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.