Philanthropy: The Corpocracy’s Insurance Policy
Hush, all you serfs Take this cash Don’t do anything rash And stay off our turfs For over 200 years might and money have kept the powerful in power in America. Throughout her history America’s organized, powerful few have exploited the unorganized, powerless many and militarily claimed the lives of countless millions throughout the world all for the sake of ever more profit and ever more power. He
No Time for Jubilation
Perpetual mass-media deception and pervasive surveillance encompass a never ending train of abuse that won’t end any time soon. As long as armaments factories continue producing weapons of death for the fortune 500 Wall Street elite who reside in U.S. capitalist society, war and threats of war will continue to expand and take on an ever deadly character. Over 1000 military bases stationed, world-w
The Madness of Never-Ending Economic Growth
Countries’ economies are driven by an obsession, continuous growth in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The absurdity of this becomes clear with a little bit of thought. Never-ending growth that relies on extracting resources from a finite planet is, of course, a mathematical impossibility, but well before we reach that point, this obsession will render our planet uninhabitable. If our
Banning Golden Dawn
They are at it again. By that, we can refer to those critics who see in Greece the basket case of all basket cases, the economic nightmare, the social dysfunction, a client who goes to a psychiatrist but evidently can’t pay the bills. The picture is dismal, made even more dismal by the critics who are hectoring Greece for what it is not. Let us take a contribution in Haaretz by Charilaos Peitsini
Pulling the Plug on the First Amendment
During the September 23, 2013 meeting of the Bennington Select Board an order was given to pull the plug. Given the order, the CatamountAccess-TV cameraman immediately obeyed. Video and audio of the live broadcast suddenly disappeared from thousands of television screens. This occurred during an enthusiastic discussion between a citizen and a member of the Select Board. That there was a blackout i
Wall Street to Planet Earth: We Don’t Mind and You Don’t Matter
The conventional wisdom on the world’s stock markets is that all listed reserves will be exploited and burnt. Unburnable Carbon 2013: Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble, Report by Carbon Tracker Initiative Developing new green technology, hiring workers and investing in new productive facilities involves a real risk: it may not be as profitable as purely speculative investm
Stick This in Your Fossil Fuel Pipe and Smoke It!
California leads the way to a fossil fuel-less world. PRESS RELEASE: NIPTON, Calif. – Sept. 24, 2013 – “Today it was announced that the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System produced its first output of energy when unit 1 station was synchronized to the power grid for the first time (Brightsource Energy, Inc.)” Voilà! Thinking ‘outside of the box’ turns energetic as the Ivanpah Solar Electric
Democracy Syrian-style
One thing about the ongoing crisis in Syria almost never mentioned in our media — even the alternative media — is the role of the nonviolent opposition to the Baathist regime. After the uprising began in the spring of 2011, the government engaged this opposition in discussions about reform of the Syrian political system. Out of these discussions came a new constitution, approved in February 2012 b
Weapons of Mass Destruction Wanted?
Vermont city to consider protecting neighbors from Air Force F-35 attack With Vermont’s highest elected officials still deep in Defense Dept. denial over the disaster that is the Air Force’s F-35 strike fighter, a local city council threatens to bring some military sanity to Vermont (but nowhere else) by exercising its landlord right to reject as a tenant a weapon of mass destruction that will wr
Want to Buy a War?
The UK Ministry of Defence is worried; worried that the public have become ‘risk averse’ to the point that we won’t want to go to war anymore; so worried that in November 2012 they wrote a report – The Implications of Current Attitudes to Risk for the Joint Operational Concept – made public today by the Guardian. The report, while purportedly studying ‘risk’, is really asking ‘How do we sell war
Selling an Invasion? Consult Joseph Goebbels
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. — George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950) Since the US-UK project on Syria is back, invoking Syria’s President as Hitler – as previously, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Colonel Gaddafi in earlier “Crusades” – it is instructive to note how the ludicrous claims mirror the strategy of Joseph Goe
The Confessions of Hank Paulson
They never really fade away, the old soldiers, the bankers-cum-politicians, even the ball players. They always at least try for a come-back, although they rarely bring it off. I recall a sultry Saturday at Yankee Stadium in 1954 when Frankie Crossetti, performing in an exhibition game that brought the Miller Huggins Yankees out of mothballs to confront Casey Stengel’s more youthful oldsters. Frank
Germany: Triumph of Middle Class Common Sense
First thoughts on the electoral victory of the ruling oligarchy. Appalling victory From a social revolutionary point of view, Merkel’s sweeping electoral success is abominable. It follows, however, a political-cultural pattern of the German middle classes whose culture dominates the broad masses and therefore also the electorate. It was all about to continue the alleged German Wirtschaftswunder (e
Canada’s Government Silences Scientists, Sides with Corporate Interests
Climate scientists were muzzled from speaking to the press, causing an 80 percent decrease in the coverage of environmental stories.
UN Veto Disinterest
We support the UN veto, except when used against something we want. That seems to be Ottawa’s position towards the ability of the five permanent members of the Security Council to veto resolutions. Recently Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Minister John Baird criticized the possibility of Russia vetoing a UN resolution authorizing military action in Syria. In an article titled “Putin shou
De Blasio and the Sandinistas
According to a recent article in the New York Times [by Thomas Kaplan. 9-23-13] two of the candidates running for mayor of New York have become alarmed about the worldview of Bill de Blasio, the front running candidate of the Democratic Party. You can be sure that whatever his world view happened to be it would have alarmed them simply because they are running against him. They are alarmed because
Melancholia Approaches
Why do disaster movies always show the culminating disastrous event happening in slow motion? Two reasons, I would say: first because otherwise the fictional cataclysm happens too quickly for cognitive processing, so there’s no real impact on the audience’s psyche. If a conventional disaster movie fails to generate rank emotion, then it has failed in its narrative function. (And that’s important c