of the foremost members of the economic elite, many of them household names at the time, had indeed hatched a meticulously detailed and massively funded plot to effect a fascist coup in America. The plotters represented prominent families – Rockefeller, Mellon, Pew, enterprises like Morgan, Dupont, Pew, Remington, Anaconda, Bethlehem and Goodyear, along with the owners of Bird’s Eye, Maxwell House and Heinz. Totaling about twenty four major businessmen and Wall Street financiers, they planned to assemble a private army of half a million men, composed largely of unemployed veterans. These troops would both constitute the armed force behind the coup and defeat any resistance this in-house revolution might generate. The economic elite would provide the material resources required to sustain the new government.

The plotters hoped that widespread working-class discouragement at the stubborn persistence of the Great Depression would have sufficiently disenchanted the masses with FDR’s policies to make the coup an easy ride. And they were appalled at Roosevelt’s willingness after 1933 to initiate economic policies that economists and businessmen considered dangerously Leftist departures from economic orthodoxy. Only a fascist-style government, they thought, could enforce the kind of economic “discipline” that would reverse the Great Depression and restore profits.

Interestingly, it was a military man, Major General Smedley D. Butler*, assigned the task of raising the 500,000-man army, who blew the whistle after uncovering the details of the operation he was asked to lead. FDR was thus able to nip the plot in the bud.

The president might have used the occasion to alert the public to the anti-democratic impulses of a major segment of the capitalist class. But this would only have bolstered the fortunes of Communist, Socialist and other anti-capitalist political tendencies here, which were already gaining some ground among artists, intellectuals and a surprising number of working people. It is well known that Hollywood screenwriting in the 1930s was replete with Communist-inspired sentiment.

And we must not forget that FDR was himself a (somewhat renegade) member of the very class that would have toppled him. While FDR was open to watered-down Keynesian policies in a way that very few of his class comrades were, his commitment (like Keynes’s) to the “free enterprise” system was unconditional. He had no interest in publicizing a plot that might constitute a public-relations victory for anti-capitalist politics. He therefore refused to out the plotters, and sought no punitive measures against them. In the end, class solidarity carried the day for Roosevelt. The Congressional committee cooperated by refusing to reveal the names of many of the key plotters.

Thus, fascist tendencies gestating deep within the culture of the U.S. ruling class were effectively left to develop unhindered by mass political mobilization.

Might this grisly episode have important implications for our understanding of the current political moment? One may be inclined to think so on the basis of the fact that one of the architects of the plot was one Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush. Bush, along with many other big businessmen, had maintained friendly relations in 1933 and 1934 with the new German government of Chancellor Adolf Hitler, and was designated to form for his class conspirators a working relationship with that government.

While I highly recommend Bush-bashing, the implications of this unsettling piece of history for contemporary politics run deeper than many –especially soi disant “oppositional” liberals- would like to think. There is the temptation to point triumphantly to George W. Bush’s commitment to the irrelevance of the Constitution, his corresponding contempt for hitherto taken-for-granted fundamental human rights, his Hobbesian notion of unbridled sovereignty, his militarized notion of political power – there is the temptation to regard these fascist elements as the most significant contemporary remnant of the 1934 conspiracy.

But no less important is the utter absence in 1934 of liberal attempts to educate the public to, and mobilize the population against, the fascist threat. FDR stood down.

Although Rooseveltian/New Deal liberalism is dead, contemporary Democrats do sustain one of FDR’s least seemly qualities, namely his refusal to encourage effective mass opposition to fascist and imperialist politics. John Kerry boasted of having contributed to the drafting of the Patriot Act. And in the first round of legislation regarding continued funding of the war in Iraq, after the 2006 elections gave the Democrats a majority in the House and the Senate, the Democrats gave Bush everything he wanted. All the major presidentail contenders of both parties support a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq. None has repudiated the conceit that Uncle Sam is the permanent global hegemon. And most importantly, no mainstream Democrat has repudiated the Neoliberal Consensus, the notion that the market should be left to operate as “freely” as the public can be persuaded to allow it to act, and, crucially, that this is a model that should be imposed globally through the power of the U.S. working in tandem with such global institutions as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.

To the extent that this policy has been successful, inequalities between national classes and between the global North and South have widened dramatically since the decline of the Keynesian consensus in the mid-1970s. Since the Mondale candidacy, no Democrat has had a full-employment plank in his presidential platform. The median wage has been in secular decline since 1973, and the distribution of national income between capital and labor has not been as skewed toward capital since the Great Depression. But no Democrat has made a major issue of this.

These tendencies toward ever-widening inequality and the increasing immiseration of the working population will surely be exacerbated by the deepening slow-motion recession (depression?) that is certain to follow the unfolding financial meltdown. These conditions, and the deep resentment felt by masses of working people toward the lords of Wall Street and their political henchpersons, threaten to generate social “instability” in the form of increasing crime rates and a host of direct and indirect forms of resistance to the claimed legitimacy of the political order. The emergence of what Mike Whitney has called “soup kitchen America” requires a response from our rulers. And they are prepared with (literally) fascist legislation already in place for situations just like this.

Developments over the last day or two in connection with Monday’s House rejection of the bailout package for Wall Street indicate that allegations of fascist tendencies in U.S. political culture are in these times not to be taken lightly. Influential voices in the U.S. media have lamented the susceptability of the political leadership to the will of the people. On Tuesday the Washington Post ran a piece by Michael Gerson, Bush’s former speechwriter, complaining that “It is now clear that American political elites have lost the ability to quickly respond to a national challenge by imposing their collective will.” The same day Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London headlined a column “Congress is the Best Advert For Dictatorship.” And yesterday Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California), who voted against the bailout bill, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying “I’ve seen members turn to each other and say if we don’t pass this bill, we’re going to have martial law in the United States.” “going to have”? We’ve already got it, at least on the books.

On October 17, 2006, Bush signed three Acts that instantly transformed the republic into a police state. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act (DAA) effectively repeals the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act which prohibits military operations directed against the American people. The DAA declares that “the president may employ the armed forces to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when…[among other reasons]… the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent thet the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of (or “refuse” or “fail in”) maintaining public order — in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

There is of course nothing in the legislation that specifies what precisely may count as “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The lone Democrat to express reservations about DAA was Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), who entered into the Congressional Record that the Act “[makes] it easier for the president to declare martial law… [T]he implications of changing the [Posse Comitatus] Act are enormous…Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.” Nothing was made of Leahy’s protestations by complicit Democrats.

The Military Commissions Act permits the President, in order to “suppress public disorder”, to assign military troops anywhere in the United States in order to trump the authority of state-based National Guard units, and without the consent of the governer.

Finally, the National Defense Authorization Act allows the President to declare martial law, dispatch National Guard units around the country and authorize military action against the domestic population should His Majesty identify a “national emergency”.

Liberal Democrats, upon being apprised of these developments (of which the vast majority are ignorant) will declare themselves shocked, shocked that Bush has “declared himself dictator”. But Bush has not signed legislation which expires when he passes from office. Every future President will have these powers. Would President Obama seek to erase these abominations? Don’t bet on it. Obama has not jettisoned the entire legacy of FDR. Like Roosevelt, Obama will stand down.

· Butler underwent a major political epiphany shortly before his retirement from the Marine Corps in 1931. In that same year, he addressed an American Legion convention on his assessment of his career. His audience was stunned by his reflections: “I spent 33 years being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism…. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests inb 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.” It remains a mystery why the conspirators would approach this man. But they did.

ALAN NASSER is professor emeritus of Political Economy and Philosophy at The Evergreen State College.

World reknown architect, Oscar Niemeyer passed away yesterday.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Oscar Niemeyer, architect of modern Brazil (1907-2012)
• Oscar Niemeyer buildings around the world
• Here Are Architect Oscar Niemeyer’s Most Beautiful Buildings
• Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012): Contemporary Art Museum, NITERÓI (RJ)
• Form Follows Beauty: Oscar Niemeyer
• Oscar Niemeyer 1907- 2012
• UPDATE: One of Latin America’s Greatest Architects, Oscar Niemeyer, Dies
• RIP Oscar Niemeyer (104)
• Architect Niemeyer dies aged 104
• Oscar Niemeyer 1907-2012

From rancher to one of America’s finest jazz musicians, Dave Brubeck will be remembered.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• R.I.P. Dave Brubeck
• Dave Brubeck Dead at 91
• TT: Dave Brubeck, R.I.P.
• Dave Brubeck dies at 91
• Dave Brubeck: Top 5 albums
• Pioneering Jazz Composer Dave Brubeck Has Died; Listen to Brubeck Music Online
• Dave Brubeck, UoP Grad and Jazz Legend, Dies at 91
• Obituary: Dave Brubeck
• Dave Brubeck, Jazz Great, Dies at 91

For years, the Sonoran News has published articles casting me in a false light as part of a fraudulent scheme to control and convert my property.
CIV-12-876TUCFRZ, which was amended on January 8, 2013. Exhibits available on request.
1-8-13 first amended complaint sig pages
The basis of the litigation is:
ARS 13-2310 & Pursuant to ARS 13-1802(G): Theft of property or services with a value of twenty-five thousand dollars or more is a class 2 felony. If convicted, Sorchych and his Cave Creek cronies are facing 3 to 35 years in jail.