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Chris Hedges gave this speech Sunday at a Santa Ana, Calif., event sponsored by the Green Party of Orange County.

We live in a revolutionary moment. The disastrous economic and political experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the global marketplace has failed. The promised prosperity that was to have raised the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been exposed as a lie. A tiny global oligarchy has amassed obscene wealth, while the engine of unfettered corporate capitalism plunders resources, exploits cheap, unorganized labor and creates pliable, corrupt governments that abandon the common good to serve corporate profit. The relentless drive by the fossil fuel industry for profits is destroying the ecosystem, threatening the viability of the human species. And no mechanisms to institute genuine reform or halt the corporate assault are left within the structures of power, which have surrendered to corporate control. The citizen has become irrelevant. He or she can participate in heavily choreographed elections, but the demands of corporations and banks are paramount.

History has amply demonstrated that the seizure of power by a tiny cabal, whether a political party or a clique of oligarchs, leads to despotism. Governments that cater exclusively to a narrow interest group and redirect the machinery of state to furthering the interests of that group are no longer capable of responding rationally in times of crisis. Blindly serving their masters, they acquiesce to the looting of state treasuries to bail out corrupt financial houses and banks while ignoring chronic unemployment and underemployment, along with stagnant or declining wages, crippling debt peonage, a collapsing infrastructure, and the millions left destitute and often homeless by deceptive mortgages and foreclosures.

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

UN plan to save Earth is “fig leaf” for Big Business: insiders

September 5, 2015

UN plan to save Earth is “fig leaf” for Big Business: insiders

Why the new Sustainable Development agenda is “fundamentally compromised” by corporate interests

UN records reveal that the intergovernmental body has already marginalised the very groups it claims to be rescuing from poverty, hunger and climate disaster.

At the end of this month, the UN will launch its new 2030 Sustainable Development agenda for “people, planet and prosperity” in New York, where it will be formally adopted by over 150 world leaders.

The culmination of years of consultations between governments, communities and businesses all over the world, there is no doubt that the agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer an unprecedented vision of the interdependence of global social, economic and environmental issues.

But records from the SDG process reveal that insiders at the heart of the UN’s intergovernment engagement negotiations have criticised the international body for pandering to the interests of big business and ignoring recommendations from grassroots stakeholders representing the world’s poor.

Formal statements issued earlier this year as part of the UN’s Post-2015 Intergovernmental Negotiations on the SDGs, and published by the UN Sustainable Development Division, show that UN ‘Major Groups’ representing indigenous people, civil society, workers, young people and women remain deeply concerned by the general direction of the SDG process — whereas corporate interests from the rich, industrialised world have viewed the process favourably.

Big business

Among the ‘Major Groups’ engaged in the UN’s SDG process is ‘Business and Industry.’ Members of this group include fossil fuel companies like Statoil USA and Tullow Oil, multinational auto parts manufacturer Bridgestone Corporation, global power management firm Eaton Corporation, agribusiness conglomerate Monsanto, insurance giant Thamesbank, financial services major Bank of America, and hundreds of others from Coca Cola to Walt Disney to Dow Chemical.

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

Ayn Rand & Murray Rothbard: Diverse Champions of Liberty

August 29, 2015

Ayn Rand & Murray Rothbard: Diverse Champions of Liberty

Differences and Similarities

No one should attempt to treat Ayn Rand and Murray N. Rothbard as uncomplicated and rather similar defenders of the free society although they have more in common than many believe. As just one example, neither was a hawk when it comes to deploying military power abroad.* There is evidence, too, that both considered it imprudent for the US government to be entangled in international affairs, such as fighting dictators who were no threat to America. Even their lack of enthusiasm for entering WW II could be seen as quite similar.

Ayn Rand, famed writer and founder of the Objectivist movement
Photo credit: Cornell Capa / Magnum

And so far as their underlying philosophical positions are concerned, they both can be regarded as Aristotelians. In matters of economics they were unwavering supporters of the fully free market capitalist system, although while Rand didn’t find corporations per se objectionable, arguably Rothbard had some problems with corporate commerce, especially as it manifest itself in the 20th century. One sphere in which they took very different positions, at least at first glance, is whether government is a bona fide feature of a genuinely free country. Rand thought it is, Rothbard thought it wasn’t. Yet the reason Rothbard opposed government was that it depended on taxation, something Rand also opposed, so even here where the difference between them appears to be quite stark, they were closer than one might think.

RothbardChalkboard Murray Rothbard, introducing his students to French economist Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (widely regarded as a “proto-Austrian” today)
Photo credit: Roberto Losada Maestre

When intellectuals such as Rand and Rothbard have roughly the same political-economic position, it isn’t that surprising that they and their followers would stress the difference between them instead of the similarities. Moreover, in this case both had a similar explosive personality, with powerful likes and dislikes not just in fundamentals but also in what may legitimately be considered incidentals–music, poetry, novels, movies and so forth.

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

The Pentagon Creates Partnership with Apple to Develop Wearable Tech

August 29, 2015

The Pentagon Creates Partnership with Apple to Develop Wearable Tech

Screen Shot 2015-08-28 at 10.49.50 AM

Last week, in the post JP Morgan Hires Recently Retired U.S. General, Raymond T. Odierno, I made the following observation:

How can you ensure that the interests of TBTF Wall Street mega banks and the military-intelligence-industrial complex remain aligned? Create a revolving door of course.

Of course it’s much, much bigger than this. The genius of the current status quo system is that it has created a complicated and opaque interlocking system of crony partnerships and interdependencies between the government, mega corporations and academia so massive, wealthy and powerful it has become exceedingly difficult to challenge. This is precisely because almost everyone now depends on it for their paychecks.

Creating such corrupt networks often happens in the shadows, and in recent years has taken the form of “public-private partnerships” and secret trade deals such as the TTP, TTIP and TISA. This is how modern America operates in a nutshell, and it’s continued metastasis is rapidly destroying what’s left of freedom, common sense and free markets in this nation.

Moving along to today’s post, how free does it make you feel that the Department of Defense is partnering with 162 companies, universities and other groups to develop wearable technology? How independent can these companies and universities actually be when they are engaged in such schemes with the U.S. government. The answer is obvious: Not independent at all.

From NBC News:

The Pentagon is teaming up with Apple, Boeing, Harvard and others to develop high-tech sensory gear flexible enough to be worn by people or molded onto the outside of a jet.

The rapid development of new technologies is forcing the Pentagon to seek partnerships with the private sector rather than developing its technology itself, defense officials say.

“I’ve been pushing the Pentagon to think outside our five-sided box and invest in innovation here in Silicon Valley and in tech communities across the country,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in prepared remarks on Friday.

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

10 Disturbing Facts Most Americans Are Too Fearful To Face

August 14, 2015

10 Disturbing Facts Most Americans Are Too Fearful To Face

Sometimes you have to put out information in hopes that those who haven’t heard this will at least absorb a fraction of it. If you haven’t heard this and you absorb just one of these random points, I believe that may be enough to cause a major paradigm shift in your life or in the life of someone you know. Here are 10 random, mostly recent but some archival information that is factual and verifiable for anyone willing to look it up.

1. Genetically Modified Foods are illegal in many countries for health and medical reasons all the while the U.S. passes laws making GMO labeling illegal.

You may be thinking, say what? That’s right. U.S. citizens are being propagandized daily and are being practically forced to blindly consume GMOs while countries like Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, Australia, Russia, France and Switzerland all have booted Monsanto and their GMO crops from their countries. That’s like being booted out of a town for being a rapist and child molester only to have that same person settle into the next town over and become a grade school teacher or pastor. Now imagine the citizens of that other town having a law forced on them that says rapists and child molesters must be allowed to teach little kids and run churches. That’s what we’re talking about here.

While humanity in other countries wakes up fully to the dangers of GMO foods, Monsanto and other GMO food producers are having a feast in the U.S. buying out politicians, distorting news, research and evidence that proves GMO foods are directly linked to cancer. Like a scene from a bad movie, only it’s not a movie. Actually it’s YOUR life if you are in the United States dealing with this nightmare.

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

Pope Francis’ Appeal for the Future

August 12, 2015

Pope Francis’ Appeal for the Future

Pope Francis is pleading for world leaders to defend the rights of mankind and the future of nature against the power of corporations and the pillage of “free market” dogma, a warning about the planet’s survival that vested political and media interests reject out of hand, writes Daniel C. Maguire.

The Right has no applause for Pope Francis’s powerful encyclical Laudato Si (See, for example, David Brooks’s June 23 column) What the pope sees and his conservative critics do not is that the world economy is in crash mode, an accelerating train hurtling down the track and ignoring all the signs that say Bridge Out Ahead.

The instinct for self-preservation is strong: but in the human species, it seems, not strong enough. Like any good preacher, Francis tries to stir hope as he calls for radical reforms – and the reforms he calls for are radical – but the shrill of despair keeps peeking out at the brim of his Jeremiad.

At no point in this eloquent cri de coeur is the pope playing Pollyanna, but at times he seems close to Cassandra who was blessed with the knowledge of the future but cursed with the realization that no one will believe her.

The oceans with their coral treasures and rich animal life are dying of acidity and poison. The pope asks: “Who turned the wonder-world of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of color and life?” Arctic ice is in a death spiral and ice sheets are melting in Greenland as well as in the Himalayan-Tibetan glacier that provides water to hundreds of millions. The portents are nightmarish.

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

The Social Cost of Capitalism

August 12, 2015

The Social Cost of Capitalism

Few, if any, corporations absorb the full cost of their operations. Corporations shove many of their costs onto the environment, the public sector, and distant third parties. For example, currently 3 million gallons of toxic waste water from a Colorado mine has escaped and is working its way down two rivers into Utah and Lake Powell. At least seven city water systems dependent on the rivers have been shut down. The waste was left by private enterprise, and the waste was accidentally released by the Environmental Protection Agency, which might be true or might be a coverup for the mine. If the Lake Powell reservoir ends up polluted, it is likely that the cost of the mine imposed on third parties exceeds the total value of the mine’s output over its entire life.

Economists call these costs “external costs” or “social costs.” The mine made its profits by creating pollutants, the cost of which is born by those who had no share in the profits.

As this is the way regulated capitalism works, you can imagine how bad unregulated capitalism would be. Just think about the unregulated financial system, the consequences we are still suffering with more to come.

Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism, which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.

If only.

Progressives have their own counterpart to the libertarians’ romanticism. Progressives regard government as the white knight that protects the public from the greed of capitalists.

If only.

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

The Politics of Timber Theft

July 26, 2015

The Politics of Timber Theft

Steal a Tree, Go to Jail; Steal a Forest, Meet the President

Republished here with permission is a chapter from Jeffrey St. Clair’s 2008 book, Born Under A Bad Sky. St. Clair has provided an outstanding report of corrupt government at work. Even environmentalists in the Forest Service who are appointed to protect our national forests are part of the looting corporatocracy.

The power of money can be stronger than the power of government. We can see the power of money in the looting of our national forests. Even the environmental agencies established by Congress to protect the environment have fallen under corporate control.

Elected politicians, even if they intend otherwise, end up serving the corporatocracy.

The impotence of government to serve the public interest and general welfare is an important lesson both for progressives, who believe in the curative powers of government, and libertarians, who believe that government is inimical to private interests.

As both parties serve the corporatocracy, elections can change nothing.

The Politics of Timber Theft

Stealing trees is as old as the King’s timber reserves. The sanctions for such sylvan thievery have always been harsh. In medieval England, it meant public torture and slow death. In the US, the levy was a kind of financial death penalty — triple damages plus serious jail time.

A couple of years ago, two tree poachers drove a log truck onto a small farm in central Indiana after midnight, cut down two 100-year old black walnut trees in the small woodlot, loaded the pilfered trunks onto their truck and fled across a cornfield. The county sheriff caught them when their truck stalled in the field and sank in the mud. It turns out that the men had been hired by a local sawmill owner, who was set to sell the lumber to a German timber broker. All three men were tried and convicted of tree theft.

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

Capitalism, Engineered Dependencies and the Eurozone

July 26, 2015

Capitalism, Engineered Dependencies and the Eurozone

Greece

As fact and metaphor the ongoing crisis in Greece is the vanguard of broad social disintegration across the capitalist West. IMF Director Christine Lagarde is being put forward as the voice of reason calling for writing down Greece’s debt to manageable levels. But her actual public statements have paid deference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s suggestion, a slight variation on Barack Obama’s mortgage ‘rescue’ packages, that maturities be extended but that people be left with debts far greater than they can reasonably pay. As attractive as permanent debt servitude might appear to those demanding it, it is a form of economic extraction, a transfer of economic production from nominal borrowers to banks and bankers.

Current IMF tactics are being placed in a neo-Cold War frame with the U.S. trying to maintain European political stability on the side of the U.S. against Russia and China. But the broader tendency is toward collective suicide through imperialist revival economics, a global race to replicate Western consumption through increasingly ‘managed’ capitalism and through renewed competition for resources that led to the catastrophic wars of the twentieth century. The geopolitical frame understates the crudeness of the economic logic that gives banker / creditor ‘workouts’ the appearance of geopolitical machinations. The economic relations in play are ‘political,’ but they derive from economic ideology that preceded the Cold War by a half-century or more.

The practical problem with the neo-Cold War frame is that it takes the underlying economic relations as given when they are in fact causal. The euphemistically-called ‘trade’ agreements being pushed by the ‘developed’ West grant broad authority over civil governance to multi-national corporations, the point being that the ideology that drives corporate actions is economic, not ‘political’ in the Western liberal sense of the term.

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

The Care and Feeding of a Financial Black Hole

July 1, 2015

The Care and Feeding of a Financial Black Hole

A while ago I had the pleasure of hearing Sergey Glazyev—economist, politician, member of the Academy of Sciences, adviser to Pres. Putin—say something that very much confirmed my own thinking. He said that anyone who knows mathematics can see that the United States is on the verge of collapse because its debt has gone exponential. These aren’t words that an American or a European politician can utter in public, and perhaps not even whisper to their significant other while lying in bed, because the American eavesdroppers might overhear them, and then the politician in question would get the Dominique Strauss-Kahn treatment (whose illustrious career ended when on a visit to the US he was falsely accused of rape and arrested). And so no European (never mind American) politician can state the obvious, no matter how obvious it is.

The Russians have that pretty well figured out by now. Yes, maintaining a dialogue and cordial directions with the Europeans is important. But it is well understood that the Europeans are just a bunch of American puppets with no will or decision-making authority of their own, so why not talk to the Americans directly? Alas, the Americans too are puppets. The American officials and politicians are definitely puppets, controlled by corporate lobbyists and shady oligarchs. But here’s a shocker: these are also puppets—controlled by the simple imperatives of profitability and wealth preservation, respectively. In fact, it’s puppets all the way down. And what’s at the bottom is a giant, ever-expanding, financial black hole.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Two Contending Visions of World Government

June 14, 2015

The Two Contending Visions of World Government

The Origin & Broader Context of Obama’s ‘Trade’ Deals

U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed ‘Trade’ deals are actually about whether the world is heading toward a dictatorial world government — a dictatorship by the hundred or so global super-rich who hold the controlling blocks of stock in the world’s largest international corporations — or else toward a democratic world government, which will be a global federation of free and independent states, much like the United States was at its founding, but global in extent. These are two opposite visions of world government; and Obama is clearly on the side of fascism, an international mega-corporate dictatorship, as will be documented here in the links, and explained in the discussion.

Also as a preliminary to the discussion here is the understanding that if Obama wins Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, then all of his ‘trade’ deals will be approved by Congress, and that if he fails to receive this Authority, then none of them will.

“Fast Track,” as will be explained in depth here, is, indeed, the “open Sesame” for Obama, on the entire matter. Without it, his deals don’t stand even a chance of passage.

I previously wrote about why it’s the case that “‘Fast Track’ Violates the U.S. Constitution.” The details of the case are presented there; but, to summarize it here: “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority,” which was introduced by the imperial President Richard M. Nixon in the Trade Act of 1974, violates the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty Clause — the clause that says “The President … shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” (In other words: otherwise, the President doesn’t have that power, the President cannot “make treaties.”

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

Rule By The Corporations

June 2, 2015

Rule By The Corporations
TTIP: The Corporate Empowerment Act

The Transatlantic and Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnerships have nothing to do with free trade. “Free trade” is used as a disguise to hide the power these agreements give to corporations to use law suits to overturn sovereign laws of nations that regulate pollution, food safety, GMOs, and minimum wages.

The first thing to understand is that these so-called “partnerships” are not laws written by Congress. The US Constitution gives Congress the authority to legislate, but these laws are being written without the participation of Congress. The laws are being written by corporations solely in the interest of their power and profit. The office of US Trade Representative was created in order to permit corporations to write law that serves only their interests. This fraud on the Constitution and the people is covered up by calling trade laws “treaties.”

Indeed, Congress is not even permitted to know what is in the laws and is limited to the ability to accept or refuse what is handed to Congress for a vote. Normally, Congress accepts, because “so much work has been done” and “free trade will benefit us all.”

The presstitutes have diverted attention from the content of the laws to “fast track.” When Congress votes “fast track,” it means Congress accepts that corporations can write the trade laws without the participation of Congress. Even criticisms of the “partnerships” are a smoke screen. Countries accused of slave labor could be excluded but won’t be. Super patriots complain that US sovereignty is violated by “foreign interests,” but US sovereignty is violated by US corporations. Others claim yet more US jobs will be offshored. In actual fact, the “partnerships” are unnecessary to advance the loss of American jobs as there is nothing that inhibits jobs offshoring now.

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

The TPP, Monsanto, Rockefeller, Trilateral Commission, Brzezinski

May 30, 2015

The TPP, Monsanto, Rockefeller, Trilateral Commission, Brzezinski

All hands on deck for global, economic, corporate dictatorship

There are dots to connect here. They’re real, and they’re spectacular.

Let me begin with a brief exchange from a 1978 interview, conducted by reporter Jeremiah Novak. He was speaking with two American members of the Trilateral Commission (TC), a group founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and his intellectual flunkey, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

NOVAK: Yes, but why doesn’t President Carter come out with it and tell the American people that [US] economic and political power is being coordinated by a [Trilateral Commission] committee made up of Henry Owen and six others? After all, if [US] policy is being made on a multinational level, the people should know.

RICHARD COOPER [Trilateral Commission member]: President Carter and Secretary of State Vance have constantly alluded to this in their speeches.

KARL KAISER [Trilateral Commission member]: It just hasn’t become an issue.

Source: “Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management,” ed. by Holly Sklar, 1980. South End Press, Boston. Pages 192-3.

This through-the-looking-glass moment summed up the casual arrogance of Trilateral members: of course US government policy was in the hands of Trilateralists; what else would you expect?

US government policy most certainly covers the area of international trade—and Cooper and Kaiser were foreshadowing blockbuster trade treaties to come: e.g., NAFTA, GATT (which established the World Trade Organization), CAFTA, and now, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is being negotiated in secret among 12 nations responsible for a major amount of world trade and world GDP.

Here are two key Trilateral quotes that reflect this global outlook—by which I mean a world dominated by mega-corporations:

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

Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”

May 28, 2015

Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”

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It’s mostly not about trade. Only 5 of the 29 chapters are about traditional trade.

– Julian Assange in a recent interview with Democracy Now

I’ve focused a little bit more of my attention on the Trans-Pacific Partnership lately, as the Obama Administration scrambles to attain “fast-track” authority from Congress. The content of this unbelievably dangerous gift to multi-national corporations is being kept secret from the public, and for very good reason. For some background on the TPP and where it stands, see:

Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”

As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP

What little we know about the TPP has come from whistleblower site, Wikileaks. This is what Julian Assange thinks of this “trade” treaty in his own words.

…click on the above link to view the video…

Someone Finally Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal And Admits The TPP “Will Damage This Nation”

May 19, 2015

Someone Finally Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal And Admits The TPP “Will Damage This Nation”

There is a huge paradox surrounding what is supposed to be the crowning achievement of Obama’s second term, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a bill whose contents virtually nobody is familiar with or will be before it passes into law.

That’s not the paradox: the paradox is that back in October 2009, the White House Press secretary said that “the President has returned to a stance of transparency and ethics that hasn’t been matched by any other White House…. the President believes strongly in transparency… that transparency in that way in the best policy.”

Or to paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

And yet while everyone seems to have an opinion on the final formulation of the TPP bill, especially Elizabeth Warren and her circle of progressive democrats who have emerged as the bill’s most vocal critics, the truth is that none have actually read it for the simple reason that anyone who is familiar with its text could be jailed for disclosing its contents.

Most transparent administration indeed.

We won’t even comment that those who don’t care to have their opinion made public and do have access to the bill have also not read the massive bill which layers giveaway upon giveaway to mega corporations: in fact the only ones who are intimately familiar with the TPP’s contents are those who drafted it: America’s multinational corporations whose shareholders will be the biggest beneficiaries of the TPP.

And yet someone appears to have finally read Obama’s TPP: that someone is Michael Wessel, a cleared liaison to two statutory advisory committees and a commissioner on the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, as well as the international trade co-chair for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign.

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

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Differences and Similarities

1. Genetically Modified Foods are illegal in many countries for health and medical reasons all the while the U.S. passes laws making GMO labeling illegal.

Rule By The Corporations TTIP: The Corporate Empowerment Act

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Rule By The Corporations
TTIP: The Corporate Empowerment Act