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.