General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe REAL Big Lie is: "No one is above the law."
If anyone in America committed even a single one of the countless crimes that the Orange Beast has, they'd be in prison at this very moment. Yet, The Emperor of Mar-a-Lago is free and may never be held answerable for anything.
Even when various federal prosecutors, and those in NY and Georgia, seem to be on the verge of indicting him, someone in the judicial system gets in the way.
I'm convinced he could eat a newborn baby in Times Square, televised live, and nothing would happen to him.
I really, Really, never again want to hear some idiot say, "No one is above the law."
The Roux Comes First
(1,305 posts)I don't like nurturing cynicism, but if we must, let's just contemplate George Bush, Dick Cheney, Ken Starr, and Bill Barr for starters.
nightwing1240
(1,996 posts)George Bush Sr, Casper Weinberger, Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. Does anyone else detect a pattern here?
Kid Berwyn
(15,253 posts)Curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission in corporate media:
Two of its members were directly responsible for the rise of post-war fascism. Allen Dulles, as a top official of the OSS and CIA, incorporated NAZI war criminals into the CIA from its founding. John McCloy, as High Commissioner for Germany, allowed Klaus Barbie, Alfred Krupp, eight members of his board, and who-knows-who-else to escape justice. Of course, Dulles and McCloy also were barons of Wall Street and Beltway Insiders, at the heart of the military industrial complex. We all can see what that means for the United States today.
Background:
The American who let the Nazis rebuild Germany
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2021/the-american-who-let-the-nazis-rebuild-germany/
CIA and NAZI War Criminals
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm
nightwing1240
(1,996 posts)Kid Berwyn
(15,253 posts)By Adam LeBor
The arctic (UK), November 2021
Tucked away on the website of the United States embassy to Germany is a lengthy hagiography of a man who nowadays is largely forgotten, but should not be. John J. McCloy and the Splendid Reconciliation by the late Garrick Utley recounts McCloys life and some of his achievements. McCloy, an American lawyer, served as the highest-ranking U.S. official in West Germany from to 1949 to 1952 king in all but name. As McCloy noted, I had the powers of a dictator as High Commissioner of Allied Forces in West Germany, but I think I was a benevolent dictator. I think the rebuilding came off very well, with no significant problems. It wasnt a matter of ordering things done so much as using orderly persuasion with the Germans.
That the United States freed vast numbers of high-ranking Nazi officials, scientists and SS officers and then employed them has been well documented by historians such as Tom Bower and Christopher Simpson. The dilemma, known as hang or hire, was often resolved by the latter.
Werner von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who sent V-2 missiles crashing into London was relocated to the United States, together with a legion of German scientists and engineers. Reinhard Gehlen served as chief of military intelligence on the eastern front where German troops had carried out unimaginable atrocities. He was appointed the head of West Germanys new intelligence service.
Post-war Pax Americana demanded the rehabilitation of German industrial giants
Much less well-known is the parallel operation by McCloy and his key allies in United States government, such as intelligence chief Allen Dulles, to free numerous Nazi industrialists and bankers and return them to positions of great economic power and influence in particular the men who ran I.G. Farben, the most powerful industrial conglomerate in Nazi Germany, a subsidiary of which manufactured Zyklon B, the poison gas used to murder millions.
That decision by McCloy and his powerful allies in the American political establishment that the economy of the new West German state should be run in large part by numerous convicted war criminals shaped West Germany, post-war Europe and our world today.
Helmut Schmidt, the former Chancellor of West Germany, described McCloy as the architect of Germanys rehabilitation from an occupied country to an independent state. Henry Kissinger said of McCloy that he never served in the Cabinet of any president, and after 1952, never occupied a full-time position. Yet few Americans have had a greater impact on their time.
Continues
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2021/the-american-who-let-the-nazis-rebuild-germany/
All the Money, Power, Property & Prestige in the World with Zero Accountability.
Lonestarblue
(10,267 posts)Its by Stephen Kinzer and shows quite clearly how Allen Dulles especially used the government to advantage corporate power and profits. He engineered the overturning of the democratically elected government in Iran at the urging of British and American oil interests. Corporations have been running our government for their benefit for decades. And they do not support democracy unless it brings money to them.
Kid Berwyn
(15,253 posts)Like the NAZIs, what Capitalism's Invisible Army wants, they get. Take Guatemala, which they did in 1953.
Allen was delighted with the way Glorious Victory portrayed him and proudly handed out small-format copies." -- Stephen Kinzer, "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War"
https://books.google.com/books?id=LVb4-1l1gF4C&pg=PT393&lpg=PT393&dq=kinzer+the+brothers+dulles+diego+rivera&source=bl&ots=oAzpiYDehY&sig=f_qxzSRtbNna7xjgv6CoOpAMfMs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=duIJVbzFG_WCsQSY3IKABA&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=kinzer%20the%20brothers%20dulles%20diego%20rivera&f=false
You might also enjoy reading The Devils Chessboard by David Talbot. The author makes clear the history, pointing a pen at the likely architect of the coup of November 22, 1963.
Checkmate on The Devils Chessboard
Exclusive: Since the end of World War II, what some call the deep state has taken hold of the American Republic, stripping the citizens of meaningful control over national security issues, with CIA Director Allen Dulles playing a key early role, according to David Talbots new biography reviewed by Lisa Pease.
By Lisa Pease
ConsortiumNews.com, Oct. 27, 2015
David Talbots new book The Devils Chessboard is an anecdotal biography of not just Allen Dulles but of the national security establishment that he helped create. Talbot gave himself the monumental task of summing up a 25-year slice of important history.
Because Talbot has a keen eye for both the absurd and the darkly humorous, he managed to make the disturbing history of that period not only eminently readable but engaging and at times downright entertaining.
I have consumed dozens of books on Allen Dulles, the CIA and Cold War history, yet I was still surprised by numerous revelations in Talbots book. He often covers well-known episodes through a less well-known set of incidents and characters.
Talbot writes about the ratlines (escape routes from Europe to Latin America for Nazis), but in the context of one particularly Machiavellian character. He writes about Lee Harvey Oswald from the point of view of one of his friends who sold him down the river to the Warren Commission, likely at the behest of the CIA, a friend who later ostensibly committed suicide just as a member of the House Select Committee on Assassinations was about to interview him. Talbot talks about the CIAs mind-control programs in the context of Allen Dulles submitting his own son to those horrors.
Talbot and his research associate Karen Croft, to whom he dedicated his book, have found all sorts of nuggets in Allen Dulless papers, his appointment calendar, oral histories, and other less-used sources. In addition, Talbot infuses his book with anecdotes from interviews he personally conducted. While I found some points I could nitpick in various episodes, overall this is a worthy addition and a much-needed perspective that elucidates how we came to have two governments: the elected one and the one that doesnt answer to the elected one.
Talbots presentation is not linear but episodic, jumping back and forth like a checker on the chessboard in his title to keep subjects thematically together. Doing this allows him to introduce the character of Allen Dulles quickly, by showing him handing over a World War I girlfriend, a young Czech patriot, to British agents who suspected her of being an enemy spy, after which, Talbot tells us, she disappeared forever.
Talbot demonstrates that Dulles always found a way to do what he wanted, regardless of what he had been asked to do, even from his entry into the World War IIs Office of Strategic Services, the CIAs forerunner. OSS chief William Wild Bill Donovan had tried to assign Dulles to London to exploit Dulless cozy relationships with high-net-worth individuals like the Rockefellers whom Dulles served as a lawyer at Sullivan and Cromwell. But Dulles instead got himself assigned to Bern, Switzerland, at the near center of Europe and a financial Mecca for secret bank accounts.
Allen Dulless older brother John Foster Dulles had funneled massive U.S. investments into Germany post-World War I that flowed back to the U.S. as war loans were paid off. Both Dulles brothers enabled the Nazis financially and socially, with John Foster Dulles at one point defending the character of a Nazi lobbyist who threw a party in New York City to celebrate a Nazi victory in France.
Sparing the Nazis
Talbot makes the case that Allen Dulles was all but a Double Agent for the Nazis during World War II. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew how close Dulles was to the Germans but thought Dulles, as an American, would do the Presidents bidding, serving as a lure for high-profile Nazis so they could be identified and neutralized.
In pursuing victory, FDR pushed for an unconditional surrender, but Dulles had other plans. He told an agent of SS leader Heinrich Himmler that the Allies declaration of the need for unconditional surrender was merely a piece of paper to be scrapped without further ado if Germany would sue for peace.
Roosevelt had assigned Dulles to support Project Safehaven, a program to identify and confiscate Nazi assets stashed in neutral countries. But instead Dulles, aided by his friend Tom McKittrick, the head of the Bank for International Settlements, sought to protect his German clients accounts.
Insubordination to presidents was a running theme in Dulless life. But the younger Dulles brother did not yet have the power he would command later in life, so FDRs policies won out over Dulless covert challenges.
Money and the power that money enabled, not ideology, was the predominant motivator for Dulles and his ilk. As Talbot noted, It is not widely recognized that the Nazi reign of terror was, in a fundamental way, a lucrative racket an extensive criminal enterprise set up to loot the wealth of Jewish victims and exploit their labor.
Dulles did not appear to have a problem with the decimation of the Jews. Instead, Dulles believed the real enemy were the Communists, who had the potential to shift the balance of financial power. So Dulles found natural camaraderie with the Nazi elite, who also viewed the Soviets as their biggest threat. Dulles ignored or downplayed the reports he was receiving from escapees and journalists regarding the burning of human beings in concentration camps.
Dulless declassified communications showed little regard for the killing of the Jews and much more interest in psychological warfare tricks, such as distributing counterfeit stamps behind enemy lines depicting Hitlers profile as a deaths skull, and other cloak-and-dagger antics, Talbot tells us.
When one reporter took a detailed report of what was happening to Dulles, the journalist said Dulles was profoundly shocked and thought action should be taken immediately. Yet Dulles had been receiving similar reports for more than two years and had done nothing about it, and he did next to nothing with this report as well.
Dulles wasnt the only one keeping the atrocities from being reported, of course. First, the Nazis operated in as much secrecy as possible, so credible reports were hard to come by. But even when they came, many others in government, such as Secretary of State Cordell Hull, turned a blind eye. Hull was one of those who advised President Roosevelt not to allow the St. Louis, a ship of German Jewish refugees, to dock at an American port and who had blocked an important, detailed, first-hand account of what was going on in the camps from reaching the President.
In Italy, Dulles pursued his own secret peace agreement, which he dubbed Operation Sunrise, which flew in the face of FDRs stated policies. And while Dulles presented himself to people as a personal representative of FDR, the absurdity of that was not lost on some of Dulless targets.
Launching the Cold War
During the Nuremberg trials, again, Dulles took the side opposite of what FDR had wanted, the meting out of stern justice for such egregious crimes. Where Roosevelt and other Allied leaders saw war criminals, Dulles saw potential spies to be rescued.
Talbot devotes several chapters to Dulless cooperation with and protection of the Nazis. One chapter is devoted to Dulless bringing the Gehlen organization into the fold of U.S. intelligence, with dubious results.
And, Talbot describes how James Angleton appeared to have blackmailed his way into his position of Chief of Counterintelligence by promising not to expose Dulless hiding of Nazi funds. That would explain how Angleton rose to such a key position despite his dubious fitness for the job. The paranoid Angleton ruined the lives of many intelligence officers whom he suspected falsely of being foreign spies, while missing the fact that his good friend in British intelligence, Kim Philby, was a Soviet double-agent. But Allen Dulles was ever Angletons protector.
Due to the scope of the topics covered, Talbot is necessarily unable to go in great depth into any of them. His coverage of the Hiss case feels superficial to one who has read a great deal on the subject. For example, Talbot speculates that Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official accused of spying for the Soviets, didnt want to recognize Whittaker Chambers, the chief witness against him, because the two had perhaps engaged in a homosexual liaison.
While that may be true, Ive always found Hisss own reasons compelling: Chambers had gone by another name when he had first known him; it had been many years since they had met; and Chamberss weight had changed dramatically. That seems to better explain why Hiss claimed he didnt know Chambers until he had a face-to-face meeting with him. Then, he recognized his long-ago tenant.
Talbot sprinkles a little sexual innuendo throughout the book. Personally, I find that takes away from the telling of history because anyone can say anything about someone else when the person is no longer alive to dispute it. In most cases, these suspicions are neither provable nor relevant. Fortunately, these are minimal interruptions to the overall tale.
Talbot makes a compelling argument that a lot of the abuses of the intelligence apparatus that we are dealing with now had their genesis under Allen Dulless version of the CIA. He traces the notion that the CIA is above the law and unanswerable to oversight to the McCarthy hearings, where Dulles earned the undying loyalty of the CIA by refusing to turn over Sen. Joe McCarthys targets for questioning.
McCarthy was clearly overreaching in his pursuit of suspected Communists and homosexuals as alleged national security threats but there should have been another way to deal with that than by claiming the CIA was above the law. That single act of defiance, perhaps more than anything else, paved the way to the egregious CIA abuses that have occurred in the years since, including the illegal wiretapping of elected officials, opening them up to blackmail.
In another part of the book, Talbot details the rise of Nixon under, in part, Dulless sponsorship. Most of us know that Nixon received illegal campaign donations when he was running for president. But Nixon also shook down those who wanted him to run for Congress, claiming he couldnt afford to live on the salary of a Congressman and that hed need supplementary income if he were to run. These are the kinds of juicy details Talbots book provides in spades.
As CIA Director
President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Dulles as the fifth CIA director and the first civilian director in 1953, but, as Talbot makes clear, Dulles overrode some of Eisenhowers wishes by collaborating with his brother, John Foster Dulles, who was Secretary of State. By and large, Eisenhower was okay with letting the Dulles brothers run U.S. overt and covert foreign policy as they helped shape the worsening Cold War.
Their hard-line anti-communism and sympathy for colonialism included organizing coups in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954 and blocking a political settlement of the Vietnam conflict that would have involved elections leading to the likely victory of Ho Chi Minh. (John Foster Dulles died in 1959. The international airport outside Washington D.C. is named in his honor.)
One chapter focuses on the killing of dangerous ideas in the form of a lecturer at Columbia University, Jesús Galíndéz. He and compatriots had fought in the Spanish Civil War and fled to the Dominican Republic, only to find that they had left Francos frying pan and landed in Trujillos fire. Galíndéz later escaped the Dominican Republic for America and wrote a damning 750-page essay called The Era of Trujillo, as his PhD thesis.
Talbot reveals the role of CIA operative Robert Maheu and ex-FBI agent John Frank in the kidnapping of Galíndéz and his delivery to Trujillo, who tortured him, boiled him alive and fed him to the sharks. With the help of Dulless CIA, Galíndéz died in 1956.
Talbot also argues that the CIA was too modest when it claimed it was not responsible for the death of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba who was assassinated just days before John Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961. The CIA basically handed Lumumba over to the people who killed him, making the Agency, at the very least, strong accessories to the plot, and hardly the failed-plot-bystanders, the story that CIA officials sold to the Church Committee.
Though Eisenhower had given the Dulles brothers a long leash for their foreign policy schemes, President John F. Kennedy had different ideas. As president, he wanted to run his own foreign policy, and this deeply rankled Allen Dulles. However, in his first months in office, Kennedy acquiesced to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. Furious that he let the CIA sell him on the scheme that was hatched under Eisenhower, Kennedy vowed to rein in the freewheeling CIA.
Dulles hadnt had to answer to anyone for a long time. But his sloppy Bay of Pigs operation cost him all credibility with Kennedy, who took the high road publicly, refusing to blame the CIA outright. But in private, he made it clear the Agency was not to be trusted and that he wanted to shatter it into a million pieces. The enmity between the pair grew.
Allen Dulles also defied Kennedys wishes when the President promoted an opening to the Left in Italy. Under Dulles, the CIA continued working against those same forces while supporting the Right as the spy agency and its predecessor, the OSS, had done since World War II.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy was so suspicious of Dulless secret reach that after the Bay of Pigs fiasco he found Dulless sister working in the State Department and had her fired. President Kennedy ousted Dulles in November 1961, replacing him with John McCone.
But Dulles did not go quietly into the cold night, as Talbot tells it, but ran, essentially, a government in exile from his home on the Potomac. Talbot details some of the comings and goings and how Dulles may have used his own book tour to help plan and plot the assassination of President Kennedy.
The JFK Assassination
Toward the end of the book, Talbot focuses nearly as much on President Kennedy and the plot to assassinate him as he does on Allen Dulles, with mixed results. While Talbot has the facts right in the broad strokes, if not all the small details, his focus was, in my opinion, a tad misplaced in spots. For example, he appears to believe E. Howard Hunts deathbed confession, which many in the research community do not.
Hunt, a career intelligence officer who became infamous as a leader of Nixons Watergate burglary team, implicated President Lyndon B. Johnson in the plot to kill Kennedy, which has never made sense to me. If LBJ was so ruthless that he killed his way to the presidency, why did he decide not to run again in 1968? Historically, when people have killed their way to the throne, they do not voluntarily abdicate it.
And Hunts confession seemed motivated more by the goal of leaving his family a little money after his death than by a desire to tell the truth. Indeed, even Talbot is puzzled at things Hunt appears not to know that he would necessarily have known had he been privy to the inner workings of the plot.
Clearly, Talbot focuses on Hunt because of Hunts well-documented long-term friendship with Dulles. And, I do believe, from my own research, that Hunt was likely in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, presumably as paymaster, his usual role in operations, based in large part on the fuller evidence from which Talbot created his abbreviated summary on that point. But Im not persuaded, by this presentation or my other research, that Hunt knew the details of the actual plot.
From my own 25-plus years of research into the documentary record of the Kennedy assassination, I have come to believe it more likely that Richard Helms, James Angleton and David Atlee Phillips were the top plotters, not Dulles. But, to Talbots point, all of these men were beholden, at different levels, to Dulles; in fact, Angleton carried Dulless ashes at his funeral in 1969.
David Atlee Phillips gained power in the CIA because of his successful operations during the 1954 overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala under Dulles. Helms was apparently insulated from the Bay of Pigs disaster in April 1961, perhaps by Dulles to keep a loyal person at the upper echelon of the CIA.
Given the hostility between Dulles and Kennedy, it remains a historical anomaly that Dulles managed to finagle his way onto the official investigation of Kennedys assassination. In that position, Allen Dulles was more responsible than anyone for the deliberate obfuscations of the Warren Commission. Dulles spent more minutes working for the commission than any other member. I agree with Talbot that the body should more appropriately have been named the Dulles Commission.
Talbot repudiated the recently resurfaced canard that Robert Kennedy had asked LBJ to appoint Dulles to the commission, a point lawyer and former House Select Committee investigator Dan Hardway has also recently made in detail recently with additional evidence. (See Section VIII in Hardways article Thank you, Phil Shenon.)
Dulles really did have ties to the family of Ruth and Michael Paine, the couple that housed the Oswalds in the months before the assassination. And Dulles really did monitor New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrisons case against Clay Shaw through the man Garrison had hired to provide security, Gordon Novel.
One of the most interesting people Talbot examined in the latter part of his book was JFK adviser and historian Arthur Schlesinger, who apparently had a distaste for Dulles and the CIAs actions professionally while maintaining a personal and even warm relationship with Dulles though Schlesinger came to question that friendship in later years.
One of Talbots chapters, I cant look and I wont look, is named for something Schlesinger said when confronted with evidence of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. Here was a man so wedded to his circle that he did not want to believe someone he knew and admired could be responsible for such a heinous crime.
Toward the end of his life, Schlesinger reflected on his truce and friendship with Dulless protégé Richard Helms and later CIA Director William Casey. Talbot quoted Schlesinger as saying, I did wonder at ones [meaning his own] capacity to continue liking people who have been involved in wicked things.
Is this deplorable weakness? Or commendable tolerance?
The same must be asked of the publics tolerance of secret operations that run counter to the principles of democracy in an open society. Is it commendable to tolerate assassinations and the darker deeds in the name of preserving the republic, or, more accurately, protecting the holdings of corporate leaders in the republic, or is it our weakness, as citizens of a democratic republic, that we have not raised our voices in protest of a secret, parallel government that has and no doubt will continue to pursue an independent path, out of control of our democracy?
That is the question that Talbots book asks between the lines. The Devils Chessboard gives us essential information to ponder before we make our answer.
Lisa Pease is a writer who has examined issues ranging from the Kennedy assassination to voting irregularities in recent U.S. elections.
SOURCE: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/10/27/checkmate-on-the-devils-chessboard/
ConsortiumNews allows DU to post entire articles.
Ms. Pease spoke at Duquesne conference on "Soft Power.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024024545
Talbot makes a strong case that Allen Dulles was the architect of the assassination of President Kennedy. I agree.
Lonestarblue
(10,267 posts)to my reading list.
MarcA
(2,195 posts)Kid Berwyn
(15,253 posts)By David de Jong.
From Kirkus Reviews:
An unflattering investigative history of German big business over the past century.
Financial journalist de Jong reminds us that many of todays superwealthy Germans are heirs of entrepreneurs whose companies prospered under the Third Reich through use of slave labor and seizure of companies. This is old news, but de Jong explores how all walked free after the war and their heirs do little to acknowledge their ancestors crimes. Few entrepreneurs paid attention to Hitler until he grew powerful after 1930. Some became ardent Nazis, but most approved of his hatred of socialism, worker activism, and democracy. Once Hitler began rearming, they scrambled for contracts, which involved currying favor with Nazi leaders. An enormous source of profit was Jewish businesses, often acquired for a pittance. Readers searching for an industrialist who disapproved will come up empty. As de Jong shows, nearly everyone approved of the methods of the business community. Orders increased, and a flood of slave laborers from the conquered countries poured into the factories. Though most employees were treated horribly, few employers objected. During the final year of the war, companies continued to sell their products and overwork their laborers even as the Allies overran Germany. Then they made themselves scarce. Their activities were no secret to Allied intelligence, but the first Nuremberg trial involved major political figures rather than business owners. Later, the trials of businessmen received little publicity and largely flopped, handing out a few short prison sentences and fines. Its to de Jongs credit that he brings many of these events back into the historical spotlight. The defendants mostly kept their businesses, handing them on to heirs, who were not inclined to discuss the wartime years. As decades passed, a good deal of dirt turned up, persuading some to apologize and make modest gestures of restitution, but others stonewalled. The author recounts perhaps more details on German business dealings than American readers may seek, but there is enough chicanery to maintain interest.
A sturdy account of the financial side of Nazi evil that resonates today.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-de-jong/nazi-billionaires-dynasties/
The Roux Comes First
(1,305 posts)And J. Edgar and Smedley Butler should be on the radar too.
modrepub
(3,513 posts)The justice system has always treated you different. That's been going on for a long, long time. What TFG has done (literally for his entire life) exemplifies what's wrong with our society.
Literally, the path of justice is multi-directional; the outcome is preordained by your socioeconomic (and to some extent, racial) position within this society. Not always, but most times.
Gary 50
(382 posts)Should read "no peon is above the law."
Farmer-Rick
(10,268 posts)Except for the filthy rich; their stooges and monsters sometimes too.
Capitalism which allows these corporate monsters to buy anything and everything, is why America is falling apart. From time to time, America will put a patch on capitalism's tears, holes and unraveling of democracy. But then allow capitalism to destroy again.
Cyrano
(15,097 posts)Seems to be a race between humanity evolving to a state of sanity, or destroying ourselves before we get there.
I_UndergroundPanther
(12,524 posts)Or we could follow through and tax the income, total wealth ,capital gains,and inheritance ,and property of these poisonous people . Than hire enough I R S
people and lawyers sick of corruption to comb through all these oligarch monsters records including off shore assets. Have an oversight committee to make sure no one doing the audits are bought off..all accountable to each other.
And make the pigs pay up that money or lose thier business charters and be barred from ever having a business again
every single one of them . If they don't cooperate put them in the poor people's jail for life no exceptions no plea bargains,no parole, in solitary so they cannot manipulate the public or talk to thier corrupt associates with no way out until they die.. and enforce it ruthlessly and give them no pity.
Problem is we need a strong charismatic good person to head this thing . Someone who prides themselves on having integrity that cannot be bought,who is fearless and relentless,and will do what must be done to get these over wealthy assholes under control.
They need to pick people to help also who are honest,can't be bought who are also fearless and relentless.
They all must desire equality,dispise nazis and hate the abuse of power.
Is there anyone like this in this world?
Farmer-Rick
(10,268 posts)Some even had wars over it.
So maybe the world will do it again and evolve away from capitalism into a better economic structure. Democracy was a good idea for a government but we left in place an economic system that was very feudal and not democratic.
SoCalDavidS
(9,998 posts)There are still those who expect TFG to be arrested, dragged away in cuffs, and put in jail for the rest of his life.
skydive forever
(449 posts)But now it is kinda obvious, isn't it? The laws apply to thee, but not to me.
kairos12
(12,921 posts)broke.
mnhtnbb
(31,454 posts)So true.
CrispyQ
(36,634 posts)I had a little hope until the classified documents case. As a country & a party we look weak, stupid, & foolish, letting this traitor walk free, conduct rallies, & run for president again. I'll continue to vote straight ticket dem, but without any enthusiasm & no more money to any candidates.
childfreebychoice
(476 posts)No more. The voters have spoken, they like living under rethug authorization/theocracy. Will cont to support former home state of Md, but we are done dumping money into the abyss. Red state voters...pull yourselves up by own bootstraps
Lonestarblue
(10,267 posts)Obviously, most people on DU believe it is a mistake not to hold Trump accountable for January 6 and his theft of classified documents. I applaud those who can maintain their belief that justice will prevail, and I sincerely hope their faith is rewarded.
While I think not indicting Trump sends a very bad message that indeed some people are above the law, I also worry about the message that would be sending to allies and to people around the world who would see the US as just another corrupt country where the only things that matter are wealth and power. Not a good look for our democratic principles.
Kablooie
(18,658 posts)He hasnt been indicted.
No matter how big the crime and how obvious the evidence it never goes farther than an investigation. Then poof!
For years and years hes been on the edge of being indicted any day now.
TRUMP WILL NEVER BE INDICTED FOR ANYTHING!!!
EVER!!
JUST ACCEPT IT.
childfreebychoice
(476 posts)In his own bed. Stopped looking for equal justice, and I sleep much better
dlk
(11,649 posts)Throughout history, money and connections have bought favors. All we can do is work toward a more perfect version of justice. Make no mistake though, the work is never done.
Cyrano
(15,097 posts)Orrex
(63,333 posts)I could almost accept that Trump will escape monthly unscathed, if only certain people would stop catapulting the propaganda about equal justice under the law, when we daily see proof to the contrary.
I expect that a few will jump in to scold me once again, in fact.
ancianita
(36,273 posts)Orrex
(63,333 posts)So perhaps youd like to rethink your phrasing, while youre explicitly proving my point for me.
Response to Orrex (Reply #28)
ancianita This message was self-deleted by its author.
Orrex
(63,333 posts)Never mind. I wont see your reply anyway.
ancianita
(36,273 posts)At first I thought you were implying you'd Alert me. Sorry. I realize damage is done but I'll just delete my post anyway.
ancianita
(36,273 posts)In the last ten days:
Former Navy Sailor Sentenced for Producing Images of Child Sexual Abuse
Ex-Wall Street Trader Convicted of Fraud in Precious Metals Spoofing Scheme
New Jersey Electronics Businessman Pleads Guilty to Filing False Tax Return
New Jersey Business Owner Sentenced to Five Years of Incarceration for Defrauding Over 75 Victims of More Than $2.7 Million in Nationwide Scheme to Sell Fraudulent Coronavirus Disinfectant Products
Jury Convicts Former Federal Prison Warden for Sexual Abuse of Three Female Inmates
Three Health Care Providers Agree to Pay $22.5 Million for Alleged False Claims to Californias Medicaid Program
Eleventh Defendant Pleads Guilty in $15 Million Scheme to Defraud Spanish-Speaking United States Immigrants
Former Correctional Officer Sentenced for Assaulting a Hawaii Inmate
Active Russian Agent Andrii Derkach Indicted for Scheme to Violate Sanctions in the United States
Seven Alabama Residents Sentenced for Felony Violations of the Animal Welfare Act, Ending One of the Largest Cockfighting Operations in the Country
Father and Son Sentenced for $1.7 Million COVID-19 Relief Fraud
Former Assistant Atlanta City Attorney and Police Officer Charged in $7 Million PPP Fraud Scheme
Criminal Charges Unsealed Against 12 Individuals in Wide-Ranging Scheme to Monopolize Transmigrante Industry and Extort Competitors Near U.S.-Mexico Border
Former Muncie, Indiana, Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Eleven Civil Rights and Obstruction Offenses for Assaulting Arrestees and Writing False Reports
Former Oklahoma Supervisory Correctional Officer Sentenced for Promoting White Supremacist Assault on Black Inmates and Ordering Other Abuse
ABB Agrees to Pay Over $315 Million to Resolve Coordinated Global Foreign Bribery Case
Alabama Defendant Sentenced to 60 Years and Ordered to Pay Over $950,000 in Restitution for Sex Trafficking Scheme Involving Forced Prostitution
Former Senior U.S. Navy Employee Sentenced for Bribery Conspiracy and Lying to Investigators
Mississippi Man Pleads Guilty to Federal Hate Crime for Cross Burning
Las Vegas Tax Preparer Sentenced to Prison for Multiple Fraud Schemes
Leader of International Drug Trafficking Organization Pleads Guilty to Cocaine Trafficking Conspiracy
https://www.justice.gov
Orrex
(63,333 posts)How many were required to admit to wrongdoing? And how many saw jail time?
If the answer is anything other than all of them, then that simply proves the reality of our pro-wealthy justice system.
ancianita
(36,273 posts)Even if you could prove any "no wrongdoing" agreement -- which you won't find at the link -- the OP is wrong about "NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW" because of the factual record of arrests, convictions, sentencing that remain on a person(s) background, if they ever get background checked.
Anyone with common sense and knowledge of what the Justice Department, would rightly wonder how in hell anyone can call that a lie.
Fight to get Main Justice more funding. Lisa Monaco has hired over 130 more lawyers (this past April) on the Trump cases. Because by my count he's not above the 17 laws he broke. Garland has a badass from both the DOJ and the Hague on the Trump cases. AND his aiders and abettors.
Just because it's not the justice YOU want, or at the pace YOU want, doesn't mean justice isn't doing its job in the third biggest nation on the planet.
The FUD chorus here is just, "I want it NOW or you FAIL!" whining and bitching.
Orrex
(63,333 posts)I have no interest in a line-by-line refutation of your pre-prepared Gish gallop.
And youve once again proven my point. Thanks!
ancianita
(36,273 posts)The Department of Justice's conviction record is a Gish gallop? You might as well be saying, "I'm grown enough to refuse to do my homework!" Pure laziness and bullshit.
This is a "sense of justice" grievance thread. In a General Discussion thread you get discussion. The fact that you refuse to use fact to base your claim says "a great deal about you, by the way," -- that you refuse to discuss.
Orrex
(63,333 posts)I choose not discuss it with you, however, and not because Im overwhelmed by the strength of your argument.
Ive also had posts hidden for questioning a DUers age or maturity, but apparently youre held to a different standard.
Nothing further is to be gained from suffering through your posts.
Cyrano
(15,097 posts)"Justice" is an abstract concept. But I defy anyone to demonstrate that our "system" doesn't favor the rich over the poor, the haves overt the have nots, the white over the black, and the connected over the basic peon.
If you're trying to make the case that "Everyone is equal under the law in America," you've carved out quite a mission. Trump isn't the first/only thug to "get away with everything," and he won't be the last. Thousands like him probably exist out there today, and post #5 just touches the surface of the hypocrisy. Nowhere in the world is "Everyone is equal under the law" a reality. We humans have a long way to go before we "grow up." And right now, our destruction of our home planet seems to indicate that we won't get the chance to "grow up."
ancianita
(36,273 posts)Justice is not abstract. It is rule of law intended to both prevent and prosecute "loss, harm or damage" to humans. Of course the hardest recourse is for humans already born into unequal income classes and structures to afford to pay for their recourse. 10% of most law firms' budgets are set aside for pro bono work for that reason. And of course, given the size of our nation's problems, that's not enough; which is why there are huge legal orgs like the ACLU, NLG, and so many others.
Justice as concrete recourse has been structurally hobbled by politically motivated funding. It's been muddled by corporate insurgence into constitutional law. Yet justice is as essential to a strong society as is a military. Yet the two have always been funded unequally.
I don't have to make the case that " Everyone is equal under the law in America" when our Democratic leaders say it and make the case for it, and work to make it real all the time.
Just because the funding, pace, and outcomes aren't perfect, or to our liking, doesn't mean that when our leaders make the case for, or even SAY, " Everyone is equal under the law in America" that it's a lie. Neither does any history of failed justice prove that statement is a lie.
The LIE part is what bothers me. It's not just provocation. It's denigration of our elected leaders and Department of Justice who believe it, and work toward its concrete adherence as their calling.
We on DU must not denigrate the imperfections of rule of law as a lie perpetrated upon the People. If we don't "grow up" about what we call empowerment through justice, you're right -- we won't "grow up" about corporate capture, covid, ecosystem destruction or even envisioning the futures our descendants deserve.
But the thing about growing up is that it's not about 'getting the chance.'
It's about deciding to make the disciplined effort about what we call adult systems; deciding not to just "get a chance," but deciding to leave nothing to chance.
In other words, to make our own chance. That right there precludes energy draining namecalling, grievance airing and general FUD bitching. We often reference the "adults in the room" because we easily see people of the opposing party who refuse to grow up about all kinds of things -- like committing to truth, lifelong learning, how government and governing work to do the greatest good for the greatest number, supporting collective solutions to big system problems, etc.
Feel down, but know we're not out. Know that "no one is above the law" is daily proven true more than not. The daily court wins of millions upon millions of fraudulent money gained back to our covid and PPP budgets, the millions in monies returned across business frauds, all that's just the "making whole" part of enforcing rule of law.
Because of that concrete enforcement of justice the criminal element of scofflaws, outlaws and "aboves" keep learning the hard way that it's true.
In an imperfect democracy full of imperfect humans, I will err on the side of our elected officials and Department of Justice lawyers who believe it, work for it and literally, concretely, prove it every damn day.
Cyrano
(15,097 posts)And I too yearn for that world at the end of the rainbow.
ancianita
(36,273 posts)Your choice to believe what you want to believe. I don't yearn.
In the adult world there is no yearning or worlds at the end of rainbows.
I'm a realist. I know the concreteness of what "no one is above the law" really is.
Cyrano
(15,097 posts)ancianita
(36,273 posts)Paladin
(28,306 posts)MarcA
(2,195 posts)If he is ever sentenced to prison, he will try and escape to a friendly country or go to jail for Show for a short period of time and when he gets out will be even more of a grifter playing on his victimhood.
Tommymac
(7,263 posts)This details the 1940's attempt at a Nazi coup in the US and how politically powerful RW Senators and Congress folks avoided the attempts to try and convict them. They made the DOJ look like their puppet.
Every US Citizen should listen to this great podcast - it plays like 'Law & Order' or other law TV show - very very entertaining. And totally scary too.
But don't despair - she tells us how We The People can mitigate shit like this in the end. Activism.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra
Our system is not broken, this is by design. The Founders DID NOT WANT DIRECT DEMOCRACY and also wanted to protect their 'Class' (Planters).
That said, IMO our system with all it's flaws is still the best compared to fascism, feudalism, monarchies, and other authoritarian systems.
ancianita
(36,273 posts)I listened to all the ULTRA episodes and the lesson was more specific. Voting.
The lesson was that those who thought they were above the law were voted out under voting law.
Voting is The People's Jury.
So far, that law has worked when Americans are made aware of the facts and the law. For all the political suppressions of past DOJs, voters have come through enough to keep this democracy working for centuries.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)it is so often effectively the case.
I have never said such a thing. But then no one is above the law to me and those like me. Ever.
It's a basic principle. And the bigger their duty to us, the more they should fear us.
brooklynite
(95,211 posts)And how long, precisely, would you have allowed AG Garland to investigate and craft a case?
Indictments in Watergate took 2 years (without an angry blogosphere).
GoldandSilver
(186 posts)There are rich, powerful people (men) that can get away with the most incredible things, and then there are the rest of us. The Orange guy wasnt kidding when he said he could shoot someone on a crowded street in New York City and no one would care. He firmly believes he is above the law and apparently, many people agree with him.
Some people (men) have lied, cheated, and bullied their way into power positions and they wreak havoc on societies around the world.
In America, that injustice will remain until we decide to reject it, but no one has yet. We choose to live the lie and the rich and powerful are protected and the rest of us stand and watch and wait for someone else to clean up our democracy.
Kid Berwyn
(15,253 posts)All they did was rip off $ trillions in 2008 (like they did to the S&Ls in 1991). Written at the time:
Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4055207
It got put back, though by the US taxpayer.
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