The US does not have justice or even the rule of law

WELCOME TO CEASARISM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spengler's_civilization_model#Political_epochs

I recently coined a phrase on my blog to describe our billionaires oligarchy, specifically referring to a radioactive waste dump being built in Texas but applying to the political system across the board: Toxic Wasteland.

http://billhicksisdead.blogspot.com/2012/04/toxic-wasteland.html

“Welcome to modern day America, where our politics is as toxic as the air we breathe, and the water we drink and the soil in which we plant our crops. It is the playground of unaccountable billionaires, who throw their wads of cash around as they please, buying the political process to ensure they make even more money–long term damage to the environment and the body politic be damned.”

THis is my little comment: We, the humans, such as we are, we are on a course to complete destruction. The worst elements…. as Eisenhower suggested… are really in control of it.

The only reason for these “wars” that are siphoning off from, and parisitising from the commons… (our taxes, and that is from the commons… the tax monies… goes to pay off the f’n
suppliers/contractors…(in quotes) the whole f’n thing is a grift, of the bastards that control the f’n ordinance! Bigger guns, they might even not give a shit about… so called… Posse Comitatis.

So just sayin’n…

markfromireland,

…
That the experiment in liberal democracy underpinned by the rule of law was an aberration and that authoritarian government in one form or another is the norm.
…

This is the make-believe:
Habeas corpus : Away with it. –One bit.
Privacy: Away with it. –One bit.
Open space: Away with it. –One bit.

The battle is on bits , not the mythical ‘whole’.

Fragmented minds never have a problem to discard the whole, because they have no awareness of it.
They take it bit by bit.
Their ultimate ‘whole’ is a void. A sink. A NIL device. Ultimately armageddon.
Upon that they project a fictitional ‘judgement’, where they come out as the good ones.

How silly is that?

Here’s another example:

Megaupload founder will likely never go to trial, says US judge
http://boingboing.net/2012/04/21/megaupload-founder-will-likely.html
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-trial-may-never-happen-judge-says-120420/

“Remember earlier this year when the New Zealand government and the US government conspired to send a SWAT team to arrest Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload, shut down the service, make 220 people unemployed, seize Dotcom’s assets, and deprive millions of users of access to their files? Well now a US judge says that the trial against Dotcom will probably never proceed, because the US government didn’t ever formally charge Dotcom. This wasn’t a mere oversight, either. They were not legally allowed to charge him.”

And another:

New York Times Details Widespread Bribery in Wal-Mart Mexico and Top Executive Coverup
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/new-york-times-details-widespread-bribery-in-wal-mart-mexico-and-top-executive-coverup.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/business/at-wal-mart-in-mexico-a-bribe-inquiry-silenced.html

“In 2005, Sergio Cicero Zapata, a lawyer who had been with WalMart in Mexico for ten years and had resigned in 2004, came forward with a description of his involvement, sanctioned by top executives in Wal-Mart’s Mexican operation, of handing out bribes totaling over $24 million to accelerate the construction of new stores. This activity is a clear violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Even though the Bentonville giant quickly found evidence corroborating the Cicero’s charges, as well as that of a cover-up by the top brass in Mexico, and looked into hiring an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation, it quickly converted it to a limited review by an internal unit whose main activity was handling shoplifting cases. …”

And just who would be in charge of that prosecution? The equally corrupt, or equally corruptible, Eric Holder Justice Department? The political process is corrupted beyond repair. You cannot expect it to render Justice consistently, if at all. The Judicial process is corrupted beyond repair and is joined at the hip with the Political process. There is no separation of powers any longer, and an argument can be made that perhaps there never was except on paper….and that lack of separation is ever so more apparent these days due to information overload.

This System will not heal itself. This System is the disease. The double-bind is that we must live in it to survive, and in doing so we must support it as a matter of some degree…and that involuntary commitment, zealously voluntary for some, helps perpetuate this utter madness into what seems eternity or death do us part…except now death is no longer a final escape. No, as we speak, this sadistic System seeks to conquer death as a portal of refuge from its madness. Soon enough, there will be No Way Out.

The U.S. has a gigantic criminal justice system and ordinary citizens are held fully accountable to the letter of the law. It’s the members of the elite and near-elite who are exempt, in varying degrees, to the letter of the law. This is really nothing new. This system exists to crush members of the underclass and to control the more wayward members of the middle-class. The rich usually have little to worry about — unless they swindle or kill other rich people. Bernie Maddoff is an example of this.

Here’s a link to Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now for April 20th;

http://www.democracynow.org/

It should give one pause about how one communicates; cell phones, Internet, e-mails; all compromised!
Orwell’s 1984 is here now (I know, cliche’, but true) and everyone who fancies themselves as “freedom fighters/progressives” (whatever the hell that means) should probably find a different way to communicate because your government knows what your eating, saying, and thinking; as well as who you speak to and what you’re saying.
Even encryption (128, 256, 512 bit) is no longer able to block the ability of the government to read your e-mail. Their computers are able to break encryption in minutes or seconds.
But then, when all is said and done, we’re relatively harmless pecking away at our keyboards.
In the end, a distraction, and a failure of genuine action.
Groo mentions the Tao; therein lies the definition of genuine action and this ain’t it.
Cheers.

jcapan PERMALINK
April 22, 2012
233, thanks for the link! Dissidents should look to the past, when successful activism, revolutionary or otherwise, was (I know it’s shocking) practiced without Twitter!
Bertram Wolfe’s classic, Three Who Made a Revolution, is great on this topic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You’re welcome. Without Twitter, LOL. Yes. I dumped twitter and facebook years ago; vile things, they are.
I find Amy’s show to be the best, bar none, there in the states. Counterspin is pretty good as well.
I don’t see forums as worth more than a discussion venue; they’re of limited value, IMO, but can be sources of education (good) but not vehicles of change; I still maintain, that must come to us individually. True change is a form of action, IMO.
Of late I have drastically cut back on posting; this being one place I mostly enjoy. Ian tends towards thoughtful threads. I’d like to see a little more diversity here in the posts, but oh well.
Cheers…

Pepe PERMALINK
April 23, 2012

I’m reminded of the war games where they wanted to test out their surveillance capabilities, and the general who led the “bad guys” used motorcycle couriers to deliver messages. The war games were stopped and the general was told not use couriers but rather to use phones and email.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nice one; I had completely forgotten that incident. But it’s certainly in line with what I was thinking; pigeons would be another possibility. I think even snail mail, up to a point, would be effective.
Low-tech/no-tech is really on order here.
I just talked to a friend in Oregon 2 hours ago and this was the topic of a good deal of our conversation. I usually say hello to the NSA (Asia to U.S. is monitored 100%).
I’ll not fly ever again. Ground/Sea transportation or nothing.
Cheers.

Part 2: Democracy Now interview with NSA whistleblower William Binney;

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/23/more_secrets_on_growing_state_surveillance

December 12, 2000, a date that ought to live in infamy but will soon either be forgotten or — perversely — celebrated.

That was the date that the Constitution of the United Stated of America, already a tattered and threadbare document barely being held together with tape and chewing gum, was irrevocably shredded by the lawless intervention of the US Supreme Court into a presidential election dispute.

Ever since, the ‘rule of law’ in the United States has — and will continue to be — a joke. The impunity with which Our Rulers operate has grown exponentially since the decision in Bush v Gore was rendered, and there is no going back under the present regime.

What seems odd to me is that we are still in a period of transition between the remnant republic (quite extinct, though many of its attributes remain in place for show) and a full on imperial autocracy.

Arbitrary imposition of authority is taken for granted, as is the differential application of “justice.” Everybody knows that authority is arbitrarily imposed on those who can’t easily fight back, and that the poor, the brown, and the black people among us are treated far more harshly than they deserve, and that the rich and the palest and most powerful of us are able to avoid any sort of rational justice at all, quite literally getting away with murder, even being rewarded for it.

Nothing the People do seems able to change this state of affairs for the better; in fact, in too many circumstances the People are actually complicit in the destruction of Law and Justice.

Still, we do what we can…

Veblen you say, groo? Many Americans should know better, it’s true, but the idea of actually looking into things has come to be regarded as somewhat pervy, you know.

And what is this “leisure” of which you speak? Americans know not thereof, for they have little now and can’t remember a time when they ever had more.

“Leisure” comes when Americans get old enough to drive around in their Winnebagos, sour and perplexed, until they die.

Ché Pasa,

well, my understanding of Veblen is, that he -with the ‘leisure class’- characterized a character-type, which nowadays is synonymous with the 1%.

Which correlates, upon closer inspection, with relative status, narcisissm, self-interest, downto outright sociopathy.
Which is a syndrome, i.e. a cluster of traits, which are self-reinforcing.

I tell you a story:
I have been in the hospital for a couple of days, which is not such a scary thing over here from the financial side, and met some people whom I never would meet during normal circumstances.
Those were medium high class-people, privately health insured, and so on.

Now what are those people?
What do they think?

I tell you.
They have, say, average five properties all over southern Europe, which they occasionally visit and most of their mental energy goes into maintaining this property.

Which, I think is quite typical of the upper middle class over here, and quite aligns to Veblens thinking.

This class is totally absorbed into
a) maintaining/multiplying their property
b) maintaining relative status VIA property. Property is a display of status.

This is NOT the 0.1%, but they share their values, and through this shared value system they reinforce the status quo, which is a system of rent extraction through property values, and its display as status-‘value’.

The lower classes are pressured downto subsistence level, not being aware of that.
And ‘belief’ follows the pressure.

These pressures lead to something peculiar:
A divergence of beliefs: master-belief versus slave-belief.