in the time remaining, to help us understand how the man-made system of capitalism will lead to the extinction of our human species, and so many others.
What has made the post-2008 crash most remarkable is not merely the delusion that the way to get rich is by debt leverage (unless you are a banker, that is). Most unique is the crash’s aftermath. This time around the bad debts have not been wiped off the books. There have indeed been the usual bankruptcies – but the bad lenders and speculators are being saved from loss by the government intervening to issue Treasury bonds to pay them off out of future tax revenues or new money creation.
This paragraph, I believe, is the main thesis of the article: that this economic collapse is different from the past ones. I have lived through many recessions and I've felt also that this one is very different. This article helps to clarify why it is different. It is different not only because of the magnitude of the debts that accumulated, but the way the US ruling class has chosen to deal with the crisis.
Unfortunately, the propaganda organs of the ruling class have thus far succeeded in convincing most ordinary Americans that "the policy of saving the bankers rather than the economy as having been necessary"; that it was necessary to bail out...
Wall Street – and thereby the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans – while saying there is no money for Social Security, Medicare or long-term public social spending and infrastructure investment, the beneficiaries are obvious. So are the losers. High finance means low wages, low employment, low industry and a shrinking economy under conditions where policy planning is centralized in hands of Wall Street and its political nominees rather than in more objective administrators.
I don't normally comment on localized events, especially events connected with sports. However, having lived in Vancouver, BC for about four years and having been in many political demonstrations, I see a definite social class aspect to riots in general and how this one fits into that view. Social class does not explain everything in the world, but it does explain a lot. And it is interesting to observe that such an analysis is nearly always missing from mainstream media portrayals. To the reporter's credit, the article offers a much more neutral view than is provided in mainstream Canadian coverage which has been more concerned with protecting Vancouver's "image" and dismissing the event with knee-jerk responses blaming hooligans, anarchists, and leftists. S/he offered some analysis, but what was offered explained little.
I think that one comment following the article offered by "c-gordon" really gets at the social class aspect of this and other riots.
I'll first commend you on some good on the scene reporting, and your criticism of the police response is spot on, but your analysis is far from accurate in my opinion.
This wasn't a riot of the oppressed, this wasn't a release of frustrations from the disenfranchised. These were middle class, white male shitkickers, the same privileged yuppiespawn that turn the same neighborhood into a warzone every weekend. Fuelled by a combination of alcohol, testosterone and the complete lack of personal accountability that comes with their spoiled upbringings.
They weren't inspired by people who fought for causes, they were lashing out in rage from an insult to their corporately-sponsored nationalism. They were looking for someone to hurt, something to break for fun. Western capitalist culture has glorified this mean-spirited, aggressive and violent behavior in young men, both blatently and latently.
The rather muted police response to this compared to the G20 or even the Heart Attack demonstrations were telling. The kid gloves policy enacted by police was deliberate. It was because these were the privileged, the spoiled, the dominant. It's perfectly fine in this political environment to assault, oppress and beat "losers" like ethnic minorities, women, the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised. But these weren't them, these were the children of important people, "pillars of the community", and were given a free pass.
This analysis completely fits with a class view of the function of police in any class structured society, and especially in a capitalist society. In the latter their purpose is to protect the system of capitalism from any threats against the legitimacy of the system, and the interests of the capitalist class such as threats to private property. Hence, the dual way that police handle riots.
In riots that occur in relation to political protest demonstrations, the police typically see the crowds as the enemy because they threaten the legitimacy of the system. Hence their response is aggressive and they attack the crowd indiscriminately. Very frequently the rioting in these events have been engineered by police provocateurs in order to justify their crackdown and to tarnish the demonstrator's issues.
Whereas, in riots that occurs after sporting events, the police use much more friendly methods in the initial phases, and then crack down on rioters in a much more discriminatory fashion according to the rioter's behavior.
Frequently on Saturdays I like to pay a visit into the lives of the ruling class. After all, they are people, too. Because they have such a great influence on how we live, we need to understand them. Jamie Johnson is of that class and I think he is the perfect guide.
Of course, other people love their dogs and other pets, too. But Jamie's view is that the rich have an even more special attachment to their dogs which, in his view, is likely to interfere with the dogs' abilities to guard them and their property.
Prosperous families already shell out millions each year on other prized animals, notably horses, which can cost the kind of money that only billionaires throw around. I’ve said it many times before in this blog, but I believe the point bears repeating—rich people are notoriously bad with intimacy, and the relationship they can form with a pet is often the most affectionate bond they ever know. For the patrician class, referring to dogs as “man’s best friend” is no exaggeration. (I’ll say it: dogs aren’t just their best friends—they’re often their only real friends.)
It was in a crowded room in Athens that parliamentary deputy Sofia Sakorafa, recently excluded from the governing socialist PASOK party for refusing to vote for austerity measures, opened the conference, "Debt and austerity: from the Global South to Europe.” From the outset, she set the tone by moving the debt issue beyond the borders of North-South divisions: "Debt is tied to the class question."
The emphasis that has been advocated by this organization, CADTM, is the cancellation of debt to Third World counties. But, it appears to me that people are increasingly coming together at conferences like the one depicted here and are formulating more radical solutions to the debt problem. For example, the author reports that the keynote speaker "set the tone [of the conference] by moving the debt issue beyond the borders of North-South divisions: 'Debt is tied to the class question.'" Unfortunately, the article does not indicate whether the participants developed this theme.
So permit me to expand on it. The statement rather clearly states that it is not merely a North-South problem, but a class problem. If she understands the world she lives in--and I don't doubt that she does--she understands that humanity is divided into two basic classes that exist nearly everywhere in the world: those who produce wealth (workers) and those (mostly capitalists) who both enforce "ownership" rights to appropriate much of this wealth for themselves and control the issuance of money through their indirect ownership of central and international banking institutions. The latter class have succeeded throughout much of the world to appropriate so much of this wealth that the working class has to go into debt to the latter class in order to live decently. This has happened all over the globe: in first world countries as well as third world countries under globalized capitalism.
If this analysis is correct, then the battle being waged is global, but also frequently a one sided war being waged by capitalists against workers many of whom, especially in first world countries, are still unaware (except in places like Wisconsin) of what's going on. Workers who are aware must reach across borders with their brothers and sisters in order to organize effective campaigns to rid themselves of a system that is not only putting themselves into debt slavery, but is destroying the planet for future generations.
This piece from the liberal Guardian skirts on the edges of the fundamental conflict between the system of capitalism and environmental safety. But by doing so, it provides a valuable path to lead any reasonably intelligent person to that ominous conflict and the need for system change.
Protest tactics do raise public awareness, win the occasional policy battle, save threatened sites or get dangerous products banned. They are still necessary. But they are not sufficient to alter the destructive path travelled by virtually all governments and most corporations. They are defensive moves against the unremitting pressure of market forces and the priorities of mainstream political parties.
Something much more powerfully proactive is required to persuade the majority to change course before it is too late – something that stirs up a social force to match (peacefully) the citizen revolutions overturning the established order across the Middle East. The movement has the resources to do so. But does it have the ideas and the will?
Clearly, environmental activism must join with social justice activism to create a real social revolution.
It is great to have the rather rare opportunity nowadays to post an article with good news in it. This piece does that. You might be skeptical of optimistic statements coming from corporate executives rather than scientists, but, after all, they are in the best position to know about the economics of solar power. In short, the good news is that top executives of two major solar energy companies provide compelling evidence that the cost of producing solar energy is dramatically coming down and will likely continue to do so.
And if this news doesn't raise your spirits, then read this piece entitled, "Green Jobs Are Real: German and American Solar Industry Both Employ More People Than U.S. Steel Production".
The 500 largest global corporations, the “Global 500” control nearly 40% of total global revenue. Why shouldn’t these production bureaucracies be managed in the interests of everyone rather than a tiny elite of passive stockholders? Since ownership and control of these companies are separate, there’s no particular reason their efficiency should drop if the absentee stockholders were removed from the equation. What a beginning if these companies could be operated globally in the interests of society.
Can you believe this guy had a career in banking and finance? Well, bankers are people, too! However, I notice that he quit his career.In any case, he is authentic--I've had contact with him and he is the "real deal".
The political operatives of the ruling class have successfully gotten away with so much war making that they hardly make a pretense of following Constitutional law. Emperor Obama (of course, he is no emperor, but only a public relations officer for the ruling class) declared the Libyan campaign to be legal, so it is. That is precisely the way mainstream media reported this event, except they left the "emperor" part out. The 9/11 tragedy, which in my estimation was a ruthlessly engineered event, has succeeded in putting the American people in the "right" frame of mind (pun intended) in order to...
support wars abroad in defense of the interests of the ruling financial aristocracy, as well as the attacks on basic democratic and social rights that accompany the unrestrained growth of militarism.
It is also interesting to me that any sort of court hearing on anything related to 9/11 or alleged terrorist prisoners is being vigorously opposed by politicos.See this.
Because reports of the residual effects of the Fukushima meltdown has largely disappeared from the media, it is good to see that people at this website, who seem very well informed, are reporting this important information. In this excellent video Arnold Gundersen provides a very clear explanation of one radiation hazard we in the Seattle area (likely in many areas of the West coast and beyond) may be exposed to. (Full screen mode worked well on my computer.)
Of more interest to me were the observations of the nurses promised by the author. These were provided toward the end of the article.
This week, some eight hundred members of National Nurses United, the union that represents 170,000 of America’s Registered Nurses (RN’s) are this week holding a conference in Washington DC in an effort to highlight the growing health disaster that is overtaking the United States and to put forward a program to redraw national priorities, for jobs at living wages, access to health care, schools, decent housing and an equitable tax system. During the week they will rally outside the White House in the hope that someone, Barack Obama and/or the media, will start to take notice.
It seems to me that reports of Jordan's spring uprisings has largely escaped even alternative media.
This Berkeley professor comments on the King's announcement about democratic reforms in the offing for Jordon. And guess what? It's form without substance. This has been the strategy of all class based regimes especially since the American and French revolutions of the 18th century that tapped into the universal yearning for a genuine participatory democracy. Unfortunately, these revolutions resulted only in capitalist aristocracies taking power away from the feudal aristocracies. Nowadays, autocratic ruling classes always opt for a fake democracy, just like we have in capitalist "democracies", when their rule is threatened.
I doubt very much that any genuine democracy will ever be handed to ordinary people by people who rule over and exploit them. Ordinary working people must create this for themselves.
By delving into an unusually rich and well-preserved set of ancient marine sediments from Spitzbergen Island on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, an international team of researchers has come up with an estimate of how quickly carbon entered the atmosphere at the start of the PETM [an ancient period when carbon buildup happened rapidly].
It’s a key question because climate change is really only a major problem if it happens relatively quickly. If it plays out over many centuries, ecosystems will have time to adapt, and the vast infrastructure that underlies the developed world — cities, transportation systems, industrial facilities and more—can be moved, rebuilt, or modified at a reasonable pace and cost. If, as is currently the case, climate change unfolds rapidly, the changes can be enormously destructive.
A major problem for many people to understand the threat of climate change are time scales and the speed of change over larger periods of time. Such time scales are beyond the realm of ordinary human experience.
Fortunately, most scientists are keenly aware of their importance. To understand the present threat of climate change, scientists are looking at similar periods of carbon buildup in past geologic time with which to compare our own age. The results are disturbing.
Such information is routinely hidden, obscured, and belittled by capitalist media managers. They sense that if too many people become informed of this threat, their favorite system that provides them with so much wealth and power will simply collapse.
Also, I recommend reading the comments following the article.
I am very impressed with the movement building strategy reported in this piece. It's clear to me that the Spanish worker activists have their "heads on straight" as they incrementally create a political consciousness and solidarity necessary to construct a powerful movement.
First, to strengthen the grassroots movement, empowering local assemblies and establishing stable coordinating mechanisms. ...Second, to seek ties with the working class, those in struggle and militant trade unionists, and to keep up the pressure on the main trade unions, who are disconcerted by a change in the political and social landscape that they did not anticipate. ...Third, to prepare for October 15 as the date of mass mobilisation and seek to make it a global day of action at a crucial time for the internationalisation of the movement. Fourth, to combine the development of a general movement, the "movement of l@s indignad@s [the outraged]," which criticizes the current overall political and economic model, with the concrete struggles against the cuts and policies that seek to shift the cost of the crisis onto the workers.
One stage ends and another begins. Without our having noticed, we are dealing with a movement whose potential we are just beginning to discover.
I am listing this piece because it illustrates an obsolete capitalist view of world economic issues. The author appears not to understand that the globalization phase of capitalism, starting in the 1970s under the influence of the neo-conservatives and greatly accelerated under that great liberal Presidency of Bill Clinton, has dramatically changed the way the biggest and most powerful capitalists view the world. This nationalistic perspective also informs the views of many others--most often among libertarians and liberals--who are critical of policies generated by existing political and economic elites.
A nationalistic perspective no longer informs the polices of the powerful capitalist operatives, especially on economic issues. These new supranational capitalists are located in many countries--indeed, they often spend their time in multiple countries--are now organized into an empire, a US led Empire, whose wealth accumulating interests are pursued through major banking institutions like the IMF, World Bank, UBS, etc. and numerous economic and political organizations. They also have a large army organized under NATO when more direct measures are needed to enforce their policies on uncooperative governments. The major actors in these institutions have a global capitalist perspective. In contrast, the author and many other liberals and libertarians have an old fashioned nationalistic view of the economy.
But there are other capitalist countries who wish to pursue a more independent, nationalistic course. The most prominent of which is China, to some extent Russia. As we witnessed in the 20th century, inter-capitalist rivalries can lead to devastating world wars. And then there are those irritating smaller countries such as Iran and Venezuela, and many indigenous and rebellious groups within capitalist countries throughout the world who fight back against capitalist policies: in Afghanistan, Iraq, within many Arab counties, India, etc. The latter are often referred to by capitalist media outlets as "terrorists".
Borders within the US Empire are of little concern to their political and economic operatives simply because they removed most border restrictions on the movement of capital. When capitalists want to take advantage of cheap labor, they now find it easy to move their factories to wherever they can find such labor. (Likewise, they are buying up land and resources everywhere.) And there is often an added bonus in the form of lax or unenforced environmental regulations. Border enforcement only exists to control the independent movement of working people. Whenever corporations want to move cheap labor to their production facilities, they have no problem doing so. But when workers try to move independently across borders to where the jobs are, they encounter enormous problems. That, of course, illustrates only one unfortunate feature of the class structured world we live in.
Notice also that the nationalistic view of capitalism expressed in the article frames the issues only from a competitive industrial point of view:
Real industries are not abstract aggregates; they are complex ecosystems of suppliers and supply chains, skills and customer relationships, long-term investments and returns. Deindustrialization is thus a more complex process than is usually realized. It is not just layoffs and crumbling buildings; industries sicken and die in complicated ways.
...All over America, [many] industries are quietly falling apart....
It's clear that the author of this piece is representing the views of smaller capitalist enterprises within the US. And it's clear that they are hurting and will be hurt more in the future. The inherent tendency for capitalists to combine with others into larger units has always been seen to be an inherent tendency of capitalism by knowledgeable people. This process is utterly logical given the dynamics of private ownership, growth imperative, and individual wealth accumulation through corporate entities.The elimination of national borders to access cheap labor is utterly logical.
But, more importantly, notice that the author expresses no direct concern about the devastating loss of work skills on the lives of working people and on their communities in the US.It seems to me that if you accept the system, you must accept the consequences.Or, if you don't like the consequences, change the system!
Although I am not convinced that the government of the ruling class has so much more to be revealed in the latest unexpurgated release of the Pentagon Papers, the article does provide a lot of interesting material about mainstream media censorship in the US.
In contrast to such places as Pakistan where journalists are almost routinely shot, in the US the governing class usually takes the livelihood away from their journalists if they don't conform. In 1996 Gary Webb, a journalist with the San Jose Mercury, who wrote an outstanding series on government collusion with the drug cartels, was fired and blacklisted from further employment as a journalist. He died in 2008 in rather mysterious circumstances, but his death was ruled a suicide.
After reciting her poetry at Lulu Square where Bahrain’s protests were centered in February and March 2011, twenty-year-old poet Ayat al- Qormezi disappeared.
...Before Lulu [Square] was destroyed, videos showed al- Qormezi on February 23 performing her poems before crowds of protestors applauding her critical verse, sometimes joining in and interrupting her performance. She intoned with restrained anger: “We are a people who kill degradation and misery. We are a people who destroy the foundation of oppression.” Another poem imagines a dialogue with the Devil and King Hamad Bin Khalifa, wherein even the Devil, Hamad’s best and “most courageous pupil,” tells him: “Hamad, your people have shaken me. Don’t you hear their cries?” At the end of the video, Lulu protestors yell: “Down with Hamad!”
Because Bahrain is one of the Empire's favorite Mid-East satraps, the protests that have occurred there this spring were a major embarrassment to all related ruling class political operatives. Thus, you likely heard very little from mainstream media about the ruthless oppression by Bahraini authorities and the invasion of troops from Saudi Arabia and UAE in March. Although the Empire's media must be quiet about it, Bahrain represents the kind of government that the Empire really likes and supports.
This was not pleasant reading for me because it has confirmed all my suspicions about one of the few bright promises of people-powered governments in the world. However, the arguments he assembles from many historical examples as well as the record of the Chavez regime are simply much too persuasive to counter.
It's clear that enormous challenges confront leaders who might wish to take an independent course from the capitalist Empire. Probably the first of these is to overcome the addiction to power; and the second is to put one's faith in people, ordinary people, by empowering them. I think that the historical record, much of which Petras cites in the article, demonstrates at least that pursuing a narrow nationalistic strategy may work in the short run to preserve hierarchical regimes, but such strategies will never serve the long term interests of building socially just societies and a peaceful, sustainable world community.
To accomplish the latter, there is simply no alternative to the empowerment of ordinary people, and to their support everywhere in the world against the tyranny of hierarchical, class-based, exploitative regimes.
One sector of the US economy is thriving: US weapons firms are doing big business in the Middle East.
To learn what kind of governments the Empire really supports, take a close look at one of the their favorite satraps of the region--United Arab Emirates:
The rapid expansion of the UAE military has the tacit support, if not outright blessing, of the U.S. government.
...There are at least two reasons for the administration’s position. First and foremost, it regards the UAE as one of its most important allies in the region. The Emirates supported both Iraq Wars, and it currently is involved in cracking down on the protest movement in Bahrain — it sent 500 police officers to suppress the revolt in the tiny Gulf kingdom. In the midst of the crackdown, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed was welcomed by the White House with open arms.
In a stealth legislative maneuver Governor Walker is trying to ram his attacks on public spending through an emergency session of the Wisconsin legislature.
Governor Walker’s Republican budget includes a $1.6 billion cut to schools, a $500 million cut to health care programs, a $250 million cut to the University of Wisconsin system and a 30 percent cut to out state’s technical college system, and the list goes on.
As a result [of the operations of the IMF and World Bank], bankers and other corporate predators strip mine countries of their material wealth and resources, shift them from public to private hands, crush democratic values, hollow out nations into backwaters, destroy middle class societies, and turn workers into serfs if they manage to have any means of employment.
As history offers an abundance of evidence, private banking institutions have always functioned this way. Even though institutions like the above and the Fed like to hide behind an elaborate facade of public-private control, they operationally always serve private financial interests. The latter gain wealth and power through their control over the engines of capitalist growth--major corporations which, of course, are nearly always privately owned and controlled. That is precisely why we, as individuals and whole societies throughout much of the world, have arrived at the situation weare in today: an overwhelming number of debtors (mostly taxpaying workers) beholden to a tiny group (about 1%) of creditors (owner-investors who hide their incomes in tax havens).
In looking at recent media reports "that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had ordered the rape of hundreds of women....", Scott recalls the many myths circulated by the Empire's war machine to manage the minds of American working people in supporting their past wars.
Click here to access this moving video in which Miko Peled, author of the book, The General's Son, reveals the fundamental truths about the Apartheid State and what motivated him to become a peace and social justice advocate for a new democratic, secular, and integrated state for both Jews and Arabs. Who is Mike Peled?
Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
View this video from RT in which Alexander Cockburn provides his perspective on the Israeli political control of US politicos. I wonder how much of that annual $3 billion plus aid to Israel is recycled back into funding the electoral campaigns of US Congress and the President.
“Democracia real ya” (“real democracy now”). This “Ya" in fact concentrates all the revolutionary potential of this magnificent mobilisation: we want change now, don’t try to put us to sleep with your promises of a better future; we begin to impose this change now, by the struggle here; this struggle is hard but a source of intelligence, joy, dignity here and now; it opens the door to another possible world now since yes, it already exists, in negative form, as the opposite of the current world.
The author examines the significance of the current rallying cry in the Spanish cities and towns and its demand for system change. The people in the streets see clearly that the existing system is leading to more social and environmental destruction.
Click here to access video translation of an inspiring message delivered in Spanish by "Anonymous" in Spain to the government, posted by P2P Foundation. (The translation is not the best for North Americans. For example, instead of "imaginary", a better translation is probably "concepts".)
This is an Anonymous message from the Spanish revolution to politicians, dictators and plutocrats all over the planet: Surprised by global disobedience? Let us explain your delicate situation.
