Trans Pacific Partnership Latest Disgrace By Congress

As I’ve noted many times, with merely 300 or so honest representatives in Congress, all our national problems could be solved. No more Federal Reserve machinations. No more meddlesome escapades in foreign countries that pose no threat to us. No more Patriot Act. No more NDAA. No more pay-raise votes. No more secret budgets for the CIA and other intelligence agencies. No more restrictions on civil liberties.

But we don’t have 300 honest representatives in Congress, and probably never have. We don’t have 100. We don’t even have 50. Instead, we have a bunch of spineless lemmings, led by the most awful human beings imaginable. Nancy Pelosi? John Boehner? Mitch McConnell? Harry Reid? Lindsay Graham? Charles Schumer? We really can’t do any better than that? Would you ever expect them to do the right thing?

Jonathan Swift wrote, some three hundred years ago, that the judges of his time were so notoriously addicted to corruption that it would impossible to bribe them to act in the interests of justice. I think we’ve reached that point in this age. I think our representatives are so accustomed to obeying the orders of powerful lobbyists, of opting for war, austerity measures and globalist expansionism, that it would be impossible to bribe them to act on the behalf of their constituents, to vote for their interests.

The Trans Pacific Partnership will not only obliterate what little is left of American industry and national sovereignty, it is being ramrodded through Congress with even more secrecy and “bipartisanship” than usual. Most members will undoubtedly fail to even read the legislation before feeling comfortable in voting on it. As former House Speaker (now Minority Leader) Nancy Pelosi famously remarked, regarding Obamacare: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Very few members of Congress are likely to read the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. It’s hundreds of pages long, and the restrictions are incomprehensible for any piece of legislation in a supposedly free society.

Members who actually have the desire to wade through this monstrosity must attend classified briefings, and then leave both their staffs and their cell phones behind when they conspiratorially descend to the Visitor Center in the basement of the Capitol. They aren’t even permitted to take any notes out of the soundproof room. And then, believe it or not, they are forbidden to discuss what they’ve read. This sounds like something more suitable for the old Soviet Politburo, and anything remotely approaching such draconian secrecy should be anathema in our constitutional republic.

But all the most powerful people support this horrific agreement, just as they all supported NAFTA back in the 1990s. The “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot so astutely predicted then is likely to become an ear- shattering blast, trumpeting the end of an America that once was the wonder of the world. No one seems to know exactly what is in the TPP agreement, but you can bet that it will have a disastrous impact on the poor and working-class in this country. More “guest workers” from other countries, doing the “jobs Americans won’t do,” and it appears that the pact will make it easier for Monsanto food products to dominate the marketplace. The chief U.S. agricultural negotiator for the deal is, in fact, former Monsanto lobbyist Islam Siddique.

There has been very ineffectual, token opposition to the agreement in Congress, spearheaded by Elizabeth Warren. But Warren, who recently voted against auditing the Federal Reserve, focused most of her criticism on the secrecy surrounding the deal, not the deal itself. As it was with NAFTA and the other deadly trade agreements that eviscerated American industry, so it is with TPP; the usual unholy alliance between Democrats and Republicans, and universal support from both the “Left” and “Right” talking heads in the mainstream media. No one but the “extremists” and “conspiracy theorists” seem to realize just how awful this deal will be for the vast majority of people in this country.

Congress has been issuing these kinds of head-scratching votes for much of our history. Remember that only one U.S. Senator- Russ Feingold- voted against the unconstitutional Patriot Act, which was rushed through Congress barely a month after the events of 9/11. The House was a bit more serious about their vows, but still only 66 members voted against it. Thanks exclusively to Rand Paul, three key re-authorization provisions of the Patriot Act were blocked in the Senate just yesterday. If the past is any indicator, “bipartisanship” and power politics will prevail, and the entire odious thing will ultimately be extended again.

The infamous psy-op that led to the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, fooled only two U.S. Senators at the time, and zero representatives in the House. Both Houses proudly passed a joint resolution condemning the imaginary incident. In fact, our vaunted congressional representatives have always given the president-whoever that may be-free reign to invade and occupy other nations. Whichever party has a majority in Congress, and whichever party is in the White House, they always vote for war. The last president who defied the military industrial complex and the drumbeats for war was John F. Kennedy.

The only leaders in this country who have backbone are acting against the interests of the people, and at the behest of powerful forces behind the scenes. There are no profiles in courage out there, in positions of prominence, within the government or in private industry. Permitting the president to “fast track” this heinous deal is something that would gnaw at anyone with a conscience. The guilt should be overwhelming for those “representatives” who agreed to the clandestine, almost science-fiction like provisions of secrecy of the deal,  and still approved it for “fast track” status. Clearly, there are few consciences in Congress.

Every public opinion poll reports that the American people are disgusted with Congress, giving them a less than ten percent approval rating. And yet, they continue to allegedly re-elect them at an incomprehensible rate- 96 percent of incumbents were returned to office in the last election. There are really only two explanations for such a glaring dichotomy. Either they don’t really count our votes, or the American people really are hopelessly stupid.

Let’s all hope that they aren’t actually counting the votes.

Another Show Trial For Another Patsy

The recent trial of alleged Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was just the latest high-profile example of how corrupt our legal system is. Tsarnaev was accorded the same brand of justice that patsies charged with significant events have received since at least the 1930s, when hapless Bruno Richard Hauptmann was “defended” by a famous lawyer known by the confidence-building name of “Death House” Reilly.

Tsarnaev’s attorney was Judy Clarke, who seems to gravitate to these cases. She built her undeserved reputation by “defending” the likes of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and purported Gabby Giffords’ assailant Jared Lee Loughner. Despite the fact that Tsarnaev had initially pleaded not guilty to all 30 charges against him, and the myriad of easily detected holes in the case against him, Clarke opened her defense by telling the court, “It was him.” There was no attempt to cross-examine the dubious witnesses, or dismantle the easily dismantled arguments of the prosecution. Instead, Clarke blamed Dzhokhar’s deceased older brother, killed under very questionable circumstances by the police, and insinuated that the younger boy was merely a naive dupe.

Clarke’s ridiculous, twenty minute closing statement consisted of attempts to cast her client in the role of misguided, jealous sibling. “He expressed he was jealous of his brother, who achieved martyrdom,” Clarke declared. She did not explain how he was by any definition a martyr, or who would have considered him as such. She bought every bit of the absurd official narrative, including the mind numbingly impossible “confession” Dzhokhar supposedly wrote on the side of the boat where he was captured.

The entire Boston Bombing event has been dissected to pieces on the internet, by real citizen investigators. There are no true investigative spirits left in the mainstream media, of course, so the mainstream media dutifully passed along all the implausible elements of this story, without questioning a single thing. Their “coverage” was perhaps best expressed in a March 30, 2015 Vanity Fair headline, “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, The Boston Bomber, Has the Most Ferocious Lawyer in America Defending Him.” How many inaccuracies can one media organ fit into a single headline? Clarke’s defense of Tsarnaev certainly turned out to be anything but “ferocious,” and the magazine might at least have paid cursory service to the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing, and identified Tsarnaev as the “alleged” Boston Bomber.

But the secrecy surrounding these proceedings even taxed the patience of the compliant establishment press. The Washington Post complained, in a January 29, 2015 story, that they “have never faced the sorts of restrictions imposed by Judge George O’Toole in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev…The bulk of the filings in the case are under seal…and reporters are excluded from seeing or hearing much of the courtroom discussion that would customarily be public.” Judy Clarke called all of four witnesses before resting her case, and never cross- examined any of the victims.

Even leaving aside all the questionable aspects of the event, which were captured on film and subjected to intense scrutiny on the internet, the case against the Tsarnaev brothers was flimsier even than the case against Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City Bombing, and it should have been destroyed by any competent defense attorney. Was older brother Tamerlan an FBI informant?  Their mother insisted that the FBI had been in contact with Tamerlan for up to five years. What about all the footage of individuals wearing the uniform of private security firm Craft International, complete with backpacks, who were in the immediate vicinity of the blast?

The questions are plentiful. Why were runners told that a bomb squad drill was taking place during the Boston Marathon? As participant Alastair Stevenson told a local television station, “They kept making announcements on the loud speaker that it was just a drill and there was nothing to worry about.” Stevenson also described lookouts on the rooftops and “dogs with their handlers sniffing around for explosives..” Clearly, this cried out for investigation, but the mainstream media has become totally toothless and hardly more than a mouthpiece for the state at this point.

Was it really Tamerlan who was killed by the authorities in a shoot out? How and why was he shot, after being apprehended naked (and how strange was that?) His aunt claimed adamantly to alternative reporters that the naked man was not her nephew. And what about the preposterous added detail, not seen in the footage (which also doesn’t show the naked “Tamerlan” being shot or even injured as he is led into a police car) that Dzhokhar backed the car over his brother’s body in an attempt to escape?

A key question is just how Judy Clarke came to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s attorney. Could he not make her aware of the key flaws in the case against him? What about his family- they had been quite vocal early on about his (and Tamerlan’s) innocence, although his mother was pressured to flee America and could only rant about the verdict from abroad. Exactly who decided to “appoint” Clarke to represent Tsarnaev? Surely, with all the conjecture about the case, there must have been a decent lawyer somewhere who was cognizant of the holes in the story, and anxious to bolster their reputation by defending Tsarnaev.

What about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s friend Ibragim Todashev, who was simply murdered by the FBI while in custody? You read that correctly. That’s all the information we have about this incident; that Todashev was killed while being questioned. This is a highly unusual circumstance, to say the least. What innocent explanation would there be for a witness under interrogation to ever be killed by the authorities? Needless to say, there are no Woodward and Bernsteins out there in the heartland to ask the tough questions of those who were responsible for Todashev’s death. But it certainly isn’t a “conspiracy theory” to be flabbergasted and highly suspicious about this.

The “evidence” against the Tsarnaev brothers consisted largely of a video tape that the authorities have yet to produce, and which even his inept defense team declared did not exist, and a mysterious, still unidentified witness known only as “Danny,” a Chinese man who was supposedly carjacked by the Tsarnaevs and heard Tamerlan conveniently confess to the Boston Bombing, as well as to the shooting of a police officer at MIT. Following the death of Tamerlan under still unclear circumstances, a huge manhunt for Dzhokhar ensued, resulting in a virtual lockdown of the city and culminating in the apprehension of the younger brother, amid a fusillade of excess bullets, in a boat in the backyard of a residence.

How did “Danny” escape the clutches of the carjacking fugitives? How did Dzhokhar escape the authorities, in the midst of a huge shootout, during which he was wildly outmatched, and elude them for so long when the entire area was under intense surveillance? Why wasn’t the eerily timed drill investigated? Why didn’t the defense raise any of the multitude of questions that cry out for answers?

In the aftermath of the apprehension of the wounded Dzhokhar, America regressed into its customary Idiocracy-like mindlessness. “Boston Strong” became the rallying cry everywhere, from sporting events to shameless politicians, as everyone praised the city itself for somehow being heroic by virtue of enduring an event that took the lives of three people. They also proudly endured virtual martial law, and Americans were treated to videos of military tanks rolling through tree-lined streets, with sharpshooters pointing their weapons at innocent residents. They ordered citizens out of their homes without any reason or rationale. And after all the terrorizing was over, the citizens who experienced it cheered the militarized police, crediting their heroes for a capture they would never have made without the help of the resident of the home, who contacted the clueless authorities and told them the suspect was outside hiding in his boat.

I refer those interested in the more frightening, esoteric elements of the Boston Bombing story to the work done by Dave McGowan on his web site. He really goes down the rabbit hole at this link: http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr114.html  If ever there was a case where a real defense could have embarrassed the authorities by exposing their lies and chicanery, it was this one. A first year law student could have done a better job than Judy Clarke. But I’m sure the mainstream media still thinks she’s “ferocious.”

In the end, Judy Clarke’s curious strategy of fighting only to defeat the death penalty failed, as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death. And so he will presumably join Timothy McVeigh in the pantheon of patsies killed by the state, forever silenced without even testifying in his own defense. Like McVeigh, Dzhokhar sat stoically throughout his farce of a trial, and there is little chance that he will ever be interviewed by any intrepid journalist before his execution.

Dzhokhar’s fate was assured from the moment he was charged. To be accused of a highly publicized violent crime, especially where any political motives can be ascribed, is tantamount to guilt in our culture. Did anyone really imagine that Bruno Richard Hauptmann, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Timothy McVeigh, Jared  Lee Loughner or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would be found not guilty? Does anyone expect that James Holmes (the alleged Aurora, Colorado “Batman” shooter whose trial is about to begin) will be found not guilty? There is a 100% conviction rate in these kinds of high-profile cases, which makes every one of the trials associated with them nothing more than legal charades.

There is far more to this story than I can write about here. I would urge interested readers to check out all the excellent videos readily available online, that break down all the impossible aspects of the incident, and show beyond any doubt that, whatever happened that day at the Boston Marathon, the Tsarnaev brothers weren’t responsible for it.