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Dear Sirs:
Trudy Rubin claims that “Brexit would be a huge step backward”, but she never explains why. Oh, she does correlate the growth of the EU regulatory state with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this is not cause-and-effect. The Soviet Union collapsed because NATO stood guard over the Western democracies until the internal cancer of communism had destroyed the Russian economy. Even Ms. Rubin admits that Europeans resent its (the EU’s) massive bureaucracy, myriad regulations, financial disasters, and open border policies. Furthermore, she admits that Brexit probably would lead to the dismantling of the EU. Is this not democracy in action? The Europeans, of all people, understand the dangers of large, undemocratic, centralized, bureaucratic states, of which the EU is just the latest incarnation.

Patrick Barron

Washington’s Dog-Whistle Diplomacy Supports Attempted Coup in Brazil

April 25, 2016

Washington’s Dog-Whistle Diplomacy Supports Attempted Coup in Brazil

The day after the impeachment vote in the lower house of Brazil’s congress, one of the leaders of the effort, Senator Aloysio Nunes, traveled to Washington, D.C. He had scheduled meetings with a number of U.S. officials, including Thomas Shannon at the State Department.

Shannon has a relatively low profile in the media, but he is the number three official in the U.S. State Department. Even more significantly in this case, he is the most influential person in the State Department on U.S. policy in Latin America. He will be the one recommending to Secretary of State John Kerry what the U.S. should do as the ongoing efforts to remove President Dilma Rousseff proceed.

Shannon’s willingness to meet with Nunes just days after the impeachment vote sends a powerful signal that Washington is on board with the opposition in this venture. How do we know this? Very simply, Shannon did not have to have this meeting. If he wanted to show that Washington was neutral in this fierce and deeply polarizing political conflict, he would not have a meeting with high-profile protagonists on either side, especially at this particular moment.

Shannon’s meeting with Nunes is an example of what could be called “dog-whistle diplomacy.” It barely shows up on the radar of the media reporting on the conflict, and therefore is unlikely to generate backlash. But all the major actors know exactly what it means. That is why Nunes’ party, the Social Democracy Party (PSDB), publicized the meeting.

To illustrate with another example of dog-whistle diplomacy: On June 28, 2009, the Honduran military kidnapped the country’s president, Mel Zelaya, and flew him out of the country. The White House statement in response did not condemn this coup, but rather called on “all political and social actors in Honduras” to respect democracy.

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

Democracy in Action: Arrests at Capitol Building Protests Top 1,400

April 18, 2016

Democracy in Action: Arrests at Capitol Building Protests Top 1,400

Via Twitter

Protesters have made their voices heard in Washington D.C. Over the past week, more than 1,400 people were arrested at the Capitol for participating in the Democracy Awakening and Democracy Spring movements.

Members of Democracy Spring began protesting corporate financial influence in politics several weeks ago. They were soon joined by members of Democracy Awakening, who protested discriminatory voting laws.

USA Today reported Monday on the protests:

More arrests are expected Monday, the final day of protests when the focus of the non-violent protests turn to voting rights and timely consideration of … Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court. U.S. Capitol Police have arrested more than 900 protesters through Saturday. …

Those arrested were charged with violating a D.C. statute prohibiting “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding,” which are misdemeanors, said police spokeswoman Eva Malecki. All of those arrested were Democracy Spring-related participants. Most were processed and then released on the scene.

On Sunday, Malecki said demonstrators remained “orderly and respectful,” just as they had through the previous week.

Democracy Awakening urged their protesters to wear their “Sunday best” and to bring $50 in cash in anticipation of the planned arrests Monday.

Groups including the NAACP, Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Every Voice participated in the protests. Actress Rosario Dawson, who has been vocal about income inequality, was arrested Friday afternoon. Ben & Jerry’s founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, famous for their political activism as well as their ice cream, were seen stamping bail money with the words “NOT TO BE USED TO BRIBE POLITICIANS.”

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Sierra Club ✔‎@sierraclub

Great pic of Sierra Club pres Aaron Mair getting arrested as part of #democracyawakens this morning! (by @Javier_SC)

12:44 PM – 18 Apr 2016

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

2016: The Year the Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged

April 13, 2016

2016: The Year the Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged

“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.”

– Former President Jimmy Carter

(ANTIMEDIA) Denver, CO — The 2016 election has been a wild ride, with two insurgent grassroots campaigns literally giving the political establishment a run for its money. But as the events of this presidential primary season play out, it’s becoming clear the U.S. election — and even more so, the presidential race — is a big scam being perpetrated on the American people.

Events from the last week have exposed the system as an illusion of choice and a farce. They have reinforced at least one study showing the U.S. is an oligarchy rather than a democratic republic.

The Wyoming democratic caucus took place on Saturday, purportedly to allow voters to have their voices heard in the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders lost the Wyoming caucus by winning it with a 12 percent margin.

Wait, what?

How does one lose by winning 56 percent of the votes? This happens when the political process is, according to the New York Post, “rigged” by superdelegates. The Postsummed up this “strange” phenomenon:

“[U]nder the Democratic Party’s oddball delegate system, Sanders’ winning streak — he has won seven out of the past eight contests — counts for little.

“In fact, despite his win, he splits Wyoming’s 14 pledged delegates 7 to 7 under the caucus calculus.

“Clinton, meanwhile, also gets the state’s four superdelegates — who had already pledged their allegiance to her in January. So despite ‘losing,’ she triumphs 11-7 in the delegate tally.”

Even media pundits on MSNBC openly called the process rigged:

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

Mary Mellor’s “Debt or Democracy”: Why Not Quantitative Easing for People?

April 12, 2016

Mary Mellor’s “Debt or Democracy”: Why Not Quantitative Easing for People?

Although it is widely assumed that governments are the source of all new money – through “printing it” – the so-called private sector is the source of most new money put into circulation. In one of the most successful enclosures of the commons in our time, commercial finance institutions have captured the power to create most new money through their discretionary lending. This power has become so normalized and pervasive that hardly anyone acknowledges the startling fact that commercial lending accounts for more than 95% of “new money” created. Government has in effect surrendered its enormous power to use its money-creating authority for the public good.

Perhaps the leading champion for reforming the current money system is Mary Mellor, emeritus professor at Northumbria University in the UK and author of the recently published, eye-opening book Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice (Pluto Press, 2015, distributed in the US by University of Chicago Press Books).

Mellor recently published an oped piece in The Independent, the British newspaper, that summarizes some of the key themes in her book. Her essay focuses on the “myth of handbag economics” – the idea that government budgets are comparable to household budgets. This distorts our understanding of how the money supply works, says Mellor, and inexorably leads governments to adopt fiscal austerity policies.

The critical political question that is rarely asked, said Mellor at a policy workshop last September, is: Who controls the creation and circulation of money?

She notes that the government, as the sovereign, has the authority to issue new money – an ancient authority known as seignorage. But in practice, governments have surrendered this authority to the commercial banking sector, whose lending creates nearly all of the money in circulation as debt.

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

From Democracy to Pathocracy: The Rise of the Political Psychopath

March 31, 2016

From Democracy to Pathocracy: The Rise of the Political Psychopath

“Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this… That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow — but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one.”—Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and former instructor at Harvard Medical School

Twenty years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?”

The answer, then and now, remains the same: None.

There is no difference between psychopaths and politicians.

Nor is there much of a difference between the havoc wreaked on innocent lives by uncaring, unfeeling, selfish, irresponsible, parasitic criminals and elected officials who lie to their constituents, trade political favors for campaign contributions, turn a blind eye to the wishes of the electorate, cheat taxpayers out of hard-earned dollars, favor the corporate elite, entrench the military industrial complex, and spare little thought for the impact their thoughtless actions and hastily passed legislation might have on defenseless citizens.

Psychopaths and politicians both have a tendency to be selfish, callous, remorseless users of others, irresponsible, pathological liars, glib, con artists, lacking in remorse and shallow.

Charismatic politicians, like criminal psychopaths, exhibit a failure to accept responsibility for their actions, have a high sense of self-worth, are chronically unstable, have socially deviant lifestyle, need constant stimulation, have parasitic lifestyles and possess unrealistic goals.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans.

Political psychopaths are all largely cut from the same pathological cloth, brimming with seemingly easy charm and boasting calculating minds.

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

Erdogan: Democracy, Freedom Have ‘Absolutely No Value Any Longer’

March 18, 2016

Erdogan: Democracy, Freedom Have ‘Absolutely No Value Any Longer’

Vows to Turn Military on Political Opposition

Concerns about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian leanings have been at the fore in the nation’s political dialogue since he assumed the presidency, and appear to have been well founded, as in a televised speech today he declared “democracy,, freedom, and the rule of law have absolutely no value any longer.”

Rather, Turkey is about one thing in 2016, and that’s wars, with Erdogan insisting anyone who supports his wars is a friend and anyone “on the opposite side are our enemy,” insisting the nation will treat them all with an iron fist.

Erdogan also vowed to turn the nation’s military against the opposition HDP, which opposes the war against the Kurds, saying that “wherever you run, our soldiers, police, and village guards will find you there and do what is necessary.” Erdogan had previously pushed for the HDP’s parliamentarians to lose their legal immunity so they could be charged as terrorists.

“I no longer see as legitimate political actors the members of a party which is operating as a branch of the terrorist organization,” Erdogan reiterated today, demanding parliament take quick action against opposition MPs from the Kurdish-dominated southeast.

Erdogan has increasingly sought to charge political opponents as terrorists, and has in the past few weeks not only arrested academics as “terrorists” for their positions on his government, but nationalized the nation’s largest newspaper for publishing articles critical of his ruling party.

Exposing the Libyan Agenda: A Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails

March 14, 2016

Exposing the Libyan Agenda: A Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton’s recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.

The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a “victory lap.” “We came, we saw, he died!” she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, “as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain.”

US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, “the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as ‘thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,’ and ‘kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant’.”

Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy.

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

Rome & the Birth of the United States

March 10, 2016

Rome & the Birth of the United States

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Are you saying they never intended to create a democracy since the founding fathers created the Electoral College?

ANSWER: Correct. We have a republic and not a democracy, despite the fact they call this a democracy. You vote for delegates to represent you. The rules allow them to defeat any public choice and claim that is the law. At the time of the founding, the popular research that was emerging had to do with Rome. Above is an Order of the Cincinnati founded by George Washington who was inspired by the Roman dictator Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519–430 BC), the aristocrat and statesman who served as consul in 460 BC and dictator in 458 BC and 439 BC, which made him a model of integrity and virtue. The Romans regarded Cincinnatus as a hero. When Rome was invaded, he was called to serve Rome as dictator, which was an office for one year. He defended the nation and then resigned two weeks later after defeating the rival tribes of the Aequians, Sabines, and Volscians. His immediate resignation of power demonstrated his integrity and lack of personal ambition. Washington would not accept the office of president until he had resigned as military leader and returned to private life. The Founding Fathers were deeply impressed with the battle of Rome against its Tarquin king that gave birth to a republic. Unfortunately, as we are experiencing now, all republics devolve into oligarchies.

Ben Franklin on one occasion, was dining at a Paris restaurant and learned that Edward Gibbon, the British historian of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” was there as well. Franklin invited Gibbon to his table, but Gibbon refused, remarking that since he was loyal to George III, he wouldn’t speak with a rebel like Franklin.

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

Pictorial Essay: Message to the Voting Cattle

March 9, 2016

Pictorial Essay: Message to the Voting Cattle

Our own awesome ‘wip’ posted this video in another thread, and asked me to listen to it. I did, and it’s freaking fabulous. I agree with about 95% of it. It explains as well as I’ve ever heard, why I say we should all vote for Candidate Nobody.

Here is the video:

Of course, not 1 in 20 will listen to a twenty-minute video, even here. So, I transcribed it. And, added some pictures for your viewing pleasure. You should be able to read it in under ten minutes. I did this for you curs and Trump-eteers. And, to send out to my brain dead friends and family, which are Legion.

============================================

You cannot begin to imagine in how many ways the world is the opposite of what you have been taught to believe.

You see the guy who sells drugs to willing customers so he can feed his family as the scum of the earth, while you see the hypocrite who gives away stolen money in the name of government, as a saint.

You see the guy who tries to avoid been robbed by the federal thugs as a crook and a tax cheat, but see as virtuous the politician who gives away the same stolen loot to people whom it does not belong.

every-51-seconds-there-is-a-marijuana-arrest

You see the cop as a good guy when he drags a man away from his friends and family and throws him in prison for ten years for smoking a leaf [every 51 seconds in Amerika]. And you see anyone who defends himself from such barbaric fascism as the lowest form of life … a cop-killer. In reality, most drug dealers are more virtuous than any government social worker, and prostitutes have far less to be ashamed of than political whores, because they trade only with what’s rightfully theirs, and only with those who want to trade with them.

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

Doug Casey’s Top Five Reasons Not to Vote

February 27, 2016

Doug Casey’s Top Five Reasons Not to Vote

Doug Casey’s Top Five Reasons Not to Vote Democracy is vastly overrated.

It’s not like the consensus of a bunch of friends agreeing to see the same movie. Most often, it boils down to a kinder and gentler variety of mob rule, dressed in a coat and tie. The essence of positive values like personal liberty, wealth, opportunity, fraternity, and equality lies not in democracy, but in free minds and free markets where government becomes trivial. Democracy focuses people’s thoughts on politics, not production; on the collective, not on their own lives.

Although democracy is just one way to structure a state, the concept has reached cult status; unassailable as political dogma. It is, as economist Joseph Schumpeter observed, “a surrogate faith for intellectuals deprived of religion.” Most of the founders of America were more concerned with liberty than democracy. Tocqueville saw democracy and liberty as almost polar opposites.

Democracy can work when everyone concerned knows one another, shares the same values and goals, and abhors any form of coercion. It is the natural way of accomplishing things among small groups.

But once belief in democracy becomes a political ideology, it’s necessarily transformed into majority rule. And, at that point, the majority (or even a plurality, a minority, or an individual) can enforce their will on everyone else by claiming to represent the will of the people.

The only form of democracy that suits a free society is economic democracy in the laissez-faire form, where each person votes with his money for what he wants in the marketplace. Only then can every individual obtain what he wants without compromising the interests of any other person. That’s the polar opposite of the “economic democracy” of socialist pundits who have twisted the term to mean the political allocation of wealth.

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

Chomsky Wants You to Wake Up from the American Dream

February 18, 2016

Chomsky Wants You to Wake Up from the American Dream

If you’ve just seen Michael Moore’s movie and are wondering how in the world the United States got diverted into the slow lane to hell, go watch Noam Chomsky’s movie. If you’ve just seen Noam Chomsky’s movie and are wondering whether the human species is really worth saving, go see Michael Moore’s movie. If you haven’t seen either of these movies, please tell me that you haven’t been watching presidential debates. As either of these movies would be glad to point out to you, that’s NOT HOW YOU CHANGE ANYTHING.

“Filmed over four years, these are his last long-form documentary interviews,” Chomsky’s film, Requiem for the American Dream, says of him at the start, rather offensively. Why? He seems perfectly able to give interviews and apparently gave those in this film for four years. And of course he acquired the insights he conveys over many more years than that. They are not new insights to activists, but they would be like revelations from another world to a typical U.S. resident.

Chomsky explains how concentrated wealth creates concentrated power, which legislates further concentration of wealth, which then concentrates more power in a vicious cycle. He lists and elaborates on ten principles of the concentration of wealth and power — principles that the wealthy of the United States have acted intensely on for 40 years or more.

1. Reduce Democracy. Chomsky finds this acted on by the very “founding fathers” of the United States, in the creation of the U.S. Senate, and in James Madison’s statement during debate over the U.S. Constitution that the new government would need to protect the wealthy from too much democracy. Chomsky finds the same theme in Aristotle but with Aristotle proposing to reduce inequality, while Madison proposed to reduce democracy.

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

Turkey’s Revival of a Dirty ‘Deep State’

February 11, 2016

Turkey’s Revival of a Dirty ‘Deep State’

Exclusive: NATO keeps backing Turkey, one of its members, despite its aid to the Islamic State and other jihadists fighting Syria’s secular government — and even though Turkey’s erratic President Erdogan may be leading NATO into a risky showdown with Syria’s Russian allies, writes Jonathan Marshall.

Turkey’s embattled President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is resurrecting the “deep state” alliance of secret intelligence operatives and extreme rightists that he so notably challenged just a few years ago while putting hundreds of military officers and other opponents on trial for conspiring against Turkish democracy. In a remarkable about-face, Erdogan is now emulating the ruthless tactics of previous authoritarian rulers at the expense of Turkey’s evolution as a liberal state.

Like many of his secular predecessors, Erdogan has reverted to waging an all-out war against radical Kurdish separatists, the PKK. He is dramatically expanding the once discredited National Intelligence Agency, which in years past recruited Mafia criminals and right-wing terrorists to murder Kurdish leaders, left-wing activists and intellectuals. And he appears to be forging an alliance with ultranationalist members of the National Action Party (MHP), who supplied many of the ruthless killers for those murderous operations.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

These developments should alarm U.S. and European leaders. They are ominously anti-democratic trends in a country that once promised to meld the best of Western and Near Eastern traditions. They are also helping to drive Turkey’s secret alliances with Islamist extremists in Syria and its violent opposition to Kurdish groups that are leading the resistance to ISIS in that country.

Erdogan successfully cultivated a democratic image after his moderate Islamic party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), gained a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the November 2002 elections. Then in 2008, with public support for his party sagging, Erdogan oversaw the mass indictment of more than 200 former military officers, academics, journalists, businessmen and other opponents of the AKP.

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

USA: Where Politicians Are Free to Rig the Game

February 2, 2016

USA: Where Politicians Are Free to Rig the Game

As to be expected, the Republicans are up to dirty tricks to try to prevent Trump from being the candidate. After the Iowa Caucus, reports are surfacing from volunteers who say that their precincts were being combined into one large mob to push the vote to Cruz. Iowa was always a rigged game, and generally only 1 in 6 people eligible to vote bother to show up. The political elite have typically tried to manipulate the election results, showing that Joseph Stalin was not so off base by saying voters never decide elections.

Reports are coming in stating that combining precincts neutralized the “caucus” process entirely. Rep. Steven King was in on it, tweeting that Carson was out of the race, which was not true. Ben Carson is outraged.

Trump has a long, hard, road ahead and they will do everything possible to rob the election from him in the primary. If they cannot rob the election from him, he will be assassinated.

Democracy Is No Better Than a Monarchy… or a Dictatorship

January 26, 2016

Democracy Is No Better Than a Monarchy… or a Dictatorship

“Flaming Lunatic”

MUMBAI, India – The Dow managed a small bounce late last week. The bounce came as crude oil gushed higher, back above $30 a barrel. What next? We wait to find out…

We had dinner in London last night, before boarding a plane for India.

“A large part of the U.S. population must feel threatened by any kind of intelligence,” said a voice at a nearby table. A group of Englishmen were discussing U.S. politics. We eavesdropped.

“Can you imagine? That Trump… he seems like a flaming lunatic. His campaign is nothing but telling voters that he’s a good negotiator. He thinks it’s all just making deals with people. All that matters is getting a good deal.

palin-endorses-trump-cartoon-luckovich Implanting a thought…

“Now he thinks people will vote for him because he got an endorsement from that total idiot Palin. What is the matter with Americans? How did they get to be so stupid?”

We almost got up from our chair. It was time to straighten these Brits out. But what would we say? Besides, it is a fair question: How did Americans come to be so stupid?

Of course, the same question could be asked of almost any nation. And it being Friday as we write this, and we being laid low by an epizootic and airline travel, we dug into our archives for an answer…

The American Brain

[Ed note: Originally published on November 5, 2004]

“There is no point in asking why Americans get caught up in the presidential election ritual, even when the campaigns are obviously manipulative and the candidates are far from the best the country has to offer. […] All rituals rest upon faith, not logic; all involve suspension of disbelief; and all seem as reasonable to the faithful as they seem absurd to unbelievers.”

– Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency

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

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