Category Archives: culture

A 2% Financial Wealth Tax Would Provide A $12,000 Annual Stipend To Every American Household

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Careful analysis reveals a number of excellent arguments for the implementation of a Universal Basic Income.

By Paul Buchheit

Source: Nation of Change

It’s not hard to envision the benefits in work opportunities, stress reduction, child care, entrepreneurial activity, and artistic pursuits for American households with an extra $1,000 per month. It’s also very easy to justify a financial wealth tax, given that the dramatic stock market surge in recent years is largely due to an unprecedented degree of technological and financial productivity that derives from the work efforts and taxes of ALL Americans. A 2% annual tax on financial wealth is a small price to pay for the great fortunes bestowed on the most fortunate Americans.

The REASONS? Careful analysis reveals a number of excellent arguments for the implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

(1) Our Jobs are Disappearing

A 2013 Oxford study determined that nearly HALF of American jobs are at risk of being replaced by computers, AI, and robots. Society simply can’t keep up with technology. As for the skeptics who cite the Industrial Revolution and its job-enhancing aftermath (which actually took 60 years to develop), the McKinsey Global Institute says that society is being transformed at a pace “ten times faster and at 300 times the scale” of the radical changes of two hundred years ago.

(2) Half of America is Stressed Out or Sick

Half of Americans are in or near poverty, unable to meet emergency expenses, living from paycheck to paycheck, and getting physically and emotionally ill because of it. Numerous UBI experiments have led to increased well-being for their participants. A guaranteed income reduces the debilitating effects of inequality. As one recipient put it, “It takes me out of depression…I feel more sociable.”

(3) Children Need Our Help

This could be the best reason for monthly household stipends. Parents, especially mothers, are unable to work outside the home because of the all-important need to care for their children. Because we currently lack a UBI, more and more children are facing hunger and health problems and educational disadvantages.

(4) We Need More Entrepreneurs

A sudden influx of $12,000 per year for 126 million households will greatly stimulate the economy, potentially allowing millions of Americans to TAKE RISKS that could lead to new forms of innovation and productivity.

Perhaps most significantly, a guaranteed income could relieve some of the pressure on our newest generation of young adults, who are deep in debt, underemployed, increasingly unable to live on their own, and ill-positioned to take the entrepreneurial chances that are needed to spur innovative business growth. No other group of Americans could make more productive use of an immediate boost in income.

(5) We Need the Arts & Sciences

A recent Gallup poll found that nearly 70% of workers don’t feel ‘engaged’ (enthusiastic and committed) in their jobs. The work chosen by UBI recipients could unleash artistic talents and creative impulses that have been suppressed by personal financial concerns, leading, very possibly, to a repeat of the 1930s, when the Works Progress Administration hired thousands of artists and actors and musicians to help sustain the cultural needs of the nation.

Arguments against

The usual uninformed and condescending opposing argument is that UBI recipients will waste the money, spending it on alcohol and drugs and other ‘temptation’ goods. Not true. Studies from the World Bank and the Brooks World Poverty Institute found that money going to poor families is used primarily for essential needs, and that the recipients experience greater physical and mental well-being as a result of their increased incomes. Other arguments against the workability of the UBI are countered by the many successful experiments conducted in the present and recent past: Finland, Canada, Netherlands, Kenya, India, Great Britain, Uganda, Namibia, and in the U.S. in Alaska and California.

How to pay for it

Largely because of the stock market, U.S. financial wealth has surged to $77 trillion, with the richest 10% owning over three-quarters of it. Just a 2 percent tax on total financial wealth would generate enough revenue to provide a $12,000 annual stipend to every American household (including those of the richest families).

It’s easy to justify a wealth tax. Over half of all basic research is paid for by our tax dollars. All the technology in our phones and computers started with government research and funding. Pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t exist without decades of support from the National Institutes of Health. Yet the tech and pharmaceutical companies claim patents on the products paid for and developed by the American people.

The collection of a wealth tax would not be simple, since only about half of U.S. financial wealth is held directly in equities and liquid assets (Table 5-2). But it’s doable. As Thomas Piketty notes, “A progressive tax on net wealth is better than a progressive tax on consumption because first, net wealth is better defined for very wealthy individuals..”

And certainly a financial industry that knows how to package worthless loans into A-rated mortgage-backed securities should be able to figure out how to tax the investment companies that manage the rest of our ever-increasing national wealth.

 

NYT: Don’t Be Progressive, Be a ‘Liberal’

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By Jim Naureckas

Source: FAIR

A New York Times op-ed by political scientist (and former Bob Kerrey aide) Greg Weiner (7/13/18) may well be the New York Times–iest op-ed ever.

Its ostensible subject is why Democrats should call themselves “liberals” and not “progressives.” But in making that case, it hits most of the main points of the New York Times‘ ideology—one that has guided the paper since the late 19th century.

First and foremost, it’s a defense of the status quo. “The basic premise of liberal politics,” Weiner writes, “is the capacity of government to do good, especially in ameliorating economic ills.” But not too much good, mind you:  “A liberal can believe that government can do more good or less,” he stresses. Weiner draws a contrast with progressives: “Where liberalism seeks to ameliorate economic ills, progressivism’s goal is to eradicate them.”

So Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society is cited negatively as an example of “a progressive effort to remake society by eradicating poverty’s causes”—in the process supporting  “community action” and  financing the “political activism”—presented without explanation as a self-evident evil.  The explanation, presumably, is that the poor should remain passive as they remain poor, gratefully accepting the handouts that “alleviate” their plight, as “cutting checks,” as Weiner puts it, is “something government does competently.”

Coupled with this anxiety about “eradicating poverty’s causes” is the confident assurance that the truth is always somewhere in the middle. “Unlike liberalism, progressivism is intrinsically opposed to conservation,” Weiner warns:

Nothing structurally impedes compromise between conservatives, who hold that the accumulated wisdom of tradition is a better guide than the hypercharged rationality of the present, and liberals, because both philosophies exist on a spectrum.

Conservatives make better partners for liberals than progressives, because “one can debate how much to conserve.” But you can’t debate how much to progress, apparently: “Progressivism is inherently hostile to moderation because progress is an unmitigated good.”

In other words: Equality and justice, sure, but let’s not rush into things, is the “liberal’s” advice. He endorses “policies [that] develop gradually and command wide consensus—at least under normal circumstances.” (Progressives have an unnerving desire to “depress the accelerator.”)

Something that doesn’t change is the right wing of the left’s attraction to redbaiting. Weiner praises “the Cold War liberal who stood for social amelioration and against Soviet Communism,” a figure who “was often maligned by progressives.” Without coming out and accusing progressives of Stalinism, he describes progressives’ response to critics as “a passive-aggressive form of re-education,” one that “supersedes the rights of its opponents.” The example he gives of this is the “progressive indifference to the rights of those who oppose progressive policies in areas like sexual liberation”—an odd arena to cite, since the main “rights” that opponents of “sexual liberation” have demanded in recent years are the “right” of small businesses to discriminate against gay customers and the “right” to check the chromosome status of people who use public restrooms.

 

You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com  (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

US Technological Transformations and the Narcotic-Fueled Genocide of American Workers

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By James Petras

Source: The Unz Review

Introduction

During his recent visit to New Hampshire on 3/20/18, President Trump declared once again that the US is facing a ‘drug epidemic’. This time he advocated the death penalty for criminal drug dealers as the solution to a national crisis that has killed over 1 million Americans since the 1990’s (when the blockbuster prescription opiate Oxycontin was first released on the market). Trump promised that the Justice Department would develop the most severe penalties for criminal drug traffickers, by which he meant foreigners. He argued that his proposed “Wall” (between the Mexican- US border) would cut the flow of drugs responsible for the ongoing addiction of millions of US citizens – as though the prescription opiate addiction epidemic resulted from a foreign invasion, and not corporate decisions from Big Pharma.

President Trump’s claim that 116 ‘drug deaths’ occur every day (42,000 a year) is a major underestimate. In 2017, alone over 64,000 drug overdose deaths were reported in official statistics (with many unreported cases signed off as natural or undetermined, especially in counties too poor to afford autopsies and expensive forensic toxicology). Another 4 million Americans, at least, are currently addicted to opioids and at risk for overdose.

In comparative terms, more American workers have been killed or devastated by narcotics (mostly via prescription) in 2017 alone, than in the entire decade of the Vietnam War with its 58,000 dead and 500,000 wounded. In 2017, 40,000 Americans died in motor vehicle accidents and another 39,000 by gun violence – and these statistics are not broken down to include vehicular accidents due to drug intoxication or gun violence over drugs. Prescription or illegal opiates, alone or mixed with other sedative drugs, like Valium, or alcohol, are the most prominent and preventable cause of premature death in the United States today.

This pattern is unique to the United States, where the irresponsible medical prescription of highly addicting narcotics has been the primary portal of entry into the degrading life of addiction for millions. Despite President Trump’s claims, the addiction crisis is not a product of urban Afro-American street dealers or Mexican narco-traffickers: This uniquely American crisis has been created and fueled by billionaire-owned US pharmaceutical corporations, which produced, distributed and wildly profited from legal narcotics. They were aided by the irresponsible prescription practice of tens of thousands of doctors and other ‘providers’ who introduced millions of vulnerable patients to the world of narcotic dependency – including youngsters with sports injuries and workers with job-related pain. These are physicians and medical providers who rarely stopped to examine their own responsibility, even when their otherwise healthy patients overdosed or were destroyed by addiction. It is especially outrageous that doctors and ‘Big Pharma’ worked hand in hand for over 20 years to create this epidemic, enjoying wild profits and almost total legal immunity. Few have dared to openly question their irresponsibility and greed. In the poorest and most vulnerable areas of this country, the most irresponsible and unaccountable incompetence has replaced real medical care and created a health care apartheid.

The Federal Drug Enforcement Agency (FDA) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have protected the corporate drug traffickers and ensured the manicured and cultured narco-bosses the highest rates of return on their products. These polished pushers have their names engraved on the walls of museums and opera houses around the country.

The majority of Presidential, Federal, State and municipal candidates from both major parties have received millions of dollars in electoral campaign funds from these huge legal narcotic manufacturers and distributors, as well as from physicians and other representative of the ‘pain-treatment industry’. Over the past decades, politicians have openly or secretly opposed or weakened legislation designed to address this crisis.

Why not just ask President Trump to direct his Justice Department to impose the death penalty on the board of directors of the big corporate narcotic manufacturers or distributors or on the CEOs of major ‘pain clinics’ or on the owners of local rural ‘health centers’ that drove the villagers of West Virginia into their life-destroying downward spirals?

When will the DEA finally storm the medical centers to arrest the over-prescribing ‘providers’ of narcotics and benzodiazepine tranquilizers (a very common deadly combination)?

When will the SWAT teams seize the vacation homes of the CEOs of major US hospitals where the convenient and fake ideology of promising a ‘pain-free’ experience (‘make it Zero on the Pain Scale’) led to the generalized promotion of highly addicting narcotics for minor injuries, arthritic pain, or chronic back discomfort due to work or obesity? Responsible alternatives existed and were used in the rest of the world – largely untouched by this prescription-fueled crisis.

No doubt what President Trump has in mind is something else: the expulsion of Latin American workers under the pretext of going after the drug dealers and the even more massive incarceration of petty street dealers in the African American community.

Trump will then turn to further monitoring and arresting small-scale American marijuana farmers, who earn a basic income from growing a product that many believe is safe, non-addicting, and significantly reduces demand for dangerous narcotics.

As ugly as this all seems, the complicity of the political, economic and the medical elite in exponentially spreading deadly narcotics among the poor, working class and downwardly mobile middle class, points to a deeper and more sinister policy goal: the systematic elimination of millions of American workers made redundant in the new economy. This is a ‘gentler genocide’, where millions of workers die prematurely seeking an escape from pain as they have been replaced by a new technology and a new ideology: Robots, artificial intelligence and digitalization have rendered them disposable, while the out-sourcing of work to low paid overseas laborers and immigrants have guaranteed unimaginable profits for the elite decision makers.

This highly profitable process, benefiting the political, pharmaceutical, financial, police and judicial elites, conveniently blames the victims, a significant proportion of whom come from the poor and working class in this country, including white rural and small town addicts, especially youth, stuck at minimum wage jobs with no prospects of a decent future – injured construction workers, 15% of whom abuse prescription narcotics for work-related injuries, as well as the marginalized petty drug dealers from the urban slums and desperate Latino immigrants forced to accommodate the cartels. These people have little rights and are easily monitored, incarcerated, expelled and just written-off in one-line obituaries.

The narcotic-fueled genocide had grown out of a calculated corporate strategy meant to cull and subdue a huge population of potentially restive marginalized workers and their families, blaming the overdosing victims for their own ‘irresponsible’ choices, their reliance on prescription opiates, their lack of access to competent medical care, and their untimely deaths as though this were all a collective suicide as the great nation marches forward.

The higher the death toll among marginalized Americans, the greater the reliance on political distractions and racist deceptions. President Trump loudly blames street-level retail distributors, while ignoring the links between tax-exempt mega-billionaires who have profited from the shortened life-expectancies of addicted workers (scores of billions of dollars already saved in future pension and health care expenses) and the millions fired for addiction and denied jobless benefits and treatment. Trump has yet to even mention the actions of the legal pharma-medical industry that set this in motion.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party leaders denounce the worker-victims of addiction and their communities as ‘irresponsible and racist’, for having believed the populist rhetoric of candidate Trump. Trump’s most intense rural areas of support coincided with areas of the worst opioid addiction and suicide rates. Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton wrote off scores of millions of vulnerable Americans as ‘deplorables’ and never once addressed the addiction crisis that grew exponentially during her husband’s administration.

Since the implementation of NAFTA during the 1990’s, scores of millions of American workers have been relegated to unstable, low paid jobs, deprived of health benefits and subject to grueling work, prone to physical and mental injuries. Workplace injuries set the stage for the prescription narcotic crisis. Even worse, today workers are constantly distracted by electronic gadgets at the workplace, with their orders from above arriving digitally. These highly profitable gadgets have created enormous distractions and contributed to workplace death and injuries. The plaything of choice for the masses, the I-phone, has added to the addiction crisis, by increasing the rate of injury. This mind-numbing distraction, produced abroad at incredible profit, has played an unexplored role in the increase in premature death in the US.

The corporate narcotic elites, like the ultra-cultured Sackler clan owners of Perdue Pharmaceuticals, and their allies in the finance sector, support the diverse ideological distractions fashioned by their politician pawns: Eager to please her donor-owners, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats blame the working class for their backwardness and genetic propensity to addiction and degradation. Meanwhile, President Trump and the Republicans blame ‘outside’ suppliers and distributors including Mexican narco-cartels, illegal immigrant traffickers, black urban street dealers and now point to overseas Chinese fentanyl labs – as though the entire crisis came from the outside. Trump’s approach flies in the face of the unquestionable source of most narcotic addiction in the US: Irresponsible prescribing of highly addicting legal narcotics.

No other industrialized country is experiencing this scale of addiction and pre-mature death. No other industrialized country relies on a private, for-profit, unregulated system of delivering medical care to its citizens. Only the US.

Both elite political parties avoid the basic issue of the long-term, large-scale structural imperatives underlying the transformation of the US work places. They refuse to address the marginalization of tens of millions of American workers and their families, made disposable by corporate economic and political decisions.

The US corporate elite are completely incapable of developing, let alone favoring, any policy that addresses the needs of millions of surplus office and factory workers and their family members replaced by new technology and ‘global’ economic policies. The American financial and political elite is not about to support an economic, political and cultural ‘GI’ bill to save the scores of millions shoved to the wayside in their rush to obscene wealth and power.

The unstated, but clearly implemented, ‘final solution’ is a Social Darwinian policy of active and passive neglect, the unleashing of profitable prescription narcotics into the population of vulnerable disposable workers, offering them a convenient, painless way out – the opioid solution to the over-population problem of redundant rural and small town ‘Helots’. The political elite’s willing complicity with Big Pharma, the medical profession, the financial oligarchs and the prison-industrial complex has transformed the country in many ways. Shortened lives and depopulation of rural and small town communities translates into lower demand for public services, such as schools, health care, pensions and housing. This is guaranteeing a greater concentration of national wealth in the hands of a tiny elite. The financial press has openly celebrated the projected decrease in pension liabilities as a result of the drop in worker life expectancy.

The ongoing mass genocide by opioids may have started to arouse popular discontent among working people who do not want to continue dying young and miserable! Social services and child protective services for the millions of orphaned or abandoned children of this crisis have been demanding real policies. Unfortunately, the usual platitudes and failed policies prevail. Drug education and ‘opioid addiction treatment’ programs (currently among the largest expense in some union health plans) are pointless Band-Aids when confronted by the larger policy decisions fuelling this crisis. Nevertheless, thousands of health care professionals are beginning to resist corporate pressure to prescribe cheap opioids – and fight for more expensive, but less dangerous, alternative for addressing their patients’ pain. Even if all medical providers stopped over-prescribing narcotics today, there are still millions of addicts already created by past practice, who seek the most deadly street drugs, like fentanyl, to feed their addiction.

Politicians now publicly denounce ‘Big Pharma’, while privately winking at the lobbyists and accepting millions from their ‘donor-owners’.

Public critics in the corporate media are quick to condemn the workers’ susceptibility to narcotic addiction but not the underlying causative imperatives of global capitalism.

Mainstream academics celebrate corporate technological advances with occasional neo-Malthusian warnings about the dangers of millions of redundant workers, while ignoring the profit-driven role of narcotics in reducing the social threat of excess workers!

Finally the role of an elite and respected profession must be re-evaluated in a historic context: In the 1930’s German doctors helped develop an ideology of ‘racial hygiene’ and a technology to demonize and eliminate millions of human beings deemed redundant and inferior, through overwork in slave camps, starvation and active genocide – serving the ambitions of Nazi expansionism and deriving significant profit for select individuals and corporations. US physicians and the broader medical community have less consciously assisted in the ongoing ‘culling of the herd’ of American laborers and rural residents rendered superfluous and undesirable by the decisions of a global oligarchy increasingly unwilling to share public wealth with its masses. There are similarities.

Once prosperous, industrial cities and towns, as well as rural villages, in the US have seen marked declines in populations and a premature death crisis among those who remain.

This must be reversed.

 

Freedom Rider: Syria and Press Propaganda

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By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

“Trump protects himself with war as Democrats and the rest of the ruling elite support his militarism.”

It is difficult for Americans to find out what is happening in their country and around the world. That is because corporate media outlets have nearly complete control over what they see and hear and because those interests are closely allied with the state. The promise of the internet, the hoped for level playing field for communication and information gathering, is also under corporate control. It is now part of a well coordinated censorship effort and attack against left wing sites such as Black Agenda Report.

The lies which allowed the United States, France and Britain to attack Syria are presented without contradiction. The people with knowledge and expertise who can counter these narratives are disappeared from access to newspapers or television stations. The close relationship between the deep state, the corporate media, and the establishment elite at home and abroad continues without hindrance.

“British prime minister Theresa May refused to allow a parliamentary vote on the Syrian missile strike.”

Donald Trump may be labeled a fascist but he attacked Syria with the help of France and Britain. Apparently every leader of a “free world” country is also a fascist. They certainly behave that way as they trample on the rights of millions of people. Far from being the “civilized” nations that Trump referred to in his televised address, these three countries are among the most criminal that have ever existed. They all grew rich on the slave trade, indigenous genocides, the plantation economies in the Americas, and the theft of resources all over the world. Now they run roughshod over their own people. British prime minister Theresa May refused to allow a parliamentary vote on the Syrian missile strike and showed the hollowness of claims that hers is a democratic nation. The same can be said of her partners in crime.

France impoverished Haiti with nearly 100 years of theft, murdered Algerians in the streets of Paris and keeps its former African colonies financially dependent. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy took millions of dollars from Muammar Gaddafi and then had him murdered, just like a mob boss would do. Now they have connived with the help of press propagandists in all three countries to fool millions of people as they try to continue their gangsterish aggression against Syria.

“Sarkozy took millions of dollars from Muammar Gaddafi and then had him murdered, just like a mob boss would do.”

If even mediocre journalists were allowed to report freely on this issue the crime would be obvious. Consider the timeline of events. On March 4, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter are poisoned with a chemical agent in Britain. The British government immediately blames Russia, which has no motive to harm a former spy they swapped eight years earlier. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives in London for an official visit on March 7. On March 12 French president Emmanuel Macron states that France will attack Syria if any chemical weapons are used there. The next day the Russian military claims to have evidence that a chemical attack will be carried out against Syrian civilians as a pretext for war. On March 16 France warns French journalists to leave Syria. Mohammed bin Salman arrives in Washington on March 19. On April 8 he goes to Paris for yet another official visit. That same day Saudi funded jihadist groups and the White Helmets, who were created by a British intelligence officer, claim that a chemical weapons attack occurred in the city of Douma. On April 14 the United States, France and Britain join in the missile strike.

“They have connived with the help of press propagandists in all three countries to fool millions of people.”

The aggressors are very transparent. The plot was carried out in the open. But because they have a compliant media behind them they have no reason to worry. No journalist asked why Sergei Skripal and his daughter are in effect held hostage and denied access to Russian officials as a treaty between the two countries demands. No one questions a strangely worded statement allegedly from Yulia Skripal but issued by the London Metropolitan Police in which she said she didn’t want help from her government or contact with her own relatives.

Why shouldn’t Mohammed bin Salman openly plan with presidents and prime ministers? Who will question him? The New York Times and MSNBC and the Washington Post and the BBC and AFP certainly will not. We will probably never know the name of the person or persons who poisoned the Skripals but common sense tells us that the intended murders were ordered by someone with a motive to create a pretext for war.

“The plot was carried out in the open.”

The actual air strike was limited because of back channel negotiations between these countries. The danger may look like Kabuki theater but no one should assume that the peril is over. The criminals in Washington, London and Paris may yet go too far and provoke a major hot war.

All three heads of state have their own concerns. Macron was put into power to kill off his country’s welfare state and any remnants of left politics. May is struggling with Brexit negotiations and cruel austerity measures that have made her so unpopular she actively avoids voters. Trump may be impeached but he protects himself with war as Democrats and the rest of the ruling elite support his militarism.

Regardless of individual rationales these three people pose a threat to the entire planet. They are aided and abetted by corporate media who act as scribes and present war propaganda as fact. The Nuremberg trials after World War II established that planning aggressive war is a crime and so is the propaganda that promotes it. May, Trump and Macron are guilty but so-called journalists are as well. The criminals could not commit their dirty deeds without their help.

 

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com . Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

On the Criminal Referral of Comey, Clinton et al: Will the Constitution Hold and the Media Continue to Suppress the Story?

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Ray McGovern reports on a major development in the Russia-gate story that has been ignored by corporate media: a criminal referral to the DOJ against Hillary Clinton, James Comey and others, exposing yet again how established media suppresses news it doesn’t like–about as egregious an example of unethical journalism as there is. 

By Ray McGovern

Source: Consortium News

Wednesday’s criminal referral by 11 House Republicans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as several former and serving top FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials is a giant step toward a Constitutional crisis.

Named in the referral to the DOJ for possible violations of federal law are: Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey; former Attorney General Loretta Lynch; former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; FBI Agent Peter Strzok; FBI Counsel Lisa Page; and those DOJ and FBI personnel “connected to” work on the “Steele Dossier,” including former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente.

With no attention from corporate media, the referral was sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John Huber.  Sessions appointed Huber months ago to assist DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz.  By most accounts, Horowitz is doing a thoroughly professional job.  As IG, however, Horowitz lacks the authority to prosecute; he needs a U.S. Attorney for that.  And this has to be disturbing to the alleged perps.

This is no law-school case-study exercise, no arcane disputation over the fine points of this or that law. Rather, as we say in the inner-city, “It has now hit the fan.”  Criminal referrals can lead to serious jail time.  Granted, the upper-crust luminaries criminally “referred” enjoy very powerful support.  And that will come especially from the mainstream media, which will find it hard to retool and switch from Russia-gate to the much more delicate and much less welcome “FBI-gate.”

As of this writing, a full day has gone by since the letter/referral was reported, with total silence so far from The New York Times and The Washington Post and other big media as they grapple with how to spin this major development. News of the criminal referral also slipped by Amy Goodman’s non-mainstream DemocracyNow!, as well as many alternative websites.

The 11 House members chose to include the following egalitarian observation in the first paragraph of the letter conveying the criminal referral: “Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately.” If this uncommon attitude is allowed to prevail at DOJ, it would, in effect, revoke the de facto “David Petraeus exemption” for the be-riboned, be-medaled, and well-heeled.

Stonewalling

Meanwhile, the patience of the chairmen of House committees investigating abuses at DOJ and the FBI is wearing thin at the slow-rolling they are encountering in response to requests for key documents from the FBI.  This in-your-face intransigence is all the more odd, since several committee members have already had access to the documents in question, and are hardly likely to forget the content of those they know about.  (Moreover, there seems to be a good chance that a patriotic whistleblower or two will tip them off to key documents being withheld.)

The DOJ IG, whose purview includes the FBI, has been cooperative in responding to committee requests for information, but those requests can hardly include documents of which the committees are unaware.

Putting aside his partisan motivations, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) was unusually blunt two months ago in warning of legal consequences for officials who misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to enable surveillance on Trump and his associates. Nunes’s words are likely to have sent chills down the spine of those with lots to hide: “If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial,” he said.”The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created.”

Whether the House will succeed in overcoming the resistance of those criminally referred and their many accomplices and will prove able to exercise its Constitutional prerogative of oversight is, of course, another matter — a matter that matters.

And Nothing Matters More Than the Media

The media will be key to whether this Constitutional issue is resolved.  Largely because of Trump’s own well earned reputation for lying, most Americans are susceptible to slanted headlines like this recent one — “Trump escalates attacks on FBI …” — from an article in The Washington Post, commiserating with the treatment accorded fired-before-retired prevaricator McCabe and the FBI he (dis)served.

Nor is the Post above issuing transparently clever warnings — like this one in a lead article on March 17: “Some Trump allies say they worry he is playing with fire by taunting the FBI. ‘This is open, all-out war. And guess what? The FBI’s going to win,’ said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. ‘You can’t fight the FBI. They’re going to torch him.’” [sic]

Mind-Boggling Criminal Activity

What motivated the characters now criminally “referred” is clear enough from a wide variety of sources, including the text messages exchange between Strzok and Page.  Many, however, have been unable to understand how these law enforcement officials thought they could get away with taking such major liberties with the law.

None of the leaking, unmasking, surveillance, “opposition research,” or other activities directed against the Trump campaign can be properly understood, if one does not bear in mind that it was considered a sure thing that Secretary Clinton would become President, at which point illegal and extralegal activities undertaken to help her win would garner praise, not prison.  The activities were hardly considered high-risk, because candidate Clinton was sure to win.

But she lost.

Comey himself gives this away in the embarrassingly puerile book he has been hawking, “A Higher Loyalty” — which amounts to a pre-emptive move motivated mostly by loyalty-to-self, in order to obtain a Stay-Out-of-Jail card.  Hat tip to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for a key observation, in his recent article, “James Comey, the Would-Be J. Edgar Hoover,” about what Taibbi deems the book’s most damning passage, where Comey discusses his decision to make public the re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Comey admits, “It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the re-started investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in the polls.”

The key point is not Comey’s tortured reasoning, but rather that Clinton was “sure to be the next president.”  This would, of course, confer automatic immunity on those now criminally referred to the Department of Justice.  Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men — even very tall men.  One wag claimed that the “Higher” in “A Higher Loyalty” refers simply to the very tall body that houses an outsized ego.

I think it can be said that readers of Consortiumnews.com may be unusually well equipped to understand the anatomy of FBI-gate as well as Russia-gate.  Listed below chronologically are several links that might be viewed as a kind of “whiteboard” to refresh memories.  You may wish to refer them to any friends who may still be confused.

2017

Russia-gate’s Mythical ‘Heroes’ June 6, 2017

The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate Oct. 29, 2017

The Foundering Russia-gate ‘Scandal’ Dec. 13, 2017 

What Did Hillary Clinton Know? Dec. 25, 2017

2018

The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate Jan. 11, 2018

Will Congress Face Down the Deep State? Jan. 30, 2018

Nunes Memo Reports Crimes at Top of FBI and DOJ Feb. 2, 2018

‘This is Nuts’: Liberals Launch ‘Largest Mobilization in History’ in Defense of Russiagate Probe Feb. 9, 2018

Nunes: FBI and DOJ Perps Could Be Put on Trial Feb. 19, 2018

‘Progressive’ Journalists Jump the Shark on Russia-gate March 7, 2018

Intel Committee Rejects Basic Underpinning of Russiagate March 14, 2018

McCabe: A War on (or in) the FBI? March 18, 2018

Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared March 19, 2018

 

Saturday Matinee: The Murder of Fred Hampton

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Fred Hampton, founder of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was assassinated by a special unit of the Chicago Police Department on December 4th, 1969 as he lay face down in bed. He was 21 years old when he was murdered. The police fired 99 unanswered shots into his apartment, wounding Fred as he slept. Apparently drugged by an informant, Hampton was unable to awaken. After the raid the police put two more shots into Hampton’s head and said “Now he’s good and dead.”

This film follows the last year or so of Fred’s life and the investigation immediately following his murder.

The first part of the film shows Fred speaking and organizing and provides a brief glimpse into the Panther community programs such as free breakfasts for school children, as well as a fairly good portrayal of Hampton’s dynamic speaking abilities, vast depth of knowledge for someone so young, and his passion for the revolutionary struggle of all oppressed people worldwide regardless of race.

The remainder of the film focuses on Fred’s murder including footage of the crime scene. The attacking police unit was so secret that the local precinct was not notified to clean things up after the bodies were removed. As a result the Panthers and their attorneys filmed and collected a vast amount of evidence which proved the police and states’ attorneys were lying. The police and government arguments are given, interspersed with contradictory proof by the Panthers and their attorneys proving that this was not a raid gone sour, but rather a carefully planned assassination. The photo of the police smiling joyously as they carry Hampton’s body out of the apartment is ominous.

This film was made right after Fred Hampton was murdered, and before the Panthers were aware that one of their own – William O’Neal – was actually an FBI informant who provided the police with the map of Fred Hampton’s apartment. It was also filmed years before the information about the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign was made public. It is a great piece of history which gives a rare fair treatment to the Black Panther Party.

Watch the full film here.

 

America’s Descent Into Despotism: Finding Our Source of Power Within

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By Nozomi Hayase

Source: The Indicter

The United States is in a major upheaval. Trump’s cabinet shake-up moves the country into an alarming direction. From the nomination of torturer Gina Haspel as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency to Mike Pompeo, former CIA Director and a vocal opponent of the nuclear deal with Iran as new secretary of state, his selection exposes the White House’s dangerous kill instincts.

An ultimatum came with the president’s appointment of John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations as his 3rd national security advisor. Bolton,  who served in the George W. Bush administration is notorious for his hawkishness, with a great zeal for military action against Iran and North Korea. This rearranging of the deck chairs in the sinking empire signals the great calamity of foreign policy ahead with potential threats of war.

In this seeming free-fall toward despotism, what can ordinary people do? Tackling corruption of our political system and averting a doomed future requires us to truly understand the problems we are facing. The crisis of representation didn’t just arise with Trump, the new commander in chief. A glimpse of it was shown during the 2008 financial meltdown, which was covered up swiftly by bank bailouts and politics of ‘hope and change’. The truth is that seeds for dystopia have been inside this country all along. The roots of the issues that are now emerging in Trump’s America go back to the very beginning of this nation.

In its modern formation, the United States inspired the world with its torch of liberty and equality. At the same time, this beacon of light had its darkness within. From the onset, America contained internal contradictions manifested as the founder’s hypocrisy and the violation of its own ideals with genocide of natives, slavery of blacks and suppression of women. The Founding Fathers of the United States brought a victory of rejecting the power of the King’s monarchy and pioneered a path for one’s own self-determination. The concept of “a government of laws, not of men” was groundbreaking at that time. Yet without reconciling its own shadow, this nation of law failed to fully shield the republic from the tyranny of the Old World.

Supremacy of reason

The unredeemed darkness found in America’s troubled past was a force inside Western civilization that tries to define history, subjugating other perspectives to its single vision. Europe, with its ethos of separation and objectivity set out to conquer the world, spreading its influence across many continents. This domineering power of reason found its new front of exploration in the New World.

America, driven by the monotheistic goal of Manifest Destiny, expanded its territory with brutality. It swallowed what is edible, assimilating immigrants one by one to its conception of what is civil, while spitting out those that it considered impalatable, relegating them into three-fifths of a person or exterminating them from the earth altogether as savages.

This maddened head centricity was manifested in the structure of a new government. Sheldon Wolin, author of Democracy Inc noted how the framers of the Constitution created a so-called managed democracy, a system that favored elite rule and that “the American political system was not born a democracy, but born with a bias against democracy” (2008, p. 228).

The intellectual elites regarded the democratic majority rule as an irrational force and they feared the tyranny of popular majorities. While the faculty of reason positioned itself as a supreme force, a potential to account its autocratic power was found inside America.

The sovereign power of We the People

Expressed in the preamble of the Constitution “We the People” was faith in the wisdom of ordinary people to govern themselves. This was an intention to shift from the model of government that acts as authority of their lives to one that places power in the hands of ordinary people. In this government established under the rule of the people, the source of legitimacy was not derived from a god or king, but was meant to come from people themselves.

This arrangement of governance was not granted from above. It was first demanded by those who opposed the ratification of the 1787 Constitution that lacked the guarantee of individual liberties. The proponents of the Bill of Rights articulated essential parts of the sovereign power of We the People as a freedom of expression; freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. By building upon First Amendment rights, further efforts emerged from below. From abolitionists’ defiance and the women’s suffrage movement to civil rights and free speech movements, people’s determination for individual autonomy persisted.

Assault on this power of ordinary people intensified with the rise of corporate power in the ‘60s. Manifest Destiny is now carried out with Nike’s slogan of “just do it”. With limited liability and having no human beings in charge, the abstraction of the head inside transnational corporations took flight from the communal ground, plundering their way into the globe, without ever having to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Giant corporations became a sponsor for this managed democracy, gaining control over media to manipulate public perception, keeping American voters in hostage with the lesser of the two evils charade politics.

WikiLeaks, the rise of cryptographic direct action

In the political winter of the post-911 war on terror, as fear and apathy spread around the globe, a new civic force surfaced online. The waves of whistleblowers began shedding light on the collaborative secrecy of elites that deceive and manipulate the public behind a façade of democracy.

WikiLeaks, with its motto of “privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful”, opened a floodgate of a free flow of information. This world’s first global Fourth Estate embodies the philosophy of cypherpunks– a loosely tied group of online privacy advocates who saw the potential of cryptography to shift the balance of power between individuals and the state. With the idea that cryptography is the “ultimate form of non-violent direct action” (2012, p. 5), WikiLeaks founder and editor in chief Julian Assange built the system of scientific journalism that would give everyday people around the world tools to combat military might and confront the madness of fallen reason that censors free speech.

The invention of the anonymous drop box was truly revolutionary. It enabled anyone to send information securely without a trace of his or her identity. Through the robust decentralized infrastructure built around this game changing technology, WikiLeaks was able to provide unprecedented source protection in the history of journalism. Here, the organization that derived its source of inspiration in American founding ideas, freed the First Amendment that had been captured through a corporate monopoly and co-optation of the media, making it available to people all around the world.

It is through WikiLeaks’ adamant commitment to the principle of free press that former U.S. Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning was able to exercise uncompromising free speech and engage in the American tradition of civil disobedience. Manning, whom the late attorney and President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner described as the “conscience of our nation”, let the American public see the US imperialism in action in the Middle East.

In her request for a presidential pardon, Manning stated her commitment to the ideal of America, saying how she was willing to pay the price if it would make this country be “truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.” Through her non-violent cryptographic direct action, she helped America find its conscience.

One individual’s act of courage brought another. Inspired by Manning, Edward Snowden came forward to inform people about the NSA’s mass surveillance. In one of the addresses he made, Snowden also described his act as a public service and connected it with Dr. King’s non-violent civil disobedience. Through his whistleblowing, the former NSA contractor defended individual privacy as fundamental civil rights for all people and tried to preserve the world where people can share creativity, love and friendship freely without every conversation and interaction being monitored and recorded.

Whistleblowers and their faith in ordinary people

From WikiLeaks disruptions to Snowden revelations, courageous act of truth-tellers renewed the faith in the wisdom of ordinary people to govern themselves. Both Manning and Snowden believed in the public’s right to know and held a view that when people are informed, they can make changes and determine their own destiny.

Faith is different than mere belief. It is not about one blindly trusting or passively accepting something. Faith is an active will that requires one to choose out of themselves to believe in something. When established media and trusted institutions failed, Manning chose to put her trust in the journalistic organization that was little known at that time. When the government’s internal mechanisms of accountability were broken, combined with the betrayal of Obama’s campaign promises and his war on whistleblowers, Snowden turned to American journalists whom he could trust by his own judgment of the integrity of their work. They placed faith not in political leaders or authority but in fellow men and women.

It is to this faith in the ability for the wise and knowledgeable public to govern themselves that fearless journalism responded. WikiLeaks, the publisher of last resort kept its promise to the source by publishing full archives with maximum political impact and bringing information back to the historical record. Through honoring Snowden’s wishes, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Barton Gellman broke the story of NSA surveillance and led the Guardian’s independent journalism, making the established media fulfill its duty. In the aftermath of Snowden’s disclosures, when this young whistleblower was stranded in Hong Kong, WikiLeaks demonstrated its extraordinary source protection with journalist Sarah Harrison risking her own liberty to help Snowden attain asylum.

With this faith given by peers, citizens around the world who have been distrusted by their own governments and made powerless began to claim their own power. By recognizing that someone believed in them and sacrificed their lives so that they can be free, they were able to believe in their own ability to protect those they love and preserve rights that they cherish. The will to respond to this faith in one another awakened love for one’s neighbor. This made it possible for ordinary people to carry out extraordinary acts, to choose paths that do not lead to financial success, fame and security, but one of scourging, persecution and punishment.

Manning was sentenced to prison for 35 years, initially being held in a cage in Kuwait and then being put in a tiny cell in solitary confinement. Snowden remains in exile, being called for execution by the president and his new nominee for the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. WikiLeaks has been declared an enemy of the state by the most powerful government in the world, being subjected to legal and extra-legal pressure. Unconstitutional secret U.S. Grand Jury investigation against WikiLeaks and its staff continues, keeping its founder in long years of arbitrary detention in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in violation of the UN ruling. Now, threats of a free press increase with Trump’s Department of Justice stating the arrest of the Assange is a “priority” and the former CIA chief calling the whistleblowing site a “hostile intelligence service”.

Bitcoin, Innovation without Permission

Contagious courage lit by people’s faith created a fellowship that can withstand the state violence. It began to shift the balance of power, replacing the source of legitimacy from trusted institutions to ordinary people’s trust in one another. As the network of resistance grew, new attacks emerged. Following the release of U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010, WikiLeaks faced the unlawful financial blockade imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union. When this economic sanction starved the whistleblowing site, destroying 95% of their revenue, the flow of autonomy that helped the organization circumvent economic censorship came from fellow cypherpunks.

Bitcoin, as a peer-to-peer electronic cash was the holy grail of cypherpunks. With its defining feature of censorship resistance and permissionlessness, Bitcoin makes free speech an app that can be distributed across borders and used by anyone regardless of nationality, religion, race, gender or economic status. Here, imagination from computer science redeemed the reason that lost its connection to the heart, by synthesizing bits of isolated knowledge that had created separation and injustice, transforming them into a higher order of unification.

Networks of equal peers emerging around this invention opened up a new avenue of dissent in a form of decentralization. Adam Back, notable cryptographer whose work was cited in the Bitcoin white paper, described cypherpunks as “a state of mind” and explained its philosophy of “writing code” as a “proactive approach to societal change by doing: building and deploying tech – rather than by lobbying politicians or asking permission.”

This path toward decentralization was first taken by the creator of this technology. The anonymity of Satoshi Nakamoto represents the power of ordinary people. Through an act of publishing the white paper under a pseudonymous name and making the protocol open source, the mysterious author gave up ownership and simultaneously gave users control of the software, making it possible for each individual to use it as a tool to govern themselves.

What is enshrined in a piece of mathematics is wisdom of ordinary people that understands that man is corruptible, as well as perfectible and recognizes the security holes inherent in the existing model of governance that requires trust in third parties. It is the wisdom of history that teaches us how the best way to secure the system is not to have levers of control in the first place through which power concentrates, leading to despotism. With a consensus algorithm placed as a foundation, laws can be built that is more immune to man’s fallen nature. With this, idea of a government of laws, not of men can be truly realized. Governance of We the People now becomes possible, where rules of law are validated by consensus of ordinary people as opposed to elected officials having power over them.

Andreas Antonopoulos, a technologist and one of the respected figures in Bitcoin, in his talk titled “Courage to Innovate”, captured new enthusiasm and passion ignited around this technology in a phrase “innovation without permission” and connected it with civil disobedience. He reminded the audience how “almost every important innovation in history starts out being illegal or unregulated” and interesting technology started out with people who forgot to ask permission. Describing technology’s core invention as a platform to scale trust, Antonopoulos described how this is a system that makes it possible for people to make social decisions without hierarchy, whether it is government bureaucracy, corporations or any other institution. This system Antonopoulos characterized as “rules without rulers” is being built by people around the world without central coordination.

Claiming our revolutionary spirit

Our Founding Fathers, no matter how imperfect they were, brought us ideas conceived in a revolutionary spirit. The genius of the Constitution is that it makes fundamental laws and principles of government amendable. The highest law of the land preserved space for people to not accept authority imposed on them and even to revolt against it when it is necessary, by giving ordinary people means to change rules. America indeed was founded on rebelliousness and distrust of their own government, demonstrated in the Declaration that reads “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive… it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and institute a new Government…”

The government brought by our forebears not only allowed dissent, but depended on our rebellion. The realization of the Constitution as the fulfillment of ideals in the Declaration required individuals with a strong and independent mind. It demanded people to develop moral courage to defend these ideals against special interests of single groups or nations and any adversarial forces that try to deny them.

From the civil rights movement to whistleblowers at the frontier of digital liberation, we have seen the awakening of revolutionary spirit in people’s courageous civic action upholding the ideals of this country. The networks from below expands, converging together to build a new global civil society. Bitcoin developers around the world put their knowledge and skills together, making improvement proposals and fixing bugs, striving to meet the demands of all users.

Innovation without permission is enlivening entrepreneurship. Instead of waiting for problems to be solved by politicians or corporate CEOs, working class began to have faith in their ability to make changes, finding strength and resources within themselves. Around this currency, a new economy is now being bootstrapped, with startups and new businesses hiring people and providing them with skills and knowledge, while many other industries are stagnating.

Solutions to the crisis of representation are within us. Ordinary people, through freely associating with one another, can now give birth to the rule of a real democracy, securing Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness for all.