Reports: Obama pushing for cuts to Social Security, Medicare

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from Salon. 

The author, once again, provides a corrective to the narratives spun by mainstream media's portrayal of the US budget crisis. 

For months, the standard narrative among progressive commentators was that Republicans were outrageously exploiting the debt ceiling deadline to impose drastic entitlement cuts on a resisting and victimized Democratic President (he's weak in negotiations!), but...the driving force behind these cuts is the President himself, who is pushing for even larger spending cuts than the GOP was ready to accept....

This is another illustration of the "good cop, bad cop" theme that mainstream media likes to use to confuse ordinary Americans.

Kleptocratic Capitalism: Challenges of the green economy for sustainable Africa

Click here to access article by Yash Tandon from Pambazuka News (Africa). 

The fundamental reality of Africa is that it is integrated into a global system of kleptocratic capitalism characterised by primitive accumulation or ‘rent seeking’ by the rich nations and within each nation by the rich power elite. This creates at the opposite polar end the dispossession and disempowerment of the masses of the people. The present phase of the evolution of capitalism is caught up in its own contradictions, but capitalism is not about to disappear. It is a long road. In facing the challenges of the demands of a ‘green economy’ that ensures ‘sustainable Africa’, Africa has to balance the human rights and needs of the masses of its people with the imperative of protecting Africa’s environment. Africa should not hand over policy matters and negotiating strategies to outside ‘experts’, however benign they might appear.

 

PASOK: Pan Hellenic Socialist Kleptocrats

Click here to access article by James Petras from Dissident Voice.

Petras does an excellent job of exposing how representative democracy functions in Greece to serve the governing class. Of course, the situation in Greece is only an example of how representative democracy is used by governing capitalist classes to fool working people into thinking that their governments are legitimate.

His concluding paragraph is very significant: 

For the vast majority of Greeks there is no future and no solution in the existing system of street protest and parliamentary politics. The latter ignores the former. This impasse raises the question of what kinds of extra parliamentary action are necessary and possible to end the rule by de-factor imperial rulers and kleptocratic collaborators.

It seems to me, as a general strategy, that the solution lies in thinking globally in terms of working class consciousness and connecting with workers in other nations, and acting locally. Working class activism must become globalized to meet the challenge posed by globalized capitalist elites.

Looking at FBI Entrapment

Click here to access article by Rehanna Jones-Boutaleb from Foreign Policy in Focus.

Yesterday I referred to the hybrid form that the US political system has assumed: pseudo forms of democracy combined with police state methods. This article illustrates the latter. 

US teachers’ union endorses Obama for 2012 election

Click here to access article by Alexander Fangmann and Jerry White from World Socialist Web Site.

The National Education Association—whose 3.2 million members have been a major target of the Obama administration’s attack on public school teachers—became the first major union to endorse the Democratic president’s reelection bid in 2012.

This article highlights how much the ruling class has co-opted this US education union into serving the capitalism system. 

For more detailed information on how this process has succeeded, read Chapter 3 of "The Business Roundtable and Systemic Reform", a 2002 PhD dissertation by Kathy Emery, from her website.

Why I’m Hoping the NFL Season Will be Canceled

Click here to access article by William Hicks from Dissident Voice. 

I love this paragraph:

It has become painfully obvious in recent years that the purpose of the mainstream media is to serve as what the late Joe Bageant used to call the “American Hologram,” distracting the masses from noticing how they are being robbed blind by the corporate and Wall Street elite who own that very same media. From celebrity spectacles, to reality shows, to official propaganda presented as “news,” hundreds of cable and satellite television channels are dedicated to pulling the wool over the eyes of the bovine herd whose minds have become as flabby as their waistlines.

I don't quite agree with his blaming both athletes and owners for the impasse. Especially in relation to "professional" (commercial) American football, the former are workers who have invested so much of their lives into becoming top athletes and risk so much in terms of their health.

Once again, it is the system of capitalism which corrupts everything--even recreation that ordinary people used to enjoy. Sports has become too much of a commodity like most everything else: something to be paid for and consumed rather than something to participate in for fun and a healthy way to connect with one's neighbors.

Firing Line: The Grand Coalition Against Teachers

Click here to access article by Joanne Barkan from Dissent. 

This article will investigate the fix-the-teachers campaign of today’s “education reformers.” It’s not their only project. They also want public schools run with the top-down, data-driven, accountability methods used in private businesses; they aim to replace as many regular public schools as possible with publicly funded, privately managed charter schools; some are trying to expand voucher programs to allow parents to take their per-child public-education funding to private schools. ...It endangers the democratic nature of public education as well.

It is clear to me that the capitalist political operatives have launched a broad campaign against working people everywhere in the world. Here at the center of the Empire they are attacking the last vestiges of public funding and control of what is considered "the commons" and the public worker unions which have a stake in the commons. 

The political operatives are thoroughly drunk on the power they derive from the control of an impressive military apparatus, well-equipped police forces, and their stacking of the court system with neo-conservatives. This control, and their commitment to such fascist methods, well describes a contemporary version of fascism, although at this time it has taken a hybrid form consisting of pseudo-forms of democracy combined with police state methods. All aspects of fascism are in place, but they still feel that they can fool most working people into believing that the system serves their needs. Thus, they continue to use a fake form of democracy called representative democracy within which they control the process of selection of candidates and the elected representatives. 

As long as working people mostly cooperate in their oppression, this make-believe democracy will continue. But, should working people really begin to fight back in an organized fashion with all the immense power they possess, then you will see the gloves come off to reveal the naked fist of fascism. This prospect likely frightens some people, but there really is no decent alternative but to organize and fight back. 

What is the alternative to fighting back? Take a look at the future where fascism functions quite openly with only a thin veneer of democratic process . Look at conditions in Honduras as an illustration of what lies ahead for US workers if they continue to cooperate with the 1% of citizens who essentially own our economy and use it for their sole benefit.

Once working people become conscious of their power, the system will collapse like a house of cards. The system cannot function without the cooperation of large numbers of working people.

Thus it is clear that the fightback in the US it is mostly an ideological battle. Arrayed against us are all the ideological organs of the owning class--their increasing control of education and absolute control of mainstream media. They now want absolute control of education. In order to counter this barrage of propaganda, it is mandatory for those of us, like Joanne Barkan, who are already aware of the dire situation, to enable a new consciousness through the use of alternative media.

Fourth of July Lies

Click here to access article by June Terpstra from OpEd News. 

This fourth of July article is a call to those people of the USA who can still think critically to stop merely talking about changing the US and hence, the world, and start doing it by creating resistance movements against the beliefs and practices that foster going into countries and homes to kill the people and take their resources. Be it under the ruse of something called democracy, humanitarian intervention, the war on terror or the war on drugs, these programs and their labels delude and deceive in order to manufacture consent for war, torture and theft that profits the small group of men and women who really rule the world.

This writer clearly understands that the battle being waged against us, and many others in the world, is an ideological one. She counters many of the "Fourth of July Lies" with the truth to help us to think clearly about the issues of our time.

The only weakness I see with her article is that she fails to connect the lies to the system of capitalism, the goose which lays the golden eggs for 1% of citizens to the detriment of everyone else. To her the source of the lies and oppression is...

The national religion, an ugly mix of Calvinism and evangelical Christianity, is the ultimate expression of greed and manifestation of death wishes which destroys any human love for the poor and down-trodden. The dominant culture promotes the continuation of the ability to make money for consumption; an addiction to mind numbing media; and the desensitization of the population to violence to benefit the greed based fundamentalism of ruling power elites. 

To be sure religion has been used, and still is to a lesser extent, by the ruling class of capitalists to support their system. And, their system is the real faith-based religion of capitalism that allows a small minority to control the economy to serve their interests, not ours.

Hundreds of Thousands of Greek and British Workers Stage Strikes As Governments Push Austerity Cuts [16:38m video]

Click here to access article from Democracy Now.


Workers in Europe are beginning to understand that they must fight back, that the existing political process cannot bring relief, and that they have tremendous power at their disposal to bring down the system.

"Democracy Now!" is a valuable left-liberal media source of information and analysis in the US, but it always skirts the underlying issue of capitalism. I don't know whether they do this to survive in a hostile US media environment or whether they actually believe that capitalism can be reformed to serve the interests of ordinary working people.

The Propaganda Narrative of U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq

Click here to access article by Jeremy R. Hammond from Foreign Policy Journal.

This is an excellent analysis of a current propaganda piece published by the most prominent "newspaper of record" in the US. Anyone who has any interest in how the ruling class shapes public opinion must read this article. 

...the New York Times would have Americans believe that “Iraqis Hope U.S. Special Operations Commandos Stay”. Naturally, the U.S. mainstream media also stays true to the narrative that the U.S. is in the country to help Iraqis build “democracy”, the rejection of the views and positions of the overwhelming majority of Iraqis notwithstanding.

In order to maintain the fiction of an independent press, the control of mainstream media in the US is always handled informally and hidden from public view. Thus, control of the media is not done formally as when the Soviet authorities directed its propaganda organs such as Pravda to publish articles in a certain way, but control exists nonetheless.   

A World Overwhelmed by Western Hypocrisy

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from Information Clearing House.

The International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank are violating their charters in order to bail out French, German, and Dutch private banks. The IMF is only empowered to make balance of payments loans, but is lending to the Greek government for prohibited budgetary reasons in order that the Greek government can pay the banks. The ECB is prohibited from bailing out member country governments, but is doing so anyway in order that the banks can be paid.  The German parliament approved the bailout, which violates provisions of the European Treaty and Germany’s own Basic Law. The case is in the German Constitutional Court, a fact unreported in the US media.  

This opening paragraph is only one of many hypocrisies that he cites, however it brings to my mind some important insights regarding the way the capitalist class rules to serve their interests while only pretending to follow the rule of their own laws. I will comment only with regard to key financial institutions, but the same principles (securing the private interests of the owning class) apply to the other hypocrisies he writes about.

First, although they always claim to follow a system of laws, not people, this is always a cover to hide their use and misuse of laws to serve their class interests. When it is in their class interests to flout their own laws, they do so through a variety of methods: they put pressure on their appointed legal authorities to provide favorable interpretations of the laws or completely redefine what the laws mean (for example, corporations became "persons" via the US Supreme court in 1886). And, at other times, they simple ignore their laws and do what they want. 

Laws designed by the owning class have always been designed, interpreted, and enforced to serve their class interests regarding the ownership of private property, and the key feature of which is the right of ownership and control over the wealth produced by working people.

Second, notice that once again (similar to the Federal Reserve) we see institutions that have a veneer of governmental participation in order to create the appearance of legitimacy, but in reality serve the private interests of the owning class. (See this, this, this, and this.) Here we see these quasi-governmental institutions serving private banks which are owned and controlled by the capitalist class who represent less than 1% of the European population. 

We are living in a debt ridden world, and who "owns" all this debt (i.e., the creditors)?  The tiny minority of people who benefit from their system and who rule much of the world.

Getting used to Life without Food

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from Global Research.

The author argues that under neo-liberal policies, the food supply is being used to serve the profit interests of the owning class while causing severe famines in many areas of the world.

Also, it appears obvious to me that increasing unstable weather patterns are causing havoc for farmers in producing their crops and thus contributes to the rise in prices. Engdahl argues in the last section of the article that weather changes are due to unusual solar flare activity and cites a few sources to support this. From my reading of many scientific studies, I have seen little that supports this argument. To the contrary, there is abundant research findings to support the thesis that global warming is creating extreme weather patterns. (See this, this, and this.) Most evidence suggests that solar flare activity seems to affect little more than electronic signals. (See "Hazards" subheading in Wikipedia's solar flare entry.)

Turn out the lights

Click here to access article by Peter Radford from Real-World Economics Review. 

...as a result of the opening up of our economy in the name of free market magic, and the economic collapse it brought about, we now have an enormous burden of underemployed people. These are our fellow citizens. They are without help and without hope. And our leaders try to ignore them.

Instead they engage in a furious re-writing of history to avoid responsibility for the play being staged.

Not content with dismantling our sense of community, they want to prevent any chance it will be recaptured. They want to expunge from history any remains of the response to the Great Depression. Indeed, they seem intent on reigniting depression in order to scorch the earth clean of vestiges of social action.

Under this globalization phase of capitalism the owning class is transforming much of the US working class into a permanent unskilled underclass. The great technological prowess and much vaunted American know-how of previous generations of workers that produced so much economic success is now being used by the owning class against American workers which will, if this continues, produce one generation after another of low paid service workers. 

With the ability to draw on skilled workers throughout the world, they no longer need most American workers to produce their wealth and the power that wealth brings with it. Thus, we see today that the owning class has no interest in a serious "New Deal" as we saw following the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The only civilized solution to save ordinary working people throughout the world is for them to use all the resources at their disposal--imagination, courage, cooperation, organization, etc--and to enlist these qualities to serve the workers of the world in order to throw off the shackles of the present class driven system of capitalism.

Egypt: The Struggle Continues

Click here to access article by Joel Beinin from Jadaliyya.

Egypt’s revolution is very much a work in progress and the struggle among its political and social forces remains undecided.

Indeed, we have only witnessed the initial stage of this revolutionary process. The Egyptian people will not easily return to their former dependent status and be exploited further by the US sponsored military ruling class in Egypt. 

This is a major contest that the Empire's political operatives feel could be a decisive battle to preserve the Empire, and they are doing everything they can to win. See this article entitled, "Top US senators join business trip to Tunisia, Egypt" in which the "top senators", who brought bags of US taxpayer money to bribe the Egyptian ruling class, were accompanied by CEOs of key US corporations such as Bechtel, GE, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Bechtel, Exxon Mobil, Marriot and Dow. 

The Last Great Global Warming

Click here to access introduction to the article by Lee R. Kump from Scientific American.

Unfortunately the full article can be accessed by subscription only. Of course the working people who made this article possible should be paid for their work. But if most of the rewards go to some group of investors, then this is a social crime. Under a socially just system, everyone could access this vitally needed article with a minimal amount of expense, and with little inconvenience. 

However, their introduction and the following summary hits the crucial points, and the implications pose a herculean challenge for those of us living today. We simply must meet this challenge to insure a decent survival for those generations that follow us. To do this, we must change the social-economic system of capitalism that otherwise will lead us to extinction. It is no longer only a matter of social justice, it is now a matter of survival for our children and their children, and so on into the future.

• Global temperature rose five degrees Celsius 56 million years ago in response to a massive injection of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

• That intense gas release was only 10 percent of the rate at which heat-trapping greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere today. 

• The speed of today's rise is more troubling than the absolute magnitude, because adjusting to rapid climate change is very difficult.  

There are times when I fear that the human race has a fatal flaw that will prevent them from meeting this challenge--it is the worship of power and the powerful. Somehow ordinary people have tended historically to believe that the powerful possess power because they are superior human beings. Of course, the powerful have always played into this tendency by proliferating beliefs such as "divine rights" and other ideological supports from religious authorities, with legal systems where they make the laws and appoint the judges, and by indoctrinating its citizens in the belief that the leaders possess knowledge about the complexities of today's world that ordinary people cannot understand. 

Because most ordinary people are honest, they tend to believe that most other people are like them. They tend not to believe the reality that there are sociopaths among them who have attained power through deceit, criminal acts, and violence.

The present capitalist aristocracies have also made every effort to obscure real knowledge of important issues through their control of every important institution in our societies, the most important of which are education and the media.

Rogues or respectable? How climate change sceptics spread doubt and denial

Click here to access article by Ian Enting from The Conversation (Australia).

For US readers to follow up on this subject, I especially recommend that you read the book by Oreskes and Conway entitled, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. The book provides all the disgusting details of how a few scientists were bought off and used by capitalists to discredit scientific findings that interfered with their access to profits, a drug that has the latter so addicted that nothing else matters to them. 

Brainwashing the Corporate Way

Click here to access article by John Pilger from Global Research. 

One of the most original and provocative books of the past decade is Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield). “A critical look at salaried professionals,” says the cover, “and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives.”

I entirely agree with Pilger regarding this book. It has long been on my blog list. I regard it as essential reading in order to understand how the fake democracy works at its best (or worst) in the United States.

What passes as higher education in the US is loaded with indoctrination: history. literature, sociology, psychology, etc, is laced with the values and perspectives of the capitalist class. The latter depend especially upon their highly trained managers to serve their interests and the perpetuation of capitalism. That is precisely why they pay them so much. It is not because the key managers of the system are indispensable, but it is to insure their loyalty to the system and its beneficiaries.

The extraordinary benefits that the ruling class bestows on their key managers of the system was likely influenced by James Burnham in his book published in 1941 entitled, The Managerial Revolution, in which he foresaw the rise of a new managerial ruling class to replace the capitalist class.
 

50 U.S. Health Care Statistics That Will Absolutely Astonish You

Click here to access article from The Economic Collapse. 

The U.S. health care system has become one gigantic money making scam, and you are about to see the statistics that prove it.  Today, the United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world by far.  The health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical corporations are raking in gigantic mountains of cash and yet the quality of the health care that we receive in return is rather quite poor.

Here in the center of the Empire the ruling class couldn't care less about the health of working people. The Obamacare stage production was an elaborate attempt to cover up these embarrassing facts.

Beyond Golf, Gentlemanly Ways President Obama Can Court the Rich

Click here to access article by Jamie Johnson from Vanity Fair. 

Here Johnson makes the point that pleasing the ruling class ("patrician class") is very important in order to attain and keep an influential position in their fake democracy.

Pundits in Washington have characterized President Obama’s decision to participate in a bipartisan “Golf Summit,” a friendly round of 18 holes that included Vice President Biden and Republicans John Boehner and John Kasich, as a conciliatory effort to reach across the aisle and embrace congressional opponents. But what if the president had an even more strategic political goal in mind? It’s possible that the carefully staged outing was designed not only to present him as a fair-minded, bipartisan leader but to remind rich campaign contributors that he’s a fan of upper-class pursuits, too.

NOTICE: I underestimated the time it will take to do some redecorating of my home and to reorganize everything. Hence, I must cease posting for approximately a week. I expect to be back with new posts next Saturday, July 2nd. I think it will also be good for me to take a mini vacation away from my blog--the first since I started in December 2009.

Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer, 2nd edition [a repost of key document]

Click here to access article from Citigroup, courtesy of Biblioteca Pleyades.

I am re-posting this Citigroup document dated March 6, 2006. There have been several attempts by Citigroup to remove this piece from the internet--for obvious reasons. Fortunately, the non-profit website, Biblioteca Pleyades, has archived this on their website and I think it will remain secure there.

It illustrates the unvarnished thinking of the ruling class which in their arrogance see that they are in command of the world, and they command it to extend their wealth and power. It's clear that when communicating within their own circles, they have no compunctions about recognizing this as a fact and encouraging their members to take full advantage of it. 

Because someone leaked the document, we are fortunate to have a "fly on the wall" opportunity to see how this ruling class, who comprise less than 1% of the population, view the world. 

From my May 1, 2010 commentary and original posting:

I found an especially interesting mini-segment of Bill Moyers' final program when he, after the interview with Jim Hightower, briefly referred to this Citigroup document of 2006. In the interview it can be found at 37:13m. After some searching, I found the document on line. The conclusion at the end of the article is sufficient to get the main points:

The latest Survey of Consumer Finances for 2004 from the Fed, just released, shows that the richest 20% of Americans have gotten even wealthier since the last survey was conducted in 2001, and continue to enjoy a disproportionately large share of both income (58%) and wealth (68%). We should make clear that we have no normative view on whether plutonomies are good or bad. Our analysis is based on the facts, not what the society should look like.

This lies at the heart of our plutonomy thesis: that the rich are the dominant source of income, wealth and demand in plutonomy countries such as the UK, US, Canada and Australia, countries that have an economically liberal approach to wealth creation. We believe that the actions of the rich and the proportion of rich people in an economy helps explain many of the nasty conundrums and fears that have vexed our equity clients recently, such as global imbalances or why high oil prices haven’t destroyed consumer demand. Plutonomy, we think explains these problems away, and tells us not to worry about them. If we shouldn’t worry, the risk premia on equity markets may be too high.

Secondly,we believe that the rich are going to keep getting richer in coming years, as capitalists (the rich) get an even bigger share of GDP as a result, principally, of globalization. We expect the global pool of labor in developing economies to keep wage inflation in check, and profit margins rising–good for the wealth of capitalists, relatively bad for developed market unskilled/outsource-able labor. This bodes well for companies selling to or servicing the rich. We expect our Plutonomy basket of stocks–which has performed well relative to the S&P 500 index over the last 20 years–to continue performing well in future.

As you can see, the Citigroup document starts off with a disclaimer at having any moral values with regard to the increasing disparity between the rich and poor. That is because one can only function well at the top of the capitalist world if one is a sociopath, that is, one who doesn't have any regard for the morality or ethics of the capitalist system, especially in regard to the widespread effects of social inequality and injustice that it causes.

Then you can see why the ruling classes so vigorously pursued globalization: greater profits by employing working people in 3rd world countries while firing relatively unskilled working people in the US and other Western countries. You see, dictators and ruling classes in third world countries are easy to bribe to keep wages low by preventing working people from organizing into labor unions and ignoring any environmental laws they may have. Increasingly of late, more skilled workers in the US are finding their jobs outsourced to developing countries. This, combined with the rich making the rest of us pay for their gambling debts, has resulted in devastated communities, foreclosures on homes, poor health care, cuts in public services, etc. But that doesn't bother the rich and powerful--they avoid taking any "normative" stand on these issues. 

NOTICE: Because I have too many things that must get done today, I am unable to post any articles. I will be back tomorrow (Saturday noon) with more postings.

Thailand: “Red Power” or Money Power?

Click here to access article by Foreign Policy Journal. 

The author provides an excellent, and well documented illustration of why governments are targeted by regime change specialists from the Empire, and how their clever strategies are used to engineer acceptable regimes that are compatible with the New World Order and the requirements of neo-liberal policies.

Thailand, like Myanmar and Libya, is an example of an alternative economic system, but the existence of such alternatives systems is little known. Globalization aims to destroy such nationally-orientated experiments in the pursuit of a world system that results in a one size fits all mentality, whether it be in the type of political representation, finance, economics or culture and morality. While Thailand is far from perfect, and runs the risk of opening itself up to the blandishments of foreign investment and the IMF, it appears to have a system that is out of step with globalist demands, and is being implemented with the most idealistic of motives.

The Empire Strikes Back

Click here to access article by David Glenn Cox from OpEd News. 

This guy throws literary acid on the lies of the Empire in order to reveal the truth. And he concludes this essay with the greatest truth of all:

The message is clear, money is power, but there is another message which is not so clear, that there is strength in unity. The average American has more in common with a Los Angeles gang member than they do with any government official. You have more in common with a peasant worker in Juarez Mexico than you do with a Wells Fargo executive and even more in common with an Afghan fighter hiding in the mountains of North Waziristan. They know well that the empire means them no good, the empire wants only to exploit them and to use them and when finished, to dispense with them.

Shanghai to ration electricity due to power shortage

Click here to access article by Chris Hogg of the BBC. 

I believe that this report is an early warning sign of a more limited energy future that does not bode well for the growth imperative of capitalism. Whether we, as a human race, can stop this addiction to wealth and power by the 1% of the world's population is the critical challenge facing working people today. If we continue to tolerate the wasteful use of scarce resources by the 1%, then we are doomed.  If we are to survive, we simply must design a social-economic system where production and resource planning are guided by environmental concerns and for the benefit of the vast majority who want to live on a peaceful, sustainable, and healthy planet.

...this year, in what the Chinese newspapers are describing as an unprecedented move, 3,000 non-industrial businesses - mainly shopping malls and office blocks - will be asked to close their doors too.

When power is running out, households are the priority for the authorities here.

Immigration and the Culture of Solidarity

Click here to access article by David Bacon from Americas Program.

The article explains how US employers use the criminalization of immigrant workers to exploit and divide working people. Corporations in Mexico, often owned by multi-national corporations, fire their workers to bust up unions, then workers are forced to migrate to the US for work. It clarifies why US corporations want and need the migration of workers to cross the US-Mexican border because they can be easily intimidated and fired. Thus, the US ruling class supports harsh penalties for undocumented workers because they need them to be criminalized. 

The author goes into some detail about how unions and migrants are countering these attacks on working people by building greater solidarity among workers and unions on both sides of the border.

This piece offers an illustration of how capitalist elites are using borders to further their interests. Under the globalization agenda, they have managed to erase border restrictions for themselves: they have no difficulty in moving enterprises, money, or workers across borders in pursuit of profits. On the other hand, they have maintained borders to control working people in pursuit of their profit interests.

European Spring: The Gradual demise of Capitalism

Click here to access article by Gaither Stewart from Dandelion Salad.

The author looks at the "cannibalistic" system of capitalism, the current economic collapse, the resistance occurring in many countries and sees clear signs of its demise.

It [anti-capitalsim] has become contagious. A fever. The Mediterranean world is burning: the demand is economic democracy, political justice and peace. In Spain, Real democracia ya! Real democracy now. The time of indifference seems over and past. Society has awakened. Spain’s indignados, modern Don Quixotes, have occupied sixty plazas across the Spain. The Indignant Ones movement in Portugal is the same. The movement is hailed and imitated by Greeks and Italians. In France, they occupied for a brief time the Bastille. Capitalism should tremble. For when indifference ends, social activism takes over. Revolution is in fact already underway.

Having failed after the American, French, and Soviet revolutions, will working people get it right this time? Stay tuned, get informed, and get active. It is up to us.

NATO, the ultimate transformer

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online. 

The writer uses his typical cynical style to interpret the Empire's latest misadventure in Libya. It might seem a tad in bad taste considering the horrifying violence of the actual events referred to. But, the style has its uses as potent satire, particularly of the extensive efforts of the ruling class to hide its crimes against humanity. In this piece the satire is greatly enhanced by providing an Orwellian interpretation of events. You may need to use some reference sources like Wikipedia, as I did, to interpret some of his allusions to Hollywood creations. 

If this piece is too callous for your tastes, I recommend this one by William Bowles entitled, "William Hague: Following in Churchill’s footsteps" which demonstrates that the current imperialism is following in a grand tradition of the Western capitalist elites.

Killing Democracy One File at a Time: Justice Department Loosens FBI Domestic Spy Guidelines

Click here to access article by Tom Burghardt from Dissident Voice. 

While the Justice Department is criminally inept, or worse, when it comes to prosecuting corporate thieves who looted, and continue to loot, trillions of dollars as capitalism’s economic crisis accelerates, they are extremely adept at waging war on dissent.

Democracy vs Mythology: The Battle in Syntagma Square

Click here to access article by Alex Andreou, a successful Greek lawyer turned actor living in London. (Syntagma Square is the main central square in Athens and near the Parliament where the protests have been occurring.)

 I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this: The protests in Greece concern all of you directly.

...this is a battle between our right to self-determine, to demand a new political process, to be sovereign, and private corporate interests which appear determined to treat us like a herd, which only exists for their benefit. It is the battle against a system which ensures that those who fuck up, are never those that are punished – it is always the poorest, the most decent, the most hard-working that bear the brunt.  The Greeks have said “Enough is enough”. What do you say?

World's oceans in 'shocking' decline

Click here to access article by Richard Black from BBC News.

Once again, scientists are issuing alarming statements about the dramatic deterioration in our environment, this time it's about the oceans.

Life on Earth has gone through five "mass extinction events" caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity's combined impact is causing a sixth such event.

...the trends are such that it [the sixth] is likely to happen, they say - and far faster than any of the previous five.

And like most such reports, they can only blame "humanity", not that section of humanity, about 1%, who are addicted to the hoarding of wealth and associated power, and the system that delivers this drug to them-- capitalism. 

This piece reminded me of a visit I made to my sister in Florida in the early 1990s. She took me to the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park where I went out on one of their boat excursions to do some snorkeling. I immediately recognized the underwater scenes from movie clips I had seen as a child in the 1950s. The scenes depicted an underwater coral paradise, a myriad of colorful fantastic coral plants and a Christian cross planted among these shapes. Well, on this visit I was shocked to see only a graveyard of gray coral.

Then later when I told people about this experience I always received a peculiar dumb look and no response. And this experience has happened many times in my life when I related this experience or some scientific finding to suggest an ecosystem disaster in the offing. Apparently such messages just don't "compute" with all the brainwashing people receive from the consumer culture of capitalism.

It appears that all the reassuring Big Oil ads are paying off for them and for their unlimited growth policies. Check out the recent results from the conservative Rasmussen Reports poll:

...the number of voters who believe protecting the environment gets in the way of a growing economy has reached its highest level in just over two years.

Most of the public apparently insists on maintaining a growth policy as suggested by data like this:

A solid majority (60%) say finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume.  Thirty-one percent (31%) feel the opposite is true.

Conspiracy Theory

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from Foreign Policy Journal. 

This author has published many articles on the internet, but I think this is the most outstanding. While using Orwellian concepts to frame contemporary events, he makes almost laughable the ruling political operatives attempts to hide and/or discredit any scientific evidence that conflicts with the messages put out by the "Ministry of Propaganda". (Actually, Orwell used the term "Ministry of Truth".)

Part of his article provides a good illustration of how the ruling class operatives control the media and intimidate journalists to follow the party line :

I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the Republican wars in the Middle East.  After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators.

To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.

Another benefit to political operatives provided by the fact that most people are in debt is that they are so effectively able to terrorize people with the threat of loss of income.

The Truth vs. Think Tankers Maloney & Takeyh

Click here to access article by Nima Shirazi from Foreign Policy Journal. 

This is a very good antidote to all the poisonous propaganda against Iran put out by mainstream media. Of particular interest are the sources of the propaganda: they represent the highest levels of US governing class's political operatives--the Brookings Institute, the Council of Foreign Relations, and the New York Times. Such sources are followed closely by leading opinion makers throughout all the major institutions in the US. This arrangement provides some insight on how the ruling capitalist class can so effectively manage the views of the American people.

Given that there is no significant evidence to the contrary, imagine being an Iranian government official, going to an interview with a US media person, and having to deny for the nth time that Iran had any interest in building a nuclear bomb.

Imperial war behind a humanitarian charade

Click here to access article from Socialist Worker. 

The information contained in the article is probably "old hat" to people who follow this and similar blogs. 

As cynical as I tend to be, I have been particularly astonished by the speed at which the US Empire and its satraps have abandoned all pretenses about a "humanitarian mission" in Libya in order to pursue the goal of regime change. The gap between the "mission" and realty is so wide that even leaders of the grossly imperialistic Republican party can't resist the opportunity to exploit it for immediate political gains.

A Long Season of Change Ahead for Every Arab Nation

Click here to access article by Mouin Rabbani from Jadaliyya. 

As the Arab Spring continues to flower and wilt, and flower again and wilt again, there will be simply no way of knowing where things are likely to stand six months in the future.

However, there is one optimistic statement in the article that concerns me:

Where leaders remain in power, the military is playing a much larger role in repression, with regimes effectively declaring war on their own people.

Ironically, however, the mobilisation of conventional military forces may also hasten the success of uprisings. That is because the soldiery is never particularly reliable when it comes to domestic repression.

The repressive rulers seem quite aware of this, and I've noticed that some are employing mercenary soldiers to put down the their citizen uprisings. My memory fails me at the moment, but I think this has occurred in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. This is obviously a dangerous trend confronting the insurgents.

Wisconsin: What now?

Click here to access article by Anonymous from InfoShop News.

Walkerville [see this] is no more, the budget bill has passed, the collective bargaining law will be in effect at the end of the month and the unions are now concentrating on getting the vote out for the recall elections in July and lawsuits. They have also started making preparations for life after the law, which will very much alter the entire public sector's working conditions.

I am posting this because I am very interested in following up on the more dramatic TV displays of opposition to the Wisconsin Governor's aggressive attacks on public unions and severe cutbacks in public services. 

Clearly there are difficulties in formulating strategies to continue the fightback. As I have long known, having lived six years in Madison, that the state is extremely polarized politically. This presents real problems when trying to pursue strategies through the political process. I think that this report reflects those difficulties. 

In any case, organizing effective fightback strategies will be a fairly long road to travel down and people must be prepared for setbacks and detours along the way. As the cutbacks and the economy for ordinary people worsen, and people learn how to organize and spread their messages, substantial progress may finally be realized.

Robin Hahnel: Rollback of Social Reforms [2:35m video]

from The New Significance a brief, but insightful summary of the global economic crisis and its significance for working people. (The graphics were substandard on my computer, but the audio is fine.)

Europe's Own "Hurt Locker"

Click here to access article from Research Institute for European and American Studies.

It appears to me that the severe hits taken by working people across Europe is fairly rapidly developing into major turning points that could result in dramatic changes.

The Greek crisis, contrary to what they will tell you inside the august temples of “private investment” and “wealth creation,” has now transcended the frontier of how the “markets” work (or don’t) and is advancing deeply into political territory.

For more current details about the Greek crisis, I highly recommend that you read this piece from The New Significance.

 

Reasonable conjecture on Israel’s changing demographics

Click here to access article by Lawrence Davidson from Redress. 

Using Israeli government data about people leaving Israel and polling data, the author sees ominous trends that portend a state that becomes thoroughly racist and authoritarian, and a state...

where those who seek a just peace are either silenced, imprisoned or exiled? What do you do with a society where everyone must support injustice or be themselves condemned as traitors or criminals?

When Only "Crazies" See the Bank Giveaway for What It Was

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson from CounterPunch.

What has made the post-2008 crash most remarkable is not merely the delusion that the way to get rich is by debt leverage (unless you are a banker, that is). Most unique is the crash’s aftermath. This time around the bad debts have not been wiped off the books. There have indeed been the usual bankruptcies – but the bad lenders and speculators are being saved from loss by the government intervening to issue Treasury bonds to pay them off out of future tax revenues or new money creation.

This paragraph, I believe, is the main thesis of the article: that this economic collapse is different from the past ones. I have lived through many recessions and I've felt also that this one is very different. This article helps to clarify why it is different. It is different not only because of the magnitude of the debts that accumulated, but the way the US ruling class has chosen to deal with the crisis. 

Unfortunately, the propaganda organs of the ruling class have thus far succeeded in convincing most ordinary Americans that "the policy of saving the bankers rather than the economy as having been necessary"; that it was necessary to bail out...

Wall Street – and thereby the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans – while saying there is no money for Social Security, Medicare or long-term public social spending and infrastructure investment, the beneficiaries are obvious. So are the losers. High finance means low wages, low employment, low industry and a shrinking economy under conditions where policy planning is centralized in hands of Wall Street and its political nominees rather than in more objective administrators.

Canucks Fans Celebrate Loss by Burning Cars, Looting

Click here to access article by Zig Zag from Vancouver Media Co-op. 

I don't normally comment on localized events, especially events connected with sports. However, having lived in Vancouver, BC for about four years and having been in many political demonstrations, I see a definite social class aspect to riots in general and how this one fits into that view. Social class does not explain everything in the world, but it does explain a lot. And it is interesting to observe that such an analysis is nearly always missing from mainstream media portrayals.

To the reporter's credit, the article offers a much more neutral view than is provided in mainstream Canadian coverage which has been more concerned with protecting Vancouver's "image" and dismissing the event with knee-jerk responses blaming hooligans, anarchists, and leftists. S/he offered some analysis, but what was offered explained little.

I think that one comment following the article offered by "c-gordon" really gets at the social class aspect of this and other riots.

I'll first commend you on some good on the scene reporting, and your criticism of the police response is spot on, but your analysis is far from accurate in my opinion.

This wasn't a riot of the oppressed, this wasn't a release of frustrations from the disenfranchised.  These were middle class, white male shitkickers, the same privileged yuppiespawn that turn the same neighborhood into a warzone every weekend. Fuelled by a combination of alcohol, testosterone and the complete lack of personal accountability that comes with their spoiled upbringings.

They weren't inspired by people who fought for causes, they were lashing out in rage from an insult to their corporately-sponsored nationalism. They were looking for someone to hurt, something to break for fun.  Western capitalist culture has glorified this mean-spirited, aggressive and violent behavior in young men, both blatently and latently.

The rather muted police response to this compared to the G20 or even the Heart Attack demonstrations were telling. The kid gloves policy enacted by police was deliberate. It was because these were the privileged, the spoiled, the dominant. It's perfectly fine in this political environment to assault, oppress and beat "losers" like ethnic minorities, women, the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised. But these weren't them, these were the children of important people, "pillars of the community", and were given a free pass.

This analysis completely fits with a class view of the function of police in any class structured society, and especially in a capitalist society. In the latter their purpose is to protect the system of capitalism from any threats against the legitimacy of the system, and the interests of the capitalist class such as threats to private property. Hence, the dual way that police handle riots.

In riots that occur in relation to political protest demonstrations, the police typically see the crowds as the enemy because they threaten the legitimacy of the system. Hence their response is aggressive and they attack the crowd indiscriminately. Very frequently the rioting in these events have been engineered by police provocateurs in order to justify their crackdown and to tarnish the demonstrator's issues. 

Whereas, in riots that occurs after sporting events, the police use much more friendly methods in the initial phases, and then crack down on rioters in a much more discriminatory fashion according to the rioter's behavior.

 

Rich People Love Their Dogs—Especially Their Military-Grade, K-9 Guard Dogs

Click here to access article by Jamie Johnson from Vanity Fair.

Frequently on Saturdays I like to pay a visit into the lives of the ruling class. After all, they are people, too. Because they have such a great influence on how we live, we need to understand them. Jamie Johnson is of that class and I think he is the perfect guide.

Of course, other people love their dogs and other pets, too. But Jamie's view is that the rich have an even more special attachment to their dogs which, in his view, is likely to interfere with the dogs' abilities to guard them and their property.

Prosperous families already shell out millions each year on other prized animals, notably horses, which can cost the kind of money that only billionaires throw around. I’ve said it many times before in this blog, but I believe the point bears repeating—rich people are notoriously bad with intimacy, and the relationship they can form with a pet is often the most affectionate bond they ever know. For the patrician class, referring to dogs as “man’s best friend” is no exaggeration. (I’ll say it: dogs aren’t just their best friends—they’re often their only real friends.) 

If you agree with my view that people who rise to the top in the sociopathic system of capitalism are likely to be sociopaths, then it is understandable that they find it difficult to relate to people. You see, they tend to believe in the gospel of capitalism that "there is no such thing as society, there are individual men and women, and there are families."

Honey, they shrunk our share

Thanks to David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review. 

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, these two images tell even more words and suggest many subversive ideas.

For example, the graphs support nearly every dismal statistic that Stephen Lendman reports in his article entitled, "Working America's Dismal State".

International solidarity is expressed in Athens to end the enslavement by debt

Click here to access article by Jérome Duval from Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt.

It was in a crowded room in Athens that parliamentary deputy Sofia Sakorafa, recently excluded from the governing socialist PASOK party for refusing to vote for austerity measures, opened the conference, "Debt and austerity: from the Global South to Europe.” From the outset, she set the tone by moving the debt issue beyond the borders of North-South divisions: "Debt is tied to the class question." 

The emphasis that has been advocated by this organization, CADTM, is the cancellation of debt to Third World counties. But, it appears to me that people are increasingly coming together at conferences like the one depicted here and are formulating more radical solutions to the debt problem. For example, the author reports that the keynote speaker "set the tone [of the conference] by moving the debt issue beyond the borders of North-South divisions: 'Debt is tied to the class question.'" Unfortunately, the article does not indicate whether the participants developed this theme.

So permit me to expand on it. The statement rather clearly states that it is not merely a North-South problem, but a class problem. If she understands the world she lives in--and I don't doubt that she does--she understands that humanity is divided into two basic classes that exist nearly everywhere in the world: those who produce wealth (workers) and those (mostly capitalists) who both enforce "ownership" rights to appropriate much of this wealth for themselves and control the issuance of money through their indirect ownership of central and international banking institutions. The latter class have succeeded throughout much of the world to appropriate so much of this wealth that the working class has to go into debt to the latter class in order to live decently. This has happened all over the globe: in first world countries as well as third world countries under globalized capitalism.

If this analysis is correct, then the battle being waged is global, but also frequently a one sided war being waged by capitalists against workers many of whom, especially in first world countries, are still unaware (except in places like Wisconsin) of what's going on. Workers who are aware must reach across borders with their brothers and sisters in order to organize effective campaigns to rid themselves of a system that is not only putting themselves into debt slavery, but is destroying the planet for future generations. 

Environmental activism needs its own revolution to regain its teeth

Click here to access article by Charles Secrett from the Guardian. 

This piece from the liberal Guardian skirts on the edges of the fundamental conflict between the system of capitalism and environmental safety. But by doing so, it provides a valuable path to lead any reasonably intelligent person to that ominous conflict and the need for system change.

Protest tactics do raise public awareness, win the occasional policy battle, save threatened sites or get dangerous products banned. They are still necessary. But they are not sufficient to alter the destructive path travelled by virtually all governments and most corporations. They are defensive moves against the unremitting pressure of market forces and the priorities of mainstream political parties.

Something much more powerfully proactive is required to persuade the majority to change course before it is too late – something that stirs up a social force to match (peacefully) the citizen revolutions overturning the established order across the Middle East. The movement has the resources to do so. But does it have the ideas and the will?

Clearly, environmental activism must join with social justice activism to create a real social revolution.

Solar is Ready Now: ‘Ferocious Cost Reductions’ Make Solar PV Competitive

Click here to access article by Stephen Lacey from Climate Progress. 

It is great to have the rather rare opportunity nowadays to post an article with good news in it. This piece does that. You might be skeptical of optimistic statements coming from corporate executives rather than scientists, but, after all, they are in the best position to know about the economics of solar power. In short, the good news is that top executives of two major solar energy companies provide compelling evidence that the cost of producing solar energy is dramatically coming down and will likely continue to do so.

And if this news doesn't raise your spirits, then read this piece entitled, "Green Jobs Are Real: German and American Solar Industry Both Employ More People Than U.S. Steel Production". 

The radical nature of austerity

Click here to access article by Jim O’Reilly from his blog, Comments on Global Economy.

The 500 largest global corporations, the “Global 500” control nearly 40% of total global revenue.  Why shouldn’t these production bureaucracies be managed in the interests of everyone rather than a tiny elite of passive stockholders?  Since ownership and control of these companies are separate, there’s no particular reason their efficiency should drop if the absentee stockholders were removed from the equation.   What a beginning if these companies could be operated globally in the interests of society.

Can you believe this guy had a career in banking and finance? Well, bankers are people, too! However, I notice that he quit his career. In any case, he is authentic--I've had contact with him and he is the "real deal".

Obama Defends Libya War, Rejects Need For Congress Vote

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site. 

The political operatives of the ruling class have successfully gotten away with so much war making that they hardly make a pretense of following Constitutional law. Emperor Obama (of course, he is no emperor, but only a public relations officer for the ruling class) declared the Libyan campaign to be legal, so it is. That is precisely the way mainstream media reported this event, except they left the "emperor" part out. The 9/11 tragedy, which in my estimation was a ruthlessly engineered event, has succeeded in putting the American people in the "right" frame of mind (pun intended) in order to...

support wars abroad in defense of the interests of the ruling financial aristocracy, as well as the attacks on basic democratic and social rights that accompany the unrestrained growth of militarism.

It is also interesting to me that any sort of court hearing on anything related to 9/11 or alleged terrorist prisoners is being vigorously opposed by politicos. See this.

Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed [6:00m video]

From Fairewinds Associates, Inc., video provided by Vimeo.

Because reports of the residual effects of the Fukushima meltdown has largely disappeared from the media, it is good to see that people at this website, who seem very well informed, are reporting this important information. In this excellent video Arnold Gundersen provides a very clear explanation of one radiation hazard we in the Seattle area (likely in many areas of the West coast and beyond) may be exposed to. (Full screen mode worked well on my computer.)

What America’s Nurses Can Tell You About the Great Economic Crisis of 2011

Click here to access article by Ed Moloney from his blog, The Broken Elbow.

Of more interest to me were the observations of the nurses promised by the author. These were provided toward the end of the article. 

This week, some eight hundred members of National Nurses United, the union that represents 170,000 of America’s Registered Nurses (RN’s) are this week holding a conference in Washington DC in an effort to highlight the growing health disaster that is overtaking the United States and to put forward a program to redraw national priorities, for jobs at living wages, access to health care, schools, decent housing and an equitable tax system. During the week they will rally outside the White House in the hope that someone, Barack Obama and/or the media, will start to take notice.

'Jordan reform has no real content' [7:49m video and transcript]

Click here to access video interview by Press TV with Ralph Schoenman. 

It seems to me that reports of Jordan's spring uprisings has largely escaped even alternative media.

This Berkeley professor comments on the King's announcement about democratic reforms in the offing for Jordon. And guess what? It's form without substance. This has been the strategy of all class based regimes especially since the American and French revolutions of the 18th century that tapped into the universal yearning for a genuine participatory democracy. Unfortunately, these revolutions resulted only in capitalist aristocracies taking power away from the feudal aristocracies. Nowadays, autocratic ruling classes always opt for a fake democracy, just like we have in capitalist "democracies", when their rule is threatened. 

I doubt very much that any genuine democracy will ever be handed to ordinary people by people who rule over and exploit them. Ordinary working people must create this for themselves.

Ancient Warming Has Disturbing Implications for Our Future

Click here to access article by Michael D. Lemonick from Climate Central.

By delving into an unusually rich and well-preserved set of ancient marine sediments from Spitzbergen Island on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, an international team of researchers has come up with an estimate of how quickly carbon entered the atmosphere at the start of the PETM [an ancient period when carbon buildup happened rapidly].

It’s a key question because climate change is really only a major problem if it happens relatively quickly. If it plays out over many centuries, ecosystems will have time to adapt, and the vast infrastructure that underlies the developed world — cities, transportation systems, industrial facilities and more—can be moved, rebuilt, or modified at a reasonable pace and cost. If, as is currently the case, climate change unfolds rapidly, the changes can be enormously destructive.

A major problem for many people to understand the threat of climate change are time scales and the speed of change over larger periods of time. Such time scales are beyond the realm of ordinary human experience.

Fortunately, most scientists are keenly aware of their importance. To understand the present threat of climate change, scientists are looking at similar periods of carbon buildup in past geologic time with which to compare our own age. The results are disturbing. 

Such information is routinely hidden, obscured, and belittled by capitalist media managers. They sense that if too many people become informed of this threat, their favorite system that provides them with so much wealth and power will simply collapse.

Also, I recommend reading the comments following the article.

The revolt of the indignad@s: moving on to the next stage [Spain]

Click here to access article by Josep Maria Antentas of Esther Vivas website, accessed here from CADTM. 

I am very impressed with the movement building strategy reported in this piece. It's clear to me that the Spanish worker activists have their "heads on straight" as they incrementally create a political consciousness and solidarity necessary to construct a powerful movement. 

First, to strengthen the grassroots movement, empowering local assemblies and establishing stable coordinating mechanisms. ...Second, to seek ties with the working class, those in struggle and militant trade unionists, and to keep up the pressure on the main trade unions, who are disconcerted by a change in the political and social landscape that they did not anticipate. ...Third, to prepare for October 15 as the date of mass mobilisation and seek to make it a global day of action at a crucial time for the internationalisation of the movement. Fourth, to combine the development of a general movement, the "movement of l@s indignad@s [the outraged]," which criticizes the current overall political and economic model, with the concrete struggles against the cuts and policies that seek to shift the cost of the crisis onto the workers.

One stage ends and another begins. Without our having noticed, we are dealing with a movement whose potential we are just beginning to discover.

American manufacturing slowly rotting away: How industries die

Click here to access article by Ian Fletcher from Real-World Economics Review.

I am listing this piece because it illustrates an obsolete capitalist view of world economic issues. The author appears not to understand that the globalization phase of capitalism, starting in the 1970s under the influence of the neo-conservatives and greatly accelerated under that great liberal Presidency of Bill Clinton, has dramatically changed the way the biggest and most powerful capitalists view the world. This nationalistic perspective also informs the views of many others--most often among libertarians and liberals--who are critical of policies generated by existing political and economic elites. 

A nationalistic perspective no longer informs the polices of the powerful capitalist operatives, especially on economic issues. These new supranational capitalists are located in many countries--indeed, they often spend their time in multiple countries--are now organized into an empire, a US led Empire, whose wealth accumulating interests are pursued through major banking institutions like the IMF, World Bank, UBS, etc. and numerous economic and political organizations. They also have a large army organized under NATO when more direct measures are needed to enforce their policies on uncooperative governments. The major actors in these institutions have a global capitalist perspective. In contrast, the author and many other liberals and libertarians have an old fashioned nationalistic view of the economy.

But there are other capitalist countries who wish to pursue a more independent, nationalistic course. The most prominent of which is China, to some extent Russia. As we witnessed in the 20th century, inter-capitalist rivalries can lead to devastating world wars. And then there are those irritating smaller countries such as Iran and Venezuela, and many indigenous and rebellious groups within capitalist countries throughout the world who fight back against capitalist policies: in Afghanistan, Iraq, within many Arab counties, India, etc. The latter are often referred to by capitalist media outlets as "terrorists". 

Borders within the US Empire are of little concern to their political and economic operatives simply because they removed most border restrictions on the movement of capital. When capitalists want to take advantage of cheap labor, they now find it easy to move their factories to wherever they can find such labor. (Likewise, they are buying up land and resources everywhere.) And there is often an added bonus in the form of lax or unenforced environmental regulations. Border enforcement only exists to control the independent movement of working people. Whenever corporations want to move cheap labor to their production facilities, they have no problem doing so. But when workers try to move independently across borders to where the jobs are, they encounter enormous problems. That, of course, illustrates only one unfortunate feature of the class structured world we live in. 

Notice also that the nationalistic view of capitalism expressed in the article frames the issues only from a competitive industrial point of view:

Real industries are not abstract aggregates; they are complex ecosystems of suppliers and supply chains, skills and customer relationships, long-term investments and returns. Deindustrialization is thus a more complex process than is usually realized. It is not just layoffs and crumbling buildings; industries sicken and die in complicated ways.

...All over America, [many] industries are quietly falling apart....

It's clear that the author of this piece is representing the views of smaller capitalist enterprises within the US. And it's clear that they are hurting and will be hurt more in the future. The inherent tendency for capitalists to combine with others into larger units has always been seen to be an inherent tendency of capitalism by knowledgeable people. This process is utterly logical given the dynamics of private ownership, growth imperative, and individual wealth accumulation through corporate entities. The elimination of national borders to access cheap labor is utterly logical. 

But, more importantly, notice that the author expresses no direct concern about the devastating loss of work skills on the lives of working people and on their communities in the US. It seems to me that if you accept the system, you must accept the consequences. Or, if you don't like the consequences, change the system!

Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg Says that the Government Has ORDERED the Media Not to Cover 9/11

Click here to access article Washington's Blog.

Although I am not convinced that the government of the ruling class has so much more to be revealed in the latest unexpurgated release of the Pentagon Papers, the article does provide a lot of interesting material about mainstream media censorship in the US. 

In contrast to such places as Pakistan where journalists are almost routinely shot, in the US the governing class usually takes the livelihood away from their journalists if they don't conform. In 1996 Gary Webb, a journalist with the San Jose Mercury, who wrote an outstanding series on government collusion with the drug cartels, was fired and blacklisted from further employment as a journalist. He died in 2008 in rather mysterious circumstances, but his death was ruled a suicide. 

A Poetry of Resistance: The Disappearance of Ayat al-Qurmuzi in Bahrain's “Hidden History”

Click here to access article by Nahrain Al-Mousawi from Jadaliyya.

After reciting her poetry at Lulu Square where Bahrain’s protests were centered in February and March 2011, twenty-year-old poet Ayat al- Qormezi disappeared.

...Before Lulu [Square] was destroyed, videos showed al- Qormezi on February 23 performing her poems before crowds of protestors applauding her critical verse, sometimes joining in and interrupting her performance. She intoned with restrained anger: “We are a people who kill degradation and misery. We are a people who destroy the foundation of oppression.” Another poem imagines a dialogue with the Devil and King Hamad Bin Khalifa, wherein even the Devil, Hamad’s best and “most courageous pupil,” tells him: “Hamad, your people have shaken me. Don’t you hear their cries?” At the end of the video, Lulu protestors yell: “Down with Hamad!”

Because Bahrain is one of the Empire's favorite Mid-East satraps, the protests that have occurred there this spring were a major embarrassment to all related ruling class political operatives. Thus, you likely heard very little from mainstream media about the ruthless oppression by Bahraini authorities and the invasion of troops from Saudi Arabia and UAE in March. Although the Empire's media must be quiet about it, Bahrain represents the kind of government that the Empire really likes and supports. 

Chavez’s Right Turn: State Realism versus International Solidarity

Click here to access article by James Petras from Global Research. 

This was not pleasant reading for me because it has confirmed all my suspicions about one of the few bright promises of people-powered governments in the world. However, the arguments he assembles from many historical examples as well as the record of the Chavez regime are simply much too persuasive to counter. 

It's clear that enormous challenges confront leaders who might wish to take an independent course from the capitalist Empire. Probably the first of these is to overcome the addiction to power; and the second is to put one's faith in people, ordinary people, by empowering them. I think that the historical record, much of which Petras cites in the article, demonstrates at least that pursuing a narrow nationalistic strategy may work in the short run to preserve hierarchical regimes, but such strategies will never serve the long term interests of building socially just societies and a peaceful, sustainable world community. 

To accomplish the latter, there is simply no alternative to the empowerment of ordinary people, and to their support everywhere in the world against the tyranny of hierarchical, class-based, exploitative regimes. 

Bigger than Blackwater: Arming the UAE

Click here to access article by Hannah Gurman from Foreign Policy in Focus. 

One sector of the US economy is thriving: US weapons firms are doing big business in the Middle East. 

To learn what kind of governments the Empire really supports, take a close look at one of the their favorite satraps of the region--United Arab Emirates:

The rapid expansion of the UAE military has the tacit support, if not outright blessing, of the U.S. government.

...There are at least two reasons for the administration’s position. First and foremost, it regards the UAE as one of its most important allies in the region. The Emirates supported both Iraq Wars, and it currently is involved in cracking down on the protest movement in Bahrain — it sent 500 police officers to suppress the revolt in the tiny Gulf kingdom. In the midst of the crackdown, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed was welcomed by the White House with open arms.

Wisconsin Republicans latest tricks exposed

Click here to access article by Mark Pocan from The Progressive.

In a stealth legislative maneuver Governor Walker is trying to ram his attacks on public spending through an emergency session of the Wisconsin legislature.

Governor Walker’s Republican budget includes a $1.6 billion cut to schools, a $500 million cut to health care programs, a $250 million cut to the University of Wisconsin system and a 30 percent cut to out state’s technical college system, and the list goes on.

 

IMF Financial Terrorism

Click here to access article by Stephan Lendman from Activist Post. 

As a result [of the operations of the IMF and World Bank], bankers and other corporate predators strip mine countries of their material wealth and resources, shift them from public to private hands, crush democratic values, hollow out nations into backwaters, destroy middle class societies, and turn workers into serfs if they manage to have any means of employment.

As history offers an abundance of evidence, private banking institutions have always functioned this way. Even though institutions like the above and the Fed like to hide behind an elaborate facade of public-private control, they operationally always serve private financial interests. The latter gain wealth and power through their control over the engines of capitalist growth--major corporations which, of course, are nearly always privately owned and controlled. That is precisely why we, as individuals and whole societies throughout much of the world, have arrived at the situation we are in today: an overwhelming number of debtors (mostly taxpaying workers) beholden to a tiny group (about 1%) of creditors (owner-investors who hide their incomes in tax havens).

America’s Recent Wars have all been Accompanied by Memorable Falsehoods

Click here to access article by Prof Peter Dale Scott from Global Research.

In looking at recent media reports "that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had ordered the rape of hundreds of women....", Scott recalls the many myths circulated by the Empire's war machine to manage the minds of American working people in supporting their past wars. 

If you still need more details on the Empire's uses of war propaganda, false flag attacks, etc, read this article from Washington's Blog.

The General’s Son [28:25m video]

Click here to access this moving video in which Miko Peled, author of the book, The General's Son, reveals the fundamental truths about the Apartheid State and what motivated him to become a peace and social justice advocate for a new democratic, secular, and integrated state for both Jews and Arabs. Who is Mike Peled?

Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. 

Senate stands behind Israel [6:35m video]

View this video from RT in which Alexander Cockburn provides his perspective on the Israeli political control of US politicos. I wonder how much of that annual $3 billion plus aid to Israel is recycled back into funding the electoral campaigns of US Congress and the President.

Real democracy now - credit, time, space and revolution

Click here to access article by Daniel Tanuro from International Viewpoint. 

“Democracia real ya” (“real democracy now”). This “Ya" in fact concentrates all the revolutionary potential of this magnificent mobilisation: we want change now, don’t try to put us to sleep with your promises of a better future; we begin to impose this change now, by the struggle here; this struggle is hard but a source of intelligence, joy, dignity here and now; it opens the door to another possible world now since yes, it already exists, in negative form, as the opposite of the current world.

The author examines the significance of the current rallying cry in the Spanish cities and towns and its demand for system change. The people in the streets see clearly that the existing system is leading to more social and environmental destruction.

Anonymous to governments: Let us explain your delicate situation

Click here to access video translation of an inspiring message delivered in Spanish by "Anonymous" in Spain to the government, posted by P2P Foundation. (The translation is not the best for North Americans. For example, instead of "imaginary", a better translation is probably "concepts".)

This is an Anonymous message from the Spanish revolution to politicians, dictators and plutocrats all over the planet: Surprised by global disobedience? Let us explain your delicate situation.

The Biggest, Baddest Bike-Share in the World: Hangzhou China

Click here to access brief notes on this video by Elizabeth Press from Street Films. (It has good resolution in full screen viewing.)



The Biggest, Baddest Bike-Share in the World: Hangzhou China from Streetfilms on Vimeo.