Voor het veroorzaken van een bijna wereldwijde crisis, die velen in diepe ellende heeft gestort en een groot aantal mensen zich het leven benam, is geen van de verantwoordelijke bankiers (of falende toezichthouders als CDA knurft Wellink) naar de gevangenis gezonden…… Deze banken en andere financiële instellingen werden zelfs met honderden miljarden aan belastinggeld op de been gehouden…….Terwijl de ellende voor een groot aantal slachtoffers van de bankencrisis nog steeds voortduurt, neem de tentsteden in de VS en alle daklozen daar die langs de kant van de straat leven…..
Gisteren publiceerde John Queally een artikel op Common Dreams waarin hij het nieuws gebracht dat een man in de VS, Robert Spellman, voor het meermaals stelen van sigaretten is veroordeeld tot 20 jaar gevangenisstraf………
Ten eerste is die man ziek, hij is namelijk verslaafd aan sigaretten, ten tweede leeft hij in ellendige omstandigheden, dus de motivatie om te stoppen met roken ontbreekt volledig en zonder geld blijft er dan maar één weg over om aan de benodigde verslavende stoffen te komen die zich in tabak bevinden (waarvan nicotine de minst schadelijke is….*)….
Moet je nagaan er zullen legio mensen in de VS zijn als Robert Spellman, mensen die door de bankencrisis in de financiële ellende zijn komen te zitten…… Zij worden bij een misstap wel gepakt en gevangengezet…….
De VS een rechtsstaat? ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Aan dat ellende land, de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, een land dat al lang de belangrijkste voorwaarden voor een rechtsstaat overboord zette, levert Nederland desnoods de eigen onderdanen uit………..
Published on Monday, September 24, 2018 by Common Dreams
Ten Years After Not One High-Level Banker Sent to Jail for Tanking Global Economy, This Man Gets 20 Years in Prison for Stealing Cigarettes
Robert Spellman was sentence last week to 20 years in prison for stealing ten cartons of cigarettes from a local convenience store. (Photo: Escambia County Jail)
Ten years after the behavior of over-leveraged and fraudulent banks created a global financial disaster that resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in losses; a multi-trillion bailout using public money; and millions of people losing their homes to foreclosure, but saw not one high-level financial executive go to jail, a man in Florida has been sentenced to a 20-year prison term for stealing $600 worth of cigarettes from a local convenience store. According to the Associated Press, “Robert Spellman, 48, received the lengthy sentence after a jury in Pensacola convicted him of burglary and grand theft last month.” As the Pensacola News Journalreports:
He went into the Circle K in the 200 block of West Cervantes Street and took 10 cartons of cigarettes from a locked manager’s office in the stock room.
He was found nearby, matched a description of the suspect, was wearing the same clothing and had the cigarettes, according to the State Attorney’s Office.
Spellman had 14 felony and 31 misdemeanor convictions prior to this charge, so his 20-year sentence qualifies him as a habitual felony offender.
While the average carton contains 200 cigarettes, that means Spellman will now serve approximately 3.65 days in prison for each of the 2,000 cigarettes he allegedly stole. Asked in 2016 about why no high-level bankers went to jail after the 2008 crash, former Attorney General Eric Holder lamented that reality by claiming the DOJ just coudn’t make the cases stick, though said he wished it had been possible:
Writing about the tenth anniversary of the 2008 crash last month in Rolling Stone, journalist Matt Taibbi noted that while “everyone in the upper echelon of the finance community got Paid In Full in the bailout, even the exact people who screwed up the worst,” those whose suffered most of the “miserable story turned out to be poor, nonwhite, and elderly.” Though it’s likely that most poor, nonwhite, and elderly Americans didn’t need to be told that.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License =============================================== De VS het land van de ongekende mogelijkheden voor het opsluiten van mensen……..
* Ondanks dat nicotine de minst slechte stof en verslavende stof is in sigaretten, weigeren de opvolgende regeringen de tabaksmaffia te verbieden extra verslavende stoffen toe te voegen aan tabak, laat staan hen te dwingen deze stoffen eruit te…. Destijds D66 ‘minister van Volksgezondheid’, hufter Els Borst had het gore lef te stellen dat ze met een dergelijk verbod het roken zou stimuleren…… Ongelofelijk en het dan wel normaal vinden dat 18.000 mensen jaarlijks na een akelige ziekbed vroegtijdig overlijden aan de gevolgen van auto-uitstoot inademing, ter vergelijking: aan het (zelf) roken overlijden jaarlijks 20.000 mensen vroegtijdig……. (waar nooit is aangetoond dat mensen zijn overleden aan het ‘meeroken….’)
Het volgende artikel van Chris Hedges (en Matt Taibbi in de bijgevoegde video) op Information Clearing House (overgenomen van ‘Truth Dig’) handelt over de neergang van de democratie en haar instituties t.b.v. grote bedrijven, banken en het militair-industrieel complex, noodzakelijk voor de uiteindelijk beoogde fascistisch machtsovername…… (Bedrijven functioneren uitstekend in een fascistische staat….)
De vakbonden zijn verworden tot grote instituties waar kapitalen worden verspild en die nog amper van enige betekenis zijn. De reguliere (massa-) media zijn in handen van enkele figuren en dienen als eerste het belang van die topgraaiers en vervolgens het belang van de zittende neoliberale regering (althans als die goed voor de bedrijven werkt….). Wat betreft de publieke zendgemachtigden, zoals de BBC (en de NOS in ons land), is het dienen van het belang van de zittende regering overduidelijk….. Ach ja, wiens brood men eet……….
Het is in ons land al zo zot, dat men het normaal vindt, dat de Eerste Kamer bestaat uit figuren die in het (grote) bedrijfsleven werkzaam zijn en uiteraard lobbyen voor die bedrijven (bedrijven inclusief de financiële maffia en het militair-industrieel complex….). Een zienswijze die wordt gedeeld door de reguliere massamedia……..
In de VS gaat men zover, dat kritische studenten worden weggezuiverd van de universiteiten……. Ook de rechterlijke macht fungeert, meer en meer als een klassen-justitieel systeem, waar de belangen van het neoliberalisme worden gediend…… Dat geldt overigens ook voor een groot deel voor Nederland, zo besloot vanmorgen de hoogste bestuursrechter in Nederland, de Raad van State, dat er naar gas mag worden geboord bij Terschelling……..* (klik ook op het label ‘klassenjustitie’, dat u onder dit bericht terugvindt).
Lees dit uitstekende artikel en zie de bijgevoegde video (onder het artikel kan u klikken voor een ‘Dutch’ vertaling, dit neemt wel enige tijd in beslag):
The Elites Won’t Save Us
By Chris Hedges
February 13, 2017 “Information Clearing House” – “Truth Dig” – The four-decade-long assault on our democratic institutions by corporations has left them weak and largely dysfunctional. These institutions, which surrendered their efficacy and credibility to serve corporate interests, should have been our firewall. Instead, they are tottering under the onslaught.
Labor unions are a spent force. The press is corporatized and distrusted. Universities have been purged of dissidents and independent scholars who criticize neoliberalism and decry the decay of democratic institutions and political parties. Public broadcasting and the arts have been defunded and left on life support. The courts have been stacked with judges whose legal careers were spent serving corporate power, a trend in appointments that continued under Barack Obama. Money has replaced the vote, which is how someone as unqualified as Betsy DeVos can buy herself a Cabinet seat. And the Democratic Party, rather than sever its ties to Wall Street and corporations, is naively waiting in the wings to profit from a Trump debacle.
“The biggest asset Trump has is the decadent, clueless, narcissistic, corporate-indentured, war-mongering Democratic Party,” Ralph Nader said when I reached him by phone in Washington. “If the Democratic strategy is waiting for Godot, waiting for Trump to implode, we are in trouble. And just about everything you say about the Democrats you can say about the AFL-CIO. They don’t control the train.”
The loss of credibility by democratic institutions has thrust the country into an existential as well as economic crisis. The courts, universities and press are no longer trusted by tens of millions of Americans who correctly see them as organs of the corporate elites. These institutions are traditionally the mechanisms by which a society is able to unmask the lies of the powerful, critique ruling ideologies and promote justice. Because Americans have been bitterly betrayed by their institutions, the Trump regime can attack the press as the “opposition party,” threaten to cut off university funding, taunt a federal jurist as a “so-called judge” and denounce a court order as “outrageous.”
The decay of democratic institutions is the prerequisite for the rise of authoritarian or fascist regimes. This decay has given credibility to a pathological liar. The Trump administration, according to an Emerson College poll, is considered by 49 percent of registered voters to be truthful while the media are considered truthful by only 39 percent of registered voters. Once American democratic institutions no longer function, reality becomes whatever absurdity the White House issues.
Most of the rules of democracy are unwritten. These rules determine public comportment and ensure respect for democratic norms, procedures and institutions. President Trump has, to the delight of his supporters, rejected this political and cultural etiquette.
Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” noted that when democratic institutions collapse it is “easier to accept patently absurd propositions than the old truths which have become pious banalities.” The chatter of the liberal ruling elites about our democracy is itself an absurdity. “Vulgarity with its cynical dismissal of respected standards and accepted theories,” she wrote, infects political discourse. This vulgarity is “mistaken for courage and a new style of life.”
“He is destroying one code of behavior after another,” Nader said of Trump. “He is so far getting away with it and not paying a price. He is breaking standards of behavior—what he says about women, commercializing the White House, I am the law.”
Nader said he does not think the Republican Party will turn against Trump or consider impeachment unless his presidency appears to threaten its chances of retaining power in the 2018 elections. Nader sees the Democratic Party as too “decadent and incompetent” to mount a serious challenge to Trump. Hope, he said, comes from the numerous protests that have been mounted in the streets, at town halls held by members of Congress and at flash points such as Standing Rock. It may also come from the 2.5 million civil servants within the federal government if a significant number refuse to cooperate with Trump’s authoritarianism.
“The new president is clearly aware of the power wielded by civil servants, who swear an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, not to any president or administration,” Maria J. Stephan, the co-author of “Why Civil Resistance Works,” writes in The Washington Post. (WaPo) “One of Trump’s first acts as president was a sweeping federal hiring freeze affecting all new and existing positions except those related to the military, national security and public safety. Even before Trump’s inauguration, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives reinstated an obscure 1876 rule that would allow Congress to slash the salaries of individual federal workers. This was a clear warning to those serving in government to keep their heads down. Trump’s high-profile firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates, who refused to follow the president’s immigration ban, sent shock waves through the bureaucracy.”
A sustained, nationwide popular uprising of nonviolent obstruction and noncooperation is the only weapon left to save the republic. The elites will respond once they become afraid. If we do not make them afraid we will fail.
The four-decade-long assault on our democratic institutions by corporations has left them weak and largely dysfunctional. These institutions, which surrendered their efficacy and credibility to serve corporate interests, should have been our firewall. Instead, they are tottering under the onslaught.
Labor unions are a spent force. The press is corporatized and distrusted. Universities have been purged of dissidents and independent scholars who criticize neoliberalism and decry the decay of democratic institutions and political parties. Public broadcasting and the arts have been defunded and left on life support. The courts have been stacked with judges whose legal careers were spent serving corporate power, a trend in appointments that continued under Barack Obama. Money has replaced the vote, which is how someone as unqualified as Betsy DeVos can buy herself a Cabinet seat. And the Democratic Party, rather than sever its ties to Wall Street and corporations, is naively waiting in the wings to profit from a Trump debacle.
“The biggest asset Trump has is the decadent, clueless, narcissistic, corporate-indentured, war-mongering Democratic Party,” Ralph Nader said when I reached him by phone in Washington. “If the Democratic strategy is waiting for Godot, waiting for Trump to implode, we are in trouble. And just about everything you say about the Democrats you can say about the AFL-CIO. They don’t control the train.”
The loss of credibility by democratic institutions has thrust the country into an existential as well as economic crisis. The courts, universities and press are no longer trusted by tens of millions of Americans who correctly see them as organs of the corporate elites. These institutions are traditionally the mechanisms by which a society is able to unmask the lies of the powerful, critique ruling ideologies and promote justice. Because Americans have been bitterly betrayed by their institutions, the Trump regime can attack the press as the “opposition party,” threaten to cut off university funding, taunt a federal jurist as a “so-called judge” and denounce a court order as “outrageous.”
The decay of democratic institutions is the prerequisite for the rise of authoritarian or fascist regimes. This decay has given credibility to a pathological liar. The Trump administration, according to an Emerson College poll, is considered by 49 percent of registered voters to be truthful while the media are considered truthful by only 39 percent of registered voters. Once American democratic institutions no longer function, reality becomes whatever absurdity the White House issues.
Most of the rules of democracy are unwritten. These rules determine public comportment and ensure respect for democratic norms, procedures and institutions. President Trump has, to the delight of his supporters, rejected this political and cultural etiquette.
Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” noted that when democratic institutions collapse it is “easier to accept patently absurd propositions than the old truths which have become pious banalities.” The chatter of the liberal ruling elites about our democracy is itself an absurdity. “Vulgarity with its cynical dismissal of respected standards and accepted theories,” she wrote, infects political discourse. This vulgarity is “mistaken for courage and a new style of life.”
“He is destroying one code of behavior after another,” Nader said of Trump. “He is so far getting away with it and not paying a price. He is breaking standards of behavior—what he says about women, commercializing the White House, I am the law.”
Nader said he does not think the Republican Party will turn against Trump or consider impeachment unless his presidency appears to threaten its chances of retaining power in the 2018 elections. Nader sees the Democratic Party as too “decadent and incompetent” to mount a serious challenge to Trump. Hope, he said, comes from the numerous protests that have been mounted in the streets, at town halls held by members of Congress and at flash points such as Standing Rock. It may also come from the 2.5 million civil servants within the federal government if a significant number refuse to cooperate with Trump’s authoritarianism.
“The new president is clearly aware of the power wielded by civil servants, who swear an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, not to any president or administration,” Maria J. Stephan, the co-author of “Why Civil Resistance Works,” writes in The Washington Post. “One of Trump’s first acts as president was a sweeping federal hiring freeze affecting all new and existing positions except those related to the military, national security and public safety. Even before Trump’s inauguration, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives reinstated an obscure 1876 rule that would allow Congress to slash the salaries of individual federal workers. This was a clear warning to those serving in government to keep their heads down. Trump’s high-profile firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates, who refused to follow the president’s immigration ban, sent shock waves through the bureaucracy.”
A sustained, nationwide popular uprising of nonviolent obstruction and noncooperation is the only weapon left to save the republic. The elites will respond once they become afraid. If we do not make them afraid we will fail.
Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
“Insane Clown President”
Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi
Video
How a reality TV star became our president.
Chris Hedges examines the spectacle of the 2016 presidential election and the system that created President Donald Trump with Matt Taibbi, author of “Insane Clown President”.
Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het voorgaande, klik op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: Arendt, Nader, M.J. Stephan en Taibbi.
