Nick Egnatz's blog

Getting What We NEED!

Watch the Youtube video of the Cawthra Park Secondary School Choir opening the song for the Rolling Stones.  The choir starts to sing and is almost completely drowned out by the crowd noise.  Slowly, gradually, something begins to happen.  The beauty and purity of their united voices as one, silences the crowd.  The choir is split into two groups, left and right.  Just as we the people have been split into a left and right, knowing that something is rotten in Denmark or Wall Street, separately searching for answers.  Then the shear beauty and power of the choir as one wins the day.  Our challenge is to come together and fight for what we need and want for our society. 

"You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometime,

You just might find,

December 23 marks the tragic 100th anniversary of the private Federal Reserve System, when the U.S. government gave to a private banking cartel that which no government has the right to give away--the sovereign right of a people to create and control their own money, the very lifeblood of a free and independent people. 

"The Congress shall have The Power To...coin Money...", Article 1, Section 8, U.S. Constitution. 

Contrary to what most Americans think, the Federal Reserve System is not a part of the U.S. government.  Rather it is network of private banking corporations, wholly controlled by a handful of Wall Street mega "too big to fail" banking corporations.  Anyone doubting their absolute power should hearken to Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois 2009 statement following the financial crash and the inability of Congress to regulate these banking corporations, "frankly they (banks) own the place (Capital Hill)." 

America Needs The NEED Act

Today our politicians squabble over healthcare legislation passed years ago and in a few more days their fight will be over the federal deficit.  For the 95th time in the last 67 years, Congress and the President will be confronted with passing legislation to raise the "debt ceiling".  What citizens should know is that our country can pay off its debt as it comes due, put millions of people back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, provide debt free federal support for cash-strapped State governments, provide interest free funds for local governments and in addition give all Americans a Citizens' Dividend payment--putting immediate cash in the hands of all our citizens and thus giving our beleaguered small businesses what they need, customers with cash to spend on their goods and services. 

Rolling Stone Fluff on Boston Marathon Bombing

Rolling Stone magazine has a picture of indicted Boston Marathon bombing suspect  Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the Aug 1, 2013 cover with a detailed feature piece "Jahar's World"[1] inside, written by Rolling Stone editor Janet Reitman.  After reading many excellent articles on the financial machinations of the Wall Street banksters in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, I certainly expected more than the Rolling Stone and Ms Reitman delivered. 

                              Phil Mickelson's Choice, Support Corporate Criminals or Social Justice?

Forbes Magazine lists Phil Mickelson as the world's 7th highest paid athlete, with prize money earnings of $4.8 million and endorsements of $43 million for a very comfortable $47.8 million a year.[i]  With his beaming smile, swashbuckling style of play, beautiful wife and children, $47.8 million a year; one could call them the All American Family. 

BostonMarathon Bombing Questions

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." InHamlet Shakespeare introduced us to the smell test.  It would behoove us to apply the same test to the Boston Marathon Bombing. 

On April 15, 2013 two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon while the city of Boston enjoyed its annual celebration of Patriot Day.  Three people died and 264 were injured by the bombs which exploded 210 yards apart and 13 seconds apart.[i]  Three days later the FBI asked the public for assistance in identifying the two persons of interest carrying backpacks and walking through the crowd near the finish line on released surveillance camera video. 

Justice American Style: The Obama War on Dissent

The International Court of Justice in 1996 unanimously interpreted the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty as, "There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control."

Transform Now Plowshares

Who Are the Real Criminals?

83 year old nun, Sister Megan Rice and two other peace activists, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed were convicted and could be sentenced to 20 year for breaking into a Tennessee storage facility for depleted uranium weapons and splashing them with blood.  They are members of the group Transform Now Plowshares that lives the words of the Bible "They shall beat their swords into plowshares.  They shall learn war no more."

With skyrocketing cancer rates and birth defects, the city of Fallujah, Iraq has never recovered from the 2004 U.S. assault on it using depleted uranium munitions.  A study by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health states that the after effects of the Fallujah assault are "worse" than those after the U.S. nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Radicalize for Peace

The official storyline on the Boston Marathon bombing paints a picture of Tamerlan Tsarnaeva being "radicalized". 

The official storyline also ignores the fact that neither Tamerlan's all black backpack nor his brother Dzhokar's mostly white backpack resemble the blown up backpack which was black with a white rectangle on the top (probably a logo).  The official storyline also refuses to ask or answer any questions whatsoever about the presence of at least 7 individuals near the bombing site dressed as Craft International mercenaries.  At least two of these individuals are wearing black backpacks and at least one of these black backpacks has a white rectangle on the top similar to the one on the backpack that held one of the bombs.  This has all been documented by independent journalist David Lindorff at ThisCantBeHappening.net

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1718

The presidential debate ignored the root causes of the present Depression:

• Out of control military/industrial/political complex that spends more on the military than all the other countries of the earth combined.
• Allowing private banks to create our money supply out of thin air when they loan us money.
• Unregulated speculation by Wall Street banks that has left them functionally bankrupt with $trillions of worthless derivative bets on their books
• Free trade policies that allow U.S. corporations to close factories at home,  pay sweatshop wages overseas and then import the goods here duty free.
• Reduction of the income tax rate on surplus income of wealthy Americans from the 70-90% range of 1940-1980 to current 35%.

The results are:

Thank you to all; CANG8 (Coalition Against NATO/G8), UNAC (United National Antiwar Coalition), Occupy Chicago, and all others that made this all rally and march against NATO/G8 possible.  There are so many other groups, but I can't list them all here.  And thank you to all who participated from seasoned veteran activists to the youth who were exercising their right to direct or participatory democracy for the first time.  While so many others labored so long and so hard, my own part was almost infinitesimal.  Andy, Joe and Pat of CANG8 were everywhere during the long months of organizing and this great march would have been much the lesser without them.   

A Conversation with War Criminals Cancelled at University of Chicago

"Update: Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, the Nov. 14 event featuring former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has been postponed."  [1]

An Open Letter to the Occupations

Neoliberal globalization (free trade, free markets, no regulations, tax cuts for the wealthy and privatization of everything public), also more recently termed neoconservatism, is in essence a war on the poor and working class.

Here in the U.S. the results of this war are grim; 22%+ real unemployment rate, 50,000 U.S. factories closed in the last 10 years, millions of families evicted from their homes, 30%+ drop in home values nationwide, 1/3 of home mortgages “underwater,” 37% of young families under the age of 30 in poverty, etc, etc, etc.

For the rest  http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/3395

Democrats and Republicans in Washington are emitting much sound and fury on the issue of federal debt and a balanced budget. What they won’t be telling us is that we could have it all: a balanced budget, no national debt, full employment, greatly reduced income taxes and expanded social programs. How this is even remotely possible will never be addressed by our two corporate political parties or the U.S. corporate stream media.

Read the rest at http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/2504

Four days before President Obama made the unilateral decision for war with Libya, under the innocuous banner of a humanitarian NATO action to prevent civilian deaths, the African Union met in Ethiopia to discuss Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi’s proposal to unite the African continent with Arab states in a confederation called the United States of Africa. Both our president and the lapdog U.S. press failed to inform the American people why this just might be of interest to them.

Gaddafi’s plan calls for a common African currency. The Libyan dinar would become the African dinar with more than one billion people and many of the top oil producing countries using it. Libya, with 143.8 tons of gold worth $6.5 billion and the world’s ninth ranked oil reserves, just may have the resources to pull this off.

Read the rest at: http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/2152

Double-Tapping Justice & Bin Laden
Please excuse me for not joining in the celebration over Osama bin Laden's execution. The exuberance of Democratic leaders and Democratic liberal pundits over the crime is but further evidence of the anti democratic character of our monopoly two party system. There can be no doubt now that both parties equally support war, torture and empire; in addition to U.S. capitalism that has made the U.S. the most unequal industrial democracy on earth.

At least Saddam Hussein was given a trial; all be it, one with a predetermined outcome, conducted by our Iraqi puppet government, outside the purview of the international legal community. Hussein was convicted and executed for a relatively minor crime, while he was kept from answering for a career's worth of far more serious crimes, many with U.S. involvement.

It’s impossible to make sense out of why we are at war in Libya through the lens of Republican/Democratic politics and outside the context of U.S. Empire.

If it weren’t so tragic, it would be humorous that Republicans are opposed because there is no distinct mission or endgame, given their steadfast support of nine years of war in Afghanistan and eight years in Iraq without so much as a whimper of dissent. While the Democratic president, who made the decision for war, is far too enamored with the “war is peace” doctrine (he presented to the world when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for escalating the Afghanistan war) than to giving the Libyan freedom fighters the support they were asking for when they needed it.

Read the rest at
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/1339#comment-281

The current global economic cataclysm is not an anomaly. It is the 11th major financial disaster visited on the poor and working class by U.S. capitalism: Panic of 1785–1788, Panic of 1792, Panic of 1819–1822, Panic of 1837–1843, Panic of 1857–1861, Great Depression or Panic of 1873–1878, Panic of 1893–1897, Panic of 1907, Great Depression 1929–1941, Recession of the mid 1970s and now the Neoliberal Depression of 2008-? On average every 21 years U.S. capitalism provides the people with the gift of personal and financial disaster for many and severe hardship for many more.

For the rest go to
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/1323

With 22 percent real unemployment, with millions foreclosed on and millions more to follow, with Republican union busting met tepidly by national Democrats and forcefully by workers and state Democratic representatives, with tax cuts in place for the wealthy and with our military occupations continuing largely out of the public’s consciousness in Iraq and Afghanistan; does it really matter how one solitary individual is treated when the entire array of state power is deployed against him?

President Obama is satisfied with the treatment Bradley Manning is receiving, “I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

Read the rest at http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/1128

The U.S. working class has always been divided—along racial lines, against each succeeding wave of immigrants and now between the haves and the have-nots.

Nowhere is the divide and conquer strategy more evident than Wisconsin where newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker, after passing pro business legislation to the tune of $140 million, now claims a $137 million deficit and is pushing through legislation to make up the newly created shortfall on the backs of the state’s public union workers. But his proposed legislation goes beyond fiscal sacrifice: it will strip the union workers of the right to collective bargaining and no longer allow union dues to be tax deductible.

Read the rest at
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/678

Did anyone ever stop and think how protest movements could grow so vibrantly fast in Tunisia and Egypt? Not that there was nothing to protest, quite the contrary. But how did they organize and blossom under such repressive regimes?

Read the rest at http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/428

The U.S. Constitution was written to restore the British commercial and financial system under elite home rule. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were men of means and their overriding goal was protection of their private property. The Bill of Rights was strictly an afterthought, grudgingly given to the more democratically inclined.

Read the rest at
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6807.shtml

Kim Scipes’ new book “AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers” (Lexington Books, 2010) documents the history of AFL-CIO leadership in supporting the U.S. government policy of Empire in the developing world. AFL-CIO leadership, in secret and completely without the consent and support of their rank and file membership, has worked to thwart popular bottom-up organic democracy in the developing world and instead supported elite top-down democracy, friendly to U.S. corporate interests.

Read the rest at
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6741.shtml

The essence of capitalism is aiding and abetting the wealthy to accumulate more and more capital (wealth). This is justified by the rationalization that living in a free society we all have the opportunity to amass our own fortunes. The reality is that as the wealthy become progressively more and more wealthy (the very nature of capitalism), they use their wealth to squeeze the working class that provides their labor and so insure their own dominance at the top of the heap.

Read the rest at
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6708.shtml

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After voting in every national election since I came of age serving in Vietnam, I have come to the studied conclusion that continuing to participate in U.S. federal elections serves no purpose other than to convey my consent to a system which is both anti-democratic and criminal.

Anti-democratic because rather than a system of one person/one vote, we have a system of multi-millions of dollars required to run for the House or the Senate. The two corporate political parties enjoy monopoly status and refuse to allow democratic reforms. Independent and third parties have almost no chance in winning a single election of consequence. While voting for an independent or third party candidate might assuage one’s conscience, in reality it is a vote giving one’s consent to a grossly unfair system.

The Progressive Dilemma
A self described representative democracy in which the only two political parties are both funded and controlled by elite corporate interests is a contradiction in terms. Control of the population through government propaganda and a monopoly corporate media have made the domination of the American working class and poor by the wealthy corporate elite consensual. The enormity of the crime against true democratic values is so complete that substantive reform of the present system is an impossibility.