NATO's War on Libya is Directed against China: AFRICOM and the Threat to China's National Energy Security

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

The author makes a good case for his thesis about the real purpose of NATO's Libyan adventure. Libya, if NATO's puppet government succeeds in suppressing opposition, will provide a much needed NATO base in the African continent to thwart China's access to oil. The Empire can tolerate no rivals. 

Typical of the many contradictions of capitalism, NATO countries were easily seduced into taking advantage of access to China's cheap labor supply in order to enrich the capitalist class; but this in turn also created an increasingly powerful and independent competitor for the diminishing supplies of fossil fuels.

Today China is the world's second largest importer of oil after the United States and the gap is rapidly closing.

The Debt Crisis in the European Union: CDS and rating agencies: Part 5 of 7

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

Learn more about another creative scam of neo-liberal capitalists: credit default swaps (CDSs), and how they can and do wreck havoc on the economy of any country.

...right up until the AIG disaster and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the IMF, the US Federal Reserve and the ECB repeatedly claimed that CDSs were a new product that offered excellent guarantees against risks (see the box on CDSs). Since then, their discourse has changed, but nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done to regulate the CDS market. Meanwhile, in view of the size of the phenomenon, CDSs constitute a huge time-bomb hanging over the international finance system. The fact is that CDS should be outlawed. 

A Weekend of Violent Arrests and Corralling Strengthen Resolve at Liberty Plaza

Click here to access article by Manny Jalonschi from The Indypendent. 

This provides more details on Saturday's violent attack on the Wall Street occupiers by city police, media coverage, and the strengthened resolve of the occupiers.

Protesters at Liberty Plaza speaking to The Indypendent this afternoon noted a substantial increase in attendance at their general assembly meetings, a direct democratic process that has become central to the protest community’s evolution and self-government. Their one demand has become an evolving series of inter-connected resolutions that they are still refining but generally focus on freeing the American political system from the corrupting grip of Big Finance.

Greek police beat 8-year old: “dad, why did they hit me?”

Click here to access article by Jérôme E. Roos from RoarMag.

The enforcers of capitalism are attacking people everywhere who protest the ravaging of their lives by this system.

Share Traders More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows

Click here to access article from Der Spiegel.

I think a more appropriate title for this article should have been, "Share Traders More Deviant Than Psychopaths, Study Shows."

I have often argued that the capitalist system is led by sociopaths and promotes sociopathic personalities. (Psychopathy equals sociopathy, or anti-social disorder, with the former term used beyond the US English speaking world.) This Swiss study found that stock brokers, including bankers, actually scored higher on sociopathic tests than do those already with a diagnosis of this personality disorder. 

Particularly shocking...was the fact that the bankers weren't aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, "it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents," Noll explained. "And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents."

Take a look at this stock trader and financial analyst for this type of personality disorder that even shocked the BBC staff:



These are the kind of people who shape our lives in so many ways and to our detriment--in fact, they rule over most of today's world. Like alcoholics they were not born that way, but had a predisposition toward such behavior. The capitalist system insures that those with sociopathic tendencies are rewarded, and thus, foster such personalities.

US corporate profits after tax 1990 to 2011

From Real-World Economics Review Blog.

It's clear why US economists continue to insist that we recovered from the recession. A graph is worth a thousand words.

The Money Masters: Behind the Global Debt Crisis

Click here to access article by Adrian Salbuchi from New Dawn. 

This Argentine author knows of what he writes because of his experiences with the banking crises in his country. His explanations about central banks and banks in general "creating money out of thin air" are very clear and helpful. However, like the folks at the American Monetary Institute, he regards this as the only problem with the capitalist system. (See this and this.) He doesn't understand that the system of capitalism, which is based on the private ownership and/or control of the economy, can never be a socially just system. The private control of money, which is the oil of any modern economy, gives a capitalist class enormous leverage in extracting their wealth. Were this scam eliminated, we would still have private control over the economy to serve private interests--not public interests.

As we assess some of the key components of today’s Global Financial, Currency and Banking Model in this article, readers will hopefully get a better understanding as to why we are all in such a crisis, and that it will tend to get much worse in the months and years to come.

Brainwashing Is Real and It's Really Not Therapy, Part 1 of 2

Click here to access article by Marcus Chatfield from OpEd News. 

The author provides a very good, documented exposé of a topic that receives almost no coverage in mainstream media.  The government refers to these "therapeutic" programs for troubled adolescents only as "residential treatment programs". Others have referred to them as a practice of coercive persuasion and thought reform, or simply brainwashing. On rare occasions reports filter through to the media that teenagers have died in these programs. Despite this, no real study of their safety and effectiveness has been carried out. The programs have their origins in research conducted by the CIA. Need I say more?

Physical and psychological abuse is built into many of these programs by design.   According to several different experts on the subject, the exhaustion and pressure that is induced by sleep deprivation, hunger, fatigue and emotional manipulation, "unfreezes" the psychological framework.   Through this orchestrated crisis,   a new identity is instilled by manipulating the environment and the emotions of the subject to an extreme degree until the "changed" mind of the subject has undergone "re-freezing."

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution ( Occupy Wall Street )

 Uploaded onto You Tube by "ivaasks".

Solid Ground at Occupy Wall Street

Click here to access article Conor Tomás Reed from The Indypendent.

It's clear that the activists are drawing on the experiences of recent history from places all over the world to inform their strategies and tactics. 

Egypt’s lessons acutely demonstrate that liberated squares must become liberated workplaces, neighborhoods, and eventually cities. This is exactly Liberty Plaza’s aim—not to be a self-contained, pre-figurative mini-society, but a decisive tipping point in the belly of the economic beast that can collaborate with this widening network to transform global society altogether.

Nathan Schneider's report from the same source describes the escalation of police violence on Saturday against the demonstrators and the typical coverage in mainstream media.

Around 3 p.m., near Fifth Avenue and 12th Street, the police attacked. Unrolling plastic orange barriers, they isolated a crowd of marchers, along with the reporters following them, and began mass arrests for blocking traffic. This was a brutal process. Caught on cameras were scenes of one protester being dragged by her hair, others being slammed into the pavement, and a group of women, netted and helpless, being downed by pepper spray. In total, police say they arrested 80 people. With not enough room for them in vans, many were taken away in regular city buses.

While the above report focused on the dramatic events on Saturday, Chaz Valenza from OpEd News reports on a more benign day Sunday when participants were doing house keeping chores, reviewing past events, and discussing more legal hassles.

A Voice of Reason Amid the Madness

Click here to access article by Heather Digby Parton from Al Jazeera.

...Warren's message is a potent one, expressing progressive values in terms that are almost intoxicating to the base of the Democratic Party, hungry as they are for someone to take up the cause of the American middle class, workers and families who are being unbearably squeezed and yet asked to give even more - even as the wealthy fatuously declare themselves to be "job creators" and therefore absolved of any duty to pay their fair share.

Elizabeth Warren does, indeed, speak reason to madness, but nonetheless, her voice will continue to be marginalized within the Democratic party. Why? Because the ruling class has abandoned the middle class and all of America except for the industrial-financial-military complex which serves the Empire as enforcer and a huge profit center. Her policies are only progressive in the sense of a national capitalist orientation. But, national capitalism has grown up into global capitalism and the elites who control this new system, and profit from it, view national boundaries as barriers to their profit extracting enterprises. 

The Need For Monetary Reform

Click here to access article from the American Monetary Institute.

Money has value because of skilled people, resources, and infrastructure, working together in a supportive social and legal framework. Money is the indispensable lubricant that lets them “run.” It is not tangible wealth in itself, but a power to obtain wealth. Money is an abstract social power based in law; and whatever government accepts in payment of taxes will be money. Money’s value is not created by the private corporations that now control it.

This Institute is focused on bringing the issuance of money under complete government control:

...the money issuing power should never be alienated from democratically elected government and placed ambiguously into private hands as it is in America in the Federal Reserve System today.

I see this as a worthy objective, but there are several problems I see with this limited objective. First, bringing the issuance of money under full government control does not in the least provide for a genuine "democratically elected government." A privately owned and controlled economy cannot provide for a meaningful democracy. 

An economy supports a society with all their material needs. Hence, it is a vital part of any society. To have an economy controlled by private parties clearly functions to undermine any kind of genuine democracy. Clearly, this is obvious from the history of capitalist countries during the past 300 years.

Capitalist rule is just another form of class rule that American revolutionaries thought they had defeated back in 1776. Unfortunately, the Revolution was a sham. It was immediately undermined by the new class of capitalists and financiers led by Alexander Hamilton and Robert Morris who merely wanted to take control from the British Crown so that they could exploit the vast resources of this continent. Because labor is always need to create wealth, they imported large numbers of slaves from Africa and cleared the common lands in Europe of its farmers. (Read The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi.) As Charles Beard, the noted historian and political scientist of the early 20th century wrote in his seminal work, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution:

Instead of being a document drawn up by patriotic men for the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the [US] Constitution was the work of consolidated economic groups--...property interests....

But, I agree completely with the Institute's objective of bringing the issuance of our money under complete government control, but we must not stop there. We must bring the whole economy under genuine democratic control.

Hothouse Earth

Click here to access article by Robert Kunzig from National Geographic.

Around 56 million years ago a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In a geologic eyeblink life was forever changed. ...Today the evolutionary consequences of that distant carbon spike are all around us; in fact they include us. Now we ourselves are repeating the experiment. 

Humanity falls deeper into ecological debt: study

Click here to access article from AFP carried in The West Australian. 

Humankind will slip next week into ecological debt, having gobbled up in less then nine months more natural resources than the planet can replenish in a year, researchers said Tuesday. 

Isn't it interesting that we have to go to an obscure Australian online newspaper to find the results of this research whose origin was from a French news service? Then, I find that the research was done by the Global Footprint Network. Guess where that is located? Oakland, California! Isn't the Internet wonderful? Anyway, check out their report.

I usually expect The Huffington Post to cover reports like this; but only after a search of their website, I found this article which seems to only incidentally refer to the report. Could this be because Huffington Post is now owned by AOL? 

Likewise, I did a Google search on "Global Footprint Network" to see if I could find other online services carrying this report. I found that the report was carried in a fairly obscure environmental site called Green Living, a Pakistani site called Dawn, and a site somewhere in the province of Ontario, Canada called Northumberland View 

Doesn't the above illustrate how much of our news is controlled by a ruling class whose sole object is profit, and who don't want you know anything about the ongoing destruction of the planet that their activities are causing??

We have had warnings about this destructive trend since the 1970's; but our addicted capitalist ruling class have consistently obscured and contradicted such findings and the result is that we continue to allow this class and their system to destroy our planet and ourselves.

How to Kill a Country--and the Euro

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

The most extreme consequences of neo-liberal policies are now being played out in Europe with several countries deeply in debt to international capitalists. 

The use of debt to exploit people may in the end threaten the very foundations of capitalist rule. In other words, the international class of capitalists have, in their greed, pursued policies that are resulting in the perpetual servitude of major populations to this class; and the consequences of these policies, in turn, threaten their beloved system. This class of exploiters both want their debts paid off and want their system to continue. That is, "they want their cake and eat it, too." As people wake up and realize what is happening, they refuse to be placed into indefinite servitude--humans just did not evolve that way--and it is unlikely that capitalists can have both.

It’s official. The Europeans have lost it completely concerning the sovereign debt crisis and what to do about it. Herr Schäuble, in charge of the EU kommandantur [headquarters], is now hinting that the agreement about a second Greek bailout, reached on July 21st, may not go ahead as planned. Greece is already being put through the hoop by the creditors over the first bailout, agreed in 2010, since the Papandreou regime has disastrously failed in everything it promised to do, while the country is disintegrating thanks to a catastrophic depression caused directly by the Troika-imposed insane austerity that turned, not unexpectedly, into a poisoned chalice which is killing millions of Greek families.

‘Our future is not for sale’: The Chilean Student Movement Against Neoliberalism

Click here to access article by Manuel Larrabure and Carlos Torchia from Socialist Project (Canada).

As student-led uprisings have been occurring in the streets and squares of London, Madrid, Belfast, Athens and Barcelona, Chilean students are having a major impact in their country and on many activists in other countries in Latin America.

It is clear...that the Chilean student movement has become a major development for the left not only in Chile, but in Latin America as a whole. The students are presenting one of the leading neoliberal administrations in the region with a major political challenge. Crucially, they have managed to do so by building their own power outside of pre-established political institutions. Importantly, the movement has done so without simply avoiding the state, but rather through direct confrontation with it, and with a demand for its transformation and democratization. At a time when the electoral road to social transformation in the region appears blocked, this development holds much potential.

In highly class stratified societies, it is often much easier to see how ruling classes function to keep their power, wealth, and privileges. The writers of this article touch on many of these methods: placate the dissenters by advocacy of ineffective reforms and change of personnel, use of co-optation, infiltration, agent provocateurs, intimidation in the forms of cuts to education, threats of state violence, and finally, direct police violence.

It appears that this student lead movement is countering with some of the most creative and advanced forms of political actions and organization. 

Too Many Messages and Only One Facebook Page: April 6th Movement in Post-Mubarak Egypt

Click here to access article by Susannah Vila from Technosociology. 

I am posting this article to assist in bringing interested observers up-to-date as to what has been occurring among activists in Egypt since the demonstrations earlier this year. 

The fact that it wasn’t hard to find someone in Tahrir who would express disillusionment with A6Y is indicative of the larger challenge that he and colleagues face today: after the political sphere is broken open by uprising, how do you maintain and build upon support among the highly-wired crowd while simultaneously recruiting offline Egyptians?

On Corporate Power Who owns American universities?

Click here to access article by Michael Barker from Ceasefire. 

Social incompetence and an individualistic mentality are acquired in the competitive educational system. Collective action, as opposed to personal status climbing, becomes more difficult as a consequence. Cynicism is learned from doing meaningless assignments and busy work. This serves to negate any serious political thought. As long as the worker does not take himself seriously and is cynical about his world, it does not matter much what his politics are.

This article, although very important, only skims the surface of how the capitalist ruling class has taken control of education in the US, particularly higher education. But then, there are references to source materials where one can learn more. Although not addressed in the article, I am particularly interested in the phenomenon of "endowed professorships", also known as "endowed chairs" where foundations sponsor professors in our institutions of higher learning. 

Al Jazeera director resigns amidst ‘US intelligence links’ row

Click here to access article by Joseph Fitsanakis from IntelNews.

Wikileaks strikes again! The people of Wikileaks have outed another journalist-shill of the Empire, a senior executive of Al Jazeera!

The senior executive of the Middle East’s most recognizable news television network has resigned following revelations that he met with American intelligence officials and complied with their requests to alter the content of news reports.

Conscious Being Alliance: September Update & Appeal for Your Support

Click here to access article by Keith Harmon Snow from Conscious Being.

I regard this journalist as one of the finest and most courageous independent journalists in the world. Reporting the truth in a world filled with the lies of the Empire has become a dangerous occupation.

To top off the challenges of the past year, I spent hundreds of hours working to protect my self, my family and community from the onslaught of two private military companies using assault weapons and detonating explosives at an illegal weapons range near our homes. It was stressful, frightening, costly, unpaid work, unavoidable and unrewarding. It was hell. The local police were involved. These guys worked for Blackwater, and they routinely kill people in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was really, really hard on my family and I and there's been a lot of harassment and retaliation and it's not over.

U.S. not "standing idly by" in Bahrain

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from Salon.

This courageous independent journalist exposes the blatant hypocrisy that characterizes US Empire policies.

..the U.S. is fulfilling President Obama's pledge that it will "not stand idly by" in the face of a tyrant's oppression of his own people, as the U.S. is actively feeding that regime new weapons; that, by definition, is not "standing idly by."

Why the Payroll Tax Cut Endangers Social Security

Click here to access article by Dean Baker from CounterPunch. 

This economist who is a darling of liberal-left circles (even as far left as Z Communications), reinforces the confusion over the issue of Social Security/Medicare funding. This is accomplished by sticking to the ruling class framing of payroll contributions as "taxes". Thus, his proposed solution--issue tax credits to workers and their employers--suffers from this confusion.

Contributions to retirement pensions and health care are totally separate from income taxes. To equate them allows the ruling class to attack these worker programs that our ancestors fought so hard to create back in the 1930s (for example, Social Security), and then in 1966 with Medicare given to workers by Lyndon Johnson as a sop to workers so that they would soften their resistance to the unpopular war in Vietnam. 

Hence, the ruling class likes to mix them up with withholding taxes which are a deposit against yearly income taxes. Everyone is against taxes, so the framing of the contributions to these pension and health insurance funds as "payroll taxes" makes it easy for ruling class politicians to reduce worker contributions. Such cuts are a direct attack, albeit a stealth attack, on these worker benefit programs.

If I understand his solution correctly in spite of this confusion, his tax credit proposal would decrease the income tax rates on employees and their employers. While this would be fine for workers, do large corporations need more tax cuts after their taxes have declined so radically in the past several decades? Corporations are already holding hordes of cash. And, should we reward these corporations who in many cases have shipped their operations along with American jobs to locations in other countries? What kind of public policy is that?! Well, it's called liberal policy (in the political sense) and Baker is an exponent of liberal policies. What the US and the rest of the world needs most urgently are radical changes in social-economic arrangements.

How the Banks Take Down Politicians (Elizabeth Warren Edition)

Click here to access article by Yves Smith from her blog Naked Capitalism.

This politically liberal blogger often has insights on how the ruling class manages their "democracy", although she would never put it that way. In this piece she describes their use of front groups such as media outlets and non-profit political groups such as RATE to circumscribe and limit the influence of people in government who would like to curb the excesses of corporations and financial interests. 

I applaud Smith for doing this, but as a liberal she seems totally unaware of how the same methods apply to the shaping of the thoughts of 99% plus of Americans to support an economic system that is robbing them daily and turning them and their children into indentured servants of the ruling class of capitalists. She stays safely within acceptable limits of capitalist discourse by criticizing bankers instead of a whole class of capitalists who have rigged their system to serve themselves. Not only do the latter use front groups in media, non-profits, they also use front groups like the Tea Party, legislators sponsored by the ruling class, the privately owned Fed which controls our money, and an educational system used to indoctrinate us, to cull out political dissidents, and to promote those who, like herself, stay safely within acceptable limits of political-economic discourse. 

But, of course, that is the nature of ruling class societies, and we humans have been plagued with them for the last 10,000 of the more than 150,000 years of human existence. It is only now that as a human race we face intolerable consequences if we continue to tolerate such social-economic arrangements: the destruction of our habitat, ever increasing wars, poverty, police states, exhaustion of energy, etc.   

The Whole World Is Watching: Nonviolence at Liberty Plaza

Click here to access article by Nathan Schneider from The Indypendent. 

There is beginning to be much more discussion about strategy and tactics among the Wall Street protesters:

Unity, planning and discipline are also interconnected. When the police make arrests at Liberty Plaza, it tends to divide the protesters. Some want to fall back, some want to fight back. Instead, with more discipline, these incidents could unite them and sharpen their focus. Too often, the protesters are letting themselves forget who their real opponent is—all that Wall Street represents in American culture and politics—by focusing so much on anger against the underpaid, working-class police force deployed around them.

War and shopping - an extremism that never speaks its name

Click here to access article by John Pilger from his website. 

While looking for a bookshop that was no longer there, this perceptive Australian journalist inadvertently enters into the artificial capitalist world of a shopping mall and sees so much of the extremism that illustrates characteristics of the larger capitalist world of wealth and poverty. 

The mega mall, the biggest in Europe, is built in the midst of grey tower blocks not far from where the recent riots occurred, its “designer” products, made mostly with cheap, regimented labour, beckon the indebted. That it stands on a site where London workers made trains – thousands of locomotives, carriages and goods wagons – in what was once called manufacturing is of melancholy interest. The mega mall’s jobs produce nothing and are mostly low-paid. It is an emblem of extreme times.

I don't see that the article has much to do with wars as the title suggests, unless he is thinking in the context of class wars.

A Political Casualty of 9/11: The Anti-Corporate Globalization Movement

Click here to access article by Daniel Denvir from Truthout.

Nine-eleven's ten-year anniversary is sparking retrospectives ranging from lives lost to a War on Terror launched. But media accounts have omitted an important political casualty: the short-lived "anti-globalization" movement, perhaps the largest American social movement since the civil rights and Vietnam War era.

If 9/11 was not at least partially engineered by ruling class political operatives, it should go down in history as the most fortuitous event in the 300 year reign of capitalism. But, with the current economic collapse of capitalist economies, its beneficial effects for the defense of capitalism may be coming to an end.

U.S. Government to Gulf War Vets: Drop Dead!

This 8:05m video is from the Progressive Radio Network.

The narrator interviews veterans living in tent camps on the edge of cities in the US.

The Wall Street Occupation: A Sleep-In Protest in the Shadow of Power

Click here to access article by Manny Jalonschi from Indypendent.

Although this article is a bit dated in the context of the fast moving developments at the Wall Street Occupation, I think it gives a more complete picture of the various activities happening there.

The general assemblies, who began their meetings in circles, sitting on the concrete, broke down discussions into three general areas — problems, solutions and strategies. Most discussions began with an open session for assembly participants to vocalize what they viewed as the biggest challenges the country faces in freeing itself from the power of finance. While much discussion focused on the corruption and collusion between Wall Street and Washington, many assembly members  also noted that general apathy was also a problem of education.

The second part of the general assemblies focused on developing general solutions for the problems just identified. Regulation, transparency and again education became the hot talking points for this session. By the third session, assemblies were working on exchanging strategies for local, national and international action.

This event is hopefully the embryo of a future plant that represents the control of the people over the most vital activity of their lives: how and what they produce to sustain their lives and families, and how they distribute the wealth they create.  

This plant will only grow if it is nurtured by the people. This support can take many forms: participation, money, and by attacking the weeds of corporate and banking ideology that threatens to smother this plant. Unless we fight back, there is no hope of freeing ourselves of capitalist ideology and its banking and corporate insects that are intent on devouring our planet garden and our very lives.

Also, see this and this for the latest coverage.

Occupy Wall Street - Day 6: Revolution is Tweet

Click here to access article by Chaz Valenza from OpEd News.

Yesterday was another rough day for those here in Liberty Plaza, but much better than Tuesday when the police harassment was a definite attempt to nip Occupy Wall Street in the bud.

Meanwhile, the protests are spreading to other cities: Seattle, San Francisco, and other cities in the US. and making news across the globe. However, the numbers involved in these protests are still fairly small; but, who knows, they could easily escalate as the economy continues to deteriorate and impact Americans.

Here in Washington state, teachers in Tacoma have been on strike for over a month, and there is a poorly reported Longshoreman's strike in Longview where things are turning ugly, and it appears that the stock market is taking a steeper dive today.

 

Dearest President and Professor Barack Obama

Click here to access article by Tom Engelhardt from Tom Dispatch.

The author provides a very entertaining interpretation in a very tongue-in-cheek parody of the ongoing corruption in the US military-industrial elite's campaign in Afghanistan. 

Who hasn’t received one -- or 100 -- of those “Nigerian” letters offering you, in florid prose, millions of potential dollars and with nary a catch in sight? But who knew that the highest officials in Washington have been receiving them as well -- and from our war zones rather than Africa.

The Great Transition [a proposal]

from The E. F. Schumacher Society. You may want to skip the introduction and go straight to the title, "The Great Transition".

New Economics Foundation policy director Andrew Simms put it like this.
"For years we have been told that there is no alternative to an economy that
wrecks the environment and worsens inequality. We've been told that we live
in a time of prosperity, when really we're no happier than we were thirty
years ago. We've been told that crashes, bubbles and recessions are all
part of the 'natural cycle' of economies. But faced with potentially
irreversible climate change and corrosive inequality, these are dangerous
fairy tales. The Great Transition shows we have a chance of a better
reality."

Psychologists: Questioning 9/11 Is the Sane Thing To Do

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog.

Many mental health professionals have concluded that the official version of 9/11 is false, and that those who believe the official version suffer from defense mechanisms.

The author provides links to many mental health professionals who see a whole society of Americans trying to deal with the conflict between the official propaganda regarding 9/11 and evidence from scientists and engineers that contradicts the propaganda. Currently most people do not believe the official version, and this has caused many Americans a lot of problems. He ends up with this 15:08m excellent video featuring interviews with more mental health professionals relating their experiences with their patients regarding the 9/11 experience:

The age of the Reaper

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

There are few observers of international affairs can tell it like it like he does: with his razor sharp vision he with his powerful prose cuts through the newspeak, the diplomatic language, and the incessant propaganda of mainstream media to reveal the naked, raw truth.

What matters are the "facts on the ground" of Israel as the supreme dominatrix of US foreign policy as well as the US Congress being Israel's bitch. What matters is Obama trying to entice Muslims with flowery rhetoric in Istanbul and Cairo just to meekly submit, and when the going gets tough, to feel the dominatrix whip.

However, the article is mostly about the Empire's new weapon, the killer drones, AKA the Reaper, and the increasing use of these weapons to enforce the Empire's interests.

See also this article entitled, "The World of Drone Warcraft".

Anarchism, Autonomy, violence and the state

Click here to access article by Julien Febvre from Eagainst.com 

"Julien Febvre” is a Greek writer, musician, artist and filmmaker, student of politics and sociology in Birkbeck University of London. He has studied Arts and Pedagogy in Griffith College, (Dublin, Ireland) and Musicology in Kingston University of London. He has been influenced by the Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, the Situationist Movement, anarchism and Libertarian Socialism.

I consider this article to be most reflective of my "imaginary", world view, "weltanschauung" (German), or ideological position. Such an exposition of this ideology is rarely found in American English articles. Unfortunately, this article should have been proofread to eliminate several errors and to conform to ordinary English usage.  (Also, I think it is useful to keep in mind that he is writing this to a British audience following the riots in London and other cities in August, and I think that he is responding to the coverage of these events by British mainstream media.)

But, once you get beyond these problems, you will find numerous clarifications of what anarchism really means and has meant to most of its exponents throughout its history. Once you understand it, you will understand that it is a truly revolutionary world view. That is precisely why capitalist propagandists put so much effort into smearing and obfuscating the term "anarchism". It is totally and fundamentally at odds with any kind of authoritarian system as well as the numerous pseudo-democratic systems in existence today. The latter are simply authoritarian systems dressed up in democratic garb.

To aid in your understanding of this important paper, I will point out some of the most glaring errors:

To those myopic conservatives who claim that a society without state violence or capitalism is inevitable, we would respond that oppression, exploitation, war, consumerism, pollution, is the reality they are defending.

I think he meant to write:

To those myopic conservatives who claim that a society without state violence or capitalism is impossible, .... 

Precisely because of this knowledge [the meaning of "autonomy"], they can set their own laws and institutions and despise them whenever they deem it is necessary, without recognizing any totems and taboos.

I think he meant to write:

"Precisely because of this knowledge, they can set their own laws and institutions and discard or reject them whenever they deem it is necessary without recognizing any totems and taboos."

Such like for a Jewish of the Bible the question “is the law right and fair” has no answer because “the law is given by God, consequently everybody who despises it, is a sinner, a heathen or an unbeliever, hence everybody has to obey this law or will receive eternal punishment”.

I think he meant to write:

"Similarly, for the Jews in the Bible...." 

Direct democracy is not a purport but a mean, an ability to understand how we, ourselves, are able to create laws. In direct democracy, all decisions are taken directly by ourselves (whether through popular assemblies, or other entities).

I think he meant to write:

"Direct democracy is not an objective, but a means, ...."

In Every Age

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

Cox offers his views on the current state of the nation (USA) while attacking the distorted coverage of mainstream media and the phony games of government leaders.

The news is about sensationalism, death and carnage laced with preconceived ideas. Barack Obama proposes his jobs bill, which was filled with perks and play pretties for the Republican side of the aisle, only to meet resistance from his own side. Obama counters that criticism with a new set of proposals to tax the wealthy, but if Obama had been in any way serious he would have proposed these things three years ago. Obama is only stunting for the camera, emoting passionate sounds bites for public consumption.

Occupy Wall Street: Day 5 - Workers Union Joins Protest

Click here to access article by Chaz Valenza from OpEd News.

The police strategy was simple: get that video feed stopped.   Make a show of force.   Scare the crap out of these whiners and poop this little party.

Also, check out this coverage.

Profit Pathology and Its Alternatives [47:46m video]

Click here to access speech by Michael Parenti carried on Dandelion Salad website. 

If you have not heard the insightful views of Parenti before, you should definitely hear him take apart the many myths capitalists use to sell their system, the many contradictions in the system, and disasters it causes for working people that results from capitalism for the first 32 minutes. The balance of his talk is about his views on socialism which I think are much less important. 

This was an informal presentation to a group at Utah Valley University at Orem, Utah sometime earlier this year.

Occupy Wall Street: Day 4

Click here to access article by Chaz Valenza from OpEd News.

This author is providing a very good report on the highlights of the Wall Street protests.

The police tactics are now turning to petty harassment and intimidation to discourage others from physically coming to join the protest.

The local authorities of the ruling class are clearly handling this demonstration with great care. They know full well that if they crack down too hard on the protests, that this will likely only add fuel to the fire. So far, this strategy along with keeping the protests out of mainstream news seems to be working. But, if the activists in New York can sustain their protests, things can very well change.

See also this for the ongoing attempts to provide live streaming of protests.

And, for the latest news on the protests in Paris, see this report. 

The Debt Crisis in the European Union: Austerity for Life (Part 4 of 7)

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

What the members of the Troika are doing can be compared to the odious behaviour of someone who, while claiming to help a person in a difficult predicament, would actually make it worse and benefit from it. We can also consider that it is a criminal act planned collectively by the IMF, the ECB, the EC, and the governments that are supporting their action. Associating in order to plan and carry out a criminal act increases the responsibility of the aggressors.

I don't know if you can follow all the financial tricks that European banks use to enrich themselves, but it is clear to Eric Toussaint that the European Union and its institutions were designed for the welfare of the private banks and their owners, the capitalist ruling classes, and not for the benefit of the vast majority. Surprise, surprise!

I will continue to run all seven parts of the author's articles to shed some light on the dire debt situation that the private banks have laid upon Europe's working people. It is a situation that is still developing, and many think that it will deteriorate into a much deeper crisis. (For example, see this.) 

Obama’s budget plan: Cut social spending, lower tax rates for the rich

Click here to access article by Joseph Kishore from World Socialist Web Site.

This article provides a good corrective to corporate media's superficial coverage from which one might easily draw the conclusion that Obama is a great populist President fighting off those greedy oppressive Republicans. The author accurately interprets the President's budget plan as offering...

...verbal bromides, including the standard Orwellian line that the cuts are aimed at “strengthening Medicare and Medicaid over time,” are intended to cloak the actual consequences of the measures—the reduction or elimination of care for millions of people.

Obama sears the arc of instability

Click here to access article by Nick Turse from Asia Times Online. 

It's a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the George W Bush years, used to be called "the arc of instability". It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them - from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia - Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.

...President Barack Obama is in the process of trumping his predecessor.

This thesis illustrates how the US governmental system functions to create the illusion of democracy while serving powerful people behind the scenes whose rule is imposed on the world regardless of who is "elected" from those candidates that are allowed to run for office. (Read an excellent exposé in a book entitled, The Secret Team by (ret. Colonel) L. Fletcher Prouty

Also, the author seems to imply that US foreign policies mistakenly or inadvertently caused instability throughout much of the world. It is clear to me that instability was intentionally created as a strategy to control these areas of the world. See the following links to chaos theory: here, here, and here.

The Federal Budget Through The Looking Glass

Click here to access article by Jules Brouillet from American Monetary Institute. 

Macroeconomic models take the present economic system as an indisputable given.  Their studies, their conclusions, their thoughts remain uncritical; the predominant attitude of the profession is that there is no credible alternative to our system of capitalism. ...For American social science it is a scandal that it remains silent on so great an issue.”  Orthodox economic thinking stops Americans short of seriously reconsidering the merits of maintaining a system that has privatized their sovereign economic power.  Our economic liberty has been shackled to the privately owned Federal Reserve System. 

In departing from my usual policy of posting only current articles, I offer this one which is relatively timeless and insightful. I have great appreciation for this institute and the book they have published called, The Lost Science of Money by Stephen Zarlenga.  It is a bit rough in the earlier chapters, but the author really hits his stride by chapter nine. He bases his observations on considerable research into this widely obscured subject. 

However, I think that they hold the view that if the Fed were abolished and money issued by the US Treasury solely as a medium of exchange and not based on debt as under the Fed, that the capitalist system would work just fine. To be sure, the Fed does act as huge parasite on the economy, but it is only the logical extension of an economy that is based on private ownership of socially productive activity--capitalism. 

Everything under capitalism has a tendency to become a commodity. Thus, money has been turned into a commodity whose control is in private hands under the Fed. Yes, I know that there is some government participation in this arrangement, but it is very superficial and clearly designed to hide the reality of private control.

The Insidious Truth About Federal Reserve Policy

Click here to access article by Shah Gilani from Money Morning.

I love it when members of capitalist firms shed some real light on the system. This economist and investment strategist does precisely that by explaining the role of the Fed in supporting banks (and banksters) and not the economy of the US--that is the insidious truth that he has just stumbled across!

...the Fed doesn't work for the American public - it works for Wall Street .

That's right. It's not the economy the Fed has on life support - it's the banks.

It is clear that our economy is run by and for bankers, not by or for the benefit of its worker-citizens who produce real wealth in the forms of food, clothing, transportation, communications, housing, education, etc.

Media Blackout - Thousands peacefully protest Wall Street, No media coverage [4:05m video]

Well, to be more accurate, there has been very little coverage in mainstream media. View this to make up for this lack.

What Really Happened in Libya?

Click here to access audio-video interview (38:19m) with Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya from Global Research TV. 

While I was busy last week entertaining guests, I missed the interview with this independent Canadian journalist who gives an unvarnished version of his harrowing experiences in Libya, of NATO's war in Libya, and what war in general is really like.

The Debt Crisis in the European Union: The ECB, ever loyal to private interests (Part 3 of 7)

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

...we need to be aware that various EU treaties have to be abrogated, that the ECB statutes have to be radically changed, and that the EU has to be founded on other premises. Yet to achieve this, the balance of power has first to be changed through massive street mobilizations.

I don't know if you can follow all the financial tricks that European banks use to enrich themselves, but it is clear to Eric Toussaint that the European Union and its institutions were designed for the welfare of the private banks and their owners, the capitalist ruling classes, and not for the benefit of the vast majority. Surprise, surprise!

I will continue to run all seven parts of the author's articles to shed some light on the dire debt situation that the private banks have laid upon Europe's working people. It is a situation that is still developing, and many think that it will deteriorate into a much deeper crisis. (For example, see this.)

“We are going slow because we are going far!”

Click here to access article by Jérôme E. Roos from RoarMag.

This is a report on the global day of action against the banks that is occurring in Paris.
 

Live streaming of the Wall Street occupation from Global Revolution

Being the best live streaming that I've found this morning on the Wall Street occupation, I thought I would post it immediately. For video coverage click HERE or HERE. (Obviously, this will be a temporary post--to be removed after the event is finished or until the enforcers of the ruling class shut it down.)

The New Arctic Abnormal: Record Low Sea Ice Volume, Area and Extent*

Click here to access article from Climate Progress. 

So far this year the melting data of polar ice from the Arctic portends the complete disappearance of the icecap by 2020.

...what does make it incredible, is the way that freak melting season 2007 has been equaled and even surpassed in some data sets [for 2011].

See also this EarthSky report that provides data from NASA illustrated with great graphics while failing to mention the ominous implications. 

Think of a Tank

Click here to access article by George Monbiot from his blog.

The ruling class always has to deal with the problem of disguising its rule, especially when their indoctrination agencies are always preaching about "democracy". A major method to accomplish this is to disguise their influence through organizations they setup that are called "think tanks" which, of course, are essentially their main propaganda organs. Thus, it is hardly surprising that these propaganda organs are resistant to disclosing where their funding comes from. 

But, this liberal author seem oblivious to the fact that the ruling class has many other alternatives to exert their influence throughout society. They own and control all major media, exert powerful influence over educational systems, and with their direct and indirect control of jobs insure that anybody who fails to follow their "party line" regarding policies does not gain any position of influence. What dramatically occurred in the McCarthy period now occurs in a much subtler, but pervasive form.

The Debt Crisis in the European Union (Part 2/7) The great Greek bond bazaar

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

Eric Toussaint: The ECB is entirely devoted to serving the bankers’ interests.

CADTM: But how?

I don't know if you can follow all the financial tricks that European banks use to enrich themselves, but it is clear to Eric Toussaint that the European Union and its institutions were designed for the welfare of the private banks and their owners, the capitalist ruling classes, and not for the benefit of the vast majority. Surprise, surprise!

I will continue to run all seven parts of the author's articles to shed some light on the dire debt situation that the private banks have laid upon Europe's working people. It is a situation that is still developing, and many think that it will deteriorate into a much deeper crisis. (For example, see this.)

World Bank Policies "enabling" African Land Grab

Click here to access article from Bretton Woods Project 

...WBG has, through an array of different policies, overseen a shift towards prioritising large-scale commercial agribusiness, achieved by attracting and promoting foreign agricultural investment. The Foreign Investment Advisory Service and the Remove Administrative Barriers to Investment program, both projects of the International Finance Corporation, the Bank's private sector arm, have "been working - often behind the scenes - to ensure that African countries reform their land laws and fiscal regimes to make them attractive to foreign investors". The Bank has financed legal reform mechanisms that are promoting rapid changes in land tenure laws, "driven by a desire to facilitate large-scale agricultural investment".

The Bank has also been funding investment promotion agencies in African countries that place private sector advisors in key governmental ministries, including presidential offices.

Death of the Republic on 9/11/01 "For Security Reasons" , "Credible and Unconfirmed Reports"...

Click here to access article by Dr. Bill Friend from Global Research.

...what made me mourn, not only for the lost innocents in my community, but for the death of the Republic, was what began on Friday 9/9....

...those continuing reports on all the mainstream networks and their cable affiliates of "CREDIBLE but UNCONFIRMED" reports of some group of "terrorists" who were coming to somewhere in NYC in some truck or other vehicle loaded with explosives of an undetermined nature to be blown up somewhere in some crowd.  One couldn't get away from these reports and they became incessant.

FBI training material portrays Islam as an indicator of terrorist activity

Click here to access article by Abdus-Sattar Ghazali from OpEd News. 

The seven-million strong American Muslim community was shocked to know that the FBI has been using anti-Muslim instructors and Islamophobic materials in counterterrorism training.

You can be sure that the ruling class will continue to use every trick in their trickster's book to get American workers to fight against each other in order to divert attention away from them.

From Henry Gale's Study Abroad Blog.

A 3 part series by Henry Gales from The Pioneer. Click on links below to access the articles.
 
The author is apparently a student at Whitman College in southeastern Washington state, and is probably doing a "junior year abroad" at a university in Argentina. He offers a comparison of the pseudo-democratic form of government in the US with that of Argentina which is commonly found throughout Latin American with some variations: clientelism.

Government, Part One: Fascism

Goverment, Part 2: Democracy + Part 3: Clientelism 

Famous Wall Street trader: “the system is ‘fuck the poor’”

Click here to access article by Jérôme E. Roos from RoarMag. 

The fact that knowledgeable people like Eisman wasn't initially aware of what was going on is testimony to the covert and sophisticated nature of the operation. It was essentially a conscious criminal enterprise perpetrated by banksters and Wall Street investors that differs little from the methods used by the Mafia and other such criminal organizations. They boldly saw that lower-middle income people in the US were an "easy mark" because they naively believed in the American Dream. One of the leading pitchmen for this operation was none other than George Bush, Jr.

In the eye of the storm: the debt crisis in the European Union: Part 1 of 7 - Greece

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

...Western European private banks used the money they received at very low rates from the ECB, the Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve and the US money market funds in order to increase their loans to countries such as Greece without taking risk into consideration. Private banks thus bear a heavy responsibility for the crushing debts of Greece. Greek private banks also loaned huge amounts to public authorities and to the private sector. They too have a significant responsibility in the present situation. Consequently the debts claimed from Greece by foreign and Greek banks as a result of their irresponsible policy should be considered illegitimate.

I don't know if you can follow all the financial tricks that European banks use to enrich themselves, but it is clear to me that the European Union and its institutions were designed for the welfare of the private banks and their owners, the capitalist ruling classes, and not for the benefit of the vast majority.

I will continue to run all seven parts of the author's articles to shed some light on the dire debt situation that the private banks have laid upon Europe's working people. It is a situation that is still developing, and many think that it will deteriorate into a much deeper crisis.

On Ideology: From Below and to the Left

Click here to access article by Henry Gales from The Pioneer. 

Liberalism and statism, for centuries, have cast a long shadow over all types of ideology. However, there are growing movements that realize the reality of today’s world. We do not need to take state power, work through political parties, or establish hegemony. Instead, we need to build projects of governments that are inseparable from the people, and in opposition to any form of hegemony.

I essentially agree with this thesis, but I worry about the degree of liberal (capitalist) indoctrination of false ideas and values that has informed the thinking of several generations of ordinary people now living. I agree with the author's rejection of vanguardism, but reject his implied notion that left political parties have little to contribute toward building a genuine working class consciousness and viable working class organizations. (It is possible that he differentiates between formal parties that run in elections and political organizations.) Left political parties (and I include organizations) have preserved the history of working class struggles and there are many lessons that can be derived from this historical experience. Thus, they have much to contribute.

Why we are marching in Paris on September 17

Click here to access article by Jérôme E. Roos from RoarMag.

We are mobilizing on September 17 because we know that the total cost of saving the US banking sector was higher than the total cost of WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan and the Apollo Project, all added together and adjusted for inflation; and we know that the people are now being made to pay for that through years and years of austerity measures — while the bankers themselves are getting away unscathed.

There are many links to information about the role banks have played in the economic collapse and the way they have with impunity looked to taxpayers to bail them out and to provide them with cheap money to gamble with again. I have been covering this scene with in-depth articles for nearly the past two years. Such information informs the anger toward the mega-banks against which the protests are directed.

As I see it, such protests are long overdue in the US, but better late than never.

The World Consequences of U.S. Decline

Click here to access article by Immanuel Wallerstein from his blog.

Politicians and journalists are talking openly of the “dysfunctionality” of the U.S. political situation. But what else could it possibly be but dysfunctional? The most elementary fact is that U.S. citizens are stunned by the mere fact of decline. It’s not only that U.S. citizens are themselves suffering materially from the decline, and are deeply afraid that they will suffer even more as time goes on. It’s that they have deeply believed that the United States is the “chosen nation” designed by God or history to be the model nation in the world.

This distinguished liberal sociologist doesn't seem to realize that we are now entering into an era of globalized capitalism. National boundaries are irrelevant to capitalist elites because they have removed all impediments to their investment activities. Boundaries are now only used to control the movements of workers. Capitalists can and do move workers across boundaries whenever they see profit opportunities, but workers find it very difficult on their own initiative to move across boundaries for better opportunities.

Western capitalist ruling classes have decided on a merger just like corporations have merged with each other to provide more capital and power to extract more profits. The new empire that has formed out of the former Western countries is called NATO, and it is very much in the ascendancy. All the other capitalist countries such as China, Russia, Brazil, Japan, etc. are competitors, but pose little threat to NATO at the present time. Okay, I know that cartographers haven't changed their maps, but this is because NATO's ruling elites want to preserve some fictions about national identity just like they preserve fictions about democratic rule.

Although US and citizens of many other Western capitalist countries are experiencing decline in their living standards, the wealthy elites have never had so much wealth and power. They are clearly in the ascendancy.

We are now entering a world where extremely wealthy people live on well guarded, gated communities like islands in a sea of poor workers. This is the dismal world we are entering and must resist with all of our imagination and courage.

Neoliberalism, Austerity and Participatory Democracy

Click here to access article by Sveinung Legard from New Compass. 

Is there truly an inherent contradiction between fighting for welfare rights on one side and participatory democracy on the other? Do our attempts to achieve immediate reforms to regulate the economy necessarily preclude the revolutionary goals of a post-capitalist society?

Clearly, the answer is no!

The central demand in all of the new mobilizations and uprisings against neoliberalism and austerity policies around the world, has been the demand for real and participatory democracy.

 

Who will occupy Wall Street on September 17?

Click here to access article by Nathan Schneider Waging Nonviolence. 

Something...is definitely going to be happening. A lot of people are definitely going to be there, though 20,000 seems pretty optimistic. Some will know what they’re doing more than others, and all will learn. Not only will this weekend be a test of Americans’ readiness to resist, but of whether an idea lobbed into the internet by Adbusters, then grabbed by artists, students, Twitter hashtags, and a shadowy network of hackers (and hacker wannabes), can really turn into a “flood,” a show of meaningful political force, a new way forward.

If the level of political consciousness of US activists is represented in this article, then I fear for US activism. Assuming that this website is representative of the thinking of US activists, just the name of this website suggests that the only thing they can agree upon is to be non-violent in their actions. 

I have seen this call for non-violence emphasized in nearly every activist organization in the US. One might easily think that it was a basic principle of activism rather than simply a tactic for the present when one is faced with an overwhelmingly armed opponent: the organized security services of the global ruling class who have absolutely no hesitation about their use of violence against political dissenters. 

All humans feel an innate sense of the need to protect themselves from assault; and if they must use violence to protect themselves, they will do so. Given the present circumstances, it just doesn't make much sense to do use violence offensively. There are other ways to thwart our oppressors, and these must be identified and used aggressively.

And they seem wary of ideology as if they hadn't been subject to capitalist ideology all of their lives. It seems that citizens in the US have been swimming in the waters of capitalism for so long that they find it difficult to imagine any other form. Worker history has been expunged from history books by their capitalist masters. Thus, it seems that all the worker struggles for emancipation from capitalists over the past 200 years plus has no relevance for them. It seems like they feel the necessity to start over in the first school grade of political understanding. God, I hope I am wrong!

Of one thing I am certain: we, the people, must learn quickly how to resist this capitalist juggernaut and replace it with something that serves all of humanity; because, if we fail, the consequences will be horrific.
 

NOTICE:

I will be having visitors from now through September 14th which will limit the amount of posting that I will be doing during this period. Should be back on full schedule on the 15th. 

Ron Horn

Airplanes Have Been Flown By Remote Control Since 1917

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog.

Haven't had time to review this article thoroughly, but it appears that this blogger has assembled substantial evidence that the 9/11 "hijacked" airplanes may have been under remote control when they crashed into the towers. 

Peak Oil, Peak Debt, and the Concentration of Power

Click here to access article by Charles Eisenstein from The Oil Drum. 

I haven't had time to fully read this article or comment on it, but it looks interesting to me. The first thing that struck me--and, this is typical of many articles written by academics--is that the author is writing about the capitalist system but is unable to name it. He writes around the subject by using  phrases which really refer to capitalism without naming the system. See if you agree.

It should not be surprising, since the profit motive has been the primary driver towards these peaks, that we should be approaching a peak in the realm of money as well, a peak that we might call "peak debt." The crisis in money is ineluctably related to the crisis in everything else, because the viability of our money system depends on growth: the conversion of nature into goods, and relationships into services. This conversion cannot proceed much farther, due to resource depletion and the inability of society and biosphere to sustain more damage.

Obama outlines right-wing program in “jobs” speech

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

While hailed by his Democratic supporters as the return of a new combative Obama, his phony populist demagogy about the need for immediate action and commitment to ensuring that every American received a “fair shake” stood in stark contrast to the actual content of the policies advanced in the speech. All the proposals, moreover, will be paid for by even deeper attacks on core social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The following quote I found particularly interesting as a contrast to the lack of labor militancy that is still mostly typical of today's workers in the US.

Three quarters of a century ago, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt found the resources to put millions of Americans to work through programs like the Works Progress Administration, that were responsible for nationwide construction and repair of basic infrastructure, from highways to airports to national parks.

Driven by tumultuous struggles of the American working class and the fears that example of the 1917 workers’ revolution Russia could be repeated, Roosevelt set about to save capitalism from itself.

The success of the revolution in Russia inspired working people everywhere and severely shook the capitalist ruling classes. Few Americans realize this and give too much credit to President Franklin Roosevelt and little credit to working class militancy in Russia and the US. The only people who will improve the lot of working people iare working people themselves.

An afternoon with the English Defence League

Click here to access article by Laurie Penny from the New Statesman.

The picture this young journalist paints of the rise of racist/cultural hate groups in England is not one I was expecting to see so soon. Could these scenes on the streets of London be the future everywhere in the advanced capitalist countries? As the capitalist managed economy deteriorates, the ruling class would love to see workers turn on each other rather on them, and will do everything they can to encourage such developments. The code word that the elites use is "multi-culturalism" as in "multi-culturalism has failed".

Behind the mounted, armoured cops, you can see St George's flags waving, and you can hear the thump and echo of smokebombs and the chanting of hate-tourists out to scrap with members of another disenfranchised community that happens to look and pray differently. The East end is in lockdown, and there are hundreds of police everywhere. The horses are spooked, and so am I.






Although from a politically liberal perspective, a more detailed understanding of this phenomenon can be obtained by listening to at least the first 10 minutes of this 38:15 minute interview from KPFA radio (Berkeley, CA, USA) interview with John Bowen.

Why have so many European leaders recently proclaimed the failure of multiculturalism? What should we make of their claims, and of the proliferating rhetoric of blame directed against Muslims and other immigrants of color in Europe? John Bowen distinguishes rhetoric from reality in France, Britain and beyond....

The Gen Y Guide to Collaborative Consumption

Click here to access article by Beth Buczynski from Shareable. 

As corporate run governments are using our tax dollars to bailout banksters and wage wars and social safety nets are being dismantled, we are increasingly being left to fend for ourselves. We are now forced to collaborate to save ourselves. This article provides some great resources and ideas for doing this, and not only for "generation Y" people. And, in the end, our efforts to construct systems for survival could very well provide clues to creating new, sustainable, and just societies. 

If these ideas get your blood pumping, there’s good news: young people all over the world are already making them a reality. It’s called collaborative consumption, (or the sharing economy) and it’s changing the way we work, play, and interact with each other. It’s fueled by the instant connection and communication of the internet, yet it’s manifesting itself in interesting ways offline too.

Moving to Action – workplace organizing beyond recipes

Click here to access article by S. Nappalos from Liam Fox: Irreverence Cafe.

Organizing is absolutely critical in the war against capitalism and for a just, peaceful world. Too often we read or hear people advise about the necessity of organizing, but a discussion of methods and evaluating various tactics and strategies is missing. Hence, I am really impressed with this article which supplies some of this missing discussion. 

We need to move away from models of organizing by lecturing people about why we could rule this world and capitalism is horrible, or believing getting people agitated will automatically lead to organization because the workers are already radical. Instead we need to think about organizing as a relationship, a back and forth between a revolutionary(ies) and their coworkers in dialogue and common struggle.

Documents Claim Intelligence on Bin Laden, 9/11 Targets Withheld From Congress' Probe

From The Real News Network, 23:16m video:

I think that the evidence that this investigator has uncovered offers additional support for my hunch that the 9/11 project was uncovered by Western intelligence sources well before the event and authorities decided to not only let this project go ahead, but to facilitate it in order to produce a Pearl Harbor type of event which has served to justify the never-ending "war on terror" and all the invasions, torture, surveillance of dissidents, human rights abuses, etc that we have witnessed since 9/11.

Joint statement by Puerta del Sol Economics Working Group and Syntagma

Click here to access article from Take the Square. 

From the USA to Brussels, from Greece to Bolivia and from Spain to Tunisia, the crisis of capitalism is on the rise. A crisis caused by the same culprits who are imposing the reforms to get over it: pumping public funds into private financial institutions while forcing the citizens to foot the bill. Rather than lifting us out the crisis, their structural adjustment plans sink us even deeper in.

Unlike many liberal-left reforms, their recommendations are truly progressive.

50 State Attorney General Effort to Sell Out to Banks Makes Even More Egregious Offer

Click here to access article by Yves Smith from her blog, Naked Capitalism. 

Smith's blog is written for liberals in the financial services industry, and as such, it is addressed in their language. This honest blogger who has had a long career in the financial services industry knows of what she writes. This effort by the big banks to be released from legal actions resulting from many of their gross malpractices in relation to mortgages has been largely unreported in mainstream media.  Remember it was the mortgage scam that was mostly responsible for the crash of our economy and the imperiling of the lives of many working people across the globe.

There is presently negotiations being held in an attempt to shield the banks from US state lawsuits. The author sees a big sellout being attempted by the big banks and Iowa's Attorney General Tom Miller who supposedly represents the citizens of Iowa and the interests of citizens across the country. These negotiations are largely being reported only in the financial media, and it is highly distorted in favor of the banks. (If you need further background on this be sure to read this and other links she provides in her article.)

Organizing the Precariat

Click here to access article by Tom Judd from Shareable.

Although not inspiring, the article provides an illustration of all the management tactics used to stifle union organizing, lack of organized labor support, and NGO's funded by the ruling class that acted like any other for-profit corporation. It must be understood that discouraging union organizing and busting unions has become a major industry in the US and employers have a storehouse of information on such strategies. I don't offer this piece to discourage such organizing efforts, but to inform others as to the forces that they are up against so that more effective strategies can be devised. We must all share ideas in this fight back if we are to take control of our societies for the benefit of all.

Our preliminary organizing efforts, ranging from clandestine e-mails to workplace meetings, was initially met with indifference by the bosses. However, when workplace discontent was detected by management and did not rapidly disappear on its own, our demands were strangled by a massive management counteroffensive. The anti-union backlash took a number of forms; ultimately unhappy workers were sidelined or promoted, and part-timers crowded out in favor of salaried replacements. The previous sense of community was destroyed as workers were isolated and their hours disrupted by new, full-time hires. Strong organizers were lured to accept coveted promotions.to positions which gave them higher wages and kept them busy with new responsibilities. In the face of this restructuring, part-timers were left scrambling to keep their jobs.

Stung by the President on Air Quality, Environmentalists Weigh Their Options

Click here to access article by Leslie Kaufman from The NY Times.

In late August, the State Department gave a crucial go-ahead on a controversial pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Then on Friday, leading into the holiday weekend, the Obama administration announced without warning that it was walking away from stricter ozone pollution standards that it had been promising for three years and instead sticking with Bush-era standards. 

These shocked environmentalists are an example of North American progressives refusing to grow up. (See masthead statement) Obama is simply carrying out orders from his employers, the political operatives of the global ruling class of capitalists. If he failed to do so, he would be removed one way or another. But, liberals need not worry because Obama was raised by his white banker grandmother to please powerful white folks and serve their interests. These political operatives knew what they were doing when they groomed him to be President.

See also this and this. 

Manipulating Video Images: Sloppy Journalism or War Propaganda? The BBC's Fake Images from Tripoli

Click here to access article by Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research. 

I find it hard to believe in that they were simply sloppy--they were desperate. This ruling class propaganda organ simply needed the "victory" in Libya to be celebrated by Libyans to legitimate NATO's involvement, and this is the best they could come up with.

Global - Guardian journalist negligently disclosed Cablegate passwords

Click here to access article which is a Wikileaks Editorial.

Guardian investigations editor, David Leigh, recklessly, and without gaining our approval, knowingly disclosed the decryption passwords in a book published by the Guardian. Leigh states the book was rushed forward to be written in three weeks—the rights were then sold to Hollywood.

It will be interesting to see how the mainstream media, the propaganda organ of the ruling global capitalist class, manages this event. So far, they have ignored it. But, I'm sure, that they are still  formulating plans on how to turn the event into blaming Wikileaks.

Arab revolutions: “natural allies in a common struggle”

Click here to access article from Klasse! (Netherlands)

The article argues that the Arab Spring uprisings must be seen as an integral part of resistance to neo-liberal policies that are having catastrophic effects on working people throughout the world. Therefore, Arabs must be seen as allies and we working people in the West must join with them in casting off the common oppressor of international capitalism.

...Mohammad-Reza Shalgooni argues that the situation in the Middle East is comparable to revolutionary Russia in 1917, about which Lenin said that because there the contradictions of capitalism were most critical, it had become "the weak link in the imperialist chain". If this is true, the Arab uprising is of such great historical and global proportion, that the success of the Arab uprisings, and solidarity from our parts towards it, might determine the future of capitalism far beyond the region itself.

Sustaining Our Better Angels

Click here to access article by Kathy McMahon from her blog, Peak Oil Blues.

This psychologist takes a part another convenient representation of human nature that "explains" and justifies the system of capitalism. Dr. William E. Rees has written:

From a systems perspective, we might say that our current “unsustainability” is a product of the natural system…

There are certain behavioral adaptations that helped our distant ancestors survive—and thus those predilections were passed on to us. But those same (now ingrained) behaviors today are decidedly not helpful in solving our sustainability crisis—they have become maladaptive.

…we habituate to any level of consumption (once a given level is attained, satisfaction diminishes) so the tendency to accumulate ratchets up. This is particularly so if we perceive that another social group—or country—is “getting ahead” faster than we are. 

McMahon argues that such views are a product of a narrow group of people from capitalist academic institutions. She writes:

The values of Homo Economicus are deadly to the planet.  But it is dangerous to confuse the dysfunction of humans impacted by global free market capitalism, with the norms of human psychology or psycho-evolutionary biology.

Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street: As Reality Finally Hits The Financial Elite, They Start Turning On Each Other

Click here to access article David DeGraw from Amped Status.

I wouldn't get too excited about the outcome of all this. Like many predators various capitalist actors will turn on each other when the easy prey (working people) isn't enough to satisfy their voracious appetites. But the article provides an interesting survey of legal battles to keep us informed with what's happening among the class of people who rule over us. The author seems very upbeat about the outcomes of these battles, but I seriously doubt that they will result in any benefit for us. The people who will definitely benefit are corporate lawyers--I'm sure that they are ecstatic over these developments.

The following 6:32m video provides a rather clear explanation of how the Fed has been running a scam on the American people in their money creating operation, money that they gave to the troubled banks who in turn bought government securities which are debts to be paid back by us, our children, our grandchildren, and so on. This operation has been largely kept from public view. Mainstream media has focused on only the TARP program, but have grossly distorted how that scam also worked.