I herein share three disparate postings made in the last few days by my Fishbowl[tm] neighbors… (You’re very likely to already have seen at least one of these, therefore.)
1. Common Sense (please follow the link)
The feeling that this guy is an actor working from a script does not in the slightest detract from the message; to the contrary, it emphasizes that this message emanates from an organ of communication of determined opposition. All good.
This is what will save the American people; if not the American nation. Basic, common sense, “B”. And heart-felt anger in response to injustice.
Perhaps the American people, by and large, wish to see “their” government balance its budget, just like the household check-book. And why shouldn’t they expect the same responsibility?
I personally believe the idea is simplistic, naive and flawed but maybe I am just intellectually “snotty”?
I don’t believe the US government, (or any government), CAN balance its checkbook)! Not in its nature or interest. A govt is a Ponzi scheme, like it or not.
But the issue raised is still good, because it prompts all the right questions, all the same, yeah?
Should the US govt “balance” its budget? (Its own law says “it should!!”.)
This is ultimately the same as, “should Congress cut back on DoD fighting multiple, useless, drawn-out, unpopular, senseless wars around the globe that are making Americans into targets; OR should Congress cut back on Social Security benefits and cause deprivation and, yes, literally, starvation amongst America’s septa- and octagenarians?” See. That’s a good question. What is the point of “keeping the world safe for Americans” if they are starving at home, anyway? Easy answer, but important to keep asking the same question until one hears the correct answer. Accept nothing else.
This is the same as, “should the US be a happy country in which for people to live, [as the Founders intended]; OR should the US be an imperial, military power, dedicated to aggrandizing its own ’21st Century, (and subsequent…)”?”
The same as, “should the prosperity of Americans, rank and file, come as first priority in the nation; OR should the military-industrial complex, (now known as the ‘military-financial complex’) — about which Eisenhower cautioned and that JFK promised to smash into ‘ a thousand splinters’ — be primary?”
The “common sense” view will prevail because a) it is correct, b) history is against empires and c) the fundamental premise of the American nation has always been freedom: a beacon the whole world has recognized and acknowledged. Our ‘masters’ are doomed to their own, chosen fate.
[Thanks, JW!]
2. #OccupyWallStreet
Occupy!
An open letter to the media:
you’re still not getting it.
your reporters are lazy.
traditionally, protests have been the culmination of a movement organized by a heirarchy of leaders who determined demands and then held public protests to promote those demands.
old way:
injustice–>organization–>demands–>protest.
but we aren’t a traditional protest.
our way, the protest comes first and serves as its own organizational tool.
the protestors determine their own demands.
messy, but much more democratic, yes?
the problem with the old way is the protest ends, the protestors go home, and the demands are ignored. repeat.
but our protest never ends.
that is why we call it an occupation.
new way:
injustice–>occupation–>self organization–>revolution
what you reported as disorganized and rudderless
was actually in the process of self-organizing.
you were too blind to see it.
you were looking for an end at the beginning.
in just 3 weeks we’ve grown to over 60 cities.
we are ever 10000 strong today in new york alone.
we are occupying.
we are organizing.
we are growing.
we are not going to stop until our demands are met.
it is we who are too big to fail.
We are the People.
We hold this Truth to be self-evident:
A government which represents only the interests of banks, media conglomerates, corporations and the richest #1 is no longer democracy. It is oligarchy.
A new form of democracy has come to rescue the old:
a democracy by, for, and of the People again.
Inspiration for the Occupation
By: Derrick Kardos
[Thank you, Kim!]
My big doubt, concern and fear here is again that this statement is too simplistic: it believes that the government can be petitioned for redress of grievances and for justice — as if it were a rational entity. The current government is a malignant cancer and it is driven to its own ends. I applaud the popular and possibly formidable resistance, (consider Gandhi and civil disobedience), but it presupposes a disposition by the government to “be fair”.
I would prefer to see popular activism directed toward organizing state governments to take constitionally legal and justifiable action to NULLIFY the US government. The direction may seem similar or equivalent, but Americans need to commence building a replacement for the US government.
Otherwise, if successful as it is now constituted, this movement is likely to be placated, assuaged and then re-anaesthetized…
3. The ‘Getting’ Of Assange And The Smearing Of A Revolution
Pilger is a great writer normally; this may decidely not be his best work; but nevertheless: just when exactly are people going to realize that fascism has once more reared its ugly head in the world?? Frustrating for me, to say the least. For fuck’s sake: wake up, people!!
What is the point of, “remembering the bloody Holocaust… so that it will never happen again”, if we are doomed anyway to be like the Germans who somehow let tyranny flourish in their midst due to <one thousand excuses or whatever>…
[Thanks Jon, (and Duncan)]
And now a note from your editor:
In 2007, I read an article, entitled, “The Coming Financial Tsunami”, written by William F. Engdahl, a frequent contributor to Global Research. Michel Chossudovsky[1], is the Chief Editor of GR.
Since reading that particular article about the global economy, and delving into many more on the subject, I have been convinced that the world is heading into another cycle of economic depression and one, this time, that will exceed the so-called “Great Depression”, and by a significant factor.
It is my belief that this cataclysm is both inevitable and intentional.
The premise of this blog has indeed been that this world is governed by a body constituted of an oligarchy, by an oligarchy and for an oligarchy.
Several of my very astute readers have noted lately that this blog has quietened down. It has, (and thank you for being so observant), although certainly not due to a lack of material, for two reasons: the first is that I have had to acknowledge that my premise was incommunicable, (people are convinced only by what they themselves discover); and because the omens of the time have become so clear and so unmistakable, that people can now draw accurate conclusions — but more importantly, are finally compelled to do so.
[1] Excerpt of biographical material of Michel Chossudovsky:
Barely a few weeks after the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, overthrowing the elected government of President Salvador Allende, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This economic shock treatment had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys”.
At the time of the military coup, I was teaching at the Institute of Economics of the Catholic University of Chile, which was a nest of Chicago trained economists, disciples of Milton Friedman. On that September 11, in the hours following the bombing of the Presidential Palace of La Moneda, the new military rulers imposed a 72-hour curfew. When the university reopened several days later, the “Chicago Boys” were rejoicing. Barely a week later, several of my colleagues at the Institute of Economics were appointed to key positions in the military government.
While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure “economic stability and stave off inflationary pressures.” From one day to the next, an entire country was precipitated into abysmal poverty: in less than a year the price of bread in Chile increased thirty-six times and eighty-five percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line.
These events affected me profoundly in my work as an economist. Through the tampering of prices, wages and interest rates, people’s lives had been destroyed; an entire national economy had been destabilized. I started to understand that macro-economic reform was neither “neutral” – as claimed by the academic mainstream – nor separate from the broader process of social and political transformation. In my earlier writings on the Chilean military Junta, I looked upon the so-called “free market” as a wellorganized instrument of “economic repression”.
Two years later in 1976, I returned to Latin America as a visiting professor at the National University of Cordoba in the northern industrial heartland of Argentina. My stay coincided with another military coup d’état. Tens of thousands of people were arrested and the Desaparecidos were assassinated. The military takeover in Argentina was a “carbon copy” of the CIA-led coup in Chile. Behind the massacres and human rights violations, “free market” reforms had also been prescribed – this time under the supervision of Argentina’s New York creditors.
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) deadly economic prescriptions applied under the guise of the “structural adjustment program” had not yet been officially launched. The experience of Chile and Argentina under the “Chicago Boys” was a dress rehearsal of things to come. In due course, the economic bullets of the free market system were hitting country after country. Since the onslaught of the debt crisis of the 1980s, the same IMF economic medicine has routinely been applied in more than 150 developing countries. From my earlier work in Chile, Argentina and Peru, I started to investigate the global impacts of these reforms. Relentlessly feeding on poverty and economic dislocation, a New World Order was taking shape.
Meanwhile, most of the military regimes in Latin America had been replaced by parliamentary “democracies”, entrusted with the gruesome task of putting the national economy on the auction block under the World Bank sponsored privatization programs. In 1990, I returned to the Catholic University of Peru where I had taught after leaving Chile in the months following the 1973 military coup.
I had arrived in Lima at the height of the 1990 election campaign. The country’s economy was in crisis. The outgoing populist government of President Alan Garcia had been placed on the IMF “black list”. President Alberto Fujimori became the new president on the 28th of July 1990. And barely a few days later, “economic shock therapy” struck – this time with a vengeance. Peru had been punished for not conforming to IMF diktats: the price of fuel was hiked up by 31 times and the price of bread increased more than twelve times in a single day. The IMF – in close consultation with the US Treasury – had been operating behind the scenes. These reforms – carried out in the name of “democracy” – were far more devastating than those applied in Chile and Argentina under the fist of military rule. In the 1980s and 1990s I traveled extensively in Africa. The fieldresearch for the first edition was, in fact, initiated in Rwanda which, despite high levels of poverty, had achieved self-sufficiency in food production. From the early 1990s, Rwanda had been destroyed as a functioning national economy; its once vibrant agricultural system was destabilized. The IMF had demanded the “opening up” of the domestic market to the dumping of US and European grain surpluses. The objective was to “encourage Rwandan farmers to be more competitive”.
This guy has spent a great deal of his life studying “globalization”…
