NOTICE: Because I will be leaving shortly on a five day trip, I will not be able to post any articles (except the one following this note) until next Wednesday or Thursday. If you would like me to notify you when I'm back, email me to let me know. Meanwhile there are a number of great posts from the past that you can access from my site.
I welcome people who share my view that the capitalist system is on a collision course with a planet capable of sustaining human (and other life) to post articles with me that will help us to head off this catastrophe. If interested, email me.
Today I'll leave you with one article from Joe Bageant that I just received.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Global Food Security Act, S.384, to give $billions to Monsanto, other GMO producers
from Food Freedom.
Ben Burkett, National Family Farm Coalition president and Mississippi family farmer, added, “Corporate control over inputs and the free trade agenda have destroyed the livelihoods of so many farmers at home and abroad. That’s why farmers worldwide are calling for food sovereignty—the right to choose fair and sustainable farming practices that protect our local food and livelihood security. This is what works best for our farms and communities.”
University Struggles at the End of the Edu-Deal
from Mute.
...for the majority of students, acquiring a certificate is no guarantee for the future which promises simply more precarity and constant self-recycling. Many students realise that capitalism has nothing to offer this generation, that no ‘new deal' is possible...
Obama's Nuclear Surprise
from Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia). I find that it is often useful to peruse foreign publications to find out information on your own country that is missing from your domestic media. This article provides a good context for understanding the strategy behind the US administrations', current and former, efforts to reduce nuclear weapons. (The article seems to contain one mistranslation re "450 system".)
Congressional Pressure Can Help End the War, Saving Many Lives
from Just Foreign Policy. Don't know if you believe in letters to your US Congress people, but I occasionally write them. To the right of this article is a convenient way to send an email to your representatives protesting another bill to authorize $33 billion more for the war in Afghanistan. Funny isn't it that in contrast to the recent health care bill, this one will likely fly through Congress, and the media won't even bother to report it.
Frontline Fronts for Corporations Instead of Public
by Dr. Margaret Flowers from After Downing Street. Both PBS and NPR function as major "gatekeepers" of opinion in the US in the never ending efforts by the ruling class to "manufacture consent".
...just as it was in the health “debate,” single payer, improved Medicare for All, was also excluded from the film. The major point of the influence of health industry dollars on the reform process which should have been mentioned is that these dollars were spent in order to restrict the debate and protect industry profits. The lucrative status quo would have been threatened if single payer had been openly discussed because a publicly-financed national health program can provide high quality universal health care and control health care costs, something that a private insurance based system cannot accomplish.
The hedge fund parasites
from Socialist Worker.
While the mainstream media has been agog over the massive payouts to hedge fund managers, few journalists have asked a simple question: What benefit do hedge funds provide for all these riches? And how can it be that a handful of investors are reaping billions at a time when the unemployment rate is still pushing 10 percent, few jobs are being created, and average wages are stagnant or falling?
Special Report: Are regulators dropping the ball on biocrops?
from Reuters news service. Finally, a major news service that is reporting on widespread concerns from independent sources regarding the safety of genetically modified food. However, I doubt very much that many news outlets will pick this up in their coverage.
It appears to me, and many others, that reliance of the anemic oversight of the official regulatory agencies (FDA and USDA) is comparable to the oversight, or lack thereof, provided by similar agencies over the banking and finance corporations that has led to the economic collapse.
It appears to me, and many others, that reliance of the anemic oversight of the official regulatory agencies (FDA and USDA) is comparable to the oversight, or lack thereof, provided by similar agencies over the banking and finance corporations that has led to the economic collapse.
A common complaint is that the U.S. government conducts no independent testing of these biotech crops before they are approved, and does little to track their consequences after.Then the article cites some independent research that has revealed evidence to suggest serious problems caused by the consumption of GMO products.
The developers of these crop technologies, including Monsanto and its chief rival DuPont, tightly curtail independent scientists from conducting their own studies. Because the companies patent their genetic alterations, outsiders are barred from testing the biotech seeds without company approvals.
Why Are Corporate Groups Funding the Tea Party?
by Shamus Cooke from Global Research.
...only three unifying concepts [of the National Tea Party Federation] were announced: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets — all vague terms overused by any corporate Republican.
...Because the three unifying ideas are so vague, special interests will fill in the blanks when needed. For example, does a “constitutionally limited government” allow the economy to be dominated by giant corporations? Does “fiscal responsibility” mean that the U.S. should spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on foreign wars? Does “free markets” mean that Wall Street should be allowed to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants? The answers to these questions, according to the National Tea Party Federation, will all be YES!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Confidential document reveals Obama's hardline US climate talk strategy
from the Guardian.
A document accidentally left on a European hotel computer and passed to the Guardian reveals the US government's increasingly controversial strategy in the global UN climate talks.
World Bank's $3.75bn coal plant loan defies environment criticism
from the Guardian.
The [Obama] administration had come under strong pressure from Democratic leaders in Congress as well as environmental organisations to try to block the loan.
'The Fourteenth Banker,' Anonymous Bank Insider, Describes His Moral Crisis: 'The System Is Built To Be Gamed'
from Huffington Post. There are exceptions to the rule that most high level banking and financial people are sociopathic, but such people have to keep their mouths shut or remain anonymous. The latter may be the case with this banker who tells all from his vantage point. On the other hand, the article suggests that he is a lower level banker.
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis
by Henry A. Giroux from Truthout. 3800 words and at this point I've read only a small part of it, but I have a lot of respect for this author.
...teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.
Can the US dollar collapse? (8:43m video and script)
by Jane D'Arista from Real News Network. This is a first segment of an interview with this economist who appears to have some excellent insights re the US currency and debts.
"Never Even a Whisper" at Fed's Open Market Committee Meetings [FOMC]
from Washington's Blog. The title refers to a statement by William White, a chief economist at BIS who "As far back as 2003, ... implored central bankers to rethink their strategies, noting that instability in the financial markets had triggered inflation, the "villain" in the global economy...." The 18:43m video in the article features a talk by White where he tries to figure out why the warnings were ignored.
As the author writes:
As the author writes:
These comments show that the central bankers knew exactly what was going on, a full two-and-a-half years before the big bang. All the ingredients of the looming disaster had been neatly laid out on the table in front of them: defective rating agencies, loans repackaged to the point of being unrecognizable, dubious practices of American mortgage lenders, the risks of low-interest policies. But no action was taken. Meanwhile, the Fed continued to raise interest rates in nothing more than tiny increments....IMO (and I just heard White on the video say essentially the same thing!), they ignored the warnings because capitalists are sociopaths who are motivated by private short term gain and there were huge gains to be had. The system inevitably filters out normal people who have a social conscience and care about future generations and a healthy earth.
Keynes versus Hayek
by Henry C K Liu from Asia Times Online. (A re-post of an article of his from 1999) The two page article is a good summary of the two schools of capitalist economic theory and the application of each to keep the inherently unstable capitalist system running over the past 75 years. Liu, a highly educated economist, is a Keynesian, but his understanding of socialism is flawed by the historical stillborn birth of socialism in the Soviet Union. Hence "socialism" for many bourgeois educated people has come to mean an economy and society governed by a state bureaucracy instead of the soviet [local worker] councils which was the original intention. Unfortunately, it was the former which actually developed shortly after the revolution in the Soviet Union. Why this happened has been subject to endless debate and obfuscated and distorted by capitalist propaganda.
Nuclear Obama
by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online. So, what's behind the current political theater production that might be called, "Nuclear Obama", otherwise known as the 47-nation nuclear security summit. This astute political theater critic tells you his observations, and how much of it has to do with reality.
The not-so-hidden agenda of "nuclear Obama" was basically to gather global support for a tougher round of sanctions on Iran. Obama wants new sanctions in place by June.
Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital: The Definition of Compromised
from Naked Capitalism. Yves Smith casts her penetrating eyes on the sub-prime mortgage debacle to reveal more hidden-from-the-public facts regarding this scandal such as the fact that Emanuel Rahm was a key player. So one can be sure that no new onerous regulations (to the financial industry) will be passed during the current administration, or likely any other under the capitalist system.
As the Magnetar-Rahm connection highlights, Obama raised more money from financial services players than any previous presidential candidate, so it can hardly be a surprise that he and his minions are happy to give the industry a free pass. Key policy figures maintain that no one was at fault, that there was a pervasive lack of regulation, and there are therefore no bad actors. That party line also means that destructive behavior is and will remain unquestioned, unexamined, uncorrected, and unpunished.
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