Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Click here to access article by Joseph E. Stiglitz from Vanity Fair. 

THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”














This is the first of two articles in a magazine and website directed to the One Percent in which the author is trying to pound into the heads of the rich and powerful that inequality is threatening their cherished system. Thus, in the second article he makes explicit a theme that only sociopaths, which constitute a large section of the One Percent, can understand:

Harden your hearts. When invited to consider proposals to reduce inequality—by raising taxes and investing in education, public works, health care, and science—put any latent notions of altruism aside and reduce the idea to one of unadulterated self-interest. Don’t embrace it because it helps other people. Just do it for yourself.

As I and many others see it, the basic problem is that their voracious system of capitalism is running up against limits of our finite planet: declining fossil fuels and other natural resources, and industrial activity that threatens an increasingly fragile ecosystem. Hence, they have turned to extracting more wealth from working people and the poor through all the obscure methods of financial capitalism. The end result is what we see today: so many people are descending into debt servitude and suffering the cutbacks in public services--education, health, recreation, and welfare.

The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Educated Hope

Click here to access article by Henry A. Giroux from Truthout. 

This liberal author provides a very articulate description of the looming class war, but his "politics of educated hope" is lost in vague abstractions as depicted here:

There is more at stake here than saying no, making power visible and recognizing that our individual and collective experiences are not dictated by fate. There is also the challenge of confronting the actual with the possible, of pulling hope down to earth, of making sure that the possibilities we mobilize engage real problems and concrete expressions of domination and power. In addition, there is the need to translate theoretical concerns into public action, lift up the level of discourse in an attempt to connect the academy to the dynamics of everyday life and give worldly expression to our critical work. Politics as an act of translation is essential to the struggle against the coming darkness that brands critical judgment as an enemy of the state and destroys public space, paving the way for existing elements of authoritarianism to crystallize into new forms that deform language. A democratic politics may take many forms, but central to connecting its diverse expressions is the need for individuals, groups and social movements to be able to reveal individual problems as public concerns, use theoretical resources to change concrete and systemic relations of power and challenge "a hateful politics toward the public realm, toward politics."

Tough Guy Leaking: Iran edition

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from Salon. 

Forget about this liberal blogger's emphasis on Obama. Simply replace Obama with President X because it doesn't matter who they put in office. This truism applies most definitely to foreign affairs. With domestic issues one finds mostly stylistic differences. There is a section of the One Percent ruling class that loves the way Obama has finessed imperialist policies, the continued favoring of financial institutions, and his austerity policies. The other section led by the Republican party prefers more direct attacks on working people.

Liberal bloggers are very useful when it comes to uncovering the ploys of the ruling class. This author provides evidence that political operatives of this class have found an additional way to cultivate fear in citizens in order to serve their interests of power and profit.

The primary fear-mongering agenda item for the National Security and Surveillance State industry is now cyberwarfare. The Washington cadre of former military officials who seek to personally profit by exploiting national security issues — represented by Adm. Michael McConnell and Gen. Michael Hayden — has been running around for several years shrilly warning that cyberwarfare is the greatest threat posed by Terrorists and other of America’s enemies....

Hymns to the Violence: The NYT’s Love Letter to Obama's Murder Racket

Click here to access article by Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque. 

Referring to Monday's New York Times article on the death squad that Barack Obama is personally directing from the White House, Floyd writes:

It is not so much a newspaper story as a love letter -- a love letter to death, to the awe-inspiring and fear-inducing power of death, as personified by Barack Obama in his temporary role as the manager of a ruthless, lawless imperial state. In the cringing obsequiousness of the multitude of insiders and sycophants who march in goose-step through the story, we can see the awe and fear -- indeed, the worship -- of death-dealing power. This enthrallment permeates the story, both in the words of the cringers and in the giddy thrill the writers display in gaining such delicious access to the inner sanctum.

See also this piece entitled "Barack Obama: an out of control psychopath with a God complex from Ceasefire (UK).

Although Floyd's article frames this story by hinting at a deeper security state, both unfortunately place too much emphasis on Obama. Obama is essentially only a smooth talking salesman for the inner security establishment that serve as political operatives for the key decision-makers of the One Percent. As Floyd stated at one point in his article, Obama is only a "temporary manager". Obama was raised with the values of the One Percent by his white banker grandmother who enrolled him in an elite school in Hawaii, and from there he went on to further indoctrination in ruling class values at Harvard. Because of this indoctrination, his natural gifts as a public relations officer, and all the rewards he has received by serving the ruling class, he very willingly serves the needs of the Empire.

Obviously, because the real decision-makers function mostly in secret, it is always hard to determine who the key actors really are. Names that are mentioned in the NY Times article are Leon E. Panetta (CIA Director), John O. Brennan (chief counterterrorism advisor), David Axelrod (personal advisor to Obama), and Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State). What must be emphasized is that these people frequently are appointed by key political operatives. For example, in the video interview below from The Real News, former CIA officer Ray McGovern reports that George Tenet first appointed John Brennan. Tenet is very likely a key political operative. The latter, it turn, answers to key decision-makers who are well connected to Wall Street and the Federal Reserve bankers. (For example, Jamie Dimon head of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve is likely a key decision-maker.) What is most important to keep in mind is that the real key actor is a system--capitalism. 

In this video McGovern gives us a much deeper analysis of what is going on behind the scenes of this NY Times report:



What both of these articles and many others like those written by David DeGraw miss is the systemic nature of the regime that controls our government. I am certainly not trying to excuse the people listed in the NY Times report, but only to accurately focus in on the problem so that real corrective action can be devised: the replacement of a system designed to allow the private accumulation of socially produced wealth--capitalism--with one that is socially and environmentally sustainable. If many activists continue to think in such narrow terms as various liberal authors do, we will never solve our problems.

Slaughter Slant: Houla Massacre Sparks Media Blame-game

Click here to access article by Keith Harmon Snow from Dissident Voice. 

Here is the fake Syrian atrocity photo first published by the BBC:

Italian photographer, Marco Di Lauro, has exposed the BBC which illegally used one of his photographs taken in Iraq as anti-Syrian Propaganda on their website’s front page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow's article refers to this photo that has been shown all over mainstream media.

Like all mainstream corporate press agency photographers covering wars their images are sold and used for propaganda purposes. The statement by Marco di Lauro is hypocritical, since his work has been used over and over to sell the Pentagon and NATO wars. Marco di Lauro sells his images through Time, Getty Images, Associated Press and others, and they have been used to sell the illegal NATO military interventions in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and other places. 

CIA Whistleblower Talks of 12 Month Incarceration over 9-11

Click here to access article by Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall from her blog, The Most Revolutionary Act. 

I highly recommend this most fascinating talk by a former CIA operative and commend Bramhall for bringing it to our attention.

(Note: the video link to Susan Lindauer's approximately 30 minute talk and one hour question and answer session was in Portland, Oregon last September at the Lucky Lab Brewing Company.)

Many activists will doubt the integrity of Bramhall when they read her reference to CIA backed foundations' funding of such left media sources as Democracy Now! But this does in fact happen and has been happening since the founding of the CIA in 1947. (Read The Mighty Wurlitzer by Hugh Wilford.) Left wing media are always starved for cash and can be financially seduced to modify their coverage in order to stay in existence. They probably justify this in their minds by repressing information about where the source of the funding lies, and by reasoning that with additional money they can do a more effective job of alternative reporting. To keep receiving this funding, such compromised media progressives will stop just short of any exposures that are too revealing of truth that the ruling class finds most damning.

The Blue Bloc Targets OWS

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

I loved this article! Unlike Chris Hedges, this author knows how to put the issues relating to Black Bloc tactics in their proper perspective. 

China-Japan currency deal ushers in a new era

Click here to access article by Wang Xiaotian and Gao Changxin from China Daily.

It seems to me that this is a major economic development that indicates another slippage for the US ruling class and their Empire down a very slippery slope to loss of power in the world. I'm sure this is making the political operatives of the Empire very nervous.

The rule of the US Empire depends upon two main sources of power--military and economic. The US spends more on its powerful military than all other countries combined. It also has dominant positions in the major financial institutions--World Bank and IMF. In order to support these two powers and salvaging the US dollar as an international currency after running up enormous debts in the Vietnam War while pacifying their own citizens with a "War on Poverty", in 1974 US political operatives (mainly Kissinger) worked out a deal with the Saudi family which controls the major source of oil in the world. The Saudi monarchy agreed to sell their vast supplies of oil only in US dollars in return for protection by the Empire. If this appears like a Mafia style arrangement, it appears so because it is. Let me explain how this works with a simple story.

Once upon a time many centuries ago there was an isolated community in which a bully lived and who was armed to the teeth. The bully spent so much money on weapons to beat up neighbors who didn't like him throwing his weight around that he soon ran out of money. He suddenly came up with a brilliant idea to deal with this problem. This bully offered protection to a neighbor who had most of the forest on his land (specifically the head of the family who was not well liked by his neighbors or even by members of his own family), if that neighbor-patriarch would sell his logs only in the bully's currency. Wood was used for all sorts of things, most essentially for heating and cooking. The bully had long insisted that everyone use his currency to buy things, but this arrangement insured their use of his money. Now the he could spend as much as he liked by printing his own money and everyone had to accept it. 

Those who made money in this currency like the forest guy accumulated so much of this currency that they lent it back to the bully and everyone else that would borrow his money just to get rid of it and earn at least some interest off it. This caused havoc among some of the neighbors who couldn't pay back the loans. 

But there was one family, a huge family with lots of strapping sons, who also accumulated a lot of this money selling useful and low cost products through their hard work at very low wages. Their labor was so cheap that some members of the bully's family decided to take advantage of this by hiring some of them to make products for them to sell on the local market where they made loads of money. 

Then one day the huge family decided to cut deals with individual neighbors to accept the neighbor's currency for their products. In the past the bully would beat up such a rebellious family (think Iraq, Iran, Venezuela), but in this case the bully looked at this huge family and decided that this might not be a good idea. Besides, the bully liked all the products they made for him to sell, and the products that his family purchased and consumed with money from his crude printing press.

What Israel’s anti-African pogroms tell us about Zionism

Click here to access article by Robert Kazandjian, Ali Hocine Dimerdji, and Samantha.Asumadu from Ceasefire (UK). 

A week ago, Tel Aviv's African migrant community came under a sustained mob attack, including vandalism, looting and firebombing. [The authors] argue that these events, and their aftermath, provide further evidence of the inherently racist nature of political Zionism. 

Most Aid to Athens Circles Back to Europe

Click here to access article by Liz Alderman and Jack Ewing from Other News. 

This present crazy arrangement imposed on Greece by Europe's One Percent only insures that the latter receive interest payments indefinitely. 

In an elaborate payment system that began after the May 6 election that brought down the Greek government and is meant to ensure that the Greeks do not touch the cash, the big three creditors are now wiring bailout payments to an escrow account in Greece. There the money sits for two or three days — before much of it is sent back to the troika as interest payments on the Greek bonds that Europe accepted under terms of the bailout deal struck in February.  

Return of the Russian Revolution: Nature and Perspectives of the New Wave of Social Protest

Click here to access article by Alexei Gusev from Znet.

Although this fairly lengthy article was written in February, it is only now that it is appearing on this website. This Russian writer appears to be an astute observer of historical and political events, and here he trains his penetrating vision on recent events in Russia to signal that the country is likely in a pre-stage of revolution.

The demonstrations of December 10th and 24th in Moscow, in which tens of thousands of people took part, show clearly that the period of social passivity in Russia is over ; the Putin era is nearing its end. The last time such large demonstrations took place in Moscow was in 1990-91 at the height of the democratic wave directed against the domination of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Then, following these mass actions,[RG1] the whole party-state system of the USSR was broken.[RG2] Those who participated in those events twenty years ago are feeling the same atmosphere again: revolution is in the air.

There are insights here on revolution that US activists should find useful. For example:

You can’t discuss revolution without raising the question of violence. Government propaganda tries to identify these two notions, to persuade the population that revolution always means blood, death and general ruin. But in reality mass democratic movements are hostile to violence and never use it first ; on the contrary, it is most often unleashed by regimes that want to hold on to power at any price. Violence is the last recourse of these regimes, who have exhausted all other means of struggle against the social movement. That is why an important condition for the success of the revolution is a split within the forces of order where part of their personnel refuses to put down the protesters. If that eventuality seems real or extremely probable, the authorities will hesitate to have recourse to violence, which will increase the chance of a peaceful, soft victory for the revolution. This was one of the important causes of the success of the Russian revolutions in February 1917 and August 1991, as well as the ‘velvet’ revolutions in East Europe and the ‘color’ revolutions in the ex-USSR.

SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians as part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Public Support for a R2P War against Syria

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

The author argues that the recent atrocity in Syria was likely engineered by Western subversive agencies due to their long history of using such incidents to justify use of military force to pursue Empire interests. Indeed, many feel that the 9/11 attack was one such operation to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. In any case, there is no evidence that the Syrian government was responsible for it. In spite of this, Western governments and media are blaming the Syrian government and pounding the drums for more sanctions against Syria and military intervention.

See also this assessment of the incident by Ralph Schoenman from the same website. 

Just this morning I received an email from what is probably a subversive internet source posing as a progressive organization and sponsored by political operatives of the Empire that pulls at one's heartstrings in order to encourage people to support more aggressive actions against Syria. Here is a short version of the email I received posted on the related Avaaz website. Checking in Wikipedia I find out that this organization is funded by MoveOn.org and George Soros.

What Me Worry? The rise of the surveillance state and what we can do about it

A 32:54n video presentation by Scott Crow sourced from Infoshop News.

I highly recommend this to all activists and people thinking about becoming activists. The speaker is a longtime activist who knows of what he speaks.

A presentation from scott crow at the Law and Disorder conference in 2012. It covers the 'War on Terror' giving some historical background on repression of previous political movements from COINTELPRO, political prisoners (past and present) and the current security state and how current political movements can effective fight back.

Pentagon Consolidates Control Over Balkans

Click here to access article by Rick Rozoff from OpEd News.

One of the early successful projects of NATO was the subversion, the attacks on, and the dismantling of Yugoslavia. Read this to find out how the new small states have been incorporated into the Empire to serve its strategic interests.

Pay-to-play economists

Click here to access article by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog. 

In an excerpt from his new book, Predator Nation, Charles H. Ferguson, the director of Inside Job, describes how “significant portions of American academia have deteriorated into ‘pay to play’ activities.”

From the streets of Montreal: Le printemps érable

Click here to access article from The Institute for Social Ecology. 

The article provides some very inspiring reports from observers of the mass uprising in Quebec. Clearly Quebecers are feeling their power and the joy of collectively fighting back against austerity policies of their One Percent. The article points to an excellent website where we can find and feel the spirit of this rebellion--here is one stirring sample of this Quebec fighting spirit:

The grandmother and grandfather found a bench to sit on.  They tapped, trembling, on their casseroles [saucepans].  There were a hundred people, then two hundred, then a thousand.  We started to walk.  Police cars arrived on the street corners and in the alleyways.  We crossed paths a few times.  Young people looked straight into the eyes of police, without fear and without arrogance, but with conviction.  I even saw police officers lower their eyes.  I saw one in particular.  He was the same age as the students.  I got the feeling that he realized he had chosen a line of work he wasn’t passionate about.  This night, I think, he wasn’t doing what he dreamed he would be doing.

Children, men, women, seniors, people in wheelchairs, people of all nationalities, the crowd took the path it wanted, and did so in spite of police, in spite of the law.  All along the way, on the balconies, in the windows, people came out with their casseroles, and they made noise too, scratching away at the special law one tap at a time.  People protests and laughed and shouted.  People clapped.  People tapped, loud.  Loud.  Loud. 

Recovery or Collapse? Bet on Collapse

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. 

This is more evidence that solid members of the One Percent are losing faith in their capitalist religion. As a member who has been thoroughly indoctrinated in this religion and practiced it in universities and the government throughout his life, Roberts seems to be panicking at the prospect of its demise. This is the end of capitalism! This is the end of Western Civilization! 

To be sure his kind is in the minority among the One Percent. Still, his example and that of others: Michael Hudson, Jan Lundberg, Yves Smith, ascetics and lifestyle reformers like John Michael Greer, John Howard Kunstler, Jan Lundberg and a host of other doubters who severely criticize the high priests of capitalism must be worrying for other prominent members of this church who are committing so many sins and creating so much havoc in the world. Unfortunately, none of these critics want to overthrow the capitalist arrangements of the economy--frequently they can't even accurately name the system, much less criticize it for fear of excommunication. They just want people to behave better, to enact regulations curbing the excesses, and to make individual lifestyle choices that use less amounts of fossil fuels.

'Faster Than We Thought': An Epitaph for Planet Earth

Click here to access article by John Atcheson from Common Dreams. 

This writer and culture critic provides an answer as to why nothing significant is being done to prevent global warming and ecosystem collapse. It's in our DNA! (God or Allah help us from critics like this!)

Muslim Brotherhood are Western Proxies

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from his blog Land Destroyer Report. 

The author provides some eye-opening evidence of how the Muslim Brotherhood has been groomed for years to serve the interests of the Empire. However, he and others go a bit too far in alleging that the Arab Spring was all a plot or conspiracy by Western interests. Political operatives of the Empire are always looking for alternative players on their behalf in case things go wrong with their primary actors. It is the same here in the US. Financial and corporate interests back both the Democrats and the Republicans, not only to create the illusion of choice and "democracy", but to insure that whatever goes wrong with one party in office, the same basic policies can be pursued with the other party.

De-OccupyStop&Frisk

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

The author directs our attention to the ongoing police violence used against certain communities in NY City on an ongoing basis. 

No one has to tell those involved with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) that the NYPD is "out of control" and my next article will touch on this (and related) issues. However, even with all the overt repression being heaped upon occupiers across the globe, we must never forget those communities who have endured for generations under the racist tyranny of the State.

I must take exception to his portrayal of the cops being "out of control". I'm sure that there are some individual cops who in the course of their work have been so dehumanized and indoctrinated that they have become sadistic and racist in their police work. However, I think the majority are very much under the control of authorities of the One Percent. How can we understand this? Is this just old-fashioned racism? 

I recommend some insights provided by British writers Camille Barbagallo and Nicholas Beuret in their essay published in Occupy Everything. Their argument essentially is that the current economy under capitalism has reached the limits of exploitable growth and simultaneously has eliminated most subsistence activities outside of the formal economy. The capitalist economy no longer needs as many people to obtain their profits under a no-growth scenario. It has created surplus people who are a problem that capitalist authorities are having to deal with. Borrowing from BBC journalist Paul Mason and his often referenced essay, "Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere", they write:

Over the last 40 years the world has seen the birth of a new kind of worker--a worker bereft of work. Workers who inhabit precarity and are deemed to be superfluous to the requirement of capital.

So, this begs the question: how are the political operatives of the One Percent dealing with this problem? Barbagallo and Beuret have a very interesting answer. They borrow a concept from African philosopher Achille Mmembe called "necropolitics" where death assumes an important function of elite governance. Here is an excerpt from their illuminating essay which expands on this concept and provides an answer to this question.

With a surplus population, managing death is the core concern of political activity. One of the key political tasks is allowing them to die without endangering the section of the social body that must remain productive. Surplus humanity--the bodies dwelling in slums, ghettos, refugee camps, prisons, old people's home, ..., and of course those existing in the informal economy that are beyond any utility for capital--it is these bodies that are abandoned at as little cost as possible. This is necropolitics: the politics of containment and abandonment in a world without resources beyond the market.

This practice of allowing people to "fall behind" operates through a range of practices and discourses centred on a kind of Darwinian racism: a purity of ideas perfectly matched to the rhetoric of neoliberalism and "right to be unequal" held so dear. Necropolitics operates through diffused institutions--private companies, aid and disaster relief bodies, personal militias and government agencies. It creates a series of fragmented territories that disable mobility--territories in both the physical (slums, estates and prisons) and social sense (as in the idea of hoodies or welfare cheats).

Walled off and policed, these territories are maintained separately from those spaces deemed productive. Through a permanent state of siege the borders are maintained by either postcolonial policing (racial profiling, stop and search powers, ASBOs, anti-gang activities etc.), economic exclusion (such as redlining, or lack of educational facilities) or ideological public campaigns of shame and stigmatisation (against the unemployed, the migrant, the diseased or disabled). For all the differences that exits between exclusion through ASBOs vs containment via migration regimes or precarious service industry work vs informal micro-credit debt, the underlying logic is the same: contain, fragment, isolate and abandon. Kept apart as less than fully human, as not able to contribute, as a threat and contagion, these bodies are then allowed to die. Slowly. Inch by inch. Through hunger, ill health, disaster, gang violence, poverty and disease. This is the fate outlined by capital for one third of humanity today.

The hands behind Sudan’s Oil War

Click here to access article by Ramzy Baroud from Ceasefire (UK). 

Wherever there are few independent journalists and outside observers--and this applies most frequently in Africa--one finds highly distorted information in US mainstream media designed to further the interests of the Empire and its corporations in the region. Ramzy Baroud's piece is a good attempt to correct this problem regarding the ongoing turmoil in Sudan.

The destabilization and balkanization of resource rich countries is one way for powerful countries to gain access to resources of poorer counties. The British practiced this most effectively with their carving up of the Middle East into compliant, weaker countries that they could play off against each other, followed by the division of India along religious lines. More recently we've seen this with the breakup of Yugoslavia by the US Empire.

U.S. Human rights activists document U.S. participation in massacre of Moskito people

Click here to access article from Rights Action. 

Being on several list-serves, I receive frequent reports like this related to mostly US and Canadian mining corporations who need to drive indigenous people off their lands to gain access to valuable resources. Of course, such reports almost never make it into mainstream news media and most North Americans are completely unaware of these atrocities.

Compare and Contrast Two News Reports of an Atrocity

by Ron Horn for this blog.

I woke up this morning with a dramatic NPR news report on my clock radio which claimed that the UN verified a report of an atrocity in which some 90 people were killed in Syria by forces of the Syrian government. They also reported that the matter was being sent to the UN for a special meeting.

Oh god, I thought, here we go again. Another Libyan style "humanitarian" NATO mission. And, of course, I had strong doubts about the accuracy of the reported atrocity.

Now I just read a report of the same incident from Al Jazeera. Here are the key paragraphs:

Major General Robert Mood, the chief of the UN observer mission deployed to Syria, said monitors touring the area had counted 85 bodies, including 34 children under the age of 10 and seven women.

"Whoever started, whoever responded and whoever supported this deplorable act of violence should be held responsible."  Mood said about Friday's assault.

He told Al Jazeera that a residential area had been hit with a range of weapons, including "rifles, machine guns, artillery shells, tank shells," but stressed that the circumstances that "led to the tragic deaths" were still unclear.

"Whatever I learned on the ground in Syria ... is that I should not jump to conclusions."

Earlier, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan condemned the assault, calling it an "appalling and brutal" breach of international law.

"This appalling and brutal crime, involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force, is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centres and violence in all its forms," a statement issued on behalf of the two officials said.

The Syrian government completely denies being in any way responsible for this atrocity.

Just a few minutes ago, I read this breaking headline on Al Jazeera's website:

UN Security Council to meet on Syria later on Sunday: diplomats. More soon...

Al Jazeera, which is essentially owned by the Emir of Qatar, has degenerated quite a bit into a propaganda outlet for the Empire, but their journalists still try to put out accurate reports--and I think this is one. The real facts of the incident will eventually leak out just like it has with Libya, but it may be too late to prevent another Libyan style invasion. And when they do leak out, you can be sure they will be ignored by US mainstream media.

I find it hard to believe that the other ruling classes of the NATO countries have the stomach for another contrived war in the Middle East given all the economic problems they are having. But then, haven't all capitalist ruling classes found wars to be a good way to distract the attention of their subjects away from economic problems?

‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things’: WWII and Climate Change

Click here to access article by Bill Blakemore from ABC News (USA). 

I was stunned when I came across this article today! This source, which is a major mainstream media corporation, is acknowledging man-made global warming!!! Because I follow news and commentary on the internet quite extensively--although not mainstream media--I can't understand why I have just encountered it now, or why others have not made reference to it. I also haven't seen evidence of this revelation reflected in TV coverage. Maybe it is a kind of trial balloon. The piece was posted on May 20, but then I realized that it was a second in series with the first one posted on May 6.

After so many years of denial by omission of any coverage of the abundance of scientific reports warning about this, and their practice of running mostly news reports from a few, mostly well-connected scientists with industry and government scientists who, if they didn't deny global warming, cast so many doubts about these findings. For every scientific report that suggested man-made global warming, they ran at least 20 news and commentary items that denied or questioned it.

(For the benefit of people reading this commentary who have not followed my blog, let me back up a bit to clarify my view of the function of mainstream media. It is an integral part of the One Percent ruling class that serves to manage the perceptions of the 99 Percent so that the latter will continue in their role of subservience to the former, not ask disturbing questions about wages, wars, economic disasters, climatic changes, etc., and especially so that they don't take any effective actions to counter the rule of the former. It has been a major thesis of this blog that global warming cannot be dealt with effectively under the reign of capitalism.)

It has been clear to many knowledgeable people that the practices of capitalism are in direct conflict with a sustainable ecosystem. Thus, up until now these managers of public opinion have had to cover up or deny these perceptions. Apparently the evidence of man-made global warming has now become so obvious that they can no longer persist in this effort. After my initial shock while reading the first paragraphs, I was full of anticipation as to how the author was going to deal with this new ominous reality. Now they admit it, but how are they going to manage how people cope with this shocking knowledge so that this awareness does not interfere with the One Percent's ongoing project of appropriating the wealth they extract from the exploitation of human and natural resources???

Well, the first article of May 6 entitled "‘Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate)" was all about preparing the public for this shocking new view. They gave some tips from pop psychology that suggests there is hope before they launch into the subject of their huge admission.

“Hug the monster” is a metaphor taught by U.S. Air Force trainers to those headed into harm’s way.

The monster is your fear in a sudden crisis — as when you find yourself trapped in a downed plane or a burning house.

If you freeze or panic — if you go into merely reactive “brainlock” — you’re lost.

But if your mind has been prepared in advance to recognize the psychological grip of fear, focus on it, and then transform its intense energy into action — sometimes even by changing it into anger — and by also engaging the thinking part of your brain to work the problem, your chances of survival go way up.

How about the concluding paragraphs! To me, they reek of paternalism and hypocrisy.

For us journalists, the core responsibilities of our profession include knowing how to report unpleasant but important facts — and to do so in ways that nonetheless engage groups small and large, even in a sense “entertain” them, as in entertaining the mind, and to try to win their tacit appreciation for doing so.

Obviously, when the news is horrendous, such as, say, a looming world war or the rapid climb in global temperature and ocean acidification, our job includes the very essence of what it means to hug the monster.

But as this reporter and a growing number of others now working the story can report, once we do so, man-made global warming transforms into “a great story” (in our profession’s term of art) — and even one in which it is possible to glimpse a number of reasons for “realistic hope.”

Okay, now to the second article, "‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things’". The author starts by establishing a frame of historical disasters to introduce the topic of "The Rapidly Approaching Climate Catastrophe" which is a subheading in the article. He particularly focuses on WWII, and his take on this is particularly revealing of a One Percent ruling class bias.

The author uses a quote from John Kennedy's 1940 book While England Slept to highlight (using bold emphasis) his own and the ruling class bias (journalists working for mainstream media must have a basic ruling class view) to explain why WWII happened. No, it didn't happen because of inter-capitalist class rivalries.

“To say that all the blame must rest on the shoulders of Neville Chamberlain or of Stanly Baldwin, is to overlook the obvious.  As the leaders, they are, of course, gravely and seriously responsible.  But, given the conditions of democratic government, a free press, public elections, and a cabinet responsible to Parliament and thus to the people, given rule by the majority, it is unreasonable to blame the entire situation on one man or group…”

A Free Press, Public Elections, A Cabinet Responsible to the People, Rule by Majority…

In case anyone missed this point, the ABC author follows this quote by repeating the thesis. At first I thought he was suggesting that democratic government, free press, elections, and majority rule caused WWII. But no, he was only arguing that these alleged institutions could not prevent the war. He is justifying the recent decades of denial of global warming by his masters in the One Percent by comparing it with the denial that occurred in the 1930s. In other words, this recent denial of global warming just couldn't be helped or averted--it's just in the nature of humanity, humanity is at fault! 

Wow! Such blatant self-serving hypocrisy and blame shifting is truly remarkable! I can't wait to read his future articles in this series.


(Note: After writing the above, I examined his past articles, I could see that he started preparing for this series with an article on April 1st entitled "Global Warming Denialism ‘Just Foolishness,’ Scientist Peter Raven Says".)

Dancing Shoes

Click here to access article by James Howard Kunstler from his blog Clusterfuck Nation. (Some revising done on 7pm 5-23-12 Seattle time.)

This well-educated, and it appears, well off writer and social critic, makes some interesting observations in this short piece that suggests a world in the process of disintegration. I think this is someone who identifies with the One Percent, but likes to thumb his nose at them and their petty affairs and their ignorance about things. This, of course, makes him feel very superior. However, he has never, as far as I know, looked critically at the organizing basis of current societies, the capitalist system, that has created all the defects which he likes to criticize. Perhaps this is because he likes all the comforts and privileges that he has enjoyed from it. Thus, as a social critic I don't think we can take him too seriously. 

Still, I think he captures some realities about the world that the One Percent's system of capitalism has created. For example, his reference to Karl Rove (the man behind the throne of George Bush Jr.) who was a prime political operative of the Empire and an excellent example of all the arrogance, hubris and evil that can infect people who are drunk on power. Here is Ron Suskind on the New York Times Magazine quoting Rove in 2004: 

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

In another prescient observation he writes about the inability of "we" (I think he means the governing One Percent and a large part of the still sleeping 99 Percent) to make any constructive changes to avert all the disasters awaiting us:

That future is all about contraction. We could navigate our way into it but we don't want to. We want to stay right where we are with all our stuff and no need to make new arrangements and we are trying every last trick to do that.

And, finally there is this very entertaining lampoon of the directors of Empire all getting together at the G-8 meeting:

What do you suppose Obama and the other feckless schmucks of the G-8 were telling each other this weekend at Camp David between weenie roasts and ping-pong round robins? It must have been the emptiest dumb show of mere protocol; an exchange of tie-tacks in the national colors, the playing of many anthems and flying of flags, issuance of bland assurances and platitudes. Nobody believes any of them anymore, even poor Mr. Hollandaise, who has been on the job a few days. Angela Merkel must be good and goddam sick of even showing up at the office.

Preying on the Poor

Click here to access article by Barbara Ehrenreich from TomDispatch. (Note: if you wish to skip Engelhardt's introduction, you will need to scroll down to the article.)

Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. But as Business Week helpfully pointed out in 2007, the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them.

Nick Robinson: how (not) to report a planned war crime

Click here to access article by Hicham Yezza from Ceasefire (UK). 

A BBC news story has revealed UK politicians are planning to offer diplomatic, possibly military, support to an Israeli attack against Iran, despite the fact this would break international law, inflame the Middle East and endanger British citizens everywhere. 

Could this be because the One Percent ruling class and their obedient employees in the media have enjoyed so much success in the past decade in promoting their wars regardless of public opposition? Is the following statement really true?

But is political life in the UK so emaciated and numb that this fairly consequential news item has so far met with little more than indifference and some faint murmurings from the radical fringes? [my emphasis]

Are we already in a hideous dystopia where the ruling class, because of overwhelming power, no longer fear their subject populations and can rule with impunity?

A growing problem: Notes from the ‘superweed’ summit

Click here to access article by Genna Reed from Grist. 

Last week, the National Academy of Sciences hosted a summit to discuss “superweeds,” or the widespread problem of herbicide-resistant weeds currently afflicting millions of farm acres across the United States.

Notice the difficulty of the scientists, who have been taught to look at all available evidence, have in looking at the evidence of bio-engineering technology being pushed by agro-corporations to enhance private rather than the public interest. Could this be because they have been under the influence of capitalist indoctrination in schools of higher education, or could it be that they fear repercussions from powerful corporations affecting their careers and program funding?

Black Bloc Anarchists and State Terrorism

Click here to access article by Rob Urie from CounterPunch.

Liberal criticism of Black Bloc tactics has been lead by Chris Hedges and other middle class spokespeople because of possible adverse public relations via mainstream media. Hence, they assume that mainstream media is legitimate. The latter is simply another industry owned by the One Percent to serve their interests just as police forces are controlled by the One Percent and are used to intimidate activists by gassing, beatings, framed-up charges, and other assaults. 

The solution is for the 99 Percent to undermine the credibility of mainstream media by showing how they constantly use deceptions to further the interests of the One Percent. The gap between reality and their version of it is becoming so wide that many people are open to more sensible interpretations.

Why Building Community Wealth is a Key Challenge to Corporate Power

Click here to access article by Steve Dubb from Naked Capitalism. 

The article suggests that worker owned enterprises are the solution to life under capitalism, that we ordinary people can build micro-communities that are not only economically sustainable within a capitalist system, but can lead to building a larger system that can displace cut-throat capitalism. 

...a growing number of Occupy activists are looking to worker-owned cooperatives as a way to self-fund the movement, displace corporate economic space, and develop an economic base that can support alternative economic and political formations. The path to building a truly democratic economy may be long, but the growing base of community wealth building institutions provide some building blocks that, over time, suggests the quiet development, potentially, of the basis for a community-sustaining economy that serves the interest of all Americans, rather than our current system which disproportionately benefits the wealthiest at the expense of the 99 percent.

I think that this strategy is very misleading by encouraging activists that they can quietly build an alternative social-economic system within capitalism. Hence, they can forget about political activism, protests, and other militant actions to stop the capitalist assault on workers and the environment. 

I think that worker owned enterprises can contribute much to building an alternative system, but it is by no means a sufficient means of change. Worker coops are at best a defensive action to save jobs and maintain worker skills. They can also act as laboratories for workers to learn how to manage their own enterprises democratically. However, even the best run such enterprises must function within an economic system that treats them with actions ranging from benign neglect to hostility. The laws governing enterprises are founded on private enterprise models that emphasize hierarchical systems of authority. 

Coops will always find it difficult to compete with privately owned enterprises, especially those associated with large corporations. To succeed they would need a politically conscious local community that would be willing to support the coop even by paying higher prices. Private enterprises can always benefit by paying low wages and buying cheap products from foreign countries where environmental and labor laws are either non-existent or not enforced.

The ruling class of the One Percent can tolerate worker owned enterprises as long as they are limited to small niches in society and do not challenge the capitalist system or the enormous privileges of the One Percent. 

A couple of good sources on establishing worker owned enterprises are here and here.

Living in Two Cities: Tarif and Evelyn Warren

Click here to access article by Susie Day from MRZine. 

Read the powerful story of two attorneys and their encounter with NY police five years ago which began with this incident:

Early in the evening of June 21, 2007, the Warrens were driving in Brooklyn, when they saw police chasing a young man into a McDonald's parking lot.  The cops tackled the youth, handcuffed him, threw him to the ground, and began kicking him in the head.  The Warrens pulled over, got out of their car, and respectfully asked one Sergeant Steven Talvy of the NYPD Street Narcotic Enforcement Unit why he and his officers were battering someone who was obviously helpless.

Another brief article describes what it is like living in Black and Latino neighborhoods in New York City:

The heavy police presence in New York City communities of color with police bombarding the residents with summonses for petty offenses such as, jaywalking, urinating in public, noise pollution, opened alcohol beverage containers, tinted car windows, and the possession of small amounts of marijuana is creating a sense of distrust among many law abiding, tax-paying New York City residents.

Some elected officials predict an explosion.

When one visits predominately Black and Latino neighborhoods in New York City such as, Harlem, East New York, Bedford Stuyvesant, the South Bronx, and Jamaica Queens, you see military-style New York Police Department vehicles and swarms of foot patrol officers conducting illegal searches and issue summonses for the most petty offenses everyday.

...Many residents in communities of color feel imprisoned in their very own neighborhoods.

the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of today

Note: The following is an excerpt from a longer article by Los Expatriados, a group of writers with a website by this name, reporting on various workshops at the Left Forum held recently in NY City. This poignant excerpt is based on one speaker's views at a workshop called "After the Crisis, is a New New Deal Possible?"

One of the points that had the biggest impact on me during the workshop was made by Eric Pineault, the chairperson who teaches sociology in Montreal. In drawing a contrast between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of today, Pineault referred to the different forms that the attack on the working class took. In the 1930s, the problem was obviously massive unemployment but today working people are being crushed by debt much more than by joblessness. He used the term debt peonage to describe the problems faced by millions as they confront home foreclosure and collection agencies trying to get a worker to pay for a huge Visa or Mastercard bill.

In the 1930s, layoffs in a place like Detroit or Chicago would affect workers as a social layer. Since this was at a time when workers tended to live near the factory and even walk to work in many instances and when they hung out at the same saloons or parks, they tended to think in terms of joint action.

But today someone in debt will tend to see themselves as an individual whose adversary is another individual at a bank or a collection agency. Since going into debt often strikes people as a personal failing, they will also tend to blame themselves rather than larger social and economic forces. I was reminded of this the other day when I was speaking to a very old friend about my age who hasn’t worked in a couple of years. Not only is the job market poor, he has developed Parkinson’s, an ailment that will make getting hired as a salesman even harder. It doesn’t matter how good a salesman you are (and my friend was great at this) if your hands are trembling. That is the reality of a fucked-up system that places so much emphasis on appearances.

To keep a roof over his head and to pay for other basics, he has gone into debt—owing over $40,000 on various credit cards. He now pays $300 per month, the minimum required. At this rate he will be paying until he dies and have not made a sizable dent into a debt that mounts steadily as he continues to dip into Visa or Mastercard to pay for food or other necessities. This is the same treadmill that millions of other Americans are on, with no end in sight. We might be living under advanced capitalism, but the social relationship is not that different than the one described in B. Traven’s novels. Fortunately, there are no debtors’ prisons today—at least for the time being.

I was reminded of this at a panel discussion on Capitalism in India: Glitter, Commodities, and Blood presented by Sanhati, a network of academics and activists committed to social justice in India, and chaired by my friend and fellow Marxmailer Taki Manolakos.

Deepankar Basu, another good Marxist economist ensconced at U. of Mass., spoke on peasant suicides, a problem that Sanhati has devoted much attention to.  During the discussion period, with Eric Pineault’s comments on debt peonage fresh in my mind, I asked Deepankar if the epidemic of suicides might be related to the phenomenon noted earlier in the day. Was debt peonage in India leading to mass suicide rather than mass struggle for the same reason that debt-burdened workers in the USA were tending to seek individual solutions?

A bit of research this morning turns up some evidence that connects the two societies. From a blog post by Barbara Ehrenreich on July 28, 2008:

Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock’s brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. “All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once,” Scurlock told a gathering of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in 2007. According to the Los Angeles Times, lawyers in the audience backed him up, “describing clients who showed up at their offices with cyanide, or threatened, ‘If you don’t help me, I’ve got a gun in my car.’”

India may be the trend-setter here, with an estimated 150,000 debt-ridden farmers succumbing to suicide since 1997. With guns in short supply in rural India, the desperate farmers have taken to drinking the pesticides meant for their crops.

Dry your eyes, already: Death is an effective remedy for debt, along with anything else that may be bothering you too. And try to think of it too from a lofty, corner-office, perspective: If you can’t pay your debts or afford to play your role as a consumer, and if, in addition – like an ever-rising number of Americans – you’re no longer needed at the workplace, then there’s no further point to your existence. I’m not saying that the creditors, the bankers and the mortgage companies actually want you dead, but in a culture where one’s credit rating is routinely held up as a three-digit measure of personal self-worth, the correct response to insoluble debt is in fact, “Just shoot me!”

Occupy Journalists Stopped, Searched, Handcuffed & Interrogated at Gunpoint

Click here to access article by Kevin Gosztola from Infoshop News. 

Maintaining illusions is the method of choice by political operatives of the One Percent to maintain their control of society; but when that fails, they don't hesitate to use force, violence, and incarceration. Hence, anyone who attempts to cover reality for the 99 Percent is perceived as, and treated like, an enemy.

There appears to have been a conscious targeting of bloggers and livestreamers. The Chicago police, possibly with help from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI or other federal agencies, appear to be working off a list of “suspected” people or spaces where they must go “check in” on what is happening simply to ensure all is safe. Of course, this is illegal. Without a warrant or probable cause, rights are being clearly violated.

War Pay: The Nearly $1 Trillion National Security Budget

Click here to access article by Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer from TomDispatch. (You may need to scroll down to the article to skip the introduction.)

Political operatives of the One Percent rule mostly by deception simply because much of what they do serves the interests of only the One Percent. With the constant media barrage about the threats to national security and our "democratic way of life", they maintain illusions of serving the interests of society in general.

This sort of deception certainly applies to how much they spend on killing machines, soldiers who operate them, the care and treatment of disabled and traumatized soldiers returning from battle or occupation, how much is spent by outsourcing to private armies, how much is spent on police forces and equipment here in the US to control people who protest government policies, etc. The authors' accounting does not appear to include the costs of people (one out of every 32 Americans) in prison or under parole supervision.

There are so many hidden costs all of which serve mostly the One Percent in order to continue their control of our country and much of the world. The two authors try to put all the costs of killing, maiming, and intimidating together.

This illustrates once again what is required for a small minority of people to rule over a vast majority: deception and the use of force. 

Blood red dawn in Kabul

Click here to access article by Manlio Dinucci from Voltaire Network. 

The recently concluded NATO conference in Chicago highlighted plans by the Empire to put the finishing touches on the reconstruction of Afghanistan to serve the needs of the Empire. Read this author's description of the Empire's real plans for the new Afghanistan under the recently signed "Strategic Partnership Agreement".

US War Veterans Toss Medals Back at NATO

Click here to access article from Voltaire Network.

Greece: here come the vulture funds

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

When banks and other lending agencies give up on a sovereign debt, they sometimes sell these debts to private debt holders often referred to as vulture funds. 

Vultures "invest" in the sovereign debt of countries facing crisis – meaning they can buy debt cheap. They then "hold out" against any form of write-down on this debt. By doing this, they hope to get paid out in full. Given they paid a fraction of the value of the debt, getting full repayment represents an enormous profit.

Vulture fund companies have a variety of methods, not always successful, of forcing payment from countries. Read all about it here.

Educational Strike in Spain Brings Hundreds of Thousands Into the Streets

Click here to access transcript of the 7:01m video from Real News Network moderated by Noah Gimbel.

Quebec students aren't the only one engaging in massive strikes against cutbacks in education and rising tuition. 

NOAH GIMBEL: I’m here in Madrid, Spain, where over 50 groups have come together to call for an education strike from preschool to the university, teachers, students and parents. The participation rate has been estimated at 80%. Protestors are calling for an end to the austerity measures that have hit the public education system.

"We Didn't Know It Was Impossible, So We Did It": The Quebec Student Strike Celebrates Its 100th Day

Click here to access article by Malav Kanuga from Jadaliyya (An online magazine produced by the Arab Studies Institute based in Washington DC and Beirut, Lebanon.)

Students in Quebec are marking their hundredth day of an unlimited general strike on Tuesday, 22 May, the culmination of the most stunning mass protest movement of recent months and North America’s largest student movement in years. In fact, the mobilizations in Quebec might just be Canada's Arab Spring.

Local Governments Have the Power to Restrict Drone Surveillance in the US

Click here to access article by Trevor Timm from Electronic Frontier Foundation.

What I believe is really significant in this article are the revelations of secrecy employed by police departments to gain access to surveillance drones (who knows, maybe killer drones also!) No doubt this is being directed through the Department of Homeland Security. 

This is another illustration of how the US is managed by the One Percent. If they can't do things in their interest legally or if they anticipate adverse public reaction, they will do so surreptitiously. They are definitely afraid of the 99 Percent and are preparing to increase their means of controlling and containing their activities. To the One Percent it appears that we are all becoming Palestinians, Iraqis, and Taliban.

Chicago Police Face Accusations of Entrapment, Brutality in Crackdown on NATO Protesters

Click here to access to 7:08m video from Democracy Now. 

Dozens of anti-NATO protesters have been arrested in Chicago over the past several days, including five men who were jailed on domestic terrorism charges. Three of the men were accused of plotting to attack President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home and other targets. Their lawyers say they were entrapped by government informants. The Chicago police have also been criticized by activist groups for using violent force to break up protests and accused of targeting independent media activists who have been streaming the protests live over the internet. On Saturday night, three helping to livestream video of the protests were detained at gunpoint.

Perhaps the location of the NATO meeting in Chicago was motivated by the fact that Rahm Emanuel, the former White House Chief of Staff in the Obama administration, is the mayor. The aggressive anti-protester measures he used for the Chicago meeting reminds me a lot of the methods used by Israel against Palestinians to control and stifle their dissent.

Although he has always denied having Israeli citizenship, he has very strong ties to Israel where he was born. See this and this. For example, during the Gulf War in 1991 he supposedly volunteered with the Israeli Defense Forces to defend against an anticipated Iraqi attack. People wonder why he didn't volunteer in support of US forces. 

Are the police tracking your calls?

Click here to access article by Catherine Crump from CNN.

Do you know how long your cell phone company keeps records of whom you text, who calls you or what places you have traveled? Do you know how often cell phone companies turn over this information to the police and whether they first ask the police to get a warrant based on probable cause?

Not bad, coming from a major media source--even if they frame it as an opinion piece. The author is associated with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Myanmar learns the lesson of Libya

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from Voltaire Network. 

We here in the US have been treated to very positive mainstream media coverage of what they, their pundits, and government leaders describe as advances in "democracy" in Myanmar. Such positive media treatment of political events in more obscure countries always triggers alarm bells in my head. I've wondered what was really happening there. I regard Gowans as an extremely reputable analyst of political events, and this piece make absolute sense to me given the history of the Empire in relation to countries not under its direct influence.

Although the cost of integrating Libya into the neo-liberal Empire was high, it is widely regarded as worthwhile by Empire political operatives because of the lesson it gives to other countries that try to pursue independent paths. 

...the Libyan experience must have proven persuasive enough to make the Rangoon leaders step willfully into line. From an economy under government control, Myanmar today is eagerly genuflecting before an onslaught of foreign investors zeroing in to dispossess her. 

Zagreb-Sarajevo : Resistance in the Balkans as crisis grips the EU

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

People in the Balkans are comparing notes about the One Percent's debt weapon being applied against the 99 Percent in their region.

While 20 years have elapsed since the last European war was fought here, amid the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the restoration of a brutal capitalism, it is encouraging to observe the gradual rebirth of an anti-capitalist movement among Balkan youth and workers – a movement that cultivates internationalism, the refusal of all forms of oppression, the desire to develop different tools for a true democracy, etc. The large majority of organisers – men and women – of this important international meeting are aged between 25 and 40, which is a very good sign.

Post-Carbon Postcard#1: California, USA and British Columbia, Canada

Click here to access article by John Wiseman from Climate Code Red. 

Liberal scientists and economists are, once again, issuing very encouraging reports of current efforts to reduce carbon emissions and ways to improve on this. They have some very good ideas which is illustrated in item 8:

Far greater attention therefore needs to be paid to the actions needed to reduce aggregate demand for energy and resources.  When combined with a full understanding of the actions needed to reduce the risks of crossing other critical planetary environmental boundaries it becomes clear that effective climate change solutions will require significant rethinking of the ways in which we define and measure just and sustainable economic growth. One useful way to reframe the economic growth debate may be to prioritise ‘growth’ in health and wellbeing, education and access to information, social connectedness and time with friends and family over unconstrained consumption in goods and services.

Although the author recognizes that...

The primary barriers to the rapid acceleration of de-carbonization policies and programs are political rather than technological. 

...he grossly underestimates these barriers. I think that he has spent far too much time in academic institutions where liberal views compatible with capitalist values are encouraged. He apparently doesn't see how powerful the incentives of short term wealth and power are for the One Percent who will continue to oppose any real progress that might interfere with the system of capitalism that provides them with these rewards. And, it is well known that this system requires growth to exist. He and his colleagues appear to grossly underestimate the power of this class to thwart any rational efforts to implement the measures they advocate. (For example, see this latest report on opposition to the dirtiest of all oil mining.) Many rational policies to reduce carbon have been well known since the 1970s, and have always faced enormous opposition by political operatives of the One Percent.

I think that liberal academics like these people actually do more harm than good by encouraging unrealistic expectations of progress without changing the system that stands in the way of progress. It seems to me that only the Occupy movement has the potential for really challenging the One Percent and overturning their system in order to implement the changes needed to save a climate that can sustain human and other life forms.

CMD Releases New Report: "ALEC Exposed in Wisconsin: The Hijacking of a State"

Click here to access article from Center for Media and Democracy (Madison, Wisconsin). Updated at 7pm Seattle time.

News leaked out a year ago from various sources about this organized effort under ALEC by corporations to subvert state political institutions to serve the interests of corporations, to crush unions, to downsize and privatize public programs. To add insult to injury, they do all this under the guise of a tax exempt charitable non-profit organization while giving all kinds of generous "scholarships" and other expensive perks to state legislators. Researchers at CMD went to work to study the details of their nefarious operations, and have now released the results of this study. This illustrates capitalist "democracy" in action. 

The key findings are:

• 32 bills or budget provisions reflecting ALEC model legislation were introduced in Wisconsin's 2011-2012 legislative session;
• 21 of these bills or budget provisions have passed, and two were vetoed;
• More than $276,000 in campaign contributions were made to ALEC legislators in Wisconsin from ALEC corporations since 2008;
• More than $406,000 in campaign contributions were made to ALEC alumnus Governor Walker from ALEC corporations over the same time period for his state campaign account;
• At least 49 current Wisconsin legislators are known ALEC members, including the leaders of both the House and Senate as well as other legislators holding key posts in the state. Additionally, the Governor, the Secretary of the Department of Administration, and the Chairman of the Public Service Commission are ALEC alumni; and
• At least 17 current legislators have received thousands of dollars of gifts cumulatively from ALEC corporations in the past few years, in the form of flights and hotel rooms filtered through the ALEC "scholarship fund" (complete "scholarship" information is not available).

 

The details vary, but this is essentially the way the One Percent function the world over to promote their agenda of the private appropriation of socially produced wealth. (If this doesn't work, they have other well known methods.) To see how corporate "philanthropy" works internationally, read this article entitled "Foundations for Empire: corporate philanthropy and US foreign policy".

I also think that one can make the argument that ALEC is, in fact, derived from the neo-colonial model that has been employed throughout the Empire to co-opt leaders of targeted countries, most especially, members of military elites. Hence, what we are seeing is this colonial model brought home to subvert any remaining vestiges of civil and human rights that still exist in the "land of the free". 

Israel uses essentially the same model on US representatives, except that I don't believe that the latter are handed model laws to pass in Congress. But, they are wined and dined in junkets sponsored by the Israeli government probably from recycled US "foreign aid" amounting to billions of dollars. See this, this, and this.

NYT Admits Lockerbie Case Flaws

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews.

This illustrates two basic truths about mainstream media: 1) they serve the political objectives of the Empire by managing news coverage; 2) the truth about their stories usually leaks out after some period of time.

Of course, they serve the political objectives of the Empire precisely because they are an integral part of the Empire.

Because You're Worth It: The Indian Premier League, Sex, Lies And Capitalism

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from Countercurrents (India).

This author's piece illustrates how the values of capitalism--racism, extreme individualism, consumption of Western products, sex and celebrities--have penetrated and conquered even this ancient civilization 

How the US Press Lost Its Way

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from Consortium News. 

The author is no dedicated anti-capitalist, but he is a journalist with a reasonable level of commitment to truth. He looks back on his own journalistic experience and those of his colleagues in mainstream media and sees an increasing concentration of power and wealth that has grossly impacted the way news is reported. His perspective runs from a baseline of the 1970s to the present. This limited perspective misses the class based way that big media has always functioned--to serve the values and interests of the powerful, the One Percent. Thus, he refers to the 1970s as the "golden days of the 1970s". 

As they say, everything is relative, and this truism certainly applies to reporting in the 1970s when all mainstream media was, until the final years of that awful war, solidly behind the Pentagon-run war and branded protesters as essentially traitors. Pressure came from corporate boardrooms on down to journalists to report the Vietnam War favorably, and in the process the gap between reality and media lies eventually created a huge crack that could no longer be credibly hidden. Much credit can be given to anti-war protestors and underground newspapers, and even more to the brave Vietnamese people who defeated the most powerful military in the world. 

Hence, mainstream media sources were forced to report on some of these realities, but even much of this coverage was more in the nature of damage control and didn't reveal the whole truth. Their pro-government coverage of all the assassinations--John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcom X, and their coverup of government drug trafficking during this period are some of the most egregious illustrations of their catering to power. But, how could it be otherwise? Mainstream media is an integral part of the ruling class.

Therefore, I recommend this article as a review of the deterioration of mainstream journalism from the 1970s to the present day, but it must be kept in mind that this was a process of going from bad to worse. It has become worse simply because the concentration of power and wealth has increased, and there has been no organized opposition to this trend from any sector of our society until very recently with the Occupy movement.

War and cheeseburgers

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

Escobar uses his X-ray vision to see through the machinations of the Empire. With his usual sarcasm and wit he expresses what is revealed in terms of a fast-food menu.

The only thing that matters to Team Obama, above all else, is to guarantee victory on November 4. Will the cheeseburger diplomacy work? Or will Mitt Romney counter-attack promising a "No steak left behind" policy, with lots of Iranian ketchup?

Chicago police frame antiwar activists on “terrorism” chargesPosting Video of Police Harassment

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site.

The political operatives of the Empire and their enforcers are cracking down hard on protesters at the Chicago NATO meeting. It is vitally important that we get information out everywhere to help protect them. 

Besides planting evidence on protesters, political operatives and their enforcers are using their control of media to propagate the most outlandish lies. Just this morning on one TV network I saw an interview with a Chicago police officer who claimed that protesters were covering themselves with fake blood to simulate brutality and gain media sympathy!!!

For other coverage of the NATO protests, see this, this, and this. 

Why Keynes was Right, and Utterly Wrong

Click here to access article by Mat Little from New Compass.

Intelligent left-wing thought today is aware that people in Europe and the US live in immensely wealthy societies, but that more people do not see the benefits of that wealth: the ability, which Keynes envisaged, of devoting their energies to “non-economic purposes”. Because they are too busy making it for other people.

In the 1940s, the historian Karl Polanyi spoke of capitalism’s genius for creating “unheard of material welfare” but a simultaneous “catastrophic dislocation of the lives of the common people.” We are far closer today to Polanyi’s dystopia than Keynes’ utopia.

The Big Fix: documentary exposes BP, U.S. Gov't on Gulf disaster

Click here to access article by Jan Lundberg from his blog Culture Change. 

The author reviews a recently released film "The Big Fix". With his background related to the oil industry, he is well qualified to review such a film:

...a national speaker, writer and publisher, is best known for running what was widely considered "the bible of the oil industry," Lundberg Survey Inc. In 1979 the firm predicted the Second Oil Shock. After 14 years there, he left for-profit work to found the nonprofit Sustainable Energy Institute, now Culture Change. For almost twenty years he has studied peak oil, energy alternatives, and conservation based primarily on grassroots change in lifestyle. 

This critic of crucial contemporary issues illustrates in this review a common trait of many such progressive people: they refer to the "system" but are unable to name it. Instead they prefer to make references to culture or lifestyle changes or doing away with Western Civilization, but what they are really referring to must be the capitalist system. This phenomenon demonstrates the power of the One Percent ruling class to control thought much like Orwell described in his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

On the other hand, if we interpret this author's review literally, then it exhibits very shallow thinking. It's as if one could change cultures, etc. just like one could change clothes, e.g., like changing from designer jeans to untailored peasant dress. Such a view sidesteps the very challenging task of dislodging a class that derives huge benefits from the existing system of capitalism, which is the fundamental driver of fossil fuel usage, so that a new sustainable system can be installed.

NYPD Stop And Frisks: 15 Shocking Facts About A Controversial Program

Click here to access article by Christopher Mathias from Huffington Post.

Recall the recent incident in Florida where a neighborhood watch volunteer acted on the basis of racial profiling which resulted in the death of teenager Trayvon Martin?. Well, that seems to be standard practice by New York City police in certain sections of the city. Apparently they repealed the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution in New York which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Finally, after many years of this practice a class-action suit will be heard in a Federal District Court as reported here.

The age of extreme oil: ‘This used to be a forest?'

Click here to access article by Arno Kopecky from The Globe and Mail (Canada).

One grey Thursday at the end of April, a plane touched down in Fort McMurray, Alta., carrying four Achuar Indians from the Peruvian Amazon. They had flown 8,000 kilometres from the rain forest to beseech Talisman Energy Inc., the Calgary-based oil and gas conglomerate, to stop drilling in their territory.

...But first, they wanted to see a Canadian oil patch for themselves, and meet the aboriginal people who lived there.  

Report: Floods are growing trend

Click here to access article by William Petroski from Des Moines Register. 

Heavy rainfall is falling more often in the Midwest and severe flooding has doubled in the last half-century, according to a report by two environmental groups.

The study (which shows climate change is behind extreme Midwest weather)  was released Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.