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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…

Neo-feudal USA: The death of democracy — Gerald Celente

May 28, 2015

Neo-feudal USA: The death of democracy — Gerald Celente

Neither a conspiracy nor conjecture: By every quantitative measure, 21st century America has degenerated from being the beacon of democracy to a neo-feudal state.  From crime and punishment to the vast wealth and income-inequality gap, the rules are different for the political elite and economic nobility than they are for the common man bound to live by the letter of the law and brought to justice for minor infractions — all while political insiders, corporate charlatans and financial bandits are left free to rape, pillage and plunder.

What should have been headline news and met with outrage last Wednesday barely made the front page of newspapers or the top of broadcast news. Deemed not as important as the murder of a wealthy family who lived near Vice President Biden, or the motorcycle gang war that left nine dead, five of the world’s largest banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, pleaded guilty to felony charges for rigging the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange markets.

Regardless of “brazenly illegal behavior” on a “massive scale,” the trend is clear: Despite a long track record of “breathtaking flagrancy” of stealing billions, the government, in case after case, gently hits banks with a slap-on-the-wrist fine — and not one top bankster is sent to jail.  It’s the same with whistleblowers and those who leak government information — more of whom the Obama Administration has sent to prison that all presidents combined. And when Washington insider, former general and CIA Director David Petraeus is caught giving his mistress classified material for her book, a small fine and no prison time result.

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

We need a new economic system

May 27, 2015

We need a new economic system

As the 2016 election begins to come into focus, economic populism appears to be the order of the day. The Center for American Progress, the Campaign for America’s Future and National People’s Action,Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio and the Roosevelt Institute have all in the last few months released programmatic calls to action highlighting the need to tackle economic inequality. This is, of course, laudable — it’s not every day that virtually the entire spectrum of Democratic Party insiders and outsiders concurs that our increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth is a central problem to be addressed. But are calls for reform and redistribution enough?

I am opposed to very little of what is being presented in these various platforms and proposals. They are, for the most part, perfectly sensible ideas — such as financial transaction taxes, increases to the minimum wage and using government funds to build and repair infrastructure such as roads and railways — that would be, for the most part, noncontroversial if we were living in an era of sensible politics. But the fundamental fact is that we are not.

Instead, we are living in the era in which the corporate institutions at the core of our politics, along with the radical financial inequalities our system now produces, have undermined the power relationships that once allowed for traditional reforms. The labor union — the fundamental institutional power base for tempering the excesses of a corporate economy — is regrettably in terminal decline, down to 6.6 percent of workers in the private sector. Long-term structural shifts in the political economy have rendered the program of regulation and reform more or less inoperative.

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

Arguments against GMOs

May 23, 2015

Arguments against GMOs

I recently decided to take an epidemiology course to fill in gaps in my knowledge base. The entire online graduate certificate in Environmental Health looked interesting, so I applied for the entire certificate. Environmental Health was the first course that I took online at this flagship Florida university. The online experience would be a separate post in itself — the online course was mechanically flawless but grossly deficient in interactions and building critical thinking skills.

One of my class assignments was to argue in a paper against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Since the course and the textbook were too reductionist for my tastes, I argued using macroscopic arguments. I doubt the teaching assistants read it–like all other assignments in thisMOOC, it received a grade with no comments. Various friends are asking me what I think of GMOs, and most students in the class and most of my friends think that GMOs are a great solution for our food problems, so I am reposting the paper here.

Corporations promote GMOs as the solution to world hunger through expanded global food sources. That hopeful argument is not based on evidence, and there are many arguments against widespread GMO use. Most science and policy arguments are reductionist. But Einstein said that we cannot solve problems from the same consciousness that created the problems. We must learn to see the world anew, from a larger scale to see a complete picture of the processes involved. Reductionist science is not the answer to the problems engendered by a finite biosphere with a human population in overshoot.

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

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…

The world of Globalism, the galaxy of slavery

May 19, 2015

The world of Globalism, the galaxy of slavery

“Try looking at the world as a giant three-volume science fiction novel. Organizations of stupefying complexity rule the scene. There is an upside to this. You can gain a much deeper understanding of the archetype of the Rebel against the system.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

“What’s that you said? ‘We gave away our power?’ We? What ‘we’ is that? Did I miss a big meeting in the desert where we all got together and gave it away? Who are you anyway? A PR man for the Syndicate? There is no ‘we.’ Not until there’s an ‘I.’ Didn’t you learn that in Depro 101? Search this man. He’s either a dupe or an agent.” (Colossus Fortune, Jon Rappoport)

I’ve been chipping away and drilling the rock of Globalism for some years now (Archive::Globalist). At times, connections between my various investigations seemed uncertain, but eventually the picture swam into view.

Medically caused death and destruction. Toxic drugs. Toxic vaccines. Genetically modified food plants and their poisonous pesticides. International trade treaties. Manufactured unemployment. The pseudoscience of psychiatry. Political and media dupes. The art of group propaganda. Indoctrination and lowered IQ through education. Television mind control. Banking. Wall Street. Technocracy. And dozens more subjects.

The carrier of the Globalist world was chosen at the end of World War 2. It already existed, of course. But now it was seen as the prime instrument:

The mega-corporation.

Control of land, resources, labor. No other type of organization would be as efficient at mounting this operation.

Governments tuned themselves to a harmonic convergence with the colossus.

Wars for the corporation. Population control for the corporation. Judiciaries for the corporation.

Language for the corporation. Streamlined stripped-down language for minds wedded to the corporation. Reduced minds.

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

The Self-Employed Middle Class Hardly Exists Anymore

May 15, 2015

The Self-Employed Middle Class Hardly Exists Anymore

Why owning your own income is more important than ever now

Many people rightly aspire to improve their household’s state of resilience through actions such as storing emergency supplies, starting a vegetable garden, and learning basic readiness/maintenance skills, etc. In general, resilience boils down to self-reliance. But like it or not, in our largely urbanized society, true long-term self-reliance needs to include some measure of financial independence.

By ‘financial independence’ I don’t mean so much wealth that you no longer have to earn a living. Rather, in this discussion, financial independence means owning income streams that you control lock, stock and barrel. Some of this income may be passive (for example, royalties earned off a patent you own) but for most people, ‘independent’ income is actively earned via their own labor (i.e. self-employment).

Of course, the easiest path to financial independence is being born into a wealthy, well-connected family. But since few of us win that born-rich lottery, this article addresses the important question: How do “the rest of us” carve out financial independence?

How Many Make a Middle Class Income from Self-Employment?

Let’s start by defining ‘self-employment’ as an enterprise without employees that has more than one client. If a consultant’s entire annual income is from one client year after year, for example, the Department of Defense (DoD), the consultant is more of a proxy employee of the DoD than a sole proprietor. In an era where Corporate America and the government attempt to shed employment costs by hiring independent contractors rather than employees, we need to differentiate between quasi-employees who work for one client and the truly self-employed. Unfortunately, the officially-reported employment data does not distinguish between the two.

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

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

May 13, 2015

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

The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?

One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws – and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers – without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions – and even billions – of dollars in damages.

If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Maybe that makes sense in an arbitration between two corporations, but not in cases between corporations and governments. If you’re a lawyer looking to maintain or attract high-paying corporate clients, how likely are you to rule against those corporations when it’s your turn in the judge’s seat?

– From Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Washington Post Op-Ed: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Clause Everyone Should Oppose

Trying to learn about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is like trying to walk through a minefield. The only information we really have is courtesy of leaks, and those snippets are definitely not encouraging.

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

Despite drought, California is still bottling water for export

May 12, 2015

Despite drought, California is still bottling water for export

There is an old saying “as goes California, so goes the Nation.” If that is true, I would say that the nation had best strap on its seat-belt for some hard-times ahead — and some battles over resources between ordinary citizens and big corporations.

California is currently four years into the worst drought in recorded history. While the word “drought” gives the impression that this is a short-lived, inconvenient condition with which we have to live for a little while, things are actually far more serious.

NASA scientist Jay Famiglietti recently warned that California’s water reservoirs have just one year remaining before a catastrophic collapse. In his own words, as published in the LA Times:

The state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought…[groundwater] pumping rates are excessive and unsustainable…Wells are running dry. In some areas of the Central Valley, the land is sinking by one foot or more per year.

It isn’t just that no fresh water, via rain or snow, is coming into California, but that underground aquifers and other former backup sources are also running dry. According to research published in the journal Science, the entire Western United states has lost an astounding 240 gigatons of water since 2013, an amount equivalent to 1 billion tons.

UC Santa Cruz Professor Lisa Sloan co-authored a 2004 report in which she and her colleague Jacob Sewall predicted that the melting of the Arctic ice shelf would cause a decrease in precipitation in California and hence a severe drought. The Arctic melting, they claimed, would warp the offshore jet stream in the Pacific Ocean.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/05/despite-drought-california-is-still-bottling-water-for-export/#sthash.F1cocoPm.dpuf

No Wrongdoing Here, Just 6,300 Corporate Fines and Settlements

May 6, 2015

No Wrongdoing Here, Just 6,300 Corporate Fines and Settlements

Despite the PR about how corporate profits benefit widows and orphans, this vast wealth is concentrated in the top 1% and the top 5%.

I am honored to share a remarkable data base of Corporate Fines and Settlementsfrom the early 1990s to the present compiled by Jon Morse. Here is Jon’s description of his project to assemble a comprehensive list of all corporate fines and settlements that can be verified by media reports:

What struck me was the sheer number of corporate violations of laws and regulations–thousands upon thousands, the vast majority of which occurred since corporate profits began their incredible ascent in the early 2000s–and the list of those paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and settlements, which reads like a who’s who of Corporate America and Top 100 Global Corporations.“This spreadsheet is all the corporate fines/settlements I’ve been able to find sourced articles about, mostly in the period from the 1990’s up to today (with a few 80’s and 70’s). This is by far the most comprehensive list of such things online. At least that I could find, because the lack of any decent list is what made me start compiling this list in the first place.”

I encourage you to open one of the three alphabetical tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet on Google Docs and scroll down to find your favorite super-profitable corporation.

Many have a long list of fines and settlements, and many of the fines are in excess of $100 million. Many are for blatant cartel price-fixing, not disclosing the dangers of the company’s heavily promoted medications, destroying documents to thwart an investigation of wrong-doing, etc.

In other words, these were not wrist-slaps for minor oversights of complex regulations— these are blatant violations of core laws of the land.

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

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

April 26, 2015

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

— Article IV, Section 4, US Constitution

A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .”

On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.

The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.

Abdicating the Judicial Function to Corporate Lawyers

James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. . . . “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. . . .”

And that, from what we now know of the TPP’s secret provisions, will be its dire effect.

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

Who Will Control The World’s Water: Governments Or Corporations?

April 10, 2015

Who Will Control The World’s Water: Governments Or Corporations?

Water is perhaps the world’s most important resource, and one of the most common resources. For decades water was regarded as a common good, and it was plentiful enough that in most parts of the world there was little money to be made off of it. Now as the world’s population continues to grow, all of that is changing. Late in March, Tetra Tech was awarded a $1B five year contract to help support the US Agency of International Development (USAID) and its water development strategies. Tetra Tech will help USAID by collecting data related to water use, develop water management strategies, and help improve access to water in select areas.

This contract is far from the first in the area of water management. Today there are numerous companies focused on earning a profit based on water management, water provision, and water remediation. There are at least ten major corporations working in the area including three that between them supply water to 300 million people in 100 countries. These three corporations, RWE/Thames, Suez/ONDEO, and Veolia control vast swaths of water systems in Europe and are now looking at a less saturated market; the United States. The US has its own share of large water companies including American Water Works, ITT Corp, and GE Water, but most Americans are still served by publicly owned utilities and this presents a new opportunity for corporations in the space.

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

With corporate energy, we’re stuck in the dark ages – let’s switch to public ownership

March 9, 2015

With corporate energy, we’re stuck in the dark ages – let’s switch to public ownership

It is clear that Britain has an energy problem. The privatisation and ‘liberalisation’ of the energy market has left us with six dominant suppliers from which over 90% of us buy our energy. 1 in 10 households in the UK are in fuel poverty. Confidence in the ability of the biggest energy companies to act in the public interest has almost completely eroded, and the head of Ofgem has identified a ‘deep mistrust in anything the energy companies do or say’. The Big Six have faced continued criticism over widening profit margins and a perception that they abuse their dominant market position. Average pre-tax profits are expected to reach £114 per household over the next year, despite plummeting oil and gas prices. And we are categorically failing to make the necessary moves towards green sources of energy; just 5.2% of our overall energy consumption is from renewable sources, one of the lowest in the EU.

Anyone can see that the system is broken. But to how fix it? What would a new energy paradigm look like? This was the topic of an inspiring workshop event, ‘Imagining Energy Democracy’, organised and chaired by Global Justice Now, and attended by a wealth of campaigners and academics. We allowed our minds to wander, to dream, to imagine an energy future not dominated by fossil fuels and large private companies, but a future in which ‘energy democracy’ had won out against corporate profit and climate destruction.

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

HEAD IN THE SAND, ASS IN THE SKY

January 25, 2015

HEAD IN THE SAND, ASS IN THE SKY

There are far too many people that refuse to question or investigate the world around them with a clear, logical and rational mind. They don’t want to know. Most of them are gripped by fear of knowing the truth. They would prefer to listen to what their authorities tell them, no matter how absurd it is, rather than question or expose the deceptions that are presented to them as facts. Wouldn’t you want to know if someone is lying to you?

Take, for example, the collapse of the World Trade Center, on Sept. 11, 2001. To this day, many people refuse to look at the piles of evidence pointing to the truth. They believe whatever the mass media and the government tell them. Such people are seriously programmed to believe whatever the authorities tell them without question. Many have been sufficiently programmed to become angry whenever the subject is brought up, and ridicule those that try to expose the deception. People have become so deeply programmed, that they can’t even acknowledge the chemtrails that hover above their heads daily. That is serious denial. Don’t you think that something is seriously wrong with this picture?

You would think that if the government, the politicians, the banks and the corporations are not only corrupt, but are also robbing the people blind and poisoning them with chemically tainted food, fluoride and vaccines; well, wouldn’t you want to know about it? Don’t you want to know why or what they are spraying over our heads? What kind of person would rather pretend that it’s not happening? This is major denial. It is completely devoid of any rationality. What they are ignoring has the power to crush them, yet somehow they believe that if they just pretend that everything is fine, then there’s nothing to worry about.

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

The Cradle of Democracy Should Defy the Autocrats & Kleptocrats | StealthFlation

December 27, 2014

The Cradle of Democracy Should Defy the Autocrats & Kleptocrats | StealthFlation.

On the old continent, this December 29th, a succinct political showdown is scheduled to take place which may well become a defining moment for our entirely unsettled new millenium. What is at stake is none other than the prosperity of the common man pitted against the privilege of concentrated power. Lamentably, this deliberate dogmatic divide has relentlessly defined human civilization for the ages.

What is at hand isn’t so much about lofty ideals. It’s not about Socialism. It’s not about Capitalism. It’s not about Communism. It’s not about being a progressive, or a conservative or a liberal. It’s not about left vs right. Forget all those dumbed down dichotomies. It’s much more fundamental than all of that. Quite simply, it’s about People vs. Power, that’s it, nothing more. Those that have and wield institutional power, and those that do not. It’s as elementary and base as that I’m afraid.

Take a good look around, I defy you to point to a single socioeconomic construct in our supposedly enlightened and advanced society of today which is not essentially determined by that crude polarizing characterization. Whether it be our bought and paid for Political Class, our rapacious Banking Sector, our entitled Multinational Corporations, our entrenched Governmental Agencies, our marauding Military Industrial Complex, our fleecing Healthcare Providers, our muzzled Free Press, our hijacked Justice System, or our grossly overpaid CEOs, Athletes, and Entertainers, they all have one thing in common, and I assure you that it’s not the common good that they share. What they seek above all else is to expand the existing institutional dominion and their own privileges within it.

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

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