The sordid spectacle of scheming to obtain Koch Brothers Blood Money (1st in a series) Copyright 2015, Michael J. Pottebaum, all rights reserved.
Now that we have several handfuls of potential Republican Presidential aspirants all lined up, they just cannot stop themselves and love to repeat all the old chestnuts. Take one: Appeasement, especially with Iran. I love it when Right Wing Authoritarians shoot their mouths off. All you have to do is ask about September 18, 1931 and the chin music stops!
During Republican President Herbert Hoovers administration the Japanese invaded Northeast China by a pretext of an explosion near a rail road track. It took place in what in the West we called Mukden. It was a transparent attempt of aggression to start a military campaign to create the puppet Manchukuo State under the Manchus last emperor, Pu yi. The Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Government was allowed by the Republicans then in power to do all this without any effort or attempt by the Hoover Administration to stop them, not even by the use of an economic embargo on petroleum or scrap metal.
Look up the Reuters news service article (end of Article) from April 15, 2015 on the 388 unidentified remains of members of the crew of the USS Oklahoma, sunk on December 7, 1941 being disinterred for use of forensics and DNA to identify the remains from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. Greed and War-Profiteering of strategic materials to Japan while it was invading China and appeasement by the Republicans in the early 1930s killed these as yet unidentified service members using almost entirely American refined aviation fuel in airplanes and ships powered by as much as 70% with American bunker oil. All of which were made of, to a large extent, American scrap metals. The bombs, torpedo's, and bullets were also mostly made of American scrap metals. Relatives of the 388 service members are now in the 74th year of suffering with as yet an unidentified missing family member. See BBC News Magazine "A familys struggle to bring a Pearl Harbour sailor home"
(See end of article for Link)
Republican Party shameless pattern of appeasement has created yet another outrageous act of greed, again, at the expense in blood and terrible pain for soldiers and wrecking the lives of the families of military members of the U.S. armed forces. This article is an attempt to expose by use of history the acts and methods which, once again, shows how the depraved excess of greed for money creates Blood Money.
Continued below the fold.
The nouveau riche Koch Brothers of Wichita, decided to make some big profits in Iran, (see: Bloomberg Business, October 3, 2011 Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Iran Sales by Asiylyn Loder and David Evans, (See end of Article for link)
by contracting for the building of the largest methanol plant in the world, in Bandar Assaluyeh, Iran for the Zagros Petrochemical Company. Prior to 2003. The Koch Brothers found a legal way to get around the Presidential executive orders going back to Presidents Carter (1976), Reagan (1987), & Clinton (1995). Furthermore Congressional Laws were the (ILSA) Iran and Libya Sanctions Act in 1996, renamed the Iran Sanctions Act in 2006. The legal way around was to have a foreign subsidiary in this case, Koch-Glitch in France, Germany, and Italy contract with two Companies: Lurgi in Germany and Pidec in Iran with purchase orders for petrochemical equipment for the entity, Zagros, which is part of the National Iranian Petrochemical Company. An important state owned asset of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the same time, the Shia militias in Iraq were obtaining directly from the Islamic Republic of Iran sophisticated shaped charges which used molten copper to act as a super hot deadly plasma weapon against American vehicles. American soldiers were being Killed, horribly Burned, Wounded, Maimed, with many suffering from effects of explosion shock waves to this very day while the Koch Brothers could satiate some of their unlimited greed by aiding and trading with a Declared Enemy of the United States of America. This Transgressor/Oligarch behavior is contemptible and criminal. The Koch Brothers kept up their aiding of the enemy with Greed not for one year of debased gluttony or even two years of outrageous avarice, but continued for four years of outright betrayal of the entire world after the falsified and inept invasion of Iraq in 2003. The legal way to accomplish all this was done by the use of Corporate lawyers in Wichita, Kansas Headquarters primarily reviewing the paperwork to make certain no American citizens were directly involved in this debauched lust for Blood Money by any means.
Well worth the time to read in its entirety is a speech over one hundred years old that has a valuable insights into Charles Koch and David Koch as Transgressors/Oligarchs. The speech was delivered 100 Years old as the Koch Brothers decided to end their profitable business with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Two links in different formats: Government Printing office archive (See end of Article) or less of a dispatch format and more presentable: From a Pax on Both Houses website (See end of Article)
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, in his famous speech about Malefactors of Great Wealth on August 20, 1907 in Plymouth, Massachusetts for the dedication of the corner stone laying at the Pilgrim Memorial Monument said the following: "...Experience has shown that it is necessary to exercise a far more efficient control than at present over the business use of those vast fortunes, chiefly corporate, which are used (as under modern conditions they almost invariably are) in interstate business. When the Constitution was created none of the conditions of modern business existed. They are wholly new and we must create new agencies to deal effectively with them. There is no objection in the minds of this people to any mans earning any amount of money if he does it honestly and fairly, if he gets it as the result of special skill and enterprise, as a reward of ample service actually rendered. But there is a growing determination that no man shall amass a great fortune by special privilege, by chicanery and wrong-doing, so far as it is in the power of legislation to prevent; and that a fortune, however amassed, shall not have a business use that is antisocial.
...On the New York Stock Exchange the disturbance has been peculiarly severe. Most of it I believe to be due to matters not peculiar to the United States, and most of the remainder to matters wholly unconnected with any action; but it may well be that the determination of the Government (in which, gentlemen, it will not waver) to punish certain malefactors of great wealth, has been responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of the Government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so that they may enjoy unmolested the fruits of their own evil-doing. That they have misled many good people into believing that there should be such reversal of policy is possible.
If so I am sorry; but it will not alter my attitude. Once for all let me say that so far as am concerned, and for the eighteen months of my Presidency that remain, there will be no change in the policy we have steadily pursued, no let up in the effort to secure the honest observance of the law; for I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and domineering men whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.
Later in the same speech near the ending is the following; Those professed friends of liberty who champion license are the worst foes of liberty and tend by the reaction their violence causes to throw the Government back into the hands of the men who champion corruption and tyranny in the name of order. President Teddy Roosevelt, over one hundred years in advance, has detailed even the very same words that the Koch Brothers abuse in context! The very same words are also used by the Koch funded and created Tea Party members. This abuse of the word Liberty is an excellent example of the cant from the Koch Brothers. The fact that Corporations are not referenced in the Constitution did not escape President T. Roosevelt either. A fact missing from all the Tea Party chin music to uphold the Liberty and the Constitution, with shrill pietism.
Ancient Greek History also provides us insights into the history and actions of Oligarchs. It is crystal clear in depicting the very same Modus Operandi that the Koch Brothers have nurtured with their Blood Money for years.
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Translation by Martin Hammond Copyright 2009 Oxford University Press. The 17th Year of War, circa 415 B.C. 414 B.C.
"...Now Athenagoras came forward to speak. He was the leader of the democratic party and at the time the most persuasive on the general public.¨He addressed the assembly as follows: (36) "The Athenians mad enough to come over here and walk straight into our hands? Only a coward or a traitor would not welcome that prospect? But what surprises me in the people who are spreading these reports to alarm you is not the extremes to which they are prepared to go, but their stupidity in thinking that their motives are not transparent. They have their own reasons for being afraid, and want to put the whole city in a state of emergency so that their particular fears are concealed in a general panic. And this is what lies behind these present rumors, they do not come out of nowhere, but they have been deliberately made up by people who are always involved in this sort of agitation. You would be well advised to discount the reports put about by these men and instead base your view of the probabilities on what a shrewd and highly experienced enemy would do - and I certainly rate the Athenians as such..." "...But, as I say, the Athenians are well aware of all this and I am sure have no intention of jeopardizing their own interests. It is people here who are fabricating stories which are neither true nor ever likely to be true. This is not the first time, and I have always known what they are up to, they want to do or say all that they can, including this sort of rumor and others more mischievous , to intimidate you ordinary people of Syracuse into accepting their control of the city. And I do fear that constant attempts may ultimately bring them success. We are very bad at taking precautions before trouble is on us, at spotting danger and following up with action. That is why our city has so seldom been at rest - a history of disputes and struggles undertaken more among ourselves than against any external enemy, and we have had tyrannies too and oppressive cliques in power. If you will come with me in this, I shall try to ensure with all vigilance that nothing of this sort happens in our day. This means persuading you, the general public, to take punitive action against those who have such designs, not just when their guilt is blatant (it is hard to catch them at it), but for what they would do if they could, one should retaliate in advance against an enemy's intentions, not simply after the event, as the first to drop his guard will be the first to suffer. It means also exposing the oligarchic party, keeping them under close surveillance,and educating them too, which I think the best way of stopping their mischief... An oligarchy, though, gives the people their full share of danger, while hogging the benefits and depriving others to establish its own monopoly of advantage. A favorite rule of governing of the Authoritarian Right Wing and the Koch Brothers funded and created Tea Party is that they want to avoid picking winners and losers..."depriving others to establish its own monopoly of advantage..." This ensures the Koch Brothers can reap more profits by use of fools.
Another insight from a more than 900 year old Chinese historical narrative drama storytellers favorite that became a novel about 500 years ago. Translated in 1925 as ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS by C.H. Brewett-Taylor.
Chapter LVIII (Chap. 58), Page 606.
(Ts'ao Ts'ao (Cao Caa/Pinyin) is the Transgressor.)
...they overwhelmed Ts'ao's men and Ma Chao and his colleague rode forward to try to capture Ts'ao Ts'ao. They came close. Ts'ao heard one of his pursuers shout to another, That is he in the red dress! So he hastily tore off his red robe and threw it away. He also heard one say That is Ts'ao Ts'ao with the long beard! At once Ts'ao took the sword that he wore at his side and sawed off some of the beard. Yet again a soldier recognized him and told Ma Chao that Ts'ao had now cut his beard, whereupon the order went forth to capture short beards. And then Ts'ao wrapped the corner of a flag about neck and jowl and fled...
Transgressors constantly re-inventing themselves assuming completely different identities as with a pattern and color changing chameleons:
Karl Rove Quote: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." (Ron Suskind, New York Times, Oct. 17, 2004)
We can do more than study. We can expose the great Transgressors/Oligarchs amongst us. The Blood Money from the Koch Brothers is hotly lusted after by the Authoritarian Right Wing. Republican Presidential Candidates are scheduled to perform try-outs for the favor of the Koch Brothers, to the best candidate selected: a sea of Blood Money for politics from the Kochs. And the Koch Brothers contest winner, a Republican Presidential candidate, will certainly beat the drums of War with Iran. And the Koch Brothers will try to buy another election.
See Bloomberg Business, October 3, 2011. Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Iran Sales by Asiylyn Loder and David Evans for a complete chronicle of Kochs means and methods.
Mon May 18, 2015 at 10:56 AM PT: Reuters 4/15/15: http://www.reuters.com/...
Mon May 18, 2015 at 10:59 AM PT: BBC Magazine 5/17/15: http://www.bbc.com/...
Mon May 18, 2015 at 11:00 AM PT: Bloomberg Business News Oct. 3, 2011: http://www.bloomberg.com/...
Mon May 18, 2015 at 11:07 AM PT: Pres. T. Roosevelt 1907 Speech Gov. Printing Office: https://www.archive.org/...
Mon May 18, 2015 at 11:09 AM PT: Pres. T. Roosevelt: Neater Copy of Speech: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/...