Republican Poodles Have A Hoover Moment

With his K Street bosses heading for their collective put option exits this past week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-IN) found it in him to put down the whiskey bottle just long enough to summon his House legions back to Washington at 6:30 PM tomorrow night – just 30 hours before we are told we will careen over the dreaded fiscal cliff.  Clutch move Boehner.  Just don’t start crying.

Lame Democratic tendencies aside, any poor sap still duped by or enamored with the increasingly irrelevant political dinosaur known as the Republican Party couldn’t have helped notice the Grand Old Party’s solid allegiance to the International Banking Cartel.  Yet they probably did miss this rerun.  Stockholm Syndrome anyone?

Hail to the thieves.  Lick more billionaire boots Whigs.  Yes sir!

2013 Resolution

Happy New Year!  A big thanks to all who have read, subscribed, shared or donated to Left Hook.  Your support, critical thinking abilities and kind words are what keeps me writing each week.

Ten years ago this blog would not have succeeded.  People were living in fear and being devastated by the Eight Families banking monopoly and their corporate arsenal.  As we begin a new epoch, as noted by the Mayans and other indigenous peoples, our opportunities for emancipation will increase.

Many people are escaping suburbia to a life in the country.  We’ve been living like this for the past two decades – half here in the Missouri Ozarks and half in the Western Montana Rockies.  Most weeks we go to town once to get groceries.  Otherwise it’s “Buy Nothing Week” for us year round.

Press TV: The Money Trail: Merchants of Death: Part II

http://www.presstv.ir/Program/279155.html

HSBC Skates

Last week Argentina levied a $6 million fine on HSBC Bank Argentina SA for money laundering.  This comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that HSBC would pay a record $1.92 billion fine to US authorities for laundering money for Mexican drug cartels.  The latter decision left many wondering exactly what kind of crime a banker has to commit before he goes to jail.

In July 2011, First Niagara Financial Group announced that it would buy 195 retail bank branches in New York and Connecticut from HSBC for around $1 billion. [1] HSBC acquired the branches when it bought the spooky Marine Midland in 1980.

According to Global Finance, the UK-headquartered HSBC Holdings is the world’s 3rd largest bank with $2.36 trillion in assets. [2] Formerly known as Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, HSBC has served as the world’s #1 drug money laundry since its inception as a repository for British Crown opium proceeds accrued during the Chinese Opium Wars. During the Vietnam War HSBC laundered CIA heroin proceeds.

Press TV: The Money Trail: Merchants of Death: Part 1

http://www.presstv.ir/Program/277809.html

Bogotá Blues

(Excerpted from Chapter 17: The Inca Trail: The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries)

The Colombian border station is ultra-modern, the Mercedes Benz bus we board on the other side is even more so.  We cruise north in luxury, hopping off for the night at Popayan.  The age-old dilemma of the traveler sets in during a conversation at our guest house with an Irish couple, whose eyes glow with a wonderment that makes me want to go where they had just been.  That place is five bumpy hours southeast of here at the ruins of San Augustin and Terrendios.  It is a tangent with a nice ring, a ganja-filled paradise of overwhelming quietness, despite its proximity to FARQ-held territory.

Interview This Morning on Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/276400.html

12-1-12 Interview on BBS Radio

http://www.youtube.com/user/ZanyMysticRadio

The Real Human Beings

When I crossed the border from Botswana into Zimbabwe in 2009 I had travelled to 50 countries.  This odyssey is chronicled in my book The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries.  I feel fortunate to have been able to see so much of this beautiful planet, but really I planned it that way.

Ever since that first trip to Europe as trombone player in my high school jazz band, I was bound and determined that I would always have a cash reserve to pay for that next plane ticket and that I would never let a job get it the way of traveling. As such, any kind of “career” was out of the question. The act of travel was just too important.

Most people take vacations; a week in Cancun at some all-inclusive fenced in zoo, a few days at Disney World, a bus tour to Branson. Travel is different. Travel is no vacation.  The root word of travel is the Latin “travail”, which means, “to suffer; to endure”.  That 58-hour third-class train from Bombay to the southern tip of India qualified, as did that 46-hour hard seat-class number out of Shanghai.  But with all the hardship comes a deep appreciation of humanity that I feel many Americans have lost in a fog of cynicism.