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Branko Milanovic has written a response to my argument. As I read it, I was struck by two things – both quite significant.

First, Branko now seems to accept the science on how “green growth” is not a thing, and has backed off his assumption that endless growth is (a) possible, and (b) something we should promote. Or at least he has chosen not to defend his earlier claims on this matter. This is quite a shift.

Second, Branko does not insist that growth is necessary in rich nations. In fact, he seems to agree that we can maintain well-being in rich nations while reducing material consumption. And he accepts the notion that we can accomplish this by shifting to a different kind of economy, along the lines of my suggestions. “I do not think that this program is illogical,” he says.

So far, then, we’re on the same page.

But Branko doubles down on one bit of his earlier argument: that degrowth is not politically feasible. “It is just so enormous, outside of anything that we normally can expect to implement, that it verges, I am afraid, on absurdity,” he writes. He claims that people are so penetrated by the ideology of competitive consumerism that they would never voluntarily walk away from the system. So it will be impossible to put degrowth into practice in a democracy.

I do not disagree with Branko that the task is enormous; I have complete empathy with this perspective. Indeed, it is the single greatest problem of our century – how to enable human flourishing while reducing emissions and material throughput – and it demands our total focus. But let me offer three thoughts that give me hope.

1. People are not just consumption bots.

Branko advances a dystopic vision of people who identify totally with the extrinsic values of competitive consumerism and growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the Buildup to World War I Being Repeated for WWIII?

December 28, 2017

Is the Buildup to World War I Being Repeated for WWIII?

The great scholar of Turkish history, Taner Akçam, has described today’s geopolitics — the alliances and hostilities toward possibly another World War — as being not ideologically based like WWII, but instead greed-based (empire-grabbing) like WWI:

These are wars of power, influence, and control over the use of Middle Eastern energy resources and the “security issues” related to it. It is quite obvious that the sides in this war are not “those who want democracy and human rights” versus “those in favor of evil dictatorships.”

The axes that are now starting to take shape are proof of this: Saudi Arabia and Israel – openly supported by the United States (and likely Egypt over time) – are forming one alliance; Russia, Iran, and Turkey are establishing another.

A tableau reminiscent of 1918 power blocs.

Today’s alliances are modernized versions of WWI.

World War I was a mess of alliances on each of its two sides, the Central Powers, versus the Entente Powers. The aristocracies that were on the side of the Central Powers included (among others) the following: Jabal Shammar (Saudi Arabia allied with Turkey); Germany; Austria (including Croatia & Bosnia); Ukraine; Poland; Lithuania; Georgia; Turkey; Italy.

The aristocracies that were on the side of the Entente Powers included: China; Japan; Czechoslovakia; Russia; Serbia; UK; Canada; US.

Today, we instead have the West: US; UK; Saudi Arabia (UK-allied ‘Arab Revolt’ that ended in 1925 with Ibn Saud’s victory); Israel; EU led by Germany; Ukraine; Japan; South Korea; versus the East: Russia; Iran; Turkey; China.

An odd-man-out is North Korea, which will be supported by China if it stops developing its nuclear program beyond what’s needed for its self-protection (protection against repeating what had happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi), but which will be opposed by China if it develops an aggressive, conquest-oriented, imperialistic, nuclear capability (which would reduce security not only for Japan and South Korea, but also for China).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Americans Are Only Now Beginning to Learn that We Live in a Dictatorship

December 22, 2017

Americans Are Only Now Beginning to Learn that We Live in a Dictatorship

The first time when it became clear to me that I live in a dictatorship was in 2014 when reading, prior to its publication, the landmark (and still the only) scientific empirical study to address the question as to whether or not the United States federal Government is, authentically, a democracy — or, whether, alternatively, it’s instead more of a dictatorship, than a democracy. This study documented conclusively that America’s Government is the latter.

So, on 14 April 2014, I headlined “US Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy, Says Scientific Study”. Subsequently, my editor linked it to the published article at the Journal where the study was published, Perspectives on Politics, from the American Political Science Association, and the full study can be read there.

On 30 April 2014, was posted at youtube the video that remains, to this day, the best and clearest ordinary-language summary of what that badly-written academic study proved. See its explanation here:

That summary’s title is also better than the title of my article was; this excellent video headlines “Corruption is Legal in America”, which is another accurate conclusion from that study. Every American citizen should know what this 6-minute video says and shows from the academic study, because it explains how the super-rich, as a class, steal from everyone else (everyone who isn’t super-rich): They do it through corruption.

Then, that same person who created the video did another presentation of it, but this time with text accompanying the video, and this article was titled “One graph shows how the rich control American politics”, and it indeed showed how.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was

December 16, 2017

The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was

Photo by Daniel Huizinga | CC BY 2.0

One of the most steadfast beliefs regarding the United States is that it is a democracy. Whenever this conviction waivers slightly, it is almost always to point out detrimental exceptions to core American values or foundational principles. For instance, aspiring critics frequently bemoan a “loss of democracy” due to the election of clownish autocrats, draconian measures on the part of the state, the revelation of extraordinary malfeasance or corruption, deadly foreign interventions, or other such activities that are considered undemocratic exceptions. The same is true for those whose critical framework consists in always juxtaposing the actions of the U.S. government to its founding principles, highlighting the contradiction between the two and clearly placing hope in its potential resolution.

The problem, however, is that there is no contradiction or supposed loss of democracy because the United States simply never was one. This is a difficult reality for many people to confront, and they are likely more inclined to immediately dismiss such a claim as preposterous rather than take the time to scrutinize the material historical record in order to see for themselves. Such a dismissive reaction is due in large part to what is perhaps the most successful public relations campaign in modern history. What will be seen, however, if this record is soberly and methodically inspected, is that a country founded on elite, colonial rule based on the power of wealth—a plutocratic colonial oligarchy, in short—has succeeded not only in buying the label of “democracy” to market itself to the masses, but in having its citizenry, and many others, so socially and psychologically invested in its nationalist origin myth that they refuse to hear lucid and well-documented arguments to the contrary.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sarnia-born professor looks to future

December 1, 2017

Sarnia-born professor looks to future

(Submitted photo)

The world is racing towards a large-scale impending collapse, and if humans want to avoid a future filled with social, political and environmental catastrophe, they would do well to devolve and democratize society’s decision-making process, currently in the hands of a select few.

So said Sarnia-born author Kevin MacKay, during a presentation at the Sarnia Public Library on Thursday.

The Mohawk College sociology professor and union activist touched on a number of themes related to the collapse of industrial society and also the shifts needed to avert such a fate. Those subjects are covered in MacKay’s recently released book, Radical Transformation: Oligarchy, Collapse and the Crisis of Civilization.

Six years in the making, the book is a product of research, reading and conversations with experts in a variety of fields, as well as activists in several grassroots movements, MacKay said.

With a world that appears to be veering off course, he said Radical Transformation is a guidebook to understand why society seems to be becoming more chaotic. It’s also a book of solutions, he said, pointing the way to a better, more egalitarian and just future.

“My book deals with some discourse that’s emerged recently – there are people, very knowledgeable people, who are basically talking about the threat that our society could actually collapse, that our civilization is going to hit the wall,” he said. “There are a number of scientists and ecologists who have been saying that over the past several years, so my book is looking at this idea: are we in fact driving industrial civilization off a cliff? I explore the crises we’re facing, whether that’s in the ecological, political or economic areas. And then I end up looking at what we can do to change course.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sweden’s New Government Censorship

November 30, 2017

Sweden’s New Government Censorship

In the report, placing the word “refugees” in quotation marks, as well as “unaccompanied children,” is supposedly an expression of “hate”. (Many, if not most, migrants classified as “unaccompanied children” have turned out to be grown men).
Government agencies are going out of their way to protect the “integrity” of possible jihadists out of concern for a “democratic society” — the society that these jihadists want to subvert and destroy — and are using their government platform to smear non-mainstream media for matters as small as the use of quotation marks. What about the “integrity” of Swedish citizens and their right to not be blown up?
Why is a municipality sponsoring an organization that supports terrorists and even awarding it prizes? It appears that glorifying terrorism is acceptable in Sweden, so long as its victims are the Israeli children. Far from countering “hate”, Sweden appears to be doing all it can to strengthen Muslim extremism.

The Swedish government is now officially questioning free speech. A government agency has declared so-called Swedish “new media” — news outlets that refuse to subscribe to the politically correct orthodoxies of the mainstream media — a possible threat to democracy. In a government report, tellingly called “The White Hatred” written by Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut (Total Defense Research Institute), a government agency under the Swedish Ministry of Defense, Swedish new media such as Samhällsnytt (formerly known as Avpixlat), Nyheter Idag and Nya Tider are lumped together with neo-Nazi media such as Nordfront.

“Hate” is defined broadly to include violent extremism, “hateful expressions”, jokes, internet trolling and even the use of certain quotation marks. For instance, in the report, placing the word “refugees” in quotation marks, as well as “unaccompanied children,” is supposedly an expression of “hate”. (Many, if not most, migrants classified as “unaccompanied children” have turned out to be grown men).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Neocon Wars Open Pandora’s Box in Europe

November 28, 2017

US Neocon Wars Open Pandora’s Box in Europe

Photo by DAVID HOLT | CC BY 2.0

To some on the geopolitical stage, “stability” is something like a sacred word.

Of course, the devil is in the details. For decades, the word was used by successive US governments in a sense which did not preclude a certain number of wars – as long as those wars, whether officially declared or merely approved by an American President under the terms of some special Congressional authorization such as the one which is behind most current US military activity, were begun and carried out on American terms.

“Stability” was and remains the justification employed in defending United States support for some truly nasty governments, kings and dictators. Their professed opposition to communism or terrorism – as defined by the US government, of course – has been the primary qualification for that support. Although there was often talk of democracy, cosmetic moves purported to lead in that direction would usually suffice to sell the relationship to Congress, and in more than a few cases even the cosmetic mask is absent: it is simply asserted that the nation in question is a crucial strategic domino, the fall of which would put the entire world in jeopardy, and our noble principles must needs be temporarily suspended. Some of these temporary suspensions have lasted for decades now.

The dreaded scourge of instability, however, has now reached the heart of the empire.

In Germany (Western Europe’s biggest economy, as a result of massive American efforts to rebuild it as a protegee bulwark against the Soviet Union after World War II), preliminary negotiations designed to enable the formation of a new governing coalition broke down this week.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US State Department Admits Plans To Meddle In Hungary’s Democracy

November 25, 2017

US State Department Admits Plans To Meddle In Hungary’s Democracy

As we noted last week, hypocrisy may be the only consistent guiding principle of US foreign policy.

The Rex Tillerson State Department will pump $700,000 into Hungarian media to remove Viktor Orban.

TheDuran’s Alex Christoforou writes:

When another nation state uses media to communicate it’s point of view, its flagged as a foreign agent, a “bad actor”, and often declared as an “act of war (i.e. RT).

When the US government uses its petrodollar strength to insert its agenda into another country’s politics it’s branded “democracy and human rights programming”.

According to The Gateway Pundit, Rex Tillerson State Department is spending over $700,000 to defeat PM Orban in Hungary.

The deep state is vehemently opposed to Orban’s nation statism…his conservatism and his stance against open borders. For the neo-liberal cabal under the watchful eye of George Soros, Orban must go.

In his speech accepting his party’s endorsement, Orban said he was fighting against “globalist” views that threaten the EU’s Christian nations and their moral foundations, for which he blamed Soros.

“Some countries in Europe decided to transcend Christianity and their own national character,” he said. “They want to step into a post-Christian, post-national era.”

“To execute Soros’s plan they want to root out governments which represent national interests around Europe, and that includes us,” he said. “They act like Soviet agitprop agents once did. We old war-horses know them by their smell.”

Breitbart.com reports…

The U.S. State Department has courted controversy by announcing it will plough $700,000 into Hungarian media, angering the country’s anti-globalist, conservative government.

The funding was announced by U.S. Chargé d‘Affaires David Kostelancik, who has previously appeared to openly criticise the Trump administration by alluding to “apparent inconsistencies in [U.S.] foreign policy” and remarking that “not every criticism of the government is ‘fake news’.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The End of the Age of Benevolence

November 25, 2017

The End of the Age of Benevolence

The history of democracy, Marxism and feminism is the history of the snake, which, being hungry for more, stalks its own tail and consumes itself.

Some evenings I sit on the sofa in the family room with my teenage daughter and watch a TV program with her. I leave the choice of the show to her, it matters little to me, and when she finds something she likes she sits next to me, puts her head on my shoulder, and snuggles up for the hour it takes to watch whatever it is she’s chosen.

It’s our time.

Occasionally we’ll sneak in another twenty or thirty minutes to the objection of her mother but I like my time with her so I put up with the raised eyebrows and the, “She’s got school tomorrow,” scoldings. It’s important to me that she knows I love her, that I want to spend time with her and that she feels safe when she is with me. Someday, when she is a grown woman I want her to find a man that will take care of her and protect her like I do. I expect no less from a suitor and neither should she.

There will be women who read this who will object to my stance. They will say, “She doesn’t need a man to feel safe or validated or content,” but I would disagree. When she gets older she’ll need a good man, not just any man, and that’s as true today as much as it was ten years, twenty years, fifty years, one hundred years and even one thousand years ago. And it will become even more so as time goes on.

Indeed, we have reached peak denial in our civilization and whether we like it or not reality is about to make a come back.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pictorial: American Animosity Ambling Amuck

November 21, 2017

Pictorial: American Animosity Ambling Amuck

This Russia Collusion thing has been going on for one year now. I’m not interested in debating whether or not Trump colluded. I am interested in examining the massive hypocrisy emanating from our government, and on display daily in living color from MSM ~~whores~~, ~~prostitutes~~, ~~traitors~~, teleprompter readers. Who among us Dirt People isn’t amazed that our politicians can feign their fake indignant shock that such a thing could happen …. for, surely, America would never do such a thing!

The fact is that we treat the world like a giant outhouse, a place where we shit upon any nation we choose, at the time of our choosing, and then pretend outrage when they return the favor. Not that there’s anything wrong with this. Because, there isn’t, right? It’s how the world works.

But, the Whores&Pols act as if foreign entanglements should be a pure and noble endeavor when, if fact, it’s a dirty rotten business, played as such by powerful nations. Criticism of Russia, China, etc. has risen to a fever pitch. Meanwhile, they paint America as a friendly bringer of democracy, whose motives are pure as the driven snow, building shining cities on the hill for other countries, and where unicorn farts smell like wildflowers.

Of course, this is all poppycock because making America great again comes at a price.

—– Henry Kissinger said, — “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” (Probably stolen from British PM Benjamin Disreali, who likely stole it from Lord Palmersto)

—– Czar Alexander III said; — “Russia only has two allies: the army and the navy.”

—– De Gaulle said — “a man can have a friend, a nation, never”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Facebook and Google threaten public health – and democracy

November 11, 2017

How Facebook and Google threaten public health – and democracy

The sad truth is that Facebook and Google have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. And this has come at a cost to our health

woman holds smartphone — ‘Substance cannot compete with sensation, which must be amplified constantly, lest consumers get distracted and move on.’ Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In an interview this week with Axios, Facebook’s original president, Sean Parker, admitted that the company intentionally sought to addict users and expressed regret at the damage being inflicted on children.

This admission, by one of the architects of Facebook, comes on the heels of last week’s hearings by Congressional committees about Russian interference in the 2016 election, where the general counsels of Facebook, Alphabet (parent of Google and YouTube), and Twitter attempted to deflect responsibility for manipulation of their platforms.

The term “addiction” is no exaggeration. The average consumer checks his or her smartphone 150 times a day, making more than 2,000 swipes and touches. The applications they use most frequently are owned by Facebook and Alphabet, and the usage of those products is still increasing.

In terms of scale, Facebook and YouTube are similar to Christianity and Islam respectively. More than 2 billion people use Facebook every month, 1.3 billion check in every day. More than 1.5 billion people use YouTube. Other services owned by these companies also have user populations of 1 billion or more.

Facebook and Alphabet are huge because users are willing to trade privacy and openness for “convenient and free.” Content creators resisted at first, but user demand forced them to surrender control and profits to Facebook and Alphabet.

The sad truth is that Facebook and Alphabet have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. They have consciously combined persuasive techniques developed by propagandists and the gambling industry with technology in ways that threaten public health and democracy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Myth of European Democracy: A Shocking Revelation

November 5, 2017

The Myth of European Democracy: A Shocking Revelation

It’s an open secret that the “Soros network” has an extensive sphere of influence in the European Parliament and in other European Union institutions. The list of Soros has been made public recently. The document lists 226 MEPs from all sides of political spectrum, including former President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, seven vice-presidents, and a number of committee heads, coordinators, and quaestors. These people promote the ideas of Soros, such as bringing in more migrants, same-sex marriages, integration of Ukraine into the EU, and countering Russia. There are 751 members of the European Parliament. It means that the Soros friends have more than one third of seats.

George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and the founder and owner of Open Society Foundations NGO, was able to meet with President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker with “no transparent agenda for their closed-door meeting”, and pointed out how EU proposals to redistribute quotas of migrants across the EU are eerily familiar to Soros’s own self-published plan for dealing with the crisis.

The billionaire financier believes that the European Union should receive millions of immigrants from the Middle East and Northern Africa, provide each one with an annual 15,000 EUR in aid, and resettle these migrants in member-states where they do not wish to go and are not necessarily welcome.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has accused the EU of “eating out of the hand” of Soros. He believes that the billionaire open borders campaigner is behind the attacks on Hungary. The reason is the government’s attempts to take legal action over a new law which requires foreign-supported ‘civil society’ organizations — many funded by Soros — to list their big overseas donors in a public register and be transparent about their funding sources in their publications.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That are False

November 5, 2017

Democratic party chairperson Donna Brazile talks with audience members before the debate between Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. (Joe Raedle/Pool via AP)

Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That are False

There is ample talk, particularly of late, about the threats posed by social media to democracy and political discourse. Yet one of the primary ways that democracy is degraded by platforms such and Facebook and Twitter is, for obvious reasons, typically ignored in such discussions: the way they are used by American journalists to endorse factually false claims that quickly spread and become viral, entrenched into narratives, and thus can never be adequately corrected.

The design of Twitter, where many political journalists spend their time, is in large part responsible for this damage. Its space constraints mean that tweeted headlines or tiny summaries of reporting are often assumed to be true with no critical analysis of their accuracy, and are easily spread. Claims from journalists that people want to believe are shared like wildfire, while less popular, subsequent corrections or nuanced debunking are easily ignored. Whatever one’s views are on the actual impact of Twitter Russian bots, surely the propensity of journalistic falsehoods to spread far and wide is at least as significant.

Just in the last week alone, there have been four major factually false claims that have gone viral because journalists on Twitter endorsed and spread them: three about the controversy involving Donna Brazile and the DNC, and one about documents and emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. It’s well worth examining them, both to document what the actual truth is as well as to understand how often and easily this online journalistic misleading occurs:

Viral Falsehood #1: The Clinton/DNC agreement cited by Brazile only applied to the General Election, not the primary.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Ticking a box is no longer an option’: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit.

November 3, 2017

‘Ticking a box is no longer an option’: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit.

David van Reybrouck lives in Brussels, is a pre-historic archaeologist, but works mostly as a literary writer, and as a non-fiction writer. He’s probably best known for his book ‘Congo: the epic history of a people’, for appearing in the film ‘Tomorrow’ (‘Demain’), and for his more recent book ‘Against Elections: the case for democracy’, which is a brilliant read. We met up via Skype, and talked imagination, Brexit, and reimagining how we make decisions together.

I wonder if you had any thoughts on in what ways the current way that we practice democracy in the West diminishes our imagination, maybe particularly in relation to our ability to imagine something other than business as usual?

You could say that the procedures we use today to do democracy have drastically narrowed down the scope of what is politically imaginable. To me, although I’m interested in politics, it’s become quite a bit of a boring game, really. It’s all about winning elections, trying to build a coalition, trying to run a government, or be against the government that is in power. The bickering that is going on is not very rich. The strategies that are being used for political gain and political loss are less interesting than watching the Tour De France on a boring day.

Political journalism very often has come down to a form of sports journalism, really. Like, who has made what manoeuvre and what will it bring to him or to her. The political game as it is being played these days is a pretty boring one, and a pretty predictable one, yes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Eight Catalonia Ministers Jailed, Madrid Seeks European Arrest Warrant for Catalan Leader

November 3, 2017

Eight Catalonia Ministers Jailed, Madrid Seeks European Arrest Warrant for Catalan Leader

Spain, a country that supports a two-state solution in Palestine, detained eight Catalan ministers on trumped up charges of sedition. Prosecutors also seek an arrest warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont.

We all knew it would come down to this: Sacked Catalonia Ministers Held by Madrid Court.

Eight sacked Catalan ministers have been remanded in custody by a Spanish high court judge over the region’s push for independence. Prosecutors had asked the judge to detain eight of the nine former regional government members who turned up for questioning in Madrid.

They are accused of rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds. Prosecutors are also seeking a European Arrest Warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont.

The request also covers four other dismissed Catalan ministers who did not show up in court in Madrid as requested, but have been in Belgium since Monday.

Detained

Former Deputy Vice President Oriol Junqueras
Former Interior Minister Joaquim Forn
Former Foreign Affairs Minister Raül Romeva
Former Justice Minister Carles Mundó
Former Labour Minister Dolors Bassa
Former Government Presidency Councillor Jordi Turull
Former Sustainable Development Minister Josep Rull
Former Culture Minister Meritxell Borras

In a statement broadcast on Catalan TV from an undisclosed location in Belgium, Mr. Puigdemont described the detention of the eight ex-ministers as “an act that breaks with the basic principles of democracy”.

What’s Next?

If Spain’s high court judge issues a warrant, a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) will be sent to Belgian prosecutors, who have 24 hours to decide whether the paperwork is correct. If they do, they then have 15 days to arrest Mr. Puigdemont and the four others. If one or all of them appeals against it, that process could last another 15 days.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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