A recent survey by the UVM Center for Rural Studies found that 77.1
percent of the eligible voters in Vermont, up from 74.3 percent a year
earlier, believe that the U.S. government has lost its moral
authority. This is hardly surprising when you consider the fact
that our government is owned, operated, and controlled by Corporate
America. National elections are bought and sold to the highest
bidder. It was the loss of moral authority that brought down the
apartheid government of South Africa, the communist regimes in six

(In our “Mud Season” issue, published in March 2008, Vermont Commons presented Part I of
Kirkpatrick Sales’ “Dispersion” column – “You Know Your Empire Is
Collapsing When…” Sales wrote, “Empires usually make the same set of
mistakes,” and observed from his historical reading that there were
four basic reasons that empires collapse. First was environmental
degradation (examples, Sumeria and the Roman Empire). Harvard
biologist E.O. Wilson has written of the U.S. that its “ecological
footprint is already too large for the planet to sustain.” Second was

What would Ethan do? 

Read more here.

Follow the Money? God forbid.

Why was the cashing out of billions of dollars just before the 9/11 attacks never investigated?

by Jim Hogue

It's been over six years since 9/11, but U.S. regulatory entities have been slow to follow through with reports about the complex financial transactions that occurred just prior to and following the attacks. Such research could shed light on such questions as who was behind them-and who benefited-and could help lay to rest the rumors that have been festering.

William of Orange for the Convention Parliament of 1689 as set down in Blackstone in re “safety of the whole” and Locke in re representative republican governance and Adams, Allen et al in re right to self-government and self-preservation and the Virginia Convention of '76 “providing for the general safety” and Justice Samuel Chase in Calder v Bull 3 Dallas 386 at 388 (U.S. 1798) re “The nature and ends of legislative power . . .” and the Second Constitutional Congress July 4th 1776 granting the “free and independent States full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do” and again Justice Chase “that each of the several States was a sovereign and independent State with its own authority and its own law, without any control from any other power on earth” . . . and in the works of Paine and Jefferson and Franklin for the common good and the good of the commons and the keeping of the commons as opposed to the theft of the commons versus the common use of the commons and purpose and inheritance of and rights to the commons for goats and sheep and geese and horses and in the name of the commons and the many and not the few so the common ownership of the commons shall be the way of the commons in perpetuity . . . and this is self-evident as in the word, “commons,” root com as in community committee commission commerce commonwealth communication (as in to make common) . . . and commend commingle commiserate commute commit commode communion commodity common sense common law and common good . . . and the responsibility shall be held in common trust and not private hands and therefore shared in common and not restricted and this includes the affairs of government and the air and the air waves and the water and the water ways and the ground water and the lakes and the streams and the oceans and the creatures thereof . . . and when as per the writings of Marshall, Mason and Madison, Adams, Allen and Jefferson et al the commons is stolen from the people they shall reclaim it though they replenish it with their blood and the blood of tyrants and so assert their sovereignty over it and secede it from those who violate the commons which also include inalienable rights and freedoms which are granted by nature and in common with all people as in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” . . . self-evident in the course of human events, self-evident in natural law, self-evident as in obvious, clear, not-to-be-denied, as in plain-for-all-to-see, as in hey, dumb-ass, don't surrender our birth-right especially to tyrants, especially to traitors, especially to beady-eyed rats, smirking chimps and fat, useless, back-stabbing pieces of pretenders to the common good . . . to worthless witless brainless treacherous gutless underhanded groveling mean-spirited treasonous pompous arrogant self-serving destructive cowardly unctuous whores, leaches and panderers whose mission it is to divide up the world and the peoples of the world and to pillage pillage and pillage and what they can't pillage they destroy while the best and brightest stand around holding candles that belong up their asses and ours for giving the bastards everything they want so they can pillage some more with our treasure and with our friends and our children and our parents and we take it and grovel and call ourselves free . . . and some have the nerve to call themselves sane while our employees at the trough devour our private and our common wealth and shovel it on to their detestable accomplices: maggots feeding on the rotting corpse of America, the tyrants and traitors and enemies of planet earth.

The term "terrorist suspects" is turning up in SVR material. I made such a fuss and took such a stand against it at a meeting in Montpelier, in vain, that I want to go on record again, as one who adamantly wants to see it removed from our language. Using this term makes us part of the scam that is used to do the very thing we abhor: Build the Empire. We agreed to put it in quotes from the time of that meeting, but the quotes have been removed.
No terrorist suspect has been swept up since 9/11. All those captured, held, and tortured have been captured, held, and tortured in order to build up the fictitious story that must be sold to the public by Republicans and Democrats and the media.

For Dennis Morrisseau

In the words of Jonathan Simon: “When the autopsy of American democracy is performed, the cause of death will be given as media silence.”

We know, furthermore, that congress and the media have declared war on the people of the United States. The most recent defense of Peter Welch, our elected servant, by the media is a case in point. The local press defended him from the rabble who criticized him for his lies and betrayals to us and the constitution.

Media silence, yes, and active participation as well. It is the media that gives the light of day to the fake war on terror. It is the media that paved the way for the fascist wish-list that is now in place. It is the media that told us and still tells us that 19 Arabs attacked the US on 9/11/01. It is the media that promoted the fake rationale for the attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now paving the way for the attack against Iran. It is the media that ignores fraudulent elections. It is the media that our politicians most fear, and, ironically, it is the media that they most count on to do their bidding. It is the media that refuses to give the evidence provided by whistleblowers of government malfeasance and corporate crime, condemning these whistleblowers (and the journalists who dare to support them) to broken lives. Investigative reporter Charlotte Dennett told me that the unemployment lines are littered with journalists who told the truth on certain subjects that rocked the boat.

Thanks to blogger Mike Tuggle from down south for passing this our way:

Where is the California National Guard?