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.
Taibbi, like most reform critics of our capitalist society, complains (sheds crocodile tears) about the effects of the 2008 economic collapse on the poor. Of course, this is true about all the periodic crashes of the capitalist economy.
... everyone in the upper echelon of the finance community got Paid In Full in the bailout, even the exact people who screwed up the worst. But outside Manhattan? It was like Warren Buffet’s partner Charlie Munger sneered: People should just “suck it in and cope.”
The biggest victims in this miserable story turned out to be poor, nonwhite, and elderly.
He also writes:
The deal those bankers cooked up was to save the banks from capitalism.
Losers must be allowed to lose. It’s the first and most important regulatory mechanism in a market economy.
But by 2008, the banks had simply grown too big and interconnected to allow normal market processes to take place.
Notice that Taibbi, like other reformist critics, limits his
criticism and suggests that we need only to make improvements on
capitalism. He apparently doesn't understand that the system was designed to serve a sociopathic few at the expense of the many, and this phenomenon that he complains about is inevitable. Such critics deflect any basic criticisms of the system which are now becoming obvious: the system itself is the problem.
Aftermath Of Disasters Reveal A Hidden Truth This was a segment of last's night RT's Redacted Tonight program (carried on RT every Thursday evening and picked up on YouTube the next day--Fridays) that features comic Lee Camp and others. The "Hidden Truth"? Well, watch the segment and draw your own conclusions. (Tip: it has something to do with the behavior that's promoted under the system of capitalism.)
Actually, I advise people who need relief from viewing, reading, or listening to mainstream corporate sources and opinions to view this program. It is a powerful antidote to the corporate issued poison which can produce so many kinds of delusional behavior in otherwise normal adults.
I thoroughly agree with this assessment of the 9/11 false-flag event which enabled our capitalist masters to accelerate imperialist adventures, the domestic suppression of dissent, and impose economic sacrifices--all characteristics of the final stage of capitalism which is fascism. Notice that the word "fascism" is not a meaningless smear word, but a very meaningful concept that sheds light on what is happening in the USA and much of its empire.
Ford describes the two factions of fascist capitalists fighting it out in Washington.
Two contending, yet interrelated, forms of fascism are vying for supremacy in the U.S. Both fascisms are anchored in the leadership of their respective duopoly parties, which together monopolize the national political conversation. Thus, fascism is “mainstream” politics in the United States, as reflected in the daily diatribes between the warmongering, Russian stooge-hunting, neo-McCarthyite, corporate Democratic “Resistance” and the race-mongering, Dixiecrat-Republican, law and order-loving (but also white mob rule-friendly) troglodytes aligned with Donald Trump.
“Fascism is “mainstream” politics in the United States.”
These are not polar opposite fascisms, of course. Both are American exceptionalist — another term for imperialist — and both are thoroughly capitalist, tailored to the rule of the rich. The major difference between the two, is race.
Putin-Nazi Paranoia by CJ Hopkins from his blog Consent Factory, Inc. This satirical post is to help you psychologically to cope with the factional fighting among fascist capitalists.
It is ironic, and perhaps wholly coincidental, that insurgent groups as diverse as Occupy Wall Street and the Black Panthers were shut down when they began demonstrating that they could build (small scale, ultimately utopian) alternative institutions. Elections are intended to change the cast of characters without challenging existing institutions.
Sorry Urie, but I don't consider this coincidental. Carefully managed elections have been established as a ruse by the ruling class to fool once again the American people into believing that they have they live in some kind of democracy. (This comment was added at 8:15 AM CT on Sept. 13.)
The following YouTube audio presentation is a speech that, I estimate, was delivered by Alfie Kohn sometime in the latter 1980s. I discovered it as a comment-response to Patrice Greanville's recent post entitled "Of militarism’s wedding to sports—not an accidental match" from his website. I was very surprised that I never encountered his views before--the likely reason is because our capitalist culture forbids such views.
The video made a very powerful connection to my life's experience, and in addition, Kohn's speech touches on a very profound issue of which few leftists are aware: the comprehensive influence that a ruling class has on every aspect of culture--ranging from institutions down to our very behaviors and thoughts. This has been a theme that I have been hammering at for the past nearly nine years that I've devoted to this website. Thus, the topic is very current and will remain so until revolutionaries become aware of this insight and act accordingly. I don't think that even Alfie Kohn is aware of this comprehensive nature of class rule. In this speech he acknowledges that he doesn't thoroughly understand this overwhelming emphasis on competition and the conventional view of human nature throughout our culture, and he correctly asserts that more study is needed of this phenomenon. He has made a career out of talking to mostly educators about how they can create positive change by teaching cooperative values and encouraging cooperative modes of behavior in their classrooms. This, I am thoroughly convinced, is a mistaken notion. I think his career is an excellent illustration of this faulty notion: these competitive values and behaviors are worse than ever before, and wars and the assaults on the environment threaten our very existence as a human species! We can't change beliefs and behaviors without changing the fundamental structure of our societies!
Nothing less than a thoroughly democratic revolution can promote cooperative values and behavior. Yes, that means taking away the cornerstones of capitalism: the sanctity of ownership of social property (nearly all property beyond strictly private property), inheritance of wealth, etc, and replacing capitalist class rule with a thoroughly bottom-up and a comprehensive participatory governance of our societies. The only question remains is how this can be accomplished. This question must be answered--and soon before it's too late--by a people's revolutionary movement that prefigures in its very organization a participatory governing structure.
Click here to access article by Tom Luongo from Strategic Culture Foundation. (I thank an activist for alerting me to this article.)
The author provides three very good reasons why our masters (Deep State) behind the puppet show of the US government will choose the "saving face in Syria" option. The Ziocon faction of the Deep State won't like it, but cooler heads concerned about US power and profits will prevail.
Click here to access article by James Corbett of The Corbett Report. (Slightly edited the first paragraph at 6:34 PM CT for greater clarity. In this brilliant article Corbett furnishes us with an abundance of well-documented evidence that leads to the conclusion that numerous war games, false communications, and other distractions were intentionally planned and executed to disable any effective military response to the real hijacked and/or radio controlled planes. After the fact of 9/11 various government officials only offered more lies and coverups to conceal what really happened, and refuse to re-open an investigation as to what really happened on 9/11/2001.
The truth of what happened that morning would be remarkably easy to come to if those involved in the planning and execution of the day’s training events were to open the records and allow independent examination of the precise situations that were being trained that day, how those scenarios were arrived at, who planned them, who was in charge of them, what radar injects and false reports and live-fly simulations were taking place, how these exercise inputs were relayed to technicians and air traffic controllers, and what steps were taken at what times to allow those events to continue even as the attacks they were supposed to be simulating were actually happening in real life.
But we shouldn’t expect the guilty parties to indict themselves, and so it is no surprise at all that the official government investigation into 9/11 studiously avoided facing any of these issues head on.
Most of the carefully planned preparations for the 9/11 false-flag attack were performed by a top-down command structure of the military. Thus, a number of people simply followed the orders issued at the very top of this command who enjoyed virtually unlimited power, and who now enjoy even more power since 2001. This historical stunt illustrates fascism in action in the USA. It is no surprise to me that there is a vigorous coverup because it is clear to that a monstrous crime of such scale could only be carried out with the approval of a major section of the ruling capitalist class.
On this 17th anniversary of history's top false-flag event in New York City, many writers and organizations are publishing or posting articles undermining the official story fed to us by the capitalist ruling class via their media corporations. In this article Curtin describes a major contribution in this effort to reveal the criminal deceit of our masters in the form of a book entitled 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation.
The authors of this essential book, David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth, and all their colleagues who have contributed to this volume, have long been at the front lines trying to wake people up to the real news about 9/11. They have battled against three U.S. presidents, a vast propaganda machine “strangely” allied with well-known leftists, and a corporate mass media intent on serving deep-state interests, all of whom have used illogic, lies, and pseudo-science to conceal the terrible truth. Yet despite the establishment’s disinformation and deceptions, very many people have come to suspect that the official story of the September 11, 2001 attacks is not true.
With the publication of 9/11Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation, they now have a brilliant source book to use to turn their suspicions into certitudes.
Also, you might be interested in an article entitled "9/11 In Context" by "Washington" who reviews much (not all) of the history of false-flag events used by various ruling classesin their rather desperate attempts to acquire wealth and to dominate others.
Corbett is running a series of reports on the Afghan war and 9/11, and this excellent, well-documented article (in my opinion) is the best of them all. (For the others, see this, this, this, and this.) He introduces this outstanding article with this statement:
How did the war in Afghanistan start? And how did NATO become involved in this conflict? These details are never discussed because they have for nearly two decades been hidden behind a shroud of secrecy. But now, after nearly two decades of lies, the remarkable truth about the secret documents that helped launch the Afghan war can finally be revealed. This is the story of The Secret Lie That Started the Afghan War.
After he introduces well documented evidence, he reaches this compelling conclusion:
17 years of warfare and bloodshed. 17 years of attack and counter-attack. 17 years of tears and shattered lives. 17 years of lies. And all of it based on the foundational lie of 9/11, and this virtually unknown document.
But now the truth of this deception is in our hands. And it is only by exposing that deception that we can ever hope to derail the wars waged in its name, and stop the death and destruction it has wrought.
Click here to access an article by a Brit by the pseudonym of "Shoestring" reposted on Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Founded five years after the historic false-flag event of 9/11/01, this organization has been slowly gaining support by an increasing number (over 3000 as of this date) of architects and engineers bothered by the obvious contradictions of the report offered officially by the ruling class's government compared to the evidence. This article relates to only a few of the contradictions.
At least three notable anomalous events occurred at the World Trade Center in the weeks and months leading up to September 11, 2001, which may have related to the imminent terrorist attacks but could not have been caused by al-Qaeda, the group supposedly responsible for 9/11.
Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch. (Thanks go to an activist for alerting me to this article.)
I've long followed the writings of such people as Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, etc. Actually the longest was Alexander Cochburn, the co-founder of this website. (I've been thinking that it is past time that I added Paul Street to this list.) This list consists of people of the highly "educated" upper-middle class who have, on the one hand, written articles critical of the capitalist ruling classes, and on the other hand, pursued careers which served these ruling capitalist classes. I see them as severely compromised by the many benefits that they have enjoyed in their careers.
Some have hidden behind leftist rhetoric of resistance to capitalist rule much like CounterPunch or The Nation; some like Chris Hedges (author of The Cancer of Occupy) late in their careers found their duties and/or their masters so distasteful that they could no long pursue such careers. Some like Alexander Cockburn were compromised by the riches of their inheritances from former ruling classes. I consider all of them as leftist dilettantes who write and speak in leftist rhetoric but have always refused to seriously engaged themselves in revolutionary activities against the capitalist ruling classes. In this article, I think that Street unintentionally offers such an illustration by describing an incident involving Douglas Ruskoff, another highly educated person who occasionally was critical of the ruling class:
In an essay bearing the suitably appropriate title “Survival of the Richest,” the leading academic “media theorist” and “digital economics” professor, lecturer, and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff tells of an invitation he accepted last year to “a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was,” Rushkoff writes. “by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of ‘the future of technology.’”
Notice that Rushkoff had no difficulty accepting such a rewarding invitation; and even though he felt deceived to what the rich were requiring of him, he continued to offer his expertise in order to keep the generous fee.
I began to reflect on all these do-gooder, pretentious leftists and my experiences with them. I remembered how the sociology material we were given in the "higher educational" institution I attended in the early 1960s always portrayed the working class as inclined to authoritarianism (fascism) and motivated by short-term goals--hence, they were disparaged. Weren't Rushkoff's experience and that of most all of the other well-educated well-trained academics illustrations of people being motivated by short-term rewards? And I remember that when Bill Moyer asked Chris Hedges about an apparent contradiction in the latter's life (see segment from 41:20m to 43:30m in this interview), Hedges fumbled around to concoct a self-justifying explanation.
I've concluded that we should not take these compromised people seriously because in the end they will always be loyal to the ruling class that sustains them in a relatively luxurious lifestyle. Likewise, no serious revolutionary organization should ever let such people take leadership roles.