A Comparison of two reports on the outcome of recent elections in Malaysia

by Ron Horn.

I was confronted this morning by two reports on the same subject, but with widely different interpretations. I am referring to these reports:

• US "Pivot" Toward Asia Trips in Malaysia by Tony Cartalucci from his blog Land Destroyer
• Malaysia after the Election: a paradigm shift? by Giovanni Navarria from openDemocracy

The subject was, as my title indicates, the recent elections in Malaysia. My knowledge of that country's political affairs is minimal--so, who to believe? To answer this, I had to engage in a quick critical examination of both reports. 

First, let me cite two summaries of the two general views regarding the elections. 

Cartalucci:

Despite the US mobilizing the summation of its media power and pouring millions of dollars into the opposition party, including the creation and perpetuation of fake-NGOs such as Bersih and the Merdeka Center, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak sailed to a comfortable victory in this year's general elections. The cheap veneer has begun peeling away from America's "democracy promotion" racket, leaving its proxies exposed and frantic, and America's hegemonic ambitions across Asia in serious question. 

Navarria:

For decades elections in the country have been nothing but a smoke screen for a regime that has designed its election laws to look and feel democratic, while, at its very core, remaining authoritarian. The National Front coalition has won every general election since 1957 thanks to, among others things, favorable constitutional reform, corruption, abuse of power, media control, electoral fraud and strong influence on the electoral commission and the electoral districts boundaries. Yet despite the National Front clout on Malaysian politics, in the last two elections the opposition has succeeded in narrowing the gap to unprecedented levels. 

Whereas Cartalucci celebrates the defeat of parties backed by Empire funders, Navarria celebrates the fact that these latter parties have gained support in the election.

Cartalucci's report provides abundant evidence of Empire funding behind important players in the election. For example, he cites a reference to the Empire's prime election weapon, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its website that clearly reports on the latter's support for Merdeka Center for Opinion Research which both authors use to bolster their views. 

A reference that Navarria uses to support his view is a source from Reporters Without Borders. Thus, I decided to find out more about them by doing a quick examination on Wikipedia. By looking at the section entitled "Criticisms of RWB", I learned that this organization had a number of ties with right-wing organizations and it has been viewed favorably by well-known Empire agents such as Otto Reich.

While Navarria describes the present Malaysian government as "authoritarian" and the opposition parties as "the foundation of Malaysia’s new democratic future", Cartalucci doesn't offer any evaluation of the existing government, instead he focuses only on US electoral manipulations and the economic and political interests behind these efforts. 

Election outcomes are important for Empire propagandists because they serve to reinforce the phony belief that the Empire supports "democracy" as well as providing opportunities to add additional regimes that can serve Empire economic and hegemonic interests. The report by Navarria posted on openDemocracy clearly supports this latter type of an agenda in Malaysia. 

The report posted on openDemocracy also makes me suspicious about this website in general. It may be another gatekeeping website designed to serve the Empire by steering progressive type readers to views that are compatible with Empire economic and hegemonic interests.  

Robin Williams On Junkie Bankers

Click here if you wish to access the source of this video posting on Raging Bull-Shit. 

The brave new world of work: where employees are treated as criminals

Click here to access article by Anthony Elliott from The Conversation (Australia). 

We have seen this new world of work expressed accurately as a "race to the bottom" for workers. The bottom as recently appeared in Bangladesh where over 1000 (and counting) low wage workers died in a building that did not meet required building standards and was ignored by officials --after all, workers are disposable in this brave new world of work. 

This bottom of working conditions that enriches major international corporations does not go without its effects on working conditions in the technologically advanced countries. Workers in these countries are fully aware that their jobs may be subject to off-shoring; and now with high unemployment rates nearly everywhere, they cling tenuously and anxiously to their own jobs where their performance is closely monitored. The author describes the increasing introduction of electronic monitoring methods.

Coup d’Etat to Trade Seen in Billionaire Toxic Lead Fight

Click here to access article by Andrew Martin from Bloomberg News. 

Here we see the early signs of the brave new world of neoliberalism that capitalist ruling classes are preparing for us. It's surprising that this prime capitalist media corporation allows such a headline, which accurately recognizes the likely outcome of a legal dispute in Peru, as a "coup d'etat".

“It’s like a quiet, slow-moving coup d’état,” said Lori Wallach, director of the Global Trade Watch division of Public Citizen, a nonprofit that opposes many aspects of trade pacts. Investors and corporations are “using this regime to have another front at trying to limit the governance authority of nation states.” 

New Compass Meeting about Participatory Democracy at the World Social Forum

Click here to access article from New Compass (based in Norway). (Note: the introductory article contains links to both an audio and a written transcript of the WSF meeting. The transcript is accessed as a Microsoft Word document.)

One important point about participatory democracy is to make sure that the institutions really empower the citizens. Often “participatory democracy” is just a political move made by the local authorities to attract votes, a communication move that only serves to legitimate decisions that already have been taken by the authorities. To ensure real participation and decision making power to citizens, the cooperative has created the Intervention Charter. Local authorities committing to the charter are put in front of the people and held to account. The idea is that it is the people who are the experts. But implementing such a practice encounters several difficulties: the fear of the local authorities to be directly confronted by their citizens, and the difficulty of convincing both citizens and experts that ordinary citizens know what is good for their community. Low participation of citizens can also be a problem sometimes. It is not easy to mobilize people to participate nowadays. [My emphasis]

I see a danger in this presentation of participatory democracy. One must never forget that capitalist ruling classes will never voluntarily relinquish control over important decisions. The fact that they permit local experiments such as depicted in this presentation does not in any way refute this point. You see, under globalized capitalism, local decisions matter very little to capitalist ruling classes. Most tax money is spent by national governments that are controlled by these ruling classes, and local communities have lost most of the important decisions. Consider how corporations can elicit all kinds of subsidies and favors from local communities so that corporations will set up operations in their communities. This lack of power over important decisions is clearly the reason why there is "low participation of citizens...."

However, I believe that such participation is desirable in that it offers a training experience for people to prepare them for self-government.

Female 'Purity' Is Bullshit

Click here to access article by Lindy West from Jezebel.

The author looks at the issue of the tendency for women to be reduced to sexual objects in a society that is infected with notions of sinfulness associated with sex. Hence, there are "good girls" and "bad girls", Madonnas or whores. This issue in general is, as illustrated by this article, usually dealt with as an issue of men versus women, with the female author arguing that men are evil-doers. As with many other issues, I think that a class-based analysis of the topic sheds much more light. See if you agree with my reasoning.

I think that both cultural phenomena, sexuality as sin and the sexual objectification of women, are fostered by the class structure of capitalism, a system that empowers one small group, "owners" of productive property, over all other people. Because of their privileges of "ownership" that has evolved over time, such people have the power to decide on how much net wealth that is created in productive enterprises go to a class known as workers versus how much they, the "owners", keep for themselves. This fundamental division of humanity has created a pattern that is repeated throughout all institutions in society because "owners" who by the advantageous nature of this division have assumed a leading role in governing societies, that is, they constitute a ruling class of people.

Regarding the sexuality as sin issue, libertinism has often been practiced, and even celebrated, among ruling classes throughout history. You will never find a reference in history to a worker or peasant "libertine". Hence, unrestrained sexual practices have always been the privilege of ruling classes for obvious reasons. Ruling classes want workers and peasants to devote their entire lives to producing things that ruling classes want and they want to accumulate most of the wealth generated by this production.

The other issue, the sexual objectification of women and its corollary, the Madonna or whore syndrome, can also be seen as serving the ruling class. First of all, the Madonna or whore phenomenon applies only to working class women, never to ruling class women. You will find that the latter's prolific practice of sexuality is romanticized throughout most of literature, for example, George Sand. Although you will never see this observed in popular versions of historical dramas about aristocratic life such as is frequently shown over PBS TV, but it was a common practice of aristocrats to regard peasant women, and probably men also, as completely available to provide them with sexual favors (see this and this).

Then there is the fundamental tendency found in capitalist societies to reduce everything to a commodity, and that applies to working class women as "whores" who offer their bodies for sale in the sexual market.

What we frequently see nowadays reflected in "feminist" literature and writings is a ruling class framing of the sexual objectification issue as one of men abusing women. This is precisely the tone of this article. Such framing serves the divide and rule strategy very well. To divide working people on this issue provides a very good distraction from thinking about how the capitalist ruling class continues to thoroughly rob working people of their homes, jobs, pensions, and life savings.

Looking at these issues from a class-based perspective does not for an instant justify any exploitative behavior regardless of who is the agent and who is the victim. I am merely pointing out how the issues are usually dealt with in capitalist society. The framing of these issues are used against working people to serve ruling class interests. 

The real focus should be on the socialization of these attitudes in our current society. The fact is that both sexes are indoctrinated in the same ideas and participate in the indoctrination of succeeding generations in these attitudes. It is not a question of sex, it has more to do with gender indoctrination, that is, how we are indoctrinated and socialized to behave in certain ways. The only real difference between the sexes in terms of behavior is that we act on our socialization according to our sexual identity.

The Reverse Revolving Door: How Corporate Insiders Are Rewarded Upon Leaving Firms for Congress

Click here to access article by Lee Fang from The Nation.

Disclosures reveal that corporations and lobbying firms award six-figure bonuses to staff who leave to take powerful positions on Capitol Hill.

Here we see a liberal media outlet report on this practice as if it were a sensational discovery. What is really significant about this report is the framing of the report as a sensational discovery. Reporting it this way furnishes more evidence of the overwhelming power of corporate media and ruling class control of education to shape the views of most Americans to believe that it is even possible for government institutions to function in some kind of independent way in a class-structured society. 

What we see here is "government as usual" under capitalist so-called "democracy". I never cease to be surprised that there are so few Americans aware of the fact that the government is essentially a branch of American capitalism and its sole function is to pretend to be some sort of legitimate democratic institution.

Global corporations and the Bangladesh building collapse

Click here to access article by Peter Symonds from World Socialist Web Site. 

Two weeks after the Rana Plaza building collapse, global retail giants that source their garments in Bangladesh such as Walmart, Primark, Benetton and others are engaged in a cynical public relations exercise to distance themselves from the tragedy and preserve their image and their profits.
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As of yesterday, the official death toll had reached 705, with hundreds more injured, making the collapse the worst industrial disaster in country’s history and one of the worst ever in the world.

This latest tragedy joins the huge line of similar tragedies that are an integral part of a system that seeks to reduce costs to a minimum regardless of the consequences to workers and their families. After all, as expressed so well by Margaret Thatcher, "there is no such thing as society, only individuals (capitalists) and their families." In this brave new neoliberal world, workers everywhere in the world are expendable and profits are everything.

In bed with Bibi

Click here to access article by Gilad Atzmon from Intrepid Report. 

We call on people of the world to pressure the Syrian regime to end its oppression of and war on the Syrian people.

I was shocked by the names Atzmon cited who signed on to such a statement and immediately looked for documented evidence for this charge. It didn't take long. The author put it front and center in the article. So, why haven't I seen any similar views from the names he cited published in any source up to now? Have they been too embarrassed to express them? 

There are times when one must face a situation where both parties in a conflict are engaging in despicable acts, but in this conflict these "progressives" by default are supporting the most dangerous force in the world today: the Empire and its Zionist allies who are engaging in the most heinous acts in their attempt to destroy another nation.

Post navigation ← Older posts Greece’s depression is IMF’s idea of ‘progress’ May8

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

Austerity programs are designed with ideology in mind, not with economics based on the real world. One clue to this is that “structural re-adjustment” programs invariably demand sell-offs of public assets — holding fire sales of state enterprises means private capital can scoop them up at very low prices, and profit nicely from doing so at public expense.

The neoliberal concept is that people exist to serve markets rather than markets existing to serve people.

Why is Corporate America fanning the flames of violence in Chicago?

Click here to access article by  Bob Simpson from Zcommunications.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in full control of the public schools and enthusiastically represents corporate interests.  CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett of the Chicago Public Schools(CPS), answers directly to Rahm.

CPS currently is proposing 61 school actions involving a total of 133 schools. Students from schools that are closed must go to what CPS calls “welcoming schools”, whence the figure of 133 affected schools. Most of these proposed school actions would take place in working class neighborhoods of color, many of them predominantly African-American. Some of these school actions could have deadly consequences.

He goes on in the article to explain the "deadly consequences", and points to some answers to the question posed in the headline.

After referring to the establishment crackdown on the Black Panthers who were making successful efforts at organizing multiracial communities in Chicago in the 1970s, he suggests that their current efforts are designed to serve corporate interests and to sow disorganization among the poor. In other words, a renewed class war.

And Then There Was One: The Last Empire?

Click here to access article by Tom Engelhardt from his blog TomDispatch. 

The title refers to the Anglo-American Empire enforced ultimately by NATO that has been imposed on the rest of the world. I refuse to quibble over some of his observations (for example, he suggests that the Soviet Union was an Empire) because his overall thesis is right on target.

The present capitalist model (the only one available) for a rising power, whether China, India, or Brazil, is also a model for planetary decline, possibly of a precipitous nature. 

Why You're in Deep Trouble If You Can't Afford a Lawyer

Click here to access article by Hannah Levintova, Jaeah Lee, and Brett Brownell from Mother Jones. 

Back in 1963 at the height of liberal (in the American political sense) influence the One Percent's Supreme Court was a bit embarrassed by the obvious fact that civil rights, like everything else, were essentially for sale under capitalist rule in the US. So our ruling class set about establishing a cover for this embarrassment with the provision of a "public defender". 

The article exposes what lies below this fig leaf: the obscenity of class based justice. Predictably, the editors of this liberal publication frame the issue as one that can be solved within the system. Thus, you can ignore their naive solutions, instead focus on the reality of injustice under the public defender arrangement.

Building The Commons: 2013 Forum

Click here to access posting by davana from Making Worlds: a commons coalition.

The significance of this post is to illustrate that the Occupy Movement has not disappeared, but is undergoing a period of consolidation, reflection, and rebirth. Here we visit people in New York City who are involved in the work of building a commons. They are people from a variety of activist and ideological backgrounds: Transition Towns activists, community organizers, Occupy Wall Street activists, Hurricane Sandy relief workers, academic intellectuals on the left, etc. 

I think one of the core commonalities that all of them share is a sense that people must re-assume responsibility for their own lives simply because their capitalist masters have little-to-no regard for them. It is a new consciousness that our society is manipulated by people who have separated themselves from communities and who have agendas at odds with the needs of communities. These activists know that they are faced with a massive project that includes new ways of thinking and relating to each other, in short, the construction of a new consciousness and culture. It is no place for individuals who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the capitalist belief that the solutions to all problems can be obtained immediately by shopping and accumulating the stuff they want to sell you, or even a liberal's belief that participating in protest demonstrations can, by themselves, fundamentally change anything.

Anyway, I invite you to explore this website (for example, links like this and this) to understand where the commons/Occupy movement is today: it is a place where people are beginning to lay the foundations for a new society by asking important questions such as:

• How are people in NYC creating common spaces?
• How can commoning efforts support and strengthen each other?
• How do communities identify with and participate in the process of commoning?
• How can commoning be a form of resistance to neoliberal privatization?
• How can we construct a commons-inspired "Occupy theory" of collective action?

The Robot Revolution

Click here to access article by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin from News Beacon Ireland. 

Will we have more leisure time? That is predicated on the idea of a social fund created by society to pay for education, health, transport etc. But where will that money come from? The beneficiaries of robot production (which will no doubt be private) will be the owners and shareholders of robot producing companies and factories supplying robots to universities, hospitals, libraries etc. not society as a whole.

This may seem fantastical now during this transition phase of development but already relatively undeveloped robots are being used as tour guides and remote doctors. As more privatisation puts more people at the mercy of the profit motive, exposure to replacement by robot is only limited by the current capabilities of contemporary science.

Oh, I'm sure we will have much more leisure time. We are already experiencing much more leisure time while being jobless, although I don't think we can enjoy it much while being forced out of our homes and into lines at a local food bank.

The marvelous development of technology, which is a legacy of so many generations of humanity and a product of human ingenuity, has under capitalism been secured by a few for their benefit. Under their system of capitalism, they own this technology and the sophisticated tools it has produced; and they have been, and will continue, to use it against us.

The author does us a great service in pointing out the contradictions that many millions across the globe are increasing being confronted with, however his conclusion seems rather lame to me.

Only stronger ties building on the common interest between the unemployed and employed can possibly resist this coming workplace crisis. 

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Holds a Closed Door Meeting With Jamie Dimon and Hedge Fund Titans

Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

For obvious reasons it is very difficult to discern the real power centers in the One Percent ruling class, however one cannot be far off base to mark the Council on Foreign Relations as one of the primary nerve centers in the brain of the Empire's ruling class. I think you will find that this article reinforces that impression. The people gathering at this secret meeting are some of the primary directors of this class.

Americans have suffered for the past five years the economic nightmare that grew out of backroom deals, Wall Street and Washington’s revolving doors and crony capitalism. Lew continues the abhorrent tradition of drawing a dark curtain around the government’s interactions with Wall Street. 

The Syria-Iran red line show

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

This eminently Bushist Obama "red line" business, applied to Syria, Iran or both, is becoming a tad ridiculous.

Click here if you wish to access the source or the transcript of this interview with Escobar in which he provides an astute assessment of the latest Empire engineered disaster in the Mid-East. From RT.

U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator

Click here to access article from Reuters via Chicago Tribune.

Strange, how this piece of news failed to make it into any mainstream sources that I viewed this morning. Well, our masters who manage the media certainly wouldn't want an independent source to conflict with the propaganda they have been spewing out for the past two weeks--it might spoil the false flag operation.

"Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

Climate Crisis Will Bring Drought In Temperate Areas, Fnds NASA

Click here to access article from CounterCurrents.

A recent NASA study indicates what other scientists have been saying for some time: we can expect our future climate to be characterized by extreme weather events, more extreme drouths, more extreme rain storms, more wildfires, etc, resulting in more disasters for populations.

"These results in many ways are the worst of all possible worlds," said Peter Gleick, a climatologist and water expert who is president of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland research organization. "Wet areas will get wetter and dry areas will get drier."

Questioning Labor Imperialism in Egypt: A Critique of the Solidarity Centre’s “Justice for All” Report

Click here to access article by Michael Barker from One Struggle. (a "best post")

In this rather lengthy, but very scholarly report, Barker illustrates in his examination of NGO operations in Egypt the Empire's use of intellectual workers employed in NGOs fronting as labor, pro-democracy, and human rights organizations to co-opt and otherwise undermine any real movements that might challenge the Empire's engine of capitalism. The article abstract spells out the significance of this examination:

People power is the dynamic driver of social history, with history merely being the documented response of elite power-brokers to popular demands for justice. Recognizing the latent power and desire of normal people to overthrow their oppressive rulers, more far sighted elites have long recognized the need to channel such unrealized power into non-revolutionary political alternatives: a process which entails their intervening at the grassroots level of civil society to ensure that such threats never coalesce into a force powerful enough to upset the capitalist status quo. In this way, US elites have created what many authors have amorphously referred to as a non-profit industrial complex, which forms a “natural corollary” to the prison industrial complex. Overseas, such technologies of repression play a central role in sustaining imperial domination; and while their role is largely ignored by most writers (even radical ones), their importance has nevertheless been thoroughly documented.

Of course, in this age of globalization the ruling class's use of the "non-profit industrial complex" in foreign countries applies equally well to domestic operations. The genius of the Anglo-American Empire has been its refinement of methods to manage the perceptions of people. To accomplish this, Empire agents have recruited large numbers of intellectuals in this service by offering them numerous and generous monetary inducements. With this careful examination of such operations in Egypt, Barker does us a great service by exposing how they function. 

U.S. Financed Independent Polls Are Not Independent

Click here to access article by Bernhard from his blog Moon of Alabama. 

A favorite ploy used by agents of the Empire to manipulate elections is spotted by this keen observer being implemented in Malaysia.

Such tight independent polls usually carry the smell of U.S. interference.

A tight independent poll will show the U.S. favorite candidate may win. When the election then goes against the U.S. favorite the tight independent poll will be used to claim election fraud and to instigate riots to then somehow wrestle the U.S. favorite into power.

We have seen this scheme in various color revolutions in eastern Europe, in Thailand and recently also in Venezuela. 

Kennedy, the Lobby and the Bomb

Click here to access article by Laurent Guyénot from Voltaire. 

This piece offers an excellent review of US relations with Israel since the latter's founding. You will learn about Kennedy's attempts to curb Israeli influence over our government; following his assassination, Israel's successful efforts to influence the US government; Israeli espionage activities in the US; and their use of a false flag attacks--most notably on a US ship with the collaboration of the Johnson administration in an attempt to bring US into war against Egypt. (For more information on the latter, see this, this, and this.)

Welcome to the Age of Murder.Gov: The Game of Drones

Click here to access article by Jeffrey St. Clair from CounterPunch.

In a chilling 16-page dossier known simply as the White Paper, one of Obama’s statutory brains at the Justice Department cites the 1969 secret bombing of Cambodia as a legal rationale justifying drone strikes, deep inside nations, against which the United States is not officially at war.

This is another illustration of how a ruling class can use its power over any legal institutions in society to justify what its government does. Thus, contrary to the author's view, to informed and politically aware citizens there is nothing "startling" about this disclosure. It's long past time that people on the left grew up!

Facebook Bans Ad Criticising Mark Zuckerberg’s Pro-KXL Stance

Click here to access article by Andy Rowell from The Price of Oil. 

Judging by his optimistic conclusion, the author clearly doesn't understand the power of money in the system of capitalism. He doesn't understand why the capitalist class could insert sections in constitutions promising "freedom of speech" and other such freedoms, and proclaim that they were running a "democracy" when this power of money could easily determine which speech is read or heard, or any other such freedom could be exercised.

The Power of Local

Click here to access 7:50m video commentary by Catherine Austin Fitts for her Solari Report.

Fitts is a former Assistant Secretary of Housing under the Bush (Jr) administration, presently an investment banker, and investment adviser with Solari Investment Services. She exemplifies an old-fashioned conservative who fervently believes in the capitalist system, from which she secures her fortune; but at the same time she recognizes that the system is destroying our society. She maintains her belief system by criticizing the way it functions even though she hints at the conclusion of this video that such criticism is futile. 

She uses the metaphor of a body to explain her understanding of the economy. However, what she seems to miss in this metaphor is that the system of capitalism functions like any parasite, once it destroys one molecule or one body, it simply moves on to feed off another until it also dies. If you think about it, this functioning of capitalism was clearly expressed by Margaret Thatcher when she declared "there is no such thing as society [body]. There are individual men and women, and there are families [capitalists]."

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from The Guardian.

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

New Study Examines Media Coverage of Iranian Nuclear Program

Click here to access article by Nima Shirazi from Muftah.

Drawing direct parallels to the irresponsible, inadequate, inaccurate and dangerously ideological media malpractice during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the CISSM report concludes that press coverage on the Iranian nuclear program has been – and continues to be – similarly distorted and dishonest, confusing, and contradictory.

What is really surprising about this study is that it was allowed to be published at all even in an obscure journal. 

The author misses the real significance of the study which is that there is no longer any kind of independent media of any scale in the US. The concentration of the media into a few hands wedded to the military-financial-industrial complex essentially means that major media have become merely a public relations department of the Pentagon.

Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment

Click here to access article by Elaine Graham-Leigh from CounterFire (Britain).

What was the wet-dream of the nuclear industry advocates in the 1950s has resurfaced in this century as environmentalism. In reality this new effort is fundamentally driven by the needs of capitalists for cheap energy to keep their system's machinery going regardless of the health risks to the public. It is a recognition that the remaining fossil fuels are likely to become prohibitively expense. 

Nuclear power stations were supposed to produce electricity which was ‘too cheap to meter’, as Lewis Strauss, chair of the Atomic Energy Commission pronounced in 1954, as part of a vision of a futuristic ‘age of peace’, in which people would also ‘travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and with great speeds’ (p.15). The reality however did not live up to the science fiction: building and operating nuclear reactors turned out to take much longer, cost much more, and be more risky than had originally been anticipated.

Besides being dangerous, nuclear power is prohibitively expensive, but corporate advocates in their mad search of profits have managed to outsource most of the risk and expense to the 99 Percent.

U.S. Government and NATO Worked with Bin Laden and His Top Lieutenant 3 Months AFTER 9/11

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog. 

There is a lot of important information in this posting which includes a major 48:10m video interview with Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator and whistle-blower; a 25:17m video excerpt on the James Corbett show also featuring Edmonds; and the article by the blogger to summarize the highlights of the two interviews. Edmonds is a very courageous and knowledgeable observer, who has inside knowledge she gained as an FBI translator, of political events in her native region, Turkey, and nearby areas. 

She describes Operation Gladio, a CIA operation which was used in various European countries where strong working class movements existed following WWII in order to secure pro-capitalist governments. However, she explains that this model, which uses terrorism as a main tool, has become a primary weapon of Empire policy ever since and describes how it has been used in various countries. She also describes how fanatic Muslim sects have been recruited, trained, and supplied to carry out many of these project in the Middle East. She shows how the terrorist label have shifted over time on various groups depending on the political interests of the Empire. Finally, and probably of most interest currently, she explains how the Boston bombing incident fits so neatly into this geopolitical operation, and likely has implications for forthcoming US policies in relation to Syria and Iran.

I haven't had time as of this writing to listen to much of the excerpt of her interview on the James Corbett show, but it appears that she goes on to describe how Bin Laden and the whole Al Qaeda network fits into this Gladio type model.

Boston Marathon Bombings: the Emergency Declaration as a State of Exception

Click here to access article by Philippe Theophanidis from Aphelis. 

The author, who as a highly trained specialist in images (iconography), is quite concerned about legal aspects of the growing police state in the US after viewing numerous pictures submitted by civilians of events related to the Boston bombing. 

The author, of course, is a product of the US educational system which indoctrinates people to believe that our society is governed by laws that are processed through a legitimate system of government. As such the author exhibits a very naive point of view and is threatened by the images he viewed. The article essentially attempts to reconcile the images he viewed with his indoctrination. 

If one somehow has escaped this indoctrination which has been carefully crafted by a capitalist ruling class to provide cover and legitimacy for their rule, one can see and understand the realities of what happens to such a society when, for whatever reason, this class feels it necessary to dispense with the cover and reveals the hidden, brutal fist of fascism. We've seen this before in Spain, Italy, Germany, and Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, and in many other areas of the world since.

The Truthseeker: Boston Bombing - What You Aren't Told

Click here to access article from RT via YouTube.

After weeks of watching mainstream TV coverage of "news" related to the Boston bombing incident, I have arrived at a worrying conclusion: we have entered a new phase in the development of a police state. Watching TV news coverage is precisely like what you would have if the "news" was being broadcast from the Pentagon or the Office of Homeland Security, or any other such government enforcement agency. 

There is never any mention of inconsistencies or discrepancies in the official version of what happened, and it appears that corporate TV directors are attempting to elaborate and support any official versions. This 11:24m video offers a plausible real scenario to what actually occurred, and an antidote to the non-stop propaganda-like coverage that is pouring into the living rooms of Americans across the US. 

Austerity or Keynesianism: Can’t we do better than this?

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

The author examines the phenomenon of center-left and center-right governments in Europe trying to deal with their economic problems. The right, of course, is dedicated in its service to the rich ruling class, but what is puzzling is that the left merely tries to tinker with the system in the hopes of making capitalism functional once again. Referring to the latter, he writes:

These political formations are trapped by their fervent wishes to stabilize an unstable capitalist system.

They wish to discover the magic reforms that will make it all work again. They do have criticisms, even if they are afraid of saying them too loud, but are hamstrung by their belief in the capitalist system, which means, today, a belief in neoliberalism and austerity, no matter what nice speeches they may make.

World Bank Whistle-blower. Confidence in the Dollar as an International Currency Is Waning. The End of Bretton Woods ?

Click here to access article by Karen Hudes from nsnbc.  

In my hurried preparations for a long-planned outing today, I do have the time to study this thoroughly. But, I believe this report suggests some critically important political features of American capitalism that are rarely reported in mainstream media. The constant refusal by executives of the leading financial institutions to cooperate with Congressional in their attempts to obtain information about banking operations. 

Later in the article I noted that the latter was explained with the author, who worked as an attorney for the World Bank, alleged that the concentrated media is owned and controlled by the same people who own and control the major banking institutions. They accomplish this by a common feature of our major economic institutions: through interlocking directorships.

Anyway, having ascertained its importance to our understanding of where real power lies in our society and the world, I leave it to you to fully examine her report. 

Among the Thugs

Click here to access article by Vijay Prashad from CounterPunch. 

Prashad reports on the background of the fellow who built the garment factory in Bangladesh that recently collapsed killing around 400 people, and how all associated parties have scrambled to disown him. It seems that sociopathic persons everywhere find lucrative opportunities to exploit workers to serve the profit interests of capitalists, but when things go wrong they, like old clothes,  are easily discarded .

The day before the collapse of the building...Rana was informed about cracks in the walls. Three thousand two hundred people worked in five factories in this building. “The building has minor damages,” he told the press. “Nothing serious.” Local inspectors, an anaemic bunch in the face of such institutionalised thuggery, had warned that something terrible might happen. Such people are not taken seriously in neo-liberal times. They are the ones who warn of calamities and are said to misjudge the dynamic of history. When the “accident” occurs, as it did the next day, it is these soothsayers who are ignored in the flurry of reportage that wants to suggest that this could not have been foretold, or of establishment voices that would like to point to this Rana as the main culprit and not the system of which he is essentially a minor pillar.

What the CIA’s cash has bought for Afghanistan

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

This reminds me of reports several years ago about pallets of US dollars being shipped into Iraq, although in that case the money seemed to just disappear. This appears to be the method of choice for agents of the Empire to recruit and keep local puppets in loyal service to the Empire. The puppet this time is Karzai whose country now leads the world in opium production. The Empire's enemy in Afghanistan, the Taliban, had successfully outlawed its production before we invaded that country. The "War on Drugs" is like the "War on Terror"--a public relations gimmick to justify more expenditures for weapons, wars, police forces, and surveillance on citizens.

As the revelations about suitcases stuffed with American dollars make clear, the US has invested heavily in “human capital to lead the country’s institutions” and without a doubt has created an “enabling environment” for a collection of CIA stooges, warlords, drug traffickers and murderers to pillage Afghanistan and terrorize its people, while filling their bank accounts with money from Washington.

Guantánamo Prisoner's Memoirs Offer Rare First-Person Account of Torture

Click here to access the introduction by Noa Yachot from American Civil Liberties Union regarding the memoirs of a Guantánamo prisoner published in a series on Slate.

This piece provides a very good background on the prisoner who wrote the memoir and other information about the series. At the time of this writing, I have only read some of it and I find it tough reading. However, it is a necessary read for all Americans to see what the enforcers employed by the One Percent are doing to other human beings in our name and paid for by our tax dollars.

I really must have acted like a child all day long before the guards pried me from the population block later that day. You don’t know how terrorizing it is for a human being to be threatened with torture. One becomes literally a child. An Arabic proverb says, “Waiting on torture is worse than torture itself.” I can only confirm this proverb.

The escort team showed up at my cell: “You got to move.”

Corn on the Border - NAFTA & Food in Mexico

Click here to access article by Dawn Paley from Watershed Sentinel (Canada).

The Canadian author, who is living in Mexico, reports on the deleterious effects of NAFTA and neoliberalism in general on Mexican life, especially on their diets, their health, and their work.

May Day 2013: Fragile Economies, Aggressive Bosses and Struggling Workers

Click here to access article by Ingo Schmidt from The Bullet (Canada).

The fact that workers all over the world are paying the price for the capitalist crisis clearly indicates that unions and the working classes are still on the defensive. The discontent with neoliberalism, and capitalism more generally, however, is spreading. Resistance continues to pop up in new, unexpected locations almost weekly. Alternatives to austerity are in high demand and, indeed, alternatives to capitalism in any number of forms are gaining attention. And workers, increasing numbers of them unemployed and with precarious livelihoods, are willing to fight for them. 

Our American Pravda

Click here to access article by Ron Unz from The American Conservative. 

I think the value of this article lies in its illustration of an old-fashioned conservative who was a dedicated anti-Soviet ideologue and now is someone who has discovered some truths about the political nature of the US.

Old fashioned conservatives usually had a moderate respect for truth and decency, but they were even more influenced by their dedication to the capitalist system that brought them so many rewards in terms of wealth and power. Well, it seems that their power has been eclipsed by the new capitalists who operate currently under the banner of neoliberalism (literally "new capitalism" because liberalism, the original ideology of capitalism, is often used as a synonym for capitalism), and are logically referred to as neo-conservatives. The latter are a breed married to Israel-firsters that have ensconced themselves in the center of all our major institutions to influence our foreign policies in the direction of imperial domination over the rest of the world. This domination is led by their major international credit institutions, IMF and the World Bank, aided by the imposition of the US dollar in world trade, and enforced by the violent arm of NATO should all else fail.

This development has had some positive results for old-fashioned conservatives, because having lost most of their influence, many of them like this author are now able to be more objective about some of the realities of media coverage and the electoral system. It seems that in this post-Cold War era he is no longer blinded by hysterical anti-Soviet propaganda, and thus is able to see more clearly how today's ruling class functions.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reach Highest Point In Three Million Years

Click here to access article from CounterCurrents.

As global carbon dioxide, emissions teetered on the threshold of 400 parts per million (PPM) for the first time in three million years, delegates from countries all over the world yesterday started another round of talks on how to tackle climate change.

The unfortunate fact is that nothing will prevent a continuing increase of this climate-heating gas as long as we are plagued with the system of capitalism. Fossil fuels drives the system's engine which spews out carbon dioxide. We cannot prevent climate catastrophes unless we change the system, and meetings without this on the agenda are totally futile.

A post-history strip tease

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

The title refers to the stripping of any sense of citizenship in the New World Order.

In all these cases whatever happens to social life - suspension, dissolution, balkanization, implosion, a state of emergency - what happens to normal citizens is that citizenship (bios) evaporates. But ruling elites - political, economic, financial - don't care about citizenship. They're only interested in passive consumers. 

Escobar demonstrates in this piece that he is not only the world's premier journalist, but also a highly educated profound thinker. If you are like me, you will find yourself scrambling for an (online) dictionary and googling strange authors to find out what they've written. In other words, you will have your mind stretched to follow along with his attempt to make sense out of our current world. 

After taking us on an intellectual tour through a tunnel of neoliberal horrors, he ends this deep essay ironically where he began in his satire of Burt Bacharach's famous pop song.

How cozy it would be to summon the retro-spirit of Burt Bacharach to define our geopolitical future and start singing, "What the world needs now / is love, sweet love". 

Maybe that is all we have left to fall back on in our struggle for survival.

Within The National (In)Security State: Fear as a Constant Companion

Click here to access article by Phil Rockstroh from Uncommon Thought Journal.

If Escobar's article didn't get you thinking, this one might do the trick by jabbing your mind with insights like this:

The events that followed in the wake of the bombs set off at the Boston Marathon have served as an object lesson in how the police state/militarist madness of authoritarian excess becomes normalized.

Under the tedium, angst, and ennui of corporate state rule, people get high on the adrenal rush induced by the mass media feedback loop. Also, there is the illusion of breaking the spell of alienation and becoming part of a larger order.

Occupy Wall Street to Remind America This Wednesday: Democracy Is Not a Spectator Sport

Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

May Day as a day of celebrating workers and expressing opposition to the One Percent who "own" our economy, an arrangement that makes wage slaves out of us, is a prime example of their suppression of our history for ideological reasons. They managed to suppress it here in the US by substituting the first Monday in September as Labor Day in which some union bosses and Democratic party leaders gave us smarmy speeches and parades to help us forget the massacres, low pay, and dangerous and poor working conditions. Nowadays, it has largely degenerated into just another meaningless day for shopping.

In was on May 1st, 1886 when workers in Chicago nearly shut the city down with a general strike to promote an 8 hour working day. During the mass protests in support of the strike a bomb was thrown by some mysterious person causing one death and numerous wounded. With very little evidence the authorities immediately arrested labor activists, mostly anarchists, for this crime. Seven were sentenced to death, six were hanged and one committed suicide before hanging.

Does this remind you of other strange incidents that have been used to target groups that the ruling class doesn't like? To promote aggression against these groups, or other such nefarious self-serving reasons? Or even to start wars?

Why Can Corporate Interests Trump Sovereign Rights? [Part 2 of 2]

Click here if you wish to access the source and transcript of this 12:19m video on The Real News Network.

This was for me a very revealing exposé of the recent development of neoliberal extra-national bodies having jurisdiction over disputes between sovereign countries and corporations. They are international trade panels that are privately run, meet in private, and operated by people who have allegiances to capitalist enterprises who make decisions on these disputes. However, I don't really think that their private nature matters much. Witness the powerful private influence over our government presently and the whole electoral system.

The guest on this interview is Chakravarthi Raghavan, an  international trade and investment expert, who explains that the history of this development is rooted in old-fashioned colonialism. I have strongly suspected that what we saw happening in old-fashioned colonialism in earlier periods used against less developed countries is now being applied to all countries. We of the 99 Percent are all on the way to be colonial subjects of major international financial and industrial corporations regardless of where we live! Raghavan confirms this suspicion.



You can access the first segment of the interview here.

Saying Privacy Is 'Off the Table,' NYC Police Commissioner Demands More Surveillance Cameras

Click here to access article by J.D. Tuccille from Reason. 

From the Department of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste comes word that New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly thinks that now is a great time to install even more surveillance cameras hither and yon around the Big Apple.

Syria: This Intervention Threat Is Not Credible

Click here to access article by Bernhard from his blog Moon of Alabama.

The author provides an interesting take on the Syrian crisis. However, he doesn't deal with what appears to be the latest US propaganda preparations (allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government) for another Libyan style attack on Syria. What could be the motive for such a declaration if they weren't intending to go ahead with an attack--a temporary incentive for their mercenaries in Syria to keep fighting? In any case, let us hope he is right.

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Click here to access article by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone.

Taibbi does a very good job of demystifying the various scams perpetrated by international banksters who largely rule the world. The scams involve the use of obscure financial instruments they invented plus old-fashioned collusion to rob us--the people all over the world. We don't notice this because of the hidden nature of their scams and the fact that their operations have mostly a limited impact on each of us. 

These practices illustrate, once again, the widespread corruption that has infected the capitalist world. Instant communication technologies has created unlimited possibilities for such scams, and our capitalist masters cannot resist the temptations to take advantage of them. One can only wonder where this will all end. 

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

The latter sentence suggests a naive understanding of how political power works in a capitalist system. One must think of  this system as a coin: on one side there is an extreme concentration of wealth and "ownership" in a few hands, on the other side is political power concentrated mostly in the same hands. It is precisely this relationship that makes any pretense of democracy the greatest scam of all.

The Terror of Capitalism

Click here to access article by Vijay Prashad from CounterPunch.

Prashad provides an in-depth report on the collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh and its significance. It is a graphic, tragic example of neoliberalism's exploitation of working people that is a major building block in the edifice of the capitalist new world order in the 21st century. 

Economic enterprises built from the sweat and toil of workers and slaves in the West, but "owned" by a small elite, have found their way to areas of the world where even cheaper labor can toil under worse conditions for enterprises under contract by corporations, thereby shielding the latter of responsibility. Meanwhile, the sons and daughters of earlier generations of Western workers are left to work in low paying service jobs and going into debt to maintain some semblance of a respectable lifestyle according to the defining standards of Western media.

In the Atlantic world, meanwhile, self-absorption over the wars on terror and on the downturn in the economy prevent any genuine introspection over the mode of life that relies upon debt-fueled consumerism at the expense of workers in Dhaka. Those who died in the Rana building are victims not only of the malfeasance of the sub-contractors, but also of twenty-first century globalisation.

US Unveils Iraq WMD "Curveball-Style" Lies Vs. Syria

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

 The last two weeks have seen a series of victories for the Syrian Army across Syria. It appears that 2 full companies of so-called "Free Syrian Army" fighters have been annihilated near Damascus, while government forces have restored order in parts of Homs and along the previously porous Lebanese-Syrian border.

Time has run out for the West, and it appears that they are desperately seeking any excuse to rescue their failing proxy war.

Everyone’s Talking about “False Flags … Isn’t that Another Bogus Historical Conspiracy Theory?

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog.

The author provides an in-depth review of the use of term throughout history, and you may be surprised by the frequency that this tactic has been used by elites to turn events in their favor.

Doubters need to read this.

The United States of Subterfuge

Click here to access article by Larry Pinkney from Intrepid Report. 

Barack Obama and his Democrat and Republican accomplices know full well that an unfettered and informed free flow of information would spell doom for the avaricious blood sucking corporate elite. Thus, the corporate-government and its propaganda arm—the corporate-stream media—are determined to keep the masses of everyday people in a state of lethargy, ignorance, and fear.

Are Genes Patentable? An Insider's Review of the ACLU's Supreme Court Argument on Gene Patenting

Click here to access article by Lenora M. Lapidus from American Civil Liberties Union. 

The ownership of property that can be used to extract wealth from other citizens has always been a cornerstone of capitalism, and it doesn't matter to the people who own such property if this arrangement causes widespread suffering in any form to the rest of humanity. People with sociopathic tendencies are attracted to this system and the ownership of such property which ultimately gives them and their heirs enormous wealth, and with wealth comes the even more deleterious effect of enormous power. Such people constitute a socioeconomic class, also known as the One Percent or capitalists, who work daily to preserve and enhance their system.

In recent decades we've seen this class enter the world of biotechnology in search of more things to "own". Although the question in the title of this article is a fundamental one, it seems a little late to pose it. The courts controlled by the One Percent have already ruled that life forms created by tinkering with the basic ingredients (genes and DNA) of non-human life forms can be owned, so why not those of humans? The only thing that this class of people regard as sacred is property.

EPIC v. NSA - Cybersecurity Authority

Click here to access document from Electronic Privacy Information Center. 

This non-profit public research center has since 1994 focused its efforts on securing transparency in government and fighting against invasions of citizen privacy by government agencies. This document reports on its recent efforts. 

Notice the ongoing resistance by government agencies, most egregiously by the National Security Agency (NSA), to keep what it is doing secret with regard to accessing private information. NSA is the prime mover behind efforts to enact the CISPA bill which would streamline their ability to collect private information on citizens. 

It is clear to me that the One Percent, whose government we live under, greatly fear that we of the 99 Percent will wake up one day to realize that we are living in a police state; and, as a result, will forget about shopping and begin to engage in acts of rebellion. They, the One Percent ruling class, have already established militarized local police forces controlled largely by the Department of Homeland Security; and now they want to complement this by snooping into our internet activities and information on us held by corporations.

See also this regarding collusion between the Dept. of Defense and corporations regarding access to personal information.

The Boston lockdown and the Bill of Rights

Click here to access article by Tom Carter from World Socialist Web Site.

With the implementation of a state of military siege against the population of Boston last week, the American ruling class has crossed a historical, legal and political Rubicon. The die is cast and the sun is setting on the democratic forms of rule that have existed in the United States for the past two centuries.

What history will remember as most significant about the events in Boston will not be the bombing near the marathon’s finish line or the perpetrators or their motives. What will be remembered instead will be the unprecedented military lockdown of an entire major American city, with military vehicles in the streets and heavily armed soldiers going house to house—tromping through living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, staring down their assault rifles at terrified, barefoot families in their pajamas.

What the author does not seem to understand is that the Bill of Rights was tacked on the original Constitution because of widespread opposition by people in the original 13 semi-autonomous states of the United States. The newly formed capitalist class needed to add "a spoonful of sugar" in order to get their property centered constitution ratified by the states. Their promotion of this constitution was essentially a coup engineered by the major property holders of the states while attending a convention that was only supposed to be modifying the Articles of Confederation.  

They knew perfectly well that under their constitution that they could control a powerful centralized government from any democratic inference from below, and therefore they need not worry about the amendments. To illustrate how seriously the "founding fathers" took these amendments, bear in mind that only nine years after the Constitution went into effect they passed the Sedition Act which made it a crime...

To write, print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against either the hatred of the people of the United States, or to stir up sedition, or to excite unlawful combinations against the government, or to resist it....

Government giving AT&T, others secret immunity from wiretap laws

Click here to access article by Natasha Lennard from Salon.

This piece shows that the ruling One Percent, who operate what passes as "our government", is already doing what CISPA would make much easier for them to do--spy on us. In other words, our masters want to streamline surveillance over our private lives by enacting CISPA, but if that law fails once again, they will spy on us anyway--it will be just much less convenient. 

One of the major privacy concerns fueling opposition to CISPA is that the legislation would permit the private sector to acquire and search sensitive data relating to U.S. citizens between corporations and the government. However, according to government documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), such personal data sharing and surveillance is well underway already, while CISPA is yet to come up for a Senate vote.

Postcard From The End of America: Los Angeles

Click here to access article by Linh Dinh on Intrepid Report.

The author is visiting parts of the US that corporate agents will not allow you to see on TV, but yet a growing population are living like this. In his visit to LA he offers some graphic descriptions of Americans he encounters.

It was now light, and I had made my way to Skid Row. Nearly five thousand homeless people live here. On sidewalk after sidewalk, they have set up their crude dwellings made up mostly of tarps and cardboard. I saw shopping carts all over, and a few bicycles. Bodies lay on cardboard, bedding or sometimes just concrete, but trash was generally confined to trash cans. There was a commotion at 5th and Gladys, with cops and an ambulance, and people were speculating that it might have been a stabbing.

In another report he offers some snapshots of his visit to Oakland, like this one:

I saw a young woman, draped with a thin comforter, who’d crouch down often to pick something from the ground. At first I thought she was scavenging cigarette butts, then I realized she was picking up anything that wasn’t stuck to the sidewalk, a tiny scrap of paper, a dry leaf, a match stump, a candy wrapper… Not content to pick up the pieces, she’d kneel down on the concrete to arrange them, to give them order and meaning.

The Boston Marathon Explosions: A Convenient Moral Panic

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter posted on CounterCurrents. 

In 2006, former  US  military commander and CIA boss General Petraeus said the  US  strategy is to conduct a war of perceptions continuously through the news media. People like McCain are the foot soldiers in such a war and hope that the public mindset can be manipulated with propaganda about US national security interests, perceived military successes and fear about Islamic extremism.

History of the Machine Gun

Click here if you wish to access the source of following 3:08m video from Real News Network.

Here you will view actual film footage of an historical incident not likely covered in your eduction, or if it was, it was a highly sanitized version. This is only one incident illustrating a common practice throughout US history: the use of the machine guns and other weapons to intimidate working people who used the only weapon they had against oppressive company policies and practices: withholding their labor. This occurred in the Columbine Mine massacre in 1927, and in many general strikes such as those which occurred in Seattle in 1919, in the 1930s in San Francisco and Minneapolis, and many other places.

Orwell does America

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

Based on reports from his Boston followers, Escobar cites more discrepancies, inconsistencies, and other strange happenings in an event in which mainstream media managers have no doubts about: its a clear cut case of Muslims engaging in terrorism against Americans. Ergo: we must increase police state measures, remove more civil liberties, and increase surveillance on citizens (CISPA).

Welcome to Police State USA - where at least everyone still has the right to go out shopping. For now.

Anti-Fracking Activist Sandra Steingraber’s Pursuit of a Healthy Environment

Click here to access article from EcoWatch.

We read and hear almost daily mainstream media reports celebrating the new energy bonanza that shale fracking is providing our nation. We rarely hear anything about the hazards associated with this new industry. People in communities located near fracking operations have been fighting back against such practices and appealing to official representatives, regulators, environmental organizations, media, etc; however with little success. Why is this?

Energy is vitally needed to fuel the engines of capitalism in order to supply the One Percent with their addictive drugs--wealth and power. It seems that nothing will stand in their way to obtain their drugs--not extremes of wealth and poverty throughout the world, not the health of people, or not the health of the planet. They will go to any lengths to block any opposition to the practice of the system, capitalism, that supplies them with these drugs. They bribe legislators, install their own people in regulatory agencies, throw money around to local officials and environmental organizations, and more:

The industry started pouring millions of dollars into advertising campaigns and building highly disciplined PR operations. Gas companies believed they were fighting an insurgency. As a result, they hired former U.S. military psychological operations, or psy-ops, experts comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments.

I watched Steingraber's interview with Bill Moyers on his program over the weekend. I was very impressed with this very knowledgeable, articulate, and dedicated activist, scientist and mother. She spent Earth Day in jail for her opposition. In the interview she covers a lot issues and her activist activities in relation to shale fracking. This article gives you quite a lot about her background and her struggle against fracking without proper regulation and health studies. In both the article and her TV interview she gives clear explanations about the hazards of associated with this industry. 

"Before it is sent down the borehole, the fresh water used to fracture bedrock is mixed with inherently toxic materials. These include known and suspected carcinogens, neurological toxicants, and chemicals linked to pregnancy loss,” she explained. “At least one thousand truck trips are required to frack a single well. These trucks—along with earth-moving equipment, compressors, and condensers—release or create soot, volatile organic compounds, and ozone. Exposure to this kind of air pollution has demonstrable links to asthma, stroke, heart attack, cancers and preterm birth."

Because I am very conflicted about which I should post on this website: her TV interview or the article, I decided to let you choose which or to opt for both. Here is the 46:16m TV interview:

To Reclaim Our Future, We Must Change the Present: Our Proposal for Changing the System and not the Climate

Click here to access article from La Via Campesina.

This voice of the "international peasants movement" declares the following:

Humanity and nature are now standing at a precipice. We can stand idle and continue the march into an abysmal future too dire to imagine, or we can take action and reclaim a future that we have all hoped for.

Then the article explains what is needed to be done to "reclaim a future".

“Human Beings Have No Right to Water” and other Words of Wisdom from Your Friendly Neighborhood Global Oligarch

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

God! I loved this piece. The author uses the example of a top executive of the largest multinational food product corporation to illustrate some fundamental principles and practices of current capitalist operations. You will learn how he like other top players in this game are very well connected to the most powerful corporate, governmental, and other political institutions in the world. 

He and others like him are the key agents of the international ruling capitalist class, the most powerful of whom are wedded to their instrument of violence, NATO, which is used in areas of the world where their most powerful institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, are unable to be effective. You will learn how the latter act as agents of privatization.

You will learn how this Nestlé Chairman goes to great pains to rationalize his conduct and that of his corporation. As a human being--and he is a human being--one must believe in what one is doing in order to be successful. Thus, self-delusion is a key psychological mechanism that permits him to act in ways that exploit people and nature which results in most of the disasters we see occurring almost daily across the globe. His rationalizations attempt to reconcile the fundamental dictum of all capitalists--"to maximize short-term profits for shareholders"--with social justice and an ecologically sustainable planet. 

This brilliant young Canadian is working very hard for us in the 99 Percent and fighting for a healthy planet that can assure the continued existence of the human race. You can be sure that he will get no support from any well established institution to do this work. It is up to us to support him in this great contest between the One Percent and the 99 Percent.

Meet the New Enforcement Chief of the SEC – The Guy Who Orchestrated Last Year’s Discredited National Mortgage Settlement on Behalf of Wall Street

Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

It is clear why he was hired for this job of policing Wall Street: his resume demonstrates exceptional ability to defend the interests of the financial-Wall Street elites. He is one of the foxes guarding the public's hen-house.

Paying the Price for Financial Ignorance

Click here to access article by Don Quijones from Raging Bull-Shit. 

This is an excellent, understandable introduction to the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the human race by a small group known colloquially as "banksters". I am looking forward to viewing the film at the end of the article.

Also, read here what other knowledgeable people have said about banking and the creation of money down through the ages. Unfortunately, many of these people were a part of the ruling class that used this money creating power to secure their dominance over society. Thus, they were very conflicted individuals. The quote I like best was by John K. Galbraith:

The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.

Although the method is basically simple, the elaborate history of its development and methods used to conceal it are quite complicated.

400,000 Hiroshima Atomic Bombs Per Day

Click here to access article by Robert Hunziker from Dissident Voice. 

In this piece the author gives us the highlights of a lecture by James Hansen, one of world's most renowned climate scientists, in which he addresses various issues related to climate change. I posted the 17:51m video of his lecture on my blog a year ago; and if you missed it, I urge you to listen to it. The pricey TED conference lectures are presumably attended mostly by members of the One Percent or who serve the interests of the One Percent. 

Provocative Documentary by Woody Harrelson [updated commentary]

Note: This was originally posted on 4-16-2013.
Click here to access article by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall from her blog The Most Revolutionary Act.

This political refugee is now living and working in New Zealand after fleeing from FBI harassment when she was living in Seattle. Here she offers a review of this documentary which I highly recommend after only watching the first 16 minutes of it. The YouTube version is posted in her article and also the documentary can be purchased online.

In my opinion, it has powerful take home lessons for Americans across the political spectrum. Largely because it addresses what I view as the two main obstacles to political change in the US 1) the immense power private banks enjoy via their control over the money supply and 2) the enormous power the corporate media exerts over public information.

          -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4-22-2013: I finally got around to viewing the whole film last night, and I was very disappointed. I wonder if Bramhall had viewed the whole film. I think I, and others, were "taken for a ride", a ride that I will identify as a "gatekeeping operation" by agents of the One Percent to manage the dissent of people exposed to left-wing political analysis.

It started off very well by citing various themes on the left regarding hidden corporate power undermining democratic institutions and shaping our minds in support of wars and the mindless consumption of products. But, then it ends up citing the dangers of one world government, a favorite right-wing conspiracy theme, and declaring that we have an easy way to deal with these hidden powers--by making suitable shopping decisions! This seductive gatekeeping was designed to lure in leftists in the early section by citing themes that they were already familiar with, then having hooked them (as they did me), they lead them into ideological dead ends. 

The first dead end was by claiming that we were being led to a one world government. Here we see, as is frequently the case with right-wing propaganda, that government is the problem, albeit world government. That claim, of course, doesn't at all follow from the preceding section of the film. The second dead end was the silly shopping weapon that people supposedly can use to oppose corporate policies and activities.

CISPA: Worse Than The Patriot Act + CISPA Internet Blackout April 22

Click here to access material from RT and Anonymous posted on Dandelion Salad.

The benefits reaped from the Boston bombing by our masters in the One Percent continue to unfold. The imminent passage of the latest version of CISPA is probably the most immediate and important benefit to them. It will substantially aid in their construction of a police state by making available to corporations and government spy organizations complete access to your internet activities and sites where you bank, get medical care, and other personal information. For heaven's sake, don't be fooled or lulled into complacency by Obama's threat to veto it.

For more details on this bill I recommend this, this, and this.

The FBI Boston-Chechnya charade

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

The FBI narrative includes exploits worthy of the Die Hard franchise, such as Dzhokhar running over his brother Tamerlan’s body - enveloped in a suicide vest - in a stolen SUV, and crashing a massive police barricade.

It would be so convenient to pigeonhole the Tsarnaev brothers as Chechen terrorists. But that’s not the case.

I also recommend this article entitled "‘Boston Bombers’ Tsarnaev brothers: Where the dots won't connect" from RT.

And, also this article by Matthew Stevenson in NYTimes eXaminer entitled "Reichstag Smoke and Mirrors in Boston" in which the author raises numerous questions and doubts about the official story.

The dangerous dreams of Slavoj Žižek

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.

Elements of capitalist indoctrination affect nearly everybody, sadly even those who purport to be on the left. Here the author examines symptoms of authoritarian, elitist type elements that appear in the statements of Žižek. To get it right this time, we must be aware of such reactionary thinking so that we can effectively prevent its insidious influence in our organizing efforts to build a new world.

Žižek’s misplaced tribute to Thatcher and his diatribe against direct democracy reveal the dangerous messianic tendencies of his “radical” philosophy.

Weakest quarter for clean energy investment since 2009

Click here to access article by Ethan Zindler from Bloomberg. 

As an ironic commemoration of Earth Day today, I thought I would post this piece to provide another sad piece of evidence that our masters in the One Percent have little desire to use renewable energy technologies. It appears that such technologies impair their never-ending quest for immediate profits.

Global investment in clean energy in the first three months of 2013 was lower than in any quarter for the past four years, according to the latest figures from research company Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

FBI Caught in a Web of Lies in Boston

Click here to access article from Activist Post.

The evidence keeps mounting that the Boston bombing was another FBI project as supported by this well documented report. It looks like the remaining alleged perpetrator who is in the hospital in serious condition is also a key threat to the story concocted by the FBI with full collaboration of mainstream media, and thus his life may be in danger.

The three FBI lies all relate to this question:

Why did the FBI make a spectacle out of releasing the photos of the alleged Boston bombing suspects to the public feigning ignorance on who they were, asking for the public's help to identify them, when they knew all along who they were?