(from The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles)
". . . The (New York) Times editorial (defending Cornelius Vanderbilt and the question of railroad monopolies) introduces the second current of anxiety surrounding railroads: the corruption of government. The tales of bribery that flowed out of Albany reinforced stereotypes of public officials on the take, acting as if they were retainers of wealthy corporations, not representatives of the people. After Jay Gould took over as president of the Erie, he allied the railroad explicitly with the Tweed ring, naming 'Boss" Tweed himself to the board, along with his close associate Peter Sweeney. . ."
(from http://www.911truth.org/)
The 9/11 events and the anomalies in the official story raised Unanswered Questions about:
* the unprecedented failure of the US air defense system on the morning of the attacks;
* the AWOL military chain of command during the actual attacks, including the inexplicable behavior of the presidential entourage;
* the seeming impossibility of official claims with regard to Flight 77;
* the evidence that Flight 93 was shot down;
* contradictions and dubious evidence in the official claims about the alleged hijackers and masterminds, and doubts about their real identities;
* signs that the alleged hijackers enjoyed high-level protection against discovery by honest investigators;
* evidence that the alleged hijackers were financed by states allied with US intelligence;
* suspicious and massive international financial trades suggesting foreknowledge of the attacks;
* widespread signs of official foreknowledge and, in fact, advance preparation for the 9/11 attack scenario;
* the long-running links between Islamist fundamentalist terror cells and US covert operations, dating back to CIA support for the anti-Soviet mujahedeen and Osama Bin Ladin himself;
* the demolition-like collapse of the Twin Towers and of a third skyscraper, WTC 7;
* and questions concerning who could have logically expected to derive benefit in the aftermath of a massive attack on the United States.
OHO's
"Ocean City Ditty," the
CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if
you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD)
My latest solo release, '2014', can be digitally downloaded at:
(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)
(from The HIDDEN HISTORY of 9-11 edited by Paul Zarembka)
". . . [A] wise prince," advises Machiavelli, must whenever he has the occasion, foster with cunning some hostility so that in stamping it out his greatness will increase as a result." I introduce a theory of terrorism inspired by Machiavelli's observation. September 11 may be an example of expedient destruction ordered from within the state, a macabre instance of a state protection racket. What I call Machiavellian state terrorism is terror/assassination performed for reasons different from the publicized ones; often initiated by persons or groups other than those suspected of the act; and - most important - secretly perpetrated by, or on behalf, of the violated state itself. Machiavellian state terror advances the ruling agenda while disguising itself as the work of individuals or groups opposed to the state's fundamental principles. I present as an example, an obscure 1971 assassination in Paris that obliquely foreshadows some critical elements of the official story of 9-11. I conclude with a discussion on the importance of oppositional theory for maintaining a lively and democratic public discourse. . .'
(By binaryloop, at http://libertycrier.com/forum/congress-quietly-repeals-insider-trading-ban/)
While Congress might be stuck in a deadlock on just about every issue imaginable, there’s one piece of legislation that both Democrats and Republicans hate unanimously: the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, a law passed last year designed to prevent insider trading among lawmakers and government officials by requiring them to post disclosures of their financial transactions online.
Both parties and both houses of Congress hated the disclosure portion of the law so much that it was repealed last Friday (4/12/13) without debate—the measure was sent to the President by unanimous consent. The ordeal took about 10 seconds in the Senate and 14 seconds in the House, according to official records.
The STOCK Act would have required members of Congress, their aides, and other federal employees making more than $119,554 a year to disclose their financial dealings in an online database. It was supposed to prevent government officials from using insider knowledge about policy-making to profit from stock trades and other investments.
Upon the signing of the bill into law last year (pictured above), President Barack Obama said, “The idea that everybody plays by the same rules is one of our most cherished American values. It’s the notion that the powerful shouldn’t get to create one set of rules for themselves and another set of rules for everybody else, and if we expect that to apply to our biggest corporations and to our most successful citizens, it certainly should apply to our elected officials—especially at a time when there is a deficit of trust between this city and the rest of the country.” The White House has not said whether the President will sign the repeal.
Despite the repeal, government officials will still have to file disclosures of securities trades over $1,000 within 45 days, but they no longer have to file them in a searchable database that was to be easily accessible to the public.
Congress and the President had delayed the online posting portion of the act from going into effect 3 times already, but the ultimate repeal came after the National Academy of Public Administration, a nonprofit group, found that publishing the information would create an “unwarranted risk to national security and law enforcement, as well as threaten agency missions, individual safety and privacy,” in a report delivered last month. The group suggested that the online posting requirements should be suspended indefinitely.
Lisa Rosenberg of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group advocating for government transparency, said that the repeal “sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent suggesting that any risks stem not from information being public but from public information being online.“
