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US Turning Into Burgeoning Police State:
Interview with Mark Dankof
Press TV, December 16, 2011
Based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau more than ninety seven million Americans are considered to have low-income, defined as between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level.
Another 49.1 million Americans live below the poverty line, meaning 146.4 million Americans, or 48 percent are considered low-income or poor.
Meanwhile, according to a Governance Metrics International survey, American CEOs saw pay increases of between 27 percent and 40 percent last year.
Political commentator, Mark Dankof joins Press TV from San Antonio to share his opinions on the issue.
The video offers the opinions of two additional guests: Wayne Slater with the Dallas Morning News and Saul Landau, the vice chair of Institute for Policy Studies.
Press TV: Well, let's give an example of how the middle class have been squeezed and how this disparity has come. The example the number of Americans on food stamp has risen to a record high of 45.8 million, on the other hand the medium value of the CEO profits on stock options has jumped to 1.3 million from 950,400 -- that is seventy percent boost. I mean, are we talking about two Americas that is divided?
Dankof: I think that is clearly what is going on here, just as Wayne [Slater, the other guest of the show] indicated in the first part of the show. For me when you look at the American economy, it comes down to about four things. One is the massive exportation of the manufacturing sector of the American economy. We have lost five million jobs, manufacturing jobs, in this country, in the last ten years chiefly to save approximately 32000 dollars, per 1000 jobs, that are exported to either the china or to India. These savings are of course accruing to the corporate rich. This is nothing more than the exportation of the manufacturing sector, the American economy, in order to utilize cheap labor costs abroad. This is in conjunction with unrestrained legal and illegal foreign immigration in the United States, that has made it difficult for people already living here to subsist off the service economy.
The second thing is deregulation of the banking industry, which has produced, unprecedented fraud, in the American economy and banking and insecurity in industries in the last ten years.
Mortgage- backed derivatives, derivatives generally, credit default swaps, the whole nine yards, has resulted then in the third problem, which is that between the bank bailouts and the Federal Reserve's Board's printing of fiat money to the tune of sixteen trillion dollars in recent months. We are seeing a total destabilization of the value of the American currency in the teetering character of the American banking system, and the global banking system, generally,
There is a forth thing of course, and that is the ongoing cost of these American wars of the imperial conquest in the Middle East, chiefly at the behest of the bankers, chiefly at the behest of the oil companies and natural gas consortiums and to the behest of the Zionist lobby. He spent a trillion dollars in the last ten years in Iraq and the cost of we are spending in Afghanistan, is somewhere between ten and twelve billion in a month.
All this taken together has produced the outcome that you cited in the first part of this show.
Press TV: Mark Dankof, it seems like there are implications that have come out since the year 2008, Iraq soldiers to patrol the homeland; 20,000 troops for US domestic security, Department of Homeland Security, interestingly to focus on the white middle class in this anti-terror strategies, and certain warnings that are coming out. Is this, what the US is facing, consequence of an economic fallout for them to face unrest within their own country?
Dankof: I think that is exactly what we are facing, and it is a situation, you cited the Kellogg Brown & Root situation in terms of the so-called jobs that were being offered that suggest the militarization of the American state at home. This is clearly what is going on, the elimination of the Posse Comitatus laws, the organization of the American military to impose its will in terms of, imposing the will of the political class in stemming rising domestic discontent, we are going to see this in the coming years, we already have a policy of warrantless wiretapping in the United States, people who can be detained and held with the suspension of the habeas corpus, we have Mr. Obama's attorney general, arguing that the president of the United States, can order the assassination of Americans that he deems to be a national security threat -- this was chronicled in [Patrick Buchanan's American Conservatives] some months ago.
And the other thing is noteworthy is what is happening in the American military; when we look at the disproportionate number of the Hispanics, African Americans and the working class whites, who have lost their way economically, particularly the ones form towns of ten thousand and under in population, these folks represent disproportion of number of individuals, who are enlisting in the American military despite the catastrophes that are taking place abroad, because it represents the only opportunity for economic survival for them, and for their families. This in a sense is a back door draft.
Press TV: Mark Dankof, do you agree to encourage people to go along with that spending? Are people going to go along with it, because I would see the first question they would ask is “spend it on us.”
Dankof: Well, you would think so but the passivity of the American public up to now, the Occupy Wall Street movement notwithstanding, is rather amazing, and really when you look at the presidential election, it is clear that Barak Obama is in the back pocket of the same banking and Zionist interests as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were, and in terms of the Republican presidential primaries, it would appear that a certain banking corporate Zionist thief, by the name of Newt Gingrich -- that George Will recently described as the ultimate politician for hire -- is likely to be the Republican nominee at this point.
If that occurs, we are in a situation where it is tweedledum and tweedledee in terms of who wins the election in 2012 in the United States, and I think in terms of the national and global economic collapse and third world war that we may well be looking at the scenario, with the only thing yet to be determined is whether or not it happens before or after November of 2012.
Press TV: Mark Dankof, final question to you, we saw what happened with the Senate passage of section 1030 of the National Authorization Act, I think you mentioned about snatching up American citizens off the streets, held in detention camps. Is this an effort by the US government to pretty much silence this 99 percent Occupy movement in the US?
Dankof: I think it is absolutely sign of it and what you have is the development of the burgeoning police state in the United States, domestically at the same time that we become more aggressive and more irresponsible abroad. All of this dovetails with the policies that presumably are to the advantage of less than one percent of the American population, and at the expense of the 99 percent plus.
And what is significant to me, as we examine some of the very excellent things and some of the other guests have said, is that there is a very burgeoning agreement in the United States, across the political spectrum, that this is in fact, what is happening and when 63 percent of the members of the Republican Party are beginning to entertain a closer look at some of the Patrick Buchanan's arguments in 1992 and 1996 and the arguments of Ron Paul today, it is a suggestion that even in the Republican Party, the all corporate neo-conservative Zionist consensus is beginning to break down a little bit.
MY/MN/GHN
Paul: Obama gunning for martial law
Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:35PM GMT
US Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul accused the US President
Barack Obama of pushing for institutionalization of martial law in the
country.
Paul (R-TX) made the comments during an interview with
famous American radio talk show host Alex Jones on his program the Alex
Jones Show on Tuesday, the US alternative media outlet infowars.com
reported.
The congressman criticized the Obama administration's
attempt to include an 'indefinite detention' provision in a defense budget
authorization bill.
The Republican cited an example from the
National Defense Authorization Act, which he said, was worded in such a
way that allowed the government to detain the US citizens indefinitely
without trial.
Paul said that the act institutionalized martial
law, jeopardizing the freedom of the US citizens.
The congressman
has urged the Americans to wake up against, what he calls, the arrogance
of the administration.
In addition, the frontrunner called for the
immediate dismissal and interrogation of Attorney General Eric Holder over
a gun-smuggling scandal, saying that Holder's involvement in the affair
should provide enough substance justifying his removal.
He also
called on the United States to pull out of the Western military alliance
of NATO -- as part of which the country has been leading a years-long
deadly war in Afghanistan.
Lately, Paul has been relentlessly
critical of the Obama administration and has largely been the only
presidential aspirant to take on the issue of civil liberties, which
neither Obama nor his fellow Republican frontrunners seem concerned with.
“Today it seems too easy that our government and our congresses are so
willing to give up our liberties for our security,” he said during a
presidential debate earlier this election season.
“I have a
personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You
can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights,” he
noted.
GJH/AS/PM/HN
US House OKs indefinite lockup bill
Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:34AM GMT
US lawmakers have voted for a bill mandating the indefinite detention
of 'terrorism' suspects. The US House of Representatives has passed a bill
which allows authorities to jail terrorism suspects for an indefinite
period, drawing criticism from human rights groups.
The bill, named
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would deny terror suspects
including US citizens of the right to trial.
The measure was passed
after US President Barack Obama failed to veto the bid as he originally
vowed. It allows US officials to indefinitely hold suspects without charge
in military custody.
American citizens can also be jailed
indefinitely upon the decision of the US Supreme Court or future
presidents.
The measure also forbids transfer of Guantanamo Bay
detainees to US soil, making it harder to close down the infamous prison.
International rights groups including Human Rights Watch said
Obama's decision to back the bill puts him on the wrong side of the
history.
"By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama
will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite
detention without trial in US law," said Kenneth Roth, executive director
of Human Rights Watch.
"In the past, Obama has lauded the
importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is
definitely on the wrong side.", Roth added.
The Democratic-held
senate is also expected to vote on the proposal, which is part of a wider
USD 662 billion defense bill, as early as Thursday.
DB/AZ/GHN
Over 146 millions live in poverty in US
Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:4PM GMT
A man looks through the trash in New York City. (file photo) Nearly 1
in 2 Americans have now fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings
that classify them as low income, a report by the US Census Bureau says.
Based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau more than
ninety seven million Americans are considered to have low-income, defined
as between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level.
Another 49.1
million Americans live below the poverty line, meaning 146.4 million
Americans, or 48 percent are considered low-income or poor, Associated
Press reported on Thursday.
The new measure of poverty takes into
account medical, commuting and other living costs. The new method raised
the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104
million, or 1 in 3 Americans that was officially reported in September.
The new data shows that children were most likely to be poor or
low-income - about 57 percent, followed by seniors over 65.
Meanwhile Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks,
Asians and non-Hispanic whites.
Among low-income families, about
one-third was considered poor while the remainder - 6.9 million - earned
income just above the poverty line.
The US recession began in
2007. More than a year after the recession officially ended in 2009, the
US unemployment rate remains above 9 percent, and the poverty rate rose to
15.3 percent in 2010 from 14.3 percent in 2009.
The “incredibly
unequal top-down distribution of wealth” in the US has formed an elite
group who controls most aspects of the country's affluence, according to
analysts.
The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement emerged on
September 17 in the financial district of New York City to protest at a
number of issues including the wars in the Middle East, US financial
crisis, rising poverty, soaring unemployment, and high bonuses for Wall
Street executives.
PG/JR/IS
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