Supreme Court Tells Swindled Investors to "b*@*p off!"

The Supreme Court just overturned the Arthur Anderson verdict. The impact of this, according to the article, is that investors who lost their life savings in Enron will have to drop their lawsuits against the splintered accounting firm and its partners.
Basically, they are saying that accounting firms regularly destroy documents by the truckloadbefore an investigation and there is no concrete proof that AA is guilty. They say that the lower court should not have admitted that document destruction as evidence. Nevermind that Enron was hiding billions of dollars of debt and Arthur Anderson was responsible for ACCOUNTING for it all. In fact, they are specially licenced to account for it and assure us that everything is as it seems in the financial statements. Nevermind that AA was broken up to deter what everyone in the industry admits: the Big Five accounting firms cook books in exchange for lucrative consulting contracts. You can't pay an accountant extra to ignore your crimes, but you sure can buy a lot of 'advice' from him.
During the appeal, a sympathetic freelance accountant had this to say,

"I myself showed my buddy how to create shadow companies and swindle hard working people, looking forward to retirement. I told him to take a few million here and there, but his gambling took a hold of him. I used my accounting license to help hide the crime. Thankfully, he kept $50 million for me. I shred all of my evidence, but God Damnit! I do that because that's what accountants do, not because I was trying tohide anything! This could have happened to anybody in the industry, and my heart goes out to those brave managers who were stripped of everything, except their billion dollar estates protected under Florida law. "

If the Supreme Court continues to be filled with right-wing amoralists (yes, even US liberals are right-wing), it is only because people want a good show. When the verdict against the powerful is always sure to be 'not guilty', it's no wonder the nation spends its time screaming over the fate of the weak. America feels like a big man, telling pregnant women, coma victims, and individuals what is right and wrong. In the meantime, his bosses are screwing his wife and drinking his beer.

Oil Men

Not to divert attention away from the mass murder & cover-up in Uzbekistan, but the US Press is once again attempting to hide information in plain sight.

The New York Times says:"The United States did not do enough to curb corruption by American companies involved in the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq, say Democrats on a Senate committee investigating abuses in the program."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/politics/17food.html
It also says that BayOil fought the US governments attempts to block the illegal oil kickbacks (directly paid to Saddam).

Meanwhile...

The Guardian has a lot more detail on the content of the Senate report, which has documented evidence of Navy and State Department approval and assistance of the deal (the oil tanker had promises that they wouldn't be seized for illegal sale to Jordan) and evidence that Bush was notified by the UN several times that Saddam was sitting there, receiving kickbacks and that BayOil was refusing to open their books.http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1485649,00.html

At least the Washington Post mentioned the involvement of the State Department and Navy. Still, the US treasury simply 'missed' the violations. Even though they were repeatedly notified by UN investigators, they did not turn a blind eye... they simply ordered a copy of Bayoil's books, and promptly refused to show them to the UN. They must have thought, "Gee, we can't see anything wrong here, no way are going to let the UN see these completely legitimate expense lists."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601369.html

Democracy on the side

When the flame of democracy went out 2000 years ago, we had to wait for the French and Americans to rekindle it. Of course, the champions of inequality have realised that if you want it to stay dead, no one can know that it has gone.
Read how inequality is incompatible with the right to choose. Ask yourself what is democracy without control over money? What is a free person without employment rights?

Consider the case of US president Lincoln, who was assasinated. This great leader, this visionary, enshrined in the minds of Americans, had the sincerity and courage to set his people free. Freed the slaves and freed the free. The greenback (paper money backed by the treasury) was an unparalleled gift. For a short time, the American people could vote and have an impact on the prime decision, the fuel of our lives, jobs, families. Then Honest Abe was shot, the central bank returned, and we spend our time arguing the last decision, how to stay afloat on the debt.

If you are having trouble with these ideas or their evidence, which, in the words of Noam Chomsky, "is all right there on the surface of history," then I ask you to do something about it. X Sama is here to help you.

Calling All History Teachers!

X Sama begs you to introduce the BBC documentary series, The Power of Nightmares (<--full script and commentary for those who cannot screen the film). In 3 one hour parts, it provides stimulating analysis of the birth of radical Islamic and neoconservative movements. The 3 parts have been joined, edited, and shortened for the Cannes Film Festival. Read a little more about it here. You won't be seeing it any time soon on US television or in theaters, so grab a copy where you can (torrentspy; demonoid).

And if it gets you in too serious of a mood, if you just can't swallow the idea that historical forces are shaping our governments, our leaders, then there's an alternative paradigm presented in H. Frankfurt's lecture turned book, On Bullshit.

Candy Cartogram!

Maps of the presidential election results by state and county, adjusted for population and electoral votes.

Rocky Mountain Republican

Rocky Mountain News link
Randal Wagner, a Colorado Republican, went out with his wife in the drivers' seat to steal a bunch of campaign signs. They were found by police after he fell face first onto the stolen sign and knocked himself out. He was issued a summons (ooooh!) and no action was taken against his wife, who was sitting with a pick-up full of signs from earlier in the night.

Remember the truth?

Remember the cold war? Remember how we 'beat' the commies? Remember how it all fell apart and they turned out to have destroyed their economy producing only a tenth of the military arsenal of the US? How they paraded the same tank division around Moscow, changing the insignia to make it look like they could afford lots of gear, all the while praying to Lenin that the crazy religious fanatics in the US wouldn't nuke them. You don't?

Well here is something you won't remember about the war on terror. Al Qaeda wasn't real. Sounds like BBC is gonna air a killer documentary, but of course all his info seems to have been obtainable for some time now.


Oh, and now asexual people are coming out too.

Who profits from war?

I think it's safe to say that president Bush thinks he is in the right. I wonder how he feels about his family's position, a position that allowed him to fail at all aspects of life, until he decided to run for public office. Read How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power, and even if you haven't put together the pieces on George Bush Senior's business, you'll see a little of what supports Bush family power.