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The War Activists

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By David Swanson

Originally posted at ConsortiumNews.com

War activists, like peace activists, push for an agenda.  We don’t think of war activists as “activists” because they rotate in and out of government positions, receive huge amounts of funding, have access to big media, and get meetings with top officials just by asking — without having to generate a protest first.

They also display great contempt for the public and openly discuss ways to manipulate people through fear and nationalism — further shifting their image away from that of popular organizers. But war activists are not journalists, not researchers, not academics. They don’t inform or educate. They advocate. They just advocate for something that most of the time, and increasingly, nobody wants.

William Kristol and Robert Kagan and their organization, the Foreign Policy Initiative, stand out as exemplary war activists. They’ve modified their tone slightly since the days of the Project for the New American Century, an earlier war activist organization. They talk less about oil and more about human rights. But they insist on U.S. domination of the world. They find any success by anyone else in the world a threat to the United States.

And they demand an ever larger and more frequently used military, even if world domination can be achieved without it. War, for these war activists, is an end in itself. As was much more common in the 19th century, these agitators believe war brings strength and glory, builds character, and makes a nation a Super Power.

Kristol recently lamented U.S. public opposition to war. He does have cause for concern. The U.S. public is sick of wars, outraged by those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and insistent that new ones not be begun. In September, missile strikes into Syria were successfully opposed by public resistance. In February, a new bill to impose sanctions on Iran and commit the United States to joining in any Israeli-Iranian war was blocked by public pressure. The country and the world are turning against the drone wars.

The next logical step after ending wars and preventing wars would be to begin dismantling the infrastructure that generates pressure for wars. This hasn’t happened yet. During every NCAA basketball game the announcers thank U.S. troops for watching from 175 nations. Weapons sales are soaring. New nukes are being developed. NATO has expanded to the edge of Russia. But the possibility of change is in the air. A new peace activist group at WorldBeyondWar.org has begun pushing for war’s abolition.

Here’s Kristol panicking:

“A war-weary public can be awakened and rallied. Indeed, events are right now doing the awakening. All that’s needed is the rallying. And the turnaround can be fast. Only 5 years after the end of the Vietnam war, and 15 years after our involvement there began in a big way, Ronald Reagan ran against both Democratic dovishness and Republican détente. He proposed confronting the Soviet Union and rebuilding our military. It was said that the country was too war-weary, that it was too soon after Vietnam, for Reagan’s stern and challenging message. Yet Reagan won the election in 1980. And by 1990 an awakened America had won the Cold War.”

Here’s Kagan, who has worked for Hillary Clinton and whose wife Victoria Nuland has just been stirring up trouble in Ukraine as Assistant Secretary of State. This is from an article by Kagan much admired by President Barack Obama:

“As Yan Xuetong recently noted, ‘military strength underpins hegemony.’ Here the United States remains unmatched. It is far and away the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and there has been no decline in America’s relative military capacity — at least not yet.”

This pair is something of a good-cop/bad-cop team. Kristol bashes Obama for being a wimp and not fighting enough wars. Kagan reassures Obama that he can be master of the universe if he’ll only build up the military a bit more and maybe fight a couple more wars here and there.

The response from some Obama supporters has been to point out that their hero has been fighting lots of wars and killing lots of people, thank you very much. The response from some peace activists is to play to people’s selfishness with cries to bring the war dollars home. But humanitarian warriors are right to care about the world, even if they’re only pretending or badly misguided about how to help.

It’s OK to oppose wars both because they kill huge numbers of poor people far from our shores and because we could have used the money for schools and trains. But it’s important to add that for a small fraction of U.S. military spending we could ensure that the whole world had food and clean water and medicine. We could be the most beloved nation. I know that’s not the status the war activists are after. In fact, when people begin to grasp that possibility, war activism will be finished for good.

David Swanson is a peace pundit, antiwar author and talk radio host. He is syndicated by PeaceVoice. His books include War No More. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.

More about the Foreign Policy Initiative from Abby Martin, who was recently a target of their attacks:

Six Week Cycle Continues With FBI Manufacturing Another Hoax Terror Plot

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teausant

Nicholas Teausant

By Lee Daniels

Originally posted at DailySlave.com

The Federal Bureau of Investigation otherwise known as the FBI is an embarrassment to humanity.  Since I started tracking this phenomenon late last year it has become clear that the FBI is busting fake terror plots they create, staging terror hoax events or investigating fake mass shootings roughly every six weeks.  One of the primary reasons why they do all of this is for job security.  Since part of their job is to fight terrorism, if they can’t find any real terrorists it eliminates the need for certain people at the FBI to be employed.  Since there is a lack of real terrorists, they create these hoax events and entrap different dupes and morons to make the American sheep believe that there are actual terror threats.  More importantly, it projects an illusion that America needs the FBI to keep them safe.  In short, it is nothing more than FBI sanctioned criminality which warrants a full Congressional investigation.  Too bad we’ll never get one because the FBI like most organizations in the federal government appears to be above the law.

Let’s review the previous hoax events which the FBI has either been involved in staging or investigating.

January 26th 2014 – Columbia Maryland Mall Shooting Hoax (analysis)

December 13th, 2013 – Wichita Airport Bomb Threat Hoax

November 1st, 2013 – Los Angeles Airport Shooting Hoax (analysis)

September 16th, 2013 – Washington Navy Yard Shooting Hoax

Based upon the six week cycle the next staged event was scheduled to happen in mid-March right around now.  The FBI did not disappoint as another fake terror hoax hit the news wires on March 17th, 2014.  This is one of the more absurd entrapment operations they’ve pulled off in quite some time.

According to the FBI a 20 year-old college student and National Guard member named Nicholas Teausant was arrested near the Canadian border under allegations that he was attempting to join Al-Qaeda fighters in Syria.  Furthermore, the FBI is claiming that he was plotting to bomb the Los Angeles subway system.  They have charged him with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Teausant allegedly made the following comment under the name Assad on an Instagram app.

“I would love to join Allah’s army but I don’t even know how to start,” he allegedly posted on May 31.

From there an undercover FBI agent befriended him.  Teausant allegedly told the agent that he wanted to go to Syria to fight jihad with Al-Qaeda.  He also allegedly talked to the agent about potentially bombing the Los Angeles subway system.  Growing suspicious that he might be talking to federal agents he started to distance himself from people he talked to online right before his supposed arrest.

Assuming this story is even real to begin with, it is obvious that this guy did not represent any sort of legitimate threat.  Hell, look at the photos of this guy.  Does he look like a dangerous terrorist to you?  If anything he looks like the bastard child of Ukraine’s Western backed stooge Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

According to the FBI, he didn’t even know how to become a terrorist.  The FBI befriended him and entrapped him into making statements that would later be used against him.  The FBI has done this countless times since the 9/11 attacks with this just being the most recent example.

So there you have it, another FBI related hoax event that satisfies the six week cycle.  If anyone out there knows someone who works in the upper levels of the FBI can you please tell them to stop this insanity?  Nobody believes that any of the FBI’s staged terror hoaxes and bogus terror plots are real.  This is especially true considering that the FBI is literally doing something like this every six weeks.

We’ll see if the FBI got the message around the first week of May.  That’s when the next FBI related hoax event is slated to take place.

Wrapping up the article, I wanted to mention a quick plug for the guys over at the No Agenda Show.  They’ve been exposing this phenomenon for quite some time now.  Be sure to check out their upcoming podcast this Thursday which will undoubtedly provide coverage of this latest FBI hoax.

What Happened to Flight 370? An Analysis of What Is Known

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missing_maylasia_airlines_jet_map

By Charles Hugh Smith

Originally posted at OfTwoMinds.com

If we put these together, we can establish a number of logical parameters around each plausible scenario, where plausible scenario means a situation based on previous losses of commercial aircraft.

Like many other people, I am following the story of what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with keen interest. Much of what we’ve been told doesn’t add up, deepening the mystery.

It seems to me that we can already draw a number of conclusions from the known data by pursuing a logic-based analysis of what is possible and what can be excluded as illogical.

Let’s start with what is known:

1. The Malaysian authorities have been evasive to the point of misdirection, in other words, they’ve hidden the facts to serve an undisclosed agenda.

What is the agenda driving their evasion? What is known is that Malaysian security is obviously lax. This fact has caused Malaysian authorities to lose face, i.e. be humiliated on the global stage. Malaysia is an Asian nation, and maintaining face in Asia is of critical importance. We can conclude that one reason the Malaysian authorities are dissembling is to hide their gross incompetence.

It is also suspected that Malaysia is a safe haven for potentially dangerous Islamic groups. (Follow the threads from Pakistan’s secret nuclear proliferation program to Malaysia for documentation of this possibility.) The Malaysian government may have an informal quid pro quo along these lines: you are welcome to set up shop as long as you don’t cause any trouble here or do anything to cause Malaysia to lose face.

This provides another logical source of Malaysian evasion: if there is indeed a terrorist connection to the loss of the aircraft, this would focus the global spotlight on Malaysian tolerance of potentially dangerous groups.

That the Malaysian military was unable to effectively monitor the aircraft or coordinate with civilian air traffic control (ATC) also suggests incompetence at the most sensitive levels. Revealing this would also cause a loss of face.

Summary: Malaysian authorities have not been truthful or timely in their reporting. The logical conclusion is that they’re hiding data to protect national pride and the true state of their abysmal security.

2. Additional information is available but is not being shared with the public. To take one example, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) on Flight 370 was functioning and automatically sent data on four critical systems, including the engines. This data has not been released by Malaysian Airlines.

It also appears that the pilot of another 777 airliner heading to Japan contacted the pilot in Flight 370 and reported the transmission was garbled.

Even with the transponder off, the aircraft would appear on primary (military) radar. The Malaysian military tracked Flight 370 but is dissembling. Clearly the authorities are not revealing the full extent of what is known.

3. Satellite imagery did not detect a high-altitude explosion. This excludes all scenarios in which the aircraft crashes into another plane, explodes in mid-air, etc.

4. Flight 370 changed course and altitude, and then maintained the new bearing for hundreds of miles and an additional hour of flight after losing contact with ATC (air traffic control). This limits scenarios in which decompression causes everyone on board to lose consciousness or a catastrophic electrical fire incapacitating the flight deck to an emergency that enabled the pilots to set a new course before losing consciousness or control of the aircraft.

5. The Malaysian military reported Flight 370’s altitude as 29,500 feet. This conflicts with eyewitness accounts from fishermen reporting a large aircraft at a much lower altitude around 1,000 meters (3,000 feet). If the radar altitude is correct, this suggests the aircraft was not experiencing decompression, as the pilots would descend as an emergency response to decompression. If the fishermen’s report is accurate, then decompression would not be an issue.

6. Mobile phone data suggests the passengers’ phones were still functioning after the aircraft lost contact with air traffic control (ATC) and the transponder was turned off/failed.

7. Releasing data from the U.S. intelligence space-based network would reveal U.S. capabilities. The Strait of Malacca is a key shipping lanes chokepoint, and is thus of strategic interest to the U.S. and other nations with space-based assets. U.S. authorities have already revealed that U.S. coverage of the area is “thorough.”

This confirms that U.S. communications monitoring and space-based assets cover the seas around the Strait of Malacca. Given what is known about these monitoring and space-based assets, it is likely that the U.S. intelligence agencies have additional data but are not revealing them, as this would provide direct evidence of U.S. capabilities.

We can surmise that the U.S. maintains thermal imaging capabilities that can detect more than large explosions. We can also surmise that the communications monitoring networks picked up any signals from the aircraft or related to the aircraft.

That the head of the C.I.A. publicly professed ignorance is interesting. What course of action would one pursue if one wanted to keep U.S. capabilities secret? Publicly proclaim ignorance.

This is not to suggest that the U.S. “knows where flight 370 is;” it is simply to note that this is not “open ocean” comparable to the mid-Atlantic where Air France Flight 447 went down five years ago. This is a strategic chokepoint of great interest to the U.S., and therefore it is likely that U.S. networks and space-based assets collected data that would either exclude certain possibilities or make other possibilities more likely.

What can we logically conclude from the most reliable and trustworthy data available?

1. The pilots were conscious when they turned off the transponder (or the transponder failed) around 1:30 a.m. and when they changed course soon after. The aircraft was under the control of the pilots long enough for them to set a new course.

2. The aircraft flew an additional hour or more on the new westward course at cruising altitude.

3. No distress signal was sent during this 1+ hour flight after whatever event caused the the pilots to change course.

If we put these together, we can establish a number of logical parameters around each plausible scenario, where plausible scenario means a situation based on previous losses of commercial aircraft.

1. Pilot suicide. If the pilot had decided to commit suicide by crashing the plane, why not ditch the aircraft in the South China Sea? Why change course and fly for another hour?

Alternatively, the Malaysian military’s reports are completely false and they were tracking an unknown aircraft near Pulau Perak at 2:15 a.m. (previously reported as 2:40 a.m.)

How many unindentified large aircraft are flying around Pulau Perak at 2:15 a.m. on a typical night? The possibility that the radar signal was not Flight 370 seems remote.

2. Mechanical failure that caused decompression or an electrical fire that incapacitated the flight deck. If such an emergency occurred, it enabled the pilots to change course and altitude.

Assuming a decompression event, we could expect the pilots to descend rapidly. If Flight 370 was indeed at 29,500 feet at 2:15 a.m., that suggests the aircraft was still capable of flight at cruising altitude. So either the pilots were still flying the aircraft or the decompression event enabled them to change course and set the autopilot before losing consciousness.

If the aircraft was being flown by autopilot, it could have flown for many more hours, given its fuel load, which raises the question: if the pilots were unconscious at 2:15 a.m., why did the aircraft suddenly crash 10 minutes later?

If an emergency had crippled the aircraft’s electrical system, it’s unlikely the plane could have continued flying at cruising altitude for an additional hour. If a catastrophic electrical fire crippled the flight deck, how could the plane continue flying at cruising altitude for another hour, given that the battery backup would last at best 30 minutes?

In other words, the additional hour of flight time on a new course does not logically align with an emergency decompression or fire that led to the flight deck and pilots being incapacitated. A decompression event would have led to either A. a rapid controlled descent or B. the pilots unconscious/unable to take control and the autopilot flying the aircraft on the new course for many hours.

Alternatively, a catastrophic electrical fire would have either brought the aircraft down within minutes of the event or at best provided 30 minutes on emergency battery power. Neither jives with an additional hour of flight at cruising altitude.

This leads to the conclusion that the aircraft was still being flown by the pilots, i.e. conscious decisions were being made by either the pilots or someone who had seized control of the flight deck.

If a mechanical emergency had crippled the aircraft, it seems unlikely that the pilots could change course and altitude but not be able to send a distress signal. If the pilots had lost consciousness but the rest of the plane’s systems were nominal, the autopilot would have continued flying the aircraft until the fuel ran out, many hours beyond 2:15 a.m.

That suggests there was conscious control of the aircraft and that those in charge made a decision sometime after 2:15 a.m. that led to the loss of the aircraft. This scenario strongly suggests human action or error as the operative emergency rather than mechanical failure.

Either that, or some key data that has been released as fact is actually false.

Late breaking news: if the satellite images released by China (taken one day after Flight 370 went missing) are in fact photos of wreckage, then the Malaysian military was obviously not tracking Flight 370 to the west an hour later.

The blurry photo does not reveal much, but several features are noteworthy:

1. The three pieces are very large, which means they must be intact sections of the wings or fuselage. It is unlikely these would still be floating hours after a crash. We might also wonder, what sort of impact would create three large pieces rather than a debris field?

2. The three pieces are close together. Unless the aircraft landed intact in the water and sank in one piece, there would likely be a field of much smaller floating debris.

3. What else could this be? The large size of the pieces is certainly consistent with the scale of a 777.

4. Why did China withhold the imagery for three days? Did their own search ships reach the coordinates identified by the satellite?

5. The ocean currents and the location of the presumed debris do not compute. Ocean currents in the area are 2 kilometers/hour. Presumed debris is 141 miles from last known position This doesn’t compute: the satellite image was taken 11 am Sunday 33 hours after MH370 presumably crashed; debris would only drift 33 hr X 2 KM=66 KM or about 40 miles from the last known position of HM370. Debris was 140 miles to the east–100 miles beyond what’s possible in terms of debris drifting with currents from the presumed crash site.

In summary, these images open additional questions. There is no substitute for actually finding the aircraft or debris.

MH370: Satellite images show possible crash debris in South China sea

Malaysian military now reveals it tracked MH370 to the Malacca strait

Radar Blips Baffle Officials in Malaysian Jet Inquiry

The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Malaysian plane sent out engine data before vanishing

Update 3/14: Confirmed automatic maintenance data uploads transferred from the missing plane to a database of engine maker Rolls Royce indicate flight 370 may have continued flying for at least four hours after the tower lost contact with it. This has led some researchers to speculate on possible destinations such as military bases like the ones on Coco Island or Diego Garcia. As for the motive, one possibility was recently posted at 4key.net.

Update 3/17: A plausable scenario posted at Washington’s Blog.

Update 3/19: More info about the Freescale Semiconductor connection: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/465557/Malaysian-plane-20-on-board-worked-for-ELECTRONIC-WARFARE-and-radar-defence-company

Update 3/22: More clues pointing towards Diego Garcia: http://salonesoterica.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/malaysia-air-flight-370-is-no-doubt-at-diego-garcia-why-would-they-do-this/

Update 3/29: Important questions about MH 370 that need to be answered: http://www.globalresearch.ca/disappearance-of-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh-370-the-trillion-question-to-the-u-s-and-its-intelligence-services/5375780

RIP Terry ‘Bartcop’ Coppage

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Though this news is a few days old I just learned of the death of Terry Coppage today. He was better known online as Bartcop and was the creator of one of the first progressive news blogs. He died on March 5 due to pneumonia and leukemia. Fans and supporters of his site can share their memories of him and Bartcop.com in a guest book and donate to help out his family at his former blog. This is Terry’s poignant last post on Bartcop.com:

A Modem – A Smart Mouth – and the Truth!

Last Word From Bart

Since you’re reading this, I’m either gone or I’m too sick to get to my computer.

I’d like to thank everyone for reading, especially the pillars who allowed me to quit working at that little car lot and turn my rage on the illegal Bush thugs full time.

But I have a favor to ask and it’s a big one. I left Mrs Bart with a mortgage that she can’t handle by herself.

When the doctors told me I wasn’t going to reach old age, my first thoughts were worry about Mrs Bart and how she was going to make it without me and my income.

You know me, I’m a gambler to the end, so when Bartcop Manor flooded in 2004, I/we gambled that I’d live long enough to get the house paid off, or at least paid down to where she could see the end of the payments. Since you’re reading this, it means I lost that gamble.

So I’m asking you this hueueuege favor – would you keep your subscription going?

I know it’s a lot to ask, but the thought of her having to sell Casa de Bart for a loss and move into some smaller place is something too sad to think about.

If you’re thinking it makes no sense to keep the subscription going, what if you kept it going long enough to read thru the back pages one more time?

I hope your last memory of me isn’t one of “greedy bastard,” but I’ve got this problem (or used to have 🙂 that I don’t know how to fix.

So if you can help her out, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks for the life you gave me,
bart

The following origin story written by a friend and collaborator is also posted on the Bartcop site:

History of how BartCop Started

By Marc Perkel

It was about 18 years ago in 1996 when one day someone forwarded an email from an email publication that Terry was writing called “Rush Limbaugh Lying Nazi Whore – Issue #45.

http://www.bartcop.com/0045.htm

It was so funny I was rolling on the floor trying to breathe.It was during the 1996 presidential election and poor Bob Dole was trying to eak out a win over the Big Dog. This part was the part that put me on the floor.

I have a satellite dish. I caught some audio of Dole after the show. The caterer brought some food in. “Bob Dole wants a diet Coke,” he said. “Bob Dole wants a Hot Dog!”

Someone, maybe a kid serving the food, asked Dole if he wanted mustard on his Hot Dog.

Bob Dole said: “Well, I feel that’s it’s my view that mustard is certainly one of the options we’re looking at. We’re looking at a number of options, actually. There’s lot of condiments… ketchup, for instance. Some like it, some don’t….

That’s not up to the federal government to decide. Those decisions are best made locally …the states. Some people talk about relish, relish… is…

Cheese! Lot of cheese lovers in America….. Perhaps we’ll go with mustard, but we haven’t made a final determination on that, haven’t decided… It might come down to a situation where we have some ketchup and some mustard…we’ll know soon…”

Mrs. Dole interrupted and said:

“Bob Dole has always supported mustard on Hot Dogs. Bob Dole has been, and continues to be pro-mustard. Mustard has a friend in Bob Dole.”

I had just put up a web server and was looking for interesting things to publish. So I tracked down the author and called him on the phone. He was somewhat surprised that I found him but I explained that I wanted to take his collection and make web pages out of it. He didn’t even know what a web page was at first but he agreed. For the first few years he would just email his list and I would add the page every time I got one of his emails. Eventually he learned just enough to barely put together a web page and started doing it himself.

Bart was one of the first and most successful liberal bloggers. Back then Bart and I were big fish in a small pond. We inspired many other liberal web sites that became far more successful an influential. We became small fish in a big pond. But Bart stayed with it for 18 years swinging the hammer of truth. People who were born the year Bart started are now old enough to vote. He created a community and lots of people know each other through him. I believe he changed history in significant ways that will some day be discovered by supercomputers in the future. But for now we will all miss him.

Onion Classics

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There’s not many humor sites that skewer American culture as adeptly and consistently as The Onion. I recently delved deep into their video archives where I found a few gems (marginally more absurd than reality):

Whoops. That last clip was actually from MSNBC. Maybe they’re trying to compete with The Onion?

TSA Threatens Satirist’s First Amendment Rights

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TSA-airport-security-enhanced-pat-downs

On November 6, 2013 Infowars.com sponsored a “We Will Resist TSA & NSA Tyranny” video contest. One of the participants, Telly “Leatherface” Blackwood, received a call regarding his entry from a man claiming to be from the TSA on Monday afternoon. According to a statement posted with a recording of a follow-up call on YouTube:

I received a call from a man named John on January 19 claiming to be from the TSA and had some questions for me. I asked him to call me back next day that I couldn’t hear him well. He agreed and within an hour or two I download an app so I can record phone calls. Today January 20th around 5:42pm while sitting outside he called back and I was able to record the whole thing. It was a strange call but very laughable. Sounds like one irritated TSA agent had enough of my video.

The contentious video from Blackwood’s comedy group “Off the Hook Television”:

In 2012, a TSA video from Natural News was suppressed by YouTube’s age restrictions (though this reposting got around it):

This is Joy Camp’s submission to the Infowars contest:

Bonus Clip: A new Joy Camp video mocking the contemporary pop music scene:

85 Richest People as Wealthy as Poorest Half of the World

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As World Economic Forum starts in Davos, development charity claims growing inequality has been driven by ‘power grab’

By Graeme Wearden

Originally posted at theguardian.com

The InterContinental Davos luxury hotel in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos

The InterContinental Davos luxury hotel in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos. Oxfam report found people in countries around the world believe that the rich have too much influence over the direction their country is heading. Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/REUTERS

The world’s wealthiest people aren’t known for traveling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene then the richest 85 people on the globe – who between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together – could squeeze onto a single double-decker.

The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called ‘global elite’ is exposed in a new report from Oxfam on Monday. It warned that those richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world’s population.

Working for the Few - Oxfam report

Source: F. Alvaredo, A. B. Atkinson, T. Piketty and E. Saez, (2013) ‘The World Top Incomes Database’, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/Only includes countries with data in 1980 and later than 2008. Photograph: Oxfam

The wealth of the 1% richest people in the world amounts to $110tn (£60.88tn), or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world, added the development charity, which fears this concentration of economic resources is threatening political stability and driving up social tensions.

It’s a chilling reminder of the depths of wealth inequality as political leaders and top business people head to the snowy peaks of Davos for this week’s World Economic Forum. Few, if any, will be arriving on anything as common as a bus, with private jets and helicopters pressed into service as many of the world’s most powerful people convene to discuss the state of the global economy over four hectic days of meetings, seminars and parties in the exclusive ski resort.

Winnie Byanyima, the Oxfam executive director who will attend the Davos meetings, said: “It is staggering that in the 21st Century, half of the world’s population – that’s three and a half billion people – own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus.”

Oxfam also argues that this is no accident either, saying growing inequality has been driven by a “power grab” by wealthy elites, who have co-opted the political process to rig the rules of the economic system in their favour.

In the report, entitled Working For The Few (summary here), Oxfam warned that the fight against poverty cannot be won until wealth inequality has been tackled.

“Widening inequality is creating a vicious circle where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs from the top table,” Byanyima said.

Oxfam called on attendees at this week’s World Economic Forum to take a personal pledge to tackle the problem by refraining from dodging taxes or using their wealth to seek political favours.

As well as being morally dubious, economic inequality can also exacerbate other social problems such as gender inequality, Oxfam warned. Davos itself is also struggling in this area, with the number of female delegates actually dropping from 17% in 2013 to 15% this year.

How richest use their wealth to capture opportunities

Polling for Oxfam’s report found people in countries around the world – including two-thirds of those questioned in Britain – believe that the rich have too much influence over the direction their country is heading.

Byanyima explained:

“In developed and developing countries alike we are increasingly living in a world where the lowest tax rates, the best health and education and the opportunity to influence are being given not just to the rich but also to their children.

“Without a concerted effort to tackle inequality, the cascade of privilege and of disadvantage will continue down the generations. We will soon live in a world where equality of opportunity is just a dream. In too many countries economic growth already amounts to little more than a ‘winner takes all’ windfall for the richest.”

Working for the Few - Oxfam report

The Oxfam report found that over the past few decades, the rich have successfully wielded political influence to skew policies in their favour on issues ranging from financial deregulation, tax havens, anti-competitive business practices to lower tax rates on high incomes and cuts in public services for the majority. Since the late 1970s, tax rates for the richest have fallen in 29 out of 30 countries for which data are available, said the report.

This “capture of opportunities” by the rich at the expense of the poor and middle classes has led to a situation where 70% of the world’s population live in countries where inequality has increased since the 1980s and 1% of families own 46% of global wealth – almost £70tn.

Opinion polls in Spain, Brazil, India, South Africa, the US, UK and Netherlands found that a majority in each country believe that wealthy people exert too much influence. Concern was strongest in Spain, followed by Brazil and India and least marked in the Netherlands.

In the UK, some 67% agreed that “the rich have too much influence over where this country is headed” – 37% saying that they agreed “strongly” with the statement – against just 10% who disagreed, 2% of them strongly.

The WEF’s own Global Risks report recently identified widening income disparities as one of the biggest threats to the world community.

Oxfam is calling on those gathered at WEF to pledge: to support progressive taxation and not dodge their own taxes; refrain from using their wealth to seek political favours that undermine the democratic will of their fellow citizens; make public all investments in companies and trusts for which they are the ultimate beneficial owners; challenge governments to use tax revenue to provide universal healthcare, education and social protection; demand a living wage in all companies they own or control; and challenge other members of the economic elite to join them in these pledges.

• Research Now questioned 1,166 adults in the UK for Oxfam between October 1 and 14 2013.

Upper 1 Percent Plan Total Control of Internet News

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internet-censorship

By Wayne Madsen

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

With the impending demise of World Wide Web “net neutrality,” which has afforded equal access for website operators to the Internet, the one percent of billionaire investors are busy positioning themselves to take over total control of news reporting on the Internet.

In the latest move by billionaires to monopolize the Internet, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and billionaire Nick Berggruen announced the creation of World Post, a news and views website that will be officially launched at the World Economic Forum conclave of one percenters in Davos, Switzerland.

Among the announced contributors to World Post are Microsoft owner Bill Gates, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The move by Huffington and Berggruen follows the creation of the “investigative” news website First Look, Inc. by PayPal’s billionaire founder Pierre Omidyar. First Look plans to distribute the remaining cache of National Security Agency (NSA) documents originally leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald.

Another billionaire who has joined the rush to seize part of the Internet is hedge fund tycoon George Soros. Soros has backed two media operations, Pro Publica, which promised to disclose many Snowden documents but has not followed through, and Project Syndicate, which paves the Internet with editorials backing all of Soros’s global initiatives.

Greenwald and his associates have published only one percent of the estimated 50,000 documents downloaded by Snowden from classified NSA databases. In a recent interview by Israel’s Channel Ten, Greenwald made it very clear that he would release more documents concerning NSA surveillance of Israeli leaders based on what the Obama administration does with regard to convicted and jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. There are increasing calls for Pollard’s release from prison and permission for him to move to Israel.

Greenwald stated to Israeli television that the slow pace of document release would continue and that he agreed with Israel on the issue of Pollard: “I think you are absolutely right to contrast the Jonathan Pollard case with revelations of American spying on their closest allies within the Israeli government, because it does underlie, underscore exactly the hypocrisy that lies at the center of so much of what the U.S. government does.”

Pollard is serving a life sentence in the Butner, North Carolina, federal penitentiary for disclosing a cache of documents that resulted in a number of U.S. intelligence assets in the Middle East being compromised to Mossad. The Mossad approached the U.S. assets and offered them a deal: cooperate with Mossad or risk being outed to their governments as CIA assets. In either case, the assets faced a certain death sentence: disclosure of work for Israel or the United States would have been met with the same fate of execution as spies.

A number of American journalists are now coming out in support of clemency for Pollard to placate Israel over the NSA spying reports leaked by Greenwald. First Look’s initial operating budget is $250 million. Along with Greenwald, journalists such as The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill; Dan Froomkin, formerly with The Washington Post; and Entertainment Weekly.com’s Bill Gannon jumped ship to sign on to First Look. The hiring of an entertainment editor who once worked for Lucas Films, the producer of Star Wars movies, raised eyebrows among those who believed Greenwald and Omidyar intended First Look to be a no-nonsense news operation. It now seems certain that First Look will be no different than Disney Corporation’s running of ABC News.

There have been some outrageous examples of corporate parents spiking stories by their news divisions in order to avoid bad publicity. In 2006, ABC News was pressured by Disney and its then-CEO Michael Eisner to kill an investigation of pedophiles being employed by Disney World in Orlando. The end of net neutrality will stymie and possibly eliminate investigative reporting on the Internet as we now know it.

The formation of the two newest media companies follows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ acquisition of The Washington Post. It is believed that Bezos will begin to streamline the newspaper with more focus on Internet distribution than the print run.

Under President Obama, the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission have done little to advance the cause of net neutrality. In fact, the regulatory agencies have gone the other way in order to facilitate the creation of a multi-tiered Internet that will permit high bandwidth access in a “pay to play” scheme. In other words, only billionaires like Omidyar, Berggruen, Bezos, and others will have access to the top tier of the Internet to distribute varnished “news” reports.

Those media organizations without deep pockets will be relegated to the slower tiers of the Internet, sharing limited bandwidth with pornography, quack medicine, and get-rich-quick scam operators.

Rupert Murdoch’s British Sky Broadcasting and Virgin Media, formerly owned by Sir Richard Branson, have been at the forefront of establishing a “two-speed Internet.”

It is painfully clear that the top one percent are feverishly engaged in an orgy of carving up the Internet after the collapse of net neutrality for the benefit of corporatism and oligarchic control over news dissemination.

It is noteworthy that Obama’ old friend from Columbia and Harvard and his first FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, has just joined a new firm after offering only lukewarm support for net neutrality. Genachowski now works for the eternally dubious Carlyle Group.

There is little wonder why one of World Post’s first contributors will be Google’s Schmidt, the frequent habitué of the Davos and Bilderberg secret conclaves of financial and political vipers who run the world. The journalists who have joined the frenzy to climb into the one percenters’ Internet top tier deserve nothing but condemnation from their peers.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report.