The ruling elite relies on the purchase of Western arms and US military bases for protection. The wealth of productive nations is syphoned to enrich the conspicuous consumption of the Saudi ruling family. The ruling elite finances the most fanatical, retrograde, misogynist version of Islam, “Wahhabi” a sect of Sunni Islam.
The US has been working covertly with Saudi Arabia and British military intelligence for more than three decades to foster and fuel al-Qaeda extremists, beginning in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union from the late 1970s until 1990.And, then there in considerable evidence of Saudi Arabian involvement in 9/11.
After the smoke clears and those involved look back, it's remarkable what has been achieved: not just the successful blockade, but groups who have never worked together before finding common ground, building new links, and showing those looking on – who were supportive but unable to join – that the D19-20 Alliance can deliver and is here to stay, which means more support and a stronger voice in the future. This is important to all European citizens, Brussels being the seat of European power, home to the European Parliament and Council, as well as the undemocratic, unelected Commission, which is one third of the Troika and responsible for imposing austerity-laced bailout packages on struggling European countries.
After the world’s attention moved on, the lack of international scrutiny gave the government the leeway it needed to mete out the sanctions and penalties it felt were warranted by the embarrassing show of civil disobedience and dissent.From this report we learn that the directors of the Turkish ruling class are frequently using a favorite method of their counterparts in the US, but applying it much more aggressively (only because the Turkish ruling class is much less secure than the US's): they are taking away jobs from journalists and others who express dissent in all forms of media including social media. Hence, underground alternative media that is financially supported by citizens must be established in this war of information and ideas in Turkey as well as in the US.
The past few months have witnessed a backlash of remarkable scope, affecting all levels of society.
Genetically engineered apples may be the next novelty food item to hit markets, if Canadian company Okanagan Specialty Fruits wins the praises of the USDA.And, as made clear in the article, there is little doubt about the outcome.
The marketing of fakethroughs is an important component of a general manipulation of the science media. But interference with the media is in turn only a part of the barely understood but vast web of influence by which the biotech industry meticulously orchestrates the perception of itself (and its products).See also this piece posted today entitled "Pharmaceutical firms accused of falsifying data in major Alzheimer’s study" which is on a related theme of corporate practices to deceive the public--although in this case it was not done via media journalists, but directly by corporations.
What is new today, and which wasn’t the case thirty years ago, is that individual industrial sectors such as the life science industry are nowadays sufficiently profitable, monopolistic, and global that they can and do coordinate, to the mutual benefit of their larger members, the flow of information that spans three distinct but interconnected domains of thought: the public domain (TV, radio, print), the scientific domain (peer-reviewed publications), and the policy domain (government reports and bureaucratic discussions).
The confrontation, presented by the corporate media as a struggle against Al Qaeda terrorists, has deep roots in the sectarian divisions that were instigated by the US war and occupation as part of a deliberate divide-and-rule strategy. They succeeded in pitting Iraq’s majority Shi’ite population against the minority Sunnis, while the Kurdish minority in the north has been allowed to pursue regional autonomy, while conflicts over borders and rights to oil wealth threaten to erupt into civil war there as well.For more information of the Empire's use of the "divide-and-rule strategy" see this, this, and this.
Today, Special Operations Command finds itself at a crossroads. It is attempting to influence populations overseas, while at home trying to keep Americans in the dark about its activities; expanding its reach, impact, and influence, while working to remain deep in the shadows; conducting operations all over the globe, while professing only to be operating in “a number of locations”; claiming worldwide deployments have markedly dropped in the last year, when evidence suggests otherwise.
If this was the end of the Turkish Uprising, then what end did the Turkish Uprising actually serve? And why is it still an interesting phenomenon for us today?
The Saudis’ increasing destabilization of the region is testament to just how desperate and isolated they’ve become. In many ways the country is still stuck in the middle ages, and the family that has reigned as an absolute monarchy for generations is determined that it will stay that way. However, there is a tide of change sweeping through the region and if history teaches us anything, it’s that governments that are unwilling to change will eventually be forgotten by time.The author provides an excellent summary of evidence of this Medieval kingdom's role in supporting terrorist activities throughout the Middle East in an attempt to ward off threats to it antiquated rule.
The scientific literature since 1991 contains a mountain of evidence confirming man-made global warming as true and no convincing evidence that it is false. Global warming denial is a house of cards.
An unsigned "editorial" appearing in the New York Times titled, "Democracy in Peril in Asia," most likely written by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), reiterates the disingenuous narrative peddled by the West regarding "democracy" in Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Thailand.
...the brewing discontent with what people endure today--in an era of space-age technology, amid ever-greater extremes of wealth--is forcing more and more people to question the dogmas and prejudices that justify the status quo. Socialists need to find every opportunity to give our answers to these questions, in a way that builds the capacity of our side to resist.The article provides a summary of promising worker achievements and struggles across the US with some of the best right here in the Seattle area.
As Steven Rattner explains,
Wage increases haven’t been paltry because the efficiency of the American worker has flagged; indeed, productivity has continued to chug along. But those productivity gains have simply not been passed on to workers. Between 2000 and 2012, productivity rose by 22 percent while wages increased by 7.7 percent. The divergence was particularly great over the last three years of that period – productivity up 4.6 percent and real wages down 1.1 percent. For this failure of the American worker to be rewarded for his growing output, blame a variety of factors, perhaps most important, globalization, which has allowed companies to move production to whatever part of the planet offers the lowest cost labor. In that respect, American workers remain in a race to the bottom.
Actually, it’s American employers who remain in a race to the bottom—and, during 2013, they continued to win.
Had I not experienced it myself, I would hardly believe that the apolitical people of Turkey, cowed by a history of coups d’Ă©tât, peer pressure and civil authoritarianism backed up by a vicious security apparatus would fill the streets of the country and resist for months after. We were there to protest the authoritarian front that found its voice in ErdoÄźan, and the intolerable assertiveness of a corrupt government. But the demonstrations spread so swiftly that I, along with many others, was puzzled and unable to grasp how and to what end things were happening.
Now, looking back, I have even more questions than I started out with. Of one thing I am certain: the resistance sparked by Gezi was a proud stance against neoliberal insolence....
Gezi: the name of a little-known and even less appreciated park in the heart of Istanbul’s booming BeyoÄźlu district. Generally known as a place to be avoided at night, when the small area adjacent to Taksim Square is taken over by drunks and drug addicts, who find shelter and security in the darkness provided by the shadows of the large trees. But this was before, before anyone could have even guessed that this obscure oasis, this last green refuge amid the encroaching concrete jungle, this biotope of fresh air courageously pumping out oxygen in a place where smog, toxic fumes and pollution are the norm, would be the rallying cry for thousands upon thousands of angry citizens from all walks of life.This first piece is an introduction and overview of the twenty articles that are to follow in the near future.
In at least four states that have nurtured the nation’s energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.
What caused these extreme temperatures? Climate scientists have a problem: because climate deals with averages and trends, we can’t attribute specific records to a particular cause.
But our research has made significant headway in identifying the causes of climate events, by calculating how much various factors increase the risk of extreme climate events occurring. And we have found sobering results.
...it allows us to begin to recognize the author's deep skepticism toward the revolutionaries' proposition that another world is possible. Al-Jalid [the name of the novel] elaborates a form of Left pessimism, a Marxist, anti-imperialist critique of injustice and oppression, but without the utopian promise of justice or emancipation.
Solutions to addiction based on correcting individual behavior are hopeless without analyzing the role of dislocation in capitalist society, argues Bruce K. Alexander in his paper The Roots of Addiction in a Free Market Society.This blogger introduces this thesis published in a longer PDF document authored by Bruce Alexander who is a Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University located in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Alexander's paper presents a radical thesis regarding addiction which enlarges the concept to apply to other forms other than the conventional forms such as alcohol and drugs.
The English word “addiction” came to be narrowly applied to excessive drug use in the 20th century, but was generally applied to non-drug habits during many previous centuries. There is ample clinical evidence that severe addictions to non-drug habits are every bit as dangerous and resistant to treatment as drug addiction.More importantly, his concept relegates the latter to symptoms instead of causes. He identifies the primary cause as "dislocation". By reading only this article, it was not clear to me what Alexander meant by this term. This article seems to suggest only a physical dislocation. But by reading sections of the longer PDF report by Alexander, it is clear to me that he means any significant dislocation or separation from a society's web of supports and social relationships. Here are some excerpts that point to this meaning:
It [dislocation] can arise from a natural disaster that destroys a person’s home or from a debilitating accident that bars the person from full participation in society. It can be inflicted by violence, e.g., by driving masses of people from their territory, or by abusing an individual child who thereafter shrinks from all human contact. It can be inflicted without violence, e.g., as when a parent instills an unrealistic sense of superiority that makes a child insufferable to others. It can be voluntarily chosen, e.g., in the single-minded pursuit of wealth in a “gold rush,” or in jumping at a “window of opportunity.” Finally, dislocation can be universal if a society systematically curtails psychosocial integration in all its members. Universal dislocation is endemic in free market society.
.... Because western society is now based on free market principles that mass-produce dislocation, and because dislocation is the precursor of addiction, addiction to a wide variety of pursuits is not the pathological state of a few but, to a greater or lesser degree, the general condition in western society. Because western free market society provides the model for globalization, mass addiction is being globalized, along with the English language, the Internet, and Mickey Mouse.The concept also suggests alienation which has been written about throughout history, but in the era under capitalism, such names as Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Erich Fromm are some of the most prominent authors who have linked capitalism with alienation. Alexander builds on this edifice to link "dislocation" or alienation to behaviors characterized as addiction, and even more specifically to drug addiction. The fact that most other Western intellectuals have not, shows the widespread enforcement of capitalist values among capitalist ideologs in defense of their system.
Vacuum is the absence of matter.
But according to the New York Times the only "matter" that counts is the U.S. military.
The current situation is characterized by a Troika that still pushes for even more austerity and by governments that are doing window-dressing by claiming to see a positive development for the times ahead, which will never become reality if the current policy is continued. Neither in the Troika nor in the national governments, talks are about what should really be on stage: a significant debt relief in many countries – not only for the public, but also the private sector -, a restoration of public services and significant investment for facing some of the great challenges of our time, such as climate change and energy shortage.
By publishing this newsletter with reports from the countries affected by the Troika, we hope to be part of a growing movement that one day will be able to change this.