Climate change scientists warn of 4C global temperature rise

by Damian Carrington from the Guardian. 

A hellish vision of a world warmed by 4C within a lifetime has been set out by an international team of scientists, who say the agonisingly slow progress of the global climate change talks that [restarted] in Mexico [Nov. 29] makes the so-called safe limit of 2C impossible to keep. A 4C rise in the planet's temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse. 

"There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global surface temperature at below 2C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary," said Kevin Anderson, from the University of Manchester, who with colleague Alice Bows contributed research to a special collection of Royal Society journal papers published tomorrow. "Moreover, the impacts associated with 2C have been revised upwards so that 2C now represents the threshold [of] extremely dangerous climate change."

Also, read this for one solution offered by climate scientists at Cancun, Mexico.

Also, read a WikiLeaks report about US strategies used to sabotage last year's Copenhagen Accord. 

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming...and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord",

 

Adam Smith critiques the Deficit Reduction Commission

by Michael Hudson from his blog. 

This liberal, astute economist, like many others on both the liberal and conservative wing of capitalist thinking, are often critical of contemporary capitalist practices. Frequently they refer back with reverence to the early days of capitalism when, in their view, markets were really free and small entrepreneurs had a lot more freedom to succeed by combining labor, resources, and wealth to produce more wealth. You see, at the present stage of capitalism one finds Goliath corporations who, in large part, control markets and access to resources. 

Hudson refers to Adam Smith's and others condemnation of feudal land rents as unearned income and, thus, not justifiable. Thus, Smith argued for a labor theory of value except that it had a certain twist to it...

...in a more advanced society the market price is no longer proportional to labor cost since the value of the good now includes compensation for the owner of the means of production....

Thus, they argued that such land should be taxed along with natural monopolies like roads, utilities, harbors, etc., but not income derived from labor produced wealth, that is, wealth that they received through their capitalist enterprises.

Much of feudal land had been inherited or conquered or both, and comprised most of the land in these European countries. The class that owned and controlled the land constituted the feudal aristocracy and landlord class. The new rising class of capitalists were learning how to use rented labor (wage slaves) and/or actual slaves, and rudimentary forms of mechanization to transform natural resources into goods which were sold at a profit and appropriated by capitalists. Under feudal laws, land was not a commodity to be bought and sold; and the serfs were not available for wage slavery. This put roadblocks in the way of capitalists who needed land and labor markets for their activities. This conflict eventually resulted in dramatic changes by revolutions in France and the US, and more gradual assumptions of power by the new class in most other European countries.

That natural propensity of capitalism, to grow incessantly, inevitably produces increasing concentrations of capital and control over labor, resources, and societies as a whole. What these liberal economists regard as the "cute little baby" of capitalism has simply grown up to be the monster that it is. 

However, what we are now seeing is a new phenomenon. The huge scale of capitalist enterprise is now coming up against the limits of resource exhaustion and the consequences of climate change caused by their polluting industries. Hence, the capitalist class is finding it easier to get their wealth fixes by...

turning the U.S. economy into a neofeudal economy increasingly indebted to creditors, enjoying their revenue and “capital” gains (mainly land-price gains that John Stuart Mill’s generation called the “unearned increment”) at the top of the economic pyramid.

And if we continue to let them have their way, we will experience one catastrophe after another until human and other life forms will be threatened.

Australia Floods Damage Crops, Force Evacuations; Coal Shipments Disrupted

by Wendy Pugh from Bloomberg. 

It is reports like this, and last summer's drought in Russia, floods in Pakistan, that has me worried about tipping points for climate change. I keep seeing more and more extreme weather patterns all over the world.

No Economic Recovery in Sight: Seven Reasons Why Global Capitalism Can't Recover Anytime Soon

by Shamus Cooke from Global Research.

As the recession grinds on, politicians in most industrial countries have an incentive to make exaggerated claims about the supposed coming economic recovery. Some say the recession is over. Obama is in the group that claims we're on "the road to recovery,” while other nations can only spot recovery "on the horizon.” Below are seven important social phenomena that point to a more realistic economic and political outlook. 

I keep wondering about how much suffering it will take before US citizens stop believing these claims of recovery and start fighting back. Are they going to let themselves be chased down the chutes to the slaughterhouse by the dogs of right-wing propaganda?

Is Christmas Imploding?

by Michael Collins from The Agonist. 

He gives his answers to the question.

The ownership of Christmas by corporations – indeed the perversion of Christmas by corporations – seems to be running its course. We may be witnessing the implosion of Christmas as a marketing, retailing, and consumption phenomenon. What are the tell-tale signs?

 

We have a right to know

from Green Left. 

...Wikileaks is doing precisely what investigative journalists are supposed to do, but generally don’t. It has exposed abuses of power that hide behind the veil of government secrecy.

If the so-called "democratic" governments ruled with the informed consent of citizens as they pretend to do, they might have some claim to legitimacy, otherwise not. The fact is, they are ruled by small minorities who command all important institutions within their respective societies, and rule with impunity, often engaging in unlawful acts and crimes against humanity. It is their secrecy about such acts and crimes that they must at all costs protect. However, we, the ruled, must always attempt to expose their lies. Whether WikiLeaks exposes any really significant lies still remains to be seen; and if they do, will the lies be reported unreconstructed in mainstream media? It appears that various authorities are making it difficult to access, and even closing down direct access to the WikiLeaks website.

Lunch With the CIA

by Mad Hedge Fund Trader from Oil Price. 

I thought that it might be worthwhile to pay a small visit to the world of the rich and powerful, AKA  capitalists or ruling class. This piece written by a hedge fund manager describes, in a very casual style, his meeting with members of the CIA, not just any, but the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, and four others ("five gorillas built like brick shithouses") who I gather are something like bodyguards. 

I don't know a whole lot about hedge fund managers, but I do know that they manage the money of the rich, very influential, and well-connected. Despite the name "hedge fund", these people often place high-risk bets for their clients at the Wall Street casino using borrowed funds. They do this because the rewards are often very great for everyone involved. Risk is greatly reduced because they, the fund managers, have access to powerful people that can influence the outcome of their bets as well as access to valuable insider information. As we have seen, when their bets go terribly wrong, they merely have their powerful friends and servants in the government bail them out. Hence, we, the people, are stuck with the bill.

The article provides a good illustration of the access that these fund managers have to the powerful and knowledgeable, in this case, to Mr CIA, as I mentioned above. Then you may have a queasy feeling when you read this:

The long term outlook for supplies of food, natural resources, and energy is becoming so severe that the CIA is now viewing it as a national security threat. Some one third of emerging market urban populations are poor, or about 1.5 billion souls, and when they get hungry, angry, and politically or religiously inspired, Americans have to worry. This will be music to the ears of the hedge funds that have been stampeding into food, commodities, and energy since March. It is also welcome news to George Soros, who has quietly bought up enough agricultural land in Argentina to create his own medium sized country.

You will notice how the rich even bet on the suffering of the poor to make themselves richer, and it is "music to [their] ears". Of course, when he writes that with so many people suffering, "Americans have to worry", he really means that the American ruling class has to worry. And in the next paragraph he reports on learning about the fact that US currency is in danger of losing its value. This is another piece of "red meat" for his investors ("profits [on bets] from falling Treasury bond prices!") 

After mentioning a few other tidbits from Mr. CIA that don't appear to have any investment value, he fantasizes about how wonderful it would be to have access to all their CIA data and to manage their pension fund with this knowledge--a hedge fund manager's wet dream!.

Isn't the internet wonderful?

Wrong country blamed for artillery exchange on Korean peninsula

by Stephen Gowans from Voltaire.

Keeping Pyongyang under constant military pressure has been part of a long-standing goal of the U.S. - in tandem with its South Korean ally - to bring North Korea to the brink of collapse by pushing Pyongyang into accrued defense spending to the detriment of its economic development.

After the conflict between rival capitalist powers was settled in 1945, the US assumed the leadership in the defense, and promotion, of capitalism by absorbing the British Empire into an empire under its control (read The Anglo-American Establishment by Carroll Quigley). At the same time the new US hegemony went immediately after its primary adversary, the Soviet Union. There was a seamless transition from the defeat of their capitalist rivals--Germany, Italy, and Japan--to the war against the USSR whose resources, labor, and markets were not accessible by Western capitalists due to the nature of their command economy under the control of a centralized bureaucracy.

In southern Korea, soon to become South Korea under US control, this new war against USSR informed US policies for this country by supporting the previous repressive police and government structures that had characterized capitalist and landlord class rule when they were under Japanese control. The US made considerable use of all Koreans who had faithfully served under the Japanese imposed regime and even used some former Japanese officials. Both groups were extremely hated by all Korean patriots and soon there were uprisings all over southern Korea against the US imposed government. From 1946 till the outbreak of the war the South Korean government under the US puppet, Syngman Rhee, used the most brutal methods of suppression imaginable against these populist movements. 

As 1950 approached, they had largely succeeded in wiping out the opposition, and as a result, the US and its South Korea regime turned their attention northward. (To read all the details of this tragedy, read the extensively documented book by Bruce Cumings entitled, The Origins to the Korean War, v.1. Unfortunately, the book is not easily obtainable, and I suspect for political reasons.)

Thus, one can see that the Korean War never ended either formally or in reality. It is still being fought because the US Empire cannot tolerate opposition to, or independence from, its influence and its economic system.

Obama, Afghan, and that Infernal Drip

by Russ Baker from Who, What, Why. 

This astute observer knows how to read between the lines in mass media reports. The only problem I have is the way he poses the concluding question:

And it raises this question: if an elected president is truly in control, then why are “US military and intelligence officials” going around doing their own thing?

As I see it, Obama was selected, or hired like most Presidents, to sell the main policies of the ruling class. There are always rival factions within this class who try to influence strategies. 

This brings to mind my recent reading of the Korean War and the post-WWII events in the Far East when there was a rather powerful China lobby that wanted to pursue aggressive policies against the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC) and North Korea. The Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, was in charge of foreign policy strategies under the Truman administration. Truman deferred to his judgment because he lacked much experience or knowledge of foreign affairs. Acheson wanted a less aggressive policy of containment of these nominally socialist states. He favored the promotion of splits between the USSR and the PRC, while he wanted to gradually put pressure on North Korea to the point that they would attack South Korea. From my reading of volume 2 of Bruce Cumings book entitled, The Origins of the Korean War, it appears that the machinations of the China lobby greatly accelerated the start of the Korean War, but it probably would have happened anyway.

Military leaders and their followers always have a much narrower view of things and tend to pursue aggressive policies which may backfire if the public is not sufficiently prepared to back them. Obama is very attuned to the various political factions of the ruling class, but it is difficult to tell which ones are in the ascendancy at this time.

Julian Assange: Wanted by the Empire, Dead or Alive

by Alexander Cockburn from Counterpunch.  

Cockburn offers some interesting perspectives on the recent Wikileaks, and mass media coverage of the event.

Millions in America and around the world have been given a quick introductory course in international relations and the true arts of diplomacy – not least the third-rate, gossipy prose with which the diplomats rehearse the arch romans à clef they will write when they head into retirement.

Funny, how the government assumes the right to literally and virtually strip-search people at airports, scan their emails and track their website activities, peruse their medical and banking records, but is outraged when the tables are turned and the people have access to a few of their minor secrets. This would not happen if capitalist governments were run by true representatives of the people. 

I just came across this Democracy Now program video (31:47m) which brings us up-to-date on what is happening with this episode and a debate about the WikiLeaks exposures. The debate features Glenn Greenwald and Steven Aftergood, the long-time transparency advocate with Federation for American Scientists and Secrecy News. Haven't have time to listen to it all, but it appears to be very interesting.

Mapping America’s Factory Farms

from Food & Water Watch. 

This article provides a very interesting map of the factory farms across the country. I was surprised by my local area near Bellingham, Washington: I thought that mostly small, family farms existed here. So why should we care?

Across the nation, while the number of farms raising livestock has decreased, the size of farms raising livestock has increased. In some places this is due to leniency in environmental regulation.  And the growth of factory farms directly threatens independent farmers through unfair pricing and lack of competition. It also threatens consumer health through pollution and widespread contamination like last summer’s egg recall. That’s the price we pay for our food to be cheap and convenient.

I've just discovered this website and am impressed with the amount of important information regarding food and water--the basic stuff of life.

From the "Wealth of Nations" to the "Debt of Nations"

from Washington's Blog. 

Let me direct your attention to the following author's statements toward the end of the article:

As I wrote in October, in a post entitled "The Founding Fathers' Vision of Prosperity Has Been Destroyed":

The ability for America and the 50 states to create its own credit has largely been lost to private bankers. The lion's share of new credit creation is done by private banks, so - instead of being able to itself create money without owing interest - the government owes unfathomable trillions in interest to private banks.

America may have won the Revolutionary War, but it has since lost one of the main things it fought for: the freedom to create its own credit instead of having to beg for credit from private banks at a usurious cost.

The so-called "founding fathers" is a term frequently used to refer to those people who established the main institutions of the US shortly after the War of Independence. The term has taken on an almost religious-like meaning. These historical figures are now regarded as almost demigods whose virtue is beyond criticism. 

What this otherwise brilliant blogger misses is the reality that many of them were the first in the US to privatize banking in the form of the Bank of North America. According to The Lost Science of Money they used as their model the Bank of England. This institutional arrangement has been referred to as a "central bank".  They create the nation's money supply by lending money to their respective governments.

Private individuals, mostly "founding fathers" contributed some of the start-up money, but this fell short a bit and government money ended up contributing about 63%. Essentially it was managed by the private owners, and of course, for their benefit. Except for brief periods in US history, the money supply has been under the control of private banks, and in more recent history in a similar central bank arrangement by the Federal Reserve with some superficial participation by the federal government to provide a cover of legitimacy. Nowadays The Fed creates money "out of thin air" with the government's sanction (fiat money).

From the article one can see how there are layers upon layers of banks. 

Of course, there is no bright line between private and central banks, since big banks own the Fed, and the world's central banks - in turn - own the BIS.

At the bottom of this banking empire are the individual banks like Citibank that are owned by private individuals and institutions. Some of the individuals are major investors and members of the ruling class.

The corporate takeover of American schools

by Paul Thomas from the Guardian. 

The best part of this article are the citations to research that shows that schools can only, at best, have a limited positive impact with children who suffer the disadvantages of poor backgrounds. Such studies are always ignored in US mainstream media--for obvious reasons. 

Under capitalism society exists to serve one class, those who"own" and control all significant economic enterprises in the economy. The tendency for direct corporate involvement in education, in my opinion, reflects the general shift to more direct control by the ruling class of all institutions in society. For education specifically they probably see this involvement as necessary to downsize the greater commitment to education that existed previously. 

The increasing global nature of capitalist rule necessarily means the abandonment of commitment to the home base. Highly educated and skilled workers can be moved around the globe at will by corporations regardless of worker origins, and be paid much lower wages which, of course, enhances the wealth and power to this class. 

The subtitle, "The trend for appointing CEOs to the top jobs is symptomatic of a declining commitment to public education and social justice", provides a liberal slant to their piece by suggesting that there has been a time when there was a true commitment to education and social justice. Education under the rule of this class always served their needs for obedient, non-questioning, well indoctrinated, and skilled workers. And, of course, social injustice is built into the system of class rule. The ownership and control of the wealth produced by working people, that is bestowed under the rules of capitalism to a class of investors, is inherently unjust.

In The Wake Of Victory

by John Michael Greer from The Archdruid Report. 

Because the author appears to be among the most influential intellectuals in US environmental circles, I think this piece may be worth examining as a strategy to alter the destructive path that the "political class", to use his words, is leading us down. 

Also, he interests me because his roots are in my backyard. He was born in Bremerton, Washington, attended Western Washington University, here in Bellingham (where I currently live), and obtained a BA degree in Comparative History of Ideas from the U. of Washington in Seattle. Judging by his numerous writings related to mysticism and the occult, he seems to have a peculiar fascination with these subjects. (For biography, read this.) 

His recent popular influence in environmental circles seems to stem from a number of essays and especially his recent book entitled, The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age, in which he reassures us that we are not faced with an  immediate apocalyptic future and that we can prepare for it with mostly individualistic measures like gardening, re-learning earlier low-tech, agrarian skills. Here is how the Amazon website summarizes his themes:

The Long Descent examines the basis of such fear through three core themes:

    * Industrial society is following the same well-worn path that has led other civilizations into decline, a path involving a much slower and more complex transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by so many social critics today.
    * The roots of the crisis lie in the cultural stories that shape the way we understand the world. Since problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them, these ways of thinking need to be replaced with others better suited to the needs of our time.
    * It is too late for massive programs for top-down change; the change must come from individuals.

In this article he suggests a strategy that the enlightened few can use to outsmart the "political class" by playing off the "subsets" of this class against each other. In other words, he is saying that his strategy will enable us to essentially "game" the existing system and win. Read the article for the details.

Unfortunately, he hides so much of reality behind the use of the concept "political class". Apparently no understanding is necessary for this concept, and none is offered. It is clear to me that he doesn't understand it, or the basis of its power, that is, what enables this class to rule. He does offer that the "subsets" of this class are the Democrats and the Republicans. Lacking a deeper, systemic understanding of power in relation to societies, to my mind, presents a major obstacle to any real progress in averting the many disasters that lie ahead due to climate change and peak energy.

Why President Obama Won't Deliver On His Network Neutrality Promises

by Bruce A. Dixon from Black Agenda Report. 

It's not just that the presidential candidate who needed our votes smiled at us, told us what we wanted to hear, and now intends to forget those promises. It's far worse than that. By owning the media, and managing broadcast airwaves, cable, telephone and internet networks as their private property, telecommunications companies have become the literal owners of our public and even our private conversation. Communities have no right to hear their own voices if some telecom executives can't reap a profit. 

The assault on net neutrality by the telecommunication corporations is a very dangerous one. If they win, this wonderful medium of communication will be under private control to serve private interests. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

Boston-Area Union Will Block Factory Auction to Save Jobs

by Jane Slaughter from Solidarity Economy.

In a move to save factory jobs that evokes shades of the ’30s, the United Electrical Workers are asking supporters to block a December 14 auction of presses and equipment from a plant south of Boston. The UE is calling for mass picketing and blockading of entrances to the 80-year-old plant if necessary.

Esterline Technologies Corp. of Bellevue, Washington, has refused to hold off on selling the equipment till another buyer can be found. The union’s request to buy the closed plant, which would create an employee-owned factory, has been ignored.

Another plant closure that illustrates, once again, the deep contradictions between a capitalist system and the needs of communities and societies. The system is designed to serve private needs not social needs, and the end result is that society functions to serve private interests--wealth and power. Collectively, these private interests create a class of people, also known as a ruling class, who govern society and insure that society functions to serve their interests.

In this latest example in Massachusetts, we see that the 80 year old plant is "owned" by a corporation in the State of Washington (not far from where I live). 

Under the rules of capitalism--not ordained by some god, but a system created by people, powerful people in the past--this plant became a thing, a commodity, that could be owned by some people with money whose interest was making more money. 

The plant, of course, was the end result of endless generations of working people that created the technology and the wealth that created the form of this plant 80 years ago. Since then workers in the plant created wealth for the various owners of the plant, but they also created wealth for the community that sustained it and helped it grow. The community and the larger society, in turn, sustained the workers by educating them, providing them with health care, entertainment, media, culture--in reality, this entity is a social organism. 

Capitalism, on the other hand, is essentially an asocial system. Capitalists deny the existence or importance of the concept of "social organism". That is why a capitalist leader, Margaret Thatcher, made this statement:

...there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

Thus capitalists must deny the reality of collective decision making and collective welfare that sustained humanity for more than 98% its existence.

Now this community in Massachusetts, and to some extent the larger society, is threatened because the "owners", whose only interest in the plant is to make money, want to make more money elsewhere. Because they "own" the plant under the rules of capitalism, they are permitted to do this. Why should they "sell" the plant to the workers? The plant might compete with products they want to produce in Mexico and southern California, and thus cut into "their" profits. Thus the workers face an uphill struggle to win the battle to take over the plant.

This is the pattern in the US that has been playing out most dramatically in the last 30 years. More and more plants have been moved to other countries where cheap labor and weak environmental laws provide greater opportunities for capitalists to make more money. Because they govern their societies, capitalists can get away with it. 

We are now witnessing the devastation caused to communities and the larger society in the forms of unemployment, deskilling of American workers, families torn a part, more crime and drug addiction, poverty, mental illness, etc. 

Meanwhile, the "owners" fear that the "natives" may be getting restless and will fight back. Hence, we are seeing more and more repressive police measures and surveillance of citizens which could lead to a police state.

Cancun, and more Consequential C Words

by Michael M'Gonigle and Louise Takeda from The Tyee.

The authors look at the rather dismal prospects for progress at the upcoming UN sponsored meeting on climate change, and the resistance by major powers to any substantive change from the Copenhagen Accord. The latter's emphasis is to incorporate a climate change strategy in the form of carbon trading into markets like Wall Street that will only create the illusion of doing something about the problem, but in reality will allow capitalists to continue their plunder of the Earth. However, there is some hope as evidence keeps surfacing that more and more people are becoming aware of the basic contradiction between the capitalist system and Earth's ability to sustain human and other life forms.

Consider the constricted discourse that prevents any real discussion on the trap of (shhh... capitalist) dependence on growth and commodification. A few brave souls tip-toe around the word with more palatable terms like 'de-growth'. However expressed, the reality is that there is no hope of escape from our planetary momentum without a whole bunch of folks willing to confront the evidence, and the power of denial, and admit that the emperor has no clothes.

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot

by Glenn Greenwald from Salon. 

In this piece the author builds a good case for suspecting that the Portland, Oregon incident was brought about by the FBI's use of entrapment. And, to be sure, this enforcing arm of the ruling class certainly has the motivation to do this--spreading more fear among citizens to distract from the social spending cutbacks, to justify the "full-spectrum" surveillance of Americans, and more spending on "security services" that will inevitably lead us down the path to a police state.

As Greenwald points out, the real mystery is why the American people wonder why some people from the Middle East hate Americans and easily succumb to such terrorist fantasies.

We hear the same exact thing over and over and over from accused Terrorists -- that they are attempting to carry out plots in retaliation for past and ongoing American violence against Muslim civilians and to deter such future acts.  Here we find one of the great mysteries in American political culture:  that the U.S. Government dispatches its military all over the world -- invading, occupying, and bombing multiple Muslim countries -- torturing them, imprisoning them without charges, shooting them up at checkpoints, sending remote-controlled drones to explode their homes, imposing sanctions that starve hundreds of thousands of children to death  -- and Americans are then baffled when some Muslims -- an amazingly small percentage -- harbor anger and vengeance toward them and want to return the violence.   And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse:  that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism -- rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism.

Winning the Class War

by Bob Herbert from the NY Times. 

The class war that no one wants to talk about continues unabated.Even as millions of out-of-work and otherwise struggling Americans are tightening their belts for the holidays, the nation’s elite are lacing up their dancing shoes and partying like royalty as the millions and billions keep rolling in.

This opinion piece is probably the most anti-establishment article that will ever be permitted by the owners and editors of this establishment publication. However, notice that his recommendations for change are very conventional:

What’s really needed is for working Americans to form alliances and try, in a spirit of good will, to work out equitable solutions to the myriad problems facing so many ordinary individuals and families. Strong leaders are needed to develop such alliances and fight back against the forces that nearly destroyed the economy and have left working Americans in the lurch.

For detailed evidence of class discrimination in the US, read this.

The Big Lie: Governments Have to Save the Big Banks

from Washington's Blog. 

The author reviews some discourses on the effectiveness of big lies followed by some recent research to explain why ordinary people believe these lies. Then he concludes that big lies also apply to the recent moves by the US ruling class to justify making ordinary people pay for the bad bets of the banksters.

I think that ruling classes have always made great efforts to instill in the minds of their subjects, ordinary people, the belief that their masters are looking out for their best interests and should never be questioned. Thus, under monarchy they propagated the belief that kings ruled by Divine Right. 

In modern times we are indoctrinated with the belief that authority figures are always right and should always be obeyed. Disobedience usually brings swift punishment. People in authority are portrayed as superior human beings. For example, judges in courtrooms are always positioned on an altar-like edifice above ordinary people. When judges enter the room, people are expected to stand to demonstrate their obeisance. In educational institutions children are taught not how to think critically about information, but to merely memorize. Obviously people are not inherently stupid, but are thoroughly socialized this way by ruling class institutions to believe and act as they do.

Dire messages about global warming can backfire, new study shows

by Yasmin Anwar from UC Berkeley News. 

The results of the first experiment described in the article are completely compatible with previous knowledge found in "death and dying" research. The same dynamics of denial function when one feels doomed. You can't expect climate scientists to offer solutions, they can only report on what they observe.

...if scientists and advocates can communicate their findings in less apocalyptic ways, and present solutions to global warming, Willer said, most people can get past their skepticism.

The problem with offering solutions to the climate crisis is that real, effective solutions are incompatible with the ruling political-economic system of capitalism. Therefore no convincing solutions can be offered by the propaganda organs of the ruling class. Hence, their propensity to engage in denial or to offer false solutions which are usually unconvincing and without scientific support.

Climate change will cost a billion people their homes, says report

by Robin McKie from The Observer.

A special report, to be released at the start of climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, will reveal that up to a billion people face losing their homes in the next 90 years because of failures to agree curbs on carbon emissions.

Cutting the Deficit: Sacrificing Workers to Save the Rich

by James Petras from Global Research.

The scheduling of the press releases until after the recent elections by this ruling class "bi-partisan commission" is not coincidental. They did not want their orchestrated elections and their candidates to focus on the issues of cutbacks in social programs. The timing kept these issues from the public's attention while entertaining them with false issues like "fiscal responsibility" and the side show of Tea Party antics. Of course, the ruling class ploy of organizing these attacks on the most vulnerable populations using  a "bi-partisan commission" attempts to give them a legitimate or objective quality.

The deficit proposals put forth by Obama’s Bipartisan Commission threaten to push the one-third of retirees who depend mainly on their social security payments into the food kitchens or destitution.  The added cost and reductions in health care will increase the mortality rate among working families.  The increase in retirement age will result in “work until you die”, with no time for leisure, travel or grandchildren.  

It is clear that the ruling capitalist class is now prepared to accelerate the class war in the US. Are we prepared to fight back as the Europeans are doing?

by Henry McDonald and Andrew Clark from the Guardian. 

One of the largest demonstrations in the Irish Republic's history brought more than 100,000 people on to Dublin's streets in protest over the international bailout and four years of austerity ahead.

Also, read this for more coverage on the Irish protests.

Dancing With Dangl

by Clifton Ross from Counterpunch. 

This is the third book review that I have posted for Dangl's new book entitled, Dancing with Dynamite. (See this and this.) The book deserves all the attention it is getting because many on the left are experiencing disenchantment with progressive movements that continue to be swallowed up or co-opted by ruling classes. 

Dangl surveyed many progressive movements throughout the Americas and concluded that...

“...the state and governing party is, by its nature, a hegemonic force that generally aims to subsume, weaken or eliminate other movements and political forces that contest its power.”

However, experience reveals again and again that after so much time, energy, and commitment has gone into the building of these movements, they seem to result in only minor gains, at best, in the lives of ordinary people. Their credo is best expressed by this statement from Howard Zinn:

Democracy is social movements. That’s what democracy is. And what history tells us is that when injustices have been remedied, they have not been remedied by the three branches of government. They’ve been remedied by great social movements, which then push and force and pressure and threaten the three branches of government until they finally do something. Really, that’s democracy.

I believe that it is time--indeed, a long overdue time to re-evaluate this perspective--and, Dangl also thinks so. Progressives everywhere must wake up to the facts that this is leading us down a dead-end road. Hierarchical social arrangements and technological prowess has resulted in the system of capitalism that will end in the exhaustion of energy resources, environmental destruction, climate change and the end of human and other life forms. 

The first task, in my opinion, is to destroy this system which automatically provides huge advantages to people who "own" productive property and has resulted in a class of people over and above all others. An economy is always social in nature. It is a legacy that has been handed down to us from many generations of working people. Thus, all significant economic units must be publicly owned. This eliminates the economic basis for hierarchy. Then there remains the addiction to power that can afflict individuals and produce systems of oppression.

As I have argued before, at least 98% of human existence has been organized around small groups where decisions were made collectively. That is our fundamental human nature. As soon as you elevate people to a higher level decision making group, they are absorbed into a new group that creates its own identity and interests which are often different from their original group affiliations. As people rise in a social hierarchy, this process keeps repeating until you have people at the top whose interests have little to do with their social origins (assuming ordinary social origins). 

People who rise in such a system tend to lack moral constraints. Thus the people with the most sociopathic tendencies tend to rise to the top. Their new group references are at, or near, the top and together they establish their own group norms and interests. Groupings like this tend to regard people at the bottom of this heap as expendable when they get in the way of their interests. 

Thus, we see under capitalism that they have little difficulty in deciding to close down a factory and move it where they can find cheaper labor regardless of the consequences to the people living in the community. They have little difficulty deciding to engage in all kinds of financial scams to enrich themselves that have ended in the devastation of whole economies. They have little problem lying to their citizens to justify invading other countries to kill their people and steal their resources. They always do this with their peer's support. It is the social nature of the human beast always to be guided by their referent groups.

It seems to me that the solution that follows from this analysis is that we must do away with these elaborate hierarchical social systems by designing highly decentralized societies that require a high degree of political participation by people at the grass roots. Dangl senses this when he writes:

For progressive changes to take place in the US, more people need to become participants in politics rather than spectators. And by this I mean making revolution a part of our everyday lives, not just something we watch on TV or a vote we cast for a politician.

What is there to lose by not trying to do this? By continuing down the same path as we have in the last three or four millenniums, we will surely end up destroying our habit and ourselves.

  

January-October 2010: The Warmest Period on Record

by Andrew Glikson from Dissident Voice.

Let us pray that we have not yet passed significant tipping points.

Ignoring reports by the world’s major climate science organizations (NASA/GISS, NCDC, Hadley-Met, Potsdam, BOM, CSIRO), governments continue to consider the issue almost exclusively in economic $ terms, the ultimate Faustian bargain.

So, How Does the Financial System Work?

by Dan Hind from The Return of the Public. 

This is some of the clearest writing I've found on the internet regarding money operations. The writer is a professor of sociology at an English university.

Quantitative easing can only be understood if we understand what central banks do – if we understand the mystery that lies beneath the day-to-day operations of the economy. The calculations of capitalist activity rest finally on something very like a magic trick. This is why criticisms [of] the Federal Reserve in particular often veer off into heated speculation about shape-shifting lizards or the urgent need to buy gold now. Once you understand that the so-called private sector is dependent on the operations of the state it is easy to lose your balance. So steady yourself. This is the secret of the temple.

Like the political institutions that are portrayed as "democratic", the creation and operations of money is hidden behind many layers of obfuscation so that ruling capitalist classes can have their way with us. 

In order to learn more from this author, I just ordered his new book, The Return of the Public, from a bookseller in England.

Senate Bill S 510 Food Safety Modernization Act vote imminent: Would outlaw gardening and saving seeds

by Mike Adams from Natural News. 

I haven't followed this Congressional bill as well as I should have. A lot of people with interest in natural foods and small farms are really upset about the bill. 

Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, has been called "the most dangerous bill in the history of the United States of America." It would grant the U.S. government new authority over the public's right to grow, trade and transport any foods. This would give Big brother the power to regulate the tomato plants in your backyard. It would grant them the power to arrest and imprison people selling cucumbers at farmer's markets. It would criminalize the transporting of organic produce if you don't comply with the authoritarian rules of the federal government.

“US has unprecedented imperial military presence in the world” [10:26m video]

Tom Engelhardt is interview by RT. 

Engelhardt provides an excellent overview of US's military establishment, its bases protecting the Empire, the mad pursuit of a never-ending war policy that is destroying the US, and the present terrified state of ordinary Americans.

What is lacking in the interview is a systemic political understanding of this phenomenon as reflected in statements such as "the media is in bed with the militarists". Mass media and the military, along with all other significant institutions, are all under the control of a class of people who own, and reap the rewards from, all the important economic activities in the nation and in much of the world.

When Citizens Are Merely Political Spectators They Get Rolled Over by the Political Class

by Micah Uetricht from AlterNet. 

This is an interview with journalist Benjamin Dangl, author of Dancing With Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America. Dangl describes the general pattern of leftist politics in South America and the implications they may have for political organizing in North America. Thus, instead of putting all of one's hope on electing progressive candidates, North Americans must organize their own independent bases of power like they have done in South America. Here is where to start:

For progressive changes to take place in the US, more people need to become participants in politics rather than spectators. And by this I mean making revolution a part of our everyday lives, not just something we watch on TV or a vote we cast for a politician.

Buffett Thanks "Uncle Sam" for Big Bailout Payday

by Michael Collins from The Economic Populist. 

The author exposes Buffett's cynicism and contempt for American working people in reference to the latter's article in the NY Times lauding the government for its bailout of the financial institutions. The author points out how the bailouts directly benefited Buffett's investments in Goldman Sachs. Collins responds to Buffett with this statement:

Mr. Buffett. You are no different than Goldman Sachs and the other exploiters funded by the hard work of everyone other than those who reap the benefits of that work.

There won't be a bailout for the earth

by Johann Hari from The Independent.

Why are the world’s governments bothering? Why are they jetting to Cancun next week to discuss what to do now about global warming? The vogue has passed. The fad has faded. Global warming is yesterday’s apocalypse. Didn’t somebody leak an email that showed it was all made up? Doesn’t it sometimes snow in the winter? Didn’t Al Gore get fat, or something? 

Meanwhile:

2010 is globally the hottest year since records began. 2010 is the year humanity’s emissions of planet-warming gases reached its highest level ever. And exactly as the climate scientists predicted, we are seeing a rapid increase in catastrophic weather events, from the choking of Moscow by gigantic unprecedented forest fires to the drowning of one quarter of Pakistan.

Read about the latest theory developed by the paleontologist Professor Peter Ward regarding the great extinctions in Earth's history.

The Korean Crisis: Cui Bono?

by William Engdahl from Global Research. 

This author is a very astute observer of the Empire's shenanigans, and can always be counted on to balance the disinformation put out by the Empire's media machinery.

He points to the source of the tensions by referring to an earlier incident that took place in March of this year. For information on the most recent incident, the AP has probably provided the best report from Western sources which as usual have done a dismal job. 

There are few places in the world where Western media, especially US media, do such poor coverage of the news as that of North Korea. I don't believe (or disbelieve) anything that is reported from these sources. Instead I wait for reports from alternative news agencies which often takes some time. The only area of the world where coverage might be worse is in the Congo (DRC) where Western corporations are plundering their mineral resources and supporting mercenary armies. (See this, this, and this.) 

I am not very current in my knowledge of Korean affairs largely because of the poor coverage, but I have recently acquired an accurate knowledge of the Korean War by reading two excellent, well-written, extensively documented volumes by Bruce Cumings entitled, The Origins of the Korean War, v.1 & 2. 

While reading these two books, I was shocked at one revelation after another that clearly contradicted everything that I had been brainwashed into thinking about Korea during the Korean War when I was a young teenager and since. If you have only time for one book, I suggest reading v.1. These books are not easily obtainable. They are expensive in the used book market, and only large university libraries seem to have copies available. (I wonder why.) I can see now why the US media and academic authorities prefer to call it the "Forgotten War"--they would like you to forget about it.

The stench of the police state at US airports

by Patrick Martin and Joe Kishore from World Socialist Web Site. 

The authors furnish some good arguments to support this thesis:

The entire “war on terror,” from the initial 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 to the most recent scare over cargo shipments from Yemen, is characterized by the unexplained and highly suspicious role of the American security apparatus, which has repeatedly acted in a fashion that suggests that it is promoting and facilitating terrorist provocations—which are then utilized to promote the military and foreign policy goals of American imperialism—rather than preventing them.

It's Official: The Economy Is Set To Starve

by Chris Martenson from his blog. 

The author examines the recent report on energy released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and mainstream media's coverage of the report. It is very interesting because he helps us to see the strong bias of capitalist elites both in the report and their media coverage of it. 

Now, the author is no critic of capitalism. It might be worth your while to examine his extensive background and credentials in science and finance. He clearly knows of what he writes. 

On the other hand, I don't think he believes, like many others who have spent a number of years in academia and have been subject to academic elite's indoctrination, that there is any alternative to capitalism. There certainly is no mention of the system in the article. The closest he comes is with this statement:

The IEA report indicates an enormous set of risks for an over-leveraged world reliant on constant growth. [my emphasis]

His strategy to deal with the implications of peak energy is to become as self-sufficient as possible--the individualist approach. He goes on to describe all the many ways his life has changed. He does say in his "About" statement, "...most importantly, I now know that the most important descriptor of wealth is not my dollar holdings, but the depth and richness of my community." However, in contrast to his individual adaptations, he doesn't elaborate at all on this statement.

"Effects of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession on American Households"

from Economist's View blog. 

This is a succinct, and rather cold-blooded, conclusion of a study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. Both authors of the study are associated with the Rand Corporation.

Gap Between Science and Pledges Likely to Outlive Cancún

by Matthew O. Berger from IPS. 

In contrast to last year's hopeful expectations about the climate change meeting in Copenhagen, the upcoming meeting in Cancun is much more subdued. It is only a week away and there have been very few articles about it.

On Tuesday, the U.N. Environment Programme released a report that concluded those reductions [the non-binding reductions from the Copenhagen Accord], even if fully met, are only 60 percent of the reductions needed to keep global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, which scientists – and the accord – say is necessary to prevent catastrophe.

Schemes of the Rich and Greedy

by Michael Hudson from his blog. 

I don't agree with everything in the article, particularly with the way he frames his arguments. For example, the title of his essay. This serves to frame the social injustice that he illustrates with a number of examples as simply a matter of morality--greed. Well, I think that this should be overlooked because, after all, he is an economist not a political scientist, and most economists have been so thoroughly indoctrinated in the virtues of capitalism that they don't believe there is any alternative. On the other hand Hudson is a very astute and honest economist who has not lost his sense of social justice. 

Anyway read the article to find out about all the "schemes of the rich and greedy". Actually, there are other schemes as well, but he covers many of the current ones.

...the wealthy want just what bankers want: the entire economic surplus (followed by a foreclosure on property). They want all the disposable income over and above basic subsistence – and then, when this shrinks the economy, they want the government to sell off the public domain in “privatization” giveaways, and they want people to turn over their houses and any other property they have to the creditors. “Your money or your life” is not only what bank robbers demand. It is what banks themselves demand, and the wealthy 10% of the population that owns most of the bank stock.

Of course, the real underlying problem is the system which turns ordinary people with sociopathic tendencies into monsters.

Tuition fee protests: eight injured, five arrested as students turn violent [U.K.]

By Andy Bloxham from The Telegraph.

Students in the UK are fighting back against dramatic increases in higher education fees that are another way in which the capitalist class will make working people and their children pay for the crash in their casino economy. Unfortunately, their latest gambling activities at the casino have resulted in debts and they have the gall to stick us with the bill.  

Meanwhile, let us see how the children of capitalists are managing under the austerity measures by reading this Bloomberg article.

TSA Gestapo Empire

by Paul Craig Roberts from Foreign Policy Journal.

The author provides an excellent perspective on the latest invasive security measures for airline travelers in the US under the cover of the "war on terror". His analysis suggests that the "war on terror" and its associated security measures are a fraud. So then, what might be the real reasons for the elaborate and growing security apparatus in the US, a country that increasingly is taking on  the appearance of a police state?  

With such expensive counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the hard-pressed taxpayers’ money and civil liberties, one would think that bombs were going off all over America.  But, of course, they aren’t. There has not been a successful terrorist act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts doubt the government’s explanation of that event.

Subsequent domestic terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and lead them into displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act.  Once the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right words to be said and captured on his hidden recorder, the “terrorists” are arrested and the “plot” exposed. 

What the TSA Patdown Searches Are Really About

by Robert Freeman from Common Dreams. 

I think he has hit on the right reasons.

The startling part of it was the mindlessness of it all.  The guards were simply being good Nazis.  Today, it is no longer mindless.  It is part of a sustained campaign to condition the American public to being humiliated by government officials in the name of national security.

Fighting Doom: The New Politics of Climate Change

by Brendan Smith from Common Dreams. 

Working people are slowly waking up to the overwhelming problems that we are faced with today. But, rather than feeling merely overwhelmed, they see the necessity for action.

The highlights of my political life -- as opposed to oystering -- have been marked by winning narrow, often temporary, battles, but perennially losing the larger war. I see the results in every direction I look: growing poverty and unemployment, two wars, the rise of the right, declining unionization, the failure of the Senate's climate legislation and of Copenhagen, the wholesale domination of corporate interests. The list goes on and on. We have lost; it's time to admit our strategy has been too tepid and begin charting anew.

This time can be different.

 

The view from inside Teach for America

by Eric Maroney from Socialist Worker. 

The radical author inexplicably finds himself in the company of the new education "reformers", and learns first hand what they are all about.

For all the talk of "equality" and "justice," the individuals at the helm of the reform movement are ruling-class cretins, concerned with creating an education system that is cheap to maintain and produces profit-maximizing entry-level workers. In this model, the students most affected by disability, language barriers, poverty and the achievement gap are sure to be left behind.

Why do we bother with elections?

by Danny Lucia from Socialist Worker. 

Danny Lucia wants to know why we had to pay attention to the elections when the two parties were getting together behind closed doors to plan how to screw us over.

My sentiments exactly. I stopped paying attention to the election circuses many years ago, and I keep wondering when the rest of my fellow Americans wise up. 

Instead of watching all the TV hoopla, attending candidate rallies, etc., why not spend your time reading about real current and historical events from alternative sources? Then after learning about how our society really functions to serve the few, you might be able to join with your enlightened fellow Americans to change it into one that is governed by, and serves, all of the people.
 

Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11

by Kevin Ryan from Foreign Policy Journal. 

The author re-visits this peculiar 9/11 phenomenon with new information that is extensively documented. 

In the last few years, new evidence has come to light on these matters.  In 2006 and 2010, financial experts at a number of universities have established new evidence, through statistical analyses, that informed trades did occur with respect to the 9/11 attacks.

Leaking Siberian ice raises a tricky climate issue

An AP report carried in Yahoo News. 

Wherever one looks, one sees threats to climate stability. The huge quantities of methane under the permafrost in Siberia and other northern regions appear ready to burst forth.

...in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.

Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.

The Economy Is Not Coming Back : The Reasons it Shouldn't

by Gilles d'Aymery from Swans Commentary. 

If you are looking for a one-stop "shopping center" for research about peak energy, environment, and climate change and the implications for societal organization, this appears to have most of what you might need. 

The socioeconomic paradigm built on capital accumulation, perpetual material growth, and financial profits for the infinitesimal few must be not just overhauled but buried, and replaced by an equitable new arrangement that takes into account all natural ecosystems.

Top FBI Officials Push Silicon Valley Execs to Embrace Internet Wiretaps

by Tom Burghardt from Antifascist Calling. 

As the class war, disguised as a "war on terror", heats up all over the world, the ruling classes are looking to "full-spectrum dominance" over their own "unruly" citizens by gaining complete access to information about your online activities. You are to submit meekly not only to full body scans and pat-downs at airports, but to have all of your communications scanned as well by ruling class spy agencies. This excellent investigative journalist and friend of working people delves into the latest developments in the US.

The weakest link in the battle to preserve privacy rights...are the corporate grifters feeding at the federal trough.

...it becomes clear that profit always trumps democratic control and privacy rights.

Dollar War in Detail

by Michael Hudson from his blog. 

I think that this is the most important article that I've read in some time--a must-read article of the month. It is not easy reading if you don't have a fairly strong background in economics, finance, and currency trading. Like most people, I don't have this strong background; thus with a light background I've had to spend a considerable amount of time studying the article. I continue to believe that Hudson has a sound grasp of the issues, although he often has difficulty in explaining the issues in terms that ordinary people can understand. I think he succeeds very well in this piece. 

There are so many insightful gems in this article that I'm not sure where to start. I have the sort of mind that likes to integrate or consolidate ideas. Here is a summary of my current understanding of how we have arrived at this currency war.

In the 20th century the US rose to prominence in the world largely due to its abundance of natural resources that was turned into wealth--goods, growth in technological knowledge, and services all created by working people to make their lives fuller and comfortable. Because the economy of the US was organized under the system of capitalism, a large part of this wealth came under the control of a few people whose primary interest was in accumulating wealth and the power that wealth brings with it.

Capitalist ruling classes clashed for dominance beginning with WWI and continued with WWII. After the devastating effects of the latter war on most of the world, the US's economy was intact having suffered no damage from the war. Driven by the engine of capitalism that serves the profit needs of a small class of owners, the US economy produced prodigious amounts of goods that required huge amounts of resources from all over the world. Americans consumed the great majority of these goods and enjoyed a very high (some would describe it as "profligate") standard of living. This activity, it turn, consumed much of the energy and other resources in the US. 

With a powerful economy and a powerful military, the US ruling capitalist class took control of most of the non-Soviet-communist controlled world and sought to impose its dominance on the latter through various smaller proxy wars in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The collapse of Soviet style communism which occurred in 1989 left a vacuum for the capitalist classes which they eagerly filled.

However, the Cold War proved very costly for the US also. Shortly after the Vietnam War they had to go off the gold standard as backing for US currency. Instead, in a crucial move to insure its own currency as the prime world currency, they made a mostly secret agreement with the rulers of that oil rich, Medieval-like Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In this agreement, negotiated by Kissinger, the US guaranteed the security of the Kingdom and, in return, the Saudis agreed to sell oil only in US dollars and to recycle those dollars into US Treasury bonds and US stocks. This effectively backed the US dollars with oil. This explains Hudson's statement, 

Saudi Arabia realizes that it exists only with U.S. support. Doing what U.S. diplomats tell them to do lets them keep their oil resources rather than being treated like Iraq and Iran. 

As resources have become increasingly scarce and costly to obtain, the US ruling class became even more concerned with the control of resources abroad and pursued more aggressive campaigns to bring them under control. They organized the Western capitalist countries under NATO to move from the West into eastern Europe and the Middle East. They have also colluded with Zionists to insure Israel's military superiority in the Middle East. Today they occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and have over 700 military bases in the world. It is a US lead capitalist empire.   

The Empire has also employed two primary financial weapons to dominate other countries and to gain access to their markets, resources, and cheap labor. The use of debt against other countries through the US dominated IMF and World Bank has been used for some time. See this and this, and read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by J. Perkins. (They have recently used this debt weapon against its own citizens in the Western countries during this current economic collapse. For US citizens see this article.) 

Currency manipulation is the other weapon and Hudson describes the current currency war in great detail in this article. He describes how the currency war that Geithner, Obama, and Bernanke have launched will impact other countries. The US ruling class is starting to see opposition from members of its own Empire who wish to protect their currencies and  maintain control over their economies. Like Rome, the center of the current Empire, the US, is starting to show opposition from its satellites. I think that we are at a crucial turning point in the history of the world, and it would be a good idea for all of us to pay attention.

A Debtcropper Society

by Matt Stoller from New Deal 2.0. 

This brief piece hits on the powerful strategy of financial elites to enslave all the world's working people to feed their addictions to wealth and power. (Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man)

Giving money to people and nations in the form of debt is so seductive and so effective at bringing people under the control of the creditors. The creditors use the legal system which they constructed, and then use sheriff and police departments which they control, sometimes even armies, to enforce their laws. 

Instead of raising taxes on the rich, the rich much prefer issuing debt to their own governments in the forms of bonds, loans, etc. Instead of paying decent wages to workers, they encourage workers to use credit cards to purchase items that the advertising world insists they should have in order to be an acceptable human being.

Today, the debts do not involve liens against crops. People in modern America carry student loans, credit card debt, and mortgages. All of these are hard to pay back, often bringing with them impenetrable contracts and illegal fees. Credit card debt is difficult to discharge in bankruptcy and a default on a home loan can leave you homeless. A student loan debt is literally a claim against a life — you cannot discharge it in bankruptcy, and if you die, your parents are obligated to pay it. If the banks have their way, mortgages and deficiency judgments will follow you around forever....

Grand Delusions: The Regressive Results of Progressive Markets

by Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque. 

The author does an excellent job of busting the myths of liberal capitalists who engage in make-believe good works while padding their pockets.

You cannot fruitfully address social problems with a mechanism designed to create private profit -- just as you cannot build a peaceful, stable society with an organization designed to kill people and blow things up. Yet multitudes are suffering and dying all over the world from these delusions. And because they augment the wealth and dominance of the powerful, these corrosive myths will continue to be propagated with evangelical fervor by those same elites and their sycophants -- to the detriment of social needs, of national security, of the common good and the daily lives of countless individuals.

Rich People Don't Watch Football

by Jamie Johnson from Vanity Fair.  

Jamie is our Saturday morning guide into the lives of the rich who we seldom encounter in our everyday lives, except of course on TV. But these latter are mainly celebrities, people who are newly rich who are not really accepted among "The One Percent" as one of them. 

We rarely, if ever, meet rich people in the flesh who spend much of their time at their various homes and playgrounds in such places as Aspen, The Hamptons, Nantucket, Davos, Dubai, and Monte Carlo. And when they travel between these places they don't fly coach, probably not even 1st class, because they often use or charter private jets. Nevertheless, they are our fellow Americans and we need to keep in touch with them as best we can.

Theirs is a rather insular world free of the obstacles and much of the everyday frustrations that the rest of us put up with. For example, I doubt that any of them would ever endure the humiliation of going through security checkpoints at airports and being scanned or patted down by TSA's gestapo. 

Today we learn from Jamie that this crowd doesn't really go in for football (American football). He doesn't really know why, but I surmise that they are much too genteel to appreciate the sweaty roughness of tackling somebody or swilling down "Buds" while watching this on TV.

...indoor games like bridge provide the kind of competition rich people like to engage in during leisurely weekend hours. In certain circles, a fabled bridge player enjoys far more cachet than a Heisman Trophy winner. And if the card champion happens to speak beautiful French, then you are finally talking about the kind of consummate sportsman polite society can truly embrace.

By the way, if you haven't seen Jamie's excellent film, "The One Percent", you simply must do so. As a member of this set, he has access to them and their world which can shed so much light on their perspectives and values.

Building community: an economic approach

An interview with David Korten from Yes! Magazine.

Yes! Magazine is essentially David's magazine. This interview illustrates the general thrust of his magazine which is, I believe, to romanticize the various projects going on at the community level which include networking of small business enterprises, cooperatives, Transition Towns projects, community created money, etc. These projects are all fine. They help, to a limited extent, to build cohesiveness at the local level. But by themselves they will have little effect on the lives of the vast majority of working people. 

So, I ask, why does Korten makes such an emotional display of support for these projects? I can't get inside of his head, but I can look at what his efforts are likely to lead to if they succeed. They will at best provide some micro-niches for a few small scale projects that will moderately enhance the lives of a relatively few people. But what concerns me is that support for such projects will divert attention away from the overwhelming system that is ruining all of our lives--capitalism. We cannot ignore it and hope it will go away. We must learn how to understand it and how to fight it. 

Because such efforts serve to distract from more militant projects, I believe that this is why Korten is given access to PBS--another instrument of the ruling class that serves to "manufacture consent". 

By the way, I live in Bellingham.

Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay [a book review]

by Gregory Elich from Global Research (orig. from Science & Society). 

This book appears to offer some excellent insights to enable an understanding of the gradual degradation of the lives of working people caused by neo-liberal policies.

The first section of the book addresses economic globalization, in which "transnational corporations are able to pit workers in the rich, developed imperialist countries in a direct job-for-job wage competition with workers in poor, underdeveloped, low-wage countries on an ever-widening scale."

In the second section of the book, Goldstein outlines the thirty-year assault on the American workforce. The net effect has been more deleterious than is often realized. "Over three decades of outsourcing, offshoring, and immigration, the pressure has become more insidious than a market crash. The confidence of workers has been slowly and imperceptibly undermined by the bosses' gradualist piecemeal tactics: layoffs in one plant or a group of plants, staggered over time and in different industries and regions. Production is shifted to low-wage areas behind the backs of the workers. Over time, concessions have been made to the bosses in increments. It all adds up to a massive attack on the entire class, but in slow motion. The workers are influenced by what has become known as the 'fear factor' and their leadership has shown no way out."

What Kind of Palestinian State in 2011? Neoliberalism and World Bank Diktats

by Rafeef Ziadah from CADTM. 

The article reports on the recent activities spearheaded by the World Bank and the IMF to promote neo-liberal plans for the integration of Palestinian territories into Israel and the Empire. Their actions illustrate some of the common tools of ruling classes that are used to impose their will on a people, whose labor and resources they want to control, such as divide and conquer and co-optation. See if you can spot the current use of these methods in this article.

Understanding the logic of the Fayyad Plan is critical to assessing the current state of the Palestinian struggle. Often the analytical emphasis is placed on Israeli action, while internal Palestinian politics are ignored. However, the shifts taking place within the Palestinian Occupied Territories such as the increased power of a Palestinian elite class, and the hand-picking of Fayyad to implement neoliberal reforms, are vital to understand because they pose significant obstacles to Palestinian prospects for self-determination. 

Historian takes aim at powerful climate doubters

by Margot O'Neill from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  

The reporter provides this transcript of her interview with Prof. Oreskes who essentially argues the main thesis of the excellent book entitled, Merchants of Doubt, which she co-authored.

American science historian Professor Naomi Oreskes believes political uncertainty about climate change comes from a small handful of distinguished scientists who also denied the link between tobacco smoke and cancer.

In the interview, and much more in detail in the book, she explains how some scientists were essentially co-opted into serving ruling class interests by being given access to some of the highest levels of power. 

I believe that it is a similar story to how they managed to co-opt many leaders of labor unions. Co-optation is a major tool in the arsenal of capitalists to deal with opposition from working people.

India faces warming climate, study says

from UPI.

Before I found this article, I looked at about eight media sources to learn more about this report after seeing a news article in the NY Times. All failed to satisfy me in some way. I found the following weaknesses: too brief such as the BBC report, too dry by merely listing some findings without any implications for the effects on humans (link), distorting the effects of dramatic climate changes by implying that they are a mixed blessing (Indian Express), or as in the NY Times article which merely cites a "report" issued from India without clarification as to the qualifications of the people issuing the report and no links which might provide this important information. 

Through a circuitous route I managed to find this report from UPI which I believe is the best. Do you think I am being a bit paranoid when I start wondering that the poor coverage is motivated by capitalist interests in suppressing news reports about climate change?

Conducted by 220 Indian scientists and 120 research institutions for the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment, a governmental organization, the study predicts an increase in rainfall, particularly in the Himalayas, with extreme precipitation to increase by up to 10 days in all regions of India.

Who are the bond holders we are bailing out?

by David Malone from Golem XIV. 
The IMF and the European Central Bank want to "rescue" Irish banks by having the Irish government take on more of their loans in order to bail out the banks. Such loans always result in more pressure from the IMF and the ECB to raise more taxes, cut public spending, sell off government property, etc. in order to pay off the loans.

This author from the UK has delved into who the creditors are that own the current debts of the Irish banks that are in danger of defaulting. 

It is worth knowing who they are because the Irish government has said more than once that one of the reasons the bond holders had to be protected and could not, must not, be made to suffer any losses, even though it would be PERFECTLY legal to do so, is because the bond holders are pension funds for poor Irish widows and cooperative savings funds for orphans and 'ordinary folk'.  A little poetic exaggeration there, but only a little.

It is rare that anyone has looked into who the creditors are that own all the debts that is owed by US citizens for the various levels of governments consisting of cities, States, and the US government. For the latter I've found an interesting chart from 2008 data that shows that about half is owed to the Federal Reserve which is owned by private banks who, in turn, are owned mostly by the wealthy 1% of Americans.

The Delusional People Who Want to Frack This Country Up

by James Howard Kunstler from AlterNet.

On Sunday night CBS hauled Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, on board their flagship Sunday infotainment vehicle, 60 Minutes, to blow a mighty wind up America's ass (as they say in professional PR circles). America is lately addicted to lying to itself, and 60 Minutes has become the "go-to" patsy for funneling disinformation into an already hopelessly confused, wishful, delusional, US public.

Following this opening paragraph the author continues on to reveal the real story that corporate media carefully omitted. 

The problem with mainstream media is that they disseminate so much disinformation that it is impossible to correct all of it. The only solution that I see is for people to establish their own media and to wean ordinary Americans off corporate media.  The remaining huge question is how to accomplish this.   

I think that it is inevitable that people will eventually tire of being lied to as they see their living standards plummet and more extreme weather caused by capitalist growth. However this "eventual" time might be too late to save the planet for humans to live on.

Peddling War to Children

by Robert C. Koehler from Common Dreams.

About preparing children to go to war for the Empire:

...nobody in the gaming industry, or the media that covers it, evinced a concern about that, or noted that Six Days in Fallujah and all the other war games that children and adults play are merely sophisticated e-versions of cowboys and Indians: the dance of good and evil played out in a consequence-free context. The good guys are always “us” and the bad guys of the moment are often merely our victims.

The cutback commission

by Petrino DiLeo from Socialist Worker. 

What's most striking about the Bowles-Simpson outline for the commission's final deliberations is who is being asked to tighten their belts. The co-chairs call for sacrifices from workers, the elderly, college students and veterans--while corporations and the wealthy are promised lower taxes.

Students as well as workers all over the world are fighting back against cutbacks and fee increases. From United for Education and Democratizing Education Network:

 

 

The liberals’ lament: “Why won’t Obama fight?”

by David Walsh from World Socialist Web site. 

This writer provides a lot of valuable insights to understand how US liberals serve to maintain the capitalism system.

They delude themselves and others with the notion that, subjected to the right arguments, the proper amount of pressure, Obama and his administration can emerge as the champion of the people.

That miracle will never happen before the Day of Judgment, and those who perpetuate such illusions play a reactionary role. This sort of complacent petty-bourgeois politics has disastrous consequences for the working class. Insofar as it reinforces the hold of the big business Democrats over workers, it confuses and paralyzes them politically, and makes inevitable the advance of the ultra-right and ever deeper attacks on social conditions, living standards and democratic rights.

Rich, Krugman, Reich and Greider are at one on this: they seek to prevent an understanding of the class character and history of the Democratic Party and of the need for the working population to break with it, once and for all.

Until ordinary working people understand this, they will continue to suffer the "slings and arrows of [capitalist] misfortune".

Social democrats win Greek regional elections amid mass abstention

by Robert Stevens from World Socialist Web Site.  

This means that nearly two in three Greek voters did not vote for a candidate in the second round.

This mass abstention is a particularly clear sign of growing discontent with “official” politics, as it is illegal not to vote in Greece. Such levels of abstention reveal a pronounced level of disgust with both PASOK and ND, who are equally reviled and viewed as proponents of austerity and social misery.

The Greeks know how to cope with the election circuses that their ruling class use to create political legitimacy for a capitalist party, whichever one they are allowed to vote for.