Yearly Archives: 2015

Deepwater Capitalism

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Reflections on the Fifth Anniversary of One of the Biggest Oil Spills in History

By Quincy Saul

Source: Counterpunch

In memory of Gabriel García Márquez, March 6, 1927-April 17, 2014.

In September of 2009, the BP corporation dug the deepest oil well in history. The 35,055-foot deep Tiber prospect, 300 miles off the Texas coast, promised six billion barrels: one of the largest oil fields ever discovered in the country. So of course, they kept looking for more: They moved their massive drilling rig named Deepwater Horizon fifty miles south of the Louisiana coastline, to a prospect called Macondo, named after the setting of the famous book 100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez.

On April 20, 2010, as they began to seal the well, something went wrong: a mix of oil and gas escaped, rushing up through earth and water, blowing up the Deepwater Horizon, and killing eleven workers, whose bodies were never recovered. Over the next eighty seven days, the whole world watched as over 200 million gallons of oil erupted from the ocean floor into the Gulf of Mexico.

It was the largest oil spill in history – more than ten times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. The images of animals covered in oil began to haunt our screens again, and the scale of death was so great it still seems impossible to quantify – estimates of the number of birds killed within the first hundred days ranges between 100,000 and one million. But the real nightmare was offshore, as riptides and hired hands collected thousands of animal carcasses into “death gyres”. Riki Ott explains:

“Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen managed to get the only footage of what I came to call the ‘death gyres.’ the rip currents that collected dead animals offshore. The Incident Command – BP and the US Coast Guard – kept the media 1,500 feet up in the air so the press couldn’t really capture the situation there. The animal carcasses were corralled, taken out to sea, and dumped at night, according to fishermen who were involved with so-called ‘Night-time Operations.’ Offshore workers reported ‘thousands of dolphins, birds too numerous to count, sea turtles too numerous to count,’ and even whales in the death gyres.” (Earth at Risk, Building a Resistance Movement to Save the Planet, edited by Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith, p. 49)

Five years later, what can we say? If hindsight is 20-20 then presumably we can learn from our mistakes. How did it happen? Was it BP’s fault? Or is there a bigger picture to blame? Five years later, the common sense of this tragedy has yet to dawn, as if the oil has clogged our hearts and minds along with our oceans and beaches. Like the pioneers of Márquez’s Macondo, searching for a way through the swamp, we seem lost, desperately hacking our way through nature and through our own nature. And the past, like the path, seems to always be disappearing behind us.

“…and the cries of the birds and the uproar of the monkeys became more and more remote, and the world became eternally sad. The men on the expedition felt overwhelmed by their most ancient memories in that paradise of dampness and silence, going back to before original sin, as their boots sank into pools of steaming oil and their machetes destroyed bloody lilies and golden salamanders. . . . They could not return because the strip that they were opening as they went along would soon close up with a new vegetation that almost seemed to grow before their eyes.” (Márquez, p. 11-12)

How did it Happen?

“The main thing is not to lose our bearings.” (Márquez, p. 12)

Whodunit? What was the crime scene, and who are the criminals? What murder weapon spawned gyres of death? Five years later, we must look through the tangled jungle of events which have grown up behind us, and remember how we got here. Michael Klare’s insightful blow-by-blow of the events leading up to the accident is worth revisiting. 

“When BP first deployed the rig at the Macondo prospect in January 2010, it set a target date of March 7 for completion of that well. However, due to a series of geological obstacles and technical mishaps, drilling was not completed until April 19, producing a cost overrun on the project of approximately $58 million. It is not surprising, then, that BP’s site managers felt particular pressure to seal the well and move the Deepwater Horizon, to its next scheduled location. In their rush, the site managers made several last-minute decisions. . . . When preparing for the final cementing that would prevent natural gas from leaking into the wellbore, for instance, they decided to use only six “centralizers” to position the well’s steel casing, whereas the original design had called for twenty-one centralizers. They also went ahead with the sealing of the well even though several ‘negative-pressure’ tests suggested a dangerous buildup of gas in the wellbore. . . . the desire to complete the job swiftly and move the expensive drillship to its next assignment certainly contributed to the disaster.” (The Race for What’s Left, The global scramble for the world’s last resources, Klare, p. 47-8)

One way to solve this crime is to blame the workers – the crime scene is the workplace, and the murder weapon is the botched job. They failed to follow industry regulations; using less than half of the recommended number of centralizers, and ignoring the test results indicating a dangerous buildup of gas. But this explanation is not sufficient, and hides another suspect. If the workers pulled the trigger, who gave the order?

As Klare explains, the workers were in a rush. It was the BP site managers – their cost overrun, their “pressure to seal the well and move,” and the “desire to complete the job swiftly,” which created the conditions in which the oil workers made their fateful decisions. So is BP the murderer? Is the crime scene the BP board room?

 

Inside BP

At the dawn of the 21st century, BP had a tabloid affair with alternative energy. John Browne, its CEO from 1995 to 2007 re-branded the company, from “British Petroleum” to “Beyond Petroleum”, and urged its shareholders and broader public “to look beyond oil and gas to fuels which can be produced locally and which do not threaten the sustainability of the world’s climate.” In 2008, Browne was replaced by Tony Hayward, whose more sober vision re-branded the company simply “BP”, and clarified that “the energy of the future will be more than oil, but oil will still be a major part of it.” In 2010 he closed BP’s “alternative energy office.” (Klare, p. 41)

Perhaps the public relations team from that office had all been moved to the Gulf Coast, where it has been working overtime since 2010. This has included classroom visits with “hands-on” experiments, substituting cocoa for oil and dish soap for chemical dispersant, to win young hearts and minds to the efficacy of BP’s cleanup efforts.[1] According to the company, the case is closed. A recently released report from BP concluded: “BP has seen no data to suggest a significant long-term population-level impact to any species.” In fact, “BP is claiming that wildlife in the Gulf is thriving and more abundant since the disaster.” (Jensen and Keith, p. 61) In a recent press conference, BP’s executive vice president for response and environmental restoration in the region Laura Folse said “I personally have no concern about oil washing in from the offshore to the shoreline.”

BP is preparing for the punchline, because currently pending in court is the case which will decide how much money BP has to pay in damages for the disaster. While BP is a giant – listed by Fortune magazine as the fourth largest publicly held company in the world – some on Wall Street have expressed fear that the court’s decision could kill the company. This panic began almost immediately after the spill, and BP began to sell off assets all over the world, in Colombia, Egypt, the US, Canada and Argentina. (Klare, p. 215, 216)

But according to forensic accounting expert Ian Ratner who testified recently on the case, BP “actually, has a better balance sheet today than it had before the spill.” Despite around $40 billion in oil spill liabilities, the company is financially better off than before the disaster. What’s more, they are back at the scene of the crime: “We expect to be back and actively drilling during the second half of the year,” said BP Chief Financial Offcer Byron Grote in April 2011. And he kept his promise: like Colonel Buendía in Márquez’s novel, BP gives orders for execution but is isolated and naive about to the results: “Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.” (Márquez, p. 171) BP seems both all-powerful and powerless, returning to the scene of the crime like a dog unto its vomit, at the mercy of some god or godlessness which demands more drilling.

There is more than meets the eye in this case. Is BP the only culprit on trial? If the workers pulled the trigger, and BP gave the order, who put the gun in its hand? And who made the gun? There is an African saying that “if you want to get at the root of the murder, you have to look for the blacksmith who made the machete.” (Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe, p. 159)

The World System

“That was perhaps the only mystery that was never cleared up in Macondo. . . . A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta’s chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.” (Márquez, p. 135)

What was the blacksmith that built and blew the Deepwater Horizon? Like the mystery of Macondo in Márquez’s story, the trail of blood climbs and descends, turns corners and crosses paths, taking us from the work place, to the board room, to the stock exchange, and from there it seems to flow into the ocean of normal every-day modern life. As Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America said, “the deepwater is indispensable to the world’s energy future.” (Klare, p. 69) The trail doesn’t go cold, it goes everywhere. Like the war of Colonel Buendía, our search for justice in the death gyres seems to get stuck in a stalemate of business as usual: “’Everything normal, Colonel.’ And normality was precisely the most fearful part of that infinite war.” (Márquez, p. 171)

In the early 2000s, the deep sea drilling industry boomed. All the big oil corporations competed to dig the deepest wells, at depths and conditions that boggle the imagination – deeper than Mt. Everest is tall, under thousands of feet of water (and pressure). These projects out-compete space exploration in the audacity of their engineering and in their cost: Shell built a rig called Mars that was three times more expensive than the Mars Pathfinder mission, with arguably more complex technology. (Klare, p. 44) While their locations are industry secrets – no one knows how many or where they all are – they are everywhere, from the Falkland Islands to the Arctic Circle, from South America to West Africa.

A 2010 report by energy expert Michael Smith estimated that big oil would spend $387 billion on offshore drilling between 2010 and 2014 – 33% more than over the previous five years – building 20,000 offshore wells in ever deeper waters. (Klare, p. 44-45) The Deepwater Horizon explosion, which came nineteen days after President Obama announced plans for more offshore drilling, did little or nothing to change the plan. Three days after the explosion, with Macondo still gushing, a White House spokesperson assured that increase in offshore drilling would continue, promising that it would be done “safely, securely, and without harm to the environment.” (Klare, p. 51)

Before Deepwater Horizon, regulations on the industry had been lax. In the United States, the Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service (MMS) took a hands-off approach to the industry, never, for instance, setting any criteria for minimum-pressure tests, which had such fateful consequences in the Gulf. (Klare, p. 50) After a six month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf after the disaster, oil companies began to lobby the courts to being reissuing permits. A new set of safety rules was established, and by April 2011, one year after the disaster, deep drilling in the Gulf, by BP and others, was back online. (Klare, p. 52) Everything normal, Colonel.

This is the normalcy of the infinite war on mother earth: While the fallout of the disaster continues to inflict irreparable damage to the Gulf, the industry which created the crisis is allowed to resume the activity which created it. And the same agencies that failed to regulate the industry before are being trusted to do it right this time. How can this be?

The answer can be found by following the money, like the trickle of blood in Macondo, from the scene of the crime, and out into the world-system. In an energy analysis report from several years ago, it was predicted that due to declining reserves of conventional oil, offshore oil output would contribute 35 percent of global supplies by 2020. By 2015, the report continued, deep-offshore fields would be “the only source of growth to power the world’s expanding economy. . . . Any energy firm that intends to continue being involved in the production of hydrocarbons must, therefore, establish a significant presence in the major deepwater drilling zones.” (Klare, p. 45)

In other words, the industry is too big to fail – even if does fail. Big oil cannot be too strictly regulated or restricted – or punished. Their alibi is the world-system; the modern way of life. This logic was recently re-asserted by Justice Department attorney Steve O’Rourke in the buildup to the court case that will decide BP’s punishment, who said that the penalty “has to be high enough that companies of this size won’t let a spill like this ever happen again. But, again, not so high as to be ruinous to their operation.” In the great state of Louisiana, individuals who murder get capital punishment, but corporations who murder get rehabilitation. Questioned about whether the company would attempt to drill at Macondo again, BP senior vice president Kent Wells responded that “there is a good reservoir there,” and there was no reason to rule it out, because if BP didn’t, someone else would. (Klare, p. 52)

And so BP and the Gulf and all of us have come full circle, back to the scene of the crime. As death approaches for Márquez’s Ursula Buendía, so does the realization for all of us: “time was not passing. . . . it was turning in a circle.” (Márquez, p409) As big oil races ever faster and ever deeper, time somehow seems to stand still. The rush put on the workers is the rush put on the managers, is the rush put on the CEOs, is the rush put on the shareholders, is the same rush put again upon the workers. And in this “race for what’s left,” as Michael Klare calls it, we are left standing still, watching death approaching, as the drilling rigs, like monster space-age vultures, circle Macondo once again.

We must ask again, and answer again, to keep our bearings, and to clear a path to the truth: Is the crime scene the workplace, or is it the board room? The stock exchange, or the gas station down the street? Like the trickle of blood weaving through the town of Macondo, the evidence leads everywhere; back to normal modern life. The crime scene is everywhere. The murder weapon is the world-system. The criminal and the culprit is deepwater capitalism.

Deepwater capitalism is a terminal stage in the global metastasis of a social cancer we call the economy. Capitalism has gone to deep water, as it has gone to the hearts of mountains and into the depths of the earth. Offshore oil drilling is but one horseman, in a world-wide apocalypse of extreme resource extraction. The others are fracking, tar sands, and mountaintop removal. If imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, then today’s resource extraction apocalypse reveals the highest stage of imperialism – genocide and extinction.

Captain Ahab from Moby Dick, the insane captain of a whaling ship – distant ancestors of today’s offshore oil rigs – speaks for the system: “all my means are sane, my object and my motive mad.” (Melville, p. 177) With sane means and mad motives, Captain Ahab is both a model and a metaphor for today’s economy, whose command will sink civilization. It is the immense power without direction, the normal infinite war, the gravity at the center of a world-wide death gyre.

 

Conclusions

At the beginning of the road into the swamp they put up a sign that said ‘Macondo’ and another larger one on the main street that said ‘God exists’.” (Márquez, p. 49)

Five years later we owe it to ourselves and to the world to come to some conclusions. It may take millions of years for the ecosystems of the Gulf to recover, but in the meantime we must recover our hearts and our minds from a modernity in which such disasters are normal aspects of every-day life. We must come to some conclusions about this world-system, and about the generations of people who will live and die on the front lines of an infinite struggle against an infinite war.

Regardless of the severity of the punishment BP receives, the fact that it is back at the scene of the crime, drilling, gives us an indication of the real scale of the problem. If BP is a psychopathic recidivist criminal, it is not alone. The global economy which depends on this kind of extreme resource extraction, which gives corporations like BP orders and alibis, and which bends executive, legislative and judicial power to its needs, is on the move, and it will strike again. Bhopal, Macondo, Fukushima – the beat will go on until we pull the emergency break. Michael Klare writes in conclusion to his comprehensive global survey of our doomsday terrain: “As the race for what’s left gains momentum, this sort of predatory behavior will become more frequent and more brutal. . . . Only if we abandon the race altogether . . . . can we hope to avoid calamity on a global scale.” (Klare, p. 218 and 210)

To abandon the race: This is the conclusion to which we must come. It will, however, require much more of us than the reformist measures Klare proposes – increasing efficiency, developing alternative energies, and supporting “green” versus “brown” capital. These will only buy Captain Ahab more time. It’s time for mutiny. It’s time for the emergency break. It’s time for revolution.

Conclusions on the local level in the Gulf are more difficult. Big picture political conclusions will not bring back the fish and the birds, will not restore livelihoods and dreams swept away by poisoned waters. In a region that the federal government has all but abandoned, the future is wholly in the hands of the common people of the Gulf coast.[2] It is an immense burden for any people, let alone those who are still recovering, ten years later, from Hurricane Katrina, and who live trapped between “cancer alley” and rising ocean levels, with the ground literally sinking under their feet. Thus the struggles of the people of the Gulf symbolize for the entire world a last stand for meaning, in a civilization on the brink of oblivion: “It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.” (Márquez, p409) After them, the flood.

Like children, many of us are afraid of the dark. We hide from the creeping annihilation even as it seeps ever closer to home. We close off our hearts to the horror, and mute our minds before the madness, even as it consumes us and enlists our complicity. As John W. Tunnell, witness for BP, recently testified, “The images of those dead birds that were oiled, like pelicans, stick in people’s minds more, and so it’s easy to get emotionally involved in those things. . . . you have to step back and critically and unemotionally, objectively to look at what’s going on.”

While BP’s witnesses, as personifications of capital, would have us immerse ourselves in the infamous “icy waters of egotistical calculation,” some people in the Gulf prefigure a different path to the truth. A documentary titled My Louisiana Love chronicles the story of Monique Verdin, a young Native American woman in search of love and life amidst death and indifference: “I want to keep living on our land, but I’m inheriting a dying delta.” She sets out fearlessly into a landscape of annihilation with an open heart, an open mind, and open hands, and in her story there is a universal story.

It is a story of salvation blossoming next to damnation, a story which promises like Holderin that “where danger threatens, that which saves from it also grows.” Like jewelweed growing next to poison ivy, like women’s liberation in Rojava alongside to the patriarchal crusade of ISIS, like God next to Macondo: There is hope here, perhaps the only kind of hope that is real in a world where everything is at least partly toxic, where dioxin swirls in breast milk, and death gyres spiral in the oceanic cradle of life. It is a story that slumbers in a world consumed with cynicism, a world awash in the icy waters of ego. But like the people of Macondo, we await only the right magnet to re-ignite our wonder. As the gypsy proclaimed, “things have a life of their own. . . . It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.” (Márquez, p. 2)

Quincy Saul is the author of Truth and Dare: A Comic Book Curriculum for the End and the Beginning of the World, and the co-editor of Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz. He is a musician and a co-founder of Ecosocialist Horizons.

REFERENCES

100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006

The Race for What’s Left, The global scramble for the world’s last resources, by Michael T. Klare, Metopolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, NY, 2012

Earth at Risk, Building a Resistance Movement to Save the Planet, edited by Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith, Flashpoint Press, 2012

Anthills of the Savannah, by Chinua Achebe, Anchor Book, 1998

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, St. Botolph Society, 1892

“Suffering a Sea Change,” by Joel Kovel, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2010

Notes.

[1]  “NOAA and BP teamed up to visit eighth-grade classrooms in the Gulf to show children how to safely clean up an oil spill. They spilled cocoa powder in a little aquarium to mimic an oil spill – cocoa powder, right? Yummy. They sprinkled in Dawn dish soap to ‘disperse’ the oil. ‘See children? Dispersant works to clean up the oil, and we’re going to save the world. It’s OK.’ (Riki Ott, in Jensen and Keith, p52) Chemical dispersants can best be described with the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, “where we, even where we mean to mend her, we end her”: the toxicity of chemical dispersants – arguably more dangerous than the oil they purport to clean up – has been analyzed and documented by many organizations.

[2]  “It really is all up to us. In the Gulf, it didn’t take people twenty years like with the Exxon Valdez spill to realize the federal government was not in control of the situation; it took them two months.” -Riki Ott (Jensen and Keith, p52)

 

 

Hillary Clinton: The International Neocon Warmonger

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By Webster G. Tarpley

Source: Voltaire.net

Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy for President of the United States. While the European press showers her with praise without thinking, Webster G. Tarpley recalls her balance sheet: in all circumstances, she supported war and corporate interests.

As the National Journal reported in 2014, even the pathetically weak anti-war left is not ready to reconcile with Hillary given her warmongering as Secretary of State. And with good reason. Scratching just lightly beneath the surface of Hillary Clinton’s career reveals the empirical evidence of her historic support for aggressive interventions around the globe.

Beginning with Africa, Hillary defended the 1998 cruise missile strike on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, destroying the largest producer of cheap medications for treating malaria and tuberculosis and provided over 60% of available medicine in Sudan. In 2006 she supported sending United Nations troops to Darfur with logistical and technical support provided by NATO forces. Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was outspoken in his condemnation of this intervention, claiming it was not committed out of concern for Sudanese people but “…for oil and for the return of colonialism to the African continent.”

This is the same leader who was murdered in the aftermath of the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya; an attack promoted and facilitated with the eager support of Mrs. Clinton. In an infamous CBS news interview, said regarding this international crime: “We came, we saw, he died.” As Time magazine pointed out in 2011, the administration understood removing Qaddafi from power would allow the terrorist cells active in Libya to run rampant in the vacuum left behind. Just last month the New York Times reported that Libya has indeed become a terrorist safe haven and failed state— conducive for exporting radicals through “ratlines” to the conflict against Assad in Syria.

Hillary made prompt use of the ratlines for conflicts in the Middle East. In the summer of 2012, Clinton privately worked with then CIA director and subversive bonapartist David Petraeus on a proposal for providing arms and training to death squads to be used to topple Syria just as in Libya. This proposal was ultimately struck down by Obama, reported the New York Times in 2013, but constituted one of the earliest attempts at open military support for the Syrian death squads.

Her voting record on intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq is well known and she also has consistently called for attacking Iran. She even told Fareed Zakaria the State Department was involved “behind the scenes” in Iran’s failed 2009 Green Revolution. More recently in Foreign Policy magazine David Rothkopf wrote on the subject of the Lausanne nuclear accord, predicting a “snap-back” in policy by the winner of the 2016 election to the foreign policy in place since the 1980s. The title of this article? “Hillary Clinton is the Real Iran Snap-Back.” This makes Hillary the prime suspect for a return to the madcap Iranian policies that routinely threaten the world with a World War 3 scenario.

Hillary Clinton is not only actively aggressing against Africa and the Middle East. She was one of the loudest proponents against her husband’s hesitancy over the bombing of Kosovo, telling Lucina Frank: “I urged him to bomb,” even if it was a unilateral action.

While no Clinton spokesperson responded to a request by the Washington Free Beacon regarding her stance on Ukraine, in paid speeches she mentioned “putting more financial support into the Ukrainian government”. When Crimea decided to choose the Russian Federation over Poroshenko’s proto-fascist rump state, Hillary anachronistically called President Putin’s actions like “what Hitler did in the ‘30s.” As a leader of the bumbled ”reset” policy towards Russia, Hillary undoubtedly harbors some animus against Putin and will continue the destabilization project ongoing in Ukraine.

Not content with engaging in debacles in Eastern Europe, she has vocally argued for a more aggressive response to what she called the “rollback of democratic development and economic openness in parts of Latin America.” This indicates her willingness to allow the continuation of CIA sponsored efforts at South American destabilization in the countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil.

It is one of the proud prerogatives of the Tax Wall Street Party to push out into the light the Wall Street and foundation-funded Democrats. The final blow to Hillary’s clumsy façade comes directly from arch-neocon Robert Kagan. Kagan worked as a foreign policy advisor to Hillary along with his wife, Ukraine madwoman Victoria Nuland, during Hillary’s term as Secretary of State. He claimed in the New York Times that his view of American foreign policy is best represented in the “mainstream” by the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton; a foreign policy he obviously manipulated or outright crafted. Kagan stated: “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue…it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.” What further reason could any sane person need to refute Hillary? A vote for Hillary is a vote for the irrational return to war.

The “Giant Sucking Sound”: Clinton Gave US NAFTA and Other Free Trade Sellouts

“There is no success story for workers to be found in North America 20 years after NAFTA,” states AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. Unlike other failures of his Presidency, Bill Clinton can not run from NAFTA. It was Vice President Al Gore, not a veto-proof Republican congress, who lobbied to remove trade barriers with low-wage Mexico.

The record of free trade is clear. Multinational corporations and Wall Street speculators realize incredible profits, wages remain stagnant in the US, poverty persists in the developing world, and the remaining industrial corporations in America and Canada are increasingly owned by Chinese, Indian and other foreign interests.

America’s free trade policy is upside down. Besides Canada, Australia and Korea, most of our “free” trade partners are low-wage sweatshop paradises like Mexico, Chile, Panama, Guatemala, Bahrain and Oman. The US does in fact apply tariffs on most goods and on most nations of origin – rates are set by the US International Trade Commission (USTIC), a quasi-public federal agency.

Since a German- or Japanese-made automobile would under USITC’s schedule be taxed 10% upon importation, Volkswagen and Toyota can circumvent taxation by simply building their auto assembly plants for the US market in Mexico. In Detroit, an auto assembly worker is paid between $14 and $28/hour, ($29,120-$58,240/yr); hard work for modest pay. In Mexico, the rate varies from $2-5/hour.

In China, all automobile imports regardless of origin are tariffed as high as 25%. This allows the Chinese to attract joint ventures with Volkswagen and Toyota, and to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “keep the jobs, the cars and the money.”

NAFTA-related job loss is not a question of productivity, currency manipulation, “fair trade,” environmental standards, etc. While these issues are not trivial, free trade – as Lincoln’s advisor Henry C. Carey proved – is a matter of simple accounting. Can an American family survive on $4,160/year ($2/hr)? If not, cars and their components will be built in Mexico. If we want cars built in the United States, the only solution is a general tariff (import tax) reflecting the difference between those wage standards, like the very tariffs repealed by Bill Clinton.

In the United States the “runaway shop” under NAFTA and CAFTA has sent trade deficits and unemployment soaring while wages drop relative to the cost of living. Yet Mexico and other “partners” receive no benefit either. Many manufacturing sectors in Mexico pay wages lower than the equivalent sector in China. Mexico is now the world leader in illegal narcotics exportation and weapons importation. The poverty level between 1994 and 2009 remained virtually identical. (52.4% – 52.3%). The shipping of raw materials to Mexico comprise the majority of so called American “exports”. The finished products from these exports are assembled and sold back to the United States at slave labor prices.

Don’t expect Hillary to behave differently with the coming “Trans-Pacific Partnership,” which seeks to replace an ascendant China with less-developed Vietnam and Malaysia. Vietnam would overtake India-allied Bangladesh in the global apparel trade, and Malaysia has a high-tech manufacturing sector poised to rival China’s. With America’s manufacturing economy in shambles, the Clinton machine can now be redirected to geopolitical maneuvers.

 

How Tommy Chong Beat Cancer with Homegrown Cannabis Medicine

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By Alex Pietrowski

Source: Waking Times

As the movement for the liberation of cannabis gains momentum, and attitudes toward this relaxing and healing plant evolve, we are witnessing an explosion in innovation around how cannabis is used, both as a medicine and for recreational purposes. Finally overcoming its reputation as a mind-bending, psychoactive drug that makes you stoned, lazy and useless, cannabis is being celebrated for its healing benefits.

Pioneers in the field of medical marijuana are discovering that much of the medicinal value of cannabis is packed away in its non-psychoactive cannabinoids.

“The Cannabis plant contains over 60 cannabinoids, which are carbon-containing terpenophenolic compounds concentrated in the viscous resin of the glandular trichomes on the cannabis plant bud. There are psychoactive cannabinoids, such as Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), while others, such as cannabidiol (CBD), have no psychoactive effects while offering profound healing properties.” (Source)

Due to the Schedule I criminal status of the cannabis plant, for many decades it has been difficult for marijuana researchers to understand the relationship between the therapeutic benefits of the cannabis plant and its psychoactive effects. Yet, today, you don’t have to “get high” to benefit from the healing power of cannabis, because, over the last decade many CBD-rich strains are being grown for and by medicinal marijuana users. The CBD compound in cannabis can actually counter the psychoactive effects of THC.

“Knowledge about the therapeutic potential of cannabis products has been greatly improved by a large number of clinical trials in recent years. … There is now clear evidence that cannabinoids are useful for the treatment of various medical conditions.” ~ Investigators from the nova-Institute and the Hannover Medical School in Germany (Source)

Although most medical establishments and professionals would not dare to admit it, many people believe that cannabis, particularly organic CBD oil, can be used to treat, and perhaps even heal, cancer.

Additionally, hundreds of research studies have shown that cannabis-based medications, such medical marijuana, cannabis oil and marijuana edibles, can be used to relieve symptoms of chronic pain, muscle spasms, nausea and vomiting as a result of chemotherapy, loss of appetite in HIV/Aids, Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, multiple sclerosis and neuropathic pain (nerve pain).

“Cannabidiol offers hope of a non-toxic therapy that could treat aggressive forms of cancer without any of the painful side effects of chemotherapy” – Dr. Sean McAllister (source: The Daily Beast)

“CBDs hold the most promise for the use of cannabis in the treatment of serious medical conditions. CBDs have been tested in the treatment of cancer cells and are found to significantly inhibit cancer cell growth. They also assist in the uptake of other cancer drugs, increasing their effectiveness.” (Source)

In a high profile case of the healing power of CBD’s, famous actor, comedian, and marijuana advocate, Tommy Chong shocked his fans in 2011 when he announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. As a challenge to the world at that time, he stated his determination to cure his cancer with medical cannabis, and began a journey to do just that. By changing his diet and consuming, CBD rich cannabis oil Tommy beat cancer, which he announced in 2013.

In a recent interview in 2014, Tommy talked in greater detail about how he came to the decision to try hemp oil, and how the process worked for him. Remarkably, he mentions that he had his CBD oil made from plants that he legally grew on his own rooftop, bred to have a high CBD count.

While non-psychoactive CBD rich hemp oil is gaining in renown as a natural medicine, Tommy Chong believes that the high potent sedative and calming effects of the oil, the psychoactive component, is also a very beneficial part of the healing process.  He talks about the nature and benefits of cannabis and why so many of the major cancer treatment centers are ignoring the evidence that cannabis is an effective treatment.

While much of this is certainly good news for the public and for those in search of healing from cannabis, the US federal law (as well as law in many countries) continues to categorize cannabis as a Schedule I drug.

Numerous medical research studies and real life examples of the plant’s healing power continue to surface, yet politics have been slow and bureaucratic in responding, likely swayed by heavy lobbing dollars of the pharmaceutical industry, to the quickly evolving landscape of new discoveries when it comes to natural plant medicines.

About the Author

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and an avid student of Yoga and life.

Related Podcast: Rick Simpson: The Cannabis Conspiracy, Hemp Oil Healing and Rockefeller Medicine (The Higherside Chats)

http://thehighersidechats.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/THC-Rick-Simpson-Free.mp3

G.M.O. Resistance

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By Rebel Fagin

Source: The Daily Censored

We don’t have to do what the corporate death state says. We can choose how we’ll live, what media we’ll consume, and what foods we’ll eat.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) have been added to a dozen crops. GMOs are used in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds – the only seeds that will allegedly survive an attack of the herbicide Roundup. Roundup contains glyphosate, a chemical that disrupts photosynthesis and the immune system. It is a civilian off-shoot of Agent Orange, Monsanto’s notorious herbicide made from 2, 4-D and 2, 4, 5-T.

Here’s how the chemical farmer’s cycle goes. A farmer uses Roundup and other glyphosate based chemicals. Most of the weeds die. Those that survive pass on this survival gene to their offspring and the weeds come back stronger. The farmer then uses more chemicals. Ever wonder where those chemicals go?

You are what you eat. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) states, “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM foods.” These include: infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, allergic reactions, gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, heart disease, depression, infertility, cancers, and Alzheimer’s disease.

It’s worse for infants. Their immune systems are still developing and they metabolize food at a much higher rate than adults. This makes them more sensitive to chemical toxins. Independent laboratory tests have found genetically engineered soy in four popular infant formulas: Similac Soy (42%), Gerber Good Start Soy (48%), Enfamil Pro Soybee (49%), and Walmart Soy (66%). The Cornucopia Institute Report found GMO contamination in several cereals including: Mother’s Bumpers (28%), Kix Corn Puffs (56%), Nutritious Living Hi-Lo (85%), and Kashi Go Lean (100%)!

GMOs are common in processed foods. They frequently turn up in the forms of sugar, corn starch, corn syrup, cotton seed oil, and canola oil.

GMOs arrive in meat and meat byproducts as rbGH and rbST. These growth hormones have been banned in Canada.

Another dangerous GMO product is aspartame which is found in Nutrisweet and Equal. Aspartame has been linked to disorders ranging from tumors to seizers.
As of March 2015 we know that soy, cotton, canola, sugar beets (not cane sugar), corn, salmon, Hawaiian papaya, alfalfa used for hay, a small amount of yellow and crookneck squash, and recently Arctic Apples can all contain GMOs.

So what can we do? First look at the label. If it says Federal Organic, Non GMO Project Verified, or rbGH and rbST free then it is GMO free. Web sites like http://www.ocsoco.org/gmo, LabelGMOs.org. NonGMOShoppingGuide.com will keep you up to date. However, looking out only for number one is half steppin’. To do the whole dance, couple these labels with Fair Trade or Fair for Life labels and look out for the people who provide you with your food as well.

Shop at your local farmer’s market and get to know your farmers and their practices. Shop at stores that champion organic foods. You can always raise your own food. D.I.Y.
Here’s how to grow a simple organic garden in 10 easy steps.

1) Build beds and put soil in them. Soil is not dirt. Dirt is what happens when you don’t clean. Soil is interactive biological communities. Beds can be made from wood, bricks, chicken wire, etc. You can build them on the ground or at any convenient height. Build them to last several years. Rake out the rocks and level the ground.

2) Add green vegetable cuttings, animal manure, and rock nutrients to your soil. Mix well and level again.

3) You can plant seeds directly in the ground or start them indoors and then transplant them. Space them according to their mature size. This is a good time to put in a flex line drip irrigation system. Drip irrigation is a good way to conserve water. Many people like to include timers.

4) Lay mulch, such as organic hay, between your beds. It will both help retain water and control pests. Till the mulch into the soil at the end of the season.

5) Water and weed regularly. Spend time in your garden and get to know it well. Your garden will serve you for this. Add organic nutrients only as needed. Usually you need more nitrogen in the beginning. Check with your local organic gardener for what works best in your region.

6) For large pests you’ll need a fence tall enough for deer and deep enough so wild pigs don’t dig under it.

7) For smaller pests good soil preparation and a clean garden is your best foundation. Rotate crops for both pest control and to keep soil healthy.

8) Compost discarded organic, non-meat foods in a compost bin. Mix together green (vegetables) and brown (leaves), stir them up, water them, close the lid, and let ‘em cook. Avoid thick skinned foods like bananas and melon rinds as they take longer to break down. Coffee grounds and egg shells add beneficial nutrients to the soil. Stir and wait. After a year or two you’ll retrieve rich black soil from the bottom of your compost to add to your garden. Good compost is warm and alive with worms and other creatures.

9) Check your plants for color, firmness, and smell before you harvest them. You can either harvest the whole plant or take clippings from it and allow it to grow. It depends on the plant and what you want.

10) Take extra food to your local Food Pantry or contact cropmobsters.com and they will help you with distribution.
We are not slaves to the corporate death state. We can choose how we’ll live. Choose life over death and make conscious choices about food today.

Sources: Monsanto A Corporate Profile © 2013 by Food & Water Watch, ResponsibleTechnology.org, LabelGMOs.org, Herbicide forum in Willits, CA 3/8/15

Rebel can be read at the Sonoma County Peace Press & the Daily Censored.

Saturday Matinee: Mini Doc Double Feature

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“Our False Reality” and “The Lie We Live”: two recent short videos with a thematic connection. The first was produced by Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton of TruthstreamMedia.com and explores how those who seek power and control use technology to manipulate and engineer the masses right down to the perception of reality. The second film, produced by Spencer Cathcart, offers a brief but expansive overview of systems of control with a reminder of the positive potential of communications technology.

Twenty Years Later: Facts About the OKC Bombing That Go Unreported

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By Kevin Ryan

Source: Washington’s Blog

Next week will mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people including 19 children. The mainstream media will undoubtedly focus its attention on Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death in June 2001 for his part in the crime. They might also mention Terry Nichols, who was convicted of helping McVeigh plan the bombing and is serving a life sentence without parole.

There will be less discussion about how the FBI spent years hunting for a man who witnesses say accompanied McVeigh on the day of the bombing. They called this accomplice John Doe #2 and theories about his identity range from an Iraqi named Hussain Al-Hussaini, to a German national described below, to a neo-nazi bank robber named Richard Guthrie. The Justice Department finally gave up its search and said it was all a mistake— that there was never any credible evidence of a John Doe #2 being involved.

That reversal demonstrates a pattern of cover-up by authorities and limited media coverage in the years since the crime. This week, accounts will not repeat early reports of secondary devices in the building, or reports of the involvement of unknown middle-eastern characters. There will also be little if any mention of the extensive independent investigation into the crime that was conducted by leading members of the OKC community. Here are seven more facts that will probably not see much coverage on the 20th anniversary.

  1. Attorney Jesse Trentadue began investigating the case after his brother Kenney was killed in prison, apparently having been tortured to death by the FBI in its search for John Doe #2. Trentadue’s investigation led to a federal judge nearly finding the FBI in contempt of court for tampering with a key witness. Trentadue now says, “There’s no doubt in my mind, and it’s proven beyond any doubt, that the FBI knew that the bombing was going to take place months before it happened, and they didn’t stop it.”
  1. Judge Clark Waddoups, who presided over the case brought by Jesse Trentadue, ruled in 2010 that CIA documents associated with the case must be held secret. These documents show that the CIA was involved in the OKC bombing investigation and the prosecution of McVeigh. This means that foreign parties were involved because the CIA is prohibited from interfering in purely domestic investigations.
  1. Andreas Strassmeir, a former German military officer, was suspected of being John Doe #2. Strassmeir became close friends with McVeigh and they were both associated with a neo-nazi organization located in Elohim City, OK. A retired U.S. intelligence official claimed that Strassmeir was “working for the German government and the FBI” while at Elohim City. Mainstream reports about the OKC bombing typically avoid reference to Strassmeir.
  1. Larry Potts was the FBI supervisor who was responsible for the tragedies at Ruby Ridge in 1992, and Waco in 1993. Potts was then given responsibility for investigating the OKC bombing. Terry Nichols claimed that McVeigh—who allegedly had been recruited as an undercover intelligence asset while in the Army—had been working under the supervision of Potts.
  1. Terry Yeakey, an officer of the OKC Police Department, was among the first to reach the scene and he was heralded as a hero for rescuing many victims. Yeakey was also an eyewitness to conversations and physical evidence that convinced him that there was a cover-up of the bombing by federal agents. Yeakey was committed to getting to the truth about what happened but a year after the bombing he was found dead off the side of a rural road. His death was ruled a suicide despite overwhelming evidence that he was murdered. Authorities reported that Yeakey, “slit his wrists and neck… then miraculously climbed over a barbed wire fence… walked over a mile’s distance, through a nearby field, and eventually shot himself in the side of the head at an unusual angle.” No weapon was found, no investigation was conducted, no fingerprints were taken, and no interviews were conducted. His family continues to fight for the truth about his death.
  1. Gene Corley, the engineer who was hired by the government to support its claims about the structural fire at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, was brought in to investigate the destruction of the Murrah Building. Corley brought along three other engineers: Charles Thornton, Mete Sozen, and Paul Mlakar. Their investigation was conducted from half a block away—where they could not observe any of the damage directly—yet their conclusions supported the pre-existing official account. A few years later, within 72 hours of the 9/11 attacks, these same four men were on site leading the investigations at the Word Trade Center and the Pentagon.
  1. There are many other links between OKC and 9/11. For example, the alleged hijackers visited the OKC area many times and even stayed in the same motel that was frequented by McVeigh and Nichols. After both the OKC bombing and 9/11, building monitoring videos went missing, FBI harassment of witnesses was seen, and officials ignored evidence that did not support the political story. Additionally, numerous oddities link the OKC area to al Qaeda. In 2002, OKC resident Nick Berg was interrogated by the FBI for lending his laptop and internet password to alleged “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussoui. Two years after this interrogation, Berg became world famous as a victim of beheading in Iraq. Investigators looking for clues about these connections will be particularly interested in two airports in OKC, the president of the University of Oklahoma, and the CIA leader who both monitored the alleged hijackers in Germany and was hired at the university just before 9/11.

On April 19, 2015, at the 20th anniversary of one of the worst terrorist attacks in history, citizens should be reminded that we don’t know what happened that day. We don’t know because officials have covered-up the crime for unknown reasons and most media sources will not challenge that cover-up.

FAA investigating Florida mailman’s landing of gyrocopter on U.S. Capitol lawn

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By Ben Montgomery

Source: Tampa Bay Times

Doug Hughes, a 61-year-old mailman from Ruskin, told his friends he was going to do it. He was going to fly a gyrocopter through protected airspace and put it down on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, then try to deliver 535 letters of protest to 535 members of Congress.

The stunt seemed so outlandish that not even his closest friend thought he would pull it off.

“My biggest fear was he was going to get killed,” said Mike Shanahan, 65, of Apollo Beach, who works with Hughes for the Postal Service.

After 21/2 years of planning, Hughes came hovering low over the buildings of northeast D.C. about 1:20 p.m., like a distant bird. He rounded the Washington Monument a few minutes later, flew straight up the expanse of the National Mall and brought his small craft down right in front of the Capitol, where he was quickly surrounded by police and surrendered without incident.

The flight stunned police, Secret Service and witnesses. Authorities briefly shut down the Capitol as a security measure. The incident brought out dozens of reporters and cameras from national media outlets — exactly what Hughes had hoped for. Hughes, who sees himself as a sort of showman patriot, a mix of Paul Revere and P.T. Barnum, wanted to do something so big and brazen that it would hijack the news cycle and turn America’s attention toward his pet issue: campaign finance reform.

“No sane person would do what I’m doing,” Hughes told the Tampa Bay Times in the weeks before he took flight. He was doing it, he said, because the United States is “heading full-throttle toward a breakdown.”

“There’s no question that we need government, but we don’t have to accept that it’s a corrupt government that sells out to the highest bidder,” Hughes said.

It’s hard to say whether the message got through.

“I don’t think anyone noticed it,” said Sophia Brown, visiting Washington from England. “We noticed it, but nobody made a big deal about it.”

Richard Burns, 27, a worker at a marijuana lobby group in Washington, stood by the Capitol in wonder and solidarity.

“I don’t know whatever it was he was doing, but I support him,” Burns said.

Gil Wheeler, 53, a pilot from Las Vegas, said the biggest problem was how the letter carrier reached restricted airspace in the first place.

“This is just another question for Homeland Security,” Wheeler said. “We still have a lot of questions to ask.”

Late Wednesday, U.S. Capitol Police said Hughes had been arrested, charged under Title 49 of U.S. Code and processed at their headquarters. He was then transferred to the central cellblock in Washington. The FAA was investigating.

News reports said Secret Service agents were investigating at Gettysburg Airport, a small airport in Pennsylvania, where they believe Hughes took off.

Hughes didn’t know whether he would even make it. He imagined being shot down, blown down. Almost every scenario he could imagine involved some type of resistance. Barring that, he said: “They will put the cuffs on me. And they will try to establish who is behind this. . . . The authorities are going to be out to get me.”

His wife could not be reached for comment.

Hughes contacted a Tampa Bay Times reporter last year, saying he wanted to tell someone about his plan and motivation. He said he had no intention of hurting anybody and that he didn’t want to be hurt. By that time, he had already been visited twice by the Secret Service, he said.

The first visit, Hughes told the Times, came one night last spring at about 1 a.m. The agent was accompanied by a Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputy. In a statement issued to media outlets Wednesday, the Secret Service said it interviewed Hughes on Oct. 5, 2013, and that a “complete and thorough investigation was conducted.”

The Secret Service agent asked him questions about his plan, Hughes said, and he said he was honest in his replies, if not totally forthcoming with details. Yes, he did own a gyrocopter. Yes, he kept it in a hangar at the small airport in Wauchula. Yes, he had talked of doing something big to bring attention to the issue of campaign finance reform. No, he was not planning to crash into any buildings or monuments in Washington, D.C.

I’m not a violent person, Hughes remembers saying. All I want to do is draw attention.

Someone inside his circle of secrecy had reported him, telling the Secret Service that Hughes was talking about committing a daring act of civil disobedience that also happened to be a federal crime.

Two days later, Hughes said, the same agent showed up at the post office where Hughes works and asked more questions. One of Hughes’ colleagues told the Tampa Bay Times that he, too, answered questions from the Secret Service.

And then, for months, nothing. That was it, Hughes said. No other questions. No other contact. Hughes put his plan into action.

He bought a burner cell phone and a videocamera and tested a livestream video feed from his gyrocopter. He built a website offline that explained why he was doing this. He bought $250 worth of stamps and stuffed envelopes with his letter:

“I’m demanding reform and declaring a voter’s rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson’s description of rights in the Declaration of Independence,” he wrote in his letters. “As a member of Congress, you have three options. 1. You may pretend corruption does not exist. 2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform. 3. You may actively participate in real reform.”

Late last week, he loaded the gyrocopter onto a trailer and headed for an undisclosed location outside the nation’s capital.

His livestream showed that he took off about 12:10 p.m. Wednesday. He intended to fly about 300 feet high, at 45 mph and wound up landing on the west lawn of the Capitol shortly before 1:30 p.m.

Hughes knew there was a risk he could be shot out of the sky, though he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“I don’t believe that the authorities are going to shoot down a 61-year-old mailman in a flying bicycle,” he said. “I don’t have any defense, okay, but I don’t believe that anybody wants to personally take responsibility for the fallout.”

In the end, his flight occurred without incident or escorts. The Times published a story about Hughes’ plans on its website, tampabay.com, shortly after noon when it was clear he had actually taken off and was attempting his flight. His livestream cut in and out but showed his progress. A Times reporter called the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., shortly before 1 p.m. to see if officials were aware of a man in a gyrocopter flying toward the capital. Public information officers there who did not give their names said they had not heard of the protest. They referred a reporter to Capitol Police. A public information officer did not immediately answer.

Sgt. Trina Hamilton in the watch commander’s office said: “He hasn’t notified anybody. We have no information.”

Hughes’ friend, Mike Shanahan, after receiving a call from Hughes early Wednesday, said he contacted a Secret Service agent and left a message but never heard back. Hughes had told his friend he was in Washington, Shanahan recalled. But when Shanahan tried to access the live-streaming website, he could not find it and was unsure if Hughes was really going to take flight.

Before his flight, Hughes said he knew what was at stake. He figured he’ll lose his job of 11 years. And he could lose his tidy little house across from a pond with a fountain. He knew he would lose his freedom. That means losing, at least temporarily, his Russian-born wife and his polite 12-year-old daughter who plays the piano and wins awards at the science fair. He kept them in the dark, he said, for fear they’d be implicated.

Hughes is a slender, soft-spoken, pedantic man, with thinning gray hair and hearing aids. He has no criminal record and it’s rare to hear him curse. But he said he needed the show, the very dramatic public act of civil disobedience, to focus the nation’s attention on campaign finance reform, a topic that in most quarters makes eyes glaze over. Money, he says, has corrupted the democracy.

At the root of Hughes’ disdain is the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which the court decided campaign contributions were a form of “political speech” and struck down limits on how much corporations and unions could give to political contenders. The decision changed the game. Campaign spending went through the roof. In Hughes’ mind, there was a parallel spike in favor-dealing and the government is now practically owned by the rich. Hughes likes to point out that nearly half the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning some 14 times their congressional salaries.

But nobody seems to care.

Hughes thinks the answers are out there, and they’re nonpartisan. He points to reform thinkers like political activist Cenk Uygar and Harvard legal theorist Lawrence Lessig, who launched a political action committee to end political action committees. The motto: “Embrace the irony.”

“I’m not promoting myself,” Hughes said a few weeks ago. “I’m trying to direct millions of people to information, to a menu of organizations that are working together to fix Congress.”

His idea began to blossom 2½ years ago, after his son, John Joseph Hughes, 24, committed suicide by driving his car head-on into another man, killing them both. “Police: Suicidal driver caused deadly crash,” read the headline in the Leesburg newspaper. He was crushed by grief, and disappointed that his son had killed himself — and someone else — to make a stupid, worthless point.

“Something changed in me,” Hughes said. With mourning came a realization. The years Hughes spent thinking about and writing about mundane political issues were for naught if he didn’t have a way to make a point. His political frustrations and grief merged. He doesn’t condone what his son did, but it offered a lesson.

“He paid far too high a price for an unimportant issue,” Hughes said. “But if you’re willing to take a risk, the ultimate risk, to draw attention to something that does have significance, it’s worth doing.”

He has always wanted to fly. Growing up in Santa Cruz, Calif., he used to ride his bike to Sky Park and watch the planes come and go, and read books about the Wright brothers and Kitty Hawk.

At first he thought about using an ultralight fixed-wing plane, but that felt too threatening. He finally found the gyrocopter, which has unpowered helicopter blades on top for lift but gets its thrust from a propeller on the back. The cockpit, if you can call it that, is wide open. “This is as transparent a vehicle that I could come up with,” Hughes said. “You can literally see through it.” He can land the craft in a space the size of half a basketball court.

Hughes told the Times he planned to set up a delayed email blast to alert as many TV and newspaper breaking news desks as he could find, as well as the Secret Service.

The Secret Service statement said it did not receive notification of the flight. Several reporters told the Times they received the email. The Times reported about Hughes’ flight on Twitter and Facebook as it was happening, but most media attention came after his landing at the Capitol. His website went up as scheduled, which broadcast a choppy livestream of his trip.

His biggest fear all along, he said, was losing his nerve.

“I have thought about walking away from this whole thing because it’s crazy,” he said. “But I have also thought about being 80 years old and watching the collapse of this country and thinking that I had an idea once that might have arrested the fall and I didn’t do it.

“And I will tell you completely honestly: I’d rather die in the flight than live to be 80 years old and see this country fall.”

Times staff writers Zachary T. Sampson and Lauren Carroll and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

 

This is the text of the letter that Doug Hughes wants to deliver to members of Congress:

Dear ___________,

Consider the following statement by John Kerry in his farewell speech to the Senate —

“The unending chase for money I believe threatens to steal our democracy itself. They know it. They know we know it. And yet, Nothing Happens!” — John Kerry, 2-13

In a July 2012 Gallup poll, 87% tagged corruption in the federal government as extremely important or very important, placing this issue just barely behind job creation. According to Gallup, public faith in Congress is at a 41-year record low, 7%. (June 2014) Kerry is correct. The popular perception outside the DC beltway is that the federal government is corrupt and the US Congress is the major problem. As a voter, I’m a member of the only political body with authority over Congress. I’m demanding reform and declaring a voter’s rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson’s description of rights in the Declaration of Independence. As a member of Congress, you have three options.

1. You may pretend corruption does not exist.

2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform.

3. You may actively participate in real reform.

If you’re considering option 1, you may wonder if voters really know what the ‘chase for money’ is. Your dismal and declining popularity documented by Gallup suggests we know, but allow a few examples, by no means a complete list. That these practices are legal does not make them right! Obviously, it is Congress who writes the laws that make corruption legal.

1. Dozens of major and very profitable corporations pay nothing in taxes. Voters know how this is done. Corporations pay millions to lobbyists for special legislation. Many companies on the list of freeloaders are household names — GE, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Verizon, Citigroup, Dow …

2. Almost half of the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning on average fourteen times their Congressional salary. (50% of the Senate, 42% of the House)

3. The new democratic freshmen to the US House in 2012 were ‘advised’ by the party to schedule 4 hours per day on the phones fund raising at party headquarters (because fund raising is illegal from gov’t offices.) It is the donors with deep pockets who get the calls, but seldom do the priorities of the rich donor help the average citizen.

4. The relevant (rich) donors who command the attention of Congress are only .05% of the public (5 people in a thousand) but these aristocrats of both parties are who Congress really works for. As a member of the US Congress, you should work only for The People.

1. Not yourself.

2. Not your political party.

3. Not the richest donors to your campaign.

4. Not the lobbyist company who will hire you after your leave Congress.

There are several credible groups working to reform Congress. Their evaluations of the problem are remarkably in agreement though the leadership (and membership) may lean conservative or liberal. They see the corrupting effect of money — how the current rules empower special interests through lobbyists and PACs — robbing the average American of any representation on any issue where the connected have a stake. This is not democracy even if the ritual of elections is maintained.

The various mechanisms which funnel money to candidates and congress-persons are complex. It happens before they are elected, while they are in office and after they leave Congress. Fortunately, a solution to corruption is not complicated. All the proposals are built around either reform legislation or a Constitutional Amendment. Actually, we need both — a constitutional amendment and legislation.

There will be discussion about the structure and details of reform. As I see it, campaign finance reform is the cornerstone of building an honest Congress. Erect a wall of separation between our elected officials and big money. This you must do — or your replacement will do. A corporation is not ‘people’ and no individual should be allowed to spend hundreds of millions to ‘influence’ an election. That much money is a megaphone which drowns out the voices of ‘We the People.’ Next, a retired member of Congress has a lifelong obligation to avoid the appearance of impropriety. That almost half the retired members of Congress work as lobbyists and make millions of dollars per year smells like bribery, however legal. It must end. Pass real campaign finance reform and prohibit even the appearance of payola after retirement and you will be part of a Congress I can respect.

The states have the power to pass a Constitutional Amendment without Congress — and we will. You in Congress will likely embrace the change just to survive, because liberals and conservatives won’t settle for less than democracy. The leadership and organization to coordinate a voters revolution exist now! New groups will add their voices because the vast majority of Americans believe in the real democracy we once had, which Congress over time has eroded to the corrupt, dysfunctional plutocracy we have.

The question is where YOU individually stand. You have three options and you must choose.

Sincerely,

Douglas M. Hughes

http://www.TheDemocracyClub.org