This is the twenty-sixth installment of the serialization of a book entitled The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022. Herein you will find Appendix I, the Constitution of the “Old United States and the New American Republics,” as amended through the (fictional) year 2010. This Appendix demonstrates how the Republican Religious Right used the procedures embedded in the original U.S. Constitution to amend it into a document that in effect resembled nothing like the original, except in form.
By Human Rights Report
Axisoflogic.com Xinhuanet
Wednesday, Mar 24, 2010
Editor’s Note: Every year, the U.S. Department of State designs a report on human rights record of other countries, presenting favorable conditions among those who cooperate with U.S. foreign policies and damning those countries who are “uncooperative”. In the meantime, the U.S. government and it’s compliant corporate media present the U.S. as a model of democracy where civil and human rights are honored. Their annual reports consistently portray China as having one of the worst human rights records on the planet. In response, China has issued its first annual report on the human rights record of the United States. The full text follows.
On June 17, immediately after the historical ninth heads of state summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Yekaterinburg, Russia on the preceding two days, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced that their nations were drafting a joint treaty to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly.
A statement by the presidents reflected a common purpose to avoid the militarization of space and said:
“Russia and China advocate peaceful uses of outer space and oppose the prospect of it being turned into a new area for deploying weapons.
“The sides will actively facilitate practical work on a draft treaty on the prevention of the deployment of weapons in outer space, and of the use of force or threats to use force against space facilities, and will continue an intensive coordination of efforts to guarantee the security of activities in outer space.” [1]
WASHINGTON– Two men, including a security guard, were shot Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
A man with a shotgun entered the museum shortly before 1 p.m. and opened fire on a security guard near the metal detectors at the facility’s entrance, according to the museum and to a District of Columbia police spokesman. Other security guards returned fire and the gunman was wounded.
Recently declassified documents obtained by investigators Jeremy Bigwood and Eva Golinger reveal that the US Agency for International Development USAID has invested more than $97 million in “decentralization” and “regional autonomy” projects and opposition political parties in Bolivia since 2002. The documents, requested under the Freedom of Information Act FOIA, evidence that USAID in Bolivia was the “first donor to support departmental governments” and “decentralization programs” in the country, proving that the US agency has been one of the principal funders and fomenters of the separatist projects promoted by regional governments in Eastern Bolivia.
Decentralization and separatism
The documents confirm that USAID has been managing approximately $85 million annually in Bolivia during the past few years, divided amongst programs related to security, democracy, economic growth and human investment. The Democracy Program is focused on a series of priorities, the first outlined as “Decentralized democratic governments: departmental governments and municipalities”. One document, classified as “sensitive”, explains that this particular program began when USAID=2 0established an Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) en Bolivia during 2004. The OTIs are a division of USAID that function as rapid response teams to political crises in countries strategically important to US interests. The OTI only address political issues, despite USAID’s principal mission dedicated to humanitarian aid and development assistance, and they generally have access to large amounts of liquid funds in order to quickly and efficiently achieve their objectives. The OTI operate as intelligence agencies due to their relative secrecy and filtering mechanism that involves large contracts given to US companies to operate temporary offices in nations where OTI requires channeling millions of dollars to political parties and NGOs that work in favor of Washington’s agenda. After the failed coup d’etat against President Chávez in April 2002, USAID set up an OTI in Venezuela two months later, in June 2002, with a budget over $10 million for its first two years. Since then, the OTI has filtered more than $50 million through five US entities that set up shop in Caracas subsequently, reaching more than 450 NGOs, political parties and programs that support the opposition to President Chávez.
The United States is sinking deeper and deeper into the poisoned slough of their own making. Moral turpitude goes hand-in-hand with naiveté and arrogance. And nothing seems to have changed if it’s not that there is now a president with acute intellectual abilities rather than an insensitive and illiterate clown who couldn’t hold a book right side up.
Both men are devoted to the belief that the United States is the self-evident leader of the world and anything goes in the interest of keeping their country number one, including invasions of countries harboring supposed or invented enemies and, as always has been the case, cold-blooded support of dictatorships that are willing to do the bidding of Washington.
The real economic collapse could come by the end of this year
Editor’s Note
This article is meant to be provocative. Global Research does not necessarily share its conclusions.
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Letter to my son
My dear Muhammad Ali:
I told you that it’s a funny world getting funnier. Many American analysts are saying that America’s real economic collapse could come by the end of this year. “It will come to be known as ‘The Crash of 09’, they say. Others, especially a Russian political analyst, are predicting its physical collapse too. There’s no doubt that the country is up the dirtiest of imaginable creeks without a paddle. But what’s amazing is that America remains mired in stunning denial, continuing to make bad situations worse with useless bailout plans and messing around with the world instead of facing up to the reality that its time as a hyper-power is up, that’s its economic system has failed and that its only recourse is to end its adversarial doctrine and get out of its lost wars as painlessly and honourably as possible. There’s no point in going on flogging dead horses. The only sensible thing that survival demands is to craft a new moral economic and financial system and a moral foreign policy.
The deep recession verging on depression that we have seen so far was caused by the crash in the US housing market. Since other developed industrialised nations, especially of Europe, were aping the shenanigans of unchecked and poorly regulated American bankers and financiers, the collapse of their markets, banks and economies followed like dominoes. Iceland was the first to officially declare bankruptcy. Its GDP is only about $6.5 billion but its banks had lent something like $65 billion while its regulators were asleep on the wheel. Britain has not declared bankruptcy officially but we all know that it is bankrupt for all intents and purposes and none of its banks and financial institutions has any legs left.
However, this is only the aperitif. Wait for the crash of US commercial real estate, which analysts think will happen by autumn this year.
A Russian scholar, who had earlier predicted the collapse of the US, has offered President Barack Obama ways to prevent such a misfortune.
Former KGB analyst and Russian academic Igor Panarin, who has predicted the country’s 2010 disintegration on the back of mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation, insisted in a Monday interview that a revisited foreign policy may more than anything prevent the fall of the United States.
“I would, in the first place, suggest that he radically reduce the US foreign policy activities, especially in the Eurasian space,” Panarin said speaking to Russia Today.
A record high-number of 7.3 million Americans were behind bars or under a correction system in the US in 2007, according to a research.
The record-high number, one in every 31 adults, includes people in prison or jail, and on probation or parole.
The results of the research conducted by Pew Center further indicated on Monday that America’s prison population has skyrocketed over the past quarter century.
In 1982, 1 in 77 adults were in the correctional system in one form or another, totaling 2.2 million people.
[…]
Most of those in the US corrections system — one in 45 — are already on probation or parole, with one in 100 in prison or jail, the Pew study found.
A study released this week by the Pew Center on the States delivers a staggering statistic: 7.3 million Americans-or 1 in every 31 adults-are in the nation’s prison system. This figure includes those in US jails and prisons, on parole, on probation, or under other forms of correctional supervision.
No other country comes close to matching this number. If these individuals were grouped together, they would number more than the entire populations of Israel or Honduras, or all of the residents of Washington state.
The new study “One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections,” follows a study by the Pew Center last year that found the US leading the world in the rate at which it puts its people behind bars: 1 in 100, or 2.3 million people.
In both raw figures and as a percentage of the population, the US is the world leader in the rate at which it puts its people behind bars. A new report using state-by-state data says a record 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008—one out of every 99.1 adults.
The report by the Pew Center on the States also documents record increases in financial outlays for incarceration, with the 50 US states spending more than $49 billion on prisons last year, almost five times more than the $11 billion spent 20 years ago.
The Pentagon plans to make a large arms delivery to Israel, rising fears that the military campaign in Gaza will go on for a long time.
The US is trying to hire a merchant ship that can carry hundreds of tons of weapons from Greece to Israel later this month; Reuters reported citing tender documents it had obtained.
According to the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC), the ship will transport 325 standard 20-foot containers of what has been called ‘ammunition’ from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod on two separate trips in the second half of January.
A description on the manifest says the containers will be loaded with ‘hazardous material’, such as explosive substances and detonators, without giving any more details.
The Pentagon announced the tender for the ship in the last hours of 2008. The two deadlines set for the deliveries are January 25 and the last day of the month.
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By Mark Sappenfield
Christian Science Monitor
McClatchy Washington Bureau
12/09/2008
NEW DELHI — Indian officials released the names and hometowns of all 10 suspected Mumbai attackers Tuesday, saying it has pinpointed them even to individual postal codes within Pakistan.
With the disclosure, India is continuing to ratchet up pressure on Pakistan, apparently hoping that strong evidence will compel the international community to take a hard line against its neighbor.
Officials within Pakistan, including President Asif Ali Zardari, had previously cast doubt on India’s assertions that the terrorists who ran amok in Mumbai for three days last month were Pakistani. Tuesday’s announcement, including photos of nine of the 10, is intended to prove Indian claims beyond cavil.
New Delhi: Dismissing reports that Pakistan had decided to hand him over to Indian authorities in connection with the investigations into last week’s Terror attacks in Mumbai, former ISI chief General Hamid Gul on Sunday such reports were being “planted” by the United States to malign him.
“As far as I know, neither has the Indian Government asked Pakistan to hand me over to them nor has the Pakistan Government agreed to do any such thing,” General Gul, who served as director-general of the ISI between 1987 and 1989, told The Indian Express.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Updated: Jan 1, 2009 Added map and link to another story and another video report
Updated: Nov 27, 2008 added video
MOSCOW, November 24 (RIA Novosti)
19:31 | 24/11/2008
A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.
Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily Izvestia published on Monday: “The dollar is not secured by anything. The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse.”
The paper said Panarin’s dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year’s events.
When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: “It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world’s financial regulator.”
[…]
He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts – the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.
He even suggested that “we could claim Alaska – it was only granted on lease, after all.”
The break-up of America into six pieces? Alaska joining the Russian Federation? Will Russia survive the crisis? Igor Panarin, a Russian professor of economics, discusses these questions when he dropped by the RT studio on Thursday.
“Hamas Threatens Retaliation,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Israel Kills 7 Palestinians in Gaza,” Syria TV, Syria
“Obama Will Not Change Policy Towards Middle East,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
“Rahm Emanuel Accepts Chief of Staff Post,” IBA TV, Israel
“US, Iraq edge closer to military pact deal,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Iraqi Government Compensates Displaced Christians,” Al-Iraqiya TV, Iraq
“Sudanese Papers Strike Against Censorship,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“CIA, Pakistan set to bury the hatchet,” Press TV, Iran
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
Dandelion Salad 