Using Recess Appointment, Obama Sneaks Pro-GMO, Pro-Pesticide Lobbyist into Key Agricultural Post

from Politics of the Plate. 

Prior to his appointment, Siddiqui was a vice president and lobbyist for Croplife America, a trade organization representing major corporate players in the agricultural chemical industry. Croplife became known to the public when it berated Michelle Obama for putting in a (horrors!) organic kitchen garden at the Whitehouse.

The Muted Plain: Anticipating the Wake of the Wikileaks Revelation

by Chris Floyd from his blog. This article is awash in cynicism which I often try to avoid. But, he does it so well.

U.S. plan to train Indonesian elite army unit raises alarm

I am posting this from Daily Me (Indonesia) to avoid the necessity of registration at the LA Times.

The article illustrates several things about the US ruling class and its Empire: its hypocrisy re human rights, it ignores its own laws whenever it is necessary or even desirable, the subservience of the Indonesian government to the US Empire, and the Empire trains foreign militaries to serve the Empire--not the people of their home countries.

The Obama administration has begun negotiations with Indonesian military officials to establish a special training program for Kopassus troops despite legislation known as the Leahy Law.

Passed in 1997, the measure bars the U.S. from training foreign militaries facing accusations of human rights abuses unless officials attempt to bring all wrongdoers to justice.
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Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations who wrote the Leahy Law, said Kopassus has committed some of Indonesia's worst human rights atrocities.

How The Corporations Broke Ralph Nader And America, Too

by Chris Hedges from Counter Currents. This ruling class will always destroy anybody who gets in their way of accumulating profits in spite of the fact that this pursuit is ultimately against the public's interest. Nader is only one of many who have recently been destroyed as political figures. If the ruling class can't co-opt them, they remove them one way or another. Nader was, and is, not against the capitalist system--he only wants it to function more honestly and somewhat more in the public interest. Since he could not be co-opted and wasn't a basic threat to the system, he was only marginalized. People like Martin Luther King were assassinated. The capitalist system is simply not designed to function for the public benefit, and Nader doesn't seem to understand that.  The ruling class has on occasion provided a few crumbs for workers, but only under the threat to their system as when, for example, the New Deal was brought out during the 1930s to stifle growing radical dissent.

Ralph Nader’s descent from being one of the most respected and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup. Nader’s marginalization was not accidental. It was orchestrated to thwart the legislation that Nader and his allies—who once consisted of many in the Democratic Party—enacted to prevent corporate abuse, fraud and control. He was targeted to be destroyed. And by the time he was shut out of the political process with the election of Ronald Reagan, the government was in the hands of corporations. Nader’s fate mirrors our own.

When miners' lives come last

from Socialist Worker.

[The mine] is a nonunion mine--owned, via a subsidiary, by Massey Energy, a coal company giant notorious for its bitter and often violent clashes with organized labor and its unyielding opposition to government regulations to protect health and safety and the environment.

Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity—An Analysis

by Chris Clugston from The Oil Drum. The author provides extensive data on non-renewable resources based on solid research and posted on this website that is followed by highly trained people in science and technology. I also recommend reading the comments section of the article.

Given our vulnerability to an ever-increasing number of imminent and permanent global NNR supply shortfalls, the likelihood that the mix and volume of shortfalls will reach their “critical mass” is a question of “when”, not “if”.

China tilts resource balance

by Michael T Klare from Asia Times Online. This is especially interesting article to read after reading the article above this.

Think of it as a tale of two countries. When it comes to procuring the resources that make industrial societies run, China is now the shopaholic of planet Earth, while the United States is staying at home. Hard-hit by the global recession, the United States has experienced a marked decline in the consumption of oil and other key industrial materials. Not so China. With the recession's crippling effects expected to linger in the US for many years, analysts foresee a slow recovery when it comes to resource consumption. Not so China. 

World War II and the Battle of Britain: Operation Sea Lion: Looking Back

by Dr. Frederick Clairmonte from Global Research. This is an excellent antidote to the poison of disinformation and indoctrination re events surrounding WWII that most of us have received from various capitalist guided institutions such as education and media. This revised history is an exposé of the some of the worst characteristics of the system of capitalism and the people associated with it: exploitation, domination, plunder, racism, etc.

Communitarian Socialism in Bolivia

by Roger Burbach from Bolivia Rising. The article presents a balanced view of the development of Bolivian economy and society. Is "communitarian socialism" for real, or merely propaganda to cover for a state capitalism? You decide.

“We organize ourselves in the communities. In Bolivia there must be around ten thousand communities, and in each community there is a union of campesino workers. Each union has a base that is associated first on a provincial level, and then on a departmental and national level. The national level is the Sole Union Confederation of Campesino Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB). They are not naturally existing organizations, but organizations that helped allow us to assert our demands and participate in elections. There are several organized sectors with similar structures, such as the teachers, the miners, the indigenous groups, women, factory workers. And we have a mother organization, which is the Bolivian Workers Central (COB). These are the people’s organizations. President Evo Morales has called for strengthening them, since they are the agents driving this process of change.”

The greening of capitalism?

by Heather Rogers from International Socialist Review. The author travels the globe to get a closer look at the operations of "green capitalism" as practiced by major corporations and uncovers some startling contradictions in their claims. And given the present legal and economic constraints imposed upon local organic farmers under capitalist controlled governments, she uncovers evidence that questions their sustainability. Given that so much of the literature coming from ecological sources that either tout "green" capitalism or are reluctant to challenge their claims, this author's quest for truth is very refreshing.

Organic farming has sold out and lost its way

by Julian Rose, an early pioneer of organic farming, from Ecologist. This organic farmer offers his views on a "green" capitalism that has co-opted the organic food market.

What ‘organic food’ and its localised market was in those days bears little resemblance to ‘the industry’ that it is today: an industry that is heavily and centrally policed, has a compendium of regulations and is ‘big business’ on a global scale. In fact, much of the ‘organic’ produce shipped in from around the world and across the UK today carries no sense of connection with its geography or its farmers. It is as anonymous as the majority of conventional chemically produced foods, as dull in flavour and as lacking in nutritional vitality. What’s more it belongs in the category of ‘high food miles’ heavy ecological footprint produce, exceeding the 3,000 kilometre average shopping basket once identified as the UK norm. Due to the need to carry a lot of information, it is also responsible for an excessive level of packaging – most of which is non biodegradeable.

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster. This is an 11,000 plus word document that provides the often missing argument and analysis from environmental discussions: that we must replace, not merely reform, the economic system of capitalism if the human race is going to survive. They examine the driving forces of this system that it is driving us to our own extinction.

The IMF Flag Reads: Economic Slavery

Here is the translation of the article in Greek daily newspaper “Eleftherotypia” on Friday, April 2, 2010.

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...there is not a single example of its [IMF] having a limited involvement in any country in which it was called into operation. It...went in and imposed austerity measures which benefited the Wall Street banks. It will enslave you economically.

Big Government, Budget Deficits, Entitlements and the “Centrist” Ploy

by Edward S. Herman from Global Research (originally from ZNet Magazine). 

There were no Tea Party-like campaigns to protest this growth in government and attack on constitutional (and state’s) rights in the Bush years because the growing and encroaching government was in the right hands. It is only when it gets into the wrong hands and there is the threat that government will serve the undeserving poor, or even the middle class, and neglect the corporate community and National Security that business, the military-industrial complex (MIC), and right-wing protest cadres get agitated about Big Government. I refer back to my old definition of Conservatism: “An ideology whose central tenet is that The Government Is Too Big, except for the police and military establishment.”

How Washington Abetted the Bank Job

from the NY Times. The title of the article frames the issue as malpractice of government regulatory agencies. This tends to obscure the fact that such agencies function at the behest of the ruling class embedded in the financial institutions. As the authors admit:

Our bank regulators were not, as they would like us to believe, outside the disco, deaf and blind to the revelry going on within. They were bouncing to the same beat [as the banks].

 Nevertheless, the article does put the lie to the claims of Bernanke and others who deny any responsibility for what happened.

Well, the truth is this: The collapse of Enron back in 2001 revealed that the biggest financial institutions, here and abroad, were busy creating products whose sole purpose was to help companies magically transform their debt into capital or revenue.

Preparing for a Post Peak Life (videos and other material)

from Post Peak Living. An excellent website devoted to educating people on the post peak energy crisis and preparing for it. The first video lasts 20:30m, the second and third videos last 9:35m and 20:13m respectively. Then there is a lot of other information on the website. The subject is an enormously complicated one, but the site has a lot of information with which to begin and further our education. However it should be noted that the videos, and I suspect the other material on this site, do not deal with the other components of, what I and others see as, the multi-dimensional crisis--climate change and the collapse of capitalist economies. On the other hand, their (and our) solutions to the peak oil crisis can greatly contribute to the solution of the other crises.

The grand alliance for the commons: the task of 21 cy. politics

by Michel Bauwens from P2P Foundation. 

The peer to peer moment in history brings one more emerging social movement in this potential grand alliance: the movement for the free flow of knowledge, culture and innovation. This is the contribution of the free culture movement, of the open access movement, of computer hackers, and many other actors tackling artificial scarcity.

Words! Words! Words! The shackles that bind the US to Israel

by Sonja Karkar from Redress. 

As has happened innumerable times in the past, the reprimanding words of US emissaries and government officials are always quickly followed up with other words to reassure Israel of “the unbreakable bond” between the two countries, and more significantly, actions that belie the reprimands. In the midst of all the recent hoo-ha about chilling relations, a 210-million-dollar arms deal with Israel, paid for by US military aid, nevertheless went ahead with an estimated massive 3-billion-dollar F-35 warplane deal still in the offing.

Funny how, in contrast to any kind of health care legislation for the American people, there is never any debate about military and other billions of assistance to Israel. Such bills always sail through Congress without a murmur in the media.

 

The pagan roots of Easter

from the Observer. 

From Ishtar to Eostre, the roots of the resurrection story go deep. We should embrace the pagan symbolism of Easter.