Random Thoughts
Regulatory Shenanigans
– Downing Street Memo,
FDA & SEC
The
Constitution of the United states specifically gives the responsibility of
declaring war and providing funding for a war to the Congress. This is to
prevent executive abuse and misadventure, for as Madison stated war is a
means and a situation for the president to spend public funds, restrict
liberty and collect accolades. The Halliburton and military contractor
enrichment, massive fiscal profligacy, the Patriot Act and engineering his
own re-election by war and fear by the current president prove this. The
House and the Senate abrogated their constitutional responsibility by
delegating consent to the president prior to the current Iraq War, just as
a prior congress did in the case of Vietnam.
We now know that lies and fabrication about the Tonkin Gulf events led to
the debacle of an intensified Vietnam conflict with resultant loss of
blood, treasure and prestige, so this time the DOWNING STREET MEMO,
predating the Iraq War by many months and the memoirs of the former UK
ambassador to Washington, conclusively confirm the circumstantial evidence
of revelations of former treasury secretary O’Neill, national security
adviser Clarke, former ambassador Wilson’s debunking of the Niger uranium
purchase and other insider revelations. The changing rhetoric of the
executive branch, the exploitation of popular fear by the specter of
impending mushroom clouds and other lies are damning evidence of a
premeditated intention to attack Iraq to remove the cruel tyrant from
power and exploit its rich oil wealth. The legal justification necessary
to provide cover to the co-operating British to avoid their being
prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes (of which
Britain is a signatory and America is not and thus immune from it) was
provided by falsely accusing Iraq of being responsible for 9-11, equally
falsely accusing it of having WMDs and of foisting on it an intrusive
inspections team, non-compliance with which could be used to camouflage
the objective of regime change that is illegal under the UN Charter.
Alleged lack of compliance with the inspections was then used to obtain a
unanimous condemning resolution 1441 from the UN Security Council. Even
this resolution was obtained by false means of showing bogus documents by
Colin Powell, who knew and had previously publicly stated that Iraq was no
threat to anyone and had no significant WMD capability The resolution was
used as sufficient justification to officially start a war that had
already been begun by covert indiscriminate aerial bombing and logistical
preliminaries in the Kurdish north. The imposition of No Fly Zones itself
was not sanctioned by the UN and this provocation with retaliation by
Iraqi air defenses became a justification of extensive bombing. The
Downing Street Memo from the head of MI6 (British equivalent of CIA)
confirms that the decision for the Iraq war had been made in 2002 (more
likely even before 9-11) and intelligence was twisted and falsified to
extract compliance from a craven Congress to drag the nation into a
disastrous, illegal and immoral war with the connivance of a supine press
that was as negligent of its responsibility as the Congress, both equally
self-serving bodies beholden to vested interests.
One of Aesop’s fables is about a wolf who wanted to kill a lamb drinking
water downstream from it. The wolf accused the lamb of making the wolf
drink water polluted by the lamb. The foolish lamb reasonably argued that
it was downstream from the wolf and the flow of the river could not
reverse. It claimed that it was drinking the water that had touched the
wolf’s mouth first. It added that nevertheless it was not complaining and
content to be compliant. The wolf then accused the lamb of being
belligerent and argumentative. The foolish lamb ignorant of the wolf’s
intention politely and sheepishly stated that the wolf had started the
argument and he was just answering politely. The wolf then announced that
perverse bellicoseness was hereditary and he remembered that the dead
parent of the lamb had behaved similarly with him some years ago and this
was legitimate grounds on which the lamb should be taught a lesson. The
wolf then proceeded to kill the lamb and devour it. Thus was Saddam,
though definitely not a lamb trapped by America’s need for oil despite his
prior alliance when he was conveniently used to fight Iraq and even given
financial and technical help to decimate the Kurds, Shiites and Iranians
with chemical weapons. Some even say he was a given a green light to
attack and absorb Iraq and then attacked with presidential manipulation of
public opinion with lies about atrocities committed on sick babies. The
testimony was given by the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to America,
who had never been in Kuwait during the invasion and who did not reveal
her true identity and vested interest. Thus democracy was restored in
Kuwait by reinstating the Emir who promptly abolished the elected
parliament. This is what a wolf’s wits calls acts of public good, as it
preys.
The crowning despicable malfeasance is that the majority party’s attempts
at denying 122 House members a forum or opportunity to investigate this
impeach-able offence by denying them a venue to hold a hearing and
scheduling important votes and bombarding them with voting on amendments
to specifically be unable attend the hearings due to time conflicts and by
relegating them to a small basement to make it difficult to have press
coverage. Such are the abuses of power. This connivance and stonewalling
by the premier government body to the detriment of the nation, combined
with a supine and dishonest press and an apathetic and ignorant public
could spell the death of democracy.
A lesser but still detrimental to the public is the recent approval of the
FDA of BIDIL, a combination of two generic drugs for the treatment of
heart failure particularly in African-Americans. First of all there is no
such biological thing as race. We do not call brown, white or black dogs
or horses as different races. If two animals can mate and produce a viable
offspring capable of bearing young, then they belong to the same species.
The aggressive libido of the early American slave owners with the slave
status of the early Africans in America has led to an admixture of genes
and the construct of the black race groups as a homogeneous entity in
America is predominantly a social construct with few pure strains.
Secondly, the license to market a combination of two inexpensive generic
drugs as an expensive patented monopoly is a gift to the influential rich
individual or corporation to overcharge the consumer and thus deny health
by economic constraints to the sick citizens. The FDA with budget
restraints is significantly funded by pharmaceutical companies, thus
making it beholden to the monetary power of those whom it regulates and
creating a conflict of interest for the regulators. Prior examples of
Fen-fen, Vioxx and many other public disasters stand as glaring examples
of regulatory failure. Marcia Angell, a former editor of the prestigious
New England Journal of Medicine has written a scathing book exposing big
pharma.
Finally, interested readers may wish to read Kuttner’s piece in the
current Business Week about the resignation of Donaldson, the SEC
Chairman. It has been the policy of beholden politicians starting with
FDR’s appointment of stock manipulator Joseph Kennedy as SEC chairman, to
put a fox to guard the chicken coop. Donaldson, a Wall Street insider was
appointed to replace Harvey Pitt riven by conflict of interest. He turned
out to be a maverick and ruffled the feathers of those who use their
privilege, knowledge and financial clout to defraud the naive public. Thus
he had to go and Cox, a California Congressman with pro big firm
sympathies and lesser concern for Joe Public was chosen. All these
examples should raise serious public ire just as it did in the ancient
public intellectual Plato when he tackled the question, "Who shall guard
the guardians?".
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