A Call for a Democratic Economy

from Yes! Magazine. The author reviews a new book by Raj Patel entitled, The Value of Nothing, that calls for an economy brought under democratic control.

Patel’s solution is one of radical democracy, but radical only when compared to our current celebrity political culture. Instead of voting for our favorite overlord every four years, citizens should be organizing and taking an active role in establishing the rules that govern their own lives. These kinds of societies have existed before, and exist today. Patel’s primary models are ancient Athenians and the contemporary Zapatistas. For the Zapatistas, democracy is a way of life, rather than a rare and unpleasant ritual. 

Notice how the timid liberal reviewer assures us that the proposal is "radical only when compared to our current celebrity political culture". The proposal is very radical, indeed! It is one that the ruling class, whose rule depends on the their dominance of the economy and society, would never tolerate without a fight.

The ruling class frequently make use of the word, "democracy". But for them, it is only a buzz word that has been emptied of all substance, or it is just a synonym for capitalism. They know that for working people everywhere, it is mostly a long lost dream of everyone participating in the affairs of society. Hence they often use it to conjure up these feelings just like they drape scantily clad women over the latest cars in order to sell them.

A Union of Capital

from New Left Project. The article features an interview with a Dutch socialist who explains how European capitalist elites have hyjacked any element of democratic process to rule over European economy--in their interests, of course.

...it involves a process of ‘depoliticisation’. So the decision to make Greece’s workers pay the bills run up by the tax-dodging rich and their allies in Wall Street ceases to be seen as a vicious attack on the working class and comes to be defined as an unavoidable policy based on technical details beyond the understanding of mortal man or woman.

Washington Post and transparency: total strangers

by Glenn Greenwald from Salon. This esteemed investigative journalist, formerly a constitutional law and civil rights litigator, looks at how mainstream media manages the news while acting like the secretive government agencies that they protect.

With Income Gap at 80-Year High, Solutions Remain Elusive

from The Washington Independent. 

A new report shows that the income gap between rich and poor in America is at an eight-decade high — the largest differential since the period immediately preceding the Great Depression. And economists fear that the education and job-creation programs that could bridge this gap are lacking in the recessionary economy.

Shrinking Labor Force Masks Deepening Jobless Crisis

from The Washington Independent. The author offers the real stories behind the unemployment headlines and the so-called recovery.

Clinton Renews U.S. Claims On Former Soviet Space

by Rick Rozoff from Voltaire Net. 

The article illustrates and reveals a lot about the hypocrisies of US Empire agents and the very selection of such people, as they move the Empire into areas formerly under the domination of the former Soviet Union.

The Democratic Party, a pretense of an alternative party of the US Empire, offered much ballyhooed new alternatives to the American electorate in the 2008 show elections: a Black man and a woman while proclaiming changes in policies. Many people were hoodwinked, once again, and enthusiastically voted for them. The Black man is a man of mixed race who was thoroughly indoctrinated by a white, successful, banker grandmother. The woman is the wife of the promoter of the globalization phase of capitalism that has sent so many US jobs to foreign countries. It seems so easy to fool the American people who are so desperate for change that they are willing to believe it when comes packaged in different wrappings.

The following quote reveals why the ruling class moved Obama quickly into the role of President in the play called "democracy":

Two years after being catapulted from the Illinois state legislature (where few outside his Chicago district had heard of him) into the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama spoke at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs...:

"We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world in order to defeat and deter conventional threats....I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines....No President should ever hesitate to use force – unilaterally if necessary – to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened."

U.S. Hijacks ICC conference

from Voltaire Net. Read this to learn how the Empire has its way with international organizations that might impede its rule. The ICC is the International Criminal Court. 

The ICC Review Conference in Kampala last month reached the historic agreement to include the crime of agression under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. However, the United States successfully maneuvred to subvert the process.

Time out

A number of years ago a cartoonist, Fred Wright, illustrated some lessons about the profit system.

Jump Starting the First Amendment

from Counterpunch. 

The tired argument that the suspension of a free press and/or free speech is sometimes necessary in the name of national security is quickly exposed as little more than a mask for the true underlying motive which is not national security, but national greed.

With reference to the last "national" in this quote, I think it would be more accurate to replace it with "ruling class", or better yet, replace "national greed" with "ruling class security". Whenever a document such as a constitution gets in the way of what a ruling class wants to do, they simply ignore or work around it. Hence, there is no point in expressing moral outrage over such commonplace events as this unless it is to demonstrate the real nature of class governance.

Liberal writers such as this cannot envision a thoroughly democratic society, and therefore, a classless society such as we would have under Inclusive Democracy and the other alternatives listed on this blog.

Israel: a Failing Colonial Project?

from Counterpunch. 

...Israel is not an autonomous state.

It could not sustain its current military posture without the annual military grant of some three billion dollars from the United States and the tax-free donations from American Jews. More importantly, without the US veto at the United Nations, Israel could not continue its occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, its siege of Gaza, its pre-emptive wars against its neighbors, and its policy of assassinations against Arabs. In short, without US-backed immunity, Israel would become a pariah state.

The Worst of Times, the Best of Times

by Alexander Cockburn from Counterpunch. 

The author looks at the "state of the Union". Of course, it is not pretty, but it seems to be the way the system works. You see, this is just another normal economic cycle. It's the natural state of things. So accept it, and move on. Get a life, if you can. (There doesn't seem to be an emoticon for dripping sarcasm.)

Private Universities Spend Twice as Much as Publics on Teaching

from Bloomberg News. 

The article reveals how, like most everything else, education is also a commodity under the capitalist system. It also demonstrates the deterioration of access to education under neoliberalism--you know, the latest version of this barbaric system of capitalism that is accelerating the war on working people, the climate, and the environment.

What Is the Ultimate Yachting Experience on the Mediterranean?

by Jamie Johnson from Vanity Fair. This is my weekly offering about the top 1% of our fellow Americans.  After all, they have worries and concerns too. We are all in the same boat and we need to keep in touch with all the passengers.

Obama Is Slow on Global Warming Legislation

from US News and World Report. Just because the ruling class changes the cast of actors in the play called "Government", why should anyone expect changes?

Drill or Die

from Common Dreams. The title refers to the oil industries public relations theme that more drilling is the only alternative. The article goes on to explore the power of Big Oil over all the institutions of government.

...politics is all about perception, and if Obama is to survive politically in a corporate political culture, his options, at least in his own mind, are limited. Taking on Big Oil means engaging in a power struggle with one of the most powerful forces in the political universe -- what some have called the “corporate oligopoly.”

If past behavior is any indicator, that is something Obama is unlikely to do in his political lifetime. The president understands all too well that it is the corporate oligopoly who helped put him where he is today -- and it is they who can take him out.

Austerity for workers, tax cuts for business—Europe’s class policy

from World Socialist Web Site. Class war is raging in Europe as in the US.

Big business, the banks and the super rich are being increasingly relieved of paying taxes. The resulting deficits in state budgets, exacerbated by the hundreds of billions awarded to the banks in government rescue packages, are now being addressed through a combination of increased consumption taxes, which fall most heavily on the working class, and savage cuts in social programs and public sector jobs and wages.

Was the Social Security Money “Borrowed” or “Stolen”?

by Allen W. Smith from Dissident Voice. 

Read how the ruling class "borrowed" worker's Social Security fund, and now don't want to pay it back. It's like Warren Buffet said, "yes, there's class war, and we are winning!"

Over the past 25 years, five presidents, and the members of Congress, have participated in the great Social Security scam.  All Social Security contributions made by working Americans, except the amount which was needed to pay current retirement benefits, has been funneled into the general fund  and used for non-Social Security purposes.  Some like to say that the government just “borrowed” the money during the time period when it was not needed to pay benefits.

Time out

What work is really worth

from Le Monde Diplomatique. 

Most people who grow up in a capitalist society have little idea of how much indoctrination they have been subject to in order to turn them into true believers of the religion of capitalism. This article refers to a new study that will help you to step out of that soul destroying indoctrination to look at the value of individual work from a social utility point of view. If one understands this point of view, then it is obvious that capitalism does not serve social needs, but only the material needs of the few who can "win" in this barbaric system. 

Imagine for a moment we asked a crucial, and crucially different, economic question – not what are you paid, but what is the social return on the investment that is your pay? What do you contribute to society in exchange for your pay? It’s a reversed version of the usual monetary value question: what do you contribute to shareholders for your cost?

But the study's researchers reach some astounding conclusions: they favor changes to the subsystem of remuneration under capitalism ("market system"), progressive taxation, and restrictions on so-called "free trade". The latter, of course, permits corporations to outsource their operations to cheap labor countries where oppressive labor laws and little environmental enforcement exist.

Thus, it is clear that the researchers have also been so thoroughly indoctrinated that they cannot see that the remuneration of work, "free trade", oppressive taxation policies, etc. are products of the system. Apparently, like Margaret Thatcher and company, they don't see any alternative to capitalism. Or could it be that they dare not question the system if they are to continue receiving research grants and career advancement?

Spinning a Resource War in Afghanistan

from Toward Freedom. 

This is the way the capitalist ruling classes look at the war in Afghanistan and thus shape news coverage in positive ways to keep you on board the war effort:

In the world of such cold and inhuman accounting, the price tag on over 1,500 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan (or who died of their wounds in military hospitals such as Landstuhl in Germany, and other emergency care centers outside of the region) might seem acceptable. Assuming that on average a soldier posted in Afghanistan was deployed there for 2 years at a cost of $1 million dollars a year, the 1,500 lost lives purely and coldly seen from an economic vantage point have cost the US Government approximately $2 billion. Roughly calculated that amounts to less than one percent of the mineral treasures assumed to be buried in Afghanistan, once extracted.(14) Those who stand to gain from any mineral bonanza in Afghanistan are most likely not those who have paid the immeasurable personal and emotional toll of losing loved ones in the Afghan conflict.