The Case for Attacking Iran

The current U.S. regime has already demonstrated it's unpredictability. As improbable as most people may consider it, it is striking how close the history being orchestrated for attacking Iran is to that which was orchestrated for invading Iraq. One noticeable difference is that it isn't so sloppy this time. The U.N. is on board, and a branch of the U.S. government has found the government of Iran guilty of terrorism.

Pretext Number One (terrorism), Exhibit A:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Iranian government is partly to blame for a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia, a federal judge ruled Friday

This time, Americans won't be taking to the streets, waving flags and screaming for bloody war. People are cautious, after having been thoroughly lied into Iraq. Of course, that doesn't mean the current U.S. dictator won't attack Iran, despite the risks it poses to the global economy. On the other hand, if the U.S. economy were going to collapse anyway, is it possible a new war could help energize and expand the military industrial sector that drives U.S. productivity.

Pretext Two (WMD) is already being hyped by U.N. sanctions. But, didn't Blix recently say he could find no credible evidence that Iran is anywhere near posing a nuclear threat? Two who first contested the U.S. pretext for invading Iraq, Blumenthal and Ritter, seem convinced the Bush regime is about to attack Iran. Could the unthinkable actually happen? There's little comfort in the U.S. and British military build-up aimed at Iran.

Global Energy Crisis Could Be Solved with Mirrors and the Desert Sun

Excerpt:

The outlook is not promising. More than 30 countries last week agreed to spend £7bn on an experimental fusion reactor in France which critics say will not produce any electricity for 50 years, if at all.

That amount of money would provide a lot of CSP power, a proven, working and simple technology that would work now, not in 2056.

Why not?

This should make it plainly obvious that technology alone will not save us. We have the technology, it's cost efficient, but we still reject it. What really needs to be explored is not alternate technology but it's impediments. One major impediment, it will continue to be argued, is an unresponsive and heavily entrenched corporate free-market with the consequence of standardized collective competition across arbitrary market boundaries like nation-states and currencies, for example. Although there are plenty of other reasons for exploring the order of our own species, such as universal liberation through social justice and equity, that's precisely why there is resistance from the dominant power-structure. The power-elite extract and preserve their power and wealth by monopolizing dominion over species order. This monopolization of species order is achieved by use of global state-enforced corporate market economy structured to come at the expense of liberty for the many and at the expense of fulfilling universal preferences for both life-giving and life-quality social constructs instead.

In short, self-centered greedy dumb asses are in control, and very few are forceful in challenging their control!

That's why not!

Asia Times: Global economy faces a dangerous year

A detailed bleak forecast in Asia Times, from Jephraim P Gundzik, president of Condor Advisers, a firm specializing in investment risk analysis.

The United States is Insolvent

Look on the bright side. Maybe this will mean circumstance will force the U.S. to reduce green house emissions.

Some succinct analysis with some startling conclusions:

The US is insolvent. There is simply no way for our national bills to be paid under current levels of taxation and promised benefits. Our combined federal deficits now total more than 400% of GDP.

That is the conclusion of a recent Treasury/OMB report entitled Financial Report of the United States Government that was quietly slipped out on a Friday (12/15/06), deep in the holiday season, with little fanfare.

Read on.

The Draft: Opposing "Benefit!" . . . . . Apologists and Policy Test Runs

It's amazing how Americans repress hypocrisy from consciousness and leave it untagged. The head of the VA, referring to the draft:

"I think that our society would benefit from that, yes sir," Nicholson said.

The secretary recalled his own experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels, noting that the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society together in the common purpose of serving."

He later issued a statement saying his comments had been misconstrued and that he does not support bringing back the draft.

People will offer token opposition to the unpopular ideas they believe-in only until it's no longer expected that they to do so. As the unpopular idea starts to take root and a growing number of people express a will for it, expect such token opposition to be dropped. It would seem most people already have good reasons for it, it's just that the taboo aspect still requires the benefits of a draft be qualified. Even amid qualifications: the conservative might argue a draft would be more economically feasible than massive money spent on PR and advertising to recruit a volunteer military; the liberal might argue against the civil injustice of disproportionally targeting military recruitment at minorities; the leftest might argue that a draft would provide the benefit of increased discontent within the ranks of the military and on college campuses.

The near total absence of dissent among U.S. youth and on college campuses leaves conditions better for spreading the idea of a draft and hastens the day when qualification is no longer needed. Although the taboo could implode with the successful re-orientation of public perception to a new threat, the growth in public suspicion of government-endorsed threats/pretexts means the public threshold for belief is increasingly elevated. With annual rates as high as, or higher than, one half-million Iraqi refugees and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's murdered, it appears as if the U.S. considers a policy of waiting through a genocide more manageable than a draft. As the test run on genocide draws criticism, it would be hard to imagine it mere coincidence that another test run finally emerges.

Concentration Camps for Immigrant Children Victimized by Swift Raids and Beyond

A very bad precedent threatens everyone's rights and liberty.

Privatization of Prisons puts profit over rights:

It means that at the Taylor facility of the 400 people "held" there, 200 are children. And all are families that can be held there for whatever length of time without due process conducted in a timely manner.

To top it off, as long as the men, women and children are held there, the facility's operator draws a daily profit - per person.

And of course, a corporate prison must honor the stock holders by cutting costs:

Lawyers are reporting that families are receiving substandard medical care and becoming ill from the food being served them. Children are losing weight and people are complaining of migraine-type headaches.

Since it drives up costs to avoid it, child neglect and abuse can be expected:

For children to be held longer than three days, receive but one hour of instruction and only a half hour of recreational play, to be made to feel like criminals by wearing jail jumpsuits and name tags and not have any contact with anyone outside of the facility is a serious violation of the public trust we have in our government, and how we value children in this country.

Will the "national supremacy" argument collapse into the emancipation of non-U.S. citizens? Or will it collapse into the violation of everyone's rights--a new norm? The trend seems toward the later. In one of the latest of known cases of U.S. citizens being disappeared for 96 days, the U.S. government subjected an innocent U.S. citizen to the same rights violations: indefinite detention, neglect, humiliating and degrading treatment, no access to court or lawyer. That some would dismiss this line of reasoning as "conspiracy theory" attest to terrible trend's will to repress its opposition.

Update: A FOX commentator is now arguing in favor of detention camps for U.S. jounralists who merely express dissent.

US economic growth revised downward

What's the motive? Market deception?

Geographical History of Empire in the Middle East

Via Daily Kos, an animated Flash map of the history of empire the Middle East.

Solutions: Civic Participation Creates a Car-Free Green City in Germany

This is not a primitive city, but a modern one with abundant advanced high-tech jobs. Excerpt:

As a result, the car-ownership rate in Vauban is only 150 per 1,000 inhabitants, . . .

In contrast, the US average is 640 household vehicles per 1,000 residents.

Bush's Conception of the Calling

Today, in response to a reporter's query about Bush's personal feelings toward his failed imperialist venture in Iraq, the U.S. dictator replied with the phrase "our calling." When I heard him use that phrase, I started reeling in memories of Max Weber's account of "Luther's Conception of the Calling" in his famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The occidental notion of calling serves as an order from God that demands obedience. Access both to heaven and abundance on earth is contingent on compliance. The order of the "calling" becomes moral imperative, divine destiny. It is imposed as irreversible and closed to debate.

Though the notion of divine destiny had long been used to legitimize monarchical states, in Martin Luther's day the term "calling" came to have more to do with the christian god calling "man" to a trade, profession, or to the ministry. Over time, usage of the term "calling" faded to little more than a ghost lingering mainly in the deep south and heartland. Bush, however, seeks to revive the ghost and move society backwards by hundreds of years. Resurrecting monarchical in the form of dictatorship, he extends usage vastly beyond the relation between god and an individual man's labor. He substitutes "nation state" for the individual. The relation is then between god and the nation state.

The next substitution is more subtle. As if monarch or pope, Bush appoints himself as sole agent of god's divine will. He poses as the only one with the correct interpretation. As "Bush's orders" are substituted for "god's destiny," the source of the orders is cleverly re-attributed to the god. Nevermind that he openly states that his god talks to him. That's likely part of the packaged deceit. What anyone should plainly observe is that he veils his own orders with the cloak of god. In Bush's world, his orders are made to appear to derive from the christ god who calls a nation-state to a non-negotiable destiny of warfare to rid the world of evil--to rid the world of that perpetual shifting nuisance, the other which must be defeated, brought into submission, or eliminated.

Compelled to look into Bush's use of the phrase, I did the following google search: Bush "our calling." Not only did I discover that he uses the word generously to deploy his agenda (in the form of god's indisputable order's), but I also found that some of his followers are downright blatant about Bush's moral supremacy and access to divine destiny:

Unless our unparalleled military might is buttressed by a unified commitment to the righteousness of our calling, we will surely defeat ourselves. Terror will have won, and our children and their children will live as strangers to freedom – under the bondage of perpetual fear or the chains of tyranny

Interesting that a downgraded destiny for non-compliance to the "calling" can be inherited by progeny. Mark Twain's wonderful parody, Letters From the Earth, reveals that predestination -- whether by "callings" or otherwise -- utterly contradicts self-determination and liberty. Bush's usage of "our calling" more closely resembles exceptionalism, national supremacy, imperialism, and especially state fascism. How much more life, how much more textuality, will this usage gain?

The Swift Raids of December: Americans Organize Aid for Their Government's Victims

It wouldn't be surprising if you missed the U.S. government's round-up and detention of more than a thousand workers last week since it barely brushed the radar of the media giants. Yet, Labor Start continues to have a flurry of stories. The governments post-hoc pretext was identity theft, but using other people's social security cards, which alone, is far from "identity theft." Identity use might better describe situation, as would use of social security numbers, though it doesn't generate quite the mass panic that comes with the idea of freeloaders racking up debt on your credit cards--as if immigrants really come here to rob and steel.

Some people are just doing the familiar quacking about how they want all undocumented immigrants deported. The New York Times unloads all the popular rhetoric to editorialize for immigration reform. Unions, weighing heavily in on the side of the immigrants, are in an uproar at the precedents being established by big government raiding the work place, and some point to the victimization of illegal immigrants while the bosses go free. Although it was also interesting to read that finally a corporate executive may do time for hiring immigrants illegally, I'm not sure how well that bodes for the immigrants. What's so striking about most of these articles is how little voice is given to the victims.

Of the several stories I've read, the one I found most appealing discusses how citizens in Minneapolis organized a food drive for local victims of the raids. This is the type of solidarity that could prove a far more vital component in defeating the rise of fascism in the U.S.

Donations to Food Banks Decline While Requests Increase

America's Second Harvest, the U.S.'s largest food bank, reports a 9% decrease in donations, while the U.S. Conference of Mayors' reports some startling statistics, including a sharp rise in requests for food:

Among the many disturbing statistics of this year's report: 25% of the residents in emergency shelters were children. One-third of hungry adults were employed. In 6%of the cities, homeless folks had to be turned away from emergency shelters due to a lack of resources. About 74% of the cities saw a marked increase (7%) in the need for emergency food assistance. Over 23% of the requests for emergency food went completely unfilled. The length of time that someone remained homeless increased in 32% of the cities.

What a small price to pay to let congress spend billions of our dollars steeling Iraq's petroleum so at least the big oil executives can keep getting fatter.

Biggest Increase in Inflation Since 1974

Read it for youself.

Agents of a Hidden System of Exploitation and Privilege: The Case of a Las Vegas Mayor who would incarcerate thousands of people left without housing

The well publicized and hideous scapegoating of the homeless functions as a public lesson to deter worker resistance to exploitation. Like those who are subjected to the burden of credit and usury, workers who resist being exploited may be faced with, among other things, becoming dispossessed of housing. Although the dilemma between being exploited or being dispossessed is also constructed at macro levels as large as the nation state, the consequences at the micro level of the individual strike home.

During a decline in buying power, individuals may perceive a narrowed difference between being exploited and being dispossessed. As punishment is applied to those who suffer a condition of "being without housing," a condition of being exploited is encouraged over the added risks of being dispossessed of housing. In attempts to eliminate the threat posed by mass-consciousness of systemic exploitation, attention is diverted to reprisals for the unhoused who are categorically despised, condemned, or even punished.

With mixed success in the courts and on the streets, Las Vegas has tried sweeping away their encampments, closing a park where they hang out, making it a crime to feed them, even passing a ban on sleeping within 500 feet of feces.

Public exhibitions of punishment for the marginalized help deflect blame from the source of the marginalization--the system and its agents, its bosses, mayors, judges, legislators, administrators, lawyers, officers, reporters, and the like. The system uses reverse post-facto reasoning to portray its victims (the exploited and dispossessed) as culprits deserving of punishment: People are punished because they are guilty, therefore those who are punished deserve blame. As the problem of the elite's excesses are hidden and blame is relocated onto their victims, a policy of eliminationism transforms victims into culprits, benefactors into victims. The victims, the unhoused in this case, are redefined as perpetrators--as nuisances, beggars, health risks, tax burdens, drug rings, and lawless public threats. This reversal, this relocation of blame, glosses over and denies the existence of a systemic supremacy, privileging, territoriality, marginalization, and inequity.

As the system mislocates the source of the breakdown, it may seek to repress consciousness and reflection of its own naked absurdity. It may seek to contain recognition of systemic injustice. If the problem grows, it may even seek to eliminate the open presence of the unhoused who, in constant public view, serve as a persistent reminder that flies in the face of system legitimacy. The system may resort to cleansing the streets of the unhoused--by force:

Over the years, the mayor has also proposed moving the homeless to an abandoned prison 30 miles outside the city and once accused Salt Lake City officials of busing the homeless to Las Vegas.

While eliminationism, out of sight and out of mind, strives to preserve a system of privilege and power stratification, it is doomed to fail. When recognition of system break down is eliminated--when humanity fails to even detect it, let alone respond to it--the problem is left to fester. Rather than consider the extent to which an explosion of "homelessness" nationwide is a consequence of systemic privileging, privatization, monopoly and exploitation--rather than consider whether they are among its agents--mayors could be expected to skirt the topic entirely by proffering claims that other cities are responsible for the homeless dumped in theirs. It is tantamount to proclaiming that "they are not 'our' homeless, so we are not obliged to deal with them humanely." This calls into question hundreds of years of progress in ensuring the liberty of citizens to migrate freely within their own countries.

As if the unhoused were always unhoused, as if mere unwanted baggage to be shifted around, mayors may avoid acknowledging the extent to which an increase in homelessness means that more people are being deprived of adequate means of supporting themselves (let alone one another) . Such an increase shouldn't come as a surprise in a world where ordinary workers face an increasingly stratified profit system that aims to use every means imaginable to divert more and more of the fruits their labor into the coffers of a small wealthy minority.

No matter how many unhoused are eliminated from view, whether re-situated into a system of exploitation or institutionalized, still others become unhoused. The problem continually resurfaces because its source is misidentified and unaddressed. Any pretense at "solving the problem of homelessness" must first expose and subvert the collective denial of its systemic features. The myriad of systemic injustices perpetrated against both the ordinary worker and the unhoused alike must be given broad consciousness. Only then will just and equitable solutions be broadly pondered and constructed.

Labor Exploitation Leaves U.S. Border Vulnerable To Terrorists

Virtually every foreign terrorists caught in the U.S. has entered through the Canadian border, while resources get diverted to preventing the union-friendly immigrants from Latin America and Canadian borders guards are overworked:

Homeland Security officers who check incoming travelers at the region's international bridges claim that long hours and forced overtime are causing some officers to be mentally exhausted and are jeopardizing the nation's security.

The article goes on to discuss how border agents have to work for eight hour shifts without bathroom breaks and have to piss in bottles.

In an April 2002 interview, Wilson told The Buffalo News that some officers were working 16-hour shifts, but at that time, he said an anticipated increase in staff would address that problem.

Yet, how the hell do you get an increase in staff by compensating the serious health threat to your worker's health with a mere $29k in a region of the current with a higher cost of living:

"On a hot day, you can get light-headed from breathing in carbon monoxide fumes all day, but still, you have to do your job," Watson said.

But, the U.S. government and corporate power elite could care less about U.S. workers and "terrorists threats." Already, they view organized labor as a greater threat than an Islamic terrorists state. Flashback: remember it wasn't long ago that the current U.S. regime was going to outsource the port control to a terrorists state.

INS Union Busting

Until U.S. citizens get off their fat-asses and unionize, I'm in favor of opening the border to millions more immigrants from Latin America who have the courage to do it for them. It's not the immigrant's who are driving down the wages, it's the corporate pigs and the complacent chicken-shit U.S. workers! The U.S. middle class is flirting with disaster by allowing the INS to deport justice.

US Army Might Break Goodyear Strike

Now here's a way to bring U.S. involvement in Iraq to a grinding halt. If Americans would get of their asses and work together instead of against one another, for a change, many other corporate and impreialist injustices could be reversed. Screw Taft-Hartley, every exploited worker should strike already, government sponsored union or not! Slavery is banned by a constitutional amendment!

US Criminalizes and Imprisons More People Than Any Other Country

2.2 million behind bars! That rivals Stalin's USSSR--TBTW flashback!

Nobel Winner Warns of Dangers of Globalization

Excerpt:

. . . glorification of the entrepreneurial spirit has led to “one-dimensional human beings” motivated only by profit

Sounds like Marcuse.

More Americans Losing Homes to Foreclosure

From Rueters, tomorrow's news about the collapse in the housing bubble:

A mortgage survey due on Wednesday is expected to show that more and more Americans are in danger of losing their homes. The quarterly report from the Mortgage Bankers Association is also expected to show that the same mortgage products that helped send the housing market into the stratosphere are now weighing homeowners down.

In a hint at Wednesday's data, October saw more foreclosure actions than any other month this year according to RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties.

Bush's conception of "ownership society" just means a society where ownership is relinquised to lenders. Sound's like the Grapes of Wrath cometh, once again.

Amercia Blog has more, here. Also, a TBTW flashback from nearly a year ago.

A Healthy Dose of Anarchy . . . After Katrina, nontraditional, decentralized relief steps in where big government and big charity failed

Humans are long due for a discursive rebound of anarcho-praxis, the fabric of a community life eroded by the explosion of consumerism and spectator-ism brought-on by state-sponsored corporatism. Kudos to Reason Magazine for publishing a tale how informal alliances of individuals (from the likes of Rainbow Gatherings, Burning Man, and other informal networks) converged on the gulf coast in the aftermath of Katrina to practice what Kropotkin describes as "mutual aid."

Here's an excerpt:

The term “mutual aid” isn’t as touchy-feely as it might initially sound. The Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin advanced the concept in the early 20th century as an argument against the idea that people are naturally inclined to compete against one another. The concept remains popular among radicals today, and some of the relief workers in the area espouse anarchist politics.

When locals trying to rebuild asked Common Ground for help getting the proper permits, the group’s policy was to help rebuild, building permits or not. “We’re essentially breaking the law,” Koné told me, pausing for emphasis. “That’s civil disobedience.” If it keeps people from living in mold-filled houses, he said, then Common Ground will do it. The logic of the approach became clear to me after I spent weeks trying to get in touch with anyone at the New Orleans Department of Safety and Permits. I was hoping to get the department’s reaction to Koné and other critics who called it inefficient and unresponsive to ordinary residents. No one ever returned my calls.

Common Ground’s call to action is “Solidarity Not Charity.” Its logo features a fist holding a hammer on one side and a medical cross on the other, á la Bolshevik-era posters. Volunteers argue online about whether the group is too authoritarian or not authoritarian enough, whether there are too many anti-oppression workshops or too few. As Owen Thompson, a college student and Common Ground volunteer, has pointed out in the webzine Toward Freedom, it makes sense for New Orleans to be attractive to anarchists right now: Here is a place where government failed absolutely, and as such it could be the perfect place to argue that government itself is a failure.

Read the rest of the article here.

When there's finally enough solidarity and humanity to duplicate these efforts millions of times over, then peace, justice, and harmony will have made a quantum leap.

How Krugman Gives Democrats a Free Pass in his Rolling Stone Article: The Great Wealth Transfer

In Rolling Stone, Paul Krugman details how George W. Bush policies have helped the rich to scam everyone else out of a decent (let alone fair) share of the American pie. Krugman may very well be correct that the U.S. could soon face the economic inequality of Latin American, and that that inequality could end up permanently locked-in. Nevertheless, he fails to mention several major contributing factors, and it's noteworthy that he mentions none for which the Democrats share blame. For starters, he doesn't once mention a century of court rulings allowing corporate personhood, nor does he discuss the Clintonian policy of globalization and its fallout for average workers.

Curiously, Krugman neglects the major role that Clinton's Telecommunications Act of 1996 played in censoring public discussion and awareness of the problems of economic inequity. Foisted on the U.S. public with lies that it would increase competition in (and hence diversify) the market place of ideas, it did the opposite. Afterwards, major media companies went "from around 80 in 1986, to 5 in 2005." As a consequence, the number of voices in the media that speak honestly on behalf of average workers has narrowed, especially since the gigantic conglomerates that own and sponsor the media are guided by profit-driven policies which are at odds with unions and fair compensation for workers. Although little in Krugman's Rolling Stone article would be difficult for the average worker to grasp, most Americans who rely on T.V. for news hardly hear a word about labor issues, except perhaps for those who are prosperous enough to purchase cable where they can watch the likes Lou Dobbs. Similarly, Krugman mentions nothing of the PR machinery of government and corporate punditry and propaganda, especially in the form of VNR, all of which the media giants freely embrace in order to perpetuate the big economic lies: that the economy is better; that anyone can make it if they try; that tax breaks help the little guy (even though they almost exclusively benefit the wealthy). As with pretexts for invading Iraq, there are also well-funded Orwellian PR campaigns to sell American workers a big bag of lies about the economy.

Though George W. Bush could very well be the most corrupt president in U.S. history, Krugman's article would have Americans think that Bush and his rubber-stamp Republican cronies are alone to blame for the demise of the American middle class. Just as the impeachment movement tends to conveniently neglect Congressional Democrats' vast complicity in the U.S. disaster in Iraq, it's journalism like Krugman's that fosters public denial of the fact that Democrats are also complicit in stripping the average American of the type of liberty that only comes with some basic level prosperity--what until now was known as the great American dream. Now, the realization of that dream becomes increasingly tentative as the average American lives by credit and the U.S. dollar is further devalued by deficits. While I'm pleased that Krugman champions the plight of the average worker, I wish he would better explain that Washington Democrats also share blame for the decline of the middle class. Otherwise, he comes off as little more than a partisan shill who opens the door for Democrats to enact further policies which ensure the fruits of American labor continue to be redistributed upwardly.

Politicians & Lobbyists Gone Wild - D.C.'s new reality TV

Sirota rightfully rips Washington Democrats who, like Republicans, are selling out to powerful Washington lobbyist.

Money Week: US housing market is worse; Is China Ready?

On the decline of the housing market:

One Merrill Lynch report reckons that a 5% fall in house prices could see defaults rise to double digit rates, which would be enough to hurt some investors who’ve bought seemingly-safe A-rated paper, the analysts recko.

Although the M.W. article focusses on potentially grave scenarios for investors, double digit defaults on housing payments could see millions of people suddeenly without housing and thrust into comepetition for increasingly scarce and already pricey rental units. Of course, many won't be eligible for bankruptcy, thanks to Obama and other corporate congressional shills who eliminated that possibility. Those who don't retain housing will not retain work, even if jobs were otherwise abundant. Either some form of welfare emerges (increasing the tax burden to the housed), or millions of homeless people are left to fend for themselves on the streets where many will end up in jail (increasing the tax burden for the housed even more than welfare). The scenario could spiral out of control, or it could resolve with action, but either way there could be suffering up and down the hierarchy of wealth, especially considering the grave ramifications for investors.

Is China ready for U.S. economic decline? It would seem not if the U.S. responds to the already sagging U.S. dollar with protectionism, which could sink a Chinese economy completely dependent on U.S. consumption of its exports. With massive protests, unrest, and workers leaving the repressive Chinese Communist Party by the droves, a destabilized Chinese economy could even see another revolution which would send both expected and unexpected shock waves throughout the globe.

How to Destroy the U.S.

Step 1 : Transfer essential U.S. domestic productivity to other countries.

Step 2: Spend excessively on global military dominance in order to secure essential resources and productivity from those countries.

Step 3: Go in debt by trillions to pay for that U.S. military dominance.

Step 4: Watch the value of the dollar decline until essential products can no longer be purchased from other countries, while all industrial infrastructure inside the U.S. has been eliminated.

-----------------------

Of course, this isn't my recipe, nor do I advocate it. But this is the formula that has been implemented by the U.S. government's sponsoring of multinational corporate globalization for the benefit of the a tiny minority investor class--the power-elite. Even though a young child could foresee the inevitable tragedy, global corporatism has finally come home to roost, and the demise of the U.S. grows closer everyday as the almighty dollar finally begins a sharp decline:

According to the poll conducted in 2005, 65% of central banks, managing more than two trillion US dollars, have begun to realize that the US currency cannot be relied on for these banks' reserves.

More recently, the euro rallied against the US dollar to the 1.32 mark, the US dollar has shed more than 14% of it value against the euro over the last year, and 50% of its value over the past five years. This decline is attributed to fears over the US' trade deficit with the rest of the world's countries.

After brutalizing much of the world, the U.S. shouldn't expect to find other countries eager to come to its rescue. If the U.S. doesn't reverse course now and start rebuilding its domestic infrastructure so that it can produce essential goods for itself, then the party's over. At least the greedy will have had fun while it lasted, even though the country's children will continue to suffer for their parents' mistakes and wonder why nobody cared enough to leave anything for them. The sad thing is that, even though almost everyone has awakened to this reality, the number of people who care enough to stop it is severely insufficient.

US Casts Sole ‘No’ Vote Against UN Arms Trade Bill

It's amazing that anyone would regard the U.S. as "democratic" when the U.S. government alone persistently obstructs the the entire world's will for peace. U.S. productivity is heavily entrenched in arms production. Since the U.S. accounts for over half of weapons exports worldwide, there's little wonder that the U.S. government would persistently thumb its nose at the entire world. The U.S. government has no interest in democracy, because it exist to do the bidding of the power elite, much of whose wealth comes at the expense of millions of people being murdered globally. There is no democracy, no freedom, and no liberty for the millions of innocent people who find themselves victims of U.S. made weapons. Democracy and peace would both be better served if the U.S. shifted its economy to life-giving productivity, rather than continue to peddle bad dope.

Israel: 600,000 Civil Servants Strike, Shutting Down Vital Services

Labor Presses for Measure to Ease Unionizing

Labor should stand up to the corporate pigs, and move beyond just begging from politicians.

Another Inhumane City: Madison Leaves 14 More Families Out on the Streets in Freezing Temperatures

In December, when temperatures in Madison can drop to 30 below zero, the lousy mayor allocates a mere $4,500 to 14 families, a fraction of what would be needed to secure new residences, while hundreds more who were already left out in the cold get nothing. Who ever suggested only conservatives would commit genocide via gentrification. One of the most prosperous and liberal cities in the U.S. places city code above human life.

Will the 'haves' stop having it all?

Excerpt quoting Rep. Barney Frank:

"From 2001 to the first quarter of 2006, corporate profits as a share of national income went from 8 percent to 14 percent," the congressman wrote. "During that same period, wages as a share of national income dropped from 66 percent to 63 percent."

Richest 2% Hold Half the World’s Assets

Excerpt:

Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1 per cent of wealth.

African-Americans, Economic Well-Being, and Immigration

Chaka A. K. Uzondu challenges the idea that immigrants deprive African Americans of jobs.

May Day Finally Comes Back Home

May Day is International Workers Day. It was born from the national backlash against brutal police attacks on striking immigrant workers in Chicago in 1886. Soon after the birth of America's first major labor movement, May Day came to be celebrated globally and has been every since, except, as Geov Parish reminds us, in the U.S.

The immigrants of the first May Day gave U.S. workers the forty hour work week that big corporations have finaly managed to take away, as more and more Americans are forced to stake down multiple part time jobs while good paying jobs head overseas for cheaper labor markets of countries driven into dire poverty and soaring unemployment by trade agreements like NAFTA, GATT and the WTO. Most important to the struggle of workers today, Geov Parish adds:

the larger issue is America's imposition of corporate-friendly trade policies that have decimated economies in Mexico and elsewhere, spurring economic emigration to America, while at the same time exporting millions of better-paying jobs from America itself.

This year, May day has finally come back home and the U.S. may be witnessing its first labor movement in generations. Hopefully, U.S. workers will soon come to welcome solidarity with these immigrants who offer the best hope of taking the reigns of global corporate exploitation and the best chance for getting better compensation for all workers in every country, even the U.S. To oppose the immigrants who have taken to streets of the U.S. is to support a lower standard of living for the average U.S. citizen.

Every worker should demand that international trade agreements and trade organizations include fair democratic representation of workers everywhere. These agreements and organizations must be turned on their head and overhauled to protect workers rights, instead of prohibiting any laws that protect workers rights, which is what they currently do. Unbridled global trade by and for transnational corporate profiteers is what causes migration. The solution resides not in deporting immigrants, but in confronting the cause.

Bolivia Nationalizes Petroleum and Gives Oil Profiteers the Boot

The May Day National Strike, and Unregulated Trade as Leading Cause of Migration

As the May Day national strike approaches, it might be worth revisiting the leading cause of migration from Latin America to the U.S.: Unregulated life-destructive trade policies. These unfair trade agreements and organizations (NAFTA, FTAA, WTO, etc) exist EXCLUSIVELY to protect only the interests of huge transnational corporations against local worker and environmental protections, the agreements themselves strictly prohibiting the later as a condition of trade. This must be turned upside down. Neither congress nor the corporate media giants have yet fully acknowledged this as the root cause of migration, poverty, displacement, and a myriad of other social and economic problems worldwide. Too, it comes with some bit of disappointment that even the immigrants and progressives themselves have been content to frame this only as a immigrant rights issue, rather than the international labor, environmental, and health issue that it truly is.

Not only can migration be slowed or even halted, but the standard of living in the U.S. could also be raised, by ensuring that the same life-protective rights that are enjoyed in the U.S. are also enjoyed in Mexico and everywhere else. Instead of favoring only corporate profit, the terms of trade agreements should also impose incentives and "conditions for trade" on prospective government and corporate participants in order to ensure labor and environmental standards are comparable across borders.

Here are a couple of recent postings at TBTW, with much thanks to David Sirota, Randi Rhodes, and Mike Malloy, who more than most others, have gone to great lengths to expose the most censored issue in the U.S.--unregulated life-destructive corporate globalized trade:

Root Causes of Illegal Immigration: The Big Lie Systematically Propagated by Corporate Media Economic Reporting

The Taboo Subject at the Core of the Immigration Debate

For the Long Run: The Employee Free Choice Act

No panacea, but a significant step in the right direction:

Employee Free Choice Act or EFCA (H.R. 1696 and S. 842) the first major attempt to reform labor law since the 1970s.

[ . . . ]

EFCA promises to take what is now a nasty, bruising, and hopelessly lawyer-dominated organizing process and turn it into a simple and equitable matter of getting a majority of employees to sign union cards. In addition to simple card check or majority verification, EFCA provides mechanisms to prevent employers from starting a war of attrition against workers once they have selected a union by sending the issue to mediation if 90 days pass without a contract. It also contains several protections for workers including treble back pay for the discriminatory discharge of union organizers.

War in Iraq Set to Be More Expensive Than Vietnam

In 1973, the U.S. was nearly bankrupt from Vietnam, Nixon halted issuance of gold in return for notes since an international run on the gold reserve had left it half depleted, and the economy was about to collapse. Kissenger engineered the attack on Israel and Israel's harsh response against Egypt and Syria, so as to provide a pretext for the Arab Oil embargo, which in turn drove up the cost of oil so much that the gold-dollar was replaced with the petro-dollar, thereby saving the U.S. economy from complete collapse, because oil from Alaska and the Artic finally became profitable. Now, the U.S. is in a similar situation with record deficits, partly due to the war-profiteering surrounding Bush's so-called "war on terrorism." But what will save a sinking U.S. economy with the oil already nearing unsustainable highs and with no further significant domestic petroleum sources?

Ports Deal II: Bush to Approve Takeover of 9 U.S. Military Plants by Dubai, UAE

Will this go from a whisper to a scream?

Exxon's 1st Quarter Profit Soars to $8.4 billion

And that's just Exxon. That doesn't account for the profits of all the other petroleum corporations. Meanwhile, Bush plans to slash only a mere 200 million a year from the billions (ie, many thousands of millions) of annual taxpayer subsidies to the petroleum industry, otherwise known as corporate welfare, while hundreds of thousands of poor American children continue to go homeless. This is shameful. Bush's 200 million is but a tiny faction of one percent of the petroleum industry's profits. In other words, Bush's proposal does nothing but let the petroleum industry continue to reap mega-profits, a hefty percentage of which is over and beyond the pump value since those profits are subsidized, in part, by taxpayers. Is this what America bargained for when she let the petroleum-industry-incarnate occupy the white house?

America's Rags-to-Riches Dream an illusion: Study

Excerpt:

America may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world, according to a new study published on Wednesday.

The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent is just one percent, according to "Understanding Mobility in America", a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University.

By contrast, a child born rich had a 22 percent chance of being rich as an adult, he said.

Joe Libertarian might account for the 20 percent difference by suggesting that most of that 20 percent is comprised of those who don't want to be rich. While that might be true for some, I doubt Joe Libertarian's assumption would apply to many in an America where wealth determines self-value for practically everyone, irrespective of whether many will admit it.

The War On Immigrants

This is another lengthy in depth analysis from Lendmen that I haven't had time to read, but suspect it's worth sharing. Will update later.

The Corporate Control of Society and Human Life

I haven't had time to read this yet, but it looks well worth the time. Here's the intro:

Large transnational corporations are clearly the dominant institution of our time. They’re preeminent throughout the world but especially in the Global North and its epicenter in the US. They control or greatly influence what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services like health care and even what we’re taught in schools up to the highest levels.

GAO: 8 Iraqi Provinces Unstable

The Bush regime said there were only four unstable provinces. As it turns out, only three are stable:

Vice President Dick Cheney predicted in June 2005 the insurgency was in its "last throes."

But new data revealed by the GAO suggests the opposite is true.

According to the U.S. Embassy/Multinational Force Iraq National Coordination Team's Provincial Stability Assessment generated in March, just three of Iraq's provinces are stable, and all of them are in so-called Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

Link to website of GAO, the nation's top watchdog.

Bush Regime's Failure Reflected in Latest Snow Job Appointee

The Bush regime must be really desperate if their selection to deliver snow jobs considers Bush an "embarrassment." Sirota offers an in depth analysis of The Meaning of Tony Snow.

Experts: Global Warming Behind 2005 Hurricanes

Did Bush get on the wrong side of CNN? As much as CNN has shilled for him and exploited women with non-news distractions like "missing white women," and as hard as Bush has worked to silence the scientific consensus that global warming is the biggest global threat, I'm a bit surprised that CNN let this one slip through the censors.

Man Who Aided the Corporate Takeover of Democratic Party NOW Paves the Way for the Corporate Takeover of the Internet

Open Thread

Question: Readership here is small, seemingly 5 to 10 per day? I don't know who all the readers are, but was wondering if TBTW is of value to any of them, or if I should just abandon the blog for other activities?

FAIR: The Expanding Gap Between Media and Public Attitudes on the Economy

When corporate media giants say the economy is getting better, they simply mean that the wealthiest are getting a greater slice of the pie while the majority of Americans' slices are getting smaller and smaller. Where's the breaking point, where spewing the big lie undermines the media's credibility? When will the corporate media giants have to admit that the average American's main indicator for an "improving economy" is an "increase in buying power" per hour of labor sacrificed?!

CIA Purge of Patriot Targets Wrong Official

Who cares if it endangers national security when the "Leaker in Chief" purges anyone and everyone, just to silence the single leaker who disclosed that the "Leaker in Cheif" is violating international law." Flashback to the Saturday Night Massacre?

Rich Nations Use IMF-World Bank Meeting to Gain Profits from Poor Nations

Reverse Robin Hood, again--robbing the poor to give to the rich.

Profits, Not Crude Oil, Are Driving Pump Price Spike

Bush's Double Standard On Leaks

Confirmed: Bush Lied America Into War

For the few remaining people who don't yet realize it, this should bury any notion that there's a shred of honesty within the Bush regime.

According to a Top-Level U.S. Spy, the CIA Informed Bush Prior to the War that their Best Intelligence Revealed that Iraq Had No WMD

Drumheller, a 26 year veteran spy for the CIA, reveals that how excited the Bush administration was to find out that the CIA had penetrated Hussein's inner circle prior to the war:

Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq'’s nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq'’s foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq'’s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of the operation.

"This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would know what he was talking about," Drumheller says.

"You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked.

"We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.

According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House, including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.

At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said, they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."

What did this high-level source tell him?

"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program," says Drumheller.

But,when tintelligencence revealed that Iraq had no active WMD program, says Drumheller, the excitement immediately disappeared and the was thereafter completely ignored:

The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from the Iraqi foreign minister.

But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longer interested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"

"And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that you had this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilled with that," Bradley asked.

"The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.

Once they learned what it was the source had to say—--that Saddam Hussein did not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMD program, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in the intelligence."

For U.S. leadership to regain any credibility, the entire Bush regime must be impeached and removed from office. They're directly responsible for the murder of tens of thousandsinnocentcent people, including thousands of U.S. citizens.

Activists Disrupt World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz’s Press Conference

Excerpt:

What followed the protestor’s removal was described by one attendee as “mayhem”. Support people for the protestors began to hand out a statement explaining the action and holding mini impromptu press conference with the dozens of press that had followed the protestors out of the room. Other press who were not in the room at the time of the action came sprinting down the hall way in the hopes of catching the action. IMF and World Bank civil society liaisons frantically tried to curtail the activities of the activists. One IMF staff person looked at those seated in the civil society chairs that were not a part of the action and shouted quiet shrilly “you civil society people are so screwed!” Another IMF staff person, while looking rather frantic shouted “this is not supposed to be happening! There is no security in here!”

Follow more news from the D.C. protest of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank thoughout the weekend, here!

Steeling from the Poor to Give to the Rich -- Reverse Robin Hood

As the American worker's buying power continues to decline and U.S. poverty continues to rise, the workers' relative loss of income from the fruits of their labor translates into a gain for the wealthy. The workers' decreased wages means increased profits for stockholders in a stockmarket boon that creates more millionaires than ever. To top it off, Bush's taxbreaks for the wealthy come at the expense of slashing public health programs, while the taxes are increasingly slated to subsidize corporations and lavish incomes to their wealthy shareholders, even while some of those very corporations experience record profits.

Of course, the current U.S. regime and their corporate media pundits continue the big lie that the economy is in great shape when, even without adjusting for deficit spending, it's tragic for the average American. The current regime deceptively cites a rise in jobs, productivity, and the stockmarket. What they omit: the job increase is an increase slave wage jobs that won't support a family; increased productivity comes from a combination of increased use of machinery to replace good paying jobs for humans and from more sweat and blood from the worker who isn't compensated for working harder; a rising stockmarket only benefits a tiny percentage of the population, despite the fact that nearly half the population has some sort of stock.

The equation is simple: Install corporate party politicians (democrats and republicans) who agree to a scheme of steeling from the poor to give to the rich. This is otherwise known, simply, as the "Reverse Robinhood" effect.

MAY-DAY, MAY-DAY: U.S. Begins National Sweep and Detention of Migrant Workers

Let the workers go! Let the workers go!

Mexico Joins May Day Action With Boycott Against U.S. Corporatism

Are boycotts agsint the U.S. going to go international?

Workin' It: A New Air America Show on Worker Rights

From the website:

Workin’ It is a new weekly, one-hour radio show on Air America Radio focusing on working life in America. Hosted by comedienne and author Jackie Guerra, the lively magazine program provides a break from the daily grind to make you think, laugh, and do something about the declining state of workers’ rights. Workin’ It is produced in partnership with the workers’ rights advocacy organization, American Rights at Work

L.A. Port Truckers Join Call for May 1 GENERAL STRIKE!

Right-Wing Fascists Advocate Mass Murder of Immigrants & Politicians

Excerpt:

"All of you who think there's a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong. We're going to have to start killing these people," neo-Nazi radio host Hal Turner posted to his website the day after 500,000 immigrant rights activists marched through downtown Los Angeles.

"I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done."

If Turner were a Muslim or Arabic U.S. citizen, I bet he'd be arrested already! Why are white non-Muslims permitted to promote terrorism?

9th Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Homeless Can No Longer Be Prosecuted for Sitting and Sleeping

This is a major victory for poor people, and could set precedent in further case law throughout the rest of the country. Sanity, for many, may depend not only on rest and sleep, but also on living without fear of being punished for resting or sleeping. It appears that the court ruling is contingent, however, on a state of affairs where the number of homeless people exceeds available housing slated for the homeless in the area. But, the ramifications are clear, and the burden is on municipalities to provide housing other than incarceration if they wish to continue attempts to sanitize the streets. Otherwise, the unwitting public will just have to live with unsavory and predictable byproducts of anti-tax capitalism gone mad to the point that it attempts to deprive people the right to be responsible for themselves and/or for one another.

Immigration Doesn't Result in Falling Wages in U.S.

Unfettered regulatory-free trade combined with global corporatism deflates wages and living standards in every country, the U.S. not least of which. Time to wake up to the root cause! Immigrants don't set wages low, corporate profiteers do--by design or by force.

Bush Regime Refuses to Inform Congress of UAE's New Bid to Take Over U.S. Defense Contractors

It's not the least surprising that Bush, the corporate incarnate, would withhold any details about a deal to sell manufacturers of components for U.S. defense to a terrorist state with lots of petroleum. But, who, in the first place, would ever have imagined that, under unregulated "free" trade agreements (ie, regulatory-free trade agreements), the U.S. might be compelled to sell off its military defense (and maybe everything else) to the highest bidder. There would almost be a poetic justice in it.

At issue is a not a matter of where we the people draw the line, but the essential matter at hand involves people rising up to reject and/or transform agreements and entities whose unregulated and undemocratic existence perpetrates most of the more extreme injustices worldwide. At issue is democracy itself, the sovereignty of a nation's right to self-determination. Should the WTO or any outside (trade) entity be allowed to act as a sovereign higher government? Should such an external entity be allowed to act as government with veto power over U.S. laws and regulatory processes? Should such an entity have the power to punish nations for establishing life-protective regulations which interfere with corporate profit? Should a higher governing entity exist without the democratic consent of any citizenry, without any accountability to anything except the profit margins of corporate giants?

This is what the U.S. has embraced. It's tantamount to the collective corporate take-over of governments worldwide, the consequence of which is that only corporate interests are represented, and every other interest, including the democratic will of the people, is crushed. This is also analogous to state fascism, a glorified process that is above reproach as it terminates millions of people's right to exist, especially those who challenge it or refuse to participate in it. It is to institutionalize the perpetual sacrificial offering of mountains of human carnage for a contract with the money gods. There are countless alternatives to this.

A Simple Solution to Simultaneously Lower Income Taxes, Create Economic Growth, & Save the Planet

Tax and fine polluters!

The practice of reducing income taxes while increasing levies for air, water, and soil pollution--has swept nations from Singapore to Sweden, said Brown, a pioneer in the merging of economics and ecology. He called it ''environmental tax shifting''; in many countries it also is referred to as environmental tax reform.

Tax Gasoline before the corporations raise the profit margin so high that they take the lion's share of the inevitable rise in price !

Germany and Sweden lead Western Europe in environmental tax reform. By 2001, a four-year plan adopted by Germany in 1999 had lowered fuel use by five percent, said Brown. It also accelerated growth in the renewable energy sector, creating some 45,400 jobs by 2003 in the wind industry alone. Brown, citing industry figures, said he expected the figure to rise to 103,000 new jobs by 2010.

In 2001, Sweden launched a 10-year environmental tax shift designed to convert some $3.9 billion of taxes from income to environmentally destructive activities. The average household has seen its income tax bill reduced by around $1,100.

That burden has not disappeared. Rather, it has shifted to vehicle and fuel taxes--a central plank of Sweden's plan to be free of oil use by 2025.

The sensible conclusion:

Some 2,500 economists, including eight Nobel Prize winners, also have endorsed the concept of environmental tax shifts.

Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw wrote in Fortune magazine: ''Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming--all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency.''

The alternate conclusion:

. . . a quote from Oystein Dahle, a former vice president of Exxon for Norway and the North Sea. ''Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth,'' Dahle said. ''Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.'

This is the least we should do RIGHT NOW to slow our destruction of our own species and thousands of others along with it.

Bush/Clinton Economy Adds More Slave Wage Jobs

Note, growth is concentrated in jobs as servants to the wealthy. Excerpt:

. . . manufacturing jobs, which tend to pay more than average, fell by 5,000 in March, after declining in February. Over the past year alone, factories shed 56,000 positions. Construction, another high-wage industry, added only 7,000 jobs in March after gaining an average of 40,000 jobs in the two previous months.

The biggest gains last month were in the lowest paying sectors. These include such categories as restaurants and hotels, retailing, health care, and state and local governments.

Then there's global competition. Because companies in most industries are unable to raise their prices because of the influx of low-priced goods from abroad, they try to hold down their costs as much as possible -- and labor is most firms' biggest cost.

Advances in technology, including the rise of the Internet, have enabled many companies to outsource a number of their jobs, as you know.

[ . . . ]

Finally, there's the shadow labor force. These are the people who have officially dropped out of the workforce over the past six years, bringing the labor force participation rate down from a peak of nearly 68% of the over-16 population, to 66% today.

When you count these folks in, and those who are either working at jobs beneath their skills, or part-time when they would prefer full-time, you can see that there's still lots of competition for jobs.

So, adding into the unemployment rate those who either stopped collecting unemployment and are no longer counted, and those who are working low-paying and/or part-time jobs which can't sustain them, the unemployment rate (or more precisely, the underemployment rate) can then be considered to be rising instead of falling. What is a more important figure than the unemployment rate is the average workers buying power, income relative to cost of living adjusted for inflation. The average U.S. workers buying power has declined for decades, now to the point where the average American would consider the U.S. economy in poor condition even if the official unemployment rate were zero. Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer at an unprecendented exponential rate.

Raw Story: U.S. Outsourcing Iran Special Ops to Terror Group

It should be no surprise that current administration (or past ones) would support terrorists who murder U.S. citizens and support "U.S. enemies." Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset despite his anti-western terror, and he's still one of the current administrations leading assets for provoking fear in the U.S. public and channeling that fear into hysterical and hasty action. Using Saudi Arabia as a front, the Reagan/Bush-I administration helped put the Taliban in power to fight the USSR. Under the reign of Bush II, the U.S. deposed the Taliban when the later wouldn't accommodate U.S. petroleum/corporate interests subsequently and presently secured by permanent U.S. military bases in that and neighboring countries. Despite propaganda to the contrary, the U.S. is perfectly content to allow a resurgence of the Taliban and its repression as long as it doesn't interfere with U.S. business. Whatever is expedient to the corporate interest of the moment knows no moral constraint. The U.S. and Britain were for Hitler before they were against Hitler, and would've been for Hitler again had it been expedient. Such back and forth switching has been common place every since.

Movements Bubbling Up to Challenge Trickle-Down Economics

The Rise of Fascism in America

Corporate-Run U.S. City Holds First Election in 25 Years

This could almost qualify as a scaled-down model of any corporation where workers have no vote, except in this case, the city is the corporation:

On Tuesday night, a clerk promptly carried a metal ballot box into the City Council chamber and announced he would not count the votes.

The bizarre, and some say illegal, decision was just the latest eyebrow-raising political turn in Vernon, a city on the edge of Los Angeles where the mayor and council members have served for decades without opposition and most of the voters hold municipal jobs while living in city-owned houses.

[ . . . ]

Founded in 1905, the five-square-mile city consists in large part of rutted roads, railroad tracks, and a densely packed maze of warehouses, meatpacking plants, fuel tanks and an occasional vacant lot. There is no high school, no movie theater, no parkland. The city's motto: "Exclusively Industrial."

Under an unusual arrangement, Vernon owns virtually all the roughly two-dozen homes in town. In its century-long history, it has had just four mayors, all related to its founders. Mayor Leonis Malburg has been on the council since the Eisenhower administration and has been mayor since 1974.

The last contested election was in 1980; the city had not bothered to hold an election since then because there were no challengers who qualified for the ballot.

Paying the Beast to Have a Voice: Investment Activism

In May of 2005, representatives of Corp Watch and Global Exchange, both investors in Halliburton, drew national attention at Halliburton's shareholders' meeting where they spoke out against the company's growing list of labor and human rights abuses. Similarly, Sierra Club purchases stocks in corporations in order to participate as shareholders and promote change internally, and it argues that this is one (perhaps the only, as the might have us think) method available to stop corporate encroachment on planetary life-support. As Global Exchange investors are targeting Hershey over child labor on cocoa farms, the tactic appears to be gaining momentum. But, to what end? And, at what cost?

Forced to compete within the global money-value scheme set in place by transnational corporatism, activism finds itself submitting to a price tag, as do nearly all things which are to retain entitlement to exist. I question whether feeding the beast by purchasing shares in order to have a voice is better than traditional tactics, like the widespread disruption planned for May 1. Even though disruption may be more expensive in the short run, its impact is felt universally and isn't isolated to the internal workings of those corporations in which activists purchase shares. If strong enough, disruption can force more people everywhere to take a stand and can get results faster. Too, it avoids financing atrocities and may even cost less in the long run. A wiser investment might be to fund "strike and boycott" life-support infrastructure which, in turn, also fosters widespread communication channels and lasting community.

Federal Government Considers Letting Wal-Mart Take Over Banks

Traditionally, Wal-mart's current retail monopoly would have already been busted-up to ensure fair competition and fair market entry. Instead, future growth of Wal-mart banking on the level of Wal-mart retail could reduce prospects of loans to existing or entering competitors. Already, retail monopoly tosses out the window the "fair competition" argument for capitalism's raison d'etre. With Wal-Mart also controlling start-up lending, "fair competition" would be reduced to mere doublespeak. To further understand the problem of letting Wal-Mart enter the banking sector, check out Sirota's article and the background links their.

Supply-and-Demand Solutions to Migration

Sirota is right on it again (SF Gate):

Why is the supply of decent-paying jobs in Mexico so low? Therein lies an issue neither Democrats nor Republicans want to address, because it touches on public policies both have supported.

[ . . . ]

A decade after NAFTA's passage, America is still hemorrhaging the good-paying jobs that NAFTA was supposed to create. As for Mexico, the Washington Post's report on the 10-year anniversary of NAFTA told the story: 19 million more Mexicans now live in poverty than before the pact was signed. Similarly, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich points out, "Mexico's real wages are lower than they were before [NAFTA]." And because NAFTA included no provisions to force companies to improve Mexican working conditions, jobs that were created in Mexico still pay near-slave wages For instance, the Associated Press noted this week that "Many young [Mexicans] have manual jobs on minimum wage of $5 a day."

[ . . . ]

The best way to stop illegal entry into our country from Mexico is to tamp down the demand by Mexicans to enter this country illegally. After all, no wall, no fence, no border security measure can be as effective as reducing the demand for entry. This means reforming our trade policy to include serious wage, workplace and human-rights provisions so that cross-border commerce actually improves the lives of Mexican workers to the point where they no longer feel the dire economic need to break our immigration laws.

Think about it this way: Had NAFTA lifted 19 million Mexicans out of poverty as promised instead of helping to drive 19 million Mexicans into poverty, you can bet the flood of illegal immigrants across our southern border would be a trickle instead of the flood it is today.

Political Upheaval: Latin America Challenges the U.S. Corporate Trade Regime

Throughout Latin America (and much of the rest of the world), whether revolution by force or revolution at the ballot box, citizens are ousting leaders aligned with the U.S. dominated global corporate trade regime which has forced hundreds of millions of people into poverty worldwide since the 1980s. Already, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela have moved left. Peru is poised to move left, and even Costa Rica and Mexico may also.

Also, in recent months or years, Israel, Germany, and Spain moved left. Presently, the millions of people in the streets of France just gained labor concessions from their rightwing government which itself may soon be ousted. Near the Balkans, Italy's right-wing corporatist supporter of U.S.-war profiteering, Silvio Berlusconi, is poised to be ousted by leftist Romano Prodi. Also, the U.S. sponsored Orange revolution in Ukraine was just reversed so that alignment shifts away from the west and back to Russia.

U.S. access to petroleum may grow limited. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has indicated he's looking to expand his huge reserves of petroleum to markets other than the U.S. Mexico's leading candidate for president, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, "LÃpez Obrador has pledged to block attempts to open the oil and gas industry --which is state-owned--to private investment." As far as access to the Caspianean oil region, on the southern side, Afghanistan and Iraq haven't yet proved hospitable to pipelines, and Iran is but a pipe dream. Already, other small countries south of the Caspianean Sea have already begun ousting U.S. military bases, a necessary response to popular discontent with the U.S. And, experts are saying the Pakistani military is on the brink of swinging in favor of the people who are largely opposed to their president's close relations with the U.S., and specifically his allowing U.S. military to operate within Pakistan.

UAE and Saudi Arabia have indicated they may shift away from the petro-dollar to the Euro. China, the top financier of the U.S.'s 9 trillion dollar deficit, has said it is considering no longer propping up the U.S. economy by purchasing treasury bonds. If all these overtures come to fruition and the trend continues to sweep the world, the U.S. may soon become politically and economically isolated, even unable to dominate militarily without access to cheap oil. The good news is that this will allow the people within the U.S. a chance to establish social and economic justice which was prevented by the unjust corporatism propagated by rightwing regimes from Reagan through Clinton. For the first time in a quarter of a century, there is light at the end of the dark tunnel of U.S. sponsored corporate fascism that has left tens of millions dead and hundreds of millions in poverty.

The Debate You're Not Hearing: Immigration and Trade

From Andrew Christie at Common Dreams:

The exploitation of less developed countries in the economic globalization framework known as free trade has resulted in their financial and environmental impoverishment - both major causes of global overpopulation and increased migration.

Bush Must Answer to America Now!

Mr. Bush, did you authorize Mr. Cheney and/or Mr. Libby to leak to the media Valerie Plame/Wilson's identity as a CIA covert agent?

Yes, or No.

Did you authorize anyone else to do the same?

Yes, or No.

The public must demand an answer from Bush NOW!

The Myth that the U.S. Provides Security in Iraq

Blumenthal at Salon:

Under the pretense that Iraq is being pacified, the U.S. military is partially withdrawing from hostile towns in the countryside and parts of Baghdad. By reducing the numbers of soldiers the administration can claim its policy is working going into the midterm elections. But the jobs that the military will no longer perform are being sloughed off onto State Department "provincial reconstruction teams" led by Foreign Service officers. The stated rationale is that the teams will win Iraqi hearts and minds by organizing civil functions.

The Pentagon has informed the State Department that it will not provide security for these officials and that State should hire mercenaries for protection instead.

Some time in recent months, I remember reading, though I can't remember where, that a high ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq said that the U.S. military doesn't do security for the Iraqis as the myth goes. I also recall reading that Iraq's now so unsafe the U.S. military hardly leaves their bases, and that westerners, including journalists, hardly ever leave the Green Zone. Now, Blumenthal reveals that the State Department has been advised that the U.S. military will not provide their officials any security in Iraq, and that for protection they should contract private mercanaries who will not be included in the U.S. tallies of war fatalities--as if private is not public.

Globalization and the American Labor Movement

From Stewart Acuff, Organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Excerpt:

Corporate driven and fueled globalization is concentrating wealth and constricting freedom.

Duh! Unfortunately, as is typical of the AFL-CIO, this article is all problem and no solution. Since the early days, the AFL-CIO resorts more and more to wimpish do-nothing whining that unions no longer have the right or power to collectively bargain. What's needed to regain such rights is FORCE! Many people died to establish those rights in the first instance, but the AFL-CIO continues to pretend that it will regain those rights by simply educating the public and supporting political campaigns. This is delusional, because wealth can always outspend them. Labor must get aggressive and present a real threat before the holders of wealth will make concessions. Look right now at France. Rather than whine, labor should simply do what's necessary and efficient. That it doesn't do so leads me to wonder whether the AFL-CIO exist mainly to siphon of workers organizational activity, delude them into thinking the AFL-CIO can solve the problem, while the AFL-CIO tacitly ensures workers don't succeed.

Hillary Clinton Profile Degenerates Into Free Trade Worship Session

Sirota's really tearing it up! Screw Hillary!

Union Reveals Wal-Mart is Blocking U.S. Port Security Measures

Anything for higher profit, hugh? Once again, Wal-Mart hates America!

24 Wisconsin Cities Vote to Withdraw U.S. Military from Iraq

I know key activists in this campaign who didn't really expect such a landslide in a "purple" state ("politically bipolar" might be a more accurate description of state notorious for producing such extremes as Gaylord Nelson and Joe McCarthy). With the overwhelming majority voting to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq, activists plan on using the momentum to launch additional referendums on ballots in more cities this fall, throughout Wisconsin and around the country. This re-affirms that Washington Democrats and Republicans alike are increasingly out of touch with their constituencies. Let us hope people everywhere rise up and demand an end to the war-profiteering that guarantees huge campaign funding to the two dominant parties, and guarantees a huge expense to the livelihoods of future generations of ordinary working Americans already driven into the hole by 9 trillion dollars of debt.

The Taboo Subject at the Core of the Immigration Debate

Finally, this weekend, Air America's Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy broke the silence about migration problems stemming from unregulated life-destructive corporate market practices. Now, David Sirota hits a home run:

The answer points to the silver lining in the current furor over immigration: namely, that Americans' concerns over mass illegal immigration provides an opportunity to educate the public about the very tangible, real benefits of bettering conditions in the developing world. Demand that our bought-off politicians start reforming our trade policies to actually help ordinary workers - as opposed to only executives at multinational corporations - and our country will start moving to address global poverty, unfair competition, and illegal immigration.

Sirota also spots penetration of the issue into Time magazine. Keep on coming with it! This is the world's best chance since Seattle '99.

McDonald's Faces Protests Over Farm Wages

Corporate Profits Surge to 40-Year High, While Wages Fall to 40-Year Low

Meanwhile, the share of national income going to wage and salary workers has fallen to 56.9%. Except for a brief period in 1997, that's the lowest share for labor income since 1966.

Root Causes of Illegal Immigration: The Big Lie Systematically Propagated by Corporate Media Economic Reporting

From David Sirota:

. . . check out this new Associated Press story about the upcoming World Trade Organization negotiations. The piece states as fact that the Doha round of negotiations "sets out to boost the global economy and lift millions worldwide out of poverty by lowering trade barriers across all sectors."

since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement - a pact, in part sold to the public as a way to help Mexico's poor - Mexico has seen its ranks of the poor jump by 19 million

Illegal immigration to the U.S. will not stop for walls or laws. It will not stop until the U.S., and its affiliated international trade organizations, are forced to regulate trade in such a way that corporations and banks can no longer deliberately suck nations dry and thrust their citizenry into poverty. The only reason this isn't self-evident to everyone is because the corporatists (including the corporate media) slam the public with well-concocted, often nativist if not outright racist, disinformation--disinformation which sometimes even evolves into a reactionary fascist agenda like that of the (neo-)minutemen.

The last thing the corporate elite want is for U.S. citizens to realize the simple truth that the solution to illegal immigration lies entirely in regulating trade in such a way as to lift people in third world countries out of poverty. Poverty reduction does not, has not, and will not happen by unfettered free trade on the global market, because the goal of transnational corporate profit is the theft of masses of livlihoods and displacement of ways of life.

Lifting the third world out of poverty will only happen if the U.S. citizenry demand it. Because it reduces incentive for transnational corporations to move U.S. jobs overseas, lifting the third world out of poverty (debt reduction, minimum wage requirements instead of the converse, etc) will also help restore the American middle class dream.

City in Hurricane Zone Bans Feeding Homeless Downtown

The so-called "ten year plans" are little more than schemes to maintain and/or win federal funds. These schemes are the result of the Bush administration's revisions to Section 8 housing assistance, which makes "ten year plans" a stipulation for receipt of federal funds. With little concern for and input from the homeless, businesses and social service providers in cities around the country are jumping for money and/or profit, in what might be described as sanitization disguised as solutions. Meanwhile, the faith-based slush fund is gushing.

Jungle II: Mad Cow Negligence

Trillions for War, To Hell with the Poor

Raking in the dough, the Bush-family war-profiteers' dream comes true, in what has been described as the biggest corruption scandal in history.

Bush Slashes Food Programs for Elderly, Children, and Aids Victims

Goodbye to the Almighty Dollar

Here we go!

Excerpt:

UAE, Saudi considering to move reserves out of dollar

WASHINGTON — A number of Middle Eastern central banks said on Tuesday they would seek to switch reserves from the US greenback to euros.

The United Arab Emirates said it was considering moving one-tenth of its dollar reserves to the euro, while the governor of the Saudi Arabian central bank condemned the decision by the United States to force Dubai Ports World to transfer its ownership to a ‘US entity,’ the UK Independent reported.

“Is it protectionism or discrimination? Is it okay for US companies to buy everywhere but it is not okay for other companies to buy the US?” said Hamad Saud Al Sayyari, the governor of the Saudi Arabian monetary authority.

Rise in U.S. Police State Infrastructure

If the seeds of fascism are planted, how can we tell whether or not they will grow and multiply?

From the BBC:

Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarisation from Eastern Kentucky University, says that in the 1980s there were about 3,000 Swat team deployments annually across the US, but says now there are at least 40,000 per year.

[ . . . ]

"The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."

CNN: A Month Before 911, Government Obstructed Probe Into Terrorist Responsible

Corporations Above Law: Aren't Forced to Pay Fines for Violations

Incarceration of Black Men Climbs 4% under Bush Regime

What causes school dropout and joblessness?

Protest Everywhere This Weekend (3rd Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Iraq)

Striking Janitors Converge on Board, Celebrity Homes

What else can they do to get justice?

NYC Police Arrest Amerians Who Might Potentially Commit a Crime

Making the Poor Even Poorer

Tantamont to genocide!

Americans do support the Senate censure of Bush

From American Research Group:

The question:

Do you favor or oppose the United States Senate passing a resolution censuring President George W. Bush for authorizing wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining court orders?

The results:

All Adults: Favor 46% Oppose 44% Undecided 10%

Voters: Favor 48% Oppose 43% Undecided 9%

Isn't ARG a republican outfit?

Right-Wing Blocks Funding For Port Security, Disaster Preparedness

Australia: Held back by Police, Protesters Shout "War Criminal" at U.S. Secretary of State

Legal Gag on Bush-Blair War Dispute

GIVE US THE TRUTH--NOW!

170 to 4! Israel, Two Puppets and their Master Defy the World

From IPS:

As expected, this incongruous voting pattern was repeated Wednesday when the three loyal U.S. allies -- Israel and the two tiny Pacific Island nations of Palau and the Marshall Islands -- were the only member states to stand in unison with the United States when it rejected a resolution calling for the creation of a new Human Rights Council.

The vote in the General Assembly was 170 in favour and four against (United States, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau), with three abstentions (Venezuela, Iran and Belarus).

[ . . . ]

"The United States, despite its opposition to the Council, has claimed it will 'work with' the Council, and we can anticipate it will expect to win a seat in the first term," Bennis told IPS.

But such an effort should be rejected, she said, as countries evaluating human rights records keep in mind the continuing patterns of U.S. human rights violations both within the United States itself and internationally, where U.S. military or political officials are in power. "

No country with such a record of torture, secret detentions, extraordinary renditions,' rejection of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), denial of due process and generations of capital punishment, even for minors and the mentally disabled -- all as a matter of official policy -- should be allowed to serve on the new Human Rights Council," said Bennis, author of "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the U.N. Defy U.S."

If the General Assembly does indeed allow the United States a seat, she argued, special care should be taken to insure that the mandatory human rights evaluation carried out of all members be taken very seriously when it comes to the U.S., so that the claim that the so-called "indispensable nation" should be somehow exempt from human rights scrutiny will be rejected.

I've been hearing that the U.S. tried the reverse psychology trick. To spin it, the argument goes that Bolton and the U.S. wanted an even stronger resolution to form a Human Rights Council at the U.N. Sounds good, right? Actually, that's probably just a ploy. More likely, if the U.S. rulers had really wanted the resolution to be more extreme, it's probably so that the creation of a Human Rights Council would have failed to muster the necessary votes, and there would have been no risk to the U.S. for its plethora of incessant violations. The U.S. effort to block the creation of a U.N. Human Rights Council was resoundingly defated.

Since the U.S. government refuses to be accountable to its citizens, and since its citizens refuse to hold their government accountable, I welcome news that the U.S. government will at least have to be accountable to the rest of the world. Now that it failed to overcome this hurdle, what additional obstacles can the world expect the U.S. regime to place in the way of its being punished for its human rights violatons? Oh, yeah, history would suggest that we can expect to hear once again that the latest boogeyman will kill everyone if the world prohibits the U.S. regime from violating human rights as it pleases. Contrarily, there is considerable evidence that the more that the U.S. violates people's rights, the more boggeymen and terrorism there will be. When will the lesson be learned. It's a vicious cycle, a self-fulfilling course of action.

Clear Channel Censors Ad Exposing Republican Corruption

This is a violation of public trust, and their right to use OUR airwaves should be revoked and given to someone who believes in free speech instead. Excerpt:

That’s right, media giant Clear Channel wouldn't let us run an ad that informs the people of Pennsylvania’s Sixth Congressional District about the tainted money Jim Gerlach has taken from indicted former Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Clear Channel refused to run this billboard.

Note, Gerlach is one of the corrupt politicians to whom Clear Channel has made campaign contributions. Does Gerlach supports raising the threshold of the radio market CC can own?

Lieberman Says It's Okay for Hospitals to Turn Away Rape Victims

Australian PM John Howard Blasts the Occupation of Iraq (This May Be a Hoax)

POSSIBLE HOAX, OTHERWISE . . .

A Must Read! Forward this Everywhere! A shocking admission of the truth, apology and reversal of position on Iraq.

Christian Right Leaders Linked to Abramoff

U.S. prison industry: big business or a new form of slavery?

Coal Miners' Slaughter

Defense Workers Union Calls on Rumsfeld to Resign

Bargain: $25,000 To Meet with the King and a Score of His Best Men

But there's a catch: It goes to republicans! Guess that's what they mean by "executive privilege."

Bush Orders Homeland Security to Assist Church Groups

To The Center for Countering Reality-based Facts, under the direction of the Ministry of Motherland Religion and Social Control, by Executive Order from the U.S. Supreme Commander:

>Sec. 3. Responsibilities of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In carrying out the purpose set forth in section 2 of this order, the Center shall:

(a) conduct, in coordination with the WHOFBCI Director, a department-wide audit to identify all existing barriers to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the delivery of social and community services by the Department, including but not limited to regulations, rules, orders, procurement, and other internal policies and practices, and outreach activities that unlawfully discriminate against, or otherwise discourage or disadvantage the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in Federal programs;

[ . . . ]

e) develop and coordinate Departmental outreach efforts to disseminate information more effectively to faith-based and other community organizations with respect to programming changes, contracting opportunities, and other agency initiatives, including but not limited to Web and Internet resources.

So, does this mean that the Department of Homeland Security's "Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives" is to eliminate barriers that inhibit religious entities' ability to spread DHS propaganda, barriers that inhibit them from getting no-bid contracts to promote agency initiatives and programs, perhaps including the new programs. Or perhaps the goal is simply to eliminate the barrier between "church and state. Even if these government-supported religious programs were benign, they wouldn't be to the tune of billions of dollars, including a half-billion to promote straight marriage (or any sort of marriage for that matter).


From the Washington Post:

Pressed both by churches that have not received privately raised Hurricane Katrina relief funds as promised and by the outpouring of help of religious groups to Gulf Coast storm victims, Bush also called on the department by September "to identify all existing barriers . . . that unlawfully discriminate against, or otherwise discourage or disadvantage the participation" of such groups in federal programs.

[ . . .]

Along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Mississippi, religious groups have provided extraordinary help, local officials say, but also contributed to waste and duplication of effort when they failed to coordinate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and local and county governments.

This has the appearance of a straw man. Was the groundwork laid for a failure necessary to justify tansferring responsibility from FEMA to churches, from the government to the private sector. This ignores the reality that FEMA needs to be overhauled once and for all to finaly put it onto the right mission of serving the public. Then, FEMA needs to be properly funded, and staffed and managed by experts. FEMA was already defunded and scaled back to little more than a shell of itself. What's left for the Bushies but to eliminate it by moving disaster response (via churches) into the private sector and giving birth to a new market where the investor class can one day exploit money-for-nothing profit schemes. Why should we once again have to revisit Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. "Free trade" had just as well mean the United Arab Emirates or Communist China could manage not just our ports but our disaster response. Why not?