(The Russian realist, 1821–1881, wrote this little story upon the wall of his Siberian prison)
There is a good reason why we, anarchists, would pay some attention to the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) sector, principally because the general public considers this "third sector" as a tool for democratisation of society, and even worse, as an alternative to the struggle against centralized authority, oppression, poverty and all the other collective misfortunes of the people. To us, this is yet another of the great deceptions of capitalism that serve to keep the illusion of choice and freedom alive.
In the six months since the Boston Marathon bombing, the FBI has by all appearances been relentlessly intimidating, punishing, deporting and, in one case, shooting to death, persons connected, sometimes only tangentially, with the alleged bombers.
All of these individuals have something in common: If afforded constitutional protections and treated as witnesses instead of perpetrators, they could potentially help clear up questions about the violence of April 15.
I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the direction of the Syrian territory without coordinating with us. These groups don´t scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria´s political future.The relationship seems very plausible given that Saudi Arabia seems linked in one way or another to so many terrorist events, 9/11 being the most prominent.
...the bottom line [referring to the evidence] was clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a clear answer on the “are we f**ked” question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, “More or less.”Read the article to find out what this hope is.
There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope.
Recent political gridlock, shutdowns, etc suggest a "new normal" has arrived. Political combat between the parties has become more intense and intractable, because capitalism has changed since the 1970s. By then, the post second world war boom in western Europe, north America and Japan – and also anxieties about the USSR, China, and their allies – had lofted real wages and government-funded social services far above their levels in capitalism's global hinterland, especially Asia, Africa and Latin America. Capitalists in western Europe, North America, and Japan were therefore eager to evade both the high wages and the taxes they faced.
Besides enmity toward Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia share the common goal of overthrowing the regime in Syria, Tel Aviv and Riyadh are united in supporting the military government in Egypt, and they have also found common ground with regard to the unacceptability of an increase in the geopolitical role of their common rival Turkey.I think it would be clearer if re-stated as follows:
Besides enmity toward Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia share the common goal of overthrowing the regime in Syria and are united in supporting the military government in Egypt. They have also found common ground with regard to the unacceptability of an increase in the geopolitical role of their common rival Turkey.
Washington “runs on leaks and Bob Woodward has become the richest journalist in America because of leaks. But because those leaks serve the interests of those in power, no one would compare him to Kim Philby,” Greenwald says, referring to a notorious Cold War spy for the Soviets.
He believes the Snowden case and other recent leaks have evoked “the authoritarian response that at its core says when someone in power decrees something is secret we have to quiver in deference, and to challenge that decree is somehow a moral and legal crime. I reject that.
“My nature is that when I see abuses of power, I want to expose those abuses.”So, am I arguing that it is futile to engage in battles against abuses of power? No. It is important for him and others to engage in these battles, especially over securing information that the powerful wish to hide, in order to rouse the public sufficiently so that they will ultimately wage a war against the system.
...this brutal cut takes place under conditions of continuing mass unemployment and economic slump, with record numbers of people living in poverty and homelessness and hunger on the rise, testifies to the ruthlessness of the American ruling class. The callous indifference of the media and the entire political establishment, beginning with the Obama White House, to the suffering of broad layers of the population is reflected in their virtual silence on the imminent cutback in benefits.If this doesn't disgust you sufficiently, then I suggest you read this and view the video enclosed.
The case against GMOs has strengthened steadily over the last few years, even as the industry has expanded all over the world.I'm proud to report that Washington state where I reside has an initiative on the November ballot to force food companies to disclose on their labels if they contain genetically modified ingredients. And, we are going to win!
TEPCO’s claims are not to be trusted. Their lies are well documented, and their numbers are speculation. TEPCO does not know the following:
- Which nuclear materials are in the water and in what amounts (strontium, tritium, plutonium, cesium)
- The rate of water leaving the plant
- The level of radioactivity of the water.
Without these variables, scientists model “best guess” scenarios which may be misleading to government leaders who make decisions based on their estimates. What we do know is that massive amounts of radioactive material are making their way across the Pacific ocean, and that the greatest threat to life worldwide comes from bioaccumulation (also known as biomagnification).(Read also this piece entitled " Robert Stone must film Fukushima now" from War Is a Crime, and/or this piece entitled "Fukushima Brings New Agenda For Renewables" from Dissident Voice.)
Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean. That means that the total amount of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain. Ultimately, all of this nuclear radiation will outlive all of us by a very wide margin. They are saying that it could take up to 40 years to clean up the Fukushima disaster, and meanwhile countless innocent people will develop cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation.
In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour. Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets, “human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them.
Pandora's Promise, is a new pro-nuclear propaganda documentary released theatrically in the US in July 2013. It is funded in part by individuals with a vested interest in seeing the development of new reactors and is seemingly a vehicle by which to raise the profile of the anti-environmental Oakland think tank, The Breakthrough Institute, whose personnel feature prominently in the film. Despite the film's premise and early claim that it features "a growing number of leading former anti-nuclear activists" who now support nuclear energy, no one in the film ever led the anti-nuclear movement. Nor was any credible, independent scientific or medical professional with expertise in the areas covered in the film consulted or featured. Beyond Nuclear has bird-dogged the film from the beginning, and has produced numerous critiques.
Regional Caribbean organisation Caricom, through its British law firm Leigh Day, will seek to make the case in the Hague that through their colonial participation in the slave-trade, Britain, France and the Netherlands essentially contributed towards the stunting of Caribbean development, and now owe 14 Caribbean nations reparations for slavery and an apology.It seems that while ruling classes don't mind so much about apologizing, they don't want to "cough up" any significant money.
For Americans who might have more than a passing interest in understanding why such atrocities happen, and who might want to do more than shake their heads, after the fact, in bafflement and moral self-righteousness, one might start out with the always-cogent Jeremy Scahill’s explanation of “where al-Shabaab came from,” and how it came to target Kenya.The blogger provides information to indicate the Kenyan mall terrorists were another creation of the Empire. Unfortunately, his myopic perspective attributes agency to ruling class public relations employees such as Obama and UN Ambassador Samatha Powers.
How was the U.S. social compact formed? Like all social policy, it was a reflection of power, specifically the balance of forces between the corporate and working classes in the U.S. In the 1930s and 1940s, massive strike waves led to an ever-larger unionized workforce that repeatedly flexed its muscles by demanding living wages, health care, and other social programs.But, as so frankly admitted by one of America's outspoken billionaires, Warren Buffet, “there’s class warfare, all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” So, now that we have lost so many battles in this war, we are now going to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". But, is the war over? Stay tuned, or better yet, stay active and informed.
...you can see the obvious tension: the capitalist classes in America, to increase their riches further, have been squeezing workers harder by not hiring as they did in the past. We’ve never had a “recovery” in the post-WWII era with so little of GDP growth going to labor (meaning both hiring and wage increases). In the past, the average was over 60% and the lowest was 55%. I haven’t seen a recent update, but the last figures I saw was that the level for this “recovery” was under 30%. Yet simultaneously, theres’s a full-bore effort on to gut the remaining safety nets. If this isn’t a prescription for social and political instability, I don’t know what is.She provides a very stimulating essay about the more hidden coercive powers of capitalists. There is much food for thought here, and she leaves us with a "conundrum".
When I meet with my colleagues at the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change--generals and admirals from around the world, all with career-long experience in military planning and operations--I am struck by the similarity of our concerns. All countries of the world are experiencing changes that are destabilising communities and increasing security concerns. Diseases are spreading, wells are drying up, storms are smashing cities and destroying crops, and rain is either a distant memory or an acute danger.
Ahmed El-Salakawi played Hovstad with the debonair charm of a man of the world, hiding his opportunism, moral cowardice and lack of principles under a mask of urbane geniality and candour. By contrast, Imad Hassan’s Billing, a character as hypocritical and unprincipled as Hovstad, was rendered as vulgar, gauche, ridiculously pretentious, slightly stupid and very easy to see through. Imad El-Raheb’s Aslaksen was dangerously smooth and slippery. Assuming the appearance of virtue and humbleness and a sanctimonious, obsequious, submissive manner, El-Raheb managed to betray by the look in his eyes, his tone of voice and body language the real baseness and moral unscrupulousness of the character. Ibrahim Gharib...[was cast] as the Mayor, Dr. Stockmann’s brother, and he performed the part with fitting stolidness, stodginess and pompous self-importance, showing no emotion and hiding behind his stern appearance the pettiness of his soul. Gharib’s Mayor was a typical specimen of Eliot’s hollow men, with a headpiece filled with Straw.
The explosive danger for the Middle East region from a turbo-charged Saudi sulk with Washington over Syria, including more false flag terror attacks, could result in the kind of all-out war that the US so recklessly dallied with but pulled back from last month.
Perhaps even more worrying for Washington would be if the Saudis started tampering with the petrodollar life-support system. Never mind that that would also probably spell the downfall of the House of Saud. When a kingdom is ruled by temper-tantrum despots the danger of irrationality is always a contingency.
Yet, under Obama, the president who had won public relations industry awards for his well-managed presidential advertising campaign promising "hope" and "change," the empire has found itself waging war in roughly one hundred nations, conducting an unprecedented global terror campaign, increasing its abuses of human rights, war crimes and crimes against humanity, all under the aegis of the Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack Obama.In the first paragraph notice that Obama is given an award by the public relations industry for fooling the public. Public relations is a polite name given to slick advertising methods used to sell ideas or "images" instead of products. This gives some credence to my point of view that Obama, like most presidents since the assassination of Kennedy (50 years ago yesterday), function as public relations officers for a shadow government.
Whether the president is Clinton, Bush, or Obama, the Empire of Terror wages on its global campaign of domination and subjugation, to the detriment of all humanity, save those interests that sit atop the constructed global hierarchy. It is in the interests of the ruling elite that America protects and projects its global imperial designs. It is in the interests of all humanity, then, that the Empire be opposed - and ultimately, deconstructed - no matter who sits in office, no matter who holds the title of the 'high priest of hypocrisy' (aka: President of the United States). It is the Empire that rules, and the Empire that destroys, and the Empire that must, in turn, be demolished. [My emphasis]
In Canada it is illegal [as in the USA] to restrict the sale of property to certain ethnic or religious groups but many of our business people and politicians promote an organization that does exactly that in Israel.
...demonstrations broke out in cities across Canada, including Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Thunder Bay, as well as in New York and at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC.
This principled action by New Brunswick natives is being echoed in dozens of other campaigns by native communities across Canada, where natives are stubbornly refusing to be swallowed up by corporate Canada.
The corporate oligarchs have now seized all institutional systems of power in the United States. Electoral politics, internal security, the judiciary, our universities, the arts and finance, along with nearly all forms of communication, are in corporate hands. Our democracy, with faux debates between two corporate parties, is meaningless political theater. There is no way within the system to defy the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry or war profiteers. The only route left to us, as Aristotle knew, is revolt.Still, there is little material about the system itself. When he references "free market capitalism and globalization", is he, like so many other liberals, arguing for a return to an earlier stage of capitalism? Or, some reforms to the system? Are we only urged to rebel against an "oligarchy"? Or, against a system which produces an oligarchy?
...implies a change from the status quo of social injustice, which has brought millions of labor reformers, Coptic rights activists, Islamists, journalists, intellectuals, farmers, and ordinary people from all walks of life onto the streets over the past few years.
Some revolutionary plan for social reform must be put forward if the Egyptian people are to accept the government as the guarantor of their rights and well-being, rather than a stern overseer or a political prize to be fought over.
The current government and whoever takes its place in the coming year are fooling themselves if they believe a narrow focus on security and economic growth will halt demands for greater justice.
There are more than 50 Israeli laws that privilege Jews or discriminate against non-Jews. These laws affect everything from immigration and family reunification to land ownership rights.
Internal government documents released Monday by the ACLU show that U.S. government agencies collude with local authorities to use border crossings to bypass civil liberties protections and seize and search electronic devices that belong to people who associate with whistleblowers and other political targets.
...the Egyptian military’s forced removal of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi and his entire government was undertaken with the firm secret backing of Saudi Arabia and several Gulf oil states, directly in defiance of Washington’s agenda.This posted report fits very well with Engdahl's argument and provides some explanation for the current Saudi's decision. As the NY Times reports:
Saudi Arabia stunned the United Nations and even some of its own diplomats on Friday by rejecting a highly coveted seat on the Security Council, a decision that underscored the depth of Saudi anger over what the monarchy sees as weak and conciliatory Western stances toward Syria and Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival.If it is true as reported here that "the kingdom will make a 'major shift' in relations with the United States in protest..." to recent actions toward Syria and Iran, then this could really shake up the Empire directorate. Saudi Arabia's collusion with US foreign policy is of fundamental importance given not only their fossil fuel resources, but their commitment to only sell oil in US dollars. The latter fact is a major bulwark for the US dollar as the global currency and enables the Empire to "print" dollars at will.
The story and the way it was presented [on Democracy Now TV program] may be extremely confusing, vague and convoluted. However, one thing was made sure of: repeatedly use Russia as the culprit behind the bribery and corruption and intelligence sabotage involved in the case. Just pay attention to how Armstrong repeats the phrase Russian oligarchy. Take notes on how the official operations via government entities and banks are limited to Russia.
Interestingly, the reality and the facts point toward Western entities as culprits.
The campaign of vilification and intimidation against the Guardian newspaper for publishing the disclosures of former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden is without precedent in a supposedly democratic country.
Raids on newspaper offices, the forced destruction of computer drives and threats to arrest journalists are actions more commonly associated with military dictatorships.
...a deep state behind the public one. And this parallel government is guided in surveillance matters by its own Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which according to the New York Times “has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court.” ....
Most Americans have by and large not questioned this parallel government, accepting that sacrifices of traditional rights and traditional transparency are necessary to keep us safe from al-Qaeda attacks.
...at the apex of this pyramid [of power] are probably the banks and the colossi of the military-industrial-petroleum complex.
When everyone is equally entitled, communities will focus on meeting human needs, on providing employment and social services, on sustaining and improving the quality of present and future life. Instead of focusing on what is the most profitable, communities—responsible to all equally—would aim to balance employment opportunities with available labor. Public revenues would be balanced with needed social services. Imports would be balanced with exports. Industrial activity would be deliberately limited to the carrying capacity of environments.
What kind of society emerges when it is governed by the market-driven assumption that the only value that matters is exchange value....In the above paragraphs he obliquely refers ("market-driven") to the ill effects of capitalist values, but assigns the fault in the second paragraph to the "government". The third paragraph suggests that we have enjoyed some kind of genuine democracy in the past.
What happens to democracy when a government inflicts on the American public narrow market-driven values, corporate relations of power and policies that impose gross inequities on society....
Evidence of the decay of American democracy....
Witness the almost-hysterical displays of public anger by Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham over President Barack Obama's decision to avert bombing Syria in favor of a diplomatic solution. State violence is now the sanctioned norm of rule in a society in which political fanatics, such as Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Sen. Marco Rubio define policy according to a friend/enemy distinction and in doing so transform politics into an extension of war. Unrelenting in their role as archetypes of the hyper-dead, the Tea Party fanatics and their gutless allies spectacularize hatred and trade in fear, lies and misinformation while trying to hold the American public and the government hostage to their fanatical market-driven principles.
They are the face of the emerging counter-revolution taking over the nation - an updated and kinder version of the fascist brownshirts now dressed in suits carrying black briefcases and living in guarded communities. They are the dark angels of violence, and they trade in the mass psychology of fear and hate. They despise compromise and live by a take-no-prisoners political sensibility. They want to eliminate any vestiges of the government that provide social protections.In the above paragraphs he presents Democratic officials as good guys, and the right-wing as the bad guys or "evil-doers" (a borrowed term from George Bush, Jr.) Also, notice in the last paragraph that he identifies the system as "casino capitalism". Throughout his writings you will see such expressions ("narrow market-driven values", "fanatical market-driven principles", "right-wing market fundamentalists", "market society", "market economy", "market authoritarianism", "global capitalism" , and frequently throws in references to "neo-liberalism", which serve to paint him as a radical, that is, someone who espouses a need to fundamentally organize the economy, which is at the very center of society, according to very different principles.
...they [the right-wing] also want to shut down the government and strip the American public of health care benefits while consolidating power in the hands of a party that, as former President Jimmy Carter pointed out, removed America from the pretense of being a functioning democracy.[viii] But they are not alone.
Casino capitalism and its right-wing apostles lack any sense of ethics or respect for the social contract and spew feverishly an endless rhetoric of hate and vile over the airwaves.
There are some who suggest that such critiques of the growing authoritarianism and repression in American society are useless and in the long run do nothing more than reinforce a crippling dystopianism. I think this line of argument is not only wrong but complicitous with the very problems it refuses to acknowledge. From a left suffocating in cynicism, there is the argument that people are already aware of these problems, as if neoliberal hegemony does not exist and that its success in building a consensus around its ideology as a mode of common sense is passé. At the same time, liberals detest such criticism because it calls into question the totality of American politics rather than focus on one issue and gestures toward a radical restructuring of American society rather than piecemeal and useless reforms.Here he again portrays himself as a radical by criticizing liberals who he accurately describes as mostly wanting to focus on particular issues instead of the system.
The enemy is not a market economy but a market society and the breakdown of all forms of social solidarity that inform democratic politics and the cultural, political and economic institutions that make it possible.In this brief and isolated sentence he finally gives an indication of what he really believes in: a kinder, gentler, capitalist system; the kind that contains remnants of a "social contract" (see my comments regarding this subject here.): a thin layer of social welfare to mitigate the most egregious effects of capitalism, and rule of law to protect citizens against arbitrary rule of authorities. This is what people often refer to as "liberal capitalism" or even "liberalism" in the classical sense.
The contradictions of neoliberalism are unraveling....Here again he targets "neoliberalism" in place of capitalism, and elevates it to a separate system. And, "getting to the root of the problems" means building movements to gain "some form of democratic control over wealth". Here he again reveals that he only wants a reformed capitalism which in the last paragraph he describes as a "radical democracy"!
There is a need for a systemic alternative to the existing system of global capitalism. But such an alternative will not happen unless the courage to take power is matched by the pedagogical imperative to address and inform a new cultural imaginary and mode of individual subjectivity and agency. Getting to the root of the problems facing the United States suggests building broad-based social movements that can imagine some form of democratic control over wealth, the use of direct action to challenge dominant economic institutions, the reclaiming of public spaces where the formative cultures of democracy can flourish, a need to shift resources away from militarization and wars to the needs of children and everyone else who believes that equality and democracy inform and enrich each other.
Judith Butler is right in arguing that any viable movement for a radical democracy needs not only to fight manufactured ignorance, economic inequality and racial injustice but also "produce a community that manifests the values of equality and mutual respect ... missing in a world that's structured by neoliberal principles."
The corporate US response to the rising cost of labor in the West plus automated mass production was to transfer practically the whole American industrial base to China, thus multiplying its profits (and in most cases paying for the delocalization through tax breaks).
In the long run, Asia could not but win. Washington tried all sorts of monetary scams to slow the decline. To no avail; productivity kept falling in the West and rising in Asia.
And then the Federal Reserve kept printing paper like there’s no tomorrow, buying bad debts from ‘too big to fail’ banks and US Treasuries, and thus funding Washington’s ballooning spending.
The essential aim of the ACA is rapidly emerging. Behind the talk of providing coverage for the uninsured, Obamacare was devised from the outset as a means of dismantling the employer-based system of health insurance that for decades guaranteed a basic level of health care for tens of millions of workers in the US. While Obama’s counter-reform will still leave some 31 million people uninsured, it will dramatically reduce health care costs for private and public employers by hiking workers’ out-of-pocket costs and slashing their benefits.
In late September, many mainstream media outlets gave substantial coverage to the UN’s new report on the climate change crisis, which said the Earth’s climate is warming faster than at any point in the past 65 million years and that human activity is the cause. It was disappointing, though not surprising, that news reports dried up after only a few days.
But another major scientific study, released a week later and including even graver warnings of a global environmental catastrophe, was mostly ignored altogether. The marine scientists that released the State of the Ocean 2013 report on October 3 gave the starkest of possible warnings about the impact of carbon pollution on the oceans....
A major facet of Obama's foreign policy strategy has been the implementation of an unprecedented global terror war with flying killer robots ("drones") operated by remote control. By 2011, the Washington Post reported that no president in U.S. history "has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation's security goals."As you know if you have followed my blog, I would never attribute the nation's foreign or domestic policies to Obama or to most other presidents since Kennedy. Obama is merely the Empire's current public relations officer or super-salesman whose job is to sell the Empire directors' policies to the American people. In his role as public relations officer for the ruling One Percen, he has performed his role splendidly.
In order to sustain its empire, US aggression is effectively pushing the world into different camps and a new cold war that could well turn into a nuclear conflict given that Russia, China and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons.
The US economy appears to be in terminal decline. The only way to prop it up is by lop-sided trade agreements or by waging war to secure additional markets and resources and to ensure the dollar remains the world reserve currency. Humankind is currently facing a number of serious problems. But, arguably, an empire in decline armed to the teeth with both conventional and nuclear weapons and trapped in a cycle of endless war in what must surely be a futile attempt to stave off ruin is the most serious issue of all.
There are a number of interesting aspects to the lawsuit filed by Carmen M. Segarra against the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and three of its employees. Segarra was a bank examiner at the New York Fed who is charging in her lawsuit that she was told to change her negative review of Goldman Sachs and when she refused to do so, she was terminated in retaliation and escorted from the Fed premises.
In international law, odious debt is a legal theory that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation shouldn’t be enforceable. Such debts are hence regarded as personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state.This sort of argument to abrogate many sovereign debts is a part of a broader movement to solve the many debt crises popping up all over the world, and thus to reform and save the capitalist system. The most outspoken exponent of this movement appears to be the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM).
The student debt crisis will only be solved when we, the people, force the government to serve our needs.By only targeting the government, he suggests more letters to your Congressional representatives, petitions, voting in elections, and maybe even protest marches will do the trick.
Now we are faced with what looks like an unsolvable problem. We need a cheap oil substitute, yesterday. The stories we heard saying, “Substitutes will work when the oil price rises high enough,” were a bunch of nonsense. The folks who came up with this idea didn’t realize what a negative impact high oil prices have on the economy. A high-priced substitute for oil is not at all helpful. Neither is one with huge transition costs.
Without a substitute, we need to figure out how to live in a very changed world, one facing financial collapse–a very difficult problem indeed.
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