Earl Scruggs is gone now...

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs with The Foggy Mountain Boys

Boarding the Martha White Tour Bus

Dear Wynn,

It was a bright Sunday afternoon at the bandshell in Centennial Park in the warm spring of probably 1963. We were lucky and we found a place to park on the street off West End nearby. We were always lucky in those days. On the green grass meadow in front of the stage, what seemed like hundreds of people patiently waited to see and hear the best bluegrass band in the world... live.

Dodging the crowd, we marched to the backstage entrance where you escorted me inside. There, Lester Flatt and Earls Scruggs sat around taking sips of Jack Daniels in Dixie cups waiting for the show call to begin. Flatt recognized you immediately and stood to shake hands. Then Scruggs, and you introduced me to both.

Flatt was friendly with a sharp eye. Scruggs was shy and smiling. They were elegant men. They were humble, and they were creators of something brand new and amazing and exciting. In my self-centered youth, I didn't realize how much their musical art had affected practically everyone in America and millions across the planet.

On the five minute call, we left the backstage to go around for the show. We stood under an oak tree far out to stage left. The Foggy Mountain Boys entered followed by Flatt and Scruggs.

No drums. No piano. No horns. Just strings. Strings that made sounds from another more perfect world.

Thank you for taking me to that concert, Wynn. And thanks for introducing me to Scruggs who is gone now, certainly to some beautiful cabin on a hill.

Hope you are well and prosperous. Best to all of the family. I'm heading back over to Asia for more teaching soon. I'll keep in touch.

Martinshushu

God and Man at Court

SCOTUS

(The Supreme Court of the United States)

For anyone in media, an institution is defined by how it looks. It's almost a throwback to the old right wing cliché: "If it walks like a duck, ... and talks like a duck... it's a duck." That quip was attributed to Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston. And speaking of Catholic people, about twenty-five percent of Americans are Catholic. But about sixty-seven percent of our Supreme Court Justices are Catholic. That's six of the nine total Justices. The remaining three Justices are Jewish. How did this happen that we have such a skewed Catholic majority on the Court? It may be because the United States Senate is skewed to right wing religious dogma like the never-ending story of the evangelical movement to disrupt and repeal the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court. The ruling, for the first time in America's history, allowed women to control their own reproductive organs away from the purview of some obese and heavy breathing political creep from Kansas. The Senate of course approves every nominee to the Supreme Court. Many Senate members lately rely on endorsements by those radical evangelical god people who would like to repeal the right to vote for women and return to the rule of old white god people for our nation. America can then be secretly declared pure as the greatest and most powerful theocracy in the history of the world.

Another explanation is that the look of the court is a bit like the Vatican Council of Cardinals in Rome. Like the Vatican Council's relationship with the Catholic Church and the Pope, the Supreme Court has a single special purpose to provide legal consent to the works of the US Congress and the President. Like the President, the Pope governs over the entire church. The Council has a sort of veto over who can govern because they elect the Pope into his white robes. The black robed grand Council guides the church by declarations and fiats to lesser members of the church, but the Pope reigns supreme.

The Second Vatican Council

Like the Cardinals of the Vatican Council, the US Supreme Justices all wear elegant official black robes. Unlike the Vatican Cardinals, nota bene that the Supreme Justices have high chairs that loom above any litigants and observers in their Grand Courtroom. Their high chairs befit the Supreme Justices's essential places of honor and eminence in doing the majestic business of the American constitutional republic. A few years ago a coffle of Supreme Justices wrote the Citizens United decision invalidating an enacted law of the lesser and misinformed US Congress concerning money in US elections. Hopefully someday soon Citizens United will be looked upon as the Plessy vs. Ferguson of it's day. But pro tempore, Corporations are people.

We all know that Corporations and their private jets are not people. It is patently absurd that the American legal system has kept the lie of corporate citizenship as truth. Compare this decision to the ancient works of Cardinals in Rome to determine the exact number of angels who can sit on the tip of a needle. Or precisely how some poor penitent must be burned at the stake. Both Thomas and Scalia appear to have bias in both the Citizens United and the pending Affordable Care Act (ACA) cases. No other Justices as far as I can find have attended political events sponsored by financiers like the Koch Brothers. 

The operative word here is "Appearanc­­e" of bias. Thomas and Scalia "appear" to have bias because of their close associatio­­n with parties advocating a particular side of a question before the court. Last winter Thomas visited with the Koch Brothers in Rancho Mirage Palm Springs, California, and apparently Scalia went hunting on the Brothers tab in Colorado. The Koch Brothers finance dozens of radical right wing causes including paying for the pitiful Huckabee ads on cable TV to abolish the ACA.

Appearance of Bias. Go look it up on the American Bar Associatio­n (ABA) site under Judicial and Legal Ethics:"Canon 9 of the ABA Model Code concerning the appearance of profession­­­al impropriety." Then look up Judicial and Legal Ethics at Cornell University­­. Almost like the recent pederasts in the Catholic priesthood, there's no rules of ethics for our omnipotent Supreme Court. And there's no power in our government to tell the Justices to get some bare ethics code. Perhaps we should all pray to guarantee goodness in the hearts of our Justices.

Justice Scalia is obviously a very charming and political person. He bravely goes on hunts for deer and ducks in the wilderness. He defiantly transplants shoots of dark hair to conceal his widow's peak and preserve his youth. Justice Scalia stated once that "The Constitution is a static being." Does this mean Justice Scalia is declaring stare decisis dead? In short, stare decisis is the basic premise in English common law like our system that past legal decisions must be relied upon for future legal decisions. If the Supreme Court does not follow legal precedent then it may be stepping on the legislative powers of the US Congress. The media calls this judicial activism. So what was the Court doing in Citizens United? No other decision in SCOTUS history has more "Dynamic," as opposed to "Static," implication than this one. This Citizens United edict was certainly radical judicial activism. Perhaps Justice Scalia would like to explain what he meant by "Static" in his speech. Or would he defer to FoxFake News for counsel.

Finally, where did Chief Justice Roberts get his promised-at-confirmation stare decisis for Citizen's United? The Council of Orange? Our nation's legal system has been transformed into a theocracy with the highest grace bestowed on the corporation because the individual is warped by original sin.

The Seal

There's an old saying that the trouble with any organization starts at the top. Just like the Catholic religion, our American Republic has three tops. In Catholicism, god the father, god the son and god the holy ghost are the theological triple. In the US, we have the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial triple. The US Congress is apparently the best money can buy. And to get elected to the highest Executive offices takes even greater bags of money than the Congress.

Because of the money, there's no recourse for regular people except to pray to god for change. Change to repent our sins and become more godlike in our dire lives in the dark ages of our Democracy. So we turn to SCOTUS. The Supreme Court appears to be an angelic council of inspired saintly prelates who have the nod of a humane god. Certainly the Supreme Court and their leader Roberts have given no quarter to any humanity in their fiats. Only god and private jets get their precise notice.

The Emblem of the Papacy

Florida Donkey Voters & The Conservative Fringe

Florida & Australian Donkey Voters

Are Not American Democrats

In a Charlie Rose interview the other night, Rep. Barney Frank bemoaned the majority politicians in the present US House of Representatives. "Nobody parachuted in through the Capitol dome. They all got elected by these people..." Because the 2010 House is so dysfunctional and despotic it looks like "these people" who voted for them were a deranged fringe group within the body politic. Therein also may be evidence of a sociopathic virus that infected that group in the 2010 voting. In the coming 2012 elections, we people of America need to inoculate our voters to prevent recurrence of the virus. To that end, let's first explore and analyze the epidemiology of the 2010 virus using basic high school math and statistics.

Of the total USA population eligible to vote in 2010 only about 42% actually turned out and cast a ballot. Now consider the winning majority that built the 2010 House. It only takes one vote over 50% of the total votes to win an election. Of the population eligible to vote only about 21% plus one vote elected the 2010 House.

In these United States of America, do we really have so many millions of angry Billy-Bobs who swill whiskey and drive up to the polls in their pick-ups ready to lynch the politicians who caused all their troubles? A million Billy-Bobs per state? Numbers like this can get pretty mind-numbing. Speaking of which, what happens mentally to these people who vote for nut job candidates? Are they really sociopaths? And what causes these people's disturbed, entranced mental state? Was their trance caused by massive media overload? Or was the trance a result of a virus infecting the few in the fringe?

Let's look closer at Florida as an area infected by the 2010 virus. Many of Florida voters outside of the urban centers cast their ballots just like the nation did in 2010. Recall that the 911 hijackers got their flight training at a Florida aeronautical school. That was an early incident of entrancement and infection. How could someone normal not question what a reclusive gang of Arabs were up to intensely studying how to pilot a 767 jet liner? Recently Florida suffered another outbreak with the election of Florida's autocratic governor Rick Scott. And one more thing to put in the mix about Florida: the Fulgencio Batista Cubanos who want to kill Fidel Castro, and they want to kill anybody who doesn't want to kill Castro. It matters not that Castro is pushing ninety years, and that he handed power over to his brother last year. It is still Alpha 66 and "Kill the Komunistas." This fringe group takes the Donkey Voter trophy away from all Billy-Bobs and any others across the nation for being the most destructive fringe out there today.

These people are the people that the republican wonks endlessly examine and cater to because these people are the key to getting the one more vote beyond the half way mark. Watch the Florida primary vote for how we can get that one more vote for our side? For the elections next fall our nation should consider what our dear neighbors down under use for their elections.

Australian elections have a simple rule that all citizens must vote. If you don't vote then you get fined. It works like parking tickets. If you don't show up and vote you get a twenty-five dollar citation in the mail. If the fringe want to protest they can do a "donkey" vote meaning they leave the form blank. I heard from a friend down there that "donkey" votes are trending downward because people take the vote more seriously since they are required to be there.

Can we ask the Billy-Bobs and the Batistas in Florida to get serious and think before they vote? Or can they use anger management? Probably not. But if more Americans get up early and vote we can get the one more vote to win. Put that with a few Donkey Voters and we may get lucky. Then we can get some people in office who have the good will to make America a better and more democratic nation.

Adored By Florida Cubanos

Fulgencio Batista Was Not Australian

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Special thanks for his research help to our friend

Peter Kalos in Melbourne, Australia not Florida.

Newt Gingrich Goes On Tour In America

Newt in the Oval Office to Meet with President Obama & Rev. Al Sharpton

(Newt dreams sharply of what could have been)

From: Martinshushu

Subject: About Your Radical Politics &

Your Endorsement of Newt Gingrich

Date: November 30, 2011 9:06:13 PM PST

To: letters@un­ionleader.­com

Dear Union Leader,

When I first heard on the TV news of your endorsemen­t of Newt Gingrich for president, I was truly surprised. A couple of times over my long career in media production I visited New Hampshire. The Yankee ancestors of our nation were always on the faces of the people there.

The people of New Hampshire are proud, noble and independent. The people of New Hampshire deserve a candidate for president who always strives for the good of the nation.

It appears that the voice of the people of New Hampshire, the Union Leader is now only a crude follower. Fox News is your muse. The New York Post is your comfort. Rush Limbaugh is your panacea and your antidote for reality. Limbaugh's clone, Gingrich is clearly not interested in benefitting America.

Over his entire career as a politician­, Gingrich has never done anything but grandstand for whatever will gain him more money and cheap status. Gingrich once shut down all the services of our nation's government. Gingrich lied to the congress leading to sanctions and fines. As a result he was defrocked of his speakership. In retort, Gingrich angrily called his fellow caucus members "cannibals." Gingrich's record is identical to many other power mad egoists in political history. Gingrich'­s malicious works can lead only to more dissolutio­n of our nation's democracy and continuing shrinkage of our American ideology in a perilous world. The people of New Hampshire deserve much better than this huckster, Newt Gingrich.

How can you not see this?

How insulated from the world you must be?

While America sleeps the Union Leader sleeps.

Good night my once dear New England friends,

Martinshushu

A Letter to California Governor Brown

"We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute."

Buenaventura Durruti

Dear Governor Brown,

As a former instructor at UCLA, I am gravely disturbed about the recent violence against students and protestors at the UC Davis campus, the UC Berkeley campus, in Oakland, and in other public places all over California. Growing up in the Civil Rights Era South, I witnessed many similar examples of terrible violence against regular people marching or sitting in for their rights. California people traditionally embrace and greatly value human rights and the dignity of every human being. That ideal was one essential reason that I moved with my family to California thirty years ago.

Those students at UC Davis were doing nothing dangerous, threatening or disruptive. The same for the students at Berkeley. The same for the Occupy people (mostly students) in Oakland and elsewhere. Why are the police allowed to get so violent? What authority controls the various police forces that have acted so violently? What do they fear from unarmed citizens standing and sitting in protest against economic and social problems in our state? What do the UC Davis administrators fear so much from fifty or so students hanging out in the quad? In that UC Davis case there were about as many police officers as there were students. What does the Mayor of Oakland fear from people gathering to protest in a public park? For those people in authority, what are their reasons for allowing violence to happen?

The police in Davis brutalized those kids. The police in Berkeley harassed and billy-clubbed those kids. The Oakland police by order of Mayor Quan attacked the Occupy people there. No matter what distorted justification their advisors come up with, these authorities are simply wrong in allowing this to happen. This kind of behavior is psychopathic.

Certainly you know the meaning of our Constitution's First Amendment: "... the right of the people peaceably to assemble. ..." As Governor you possess ultimate executive authority in California, so action is now necessary. Please ask the authorities who allowed the violence to hand in their resignations immediately.

Please take action now to protect the Occupy people statewide. Their voices for social justice need to be heard.

We are California. We must hold the highest standard for democracy.

Martin Pitts

A Letter to President Obama

Occupy City Hall Los Angeles October 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Look, I spent a few months in China in 2007 and about four years in east Asia in 2008 - 2012. We need to get moving. China and East Asia are booming, and we'd better be ready to play the game and win. The win is not just about the money. The people in China think very long term. They are working for not the next generation, but the next five generations.

This is what needs to be done now:

1) Funding for a national chain of charter schools with very slim administration budgets. Let the teachers teach. Leave them alone. Let them teach the arts and let them teach whatever the teacher wants. Politicians in the class room are the death of good education. The USA had a good educational system after WWII mainly because of the freedom of the classroom. Now our entire education system is infused with all the dogma from all the radical nut jobs from all the state legislatures all over America. This needs to stop. And now!

2) High Speed Mag-Lev Rail connecting every city over 100,000 in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.

3) Over all of North America, free satellite high speed internet wifi access. The airwaves are the people's airwaves. Use the bandwidth for the people, and not some corporation based in the Cayman Islands. Order the FCC and the Defense Department to do this now!

4) Implement single payer in the affordable care act process including dental. Germany, the most prosperous European nation has had this type of system for years. They are a pretty healthy nation, correct? Sure the repubs and their sycophants will rise up and scream: "We don't want to be like Europe!" Baloney. If only we had health care like Germany, or Norway, or Sweden, or Australia, or Taiwan, or the UK we would have a far more prosperous nation. A healthy nation is a thriving nation.

5) Nationalize all banks with assets over US$100,000,000. For investments larger than the now smaller, not-too-big-to-fail banks can handle we need to establish in the Federal Reserve bank a new agency to decide on the large loans. The large loan agency will be accountable to the executive branch and to congress and to an ombudsman committee of regular people.

6) Break up the vertical oil oligopolies nation-wide. We tried to do this in the early 20th century. Recall Rockefeller and the Standard Oil monopoly. Well, we're back to those past times again, only the octopus is now an oligopoly rather than a monopoly. As an alternate we could nationalize all energy. Our neighbors to the South, Mexico actually did this in the 1930s. The government under President Lázaro Cárdenas bought the oil companies by a bond issue and formed Pemex so that the nation's oil reserve benefits all of the people and not just the few. Then we can join OPEC and let Exxon and BP buy from the US government petroleum operation.

7) Absolute limits on the amount of money that can be spent on political campaigns, and complete transparency of the election process. I know this will probably take an amendment. I know, I know but it is necessary for the good of the nation.

To accomplish our seven point "USA To Do List," use all emergency discretionary funds for the infrastructure jobs, the satellite wifi, and the national charter schools. It is obvious that congress and other mavens of right wing media would yell "Not fair." Do it anyway. Order the National Guard in any state into service for crewing up for the rail line construction, the wifi and the charter schools. By the constitution the President is the commander in chief of the "militias" correct? Hire people into the army that are out of work. Make them join on two-years hitches for the domestic construction projects. The wages paid to the new national guard enlistees would be a great boost to the economy. That's almost the way FDR did it in building the Oak Ridge facility in Tennessee in WWII. The Manhattan Project hired ex-soldiers all over the south to come over to East Tennessee and camp out and work on the building.

No doubt the repubs and other sleazy know-nothings will jump out of the bushes and yell, "Not Fair!" Reply to them: "Too bad!" This is for the defense of the nation against the future threats of international cartels into the next ten decades.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Martinshushu

PS: You'll have my vote in 2012 because you care about the future of our nation, and most important, you are a great commander-in-chief.

PSS: Congratulations to Veterans For Peace people who have now raised $15,000 for the aid of Occupier and Iraq War Vet Scott Olsen who was wounded by the Oakland, California police.

Innovation & Fake Capitalism in America

The Fake Capitalist

With the passing of the amazing innovator, Steve Jobs, it is a good time to talk about the work of another earlier innovator: Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter. Joe Schumpeter lived and worked as an academic in Austria and Germany until 1932. Then he immigrated to the USA and a lectureship at Harvard mainly because he was broke and needed a job. The Biedermann Bank he was running in Austria went belly up a few years before. Schumpeter's work was seen as a very conservative methodology back then and even now in some few circles. The nihilist Koch Brothers and Karl Rove gangs borrowed a few lines from Schumpeter's work to back up their inane desire to return us to the gold standard for our currency. Schumpeter said gold would reduce the size of government. So now Schumpeter holds a revered place as an iman for their gang's imagined new age of tiny governments and laissez faire everything.

However, most important Joe Schumpeter came up with a concept that is literally crucial for capitalism today and for all our nation's history. Joe separated the meanings of invention and innovation to analyze our nation's economy. According to Joe Schumpeter invention is the simple idea of something new. Invention is the concept. But innovation is the actual application of that idea to a manufacturing process or creation of a product or service. Innovation makes the invention work for profits in making goods and services and economic growth for the nation. Joe was one of the first economists to recognize the core importance of innovation to our capitalistic economy. This devilish detail leads to a look at the many examples of Fake Capitalism in present day America.

In our capitalist society companies and corporations compete with each other for clients and customers. Over time that competition inevitably trends to fewer and fewer companies and corporations in the field. Eventually the few, the proud, the oligarchs reap the profits from having eliminated the opposition. The profits can be enormous as we have seen in the American banking system for example over the past couple of decades following the complete deregulation by the US government. So Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank and Chase Bank and Citi Bank have achieved almost all of the banking and financial business in our nation. They got to their lofty position by becoming the most profitable and the most influential of all the banks before them. Because they are so few these banks have made the competitive capitalist system an oligopoly or a system of only a few suppliers. This is "Fake Capitalism." The few can literally set the prices for their services. The few need not innovate and make better products or services for their clients and customers. The few need only inexorably change the rules and raise prices for goods and services to extort more and more from their clients and customers. The spoils go to the few victors.

Theories of economics are often not intuitive or practical. Albert Einstein gave up economics because he said it was too hard, and the great English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell gave up economics because he said it was too easy.

Steve Jobs built his company on shrewdly creating more and better goods and services for his clients and customers. Jobs spent the money of his company on inventing and then applying the invention to products and services. That is innovation. That is how True Capitalism works.

The Fake Capitalists will certainly try everything to stop all innovation because innovation will lead to their ultimate deserved destruction. The white noise of the spin weenies of politics and the Fake Capitalists of finance and industry are lies of evil hucksters. The Fake Capitalists are trying to sell America a bill of damaged goods. The Fake Capitalists use quotes from the constitution or from the bible. The Fake Capitalists are the barkers for the evil destruction of our nation. Our national government must spend money on innovation now.

Why Do Standard & Poor's and Moody's and Fitch Lobby the U.S. Congress??

A Series EE $100 U. S. Bond

Robert Kennedy, Jr. said that business controlled by government is called communism, and government controlled by business is called fascism. Now with today's downgrade of U.S. Bonds by Standard & Poor's there is something foul-smelling in the international, vastly powerful, government controlling bond rating business.

If we judge from the money paid Washington lobbyists by the big three bond rating agencies, we may already have a proper fascist state.

Standard & Poor's in 2011 has now spent through it's parent McGraw Hill Companies over US$ 600,000. Last year, 2010, they spent over US$ 1,700,000. That's just one company. All three had their own operations for this and they have been at it for years and years. It just seems a little intensified over the last two years in election and seating of the 112th Congress.

Finding the exact amount is difficult because lobbyist expenditures through the parent company may be for other purposes than enhancing the position of Standard & Poor's as a ratings agency. But it is on the record that Douglas Nappi and his cohorts of the Washington, DC firm Nappi and Hoppe, LLC. approached various members of congress and federal agencies to lobby for Standard & Poors. The records are the Lobbying Reports that must be filed with the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.

The Standard & Poor's lobbyists spoke to Senators and Representatives and committee members and people at agencies to ask for something. What they asked for exactly, we do not know. The forms do not tell us that.

On the form filed by Nappi and Hoppe, LLC. the firm was hired by McGraw Hill for Standard & Poors to represent Standard & Poor's interests before the following:

"Implementation of Title IX. subtitle C of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, and Congressional oversight activities related thereto. Plus the regulation of Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations. Plus the rating of sovereign, municipal, corporate and structured debt."  And their lobbyist contacted the following: "The U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Reserve System (The Fed), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC)."

It is very important to note that last month, the House Oversight Committee with Rep. Darrell Issa in the chair relentlessly grilled Professor Elizabeth Warren in a transparent attempt to discredit the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Unbelievably Issa could not pose a single question that was not whispered into his ear from a more rehearsed assistant. It is a given that Issa's lackey had just come from a meeting with the Standard & Poor's lobbyist. This stuff does work that way and most people don't quite realize the subtle and potent influence wielded by the lobbyist in Washington. It is a big money game. And money talks loudest in Washington.

Now let's look at the other two. Moody's hired the huge and venerable firm Akin, Gump Et Al as their spin masters. Moody's spent US$ 1,530,000 in 2010 and so far in 2011 they pushed the ante to US$ 610,000. Moody's is a publicly traded United States corporation so it's major owners by far are American institutions like mutual funds and retirement funds. The same for McGraw Hill. Not so for our third party, Fitch Ratings. Fitch is owned by FIMALAC a giant Parisian, publicly traded company whose CEO is the biggest owner, Financiére Marc de Lacharriére. Note the initials from M. Lacharriére. So this year Fitch paid the KSCW Inc. lobby firm US$ 120,000 and another US$ 100,000 to another firm Crossroads Strategies. In 2010 Fitch paid out US$ 440,000 to the same firms.

So total expenditures for lobbying operations for all three of our rating companies in 2010 and 2011 to date, equals US$ 5,200,000. That's a lot of money to invest in a person to whisper in the ear of congress people and their aides and the heads of agencies and their helpers. There must be something at work here to get the money back for these companies. But how?

One simple way could be this: What if Fitch and Standard & Poor's and Moody's each short sold U.S. markets betting on the fall in the past three weeks? Then they easily could have made their money back a hundred fold. What does all this smell like? It smells rotten. It is rotten to the core of our federal government.

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Please note that some of the data used in this post was derived from OpenSecrets.org.

Who whispers into the hearts of men... Oh Allah, change my fear in my grave into love.

Osama Bin Laden's Last Photo

From the Department of Defense

United States of America

OSAMA’S REAL WAR

by Kabir Bedi

You’ve got to admire the man’s brilliance. While the Americans combed the craggy caves, ravines and villages of Afghanistan and Waziristan, he hid in a million dollar home, surrounded by colonies of Pakistani generals, a quick drive from Islamabad. But that was only half of it. Starting with his escape from the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora, Osama Bin Laden outfoxed the world’s most fearsome hunters for almost a decade.

But he made one fatal mistake. Like Sherlock Holmes’s proverbial dog who didn’t bark, the absence of technology --- TV, internet, telephones -- in an expensive Abbotabad house gave the Americans the confirming clue: it was a hideaway for “a person of great importance." The rest is now history.

Historically, Osama’s power came from America’s mistakes. Ronald Reagan backed, armed, and hailed him as a “hero” while he fought the Russians in Afghanistan. It made him famous, even though he was really, in his words, “fighting infidels in a Muslim land." Later, he used the same logic to demand the withdrawal of American troops in Saudi Arabia, the holy land of Mecca. His “new jihad” led to the destruction of New York’s iconic Twin Towers.

But America’s biggest mistake had far deeper roots. For decades, it remained a mute spectator to Israel’s relentless attacks against the Palestinians, more so after the 1967 war. Whatever the justifications, those brutal TV images were beamed across the Arab world, week after week, year after year, breeding enormous resentment against Israel’s principal benefactor. Anti-American resentment was the fodder that fuelled Osama’s popularity on Arab streets. It made him a folk hero for millions, however merciless his war.

Osama attacked all his foes, he claimed, “to defend” Islam. Russians, Americans, Europeans, Saudis, Indians or Chinese, no matter who, his battle cry was always in the name of religion. By targeting “the enemies of Islam," he sought to rally the Muslim world behind him. His strategy smartly obscured his real agenda: the propagation of a highly puritanical and regressive form of fundamentalism. Osama believed "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world was Afghanistan under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban. Before they were overthrown in 2001, the Taliban had regularly cut off people’s heads, hands and noses, and reduced the historic Buddha of Bamiyan to rubble with cannons. That was Osama’s ideal state. If he had broadcast this loud and clear, it would have splintered his supporters and divided their loyalties. Knowing this, Osama cleverly kept the focus outside Islam, not within it. He was really fighting a battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere.

Fortunately, Osama failed. No mass uprisings followed the news of his death. In fact, barely any demonstrations of importance were seen anywhere. Even those who may have admired him from afar for taking on, and humiliating, two world super powers seem to have been revolted by the wanton waves of death and destruction he set in motion. Many innocent Muslims suffered the ostracism of being seen as “terrorists." In America, they became the new “niggas." In the end, Osama didn’t dignify Muslims, he damaged them greatly.

Osama is dead, but his scattered army lives on. His deeper agenda will not wither away either. The battle between fundamentalists and moderates is still being fought in every country of the Muslim world. Extremists may have suicide bombers or violent enforcers on their side. But the moderate Muslims have far more meaningful weapons. Numbers: the majority of people, in every religion, are not extremists. Time: everything evolves; the fundamentalists are on the wrong side of history. Technology: new generations can’t be brainwashed as easily in the Information Age. Knowledge is the most potent weapon of all in the battle for minds. But it may be a while before victory can be declared.

Even as the absence of technology led to Osama’s death, it's omnipresence today may ensure that his brand of extremism becomes an unmourned relic of history. But, sadly, misguided lunatics remain a part of every society.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Kabir Bedi is an internationally renowned Indian actor and columnist. His career has spanned Bollywood, Hollywood, England and Europe. In December 2010, the Italian Government bestowed on him a Knighthood “Cavaliere," the highest civilian honour. Kabir lives in Mumbai, India.

The News Corp Blues & The Fox Plumbers

John Ehrlichman

Founder of the Plumbers

There's an old secret story of perversion around Hollywood in the 1950s. It's about the iconic 20th Century Fox studios. It's a story of creepy, childish behavior by big time guys who had too much money and too much power. Their moral and ethical corruption inevitably led to criminal doings. Those guys at Fox were deviants, but they knew well that a good movie story has a beginning, a middle and an ending.

Now for us, let's begin our story with an ending.

Today James Murdoch, the son of Rupert announced the demise of the News of the World in London. The most prominent scandal sheet in the UK is closing it's doors forever. Public and private outrage over illegal spying on both celebrities and regular people led to a speedy stock decline by the parent company News Corporation in the New York markets. So Rupert was forced to close up shop at News of the World.

Over here in the USA another News Corporation division seems to be doing quite well. Fox News is a major mover in American cable television. More importantly Fox News division is a big-box outlet store for anything "conservative." In News Corporation jargon "conservative" means any slanted story or any contrived falsehood with the purpose of coaxing the viewer to believe the lie. Journalistic ethics be damned. The only goal was to get more viewers and make more money than any other News Corporation media division.

If Fox News lies were proved true, our United States would devolve into some mediaeval oppressive Handmaid's Tale. Women would be reduced to chattel by anti-abortion madmen inquisitors. Every citizen would be bound by slave labor wages to pay off debt arranged by a conspiracy of the US Congress and International Banking Cartels.

This is not science fiction. This is happening now in the soggy dreams and vile works of the chiefs of News Corporation and Fox News. The guy who runs Fox News is Roger Ailes. You must have heard about old Roger. Roger worked for Richard Nixon, and then for Ronald Reagan, and then for both Bushes, and then other big-time republicans. For the right wing, Roger's resumé grants him special national treasure status. A latter day hero of the constitution.

Wait a minute! Go back to Nixon.

Good old boy Roger Ailes began his career in the Nixon White House. Recall that Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office in his second term. Nixon did not resign for the good of the nation. The leaders of the republican party and the US Congress told him to resign or he was to be impeached, tried and removed from office. Had he not resigned Nixon most likely would have been tried and convicted for obstruction of justice and treason. So Nixon plea bargained the resignation deal to keep out of jail.

Here's the time line: In spring of 1972 the republican national committee created the committee to reelect the president. In a mysterious and pungent twist of acronym the RNC called it CREEP. Bags of cash were given to CREEP. Does that sound familiar? Some of the CREEP cash went to a gang of criminal types called the plumbers who burglarized the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington. They snatched inside information on the Democrat's plans for the election. The gang was founded by White House counsel John Ehrlichman who eventually served prison time for his efforts. Nixon denied any knowledge of the plumbers. Nixon's secretary fumbled the oval office tapes into erasing a talk Nixon had about the plumbers. Remember the seventeen minutes?

Clearly the Nixon resignation was a Machiavellian case in absolute corruption of power.

Good old boys sometime think that regular people are too stupid to see the truth.

Now, here's the secret story about 1950s Fox. The good old boys who ran Fox studios installed a hidden two-way mirror in a concealed office. Through the mirror they could ogle young women dressing and undressing for screen tests. At some time in the 1960s or 1970s they closed the mirror room. Spying on starlets was illegal then and now. But in the 1950s it was a good old boy offense. Laughable and trivial.

Maybe not so inconsequential any more. The present day perversion at Fox is given to us by the good old boys at News Corporation and Fox News. And it does not involve two-way mirrors. Their technology is state of the art and direly invasive of regular people's lives and right to privacy. How can regular people support unethical networks like Fox anything, or Sky TV anything. Or papers like The NY Post or the Wall Street Journal or the Australian or the Times of London and on and on. The list is long.

News Corporation chief good old boy Rupert Murdoch is a board member of the libertarian and fascista Cato Institute along with his peers the carious Koch Brothers. It's psychopathic how such minions of small government and no taxes pay A-list hackers big money to eavesdrop on regular people and celebrities. How often does Fox News hack into Voice Mails and cell phone calls over here in the USA? Their sister operation over in the UK made a normal practice of such spying. It may be that the entire UK investigation was a "Modified Limited Hang Out"* arranged by Murdoch and his spin weenies.

For the term "Modified Limited Hang Out" here is a transcript of the March 22, 1973 meeting between President Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman, John Dean, and H. R. Haldeman:

President Nixon: "You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the ... let it hang out, so to speak?"

John Dean: "Well, it's, it isn't really that ..."

H. R. Haldeman: "It's a limited hang out."

John Dean: "It's a limited hang out."

John Ehrlichman: "It's a modified limited hang out."

President Nixon: "Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or privately."

So "Modified Limited Hang Out" means to conceal the worst by revealing some lesser part. A gestalt to be seen only with carefully selected blinders if you will. Fox News Il Duce Roger Ailes learned these crafts of espionage on regular people and Modified Limited Hang Outs when he was so close to the plumbers and spin weenies of Watergate fame. Note that just before all the row broke out in the UK over News Corp, Fox News let loose a modified limited hang out story of someone who supposedly hacked into Fox News Twitter accounts.

The time has come for Rupert Murdoch to shut down another one of News Corporation's far flung tainted branches of empire: Fox News.

Do it now Rupert, before the stock price takes another dive.

Quick Rupert, slam the door and turn off the lights on the festering Fox News before it's too late.

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* A Note of thanks to our friend Victor Muh for identifying the "Modified Limited Hang Out" history and its modern day application.