The Illusion of Democracy

Click here to access article by Gilbert Mercier from News Junkie Post.

Although I differ with Mercier that we have ever had, except for very brief periods, a real democracy since the beginning of civilization, he provides a good description of the fake democracy we have today:

The United Kingdom offers the example of the phony difference between Labor, the party of warmonger in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tony Blair, and Tory, the party of warmonger in Libya, Afghanistan and Syria, David Cameron. This observation extends, of course, to the fake choice between Democrats and Republicans in the United States: the names change periodically, but the neoliberal imperialist policies remain the same. In reality, the pseudo two-party system accommodates a one-party power structure that is financed and ruled by the same people everywhere and serves identical interests. This fake two-party system maintains the appearance of democracy by giving people the impression that voting matters. If voting makes no difference, then what can be done?

Then he goes on to hint at the solution: revolution and the study of what real democracy is and how it can be achieved.

In the aftermath of such a revolution, or ideally before it, we must redefine the parameters of what should guarantee representative governance in real democracy with common people’s rule.  

A Small Band of Activists Is Humiliating an Israeli Shipping Giant

Click here to access article by Murtaza Hussain from The Intercept.

Capping a series of victories by a modest band of pro-Palestinian activists, an Israel-based shipping company has re-routed a container ship from the Port of Oakland, where protestors had vowed to keep the ship from unloading, to an alternate destination in Russia.

The company, Zim Integrated Shipping Services is one of the largest cargo shipping outfits in the world, but of late it has seen its operations seriously disrupted by a small group of activists motivated by the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement (BDS), which targets companies implicated in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

Positive shopping experience

Click here if you wish to access the original posting on Max Gustafson's website. 

In this cartoon I think the Gustafson is mostly referring to people in the One Percent who already have so much stuff that they are looking to space travel out of sheer boredom and another way to spend their money. Although they've recently had a few mishaps and a "tough day", it looks like these capitalists will push ahead--especially with so much money already invested and so many space travel deposits from millionaires in their pockets. Of course, we in the Ninety-Nine Percent are not forgotten in this campaign to consume: although we don't have any money, we are urged to be good citizens by shopping with credit cards.

Watch Jon Stewart's hilarious takedown of a Koch ad

Access this article from The Grist.

Jon Stewart has fun with a Koch ad; and while doing so, points to some sad truths about oligarchic control of our country which, in turn, dominates most of the world.

Suing the State: The Hidden Rules Within EU-US Trade Deal

Click here if you wish to access the original posting of this 7:58m video at Raging Bull-Shit. 

This short video focuses on the central evil of these neoliberal trade agreements. In this latest neoliberal stage of capitalism's natural development, we see the capitalist class removing the last obstacles to their rule--laws established in national parliaments that protect the interests of citizens.

This is not to argue that there ever was true democracy since the era of civilization began. Although we often appreciate all the blessings for human health, security, and happiness that humans have created during this era, there is another tendency that has caused much grief. A few humans were not satisfied with their legitimate share of these benefits, and have through violence and cunning secured not only far more than their share, but the ability to secure ever more wealth and its companion, power. Capitalism, which has evolved out of this tendency, has greatly accelerated it. Now we see a tiny class of "owners" intent upon removing the last vestiges of influence by the vast majority. These neoliberal capitalists are now so powerful that they intend to establish the principle that private profit will always have priority over the public's interest. 

Zombies Are Us: The Walking Dead in the American Police State

Click here to access article by John W. Whitehead  from The Rutherford Institute.

Whitehead focuses our attention on the significance of the zombie theme proliferating in contemporary American culture--something unfamiliar to me because I avoid what I consider as cultural trash. However, there are some important reasons why such entertainment is produced and consumed.

Fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us. [my emphasis]

Nowhere is this epidemic of fear and paranoia more aptly mirrored than in the culture’s fascination with zombies, exacerbated by the hit television series The Walking Dead, in which a small group of Americans attempt to survive in a zombie-ridden, post-apocalyptic world where they’re not only fighting off flesh-eating ghouls but cannibalistic humans.

Election Boycott Advocates, rising

Click here to access article from The Greanville Post. (my comments were amended at 6:30pm Seattle time.)

There appears to be substantial numbers of people on the left who view election boycotts as a next significant "action" against the  takeover of the government by capitalist elites. This article also contains a sub-post of an article posted this past summer from Black Agenda Report entitled "Making the Case for an Election Boycott" which also argues this.

An organized election boycott has the potential of channeling the mistrust that most left-leaning folks have with the US imperial state into concrete political action. Instead of electing city council members, let’s confront our municipal officials that are hell-bent on selling neighborhoods and assets to the corporate ruling class.  Let’s confront our elected officials in Washington for their service of empire and corporate power.  The left’s most important task in this period is to take principled positions against US imperialism. Electing “third party” candidates into this machinery won’t do this, but campaigns such as an election boycott give us a chance to fight for transformation of the imperialist system we so desperately need. 

It seems to me that it is questionable that arguing an inaction--not voting--qualifies as a political action, and that it will by itself lead to a "transformation of the imperialist system". As has been reported earlier in the article, many people are already not voting. On the affirmative side, one could argue that it could be a way of consciousness raising about the phoniness of capitalist formal democratic institutions. Yet, I cannot go along with this proposal by itself. It could also encourage more passivity by citizens who are already very demoralized. It also can be argued that by occasionally voting for a less fascist candidate, we can slow the descent into outright fascism which provides us more time and latitude to engage in truly progressive organizing.

What I think is most critically needed are real radical actions taken by and for the people of this country. As I've always argued, what we need to start the ball rolling is for us to quit sucking at the poisonous tit of corporate media and establish our grass roots media. This we can do over the internet by organizing many separate activist websites and bloggers into a more organized network to report the real information about events in the world and to serve as an antidote to all the capitalist propaganda used to distract, dis-inform, and divide us. 

Then the next desirable action would be to replace the ideological components of public education with our own classes that teach such courses (history and social studies) from a working class point of view. We also must join hands with similar movements all over the world. These national boundaries only serve to divide us while the same boundaries are being erased to the benefit of capitalist gangs.

These actions must be, once and for all, organized around a set of principles that recognizes the inherent root of so much of the evil and disasters we see in today's world--capitalism. No, I am not referring to a certain type of capitalism--they are all in the basket with some more advanced than others. This especially means that in such a project there would be no room for liberals and other reformers writing long articles and books merely complaining about how "neoliberalism" and "deregulated" capitalism is wrecking our lives and destroying our "democracy". This new movement must endorse in an unqualified manner its opposition to the system of capitalism, and begin the long-range work of constructing a new system. This means that we must not include any notion of, or people who advocate, the reform of the existing capitalist system. Let them waste their time while we build something new. When they become sufficiently frustrated with their vain attempts, they will join us.

This non-violent stuff’ll get you killed

Click here to access this book review by James Robb from his blog A communist at large [New Zealand].

In this article Robb reviews a new book entitled This non-violent stuff’ll get you killed - How Guns made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, by Charles E Cobb, Jr.  Robb in his introduction writes:

This book, published earlier this year, sets out to correct the one-sided view of the place of ‘non-violence’ in the conventional account of the great US Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The tradition of armed self-defence in Black communities predated the non-violent tactics, the author explains, played an important part in the struggle, and coexisted throughout with the non-violent protests. The title of the book comes from a warning given in 1964 by a Mississippi farmer, Hartman Turnbow, to the most famous practitioner of non-violence, Martin Luther King: “This non-violent stuff ain’t no good. It’ll get ya killed.”

I've always suspected that the widespread propaganda which raised the tactic of non-violence to a fundamental principle in many US activist organizations was accomplished by stealth from agents, conscious or not, of the ruling class.

Extreme Weather Will Be the New Normal

Click here to access a 2:29m video from Bloomberg Business News.

While viewing a local TV network news report this morning, the news-person prefaced her report with a message very similar to this. She said something like we were "transitioning" into a new normal climate. 

Yes folks, I guess it's now official--we are merely experiencing "the new normal", not the beginning stages of catastrophic climate destabilization. So, there is nothing we need to do to prevent it. We, especially corporations and Wall Street, can only prepare for the occasional storms by protecting property. (sarcasm) 

The reality is that the ruling capitalist class are so addicted to the drugs of wealth and power which the system delivers to them that they refuse to alter their behavior; instead they engage in all kinds of fantasies. This pattern is familiar to spouses and families of alcoholics.

Chloe Demrovsky, executive director at the Disaster Recovery Institute International, and John Odermatt, managing director of Citi's Office of Emergency Management & Fraud Surveillance, discuss the global cost of natural disasters with Bloomberg's Trish Regan on "Street Smart." 

An Ill Wind Blows in Antarctica, Threatens Global Flooding

Click here to access article by John Upton from Climate Central. 

Foreboding winds of change are blowing over the already gale-swept South Pole, threatening to hasten Antarctic melting and worsen flooding around the globe.

The Southern Ocean’s legendary winds have been blowing more fiercely and in a more poleward direction since the 1950s. Temperature observations are sparse around the hostile continent, but scientists recently modeled the ocean current knock-on effects of these wind changes, which have been caused by ozone thinning and by the buildup of greenhouse gases.

The scientists were blown away by the vicious climate change feedback that they unearthed.

Ice Watch: Seeking A Determined Roar Before It's Too Late

Click here to access article by Abby Zimet from Common Dreams.

Zimet reports on an useful project created by environmentalists in Denmark to raise awareness about the threat of climate destabilization. 

Melting Artic Ice project in front of city hall in Copenhagen

The ice chunk display is part of a larger Ice Watch project. Its website features information on climate change, commentary from Eliasson on the need for a "physical wake-up call" on the climate challenges we face - he argues that "perception and physical experience" are vital facets of both art and activism - and, most chillingly, a quietly devastating soundtrack that is the crack and drip of melting ice. The exhibit ran this week, ending today. In an interview, Eliasson said they planned to distribute the remaining pieces of ice to Copenhagen schools to continue the discussion, but none was left.

Scientists Discover Huge ‘Bathtub Ring’ Of Oil On Sea Floor From BP Spill

Click here to access article by Emily Atkin from ThinkProgress.

BP has always declared that their spilled millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf simply disappeared and everything was back to normal. Well, guess what? Scientists have recently discovered where it really is, and they are concerned.

“What we still don’t know, and what we need to all keep in mind, is that there’s the potential for sub-acute impact,” Penn State University’s Charles Fisher said at the time. “In other words, things that might have happened to corals’ reproductive system — slower acting cancers, changes in the fitness of the animal. These are very hard to detect and they’ll take a long time for us to see whats going on.”  

The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria

Click here to access article by William Engdahl from Boiling Frogs Post.

Based on evidence that is emerging, this reputable geopolitical analyst argues that the current strategy of the Empire's deep state and their medieval kingdom allies is designed to destabilize Russia, Syria, Iran and while adversely impacting China. Thus they hope to kill many birds with this one stone using their war against ISIS, which they created, as cover. On the surface it seems like a brilliant strategy in a Machiavellian sense, but Engdahl thinks it's stupid.

This highly aggressive and reckless offensive against the above countries, especially Russia and China, makes me wonder what is really going on in the minds of our masters in the US. It smacks of desperation. It also reminds me of the funding of the Nazis by Western capitalists and bringing them to power in Germany in the 1930s as a grand strategy to defeat radicalized workers all over Europe and to incite the resulting monster to attack the Soviet Union. Loaded down with debts to these capitalist warmongers, Nazi Germany had only one recourse which was to steal resources from their neighbors to the East which the Nazis were only too eager to attempt. 

Possibly the same thing is happening with our masters in the One Percent. With the abundance of debt money they have created and distributed among themselves to play with in the stock market as a desperate strategy to prop up a collapsed economy, they have so loaded US society with debt that their only recourse is to hype up their offensive to control resources all over the world. What else could explain this reckless and dangerous behavior?

ISIL: From Decapitation to Islamophobia

Click here to access article by Dr Ismail Salami from Boiling Frogs Post.

I overlooked this excellent article, posted earlier this month, in which Salami assembles evidence from several ruling class sources to verify widespread suspicions and allegations that ISIL/ISIS was created largely by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council allies. I have little doubt that this strategy was at least endorsed, if not promoted, by the Empire.

The American Dream Going Bust – in One Chart

Click here to access article by Wolf Richter from Wolf Street.

Richter posts a graph that depicts what most of us already know or suspect: capitalists have been buying up all the foreclosed homes and driving prices up while destroying the great American dream of home ownership. Homes in capitalist economies are regarded as a commodity like everything else. They are not regarded as secure, almost sacred places in which to raise children into healthy adults.

The Revolution That Wasn’t: Why the Fracking Phenomenon Will Leave Us High and Dry

Click here to access article by Asher Miller from Post Carbon Institute.

According to a recent research report by this institute, the current yellow brick road of an energy bonanza boosted by mainstream energy analysts is an illusion. Because of unrealistic predictions and the nasty side effects of shale fracking, we might actually be enjoying a temporary rest stop while traveling on a very muddy road to hell.

Washington’s Moderates— From Nazis to Violent Sunni Muslim Fundamentalists

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from The Greanville Post.

A story by Eric Lichtblau in The New York Times of October 26, 2014 (“In Cold War, U.S. spy agencies used 1,000 Nazis”) raises the question of how moderate the United States’ “moderate” allies–including the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels–really are.

Lichtbau’s story concerns newly declassified documents showing that the CIA and FBI employed at least a thousand, and likely more, Nazis and Nazi-collaborators as spies and informants during the Cold War.

Unlike the report in The NY Times, Gowans looks at the implications of these recently declassified documents to the current scene in Syria and the Empire's use of "moderate" terrorists. As far as the ties of our earlier ruling class with German Nazis, this is nothing new to informed activists. However, such ties have been carefully hidden from the view of ordinary Americans for many years in such classified reports for obvious reasons.

WWII had a lot to do with the threat that Germany and it allies posed for the British Empire for world dominance. Many British, French, and American capitalists were at least initially avid supporters of German fascists because they were the most concerned about communist and other left parties that threatened capitalist interests. Thus, with funding from these multinational sources, German fascists decided to use the ultra-right wing Nazi faction as a weapon to destroy the developing consciousness among workers of radical ideas that inspired the Soviet revolution in Russia. The working class cadre of Nazi brown shirts (SA) were immediately replaced by the black shirts of the SS who came more from the ranks of capitalists. 

The only problem was that German Nazi capitalists began to be a threat to capitalists aligned with the British Empire and ultimately to most US capitalists who had close ties to the British. After the latter defeated the Axis Powers, the Anglo-American Empire once again reigned supreme in the world. There was obviously no room in the 20th century for a capitalist multi-polar world that is now favored in the 21st century by many critics. 

Immediately following this victory, the dominant capitalist US-led Empire never lost sight of their real enemy, the Soviet Union and its associated countries like North Korea and China. Hence the long Cold War which included many local hot wars by proxy. And now we are witnessing another emerging multi-polar world in which capitalist Russia and capitalist China are seen as a threat by capitalist elites in the Empire. Such competition for dominance is very much like inter-gang violence one sees in large urban areas.

Regarding the history of US capitalists in support of Nazis, Prescott Bush comes immediately to mind. But there were many others. If you need to be informed on this subject, I advise you to read some of the following books that you probably won't find in your local libraries: American Swastika by Higham, Trading with the Enemy also by Higham, Facts and Fascism by G. Seldes, The American Axis by Wallace, and The Old Boys by B. Hersh. All of these can be purchased (used) rather cheaply and conveniently from independent bookstores via Abebooks.

Snowden filmmaker Laura Poitras: ‘Facebook is a gift to intelligence agencies’

Click here to access article by Andrea Peterson from Washington Post.

In this interview filmmaker Laura Poitras talks about the just released documentary Citizenfour, her concerns about government surveillance, the dangers of Facebook, and encryption codes to counter surveillance. In relation to the latter she remarks about the important role that the Freedom of the Press Foundation is playing to develop encryption codes.

I am bothered a bit about this article appearing in a major ruling class news source, but it offers some very interesting observations about these issues. I did a preliminary check of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and could find no evidence of direct or indirect ruling class funding.

Poitras's comment about Facebook being a gift to intelligences agencies has always seemed so obvious to me. Nevertheless I tried it for a brief period back in 2006, filled out information on myself that was completely fictitious, and concluded that it was indeed a gift to these agencies. 

This is Your Ocean on Acid

Click here to access article by Mickey Z. from World News Trust. 

This author clearly understands the environmental emergency that we humans are now facing, and can no longer ignore--except at our peril. He correctly identifies the force that is destroying all life as it destroys the habitat for all living things, including us humans--capitalism. We, of course, are a small part of the web of all life on Earth, but we are having major destabilizing impacts. If we allow this system and its addicts to continue operating, we will continue destroying this web that sustains all life, including ours. In this piece he focuses on one major part of the web of life--the oceans. He concludes with a warning to liberals and capitalist reformers:

So yeah, it’d be great if corporations paid more taxes or if single-payer health care were enacted but such changes would ultimately fall into the proverbial Titanic/deck chair category if our oceans are not restored and respected -- now.

Put People Not ‘Empire of Capital’ at Heart of Development

Click here to access article by Ravi Kanth Devarakonda from Inter Press Service. 

The Raul Prebitsch Lectures, which are named after the first Secretary-General of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) when it was set up in 1964, allow prominent personalities to speak to a wide audience on burning trade and development topics.

This year, President Correa took the floor on Oct. 24 with a lecture on ‘Ecuador: Development as a Political Process’, which covered efforts by his country to build a model of equitable and sustainable development.

The author reports on a number of excellent comments made by the Ecuadorian president regarding neoliberal policies, capital flight to support the US dollar, restrictions on the movement of labor, and other topics.