Monday, September 30, 2013

The Sparks of Rebellion

Occupy Wall Street rally, March 16, 2012. (Photo: <a href=" http://www.flickr.com/photos/60513726@N03/6840360462/in/photolist-bqsCRm-dbddiF-athwJa-az9vCw-dbbjua-dbbBic-dbcamf-aw5CUR-avmdY7-avmdsm-aspsYy-asonkM-asmKFR-aspn2S-bSQtme-bDnztg-bqsD53-bDnyiV-bqsE7f-bqsGnA-bqsEuE-bDnyHz-bDnAh4-bDnwv2-bqsFwN-bqsCvC-bqsFJ9-bqsGRQ-bDnx2t-bDnwFg-bDnzEa-bDnAvH-bqsEUs-bqsEJ1-bqsGD9-aq2QaC-aw8kDA-aw8jQq-aw8jtb-aw8iRf-aw8jgL-aw8krU-bDQg4Z-asohnx-asn8nr-aspuFy-asnYDR-asn3kt-aspr79-aso414-asqeR1" target="_blank"> Michael Fleshman / Flickr</a>)Occupy Wall Street rally, March 16, 2012. (Photo: Michael Fleshman / Flickr)
I am reading and rereading the debates among some of the great radical thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries about the mechanisms of social change. These debates were not academic. They were frantic searches for the triggers of revolt.

Vladimir Lenin placed his faith in a violent uprising, a professional, disciplined revolutionary vanguard freed from moral constraints and, like Karl Marx, in the inevitable emergence of the worker’s state. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon insisted that gradual change would be accomplished as enlightened workers took over production and educated and converted the rest of the proletariat. Mikhail Bakunin predicted the catastrophic breakdown of the capitalist order, something we are likely to witness in our lifetimes, and new autonomous worker federations rising up out of the chaos. Pyotr Kropotkin, like Proudhon, believed in an evolutionary process that would hammer out the new society. Emma Goldman, along with Kropotkin, came to be very wary of both the efficacy of violence and the revolutionary potential of the masses. “The mass,” Goldman wrote bitterly toward the end of her life in echoing Marx, “clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify!”

The revolutionists of history counted on a mobilized base of enlightened industrial workers. The building blocks of revolt, they believed, relied on the tool of the general strike, the ability of workers to cripple the mechanisms of production. Strikes could be sustained with the support of political parties, strike funds and union halls. Workers without these support mechanisms had to replicate the infrastructure of parties and unions if they wanted to put prolonged pressure on the bosses and the state. But now, with the decimation of the U.S. manufacturing base, along with the dismantling of our unions and opposition parties, we will have to search for different instruments of rebellion.

We must develop a revolutionary theory that is not reliant on the industrial or agrarian muscle of workers. Most manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and, of those that remain, few are unionized. Our family farms have been destroyed by agro-businesses. Monsanto and its Faustian counterparts on Wall Street rule. They are steadily poisoning our lives and rendering us powerless. The corporate leviathan, which is global, is freed from the constraints of a single nation-state or government. Corporations are beyond regulation or control. Politicians are too anemic, or more often too corrupt, to stand in the way of the accelerating corporate destruction. This makes our struggle different from revolutionary struggles in industrial societies in the past. Our revolt will look more like what erupted in the less industrialized Slavic republics, Russia, Spain and China and uprisings led by a disenfranchised rural and urban working class and peasantry in the liberation movements that swept through Africa and Latin America. The dispossessed working poor, along with unemployed college graduates and students, unemployed journalists, artists, lawyers and teachers, will form our movement. This is why the fight for a higher minimum wage is crucial to uniting service workers with the alienated college-educated sons and daughters of the old middle class. Bakunin, unlike Marx, considered déclassé intellectuals essential for successful revolt.

It is not the poor who make revolutions. It is those who conclude that they will not be able, as they once expected, to rise economically and socially. This consciousness is part of the self-knowledge of service workers and fast food workers. It is grasped by the swelling population of college graduates caught in a vise of low-paying jobs and obscene amounts of debt. These two groups, once united, will be our primary engines of revolt. Much of the urban poor has been crippled and in many cases broken by a rewriting of laws, especially drug laws, that has permitted courts, probation officers, parole boards and police to randomly seize poor people of color, especially African-American men, without just cause and lock them in cages for years. In many of our most impoverished urban centers—our internal colonies, as Malcolm X called them—mobilization, at least at first, will be difficult. The urban poor are already in chains. These chains are being readied for the rest of us. “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread,” W.E.B. Du Bois commented acidly. ...

5 Industries That Are Mercilessly Robbing the American People

This system is tearing our once-great society to shreds.


Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/emrCartoon
There are more than five ways, of course. There are numerous product ripoffs, as described in a recent article byLynn Stuart Parramore, who identified textbooks and bottled water and print cartridges as a few of the ways Americans are duped into paying a lot more than reason and regulation would dictate.

And there are many industry-specific ripoffs, most notably in health care. We have the most expensive health care system in the world, and yet we're falling behind other developed countries in numerous health measures.

Here are five more industry-specific ripoffs of the American people:

1. The Retail Industry (Walmart): Building Owner Fortunes with Public Tax Money

study in Wisconsin by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce determined that a typical Walmart store costs taxpayers over $1.7 million per year, or about $5,815 per employee. A 2004 study in California put the cost per employee at $2,103.

For the year 2012, Walmart's pre-tax U.S. income was almost $18.7 billion. That's over $14,000 per U.S. Walmart employee.

For the year 2012, the four Walton family members made over $20 billion from their investments. That's over $15,000 per Walmart employee.

2. The Financial Industry: Printing Their Own Money

Thanks in good part to the derivatives market, the world's wealth has doubled in ten years. Estimates of the speculative value of the financial derivatives market vary, from $708 trillion to $1.2 quadrillion. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange alone reported a 2011 trading volume of over $1 quadrillion on 3.4 billion annual contracts.

A quadrillion is a thousand trillion. A return to the financiers of just .1 percent (a tenth of a penny from every dollar) would generate $1 trillion, the total Adjusted Gross Income for half of Americans.

3. The Private Prison Industry: Billing Taxpayers for Empty Cells, then Selling Inmate Labor and Paying Them Sub-Minimum Wages

Almost two-thirds of the private prison contracts analyzed by In the Public Interest "included occupancy guarantees in the form of quotas or required payments for empty prison cells (a 'low-crime tax')."

Some private prisons, such as Corrections Corporation of America and G4S, sell inmate labor to corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM, and pay the prisoners less than a dollar an hour.

4. The Telecommunications Industry: Low Quality at High Prices

In the 1990s the FCC deregulated phone and cable and Internet companies, with the intention of promoting competition. But just a few companies -- Verizon and AT&T and Comcast and Time Warner -- have divided up the market, reducing competition as they remain poorly regulated.

So now South Korea has Internet access speeds 200 times faster than us at half the cost. Same thing in Hong Kong. And in Europe unlimited texting and voice from Verizon costs about a third of U.S. prices.

It gets worse, according to David Cay Johnston, who reports that regulations have been written that allow large corporations to add unsubstantiated charges to cell phones, cable TV, internet service providers and others that can cost American families over $2,000 per year.

5. The Drug Industry: Buy American...But Tax Us Like We're Foreigners

Bernie Sanders notes that pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly and Pfizer have lobbied to keep Americans from buying cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and Europe, but then they their shift drug patents and profits to offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Higher drug prices cost an average American family over $1250 per year.

Drug companies also participate in "Pay-for-Delay" deals, through which brand-name firms pay generic makers to keep their cheaper drugs out of the market for a number of years.

That's capitalism. Ripping a once-strong society into little pieces.
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, a writer for progressive publications, and the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org).

The Rise of Green Collar Jobs

We spend a lot of time discussing how to create sustainable lifestyles for ourselves and other members of our communities. The idea is that if our local community is strong, it can withstand just about anything.

A failing economy, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and whatever else you can think of could significantly change our standard of living.
As a result, we focus on sustainable food production, conservation techniques, and other methods that are impervious (or close to it) to these outside influences. In a word, we are trying to become more resilient.
localbiz1
This is all well and good; however, it does nothing to address the concerns that many of us have regarding employment and income. Every year, more people join the ranks of the unemployed as companies downsize and struggle to remain competitive. Many of those reading this now have fallen victim to unemployment or at least know someone who has.
So what can we do to increase resiliency in this aspect? After all, we can’t be expected to produce everything we need on our own. We need assets (money, goods, or services) that can be traded for items that we are unable to produce ourselves.
We also need to provide fellow community members with options. They need to be made aware of the importance of resiliency.
Fortunately, there’s a simple answer. We need to create local businesses based on our sustainable ideals. If you been with us for a while, you’ve likely read many stories that detail the potential small business opportunities inherent to most of the topics we discuss.
Biomass pellet manufacturing, solar installation, mushroom farming, and orchard management are just a few examples of small business opportunities that can be started on a shoestring budget while providing sustainable value to our communities.
Of course, these opportunities also provide us with an income stream. It could be part-time or full-time; the scalability of these businesses is unlimited.
Maybe you are thinking “yeah, yeah…this sounds great, but does it really work?” In short, absolutely! Let’s look at an example that showcases how one local business is generating revenue using technology that helps farmers in their community.
The work being done by Tom McKinnon and Jim Sears in Colorado is interesting to say the least. These guys have developed a low-cost, remote control drone that takes multispectral images of farmland.
This technology saves farmers money because it is much less expensive than manned aircraft flights or satellite imagery while providing useful information about the health of their plots. These drones can also be fitted with infrared cameras that map the soil moisture content of the area; affording farmers the opportunity to correct dry conditions before they affect crop production.
localbiz2
You may think this technology sounds expensive, but it is actually very affordable and could be used in our own communities to monitor the health of larger, community sponsored agricultural plots.
From a DIY perspective, a drone similar to the one created by McKinnon and Sears could be made for less than $1,000. This is cutting-edge technology that is affordable on most budgets.
With drone in hand, it’s very easy to see how a part-time or better revenue stream can be generated using this technology. What’s unique about this idea is how it leverages technology in a new way that can benefit a wide range of community members.

****Spoiler alert: We discuss drones in more detail in our September newsletter. We have arranged a way you can sign up and get this month's issue and the entire archives for a hugely discounted price. Sign up to receive the newsletter here.****

The possibilities are truly endless. In the past, we have discussed LoGROcal, a small mushroom farm that specializes in the production of 100% organic oyster mushrooms and how you can replicate their success at home.

We have looked at purchasing a small scale biomass pellet machine and creating a local business producing pellets for the community; either as a sole proprietor or as a CSA-type model.
The point is that our resiliency is not simply based on what we grow in our personal gardens or what alternative energy sources we have implemented at home. We have to take a community approach that aims to strengthen every resident, not just ourselves.
What better way to do this then to create a business that promotes resiliency and produces income?
I’ll leave you with some final ideas that are working in communities around the country. Perhaps one of these will spark your entrepreneurial fire.
  • Greywater recycling system installation
  • Backyard Orchard management
  • Permaculture consultant
Let’s make resiliency work for us.
SOURCE

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Noam Chomsky: 'The Foundations of Liberty Are Ripped to Shreds'

THIS IS WHAT AUTHORITARIAN SCUMBAGS DO!


The U.S. openly brags about boom times for its drone wars, while casually abandoning our 800 year-old system of due process.


This article first appeared at Satellite Magazine, whose author Steven Garbas met with Chomsky in Cambridge, Massachusetts earlier this year to discuss the development of the drone era under president Obama.
Noam Chomsky: Just driving in this morning I was listening to NPR news. The program opened by announcing, very excitedly, that the drone industry is exploding so fast that colleges are trying to catch up and opening new programs in the engineering schools and so on, and teaching drone technology because that’s what students are dying to study because of the fantastic number of jobs going on.
And it’s true. If you look at the public reports, you can imagine what the secret reports are. It’s been known for a couple of years, but we learn more and more that drones, for one thing, are already being given to police departments for surveillance. And they are being designed for every possible purpose. I mean, theoretically, maybe practically, you could have a drone the size of a fly which could be buzzing around over there [points to window] listening to what we’re talking about. And I’d suspect that it won’t be too long before that becomes realistic.
And of course they are being used to assassinate. There’s a global assassination campaign going on which is pretty interesting when you look into how it’s done. I presume everyone’s read [a May 29]  New York Times story, which is more or less a leak from the White House, because they are apparently proud of how the global assassination campaign works. Basically President Obama and his national security advisor, John Brennan, now head of the CIA, get together in the morning. And Brennan’s apparently a former priest. They talk about St. Augustine and his theory of just war, and then they decide who is going to be killed today.
And the criteria are quite interesting. For example, if, say, in Yemen a group of men are spotted by a drone assembling near a truck, it’s possible that they might be planning to do something that would harm us, so why don’t we make sure and kill them? And there’s other things like that.
And questions did come up about what happened to due process, which is supposedly the foundation of American law—it actually goes back to Magna Carta, 800 years ago—what about that? And the justice department responded. Attorney General Holder said that they are receiving due process because it’s “discussed in the executive branch.” King John in the 13th century, who was compelled to sign Magna Carta, would have loved that answer. But that’s where we’re moving. The foundations of civil law are simply being torn to shreds. This is not the only case, but it’s the most striking one.
And the reactions are pretty interesting. It tells you a lot about the mentality of the country. So one column, I think it was Joe Klein, a bit of a liberal columnist for one of the journals, was asked about a case in which four little girls were killed by a drone strike. And his answer was something like, “Well,  better that their little girls should be killed than ours.” So in other words, maybe this stopped something that would ultimately harm us.
There is a reservation in the United Nations Charter that allows the use of force without Security Council authorization,  a narrow exception in Article 51. But it specifically refers to “imminent attack” that’s either underway or imminent so clearly that there is no time for reflection. It’s a doctrine that goes back to Daniel Webster, the Caroline Doctrine, which specifies these conditions. That’s been torn to shreds. Not just the drone attacks, but for a long time....

UN: Greenland ice melting six times faster than previous decades


Published on Sep 27, 2013
Environmental expert Subhankar Banerjee breaks down the latest UN climate change report

Friday, September 27, 2013

Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'pathetic' American media

Pulitzer Prize winner explains how to fix journalism, saying press should 'fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can't control'Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Photograph: Wally McNamee/Corbis
Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.
It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".
He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.
Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.
Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an "independent" Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. "The Pakistanis put out a report, don't get me going on it. Let's put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It's a bullshit report," he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.
The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.
"It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian.
"It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.
He isn't even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect.

Snowden changed the debate on surveillance ...

Canada's Government Silences Scientists, Sides With Corporate Interests


Published on Sep 27, 2013
Climate scientists were muzzled from speaking to the press, causing an 80 percent decrease in the coverage of environmental stories

Congress Moves To Outlaw Alternative Media

THIS IS WHAT THE SCUM (LED BY THAT PIECE OF SHIT DIANE FEINSTEIN) DO!
Dave Hodges
Activist Post

The alternative media is having a dramatic impact on the worldview of the country, so much so that US Senate is legislating against the only objective press left in the country.

It is a well-known fact that Senator Dianne Feinstein wants your guns and now she wants control over your words. Feinstein believes that a proposed media shield law should be applied only to who she refers to as “real reporters.” Feinstein chastises other reporters as “basement-dwelling, pajama-clad bloggers with no professional credentials”

At issue is that the government could soon decide who is a journalist and who is not. Feinstein introduced an amendment, to Senate bill 558, that defines a “covered journalist” as someone who gathers and reports news for “an entity or service that disseminates news and information.” The definition includes freelancers, part-timers and student journalists, and it permits a judge to go further and extend the protections to any “legitimate news-gathering activities.” In the definition introduced in Feinstein’s amendment, somebody writing for a small town paper with a circulation of 30 would receive First Amendment protections, but quality news people such as Steve Quayle, John Stadtmiller, Jeff Rense, Doug Hagmann, Stan Deyo, Michael Edwards, Alex Jones, George Noory and Matt Drudge would not be considered journalists and therefore, the First Amendment would not apply to this group of aforementioned newsmen. With the passage of this amendment, our sources would not be privileged and many of our sources would dry up. But Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper can take bribes from the CIA to not cover certain stories, yet Feinstein thinks they deserve protection as authentic journalists. Award winning journalist, Amber Lyon, quit CNN because of the CIA and CNN’s complicity in obfuscating the truth from the American people, for a price. Obviously, journalistic integrity means nothing to someone like Feinstein.

This is the same Feinstein who In 2009, introduced legislation which directed $25 billion in “taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry standards. Feinstein was a member of the Military Construction Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee (MILCON)from 2001 to 2005. During her tenure, Feinstein voted for appropriations worth billions of dollars to her husband’s firms URS Corp. and Perini Corp. Feinstein’s personal wealth accumulation since becoming a senator has grown to nearly $200 million. Feinstein has never held a job outside of public service. I am having trouble understanding how a public servant can accumulate a fortune of this magnitude. ...

Wisconsin Bridge Closed Indefinitely After 911 Callers Discover 400-Foot-Long 'Sag'

EVERYBODY KNOWS THE GOV. SCOTT WALKER IS A KOCH SUCKER AND HE WOULD NOT BE IN HIS PRESENT POSITION IF HE WEREN'T CONTINUALLY ON HIS KNEES SERVICE THE BROTHERS!

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has vowed to repair a Green Bay bridge that carries 40,000 vehicles a day after it was recently closed when motorists suddenly complained about a 400-foot-long sagging section.
After shutting down the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge on Wednesday, state officials said that that had no idea how long it would take to repair that nearly two-foot deep dip, according to the Green Bay Press Gazette.
"It could be months. It could be a year," Wisconsin Department of Transportation spokesperson Kim Rudat said.
For now, motorists will have to detour around that stretch of Interstate 43, which is expected to cause congestion and delays in other areas.

Unlike the Minneapolis bridge disaster that killed 13 people in 2007, Wisconsin authorities insist that the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge is not in danger of collapsing.
"The state of Wisconsin is committed... we will fix this bridge," Gov. Walker said at a press conference on Wednesday. ...

How The Economic Machine Works

A transaction consists of the buyer giving money (or credit) to a seller and the seller giving a good, a service or a financial asset to the buyer in exchange. A market consists of all the buyers and sellers making exchanges for the same things – e.g., the wheat market consists of different people making different transactions for different reasons over time. An economy consists of all of the transactions in all of its markets. So, while seemingly complex, an economy is really just a zillion simple things working together, which makes it look more complex than it really is.

The Smell of Collapse is in the Air – Part 2

The U.S. economy is being overwhelmed by a loss of faith and trust in politicians, government, and bankers, excessive debts, artificially low interest rates, unsustainable deficit spending, expensive wars, QE (money printing) to infinity, “Inflate or Die” monetary policy, potential derivatives implosion, Obamacare and so much more. A slow-motion collapse is occurring and most of us do not see it.

"Stun Cuffs" The New Shock Collar For The Sheeple


One jail in Missouri has implemented new “stun cuffs” to keep rowdy inmates in line, because apparently it is just too much to ask of prison guards (who can make six-figures in overtime and bonuses in states like California) to get up on their own two feet and administer a shock themselves. That is only IF such an action is absolutely necessary.
What is scary about this new technology is the incredible potential for abuse, since the mere press of a button will administer 80,000 volts through the wearers body. Oh, I see one of your feet is an inch over the red line! SHOCK. Oh, I see you didn’t shine the warden’s shoes good enough! SHOCK.
Much like drones, I fear that this new technology will inevitably spread like wildfire, and will eventually diversify into other areas of life. Can you imagine if free-thinking public schoolchildren, who dare to question the government propaganda they are made to consume, are forced to wear a “child friendly” version of a stun cuff around their ankle, that will only be removed until they are deemed to be “cured” Obamabots?
Even if these are only hypothetical scenarios of a future dystopia, wouldn’t it be nice if our country could actually invent things again that propelled civilization forward, rather than being hell-bent on developing tools to cause pain, suffering, and death to other human beings via the prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex?
This post first appeared on Ingenious Press. Follow us on our Facebook and Twitter Pages for weekly updates on independent news and other alternative media.
- See more at: http://www.ingeniouspress.com/2013/09/25/stun-cuffs-the-new-shock-collar-for-the-sheeple/#more-2938

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Nazi Government did not fall - was transferred to America - ww3


Published on Sep 25, 2013
ww3 is coming.The Nazi's and Soviet's never fell but have infiltrated our government and now work towards the goal of ww3. The entire world had always been controlled by the elite bankers and aristocrats. WW3 is upon our door. WW3 being won, there will be complete control by electronic surveillance and an absolute authority. They will have this final control after ww3.

Exposed: Enron billionaire’s diabolical plot to loot worker pensions

NOTHING BUT A BUNCHA LOUSY, CONNIVING THIEVES!

How an Enron billionaire, Wall Street and a major "nonpartisan" foundation are quietly robbing American workers

This post is an excerpt of a major report the author wrote for the Institute for America's Future. You can find the full report by clicking here.
In May of 2013, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a report that sounded a frightening alarm. Titled “Retirement Security Across Generations” and widely cited throughout thenational media, the study found that a lack of retirement savings, less guaranteed pension income and the economic downturn have collectively exposed the next generation of Americans “to the real possibility of downward mobility in retirement.”
Summing up the study’s implicit push to stabilize Americans’ retirement future, a Pew official declared that lawmakers must focus on creating policies that help workers “make up for these losses and prepare for the future.”
Pew’s analysis, though eye-opening, was not particularly controversial. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, conservative Martin Morse Wooster acknowledges that the Pew Trusts are “treated as benign truth-tellers, so high-minded as to be beyond politics” – and the call to shore up Americans’ retirement security, indeed, upheld the organization’s promise 
to“generate objective data.” Based on indisputable evidence, it proved that the country’s move away from guaranteed pension income – and states’ willingness to raid worker pension plans to finance massive corporate subsidies – will have disastrous consequences.
What was surprising was the fact that at the same time one branch of Pew was rightly sounding this moderate non-ideological alarm to shore up retirement security, and Pew’s Economic Development Tax Incentives Project was warning of states’ wasteful tax subsidies, a more political branch of the organization was working in tandem with controversial Enron billionaire John Arnold to begin championing an ideologically driven plan to make the retirement problem far worse. ...

Bragging Rights: Eight Exceptional(ly Dumb) American Achievements of the 21st Century

....

  • What other country could have invaded Iraq, hardly knowing the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, and still managed to successfully set off a brutal sectarian civil war ethnic cleansing campaigns between the two sects that would subsequently go regional, whose casualty counts have tipped into the hundreds of thousands, and which is now bouncing back on Iraq?  What other great power would have launched its invasion with plans to garrison that country for decades and with the larger goal of subduing neighboring Iran (“Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran”), only to slink away eight years later leaving behind a Shiite government in Baghdad that was a firm ally of Iran?  And in what other country, could leaders, viewing these events, and knowing our part in them, have been so imbued with goodness as to draw further “red lines” and contemplate sending in the missiles and bombers again, this time on Syria and possibly Iran?  Who in the world would dare claim that this isn’t an unmatchable record?
  • What other country could magnanimously $4-6 trillion on two “good wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq against lightly armed minority insurgencies without winning or accomplishing a thing?  And that’s not even counting the funds sunk into the Global War on Terror and sideshows in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, or the staggering sums that, since 9/11, have been poured directly into the national security state.  How many countries, possessing “the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” could have engaged in endless armed conflicts and interventions from the 1960s on and, except in unresisting Panama and tiny Grenada, never managed to definitively win anything?
  • And talking about exceptional records, what other military could have brought an 3.1 million pieces of equipment -- ranging from tanks and Humvees to porta-potties, coffee makers, and computers -- with it into Iraq, and then transported most of them out again (while destroying the rest or turning them over to the Iraqis)?  Similarly, in an Afghanistan where the U.S. military is now drawing down its forces and has already destroyed “more than 170 million pounds worth of vehicles and other military equipment,” what other force would have decided ahead of time to shred, dismantle, or simply discard $7 billion worth of equipment (about 20% of what it had brought into the country)?  The general in charge proudly calls this “the largest retrograde mission in history.” To put that in context: What other military would be capable of carrying a total consumer society right down to PXs, massage parlorsboardwalksInternet cafes, and food courts to war?  Let’s give credit where it’s due: we’re not just talking retrograde here, we’re talking exceptionally retrograde!
  • What other military could, in a bare few years in Iraq, have built a 505 bases, ranging from combat outposts to ones the size of small American towns with their own electricity generators, water purifiers, fire departments, fast-food restaurants, and even miniature golf courses at a cost of unknown billions of dollars and then, only a few years later, abandoned all of them, dismantling some, turning others over to the Iraqi military or into ghost towns, and leaving yet others to be looted and stripped?  And what other military, in the same time period thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, could have built more than 450 bases, sometimes even hauling in the building materials, and now be dismantling them in the same fashion?  If those aren’t exceptional feats, what are? 
  • In a world where it’s hard to get anyone to agree on anything, the covert campaign of drone strikes that George W. Bush launched and Barack escalated in Pakistan’s tribal areas stands out.  Those hundreds of strikes not only caused significant numbers of civilian casualties (including children), while helping to destabilize a sometime ally, but almost miraculously created public opinion unanimity.  Opinion polls there indicate that a Ripley’s-Believe-It-or-Not-style 97% of Pakistanis consider such strikes “a bad thing.”  Is there another country on the planet capable of mobilizing such loathing?  Stand proud, America!
  • And what other power could have secretly and kidnapped at least 136 suspected terrorists -- some, in fact, innocent of any such acts or associations -- off the streets of global cities as well as from the backlands of the planet?  What other nation could have mustered a coalition-of-the-willing of 54 countries to lend a hand in its “rendition” operations?  We’re talking about more than a quarter of the nations on Planet Earth!  And that isn’t all.  Oh, no, that isn’t all.  Can you imagine another country capable of setting up a genuinely global network of “black sites” and borrowed prisons (with local torturers on hand), places to stash and abuse those kidnappees (and other prisoners) in locations ranging from Poland to ThailandRomania to AfghanistanEgypt and Uzbekistan to U.S. Navy ships on the high seas, not to speak of that jewel in the crown of offshore prisons, Guantanamo?  Such illegality on such a global scale simply can’t be matched!  And don’t even get me started on torture.  (It’s fine for us to take pride in our exceptionalist tradition, but you don’t want to pour it on, do you?)
  • Or how about the way the State Department, to the tune of $750 millionconstructed in Baghdad the largest, most expensive embassy compound on the planet -- a 104-acre, Vatican-sized citadel with 27 blast-resistant buildings, an indoor pool, basketball courts, and a fire station, which was to operate as a command-and-control center for our ongoing garrisoning of the country and the region?  Now, the garrisons are gone, and the embassy, its staff cut, is a global white elephant.  But what an exceptional elephant!  Think of it as a modern American pyramid, a tomb in which lie buried the dreams of establishing a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.  Honestly, what other country could hope to match that sort of memorial thousands of miles from home?
  • Or what about this?  Between 2002 and 2011, the U.S. poured at least $51 billion into building up a vast Afghan military.  Another $11 billion was dedicated to the task in 2012, with almost $6 billion more planned for 2013.  Washington has also sent in a legion of trainers tasked with turning that force into an American-style fighting outfit.  At the time Washington began building it up, the Afghan army was reportedly a heavily illiterate, drug-taking, corrupt, and ineffective force that lost one-third to one-half of its personnel to casualties, non-reenlistment, and desertion in any year.  In 2012, the latest date for which we have figures, the Afghan security forces were still a heavily illiterate, drug-taking, corrupt, and inefficient outfit that was losing about one-third of its personnel annually (a figure that may even be on the rise).  The U.S. and its NATO allies are committed to spending $4.1 billion annually on the same project after the withdrawal of their combat forces in 2014.  Tell me that isn't exceptional! ...
  • READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE!
  • Outsourcing America Exposed


    Published on Sep 24, 2013
    This video exposes the privatizers and profiteers selling out our democracy. http://www.outsourcingamericaexposed....

    Scientists are fighting deniers with irrefutable proof the planet is headed for catastrophe


    Published on Sep 26, 2013
    http://www.democracynow.org - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is set to issue its strongest warning yet that climate change is caused by humans, and that the world will cause more heat waves, droughts and floods unless governments take action to drastically reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses. The IPCC report, released every six years, incorporates the key findings from thousands of articles published in scientific journals, concluding with at least 95 percent certainty that human activities have caused most of Earth's temperature rise since 1950, and will continue to do so in the future. "Drought is the number one threat we face from climate change because it affects the two things we need to live: food and water," says Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground. We also speak to Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo.

    Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,200+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch it live 8-9am ET at http://www.democracynow.org.

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    Why Is The Food Industry Poisoning Us With Trillions of Nanoparticles?

    By Sayer Ji The U.S. food industry is notorious for poisoning the very consumers who drive their multi-billion dollar enterprise, even spending millions against their right to informed consent (truthful GMO labeling). So, is it any wonder that this deregulated and increasingly deranged juggernaut is experimenting on its own customer base by exposing them to trillions of toxic nanoparticles? A new study published in Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy titled, "Effects of titanium dioxide nanoparticles in human gastric epithelial cells in vitro," reveals for the first time that the nanoparticle form of the common "whitening" agent known as titanium dioxide is capable of inducing "tumor-like" changes in exposed human cells.[1] - 

    See more at: http://www.naturalblaze.com/2013/09/why-is-food-industry-poisoning-us-with.html#sthash.v5KG4BUa.dpuf

    Larken Rose: Empire Knows It's Losing, Brute Force Won't Save It


    Published on Sep 24, 2013
    On this edition of Anarchast Jeff Berwick interviews Larken Rose fromhttp://www.larkenrose.com/.

    The most dangerous superstition: http://amzn.to/15pBadf
    If I were king: http://youtu.be/BNIgztvyU2U
    The tiny dot: http://youtu.be/H6b70TUbdfs
    I'm allowed to rob you: http://youtu.be/ngpsJKQR_ZE

    Larken has seen a huge rise in popularity in the ideas of liberty, mostly through the medium of the internet. Politicians in the current system are having trouble holding on to power as evidenced by John Kerrys statement that "the internet is making it hard to govern"http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/j....

    How to be a successful tyrant: http://amzn.to/17ZKTdF

    A fence containing Fukushima’s radiation has a hole in it

    JUST WHAT JAPAN (AND THE WORLD) DOESN'T NEED! 

    The silt barrier is intended to keep contaminated water from flowing into the sea


    A fence containing Fukushima's radiation has a hole in itEnlargeWorkers in protective suits and masks wait to enter the emergency operation center at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station in Okuma, Japan, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. (Credit: AP/David Guttenfelder)
    A barrier set up to contain radioactive particles from Fukushima’s crippled nuclear planthas a hole in it. It’s the latest thing to go wrong in an increasingly escalating disaster.
    TEPCO, the plant’s operator, set up the silt fences in the harbor surrounding the plant to prevent sediment from spilling into the sea. The defective fence, it says, surrounds reactors that were not damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. And the plant’s storage tanks — which have also been doing a less-than-stellar job of containing its contaminated water — aren’t kept near that particular barrier. According to a TEPCO spokesman, the levels of radiation in the affected seawater are “very low.”
    Still, this new development isn’t likely to do much to assuage fears that TEPCO is incapable of dealing with Fukushima’s fallout. Visiting the plant last week, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the company that it needed to prioritize the containment of leaks over all else.