Category Archives: History

Understanding the Tyranny of Terrorism

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Boeing_777-200ER_Malaysia_AL_(MAS)_9M-MRO_-_MSN_28420_404_(9272090094)

By Andrew S. MacGregor

Source: Memory Hole

In Dedication to Michael Hastings, Jan. 28, 1980 – June 18, 2013

The Rolling Stone journalist who was murdered after discovering this story

Terrorism: systematic intimidation as a method of governing or securing political or other ends

To properly understand the events surrounding Malaysian Airlines ‘flight MH370’ on the 8th of March 2014, a person firstly has to realise that it was a ‘terrorist’ attack’.  Now ‘terrorists’ do not hi-jack an aircraft simply to fly it around until it runs out of fuel and crashes; the hi-jacking has to have a ‘political’ agenda’. 

To understand what this ‘political agenda’ was, one has to consider why the aircraft was hi-jacked, and what the target was to have been.  General Wesley Clarke gave us the ‘agenda’ in 2001, which was for America to attack certain nations starting with Iraq and ending with Iran.  However there was a ‘further’ agenda, and that agenda involved Russia and to be more specific, the Ukraine.

The main impediment for any American attack on Iran, is that Iran has treaties with two major world players; China and Russia.  There is another problem; Iran has been aware of the impending attacks for over a decade and has built defences to her front.  She has, however, been dependent on Russia to defend her back door.

Russia has been finding its ‘superpower’ status again, and America has been endeavouring to stifle Russia’s growth, especially in the military arena.  Russia’s best known naval base is Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea, which was part of the Ukraine.  The American political agenda has been to win the Ukraine away from Russia, into the European Union.  This would have removed the Russian naval base from the Russians and turned it over to the EU. 

However, Russia would not have stood idly by and permitted such political actions to go unheeded, so an ‘excuse’ would be required to place European and American forces in the Ukraine.  Those forces would naturally be designated NATO. What was needed was a ‘suitable’ terrorist target which was not American, but of a NATO member, that would permit an immediate retaliatory reaction from that country and NATO.  The only possible ‘terrorist’ targets for this agenda at this time were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, honeymooning in the Maldives.

Thus we have the motives for two political agendas, attacking Iran and weakening Russia.  There is also a third agenda, and that is to separate China from Iran and Russia.  This third agenda was highlighted by ‘Air Force 1’ being booked on the 3rd of March 2014, five days prior to the ‘Terrorist attack’ which claimed the lives of 153 Chinese nationals to fly to China on the 19th of March, 2014.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/michelle-obama-china-visit-march

The ‘Terrorist agenda’ of MH370

The ‘terrorist’ agenda was set when it was announced on the 8th of March 2014, that two ‘false’ passports were detected within the group of passengers that boarded ‘flight MH370’.  It was also initially stated that there were ‘other’ suspects who had also boarded ‘flight MH370’.

Now ‘terrorist’ attacks involving aircraft are not new, they date back to at least the 1960’s when one remembers the hi-jacked passenger airliner that was landed at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda, and subsequently rescued by Israeli commandos, of whom the only casualty they suffered was ‘Jonathon Netanyahu’, the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu.  Then in the 1980’s, there was a new form of terrorism and aircraft, that being the ‘bomb’ planted within the luggage area and exploding in mid-flight and the most recognised was the crash at Lockerbie in Scotland, of which the ‘Americans’ were extremely quick on the scene and took total control of the investigation. 

And then in 2001 there was the ultimate ‘terror’ event that was even given direct media coverage as ‘hi-jacked’ passenger aircraft were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Centre, and Benjamin Netanyahu was there to say that ‘this was good for Israel’!  Of course there is little coverage of the fact that Dick Cheney was ‘in charge’ of American ‘Military exercises’ that supplied ‘cover’ for this event.

This very same scenario was again in operation as the Malaysian Airlines ‘flight MH370 left KL International Airport on the 8th of March 2014 and then flew northeast over Malaysia and into the South China Sea, into an area where America and Thailand were holding ‘Military Exercises’, and then vanished!

Flight MH370 is the latest 911 terrorist attack

Matthias Chang, the former top political advisor to Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, noted that the bizarre disappearance of MH370 coincided with the US-run Cobra Gold and Cape Tiger military exercises – just as previous “disasters” have mirrored suspiciously-timed drills and exercises:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/04/04/mh370chang/

Whatever happened with the ‘commercial’ radar that the Malaysian Air Traffic Control were using to monitor ‘flight MH370’ entry into Vietnamese Air Traffic Control at 0121 hours, the Vietnamese Air Traffic Control in Ho Chi Minh City waited 17 minutes before they inquired from Malaysian Air Traffic Control as to the whereabouts of flight MH370. Malaysia then claimed that the Malaysian Air Traffic Control then requested another Malaysian Airlines aircraft in the vicinity to try and contact flight MH370, and that contact was raised at 0138 hours Malaysian time. 

http://rt.com/news/156208-missing-plane-malaysia-report/

This is the media report from the 10th March 2014:

According to Malaysia’s New Straits Times newspaper, contact was briefly made with the aircraft before it vanished. It was being flown by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a highly experienced pilot, and first officer Fariq ab Hamid.  “We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace,” a pilot on another Malaysia Airlines flight told the New Straits Times.”

“The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie or Fariq, but I was sure it was the co-pilot.  “There were a lot of interference … static … but I heard mumbling from the other end. That was the last time we heard from them, as we lost the connection,” he said.

So sometime after 0119 hours, Malaysian Air Traffic Control has asked another aircraft in the region where flight MH370 had vanished off their radar screen, to try and contact via radio MH370, and there was some contact, sufficient for the pilot of that aircraft to identify the voice of the 1st Officer, Fariq ab Hamid.  Thus the supposed actual last radio contact with flight MH370 was at 0138 hours!

There is something very wrong with this story.  If everything had been normal, then flight MH370 would have contacted the Vietnamese Air Traffic Control, once they had moved out of the Malaysian Air Traffic Controls area.  This has not happened for at least 17 minutes.  Again, with the supposed contact between the two Malaysian Airliners, the contact was not clear and precise.  Something is extremely wrong.  If flight MH370 did have radio communication, then it should have logged in with the Vietnamese Air Traffic Control.

So at 0138 hours the Malaysians know something is very wrong, but what are they doing about it?  Absolutely nothing!  Why!  Is this the same scenario that occurred in America with 911?

Initial reports were that flight MH370 had crashed in the South China Sea

The initial reports of ‘flight MH370’ were that it had crashed in the South China Sea.  This is why the first couple of days search for the ‘missing’ aircraft was north of Malaysia.  However local fishermen on the north side of Malaysia reported seeing a low-flying aircraft, which simply means the authorities were informed and well aware that flight MH370 had not crashed in the South China Sea.

Authorities are also investigating several reports of locals claiming to have seen the lights of a low-flying aircraft in an area off the Malaysian coast, just below the Malay-Thai border.  It is this area which is now included in the widened search area for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

A fisherman who was in his boat at sea, says that at about 1.30am he saw the lights of a low-flying aircraft in the area of Kuala Besar.  Azid Ibrahim told The Star newspaper in Malaysia that the plane was flying so low that the lights were “as big as coconuts”.  And another man, about 30km south of Kota Bharu, is reported to have seen “bright white lights” from what he thought was a fast-descending aircraft at about 1.45am on Saturday morning.  He has since reported what he saw to authorities after seeing the lights from his home that evening.

In this search, both the Australian Sydney Morning Herald and the ‘New Strait Times’ reported on the 10th of March that the Malaysian Government was being ‘assisted by the FBI, the American ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Boeing has joined an official US team investigating the disappearance, saying it would act as technical adviser to the US National Transportation Safety Board team already in South-East Asia to offer assistance.

http://www.news.com.au/world/playboy-pilot-at-controls-of-mh370-had-a-track-record-of-inviting-pretty-passengers-into-his-cockpit-where-he-smoked-and-posed-for-snaps/story-fndir2ev-1226850952131

In other words, the ‘search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370’ is not a Malaysian government investigation but a full on American investigation orchestrated by the FBI’s CIRG!

The FBI members ‘assisting’ the Malaysian Government would have to have expertise in both ‘terrorism’ and ‘hijacking’.  This means they would belong to the FBI’s “Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG)”.  To understand exactly what type of person these FBI members are, let me refresh what I had written about James F Yacone and his involvement in the Aurora Theatre massacre in Colorado in the article; ‘Fitzpatrick’s Law’

Read the full article here: http://memoryholeblog.com/2014/06/18/understanding-the-tyranny-of-terrorism-2/#more-11463

Andrew S. MacGregor is an experienced military and law enforcement officer. Born in 1947 in Yarraville, Melbourne, Australia, Mr. MacGregor served in the Citizens Military Forces of the Victoria Scottish Regiment and as Senior Constable with the Victoria Police. Since 1998 he has conducted extensive research on the Port Arthur Massacre and other Australian ‘lone-nut’ shootings. MacGregor began playing the Bagpipes at age ten, and was active for 14 years as a member of the Victoria Police Highland Pipe Band.

Is Open-Ended Chaos the Desired US-Israeli Aim in the Middle East?

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98412608_second day of war in Iraq

By Thomas S. Harrington

Source: Counterpunch

During the last week we have seen Sunni militias take control of ever-greater swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq. In the mainstream media, the analysis of this emerging reality has been predictably idiotic, basically centering on whether:

a) Obama is to blame for this for having removed US troops in compliance with the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated and signed by Bush.

b) Obama is “man enough” to putatively resolve the problem by going back into the country and killing more people and destroying whatever remains of the country’s infrastructure.

This cynically manufactured discussion has generated a number of intelligent rejoinders on the margins of the mainstream media system. These essays, written by people such as Juan Cole, Robert Parry, Robert Fisk and Gary Leupp, do a fine job of explaining the US decisions that led to the present crisis, while simultaneously reminding us how everything occurring  today was readily foreseeable as far back as 2002.

What none of them do, however, is consider whether the chaos now enveloping the region might, in fact, be the desired aim of policy planners in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Rather, each of these analysts presumes that the events unfolding in Syria and Iraq are undesired outcomes engendered by short-sighted decision-making at the highest levels of the US government over the last 12 years.

Looking at the Bush and Obama foreign policy teams—no doubt the most shallow and intellectually lazy members of that guild to occupy White House in the years since World War II—it is easy to see how they might arrive at this conclusion.

But perhaps an even more compelling reason for adopting this analytical posture is that it allows these men of clear progressive tendencies to maintain one of the more hallowed, if oft-unstated, beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon world view.

What is that?

It is the idea that our engagements with the world outside our borders—unlike those of, say, the Russians and the Chinese—are motivated by a strongly felt, albeit often corrupted, desire to better the lives of those whose countries we invade.

While this belief seems logical, if not downright self-evident within our own cultural system, it is frankly laughable to many, if not most, of the billions who have grown up outside of our moralizing echo chamber.

What do they know that most of us do not know, or perhaps more accurately, do not care to admit?

First, that we are an empire, and that all empires are, without exception, brutally and programmatically self-seeking.

Second, that one of the prime goals of every empire is to foment ongoing internecine conflict in the territories whose resources and/or strategic outposts they covet.

Third, that the most efficient way of sparking such open-ended internecine conflict is to brutally smash the target country’s social matrix and physical infrastructure.

Fourth, that ongoing unrest has the additional perk of justifying the maintenance and expansion of the military machine that feeds the financial and political fortunes of the metropolitan elite.

In short, what of the most of the world understands (and what even the most “prestigious” Anglo-Saxon analysts cannot seem to admit) is that divide and rule is about as close as it gets to a universal recourse the imperial game and that it is, therefore, as important to bear it in mind today as it was in the times of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Spanish Conquistadors and the British Raj.

To those—and I suspect there are still many out there—for whom all this seems too neat or too conspiratorial, I would suggest a careful side-by side reading of:

a) the “Clean Break” manifesto generated by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) in 1996

and

b) the “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” paper generated by The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, a US group with deep personal and institutional links to the aforementioned Israeli think tank, and with the ascension of  George Bush Junior to the White House, to the most exclusive  sanctums of the US foreign policy apparatus.

To read the cold-blooded imperial reasoning in both of these documents—which speak, in the first case, quite openly of the need to destabilize the region so as to reshape Israel’s “strategic environment” and, in the second of the need to dramatically increase the number of US “forward bases” in the region—as I did twelve years ago, and to recognize its unmistakable relationship to the underlying aims of the wars then being started by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, was a deeply disturbing experience.

To do so now, after the US’s systematic destruction of Iraq and Libya—two notably oil-rich countries whose delicate ethnic and religious balances were well known to anyone in or out of government with more than passing interest in history—, and after the its carefully calibrated efforts to generate and maintain murderous and civilization-destroying stalemates in Syria and Egypt (something that is easily substantiated despite our media’s deafening silence on the subject), is downright blood-curdling.

And yet, it seems that for even very well-informed analysts, it is beyond the pale to raise the possibility that foreign policy elites in the US and Israel, like all virtually all the ambitious hegemons before them on the world stage, might have quite coldly and consciously fomented open-ended chaos in order to achieve their overlapping strategic objectives in this part of the world.

Thomas S. Harrington is a professor of Iberian Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and the author of the recently released  Livin’ la Vida Barroca: American Culture in a Time of Imperial Orthodoxies.

Ralph Nader: “The Total Support Of The Military-industrial Complex And Empire By Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton Is Staggering”

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Source: Reason.com via Investment Watch

“The total support of the military-industrial complex and empire by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is staggering,” Ralph Nader tells Reason TV.

Nader’s latest book is Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.

To watch the full hour-long interview and read a transcript go to http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/06/11/ralph-nader.

Saturday Matinee: Documentary Double Feature

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Today I’m featuring two classic political documentaries, both more than a decade old (from 2003) yet still equally topical and among the best films on their respective subject matters.

The first is Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott’s “The Corporation”, a comprehensive and well-researched film exploring the history of corporations, how they operate and how they’ve come to attain so much political power. Related topics they cover include the 1933 attempted corporate coup exposed by General Smedley Butler, the Fox news coverup of the dangers of Monsanto’s Bovine Growth Hormone, and the mass protests in Bolivia sparked by the attempted privatization of their water supply in 2000.

“Orwell Rolls in His Grave” directed by Robert Kane Pappas is possibly the best dissection of contemporary mass media propaganda yet, with a focus on corporate media consolidation and the role of corporate media in the controversial US presidential election of 2000. The film features interviews with Mark Crispin Miller, Bernie Sanders and Danny Schechter among others.

Podcast Roundup

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6/8: Hosts Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips discuss the ongoing situation in the Ukraine with Dr. Michael Parenti, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, and former Congresswomen and Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney on “the Project Censored Show”. All of them are contributors to a new book by Clarity Press edited by Stephen Lendman, “Flashpoint Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WWIII.”

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Pcradiodos/Project+Censored+060614.mp3

6/9: On “the Progressive Commentary Hour”, host Gary Null interviews Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist and academician specializing in inflammatory bowel disease and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine or MMR. They discuss how the US government uses corporations and universities to support policies, silence top scientists, jeopardize public health and protect corporate profits.

http://s36.podbean.com/pb/3f11f4e516587793b6f2d38475623afc/5398ccbc/data1/blogs18/371244/uploads/ProgressiveCommentaryHour_060914.mp3

6/10: On “the Higherside Chats”, Adam Gorightly and Vyzygoth joins host Greg Carlwood for a freewheeling but illuminating conversation about the suppressed history of the United States hidden beneath lies and disinformation most have been led to believe.

http://thehighersidechats.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/112-Vyzygoth.mp3

6/12: KMO talks with Vincent Horn of Buddhist Geeks on the lastest C-Realm podcast. They discuss the use of mindfulness techniques in technological society and its connection to DIY, Quanitifed Self and Maker movements. KMO wraps up with commentary on the nature of individualism and community.

http://www.c-realm.com/wp-content/uploads/418_Adaptive_Comtemplation.mp3

 

 

Individual Wealth in Perspective

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billionairehousing

By James Hall

Source: Negotium

A quaint comparison of what money can buy in today’s market has Bill Gates being able to afford every home in Boston. His $76.6 billion reported by the Washington Post or the $78.4 billion by Forbes seems a pittance when put up against John D. Rockefeller’s peak wealth of $318.3 billion (based on 2007 US dollar). According to your resident commissars over at MSNBC, “The median net worth of American households hasn’t changed much over the past decades, it’s about $20,000.” So if Gates decided to purchase all the Beantown houses, whom would he pay for the bricks and mortar? Certainly, most Americans may think of “their home is their castle”, but few actually own a debt free deed to their grand estate. No wonder the banks and financial institutions, are so fond of placing liens on real property.

The proportional context of looking at individual wealth within the relative value of global wealth is examined in the essay; It’s A “0.6%” World: Who Owns What Of The $223 Trillion In Global Wealth, seems trite. Zerohedge concludes, “The bottom line: 29 million, or 0.6% of those with any actual assets under their name, own $87.4 trillion, or 39.3% of all global assets.”

CSwealth

Here are the stunning facts:

“In 2012, 3.2 billion individuals – more than two-thirds of the global adult population – have wealth below USD 10,000, and a further one billion (23% of the adult population) are placed in the USD 10,000–100,000 range.

The average wealth holding is modest in the base and middle segments of the pyramid, total wealth amounts to USD 39 trillion, underlining the potential for new consumer trends products and for the development of financial services targeted at this often neglected segment.

The remaining 373 million adults (8% of the world) have assets exceeding USD 100,000.

And then the top of the pyramid: 29 million US dollar millionaires, a group which contains less than 1% of the world’s adult population, collectively owns nearly 40% of global household wealth.

Some 84,500 individuals are worth more than USD 50 million, and 29,000 are worth over USD 100 million.”

After absorbing this macro economic analysis, it should ease the pain that the stewardship of world wealth is in such trustworthy hands. No need to burden the masses with the weight of building wealth, when that formula for getting to the top of the financial pyramid, has room for only the few. The expert obelisk creators never meant for wealth sharing and the tools to construct one’s own prosperity are not included in your capital accumulation education. The liability of mortgage and property tax obligations to retain your edifice requires regular payments to maintain the privilege of possession. Ownership is only a conditional wealth asset.

Investopedia says 3 Simple Steps To Building Wealth are:

“You need to make it. This means that before you can begin to save or invest, you need to have a long-term source of income that’s sufficient enough to have some left over after you’ve covered your necessities.

You need to save it. Once you have an income that’s enough to cover your basics, you need to develop a proactive savings plan.

You need to invest it. Once you’ve set aside a monthly savings goal, you need to invest it prudently.”

Ordinary consumers do not build great fortunes. The elementary prescription for “getting ahead” is severely limited in thinking for a world that frequently conducts business as a blood sport. However, many of the enterprises that carve out a market for their products or services have a distinct edge over the unconnected entrepreneur. Namely, government directed and controlled startups or collaborated ventures frequently become the commercial giants of the economy. Here lays the confusion when defining wealth as an accounting device of personal ownership of assets.

In addition, governments are often in the privatization and sale of state assets. The Economists reports that the “IMF estimate that non-financial government assets average 75% of GDP in advanced economies. In most countries, these are worth more than financial assets (stakes in listed firms, sovereign-wealth and securities holdings and the like).”

Liquid cash flow and high worth individuals, especially with inside track contacts, are able to cherry pick sweet heart deals. Such opportunities, usually transfers treasure, but infrequently are engines of new wealth creation. The only guarantee is that money, made or lost depending upon the accounting needs of the vulture predator, is never an option for the normal hard working taxpayer.

Unless people accept the reality that creating and growing wealth is a noble objective that involves the widespread commerce participation of a merchant class, the outrageous disparity of the top down wealth stream will widen even more, as the top tier inclusion narrows to fewer mega-billionaires.

Global business encourages transnational conglomerates with commercially identifiable names and logos. When entire economies prevail under a business plan that eliminates any rival competition, and achieves sole market dominance, the prospects to advance the individual wealth ledger of the average person diminishes.

An opportunistic society can only exist when independent business flourishes. Government bureaucrats and corporate technocrats oppose an unambiguous free market economy. As the map of the über-billionaires illustrates, their checkbook could swallow up entire cities. However, digesting, let alone growing communities into quality environments for future generations, takes an active involvement in the wealth building process that rewards contributing players.

Without a widespread populace practicing mutually beneficial business transactions, the capacity to achieve the skills necessary to compete successfully, will never develop. Instead of making money, saving money and investing money, learn the aptitude of business as a lifelong endeavor.

The poor will always be scraping the bottom, until they learn how to advance their abilities for the betterment of their own families. The alternative to greater concentration of wealth is to initiate a viable substitute to the financial stranglehold that furthers the appetites of egomaniacs like the character, Bretton James in the movie Money Never Sleeps. In the end, the true individual wealth that anyone can attain is the sincerity and moral substance of his or her own character. Money may not snooze from making more cash, but is only a means to elevate living a life worth lived.

In such a quest, the super rich may have a net worth equivalent to one’s property, but they can never afford the essence of your family or measure of your community.

 

Comedian Rik Mayall Dead at 56

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Rik

I was surprised and saddened to hear the news that counterculture comedian Rik Mayall died in his home in London yesterday. The cause of death hasn’t been released but Scotland Yard reported that it was not believed to be suspicious. Mayall was best known for his memorable roles in cult comedy shows such as “The Young Ones”, “Black Adder”, “The New Statesman” and “Bottom”. In a tribute published by The Guardian yesterday, some of his Young Ones colleagues had this to say about him:

“very, very sad and upset that we’ve lost Rik, who was inspirational, bonkers, and a great life force… a brilliant comedian and someone who made everyone else’s lives more fun. He will be really, really missed”. – Nigel Planer

“Comedy is truly great is when it comes out of nothing, and the greatest of comedians, like Rik, have that rare ability to conjure laugh after laugh, not from endless words, but from a single look or one absurd gesture … It was in his bones. Sweet Rik, much loved – what a loss.” – Alexei Sayle

“There were times when Rik and I were writing together when we almost died laughing. They were some of the most carefree, stupid days I ever had, and I feel privileged to have shared them with him. And now he’s died for real. Without me. Selfish bastard.” – Adrian Edmonson

Not sure exactly when this live performance was recorded, but though it seems to be early in his career it captures the manic energy of some of Mayall’s later roles:

The New Zealand Herald made a commendable attempt to compile some of Rik Mayall’s greatest televised moments (there’s too many to list): http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11270946

Rik Mayall’s second-to-the-last televised work before his death was as the narrator of the following animation for Channel 4 written and produced by Louis Hudson and Ian Ravenscroft called Don’t Fear Death:

The following is a clip from One By One, an intriguing but difficult to find feature film directed by Diane Jessie Miller and featuring one of Mayall’s final performances:

Inequality Has Been Eliminated

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By Chad Hill

Source: the Hipcrime Vocab

Have you heard? Inequality has been eliminated.

What? You didn’t know that? Well, certain “professional” economists have proved it is true.
You may wonder, when you drive around your town, why formerly occupied strip malls lie abandoned, and the only local businesses are Cash-For-Gold, Payday Loans, Dollar Stores, and tattoo parlours. You may ignore the people standing near freeway exits with signs begging for work or money (these have exploded where I live), or the people rolling around shopping carts with all their worldly possessions, or the people living in their cars. It’s all an illusion. Detroit? Chicago? Merely a mirage.

You may wonder at all the empty, shuttered factories, or the fact that the Wal-Mart Super Store is the town’s biggest employer, or that “help wanted” signs seem to appear only in the local Arby’s or Home Depot (or my favorite “owner operators wanted”). You may puzzle at the foreclosed homes stripped of copper and being overgrown with weeds that litter towns from coast to coast. The entire neighborhoods that lie empty and abanadoned? Another mirage, silly. The crumbling roads and local governments “tightening their belts?” Not happening.

Not happening. Nope, none of it.

You may have heard stories about people thirty or forty years ago with high-school educations being able to get jobs that supported families, allowed them to buy a house and save money. You may have heard about people able to save up enough to go to college by just working a summer job. You may have heard of people twenty or thirty years ago with full-time jobs that had benefits such as paid vacations and health care, which are now being stripped away job by job. You may have heard about something called a “union.”

False. All false. The world is getting more equal every day thanks to globalized corporate capitalism. The economists told me so.

You may even know people who have lost their job and are unable to find another one because employers discriminate against the unemployed. You may know someone with huge debt burdens because the cost to train workers is borne entirely by the workers themselves, and you have to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt just to get a job at all. Or you may know someone who was foreclosed upon, or drowning in debt due to an unforeseen circumstance or medical emergency. You might know people who’ve had to take jobs with much lower pay and benefits than the ones they had before. You may know people working brutally long hours, or denied extra work time so that they don’t qualify for health care benefits. You may know people who have used food stamps to feed themselves or their families, even though they work full time jobs. You may know older people who have to work because they can’t afford to retire.

They all deserve it. All of them. They’re all lazy. Laziness has exploded since 2008, don’t you know. Everyone gets exactly what they deserve. It’s never been  better time to be a worker under capitalism.

You may look on the outrageous fortunes spend by the rich and conclude that they are reaping more and more benefits by breaking wages and shipping jobs overseas. Don’t you believe it! Their riches are making everyone better off. Just look at Bill Gates! He gives money to poor people in Africa. And Steve Jobs. He invented the iPod in his basement, or something. Soaring CEO salaries are great. The bailouts were all paid back. And the soaring stock market prices will make everyone rich! Don’t worry about the costs for food, housing, education and transport. The “free market” will take care of it all and unleash abundance, but only if the “job creators” don’t have to pay taxes. Those trust fund kids getting unpaid internships and getting jobs downtown – that’s just a natural part of capitalism, it has nothing to do with inequality. The fact that entire cities are unaffordable for people making less than six figures? College and health care costs? Forget about it. Nothing to do with inequality, which, by the way, has been going down, not up. Besides, even if it were going up, inequality doesn’t matter, what matters is that life is getting better even for people even at the bottom. They love being in debt and working for minimum wage! And besides, the life for the average person is getting better and better the more riches the wealthy and powerful accumulate. After all we have smart phones. SMART PHONES!!!

All those people protesting around the world? They just don’t understand capitalism.

You may even have read books and articles asserting that we are a “winner-take-all” economy, a “servant economy,” or something like that. Not true! Those books and articles were all written by “leftists” and “liberals” who don’t understand science and statistics. Articles like this are just sensationalism by liberals who hate our freedom:

76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck (CNN)

The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business Community (NYT)

The Financial Vulnerability of Americans (House of Debt)

Employment Down, Profits Up: The Aftermath of the Financial Crisis in 1 Graph (The Atlantic)

‘Happy Days’ no more: Middle-class families squeezed as expenses soar, wages stall (Wall Street Journal)

A Dozen Facts about America’s Struggling Lower-Middle-Class (Brookings)

America’s Sinking Middle Class (NYT)

Why So Little Media Coverage of How the Rich Are Becoming Richer and the Middle Class Wages are Being Squeezed? (Naked Capitalism)

RIP, the middle class: 1946-2013 (Salon)

Yep, Being a Young, American Adult Is a Financial Nightmare (The Atlantic)

Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal (Rolling Stone)

Median CEO Pay Just Topped $10M for the First Time (Slate)

Upgrade or Die (George Packer)

San Francisco’s Income Inequality Rivals that of Developing Nations (Vanity Fair)

Gap Between Rich And Poor In Manhattan “Rivals Sub-Saharan Africa” (Gothamist)

How did the economists come to this conclusion, you ask? Well, Piketty made a few spreadsheet errors. And thanks to that, the professional economist caste can breathe a sigh of relief that all of the things I named above don’t exist, and happily go back to their blackboards and spreadsheets in their corporate-funded free-market think-tank cubicles and university offices.

Because inequality is entirely dependent upon r being greater than g. That is, the rate of return to capital (yes, let’s just argue about what constitutes “capital,” that will make this whole thing go away), must be greater than g, the rate of growth of the economy. Because, heaven knows, it’s not like workers could ever get paid less than the growth of the economy, right?

Right?

Read the full article here: http://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2014/06/inequality-has-been-eliminated.html