Category Archives: Corruption

8 Facts About American Inequality

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income-inequality-graphic

By Pierce Nahigyan

Source: Nation of Change

…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

– James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (1931)

The American Dream has been defined many ways by writers of both poetic and prosaic bent, but its essentials tend to involve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or property, depending on your source).

The Declaration of Independence, upon which an entire nation was radically brought into existence, asserts that not only are all men created equal but that this is a “self-evident” truth. The significance of this fact lies not in its semantics, which epistemologists would challenge, but in its utilization as a primary foundational creed. By this “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” a contract was agreed to, that their union would be founded on this principle. Furthermore, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights that governments are created to uphold. Thus, America was endowed with its dream at the moment of its conception: the freedom to succeed.  

The United States has promoted a self-congratulating exceptionalism for decades, waving its Declaration and Constitution in the faces of other sovereign nations as if the latter had never beheld such concepts. Our capital F “Freedom” sets us apart from the rest of the world, as the political rhetoric has repeated ad nauseam, no matter the freedoms enjoyed by democracies on every continent. And yet our basic freedom, the freedom to succeed, America’s contractual promise, has been shrinking for thirty years.

The freedom to succeed transcends economic systems but it is most potently expressed by capitalist gains. The ability to go “from rags to riches” is ingrained in this nation’s ethos and there is nothing intrinsically immoral about that goal. However, the current state of American inequality reveals a very real and expanding gap between the rich and poor that betrays the foundational endowment of this Union. When the freedom to succeed is denied every citizen, their equality is equally denied. 

The wealth and income inequalities in America do not require socialist reforms to fix, and capitalism is not the problem. The problem is that we have let inequality advance in this country so gradually that its obviousness is masked by its familiarity. Below I outline eight facts about inequality in America that every American should know. 

1) 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. To put that into context, as of 2013 there are an estimated 316,128,839 people living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Just 400 Americans have more money than over 158 million of their fellow citizens. Their net worth is over $2 trillion, which is approximate to the Gross Domestic Product of Russia. This ratio has been verified by Politifact and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. One explanation for the vast discrepancy in wealth is the definition of “worth,” which includes everything a person or household owns. This means savings and property but also mortgages, bills and debt. Poorer households can owe so much in debt that they possess a negative net worth.

2) America has the second-highest level of income inequality, after Chile. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development studies thirty-four developed countries and ranks them both before and after taxes and government transfers take effect (government transfers include Social Security, income tax credit and unemployment insurance). Before taxes and government transfers, America ranks tenth in income inequality. After taxes and transfers, it ranks second. Whereas its developed peers reduce inequality through government programs, the United States’ government exacerbates it. 

3) The current state of inequality can be traced back to 1979. After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the gap between the rich and the poor began to narrow. For fifty years, wages still differed greatly between the upper- and working-classes, but a robust middle-class took shape, as well as the opportunity for working-class individuals to ascend. In his book, “The Great Divergence,” journalist Timothy Noah traces today’s inequality to the beginning of the 1980s and the widening gap between the middle- and upper-classes. This gap was influenced by the following factors: the failure of American schools to prepare students for new technology; poor immigration policies that favor unskilled workers and drive down the price of already low-income labor; federally-mandated minimum wage that has failed to keep pace with inflation; and the decline of labor unions.

4) Non-union wages are also affected by the decline of unions. The Economic Policy Institute claims that 20% of the growth in the wage gap between high-school educated and college educated men can be attributed to deunionization. Between 1978 and 2011, union representation for blue-collar and high-school educated workers declined by more than half. This has also diminished the “union wage effect,” whereby the existence of unions (more than 40% of blue-collar workers were union members in ’78) was enough to boost wages in non-union jobs – in high school graduates by as much as 8.2%. Not only did unions protect lower- and middle-class workers from unfair wages, they also established norms and practices that were then adopted by non-union employers. Two prime examples are employee pensions and healthcare. Today about 13% of workers belong to unions, which has reduced their bargaining power and influence. 

5) There is less opportunity for intergenerational mobility. In December 2011, President Obama spoke at Osawatomie High School in Kansas. He was very clear about the prospects of the poor in today’s United States:

“[O]ver the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class – 33 percent.”

As refreshing as that honesty is, Obama promised no fix beyond $1 trillion in spending cuts and a need to work toward an “innovation economy.” 

In a speech one month later, Obama’s Chairman of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, elaborated on the dire state of America’s shrinking middle-class. The contraction, he stated, could partially be attributed to “skill-biased technical change”: work activities that have become automated over time, reducing the need for unskilled labor and favoring those with analytical training. He also highlighted the 50 year decline in tax rates for the top 0.1%, increased competition from overseas workers, and a lack of educational equality for children. Poor children are denied the private tutors, college prep and business network of family and friends available to their wealthier peers, which locks them into the class they are born into.

6) Tax cuts to the wealthiest have not improved the economy or created more jobs. Krueger also revealed that the tax cuts of the 2000s for top earners did not improve the economy any better than they did in the 1990s (meanwhile, income growth was stronger for lower- and middle-class families in the 1990s than in the last forty years). Tax rates for the top income earners in America peaked in 1945 at 66.4 percent. Following decades of gradual reductions, they have since been cut in half. During the same time, the payroll tax has increased since the 1950s and individual income tax has bounced between 40-50% through the present day. Conversely, corporate tax declined from above 30% in the 1950s to under 10% in 2011. All of these tax cuts are made ostensibly to improve the economy and create jobs. However, the National Bureau of Economic Research has concluded that it is young companies, “regardless of their size,” that are the real job creators in America. Tax cuts to the wealthiest do not create jobs. 

7) Incomes for the top 1% have increased (but the top 0.01% make even more). Between 1979 and 2007, the average incomes of the 1% increased 241%. Compare that to 19% growth for the middle fifth of America and 11% for the bottom fifth. Put another way, in 1980 the average American CEO earned forty-two times as much as his average worker. In 2001, he earned 531 times as much. 

Average income across the 1% is actually stratified into widely disparate echelons. Compare the $29,840 average income for the bottom 90% to the $161,139 of the top 10%. Compare the $1 million average income of the top 1% to the $2.8 million of the top 0.1%. Yet both still pale beside the $23 million average income of the top 0.01%. 

If those numbers seem a bit overwhelming, Politizane has created a video that illustrates this staggering inequality:

8) The majority of Congress does not feel your pain. Empowered by the Constitution to represent their constituents, United States Congress members are, for the first time in history, mostly millionaires. The 2012 financial disclosure information of the 534 current Congress men and women reveals that over half of them have a net worth of $1 million or more. After the past seven facts it is difficult to read this last one and believe that these 268 legislators have the best interests of the remaining 99% at heart. But if that is too presumptuous a leap, it is not too bold to say that wealthier donors, lobbyists and special interest groups enjoy greater access to these lawmakers than the average American. 

Life, and the Liberty to Go Hungry

Last week Congress failed to extend emergency benefits for unemployment, leaving 1.3 million people without federal aid. Congress is currently on a weeklong recess that will keep them from debating the issue until their return on January 27. The bill was too divisive for Republicans and Democrats to reach an agreement on, though unemployment is still above 7% nationally. 

Thankfully, the unemployed have their Congress working for them. And at $174,000 annual pay, those representatives are sure to return from vacation committed to fresh solutions. 

The pursuit of happiness is an ephemeral affair, but the freedom to succeed is not. It is something one possesses or lacks. It is the difference between enjoying a more prosperous life than one’s parents and believing there is no way out. A “self-evident” truth is one that is meaningful without proof, much akin to faith. If inequality continues to rise in America, the self-evident truths of its founding will be no more than words on an old piece of paper, its American Dream a tattered faith paid lip service by the deceitful and the blind.

Clear as Mud

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Middle East Explained_0The current state of U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell:

Are you confused by what is going on in the Middle-East? Let me explain. We support the Iraqi government in its fight against Islamic State (IS/ISIL/ISIS). We don’t like IS but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia whom we do like. We don’t like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not IS, which is also fighting against him.

We don’t like Iran, but the Iranian government supports the Iraqi gov’t against IS. So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting our other enemies, whom we don’t want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less. And, all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren’t actually there until we went in to drive them out – do you understand now?

Ruling-Class Supremacy and the Free World

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By Mark Weiser

Source: Dissident Voice

Soon after children start noticing differences between others and themselves, they’re old enough to believe they’re superior or entitled in some ways. These feelings come naturally, and are reinforced by adults as children learn social behaviors by comparing attributes and values so they can fit in with, or be seen apart from, certain others in society. This is all instinctual to some degree and a normal part of life. To make the case for instinct and superiority, think about what anyone would consider when choosing a partner for a serious or long-term relationship. If a potential partner does not meet the standards of another, by default one person is considering their self above the other in some way. And speaking generally for superior humans, when considering procreation, they don’t want their superior self to mix with inferior genes. Everybody has standards of age, looks, intelligence, income, occupation, social standards and more or less, it’s different for everybody.

Pro-creationist superiority is instinctual to best insure our genetic code is passed along into the future. Of course there’s pure romantic attraction, but that’s only triggered because the partner being considered hasn’t been ruled out. It could ultimately be the depth and types of emotions which compel the romantic to get deeply involved, but they still make relative comparisons the first time meeting someone and along the way. We’re not speaking hypothetical, these attitudes are accepted realities and I would guess, at minimum, 96% of all readers over age twenty can relate by direct experience, even if they’ve not been in a serious intimate relationship.

Instinct and human nature overlap when it comes to seeking society with others, and societies or social groups necessarily have a culture that sets boundaries for ideological beliefs, abilities, practices, social status etc. If a group doesn’t set boundaries, by default, that group would be all inclusive and non-judgmental concerning any specific particulars. As individuals or groups looking at others, it’s all so much instinct and human second-nature, we may not be aware we’re being judgmental. Whether superiority by comparison is instinct due to genetics and the natural workings of the mind, or is influenced by personal nature and prejudices, or results from ideological and social culture, it makes no difference at all in the real world if the end result is the same.

What does make a difference in the real world is whether or not we unjustly impose on others. If our sense of imposing or taking advantage of others is not disabled, and we do impose unjustly on others, ultimately it’s some sense of superiority or entitlement which allows us to impose. Benign superiority is basically harmless as no actions are taken which harm or impose on others; although, if a person feels superior to others and doesn’t participate in something that could benefit himself, he could be a victim of his own perceived superiority.

In the U.S. we have laws against supremacist entitlement being imposed on the unwilling, but because of social conditioning there are times we might assume we’re not being imposed on when, in fact, we are the victim(s). It’s often considered justifiable that one should feel morally or intellectually superior to racists or sexists. But what about assuming religious or ideological superiority and entitlement(s)? Why would either of those be considered fair game in certain circles or social situations? If you have moral values you may feel superior to Wall Street bankers and our enabling Washington D.C politicians – as those two groups were literally the driving forces behind the 2008 economic crash – while at the same time they enriched themselves at the expense of innocent U.S. and world citizens.

The 2008 economic collapse was brought about by the deregulation and non-enforcement of banking laws which resulted in the Federal Reserve and banks both taking excessive risks. There was the Federal Reserve policy of giving the banks too much low interest money to begin with. The banks relaxed loan qualifications which led to real estate and stock market bubbles. It was all tied to fraudulent mortgage default insurance known as credit default swaps being used to prop up bundled mortgage securities which were sold all over the world to individuals, groups and all sizes of governments. The fraudulent mortgage default insurance and grossly exaggerated security ratings made the bundled mortgages securities look much less risky than they actually were, and the bundled mortgage securities were fraudulent due to the grossly misrepresented financial risks. So great were the cumulative risks of all combined, the world economy in 2008 was lined up like dominoes and literally ready to fall as soon as the mortgage defaults started adding up. By the time this was all recognized publicly as the unsustainable confidence game it was, the banks’ corporate officers had already pocketed hundreds of million$ and intended on leaving you and your grandchildren to pay for their entitlements.

With D.C. politicians, the regulatory boards, and Department of Justice looking the other way – while they’re supposed to oversee banking practices in some manner – the bankers were able to pull off the greatest financial scheme in human history. The two main groups which lined those dominoes up, the bankers and D.C. politicians, in this instance are prime examples of interdependent criminals. Our Republican and Democratic parties essentially accepted election campaign funding (bribes) from the bankers, in exchange for legislation the bankers wanted, which finally led to the 2008 crash. And because politicians wanted those campaign funding bribes to continue after 2008, they didn’t pressure the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute the bankers and most likely instructed him not to. These types of crimes and failure to prosecute are nearly guaranteed with the existing campaign funding laws when combined with the accepted political culture among the “ruling-class” in Washington D.C. Not only was the 2008 crash painful for many at the time, but people in the U.S and around the world are, in fact, enslaved to a certain degree while the true costs of those violations are still being paid off.

Assuming they didn’t suffer from psychological disorders, the bankers necessarily had to feel superior or entitled to put their personal interests above the U.S. law and country. A complex and intertwined scheme of 2008 magnitude could only have taken place if the laws on the books prior to the crash were non-existent (deregulated), corrupt as written, corrupted as practiced, or corrupted by enforcement (or non-enforcement) thereof; and we had all of those contributing factors leading up to the crash.

In the U.S. today we have a ruling-class supremacist culture holding itself, the self-chosen few, above the law. And they demand you comply with the law as they cultivate systemic enslavement to a degree as it’s being imposed on the vast majority of citizen-victims. And by all means they invite you, as a dupe, to join their party as a Democrat or Republican, neither of which are looking out for the American people; but join them, and you too can shill for the status quo. If big money likes you enough, they might select you through a screening and grooming process, to be in the U.S. Senate or Congress representing the personal best interests of ruling-class elites to the overall detriment of the country.

As a collective in the U.S. we believe ourselves to be validly non-supremacist as decreed by law, while also believing our culture is morally grounded, and that moral citizens wouldn’t impose unjust self-entitlements by forcing citizens into a degree of slavery. So what is it in our human instinct, human nature or various cultures which allow these types of supremacist-entitlement violations to occur? If the collective sense of injustice is not disabled by some psychological disorder, then as a “moral culture”, these transgressions could only take place by having a population with sufficiently corrupted-intellects, or by having a few corrupted-intellects imposing on the vast majority through concentrated political power. Corrupted-intellect for our purposes here would include the mindset to commit any act of deceitfulness, denial, or false rationalizations by either the perpetrators or victims, which allow legal violations to be committed without eventual prosecution. And regardless of whether or not we suffer from a disabling disorder, corrupted-intellect has collectively disabled our society from attaining a reasonable amount of “liberty and justice for all”. Among those unable to maintain intellectual integrity due to the influence of religious, academic or political cultures, collective denial can take the form of institutionalized supremacist-entitlements as we’ve seen with bankers and politicians surrounding the 2008 fiasco.

Does that mean we’re stuck in a non-democracy being run by a collective of predominately corrupted-intellects of a self-entitled ruling-class supremacist culture? That may depend on Americans understanding just how openly and blatantly they’re still being taken advantage of, and whether or not enough of them are outraged enough to demand some changes. Our two-party political system is essentially a self-perpetuating power structure and would require a major mutiny among members of at least one party to change the existing campaign funding laws, or the Supreme Court would have to overrule itself; the first case is extremely unlikely specifically because getting elected requires receiving huge amounts of campaign funds from the excessively wealthy “ruling-class”, and there’s little hope for the Supreme Court considering the corrupted-intellects sitting there on the bench without a clue.

The joke may be on “we the people” for the time being, but unjust power structures historically fail as the one in question is failing now by eroding the strength and health of its own population. It’s only a matter of time as to when and how a major shift takes place. And regardless of anyone’s sentiment toward the system as is, it’s not working to represent the best interests of the country. What’s left to be said for a system that has systemic corruption guaranteed by existing laws enjoyed by unjustly self-entitled ruling-class supremacists? According to the Declaration of Independence “we the people” have final say and it’s our duty as patriotic Americans, “to throw off such Government”.

Another group which more than deserves mention in the grand scheme of supremacy-entitlements is the so called “news” media. The press has immense power to pressure both, corporate industry and the government to operate within legal and moral parameters that would be beneficial to our overall society. What’s often referred to as “corporate news” isn’t really news, but is actually manipulative propaganda. And those running the show behind the scenes perceive personal benefits by having a bias slanted strongly toward corporate or special interests – which also means not exposing the government because the government works for corporate and special interests also. With the press not using its immense power to benefit U.S citizens and country as a whole, the people running the major news networks are performing a great disservice to the country by denying citizens the absolute truth for their own considerations. Corrupted-intellects are everywhere…

And going back to speaking of dupes, we need to acknowledge the entire subservient culture of politicians around the globe that cater to the whims of Washington D.C. Those foreign office holders often see their compliance to Washington as benefitting themselves personally while it victimizes their own citizens. If those “leaders” are not plain ignorant for any reason, then by default they are willing accomplices on some level. Whatever the case, they’re arguably not fit to look out for the best interests of their own countrymen – just as they’re currently not doing. This subservience is not only applicable to economic issues at present, but also enables unjust military incursions and illegal “wars” of chosen aggression for some perceived political or monetary gain.

If a constant and stable life could be realized, the vast majority of world citizens would prefer to live without trespassing on others. But the brokers of industry, media, and politics, who seek extreme wealth and power, are a different sort – some of these people are beyond being supremely self-entitled, where sociopath or psychopath would be a fitting definition. They act without consideration for truth or the lives they abuse and destroy. Nothing is beneath them, not robbing granny’s life savings while personally benefitting, not starting and backing unnecessary wars of personal choice for monetary or political gain. Over just the last five-and-a-half decades the U.S is directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions in various places around the world. The worldwide self-entitled “ruling-class” supremacists of the “free world” predominately exists in a cultural bubble of extreme criminal immorality and exceptionalism — all due to a combination of genetic instinct, human nature and social culture(s) rendering their corrupted-intellects incapable of acknowledging absolute truth and the motives behind their actions. With most of these activities being approved and orchestrated from the epicenter in Washington D.C., the destructive earthquakes travel around the globe through varying forms of imposed ideological and economic tyranny, often with a military “solution” being carelessly and recklessly forced on countless innocent victims of the current day, year, decade or century as the case may be… The “ruling-class” puts all of our lives at risk by keeping our planet in constant jeopardy.

Due to the shear waste and destruction of war along with the possibility of wanton escalation, the entire earth and the world’s population are threatened by the practices of a tiny and miniscule minority comprising the collective ruling-class supremacist culture; and with everything on earth being directly and indirectly interconnected to everything else, their victims, I’m sure you know, include all living things and every last human being.

 

Perceptions of Power

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By David S. D’Amato

Source: Center for a Stateless Society

Parsing Political Divides in the Mainstream and in Anarchism

CNBC describes the Corporate Perception Indicator as “a far-reaching survey of business executives and the general population from 25 markets,” “research firm Penn Schoen Berland survey[ing] 25,012 individuals and 1,816 business executives.” The results of the survey show quite unsurprisingly that the general public associates government with words like “corruption,” “lies,” “incompetence,” and “thieves.” As for big business, the words that came to the minds of those surveyed included, again, “corruption” and “thieves,” also “monopoly” and “power.” Interestingly, overall perceptions of both corporations and government appear to be largely negative. In American political discourse, the political right is characterized by a perceptible overpraise of business, devoted to a view of corporations that sees them as essentially free market actors, “creators” and “doers” that give us progress and innovation. Even if this is not true of everyone on the American right, certainly such sentiments are important to the right’s narrative on free markets. The right looks on government, in contrast, as the bungling and inept meddler attempting to hold back our industrious and our productive, the supporter of the lazy and parasitic who would rather live on the government dole than work for a living.

On the left, corporations are perceived as putting profits above people, as willing to do anything to suck more and more of the world’s natural wealth into the hands of a grasping, extravagant one percent. Government, on the other hand, is treated as the agent of “the greater good” or “the public good,” a kind of benevolent, altruistic mother to us all.

In the United States, people who identify themselves as free marketers or libertarians are much more likely to align with the former of these competing narratives, the right’s assertion that the corporation is the home of the movers and the shakers, the creative and energetic champions of free enterprise. This relationship between self-identified libertarians and the American right helps explain the broader anarchist movement’s pardonable reluctance to accept individualist or market anarchists as the genuine article. Further, hostility toward communism has a long history in individualist anarchism, typified by Benjamin Tucker’s frequent denunciations, yet certainly preceding them.[1]

We may observe at this juncture that both the right and the left share the historically and empirically ridiculous theory that government and corporate power are locked in an eternal war. But it is a great politico-economic myth that governments and large corporations operate at variance with one another, that one must align herself in her political commitments with one or the other, never both, never neither. For left wing individualists, surveys which demonstrate dissatisfaction with and negative attitudes toward both actually make perfect sense. That big business should be associated with greed and governments with corruption is hardly astonishing or remarkable. Further, these results underline the problem with seeing corporate power and government power as rivals, rather than seeing them much more accurately as codependent partners in crime, mutually reinforcing components parts of a larger phenomenon we might call a ruling class or power elite.

We needn’t risk the cognitive dissonance that comes with treating the State as the great restraint upon the socially destructive avarice of multinational corporations. For we find, whenever we bother to look, that elites in the business community regularly work with the public sector to create conditions accommodating to monopolism. The ideal of free and open competition, however championed in corporate press releases and political campaigning, is nowhere to be found and indeed never has been. Thus do market anarchists prosecute our laissez faire critique of capitalism. We come from an older tradition of American libertarians, radicals who contemned capitalism as much as any communist, but understood the importance of individual rights and mutually beneficial trade.

It is interesting to witness anarchist communists and syndicalists develop strict, exclusionary criteria for anarchism, particularly insofar as the arguable father of our doctrine, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was neither, his mutualism containing many market-friendly if not outright pro-market elements. No less important for anarchism as it developed in America is Josiah Warren, whose first forays into anarchist thought antedate Proudhon. If market or individualist anarchism represents a form of “pseudo-intellectualism,” then some of the anarchist tradition’s brightest lights must apparently be relegated to the dustbin of history. Granting that opposition to not only political but also economic authority is a necessary condition for the true anarchist, individualists like Warren (and his followers such as Benjamin Tucker) more than qualify.

Whether our communist and syndicalist comrades admit it or not, free market ideas figured prominently in fledgling anarchist thought, regarded as perfectly consistent with and a natural outgrowth of, to quote Warren, “the absolute right of supreme individuality.” Considering Warren as an example, many contemporary anarchists may not know that anarchist luminary Peter Kropotkin acknowledged Warren as an inspiration and, in the words of Crispin Sartwell, “a precursor of (and influence on?) Proudhon.” In discussing Warren’s legacy, Sartwell observes one of the major, continuing tensions between the individualist and communist strains of anarchism, the debate on “lifestyle anarchism.” Sartwell argues, quite correctly in the author’s view, that Warren “belongs squarely in what is called by its opponents ‘lifestyle anarchism’: that strain concerned with creating alternatives within the interstices in the existing system rather than arming to overthrow it.” “Peaceful Revolutionist” that he was, Warren emphasized experiments in the creation of practical alternatives to dominant economic and social modalities. To Warren, the whole of life was open to and the subject of reform. This holistic approach, the universality of his critique of the existing state of affairs, he likely inherited from Robert Owen, even while dispensing with other aspects of Owenite thinking. Indeed, Warren’s departure from Owen and his ideas offers us an illuminative proxy for the tensions and debates that still divide individualist from communist elements within anarchism. Warren worried about the overwhelming of the individual within combinations and, paraphrasing Sartwell, imposed a priori schemes. Communists often tend to see the undisciplined “lifestylism” of Warren-type experimentation as essentially bourgeois, outside of or ancillary to genuine class struggle.

Discussing early figures in anarchism such as Warren opens opportunities to reflect on the similarities that unite all anarchists. We can pause to wonder what someone with Warren’s breadth of interests and hopes for reform might think of twenty-first century problems and perceptions thereof.

As all anarchists understand, politics is at bottom conquest, spoliation and rape. Everything else, everything peaceful, voluntary and consensual is something different, throwing the distinction between the “politics means” and the “economic means” once again into sharp relief. The economic means to wealth is defined by the normal, even obvious standards we refer to in interactions with merchants, our friends, and family, the mutually beneficial guidelines we use to cooperate and trade with coequals. The political means, by contrast, is the acquisition of wealth by aggression, by forcible extraction through systematic privilege. The State, being the organization with a monopoly on the legal use of force, is the wellspring of such privilege. As Josiah Warren pointed out in Equitable Commerce:

Theorists have told us that laws and governments are made for the security of person and property; but it must be evident to most minds, that they never have, never will accomplish this professed object; although they have had the world at their control for thousands of years, they have brought it to a worse condition than that in which they found it, in spite of immense improvements in mechanism, division of labor, and other elements of civilization to aid them. On the contrary, under the plausible pretext of securing person and property, they have spread wholesale destruction, famine, and wretchedness in every frightful form over all parts of the earth, where peace and security might otherwise have prevailed. They have shed more blood, committed more murders, tortures, and other frightful crimes in the struggles against each other for the privilege of governing, than society ever would or could have suffered in the total absence of all government whatever.

A deep, principled loathing of both big business and government unites all anarchists. Confronted with the alarming realities of the present moment, its authoritarian repressions and economic maladies, anarchists ought to help one another in peaceful projects to build a freer, better world. Data such as those contained in the Corporate Perception Indicator survey show a world fully primed for our anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist critiques. It falls upon us to communicate our message, to do the constructive work of inaugurating a new order.

[1] Relatedly, in True Civilization, Josiah Warren wrote, “What is called conservatism has all the time been entirely right in its objections to communism, and in insisting on individual ownership and individual responsibilities both of which communism annihilates; conservatism has also shown wisdom in its aversion to sudden and great changes, for none have been devised that contained the elements of success.”

 

There is no reasoning with an empire waging a world war of deception

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By Larry Chin

Source: Intrepid Report

On September 24, 2014, the United Nations passed a resolution paving the way to open-ended “anti-terror” warfare against the Islamic State (IS), the “network of death,” promising a war that will “last for years.”

The “war on the Islamic State” is a lie. It is the same fetid Big Lie that is the “war on terrorism,” reheated and updated with new, bloodier special effects, new propaganda, a familiar but revised cast of demonic villains and a new military attack calendar.

Three thousand lives were sacrificed on 9/11 for the fabricated “war on terrorism” against “Al-Qaeda” and Osama bin Laden. Now, thirteen years of continuous imperial onslaught and tens of thousands of deaths and atrocities later, the “Islamic State” escalation will topple Syria, Iran, transform Iraq, and provide yet another pretext to wreak havoc anywhere else the empire wishes.

But it is the same lie, built on the same propaganda cornerstones: the myth of the “outside enemy,” the threat of “Islamic terror,” eternal pretexts to galvanize public opinion behind an Anglo-American agenda of conquest and war that will never end.

It is the same lie, founded upon the idea that “Islamic terrorists” are enemies of the West, when, in amply documented fact, these terrorists are the West’s finest foot soldiers and military-intelligence assets.

The Islamic State, like Al-Qaeda and all entities that comprise the “Islamic Jihad” is a creation of the CIA and Anglo-American intelligence (Pakistan’s ISI, Saudi intelligence, British MI6, the Israeli Mossad, etc.). The various jihadist militias and military-intelligence assets and fronts—IS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusrah, etc.—are “American made,” openly supported and utilized by the United States and its allies, as they have been continuously from the Cold War to this very second. These forces are carefully manipulated and guided weapons for US-NATO. Terrorists are instrumental to the ongoing US-led covert and overt operations in Syria. Terrorists run by the US and CIA destabilized and toppled Libya, are integral to coming regime changes. Under both direct and indirect orders of US-NATO sponsors and handlers, these “demon hordes” are, and will continue to be, the leading military-intelligence assets behind every major geostrategic action in the region.

The IS joins Al-Qaeda as today’s favorite “boogeyman” target. The war masks the true intent, which is the toppling of Syria and Iran, and onward.

The “terrorists” are depicted in propaganda as either villains or “freedom fighters,” depending on the day and the military theater. The horrific acts of the death squads, including beheadings and other atrocities, are standard operating procedure in CIA black operations, terror techniques going back to the Vietnam War and the Phoenix Program, and are done upon orders of US and US-allied military-intelligence. Decapitations of Syrian civilians have been ongoing for years, to media silence. The recent spate of beheadings of Americans and British have been selectively carried out (and in some cases staged) for propaganda purposes. Political theater designed to galvanize the dimwitted, ignorant masses to support massive retaliatory war.

According to recent polls, four out of five registered American voters overwhelmingly support military attacks against the Islamic State. The acquiescent, ignorant American masses, still irretrievably pacified by the propaganda “shock and fear” effect of 9/11, enthusiastically back any “retaliation” against “bad guys who cut off heads” and “threaten America,” and have no problem sending American youth to the front lines to be cannon fodder. They are “defending freedom.” The American sheeple believe—even love to believe—the Big Lie. Whereas the citizens of Hong Kong and in other countries take passionately to the streets to fight for their democracy, the average American has long abdicated his and her duty as an informed, vigilant citizen. Far too busy shooting nude selfies on handheld gadgets—their brains addled by inane entertainment, and Hollywood celebrations of the national security apparatus—to care.

So-called liberals and progressives also back action against the Islamic State. The few who have any inkling that Islamic terror is a product of the US war machine wind up wringing their sweaty hands over the red herring of “blowback”: the tired idea that the US created but lost control of a Jihadist force that it now must contain. It is bogus. These militias are the American empire’s key foot soldiers and operatives, the leading force behind plans to topple Syria, just as they were in Libya. This is not blowback, but a well orchestrated military-intelligence operation, cloaked beneath a criminal conspiracy that is maintained by an ironclad elite consensus.

Islamic terrorism “stops” the minute that its sponsors at CIA, MI, ISI, etc. stop using it. The war itself stops when the elites who have planned this Final Solution to seize control of the last remaining oil supplies on the planet—the very life blood of the Anglo-American empire—stop, and give up their war of conquest and greed. The entire apparatus collapses. But this will not happen in this lifetime. Not even in the event of planetary calamity.

To threaten humanity, to pretend to wage war against boogeyman that they themselves created, and continue to support and use, only those of world class evil could conceive of and carry out this horror.

The American network of death goose-steps to the abyss

With each passing day, more of the Anglo-American empire’s veneer falls away, revealing the violence at its core.

Leading the charge in front of the United Nations, the mendacious President Barack Obama thundered: “No God condones this terror. There can be no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

Here was a performance directly out of the playbook of the Third Reich and Bush/Cheney, brimming with threats, false morality, pseudo-religious claptrap, and invective directed against the perceived enemies. Here was Obama being who he really is, a war criminal. The ghost of Hitler has to be envious.

No God condones deceit. No God condones the terror of the Anglo-American empire’s war of conquest. No God condones the extermination of tens of thousands of lives in more than a decade of imperial conquest for oil.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the criminal leadership of an empire that will thrash and kill to the brink of extinction. There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with warmongers who have wiped out entire swaths of humanity.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with an empire so desperate and out of answers that gangsterism replaces the rule of law, and false flag operations constitute foreign policy. There is no reasoning with those who could, in the span of just a few months, set off false flag destabilizations in Syria, false flag operations in support of a neo-Nazi cabal in Ukraine, plan and cover up the false flag shootdown of Flight MH-17 (blamed on Russia), support the bombing and conquest of Gaza by Israel (blamed on Hamas, in the wake of the murder of Israeli teenagers by ISIL terrorists), and set off the “sudden” rise of the Islamic State.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with an empire that must and will stop at nothing to control every inch of the Eurasian subcontinent, and destroy all opposition along the way, including potential nuclear confrontations with Russia and China.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the functionaries and enablers of this empire in governments, in media, everywhere. There is also no reasoning—no negotiation—with the cognitively impaired sheeple.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the killers, the world planning orchestrators speaking the “language of force”; these “great men and women” who hold humanity in contempt.

There is, indeed, no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil.

Larry Chin is an Associate Editor of Intrepid Report.

 

BOSTON UPDATE: FBI War on Marathon Bombing Witnesses Continues

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By James Henry

Source: WhoWhatWhy

The Boston Marathon bombing is much more important than has been acknowledged, principally because it is the major domestic national security event since 9-11 and has played a major role in expanding the power of the security state. For that reason, WhoWhatWhy is continuing to investigate troubling aspects of this story and the establishment media treatment of it. So even as it slips from the headlines, we will be exploring new elements of the story regularly as the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev approaches. 

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Since the Boston Marathon bombing a year and a half ago, the FBI appears to be intimidating, harassing, and silencing friends and acquaintances of the Tsarnaev brothers. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers have noticed it too—they’re having trouble getting anyone to talk to them, recent court papers reveal.

In what WhoWhatWhy previously described as the FBI’s “war on witnesses”, the Bureau seems to be employing a scorched earth strategy of destroying anything that might be of use to the “enemy.”

On August 29, Tsarnaev’s lawyers filed a motion requesting a continuance for more time to prepare their defense, noting the fact that they were given only half the median preparation time that federal courts have allowed over the past decade for defendants on trial for their lives. (The judge did grant a two-month delay while refusing the defense request to move the trial out of Boston.)

The lawyers cited “outpaced requirements” in building a proper defense for their client: (1) the international nature of the investigation—including language and geographic barriers, (2) the large amount of evidence that has to be scrutinized, and most tellingly, (3) the climate of intimidation and fear created by the FBI’s investigative efforts since the bombing. They write:

Domestic defense mitigation investigation has been conducted amid a growing atmosphere of anxiety and agitation generated by highly-publicized arrests, indictments, prosecutions, deportations (and, in one instance, the FBI killing) of members of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s peer groups.

Most news reports brush over that last part. As if shooting to death an unarmed man involved in this case—as an FBI agent did to Tamerlan’s friend Ibragim Todashev—is not relevant to the difficulties the defense team has had in getting witnesses to talk to them. But even less extreme events are enough to silence potential witnesses, such as the mysterious closing of their bank accounts.

Prosecutors resisted this and an earlier attempt to have the trial delayed. The victims have a right to see justice done—swiftly, the thinking goes.

The victims and their families certainly deserve justice for this horrible atrocity. True justice should include a full accounting—something a hurried, one-sided investigation is not likely to produce. And of course Boston and the American public deserve, and need, the truth, whatever it may be.

Yet a close read of the motion document reveals FBI activities that seem more of an effort to conceal than to illuminate.

The FBI’s March to the Sea

Tsarnaev’s defense team makes reference to the most troubling—and most anxiety-producing—action by the FBI since the bombing: the shooting to death of Tamerlan’s friend, Todashev. (See our earlier story on the head-scratching circumstances surrounding that shooting, including the questionable history of the agent who pulled the trigger.)

Some of the FBI’s aggressive tactics described in the defense document look like outright intimidation. For instance, individuals “with lawful immigration status have been detained for hours and required to surrender their electronic devices upon re-entry to the United States.”

And take a look at this excerpt:

“The investigation has been further hampered by aggressive FBI follow-up tracking and questioning of potential witnesses, as well as by the unrelenting attention of the news media.”

It is one thing to be aggressively tracking and questioning individuals suspected of committing crimes, but to be doing this to presumably innocent witnesses reeks of intimidation. Witness intimidation is a tactic ordinarily associated with mafia or drug cartel defendants.

Notably, this “tracking” must have been brought to the attention of defense lawyers by witnesses themselves, indicating overt surveillance: “We’re watching you.”

Then, farther down in the document:

“These difficult circumstances are compounded by a continuing pattern of aggressive FBI re-interviewing of potential witnesses — on occasion within hours of an attempted contact by defense investigator [emphasis added].”

Within hours of an attempted contact by defense investigator? Is the defense team being watched too? (We reached out to Tsarnaev’s defense team hoping they could expand on that, but have not yet had a response.)

It wouldn’t be the first time the FBI was caught spying on defense lawyers in a high-profile terrorism case. Lawyers for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed allege that the FBI has been surveilling  them.

Whether legal counsel are being watched directly or simply getting caught up in the surveillance of Tsarnaev’s acquaintances, the effect is the same: the feds know who is talking to whom, and when.

That’s a Nice Immigration Status You Got There…

Witnesses who are not U.S. citizens—which describes the majority of Tsarnaev’s friends, family, and many in the local Muslim community—are particularly vulnerable to law enforcement manipulation. The threat of deportation is a clear and present danger to these individuals, “regardless of whether criminal charges are ever brought or proven against them,” Tsarnaev’s lawyers wrote.

Indeed, a handful of people loosely connected to the Tsarnaevs have already been deported, or had deportation proceedings initiated against them, despite having nothing to do with the Boston Marathon bombing. These include:

–   Konstantin Morozov: friend of Tamerlan, arrested and jailed pending deportation reportedly after refusing to wear a wire for the FBI as the Bureau sought information on one of Tamerlan’s Chechen friends.

–   Tatiana Gruzdeva: girlfriend of Ibragim Todashev, deported after speaking with Boston Magazine about the circumstances surrounding her boyfriend’s death.

–   Ashurmamad Miraliev: friend of Ibragim Todashev, was reportedly denied a request for an attorney while interrogated by FBI for over six hours, and transferred to an immigration detention center where deportation proceedings were initiated.

–   Khusen Taramov: friend of Ibragim Todashev, denied reentry to the United States after visiting Chechnya, despite having a Green Card.

Why hasn’t Boston’s “liberal” media made more noise about this? Arguably, the most newsworthy portion of Tsarnaev’s motion for continuance—potential witness intimidation—has been glossed over or ignored in most mainstream media accounts.

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reached out to the media and the public to expose the intimidation and harassment of Todashev’s friends and associates—and got a fair amount press coverage by their local media. The same cannot be said for the Boston area press.

Have they, albeit indirectly, been intimidated, too? The Boston media has historically had a close relationship with law enforcement, and when it ever so slightly challenged the police, found its usual (and needed) sources shut down.

However, if ever there was a moment for the local press to do the right thing, this is surely it.

The Commencement Controversy and the Real Mumia

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By Kevin Price

Source: TruthThroughStruggle

Three weeks ago I visited imprisoned journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, at SCI-Mahanoy in Pennsylvania. I’ve been visiting with Mumia, sometimes regularly, for the last decade. Despite the polarizing rhetoric from those who’ve fought for three decades for Mumia’s state sanctioned murder, the man I met is one of the kindest, funniest, and most intelligent people I’ve had the pleasure to know. The first time I visited with Mumia, on death row at SCI-Greene in 2004, the conversation was so engaging that the visit was halfway over before I realized his hands had been shackled the whole time. After years of organizing around his case I knew he was a brilliant thinker, but I was pleasantly surprised by his sense of humor and silliness.

I learned of Mumia’s case as a teenager in 1997, when my world was rocked by reading his gripping book documenting death row life, “Live From Death Row.” The same week I purchased his newly released collection of musings, essays, and poems, “Death Blossoms.” I stayed up all night reading it, inspired by the empathy and insight coming through the pages. At that point I was a freshmen in high school and had begun to get politicized by an active punk scene in Norfolk, VA. Mumia’s writing opened my eyes to worlds I had never even considered. I started organizing heavily for a new trial for Mumia as well as working on many other causes and movements. After over 15 years studying this case I know that his trial was a travesty of justice (as does Amnesty International and many international governing bodies) and I believe that he is innocent.

In person and in his writings Mumia rarely focuses on his own case, instead focusing on broad international struggles for justice. On our most recent visit we talked about books we’re reading, world events, and mutual friends. For a few years he’s been studying musical composition and when I told him that I didn’t know how to read music he spent an hour passionately explaining the basics to me. I learned a lot. These visits have been some of the most educational hours of my life. It’s easy, absorbed in conversation, to forget that we are in a prison. It’s hard to comprehend that this man was nearly put to death on two separate occasions and that the mere mention of his name will send many into a fit of rage. If they actually met Mumia they wouldn’t recognize him next to the violent cop-killer straw man the media built in his image. Mumia has been characterized by much of the mainstream media as an unrepentant murderer. When word got out that an audio recording by Mumia would be the commencement address at Goddard College this Sunday, Fox News and other media pundits manufactured a media controversy.

Over the years I’ve seen a lot of backlash by the Fraternal Order of Police and others who want Mumia dead. When Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys organized a massive benefit show in his defense there was media uproar and pressure to shut down the show. When Mumia was made the first honorary citizen of Paris, France since Pablo Picasso, and Saint-Denis, France named a street after him, the US House of Representatives passed HR 1082 condemning Mumia and Saint-Denis, France. The hysteria over having Mumia as the commencement speaker at Goddard is just the most recent in a long series of similar media spectacles. This one hits a bit closer to home for me because I graduated from Goddard College in 2012 and have friends who will be graduating this Sunday. I love Goddard and am very protective of it. Conversations with Mumia were part of the catalyst for my enrolling in Goddard. He attended Goddard in the 70s and finished his degree there in 1995, knowing he might be executed before graduation.

It’s difficult to watch a person that you love and respect routinely slandered in the media. Goddard College and their graduating students have been condemned for their decision and attacked as well. I’m impressed with the way the school and the graduating students are defending their decision. There are a number of symbolic reasons it’s valuable to have Mumia speak at commencement. The United States is the largest jailer in the world history, with over 2,000,000 people in the prison system. Racism plays a key role in deciding who will be convicted and the sentence they will receive, and as a result black men are incarcerated at vastly disproportionate numbers. The lack of educational opportunities and diminishing job options are a huge factor in our sky rocketing rates of imprisonment. If we seek to change these conditions I can think of no better speaker than Mumia Abu-Jamal, an accomplished academic, and brilliant black man who is wrongfully convicted. With the rampant police murders of black people, notably Eric Garner and Mike Brown, it’s important to publicly assert that black lives matter and that the victims of police brutality and judicial misconduct must be defended.

These are wonderful symbolic reasons to celebrate the choice of Mumia as a commencement speaker. However, Mumia is not a symbol. He is a man who was wrongfully held in solitary confinement on death row for nearly 30 years and is now being wrongfully held in general population with no legal possibility for parole. He has children who have had children in the years he’s been away. He is a man with a brilliant mind and an unstoppable pen. Those who oppose him have been fighting for decades to silence his voice. Yet every week, often twice a week, Mumia continues work as a journalist, writing and recording audio commentaries over the prison phone calls. With so much at stake it only seems right that we listen.

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To hear Mumia’s commentaries go to http://www.prisonradio.org

For more information on who Mumia is, his case and his writings go to http://www.freemumia.com

The Wretched Tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder

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Eric Holder

Going…going…almost gone, but let’s not forget him

By Dave Lindorff

Source: This Can’t Be Happening!

Good riddance!

Eric Holder has announced that he is leaving his post of Attorney General, which he has sullied and degraded for six years.

A corporate lawyer with the A-list Washington and Wall Street law firm Covington & Burling, Holder will be remembered for his timid defense of civil rights, his overseeing. and even encouragement of the massive militarization of the nation’s police forces, his anti-First Amendment efforts to pursue not just whistleblowers but the journalists who use them, threatening both with jail and in fact jailing a number of them (particularly in the case of whistleblower extraordinaire Edward Snowden, and Wikileaks journalist Julian Assange, both of whom reportedly face US treason charges), and his weak enforcement of environmental protection laws.

But Holder, who came into his position as the nation’s top law enforcement officer in early 2009 at the start of the Obama administration and at the height of the financial crisis, will be best remembered for his overt announcement that there would be no attempt to prosecute the criminals at the top of the nation’s biggest so-called “too-big-to-fail” banks, whose brazen crimes of theft, deceit, fraud and perjury during the Bush/Cheney years and beyond sank not just the US but the global economy into a crisis which is still with us.

Holder not only did not make any effort to put Wall Street’s banking titans behind bars for their epic crimes; he did not even make them step down from their exalted and absurdly highly compensated executive positions when his office reached negotiated settlements with the banks in civil cases involving those crimes — civil cases that in almost all cases allowed the banks to settle without even having to admit their guilt. (His ludicrous excuse: punishing these criminal executive might jeopardize the banks’ stocks and hurt “innocent” shareholders!) Nor was this legal benevalence limited to purely financial crimes. Banks like Citicorp and HSBC, which were found to have knowingly laundered millions — even billions — of dollars in drug money for drug cartels, were also allowed by Holder to escape with petty fines, and no prosecution of a single bank executive.

As the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) notes in its response to word that Holder is leaving as AG [1], his Justice Department generally even allowed the Banks that were fined to deduct those fines from their taxes as a business expense — something that ordinary citizens are not allowed to do by the IRS, and which Holder could have barred the banks from doing.

No surprise there. Among the clients of Holder’s old law firm are both Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. The firm also has since 2010 had a lobbying services contract with Xe Services, the murderous mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide whose bloody abuses in Iraq were so monstrous the company had to change its name (but not its methods) in order to keep obtaining mercenary services contracts from the US government.

It is being suggested that Holder may opt to go back to his old post as a partner at Covington & Burling, which would be the final, though hardly surprising, insult to the American people, providing a particularly galling example of Washington’s revolving door between government regulators and enforcers and the industries that they were supposed to be regulating or keeping honest.

God, how far we have fallen from the days when Ramsey Clark was attorney general, and left to become a leading critic of Washington’s imperial government at home and abroad!

At this point the Obama Administration is little more than a place holder until the next presidential election in 2016. President Obama, who campaigned as a fire-breathing liberal who would restore constitutional government, end the Bush/Cheney wars, re-open the government so that transparency instead of secrecy would be the default position, and take decisive action against climate change, has abandoned all those false promises.

The illegal and unconstitutional wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are now being expanded into Africa and Syria and, at least by proxy, but most dangerously, to Ukraine. Civil liberties are under attack at least as severely as they were back in the McCarthy period, with whistleblowers being jailed, with the president asserting the unfettered right to order the killing without trial of American citizens, and with a spying system in place run by the National Security Agency that is monitoring and storing, by its own admission, virtually all electronic communications of the American people. The government is also as closed and secret in its operation as it has been since 1974, when it was broadened following the Watergate and Cointelpro scandals, and is certainly less transparent and open than it was even under Bush/Cheney. The Obama administration has also done little to nothing about tackling carbon emissions despite the president’s lies to the contrary in his address to the UN.

In all of this extraordinary list of treachery and cowardice, Holder has played his sycophantic role as a defender of corporate America, of white privilege, and of Washington power. He has been both the John Ashcroft and the Alberto Gonzalez of the Obama administration. (Actually, that comparison is unfair to John Ashcroft, who at least was a man of conviction — repellent as some of those convictions may have been. In Holder’s case, we have a man not of principle, but who is simply a corporate lawyer, ready to do his clients’ bidding, however sordid and corrupt.)

Given the depths of unpopularity to which President Obama has sunk after six years of selling out his own electoral base and catering to the interests of the rich and powerful, the military establishment and neo-con right-wing of the Washington policy elite, it is safe to say that Holder’s replacement, still unknown, will be no better, though given Holder’s tenure it’s also hard to imagine his successor being much worse either.

So good riddance to Holder. But it will be worth while, and indeed important, to watch carefully this departing Obama official’s behavior back in the private sector, from under which rock he emerged to be attorney general six years ago.