Do you have the right to remain silent? The plight of Leah-Lynn Plante

Click here to access article from the National Lawyers Guild via Climate Connections. 

Anarchists has always been viewed by ruling classes as the greatest ideological threat to their rule--for quite obvious reasons. Class structured societies are organized to serve the interests of the ruling class. For the last 300 plus years the ruling class has been the capitalist class whose interests are the exploitation of workers and the environment to provide them with wealth and power. Thus, anarchists, who believe in a radical equality, consensus, and power based at the grass-roots of society, have always been hounded and persecuted to the fullest extent possible by capitalist agencies of enforcement and their legal system. 

Like most Americans, I know little about the legal institution of grand juries. It was never covered in my rather extensive education. The subject is never delved into by mainstream media. This article reveals that they function in secret. Whenever secrecy is maintained to such a considerable extent, you can be sure that it serves an illegitimate purpose on behalf of the ruling class. Here is one source where you can discover much more about how this institution functions, its sordid history of political intimidation, and many other aspects.

This article reports on anarchists who, in my area of the northwestern US, are facing a grand jury and resisting. This is how it all started:

On July 25, the FBI raided Plante’s home which was one of several raids in Seattle, Olympia, and Portland in the last few months. Plante said that FBI agents smashed through her front door with a battering ram with assault rifles drawn, “looking paramilitary.” According to a copy of the warrant, agents were looking for black clothing, paint, sticks, flags, computers and cell phones, and anti-government or anarchist literature.

Freakonomics Author Steven Levitt: Enemy of Chicago School Teachers

Click here to access article by Yasha Levine from The eXiled. 

The author examines some of the key figures leading the neo-liberal attack on education in Chicago. In this current battleground the teacher's union has gone on strike with widespread popular support. 

Levitt is a dyed-in-the-wool Milton Friedman neoliberal from the same “Chicago Boys” network that brought you the “shock doctrine.” When he isn’t pursing research into borderline eugenicist policies or studying the benefits of privatized prison labor on GDP, he’s hard at work doing his part helping the oligarchy put unionized Chicago school teachers up against the wall.

Specifically, Levitt has worked with Chicago’s notorious union-buster Arne Duncan, who was the CEO of Chicago public schools until Obama tapped Duncan to be the U.S. Education Secretary in 2008. Duncan has been credited with doing more than anyone else to help bring the neoliberal nightmare to Chicago’s impoverished and mostly nonwhite public schools, funnelling public funds to dysfunctional private voucher schools, terrorizing unionized teachers, closing schools and turning public education into feeder tube for the prison-industrial complex. And Levitt, a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, was right there along with Duncan.

Cooperation is not only a good idea, it already works in practice

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from his blog Systemic Disorder. 

Cooperation is a fundamental human trait. You may find it bizarre to read a post that begins with such a sentence, but sometimes we do have to point out the obvious.

Competition, we are continually lectured, is the primary driving force animating human beings. It is rarely, if ever, put quite so explicitly, but the prevailing ideology does tell us exactly that. Competition is the fuel of economic growth and progress in a system based on never-ending life-and-death fights to gain dominance at pain of going out of business — so we are told. Competition, conveniently, can be won by only a few heroic figures, who must be given control over other peoples’ lives and rewarded with stratospheric pay.

However, there is one group in capitalist society that does not like competition--capitalists! That is, they do not like it for themselves. They love it for workers and athletes. But for themselves, they do everything they can to eliminate it without being too obvious about it. They collude with others to maintain high prices, they eliminate competition by buying out competitors, as industries they bribe congress to pass laws favorable to them (low taxes, subsidies, cutting back on regulations, anti-union and labor organizing laws, etc.)

In U.S. Politics, Economic Class Speaks Loudest

Click here to access article by Carey L. Biron from Inter Press Service. 

For those of you who have been wide awake during the past several decades, this article probably should be entitled "Capitalist Democracy 101" or "Capitalist Democracy for Dummies". You probably would find it boring. However, it is my observation that many Americans have been asleep or so well indoctrinated that they haven't been able to recognize political fakery perpetrated by operatives of the One Percent. Likewise, these well-indoctrinated Harvard researchers seem surprised by their research findings. Because their research was not designed to ask very many penetrating questions, the findings only describe some superficial aspects of capitalist "democracy" in the US.

New research drawn from the past half-century offers one of the clearest pictures yet of the correlation between political involvement and socioeconomics in the United States, while underscoring the significant implications of recent legal and legislative changes for marginalised groups.

Incorporating the Rentier Sectors into a Financial Model

Click here to access article by Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson from Hudson's blog. It is an online posting of an article in World Economic Review journal. 

Hudson together with another economics professor tries to explain how debts issued by the financial sector is taking over economies. Although I can't follow all of what they are explaining, it appears to me to be essentially the same argument that Hudson has been expressing for several years. 

As with past articles Hudson, and now Bezemer, refer to an earlier period in capitalism where the banking sector was very conservative and preferred to invest in already productive, and safer, assets rather than in development projects. Such financial capitalists were roundly criticized by industrial capitalists for this because money was desperately needed to develop resources which were widely becoming available in the New World and increasingly exploitable due to advances in technology. This constant reference to earlier conservative financiers suggests that the solution to the present economic destabilization is, once again, more investment in productive enterprises rather than existing assets; and that this remedy would save the economy. An unstated implication is that it would also save the capitalist system. Apparently, the liberal professors also think that "there is no alternative".

As Mark Twain expressed it, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." They don't bother to explain the two financial practices in their historical circumstances. Yes, the two periods have some parallels, but the circumstances are radically different. We are now facing a number of limits that adversely impact more productive growth: peak energy and resources and climatic destabilization due to fossil fuel based production. Bankers are not stupid. They know this and that is precisely why they are buying up assets...and, due to their key role in the ruling class of the One Percent, they are lowering taxes on capital gains and strengthening their military and police forces. They, as hard core capitalists, are merely pursuing their own interests which under the dogma of capitalism is supposed to benefit society in general.

The Life and Death of 9/11

Click here to access article from Fars News Agency (Iran). 

They [US/NATO] have...been trying hard to hijack the Arab Awakening in order to create more client states throughout the Middle East.

Mixed in with the so-called US/NATO support for the populist uprisings, shockingly in coordination with elements of Al Qaeda (!), the international community is once again scratching their heads. Seeing the ongoing wars and carnage across the globe, they really want to know whether "the global war on terror" was just a fabrication designed to preserve America's global domination well into the 21st century? The US presidential candidates are not willing to talk about it. The American voters are equally not in the mood to care about the 9/11 anymore - when they have no jobs and no incomes.  

The writer makes some very astute observations.

Meet The Right-Wing Extremist Behind Anti-Muslim Film That Sparked Deadly Riots

Click here to access article by Max Blumenthal from his blog.

The US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three US diplomats were killed in attacks and rioting provoked by an obscure, low-budget anti-Muslim film called “The Innocence of Muslims.” The producer of the film is a real estate developer supposedly named “Sam Bacile” who claims to be an Israeli Jew. Bacile told the AP the film was made with $5 million raised from “100 Jewish donors.” He said he was motivated to help his native country, Israel, by exposing the evils of Islam.

I'm thinking how interesting this article is after listening this morning to NPR and TV coverage of the attacks on US diplomats. Strange (sarcasm) that they didn't mention anything about the film other than linking it to the cause of the riot and the attack. However, just now accessing NPR's website I notice that they ran an article about the film on their website. But, I still doubt that they will report this information in subsequent broadcasts.

But wait! Here are other views about this film that need to be considered.

Arctic warning: As the system changes, we must adjust our science

Click here to access article by David Spratt from RenewEconomy (Australia).

Clearly the IPPC 2007 report is no longer scientifically adequate on the Arctic – and much else – and Holmen’s call to “adjust our understanding of the system and… adjust our science” is timely. The nub of the problem is that climate policy-making in Australia, and internationally, is stuck in the IPCC 2007 frame and is thereby disconnected from what is occurring on the ground, in the seas and at the poles. For that reason it can only fail.

Interviewed: David Harvey on Rebel Cities

Click here to access article by Chris Carlsson from Shareable. 

You may want to skip the introduction by the publisher of Shareable, Neal Gorenflo, by scrolling down to Chris Carlson's first question: "Who did you write Rebel Cities for?". In his introduction Gorenflo goes to great pains to explain why he is featuring Marxist views at his website and to reassure readers that it is okay to read such material ("Harvey stands for something as American as apple pie.") This is probably necessary for many US progressives who have been subject to so many decades of anti-Marxist thought control; however, for those of you immune to such indoctrination, this reassurance is unnecessary.

I don't agree with all of Harvey's views, but they do provide much food for thought. One place where I take exception is what I regard as an incorrect conception of the capitalist state (he approves of some elements of it) and that some coercive state organization needs to be maintained in his vision of the future: views which is revealed in this quote from his book and his answer to Carlsson's followup question:

[Harvey quote] "How can radical decentralization — surely a worthwhile objective — work without constituting some higher-order hierarchical authority? It is simply naïve to believe that polycentrism or any other form of decentralization can work without strong hierarchical constraints and active enforcement."

[Carlsson] Do you think the state, currently a wholly-owned project of “the existing democracy of money power,” can be made to serve other interests than capital accumulation and economic growth?

There can be higher levels of coordination without a hierarchical system of enforcement. "Hierarchy" is by definition a centralized command structure that serves and answers to the highest level, to people who constitute a ruling class. That's the way the Soviet Union was constituted and its command structure served the interests of the nomenclatura. It appears that Harvey cannot imagine a command structure that is directed from the grassroots to the highest coordinating bodies.

The Chicago strike is typical of American politicians' war on teachers

Click here to access article by Michael Paarlberg from The Guardian.

Many see the Chicago strike as a pivotal political event in the US. Will the neo-liberal steamroller succeed in crushing a well organized popular movement in Chicago to support education?  

In this article the author describes the One Percent's media campaign against teachers:

As you may have heard, these teachers are greedy, lazy bullies who are holding kids hostage in their mad lust for power. Their choice of profession is not at all motivated by an interest in child betterment, but entirely by the obscenely lavish salaries they receive – some even approaching those of skilled jobs that actually contribute to the public good, like sales managers and insurance underwriters. All this at – never forget – taxpayers' expense. Even liberal bloggers warn that this strike will leave children forever scarred and ruin their future earnings, or at least their test scores.

One aspect that writers for the liberal Guardian dare not venture into to any significant extent is that such a campaign serves to distract people's attention away from the real conditions which impair a child's ability to learn: hunger, family tensions, broken families, homelessness, etc. (He barely touched on it with one single sentence: "Might poverty and unemployment not be to blame?") Such devastation, of course, is caused by the reckless operations of casino capitalism.

The Economic Religion of Finance Capital

Click here to access article by Frank Scott from legalienate.

The Virgin birth.
The Chosen people.
The Resurrection of the dead.
The Free Market.

Which of those is unsupported by material evidence but exists by virtue of practice based on fervent , coerced, or simply uncritical belief and is thus subject to failure at any moment when the belief is shaken to its roots by experienced reality?

The metaphor of "finance capitalism" as religion is very apt because that is precisely what it has become, especially in the US. Unfortunately, the author allows readers to infer that there may be some other kind of capitalism that is acceptable. Finance capitalism is merely the final stage of capitalism.

The Unanswered Questions of 9/11

Click here to access article by James Corbett from his blog The Corbett Report. 

These and many, many questions like them have been asked by the victims’ family members, the first responders, members of the US military, American congressmen and women, intelligence agents, foreign dignitaries and heads of state, and concerned members of the public across America and around the globe. And still, 11 years after the events themselves, the American president has the gall to suggest that all questions have been answered and it is time for Americans to move on.

Chilean Protest Hits CIA Pinochet Coup of 9/11/1973

Click here to access article by Steven Argue from IndyBay (San Francisco, California bay area). 

While the political operatives of the One Percent want make sure you know about their version of the 9/11 attack, their carefully controlled media will never cover another 9/11 event--the CIA engineered coup in Chile where 3000 people were killed or disappeared, others tortured. Once again, we must turn to the alternative media to learn about historical facts that the "Ministry of Information" doesn't want you to know or remember.

On September 11th, 1973 the Chilean military with the CIA carried out a coup against the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. This coup was foreseen by those to the left of Allende. Trotskyists foresaw it and argued the need for certain steps, not least of which were arming the working class and getting rid of the capitalist state. At the heart of the capitalist state is included the military which overthrew Allende and then proceeded to rape, torture, and murder thousands of leftists and workers after it got rid of Allende. In addition to rape, torture, and murder, that U.S. imposed government burned books, jailed tens of thousands of political prisoners, and forced hundreds of thousands of people into exile. 

Chicago Teachers Launch Strike for Better Pay, Benefits and Work Conditions

Click here if you wish to access the source of this 8:30m video from Real News Network. 

I am posting this announcement of the strike and the reasons for it by Chicago Teacher's Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis simply because mainstream media never covers the union's point of view on strikes. They only cover any negative aspects of strikes such as inconvenience to the public, some sensational incident related to the strike, and testimonies from people who are opposed to the strike. (See this and this for the two articles about the strike that I found this morning in the Chicago Tribune.) In this video the union president makes an impassioned plea to protect education for Chicago's children, but it will be a plea that will go unheard or unreported in Chicago media.

 
Another analysis of the strike and related larger issues is the coverage provided by a left-wing source, World Socialist Web Site, entitled "Teachers strike in Chicago". This report portrays the position of the union's hierarchy as willing to make numerous concessions in order to maintain harmonious ties to the Democratic party. This is a typical position of nearly all union leaders who over the past decades have been largely co-opted by the ruling class in the US.

Another source, the Occupied Chicago Tribune argues that under a new leadership this union is now rooted in the grass roots of Chicago, and as such is really fighting for education of its children.

Before CTU President Karen Lewis and members of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) became the new union leadership in 2010, the CTU, like its national union, the American Federation of Teachers, was a willing pawn in the privatization game. CORE broke from the CTU leadership and won respect from the majority of union members by actively supporting parent- and student-led protests at schools across the city. After gaining office, they continued to organize against privatization with the already active education community, and to educate its own members about the importance of doing so. 

So, how is one to evaluate the Lewis' media presentation. Is she sincerely fighting for issues of vital concern for the education of children, or is she merely acting out the appearance of doing so to maintain some legitimacy with union members? In reality is she,and the union hierarchy, far more concerned with maintaining the union's favorable relationship with the liberal wing of the One Percent ruling class and willing to to give away much in the negotiations to satisfy them? You must decide, or wait for more information before deciding.

A Tale of Two Asylums: Assange, Palacio, and Media Hypocrisy

Click here to access article by Keane Bhatt from North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). (My commentary updated as of 8:00 AM Seattle time.)

Occasionally I see references in US mainstream media that charge Ecuadorian President Correa with hypocrisy over his offer of asylum to Assange. This article sets the record straight. Guess who is really guilty of hypocrisy?

Palacio...is the author of an example of abject journalistic malfeasance. His 2011 El Universo op-ed falsely accused “the Dictator,” President Correa, of committing “crimes against humanity” by purportedly ordering troops to fire at a “hospital full of civilians and innocent people” during a coup attempt against him in 2010. Palacio didn’t provide a shred of evidence for his claims. But the U.S. media have scrubbed the baselessness of Palacio’s charges from their coverage of his asylum approval—Reuters said that Palacio simply “criticized [Correa’s] actions,” and NPR stations around the country aired a flattering interview with Palacio’s lawyer....

Although my knowledge of Ecuadorian journalism is slight, I am very familiar with the right-wing newspapers' shameless lies in Venezuela in their ongoing attempt to destabilize the Chavez government. The US ruling class would never permit that type of journalism here.

See the latest bit of hypocrisy--the US refuses to extradite a Bolivian accused of crimes against humanity as reported by Glenn Greenwald.

In October 2003, the intensely pro-US president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, sent his security forces to suppress growing popular protests against the government’s energy and globalization policies. Using high-powered rifles and machine guns, his military forces killed 67 men, women and children, and injured 400 more, almost all of whom were poor and from the nation’s indigenous Aymara communities. Dozens of protesters had been killed by government forces in the prior months when troops were sent to suppress them.

Everything Won't Be Alright

Click here to access article from The Automatic Earth.

Looking around at those... around me - family, friends, acquaintances and random faces in the crowd of apathy - the level of complacency is so concentrated I can taste it, yet I can't even describe how bad it tastes. I'm not really talking about the understanding people lack about the numerous predicaments we face as a species - that's definitely there too... but what I'm talking about is even worse. It's the assumption that we can just go about our day to day lives, doing our day to day work, having our day to day fun... and humanity will eventually heal itself, no matter how bad the injuries sustained.

This is a cultural phenomenon that has infested the Western world....

The author then proceeds to examine contemporary popular cultural products that support this passivity. Of course, such products always go through the filtering process created by the directors of the One Percent. Those which are deemed problematic for this class get filtered out. Those cultural products that support their interests, or at least prevents any threats to their system of capitalism--the source of all their power and wealth--survive the filtering process and get rewarded.

When did addiction become a good thing?

Click here to access article by Jason Hreha from GigaOM. 

This founder of a hi-tech company asks some disturbing questions about all the seemly wonderful electronic gadgets and related services that the tech industry has come up with especially in the past decade. He seems to be doing well for himself in the capitalist world, but is he asking the right questions to advance further? I seriously doubt it. His questions are downright subversive. 

As members of the tech industry, we need to ask serious questions about the behaviors that we are promoting. Are we really helping people live better lives? Or, are we promoting suboptimal habits and aptitudes? At best, many of the products we’re building are time wasters. At worst, they’re the addictive equivalents of cigarettes — irresistible cheap thrills that feel good in the moment, but are destructive in the long run. “Addictive” products are rampant in our lives — Facebook, Farmville (or any Zynga game), Twitter, Pinterest. The list goes on and on.

Jihadists join Aleppo fight, eye Islamic state, surgeon says

Click here to access article by John Irish from AlertNet via Reuters. 

Foreign Islamists intent on turning Syria into an autocratic theocracy have swollen the ranks of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and think they are waging a "holy war", a French surgeon who treated fighters in Aleppo has said.

Thank God or Allah, etc, or the internet for information like this because the Empire's Ministry of Truth will never allow such reports to surface in Western mainstream media.

Iran’s Strategic Diplomatic Victory over the Washington-Israeli Axis

Click here to access article by James Petras from Canadian Dimension. 

Any objective evaluation of the meeting, its venue, the attendance, resolutions and political impact leads to one paramount conclusion: the NAM meeting was a strategic diplomatic victory for Iran and a major defeat for the US, Israel and the European Union. The entire US-Israeli-EU diplomatic and propaganda effort to isolate and stigmatize Iran, especially over the past decade, was shredded.

“A Lot of People Believe This Stuff”: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Public Relations

Click here to access article by Andrew Gavin Marshall from his blog. 

This brilliant, young Canadian reveals the history and the methods of the Empire's shadow government in their ongoing effort to create the illusion of democracy. The methods are the sophisticated grandchildren of the public relation industry of the 1920s. These public relations specialists have developed their expertise to such an extent that war crimes and other crimes against humanity can be packaged and sold as humanitarian programs and their economic disasters as the fault of irresponsible home buyers. However, the tremendous gap between their illusions and reality that continues to grow shows signs of undermining the public's belief in the illusions. Perhaps that is why the Empire's political operatives are beefing up their police agencies, surveilling our activities, and maybe planning to convert cities into corporate run enterprises.

Whether Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, they are all parasites, whose purpose is to manipulate the public into granting them the “consent” to govern, while they govern for the benefit of corporations and banks to plunder, exploit, and profit at the expense of the population, both at home and around the world, which is often facilitated through war, coups, repression of liberation movements, genocide, and impoverishment. To these people, the public – you and I – are nothing but a “bewildered herd” of “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” who must be kept as the “interested spectators of action.” The more talented a politician is at “manufacturing consent,” the more praise he or she gets from the media, and thus, from the public, itself.

I think that these politicians can more aptly be described as slick used-car salesmen than simply parasites. Except for people like the Bushes and FDR who are/were solid members of the ruling class, many like Obama and Clinton are/were merely employees of the enterprise hired by the One Percent's shadow government (board of directors of the used-car lot).

'Lesser Evil' Voters: Stop Enabling Your Abusers (part 2)

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

The author uses an amusing metaphor about a restaurant with a limited menu to describe the electioneering performance put on by the absurd theater of the One Percent to simulate democracy. 

...the Democracy Restaurant and recognize that what we want -- what we need -- is not on that menu, no matter how many minor tweaks and modifications they promise us. ....

What we’re fighting for will never appear on their menu; they don’t even have the ingredients to make it if they tried.

However, the author seems to suggest that not voting is a very significant political act. I doubt it. What would be significant is some act to inform or organize the 99 Percent to take power away from the One Percent.

Journalists at the RNC Either Suck Up To Power, Or Risk Attack…

Click here to access article by Yasha Levine from The eXiled. 

Covering a Republican convention honestly can hazardous to ones career. Most journalists don't try. 

One thing I learned from watching last week’s RNC: Being a reporter with a video camera at a GOP convention and doing anything other than sucking up to power . . . well, that just might be the most dangerous journalism job in America today.

Of course, journalists at the Democratic party convention must "suck up to power" also, but they usually don't encounter such blatant racist behavior.

Honduras to build new city with its own laws and tax system to attract investors

Click here to access article by Jonathan Watts from The Guardian.

This article announces a new twist--privatized cities--in the private equity infrastructure investments scheme I cited in my recent posting (check it out if you haven't already). As they say, the devil is in the details, and these were apparently unavailable to the author. However, notice the title of the Honduran official who signed onto this agreement:

"This is the most important project in half a century for Honduras," said Carlos Pineda, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships, which represented the government at the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the business consortium NKG.

Whenever a policy or program is described in terms of a "public-private partnership", all kinds of alarm bells should go off in your head. Hence, it appears to follow the same model as explained in my posting with huge giveaways by the public sector to support corporations and investors while adversely impacting the 99 Percent in Honduras. Honduras is already one of the worst countries in the world in terms of human rights violations, coup d'etats by their military, and CIA activity.

As usual, One Percent political operatives always claim that their proposals will create jobs. They make the additional claim that no one will be displaced. Both claims appear to be the usual deceptions. To get closer to the truth, I recommend that you read the following two critical articles on this story from independent websites in Honduras and Nicaragua: "Agreement for a Model City" and "A Model City for a Society in Tatters".

I've been mulling this over this morning and I've begun to wonder if this Honduran story doesn't represent the future that the One Percent has in mind for all of us. With the recent economic collapse (for the 99 Percent) due to their bad bets and forcing us to bail them out, they have been infected with new levels of arrogance unseen before. Why should they pay for and fool around with long periods of electioneering during which their candidates spout all kinds of lies, bribing government representatives, making up deceptive stories in their media, etc, when they could eliminate all those costly expenses by privatizing our cities, essentially privatizing our country? That way they could govern us through boards of directors that they directly appoint without all the other fuss and expense.

Interview with Eric Laursen on Social Security and The People's Pension

Click here to access article from Infoshop News. 

This author of a recently published tome entitled The People's Pension explains a number of things he has learned about Social Security while preparing to write his book. Here is one:

What's the biggest threat to Social Security today?

Not the right, but the center-right. In researching The People's Pension, I was amazed to learn how close Washington came to drastically restructuring Social Security during the second Clinton administration. His aides collaborated very closely with Newt Gingrich, behind the scenes and even after the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit, to figure out a plan to do it. Then the Republican Congress went ahead and impeached Clinton, and it was basically all over. But what struck me was how determined the leaders of both parties were to make a deal. In a way, the people who are most dangerous to Social Security aren't the Republicans, people like Gingrich and Paul Ryan. Their views are pretty well known, and they usually don't go all-out against Social Security because it would be too dangerous. The real threat is from center-right Democrats like Erskine Bowles, Sen. Mark Warner, and – at times – Barak Obama. They're protected by the fact that the Democratic Party created Social Security under Roosevelt. So voters and the national media tend to assume whatever they do must be with the best of intentions. And they're treated as heroes in the Washington media, which loves anyone who describes themselves as “bipartisan.”

Saudi oil well dries up

Click here to access article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard from The Telegraph. 

A 150-page report by Heidy Rehman on the Saudi petrochemical industry should be sober reading for those who think that shale oil and gas have solved our global energy crunch.

...it is for now plugging holes in global supply rather than covering the future shortfall as the industrial revolutions of Asia mature.

 

There is no democracy without economic democracy

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from his blog Systemic Disorder. 

This piece might also be entitled, "Democracy for Dummies", because after so many decades of indoctrination by the One Percent's mainstream media and schools, many ordinary Americans think democracy is voting in elections managed by the One Percent. The only criticism I have about this article is that a reader could easily infer that we have political democracy in the US.

When we talk about “democracy,” inevitably, it seems, the discussion is about political democracy. Rarely is there discussion about economic democracy. Democracy stops at the entrance to the workplace.

Apple, Drone Strikes, and the Limits of Censorship

Click here to access article by Jay Stanley from American Civil Liberties Union. 

This report once again illustrates how big corporations serve the needs of the One Percent, their government and Empire by acting as a gatekeeper for what information you can access on those little electronic hand-held gadgets. Read the article to discover what kinds of information they don't want you to be informed about.

Press outlets protest Manning trial secrecy

Click here to access article by Josh Gerstein from Politico. 

More than 30 news outlets and media organizations lodged an official protest Tuesday against secrecy in the court-martial of Pvt Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accusing of leaking hundreds of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

(Click here to join others in support of Manning.)

Speculating Banks Profit as World's Poorest Go Hungry

Click here to access article by staff from Common Dreams. 

The ingenious ways that operators of capitalism's casinos have devised to profit seem almost endless. Here we see another example of a casino play that deepens the misery of untold millions across the globe.

Reports over the weekend saw some of the world's most powerful financial institutions accused of profiteering on the backs of the world's poorest people and those most vulnerable to the wild price fluctuations caused by over-rampant speculation on the price of food commodities like wheat, soy beans, and corn.

It's Not Just the LAPD: The Big Lie About Police Brutality is Claiming it's Not Rampant

Click here to access article by Dave LIndorff from This Can't Be Happening. 

More evidence of an emerging police state in the US where police brutality has become the norm.

Infrastructure-as-asset-class: Financing development or developing finance?

Click here to access article by Nicholas Hildyard from The Corner House (UK)

This British author introduces us to another neo-liberal invention--private equity infrastructure funds. Although the concept has been around for a while and apparently has been used in some form for the privatization of existing state assets, these financial instruments are now being aggressively pursued in new infrastructure projects. Apparently many national restrictions and regulations are impeding this growth industry and agents of the One Percent are launching an aggressive campaign against these barriers through various international bodies. It is the One Percents' last remaining conquest that will put all of the world's 99 Percents into more debt servitude. This investment type has greatly enhanced a type of financial class of investors--what Michael Hudson refers to as the "rentier class" (see this and this).

It is an investment method, advertised as a "public-private partnership", for the world's One Percents to substantially increase their wealth; however, for the 99 Percents of various nations it often means higher prices, inadequate services, being stuck with more debts when infrastructure projects are failures, and more cutbacks in wages and service to pay the debts. It is a partnership where the public sector assumes all the risks and where the private sector receives all the rewards. 

Because the endgame of capitalism is to force most of the world to pay a surcharge to the One Percent for every service they receive such as power, water, health care, education, etc, while exposing the public sector to more debts, it is extremely important for any reasonably educated activist to understand what this is all about. Fortunately, the author shares this concern and writes in a style suited to a more general audience.

The report is in PDF format and 51 pages long (text only, not including the extensive references). However, the content is double-spaced with large margins. (I find it much easier to read lengthy articles by printing them.) To entice you to read the complete article, I am offering the following introduction: 

Political discourse is often conducted in code. Where policy proposals or actions are likely to engender strong opposition or cause affront to the public, euphemisms are used (“collateral damage” for “dead civilians”, “land disturbance” for “mining”, “environmental enhancement” for “canalising rivers”) or concepts are employed that direct the conversation elsewhere.

When therefore the World Bank focused its 1994 World Development Report on “Infrastructure”, it should not have come as a surprise that the Report was not in fact about bridges and roads and dams, but about privatising public goods and services and reducing the role of the state in development. But the “coding” extended beyond the crude, nod-and-a-wink use of “infrastructure” to mean “divesting state assets”. By framing policy choices in terms of an either/or opposition between the “private sector”, on the one hand, and “the state”, on the other, the Report successfully hid its promotion of a new “state/private combo”. A realigned state became the lynchpin of a particular response to a growing crisis of over-accumulation within capitalism, in this instance creating new highly profitable investment opportunities by “selling off” state-owned enterprises (“the family silver” in the words of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan) at knock-down prices.

Nearly twenty years later, the crisis of over-accumulation (too much capital chasing too few investment opportunities) is not only still with us but has deepened, erupting acne-like in various manifestations that financial analysts now refer to as the GFC (or “global financial crisis”). Once again, “infrastructure” is back on the international policy agenda, with national governments, multilateral development banks and international groupings, such as the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies (G-20), all announcing support for major infrastructure development initiatives. This time, however, “infrastructure” embodies more than an agenda of privatisation: what is being constructed are the subsidies, fiscal incentives, capital markets, regulatory regimes and other support systems necessary to transform “infrastructure” into an asset class that should yield above average profits. Far from constituting a retreat from neoliberalism or a renewed state commitment to meeting unmet development needs (a constant refrain is the plight of the 1.4 billion people in the world who have no access to electricity, the 880 million people without safe drinking water, and the 2.6 billion without access to basic sanitation), the planned interventions by the G-20 and others are better viewed as a response to the over-accumulation crisis that further entrenches the current state-private settlement, geared to harnessing the state to extracting profit for the private sector. As such, “infrastructure” is less about financing development (which is at best a sideshow) than about developing finance. Indeed, the G-20’s 2011 high-level report on infrastructure makes just seven references to “the poor” in contrast to 184 references to “private” or “public-private partnerships”.
 

Ecologically Sustainable Development

Click here to access article by Peter Lach-Newinsky (Australian) from his blog memengineering.

Around the time of the UN Rio Conference in 1992 the official four criteria for what was then called ‘Ecologically Sustainable Development’ (ESD) were defined as:

1. Maintaining ecological integrity
2. Intergenerational equity
3. Internalising ecological and social costs
4. The Precautionary Principle

The author then explains how each of these principles are in direct contradiction to capitalism. Hence, they were ignored. For the One Percents of the world, whenever they must choose between the planet and capitalism, the latter always wins. That is simply because most One Percents are addicts. They are drunk on the power and wealth that imbibing the substance of capitalism creates for them. 

What Part of Free Speech Does Whole Foods Not Understand?

Click here to access article by Don Fitz from MR Zine. 

Actions by police (the enforcers of the One Percent) in Brentwood, Missouri illustrate that property rights, one of the cornerstones of capitalism, always trump civil rights.

All Eyes on Chicago’s Teachers

Click here to access article by Shamus Cooke from Workers Action. 

This writer, who specializes in labor issues, sees the current struggle by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) to obtain a decent contract as pivotal for future union battles, especially in the public sector where pressure to reduce employee costs have been pursued most aggressively by the One Percent.

This article is based on a previous report from the CTU and probably should be read first to understand the issues in this union's negotiations with Chicago Public Schools.

CTU has been in contract negotiations with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) since November 2011. Teachers have been without a contract since June of this year after its five-year agreement with the District expired without a new agreement in place.  Labor leaders have said they are negotiating for a “better day, job security and fair compensation for employees.”

Cooke suggests that this union is offering a positive model for vigorous union organizing and actions that are capable of leading a successful fightback against austerity cutbacks everywhere.

Afghanistan’s Base Bonanza

Click here to access article by Nick Turse from TomDispatch. (Note: if you wish to skip the introduction, you need to scroll down to this article.) 

There are few things that our government hides from us more than military base construction around the world. Turse does his best to cut through all the confusion to secure this information. 

While reading this, think about all the current and proposed cutbacks to health, education, welfare  and our crumbing infrastructure in order to serve the megalomanic fantasies of our Empire builders and the fat profits for the military-industrial complex.

Despite years of talk about American withdrawal, there has in fact been a long-term building boom during which the number of bases steadily expanded.  In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) claimed that it had nearly 400 Afghan bases.  Early this year, that number had grown to 450.  Today, a military spokesperson tells TomDispatch, the total tops out at around 550.

And that may only be the tip of the iceberg.

The Pacific free trade deal that's anything but free

Click here to access article by Dean Baker from The Guardian.

...the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a pact that the United States is negotiating with Australia, Canada, Japan and eight other countries in the Pacific region. The agreement is packaged as a "free trade" agreement. This label will force all of the respectable types in Washington to support it

Baker is another writer who finds that the negotiations on the TPP agreement conducted in secret by capitalist elites in these countries represents another stealth attack on consumers by multi-national corporations. Like all the other "free trade" agreements, it is an ingenious way of by-passing national regulations and political processes which often prove to be difficult for the local One Percents.

Game Over? Or Overtime?

Click here to access article by Albert Bates from his blog The Great Change (UK). 

...an international group of scientists, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group has been sailing into the Arctic waters around Norway and Russia to take samples of methane bubbling from ocean clathrates — frozen methane deposits on the sea floor.

...The preliminary reports, if they can be believed, are frightening.

In case you weren't frightened by this, he has more bad news about all the effects of fracking.

Another significant contributor to atmospheric methane is fracking — the explosive fracturing of geological formations to release oil and natural gas (see illustration). While difficult to quantify, we can expect a significant bump from this source for at least the next few decades, just from wells already completed. And once the bottle is uncorked, you can’t put another cork back in.

Capitalism's Ideological Crutches

Click here to access article by Richard D Wolff from Truthout. 

In this very insightful article the author argues that the capitalist ruling class's propaganda of choice in a long term economic crisis is to blame the government.

The mainstream ideology that works best as capitalism's crutch is blame the government. This interpretation of modern society insists that the ultimate root and cause of economic problems is the government, not capitalism nor capitalists. If you are unemployed, foreclosed, or underpaid, the problem is not the capitalist who refuses to employ you, evicts you, or pays you poorly. It is instead partly your own fault, but mostly that of the government: the politicians and the bureaucrats.

I think his argument works best with regard to the US ruling class. Elsewhere there is much historical and contemporary evidence that capitalists will use any propaganda that is effective in distracting and dis-informing working people from their system's inevitable failures in serving the needs of the 99 Percent by providing a stable, just economy. Chief among these are blaming immigrants and ethnic groups.

But who could argue with this conclusion?

In capitalist societies, corporations and the rich use their resources and power to shape government to their advantages. They also lean on ideological crutches to win enough public support to keep control of the government and society. Workers have been and will continue to be victimized by capitalist controls of economy and politics. To change government policies they need to see through capitalism's ideological crutches. More than that, they will have to organize politically as they did briefly in the 1930s. Yet that, too, was not enough.

Read further to find out what more is needed now to save the 99 Percent.

As Spain's Recession Darkens, Alternative Economies Rise

Click here to access article by staff at Common Dreams. 

The most pernicious form of private ownership and control is in relation to a nation's money supply. Spanish activists may be the leading edge in building alternative institutions that may undermine this key institution of capitalism.While the Spanish ruling class is continuing with austerity programs and borrowing from capitalist financial institutions, Spanish activists are abandoning their money and creating alternative methods of value exchange.

...as many economists grapple over numbers, and search for signs of hope for a free market revival, many people within Spain have increasingly started to turn to alternative currency systems, or parallel euro-free economies -- giving up the ghost of a neoliberal recovery....

The Shriveling of Democracy

Click here to access article by Dianne Feeley from Solidarity. 

While I think that her version of socialism is of the social democratic variety, she does good work in this article by exposing the latest methods of One Percent political operatives to diminish even their fake version of "democracy" in the US. 

In the US this version has always been about appearances. By very gradually expanding the vote to other than the original property holders after declaring and obtaining (with the vital help of the 99 Percent) their independence from England, American capitalists have used carefully managed elections as the major stage prop to create the appearance of democracy. Courts, laws, and legal processes were the other props. Until recently, all these devices continued to conceal biases that favor the One Percent and their exploitation of the labor of the 99 Percent. This deception is now wearing a bit thin.

Technological advances, created by the 99 Percent, have made it possible for the One Percent to expand their exploitation of people and resources to most areas of the planet. They are finding it easier and more profitable to exploit the labor of people elsewhere. They are relying less and less on American workers, and those they use are being forced to compete with low wage labor in other lands. They threaten to move more production offshore unless communities provide them with welfare in the form of subsidies, low taxes, trained workers, and infrastructure. 

Naturally, citizens are protesting, fighting back, and generally creating a nuisance for the One Percent through their legal system of laws, elections, and courts. Hence, we are witnessing a growing police state and measures to limit citizen political action. The author's focus on the latter subject is a valuable contribution to understanding the latest assault on what little influence we have over policies and practices adversely affecting our daily lives.

We Are Writing the Epilogue to the World We Knew

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

The data continue to roll in, and they are telling us we are in the process of bringing an end to the world we evolved in, and creating a new, harsher world. We will be forced to devote more and more of our resources trying to adapt to this new world, and less on development.

.... In 1990 we could have averted this disaster and saved money doing it. As late as 2010 we still had a shot at avoiding it.  But now, the die is cast, the future foretold.  What follows will be an epilogue to civilization, as we knew it.

Hyperbole?

Wall Street’s War on the Cities

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson from CounterPunch. 

This economics professor with a public conscience attempts in this piece to explain to the 99 Percent the stealth strategies that financial elites among the One Percent are using to subject us to perpetual servitude. These strategies are so clever that it is difficult for most of the 99 Percent to understand them. The latter must spend most of their time simply coping with their own problems such as meeting next month's mortgage payment or rent, finding a job, trying to manage a household budget with low pay, raising money to pay a medical bill, along with the usual problems of raising families.

This piece is probably the best effort on Hudson's part to shed light on the class war that is being waged. But, the problem as he sees it is only one part of the system--the financial system comprised of privately owned banks including central banks. The only solution he offers is writing off public debts to private banks and raising taxes on the rich. This is somewhat like putting a band-aid on cancerous skin lesion which is only a symptom of the underlying cancer (capitalism). What we are now witnessing is the final stage of that cancer.

The problem is that the financial system itself is rotten. This has turned today’s class war into a financial war, with the major tactic being to shape how voters perceive the problem. The trick is to make them think that cutting taxes will lower their living costs and make housing cheaper, rather than enabling banks to take what the tax collector used to take. That is the key perception that needs to be spread: cutting taxes leaves more “free lunch” income available for banks to lend against, loading the economy deeper into debt.

...So it’s time to default. Otherwise, Wall Street will turn us into Greece. That is the financial plan, to be sure. It is the strategy for today’s financial war against society at large.

Actual fascists in actual black shirts are waving swastikas and murdering ethnic minorities in Athens

Click here to access article by Laurie Penny from The Independent (Britain). 

To be sure, large immigrant populations, resulting from the chaos in nearby countries as a consequence of neo-liberal policies and Empire aggressions, are causing difficulties for the host countries. But capitalist elites always turn to fascists when they need to distract people or when they feel threatened by the people because of disasters caused by their actions. I keep wondering if what we see in Greece today is an ominous preview of what we will see in the US tomorrow.

As with many fascist groups, Golden Dawn claims to represent the marginalised working class. Like far-right groups across Europe – including the English Defence League and the new British Freedom Party – Golden Dawn declares itself the enemy of a bankrupt democratic system, exploiting for its own ends popular anger against neoliberal economic mismanagement. However, although it professes to stand against austerity, it has no economic project: its tactics are simply violent, divisive and nauseatingly racist. And the governments of Greece and Europe seem willing to tolerate this as the social cost of an ongoing austerity consensus.

Notice, however, that this liberal writer contributes to distracting people by her phrasing--"Like far-right groups across Europe...Golden Dawn declares itself the enemy of a bankrupt democratic [my emphasis] system...." (I wonder if this British writer was educated in the US where "democracy" and "capitalism" are regarded as synonymous.) Doesn't it follow that if a democratic system is "bankrupt", we should support authoritarian systems of rule?

Notice also that this young journalist has written another piece published in The Independent whereby she appears to know that Assange is guilty of rape! It's clear to me that she has a brilliant career ahead of her writing for liberal media. (sarcasm)

Germany Rethinks Path to Green Future

Click here to access article by Stefan Schultz from Spiegel Online. 

Germany is one of the leading capitalist countries to promote green power projects; but as this article reveals, there are are numerous problems making it difficult to achieve their ambitious goals in a self-seeking capitalist economy. Such projects require long term commitments, but capitalist enterprises think in terms of quarterly profits. In order to attract technology corporations to build green power plants, they must be promised big profits, subsidies, etc. This inevitably puts more burden on the less powerful poor and low income people.

...costs are rising at a faster-than-expected rate. The average household in Germany currently pays €144 ($181) a year for these subsidies, and that figure looks set to rise to more than €200 in 2013. In all, it has been estimated that the operators of green power plants have been promised more than €200 million.

Such numbers are big enough to exacerbate social inequalities in Germany. Recipients of "Hartz IV" welfare benefits for the long-term unemployed, for example, receive a fixed sum for electricity and can't afford energy-saving fridges or washing machines. At the other end of the scale, the owners of well-located houses install solar panels on their roofs and are paid for the privilege. Meanwhile, industrial companies that use a lot of electricity are being given more and more tax breaks. Indeed, the Federal Network Agency has calculated that the country's biggest electricity guzzlers account for 18 percent of overall consumption, but bear only 0.3 percent of the costs associated with the EEG.   

International Food Prices Again at Record Levels, World Bank Warns

Click here to access article by Carey L. Biron from Inter Press Service. 

We are now beginning to see another ominous consequence of our carbon-fueled capitalist economy which is causing extreme weather throughout the planet--widespread food shortages and high prices. So far it appears that among the One Percent only World Bank officials are worried about this. These are quite sophisticated people who know that this development can manifest itself in food riots which, in turn, can threaten their capitalist regimes around the world with revolution.

On another website devoted to informing their readers on how to make more money, there is a lengthy article trying to analyze the repercussions of the drought here in the US on prices and shortages. It seems oriented mostly to advising people on measures they can take to reduce the impact on their budgets. However, I suspect that part 2 of this report, which lies behind a paywall, likely advises the website's readers about how to profit from this impending disaster. Such is the outlook of capitalists among the ruling One Percent.

No CIA Prosecutions: the Cover-up Continues

Click here to access article by Daphne Eviatar from Huffington Post.

Once again we see the political operatives of the One Percent hiding their crimes behind secrecy classifications. Once again we see that Tweedle-Obama is interchangeable with Tweedle-Bush.

Manadel al-Jamadi’s beaten corpse, with a smiling US soldier

In a 2006 report, Human Rights First documented that up to 12 men had been tortured to death in U.S. custody since 2002. Reviewing documents we've received more recently through a Freedom of Information Act request to the government, it now appears that up to 19 of 247 deaths involved torture. In only six of those cases was anyone held criminally liable. According to military documents, many more detainees -- we've counted 72 so far -- are believed to have been murdered. While in some cases charges were brought, in many they were dropped or the perpetrators received only administrative sanctions. 

Ecuador Shields Assange from the Revengeful Empire

Click here to access article by Nil Nidandrov from Strategic Culture Foundation.

The author provides some details that I have never seen before regarding the women who brought charges against Assange for sexual misconduct. He alleges that Assange was set up for this legal debacle by the CIA. There is no way to check the accuracy of his information, but it seems logically plausible. I have had similar suspicions from the start of the campaign against Assange by the US government. In any case, he provides a lot of other interesting details about this subject.

Another excellent source of information that appears to be very credible is from the Australian Broadcasting Company. This is a 46:00m video presentation which reviews the entire case. After viewing this video, Nidandrov's allegations about a CIA setup seem less plausible given the sequence of events portrayed in the video.

People can still contribute to WikiLeaks in order to support transparency of information about government operations.

Selling War as ‘Smart Power’

Click here to access article by Coleen Rowley from ConsortiumNews via Women Against Military Madness. (Note: I usually refer only to the original site to designate the source, but in this case the article in ConsortiumNews is improved with added useful links to various phrases in the article.)

The latest selling point for American warfare is “smart power” humanitarianism, dispatching the U.S. military to eliminate foreign leaders designated by pundits as evildoers taking lives and resisting freedom. Ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley warns against this latest con.

However, not only are they selling war packaged in humanitarianism, but they are subverting humanitarian organizations to help sell this message! I was, indeed, sickened by the apparent ease at which some such organizations and their leaders can be subverted and/or co-opted into serving the Empire. Most astonishing example is that of Amnesty International that has an extensive history of serving the cause of human rights throughout the world. I'm sure that Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International-USA, will have a brilliant career ahead of her as a pimp for the Empire's war machine. 

In Amnesty's case I don't think that we should turn away from various chapters' humanitarian efforts because of the US parent organization. It is my impression that their member chapters function quite independently. I do think that we should raise protests against the International office wherever and whenever we can.

The author poses this rhetorical question:

If war is a lie generally, if institutional wars have historically been instigated, ratcheted up, waged, and later falsely ennobled through pretext and propaganda, if “Smart Power,” “Responsibility to Protect” and “humanitarian intervention” serve as little but better rhetoric and therefore an effective guise to sell military force to American citizens as a “last resort,” after having checked off diplomatic efforts (set up to fail) and harsh economic sanctions that starve civilians and kill children, doesn’t it make sense for human rights and peace and justice groups to renounce instead of embrace attempts of powerful governments to use them as “tools” of such policies?

Against the Cyborg Gaze: On Forward Intelligence Teams

Click here to access article by Theo Kindynis from Ceasefire (UK).

From the British section of the Empire we have this report that illustrates the advanced nature of the police state in Britain. The old seat of the British Empire is apparently a testing ground for the latest techniques for controlling a population. Methods that are found to be effective will no doubt be applied throughout the US Empire to crush dissent. In this report he describes the use of "Forward Intelligence Teams".

FITs are units comprising both uniformed police officers and (also uniformed) civilian photographers, tasked with conducting overt surveillance of the public during “public order events”. First introduced in the mid-90s in order to gather evidence against football hooligans, FITs’ scope has since been broadened to include political demonstrations and meetings, with their primary role now being to identify and obtain information about protesters.

Notice, however, that the British writer at this liberal website frames this ominous development as merely due to "today’s security-obsessed culture".  

The Eye of Sauron: Something New Under the Sun

Click here to access article by Fred Reed from World News Trust. 

I am posting this piece, not because it offers some helpful insights, but as a piece that illustrates a typical American's reactions when it finally dawns on them that they are living in a not-as-yet-fully-formed police state. Actually, this writer is obviously above average in education and in his awareness of a bad situation. But his reactions are very typical of ordinary Americans once they wake up. After expressing shock, he makes reference to a wonderful past under "democracy"and expresses other confused statements, then resorts to a simpleton's need to provide a simple explanation--it's all human nature.

At a higher level of generality, America is no longer a democracy. If you think this a rash assertion, ask yourself whether you have the slightest influence over policies that matter to you. ...National politics employs a sort of political price-fixing, in which you are permitted to choose among a number on indistinguishable candidates and told that you are having an election.

None of this is going to stop.

Why is it happening? Some suspect a vast conspiracy to Sovietize the country. I doubt it. Don’t look for a conspiracy when human nature is an adequate explanation. Presidents never want to suffer the restraints on constitutionality, the agonizing slowness of a congress that often has little understanding of the issues; if presidents can do things by fiat, or secretly, they will.

(He seems to be saying) Ho, hum. Just be cool and sophisticated like me. I'm sure we can adjust.

Big call: Cambridge prof. predicts Arctic summer sea ice “all gone by 2015”

Click here to access article by David Spratt from Climate Code Red. 

This is one of those moments when the pace of climate change and its consequences become simply extraordinary.

In the last two weeks, I’ve spent some time trying to unravel the Arctic’s big melt of 2012 and what is means for future global warming and the world we will live in. 

If one clicks on the article in the Scotsman where the prediction by this Scottish scientist is reported, one discovers once again that the only real solution now being considered are geo-engineering fantasies. It is now clear that past affirmations from our masters in the One Percent about reducing carbon output was all propaganda to calm resistance to their ongoing projects of wealth extraction for their class. Nothing, not even destruction of our planet, will deter our masters from pursuing their addictions to power and profits.

In my darker moments I sometimes think that I should re-name this blog as some sort of chronology of the human race's decent into barbarism as we experience one ecological catastrophe after another.

Caste And The Tyranny Of Capitalism In India

Click here to access article by Braj Ranjan Mani from The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) (International). 

The author argues that the legacy of India's caste system together with the dynamics of late capitalism have produced a society of huge differences in income and social privileges, and harsh oppression of the poor.

The story of the making of brand India—the subject of hundreds of academic as well as popular tomes mostly written by, or on behalf of the corporate houses—conveniently leaves aside the vital question of who has collared the benefits and in what proportion. That India is a great democracy and witnessing momentous changes is the trajectory of the fortunate few who have reaped the most from the neo-liberal policies, subverting democracy and reinforcing their privileges in the new power structures. For those who remain bereft of bare minimums of life and constitute 70 per cent of the population, India is a very limited, if not a sham, democracy.

Of course, whenever he mentions "democracy", as with other authors, you must take this to mean the fake form of "bourgeois democracy". I think the author understands this as indicated in the following statement:

Modern democracies have been around for long enough for neo-liberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy—the “independent” judiciary, the “free” press, the parliament—and moulding them to their purpose. The project of corporate globalisation has cracked the code. Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder.

Another Day, Another Shameful Ruling on Police State Spying

Click here to access article by Tom Burghardt from his blog Antifascist Calling. 

...in a collapsing Empire, where the indefinite detention or even the liquidation of "terrorism" suspects, alongside illegal warrantless spying, the trampling of First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly, the persecution of government whistleblowers who bring high state crimes to light, are now deemed unreviewable by any court by a quasi-fascist "Unitary Executive."

From my observations most Americans are blissfully unaware of this development. It is thoroughly covered up by the One Percent's media; and thus far their developing police state is carefully applying most of these measures against marginalized groups such as Muslims, activists, immigrants, and whistleblowers such as Sibel Edmonds. This, of course, brings to mind Martin Niemöller's famous admonition:

First they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

On Europe’s Failure

Click here to access article by Costas Panayotakis from NYT eXaminer. 

The author provides an excellent illustration of the method used by Empire's media to obscure issues related to capitalism's failures: re-frame the problems in terms of other conflicts regardless of whether the latter are causes or merely some indirect consequences of class based conflicts. Often such indirect consequences are promoted or induced by capitalist agents to distract attention away from real underlying class conflicts.

...the European crisis has revealed the contradictions of this neoliberal model, European capitalist elites have responded with austerity and an attempt to use the crisis as an opportunity to entrench the neoliberal model even further.  Far from representing a repudiation by the masses of the benign cosmopolitanism of the capitalist elites, the demonization of Greece and the European South imposes nationalist and culturalist frames on the crisis that are much more consistent with the interest of these elites than a frame that also includes consideration of class divisions.

Calling all Pessimistic Optimists

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

I often find it difficult to talk about political issues with my fellow Americans who have been subject to so many decades of indoctrination and propaganda. Mickey Z. seems to have mastered this task while staying committed to activism.

Throughout my time with Occupy Wall Street, I’ve encountered the FAQ (e.g. What are your demands? Who are your leaders? Why don’t you get a job?). However, enduring a predictable litany of questions is nothing new to anyone involved with radical activism. To follow are some of my favorites from over the years -- along with my answers.

Rachel Corrie: Israel’s Legal Black Hole

Click here to access article by Siham Nuseibeh from Muftah. 

I think I am posting this article because I feel rather close to this case due to the fact that Rachel Corrie was from my State of Washington (Olympia) here in the US. She was killed by Israelis while defending the homes of Palestinians. 

I was shocked by the scanty coverage of this incident especially by local media. But, of course, local TV coverage is not really local in that the TV stations are owned by large media corporations. Belo corporation headquartered in Dallas, Texas controls probably most local TV coverage in our state.

On Tuesday morning, August 27, 2012, an Israeli court dismissed a civil suit filed against the government by the parents of American peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes in Gaza in 2003. Corrie was unarmed at the time of her death. 










For more background on this incident, I refer you to two excellent articles:

• "British activist saw Rachel Corrie die under Israeli bulldozer, court hears" from The Guardian, March 10, 2010.
• "Rachel Corrie Family Finally Puts Israel In Dock" by Jonathan Cook from CounterCurrents, March 10, 2010.
  

Commons: Alternatives to market and state

Click here to access article by Derek Wall from STIR: Anger Analysis Action (Britain).

Capitalism has failed.  Leaving the care of society to the market has led to massive inequality, climate chaos and financial crisis.  The system is indeed one of zombie economics, the doctrine is dead but the beast still walks amongst us.  It reminds me of the cartoons where Bugs Bunny runs over the edge of the cliff but, not noticing that he has done so, continues to march on air until realization strikes and the silly rabbit plummets to the ground. 

Tehran hosts Non-Aligned Movement summit with focus on Syria

Click here for source of 5:49m video featuring an interview with Pepe Escobar regarding the meeting in Iran, from RT (Russia Today).

Iranian Rhetoric and the History of the Cancer Analogy

Click here to access article by Nima Shirazi from his blog Wide Asleep in America. 

The author examines the use of rhetoric by Israeli and Iranian spokespeople, compares their respective usages in relation to reality, and provides an interesting review of the use of the cancer metaphor by various historical figures. This is a most perceptive analysis of how rhetoric can hide or reveal hideous truths.

America Preparing For A Post-Israel Middle East?

Click here to access article by Franklin Lamb from Al-Manar (Lebanon). 

Although I've never thought of this author as a comedian, while reading this fantastic article I kept waiting for a final punch line like "just kidding!", etc. Then I wondered if he was suffering from some type of mental illness or had just taken some type of hallucinatory drug. 

But, look at his resumé:

Franklin Lamb, former Assistant Counsel, US House Judiciary Committee and  Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil., and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Following three years at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Lamb was visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center.

It has been picked up by a variety of other websites, most notably Foreign Policy Journal. Anyway, read it and see if you believe it. 

U.S. Foreign Weapons Sales Triple, Setting Record

Click here to access article by Carey L. Biron from Inter Press Service. 

Guess what? We're number one! Yes, we should get a gold medal for the production and distribution of instruments of killing. And, we are far ahead of our closest competitor, Russia. ($66.3 billion vs $4.1 billion.)

Arms control advocates are frustrated by lack of progress on any international regulation of arms proliferation.

The Arms Control Association’s Kimball, who attended the New York negotiations, lay much of the blame for that failure on the U.S. hosts, particularly President Barack Obama.

“Although the U.S. delegation had succeeded in inserting all of its preferred formulations in the treaty text and avoided all ‘red lines’, President Obama should have – but did not – provide the leadership necessary to close the deal,” he said.

I'd like to pose what may sound like an obscure conspiracy theory. The military-industrial complex is a major dynamic component driving the policies of the home country, USA. Obama was selected to serve the Empire's ruling One Percent to promote its policies. He is serving it very well, and there is no doubt in my mind that he will be selected once again. 

Romney would also function well (for the One Percent), but Obama still has some magic with the 99 Percent, and some of the latter feel that Obama is the lessor of the two evils. As an employee of the One Percent, he will pursue basically the same policies as Romney, but will do it with much more charm. Moreover, because the domestic economy is in shambles for most working people, the latter will fight to keep their fairly well paying jobs producing weapons for their masters in order to keep up on their mortgage payments on their homes.

I wonder how many of these weapons are now in the hands of mercenary armies, oops, I mean "freedom fighters" in Syria.

(Sorry for all the cynicism--I couldn't help it.)

Syria, sectarianism and the threat of wider war

Click here to access article by Chris Nineham from CounterFire (Britain).

There are clear signs that the strengthening of the sectarian dynamic in Syria is destabilising the region, argues Chris Nineham

Guess who is "strengthening the sectarian dynamic in Syria"?

Western imperialists are once again creating chaos in the Mid-East and risking a major conflagration.

For a deeper, class analysis of Empire intervention in the Mid-East, I recommend a lengthy piece by John Rees entitled "Empire and revolution - Syria and the critics of the anti-war movement" from the same source.

Exposed: Official Game Rules of American Politics (Satire)

Click here to access article by Carmen Yarrusso from Truthout. 

The author uses a metaphor of a professional baseball league consisting of two teams to explain the American election system. I'm not sure that this qualifies as "satire", because it is simply using a metaphor to explain how the system actually works. If he made fun of gullible Americans who believe the mythology about elections and their legitimacy, that would be satire.

The game of American Politics is played by skilled politicians (called players), but controlled by an elite ruling class of oligarchs (called owners). The game is comparable in many ways to pro baseball, except there are only two competing teams (called Republicans and Democrats). Like pro baseball, 1) the players work for the owners, not for the people who finance the game, 2) the players are well paid (especially highly skilled players), but the big profits go to the owners, and, 3) like baseball, the big profits in American Politics come from the pockets of the masses of people observing the game (called fans).

Fascists are the Tools of the State

Click here to access article by Peter Gelderloos from The Anarchist Library. (A re-posting of an article from The Anarchist Library in 2009.)

The author provides an excellent review of the many uses of fascism to serve capitalist class interests of preserving and supporting the system that provides them with so much power and wealth.  He concludes with some important considerations on how to defeat fascism.

Apparently, Liz Sly Can Conclude Without Supporting Facts

Click here to access article from Moon of Alabama.

This piece about coverage from the Washington Post on the conflict in Syria is an excellent illustration of US mainstream news reporting on any subject of vital interest to the One Percent ruling class. Is there any longer any doubt that US mainstream media has become a propaganda branch of the Empire, and should be referred to as the Empire's Ministry of Truth? 

Nakedgate Update: Those AIPAC Trips, Scandal In the Making

Click here to access article by M.J. Rosenberg from his blog. 

The author provides more information on a most controversial subject--the influence of the Zionist-Israel lobby on US government and the junkets that help make their influence so effective.

Former Israeli soldiers disclose routine mistreatment of Palestinian children

Click here to access article and 5:08m video by Harriet Sherwood from The Guardian. 

More than 30 former Israeli soldiers have disclosed their experiences of the treatment of Palestinian children during military operations and arrests, pointing to a pattern of abuse.

Top 10 Lies Told by Monsanto on GMO Labeling in California

Click here to access article by Michele Simon from Reader Supported News. 

The battle in California over Proposition 37, which would require labeling of foods containing GMOs, is really heating up. Millions of dollars are already being poured into the opposition campaign, with much of it going to former Big Tobacco shills.

...Even for a corporation not exactly known for its honesty and transparency, this brief [Monsanto's] webpage is riddled with deception and outright falsehoods about the initiative and its proponents.