Category Archives: Oligarchy

Happy ThanksGetting Day. Poverty and Social Inequality in America

Posted on by
Reply

By Philip A Farruggio

Source: Global Research

Yes, we need to finally absolve ourselves, as Amerikans, from the con job concerning Thanksgiving Day. All the ‘pomp and circumstance’ revolving around this holiday is just that, to quote Ebenezer Scrooge (one month early): Humbug!

Of course, even the southern Colonial slaves and Northern ‘indentured servants’ of that era would be thankful to just have a roof over their heads and enough to eat each day. Yet, it was only the slave masters and owners of property and capital who could kneel in their churches or bow in reflected prayer at their lavish dinner tables in true thanksgiving.

Amerika 2018 consists of well over 100 million of our citizens who are lucky just to stay head above water financially… perhaps a few paychecks from being out on the street… literally!

How many families who live next door to me and to YOU (or maybe YOU yourself the reader) who have to have two (or more?)  wage earners full time to just be able to function? How many single parents of even just one child need to live with their parents (if lucky to be able to) in order to function properly?

What about a single mom all on her own? Do the math: How can a single Mom with let us say just one child, who works a blue or even white collar full time job on one salary, be able to stay head above water on let us say the USA median salary for a woman ($ 39,900)? She most likely pays rent, and in my area of North Central Florida even a small two bedroom apt. goes for on average $ 1200 a month in a somewhat ‘safe’ low crime neighborhood.

With her take home pay of $ 725 plus her health insurance contribution (usually 50%) of $ 80 a week, the figure is now $ 645. She would most likely need a car to get around (my area is mostly ‘car driven’ with not the greatest mass transit) and let us say that for even a low end car her payments would be $ 225 monthly for a new car loan, bringing her take home figure to now $ 420. Factor in her car insurance of $ 100 a month, and her take home figure is now $ 320 a week. She and her child need some sort of cable television, and even the low end cable is going to be at least $ 50 a month… and her take home figure is now $ 270 a week. Her phone/internet cost, even at the low end, would have to be at least $ 80 a month, bringing her figure down to $ 190 a week. Then you have food costs for her and her child, clothing costs, gas for her car, and God forbid one of them gets sick, or needs dental work, which is not covered….

The CEOs of all the companies that this single mom pays her hard earned money to earn in excess of a minimum of $ 20 million a year. Some earn double that figure! Within their own companies these CEOs earn in excess of 300 times the pay of their average workers. These folks have lots to be thankful of next Thursday! Mind you: Where is the outrage?

Where is the outcry of millions of working stiffs to say ‘Something is wrong here!?’ This column is just about one tiny example of the unfairness of this current corporate/ capitalist system. Those CEOS and top execs  of Amerikan capitalism, who are even much less than what many label The ONE PERCENT, are paying federal taxes of a top rate of 37%. Now that is before their accountants cut it down to much lower figure than that. Mitt Romney, now a Senator from Utah, admitted a few years ago that he, as a mega mega millionaire, only paid at a rate of perhaps 15%. Please remember that when JFK was president, in 1961, the top tax bracket was at 90%.

Again, with a good accountant, those mega rich may have paid at a rate of maybe 50%. Yet, my late uncle, who was in the 81% bracket then, earning $ 140k a year, still was able to enjoy two brand new twin Cadillacs for he and my aunt, his exclusive country club membership and a new home in the burbs.

Folks, for this Thanksgiving it is time for we hundreds of millions of working stiffs to begin to accept the need for Socialism. It may just be the only way for our great nation to turn the corner economically and morally. Reread some of the scriptures, for all of you who adhere (as this writer does) to the teachings of Jesus, and see what he said about the mega rich: Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

The Wealth Hiding in Your Neighborhood

Posted on by
2

From country farmland to big city skyscrapers, absentee billionaires may be hiding wealth in your town — and driving up your cost of living.

By Chuck Collins

Source: OtherWords

The rich are hiding trillions in wealth.

You’ve probably heard about their offshore bank accounts, shell corporations, and fancy trusts. But this wealth isn’t all sitting in the Cayman Islands or Panama. Much of it’s hiding in plain view: maybe even in your town.

America’s big cities are increasingly dotted with luxury skyscrapers and mansions. These multi-million dollar condos are wealth storage lockers, with the ownership often obscured by shell companies.

In Boston, where I live, there’s a luxury building boom. According to a study I just co-authored, out of 1,805 luxury units — with an average price of over $3 million — more than two-thirds are owned by people who don’t live here.

One-third are owned by shell companies and trusts that mask their ownership. And of these units, 40 percent are limited liability companies (LLCs) organized in Delaware.

Why Delaware?

Criminals around the world set up their shell companies in Delaware, the premiere secrecy jurisdiction in the United States — where you don’t have to disclose who the real owners are. As a result, human traffickers, drug smugglers, and tax evaders all enjoy the anonymous cover of a Delaware company.

Many of these companies use illicit funds to purchase real estate in North American cities to launder their ill-gotten money.

In New York City, dozens of luxury towers have been connected to global money laundering. In Vancouver, Chinese investors disrupted the city’s housing market so badly that the province of British Columbia established a foreign investor tax and a tax on vacant properties.

With European countries now insisting on more transparency, illicit cash is now cascading into the United States. In fact, the U.S. is now the world’s second-biggest tax haven and secrecy jurisdiction, after Switzerland.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has increased its scrutiny over real estate markets in Miami, New York, and parts of California, Texas, and Hawaii.

But that just makes the rest of the country more attractive for secret cash — even far from big cities. In a small Vermont town, I met a Russian investor who lives in Dubai. He was buying up thousands of acres of Green Mountain farmland.

Our communities are being fundamentally transformed by land grabs and luxury building booms. These drive up the cost of land in central neighborhoods, with ripple impacts throughout a community. And this worsens the already grotesque inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity.

Our communities should defend themselves.

Property ownership should have to pass the “fishing license” or “library card” test. In most communities, to get a library card or a fishing license, you need to prove who you are and where you actually live.

In Boston, they’re pretty strict — you need to show a utility bill with your name on it. Cities should require the same for real estate purchases.

At a national level, bi-partisan legislation from Senators Marco Rubio and Sheldon Whitehouse would require real estate owners to be disclosed when buyers use shell corporations and pay millions in cash. That would be a welcome development.

Better still, cities should tax luxury real estate transactions on properties selling for over $2 million to fund local services. Such a tax in San Francisco generated $44 million last year that’s been used to fund free community college and help the city’s neglected trees.

Communities could discourage high-end vacant properties by taxing buildings that sit empty for more than six months a year. Cities like Vancouver have created incentives to house people, not wealth.

We need to defend our communities for the people who live in them, not just store their wealth there.

Once We Awaken

Posted on by
1

By Rudy Avizius

Source: OpEdNews.com

Do you get a sense, that something is wrong
like that dissonance, that does not belong

As we move through the journey of life, many people are experiencing a sense of dis-ease, that something is off-kilter, that the narratives we are receiving do not match the reality we are experiencing. There is great hope in this knowledge because once one recognizes this dissonance the process of awakening begins.

Deep down way inside, you may have suspicions
that much what we’re told, are but veiled omissions

The narratives are controlled by a small handful of people who determine what issues and discussions we should be examining. As we watch the main stream news and follow social media, the news and discussions we see are mostly spectacle designed to boost ratings with little or no coverage of the real issues such as: our wars without end, corporate and big money control of government and media, or anything critical of the powers that be. Most of the journalists we see on the main stream media are basically celebrity faces who no longer practice journalism, but are simply parroting what those in power want them to say with little effort made to investigate and corroborate the stories. There is great hope in recognizing this knowledge, as it allows one to view the narratives more critically and to filter out what does not resonate with them.

Why do we listen, to those who would divide
those who leave us empty, with our humanity denied

  • Both of the main stream political parties support the Military/Industrial/Security Complex.
  • Both of the main stream political parties support the multiple simultaneous wars and occupations of other nations.
  • Both of the main stream political parties support a foreign policy of economic and military sanctions on nations that wish to pursue paths that do not fit interests of the global central banking system.
  • Both of the main stream political parties support their corporate donors over their constituents.
  • Both of the main stream political parties voted to extend the surveillance of citizens.
  • Both of the main stream political parties have made little or no attempt to stop the flood of big money into political campaigns.

However, the powers that be are very successful at projecting that there is a real difference between the two political parties. Both political parties are successful in getting people to fight each other over social issues that in the big picture are really not the key issues. Then, as long as the people are focused on fighting each other, those who orchestrated this fight enjoy the benefits of this effective diversion, keeping people from paying attention to the criminal syndicate that has taken over the government. There is great hope in recognizing this old divide and conquer tactic because once one does recognize it, one can stop fearing or hating “the other” and recognize that we have far more in common than what is dividing us. We can stop with name calling and finger pointing, and instead engage in meaningful conversations.

Why listen to those, with so little to tell
the very same ones who, have so much to sell

So many listen to the main stream media where sensationalism such as murders, car crashes, kidnappings, sex scandals and the like dominate the content. This is the same media where 90% of the media is owned by 6 corporations. One does not need a PhD to understand that this concentration of control over the narrative that people experience is not a positive development. Those that control the news keep the masses living in fear. This fear can take many forms, but often it is physical, economic, or social.

This is the same media that now has 36% of its hourly content filled with commercials. The fact that people are recognizing this is good news because they will become more discerning about who they give their money to. They will start to question whether they really need that product or service, or do they just want it.

Once we will awaken, things won’t be the same
we will manifest, an end to their game

Once we will awaken, the angels will observe
as those with dark souls, we’ll no longer serve

Our current political system has been totally corrupted by those with vast accumulations of money. This cuts across all ideologies and political party lines. This system of legal bribery has even been ratified by the highest court in the land which opened the floodgates to even more money corroding our system. How can someone represent you when they are being paid millions to represent others? What we need now goes beyond simple reforms and enters the realm of transformational change. Many articles and videos (mostly those in the alternative media space) connect these dots so that more and more people are becoming aware. This awareness or awakening is a critical step as it opens up the possibility for transformational change to take place.

The changes we are seeking will not take place from the top down, they will take place from the bottom up. Those who benefit from the current paradigm have little motivation to implement meaningful changes. Once we are ready to accept our own roles in this process, we will realize that what needs to happen is that we have to change ourselves. Once we stop playing their game of competing with each other, we will start cooperating instead. Local, self sufficient, and resilient communities will spring up like wild flowers in a field where they grow much of their own food, start their own currencies, and their citizens will stop buying from the big corporations, instead they will patronize their local businesses.

The current system of how we create and distribute money is at the very heart of most of the problems we face. It is absolutely amazing that people will work a significant portion of their lives away to earn money, and yet have only the most elementary understanding of how our debt based monetary system works. What does debt based monetary system mean? When was the last time your main stream media covered this? When was the last time your school taught you this? Why is this information withheld?

This debt based monetary system perpetuates and amplifies the inequalities of how Earth’s abundant resources are distributed. Our very existence on this planet is being threatened as unlimited economic growth within a finite biosphere remains the current paradigm. Until we move to a totally new monetary system, we are only hacking away at branches, and not getting to the root of the problem. There can be no effective transformation of our societies until this happens.

The models for a new monetary system are already in place. However the private individuals who have been given the monopoly power to create money and are benefiting from the current system will fight to make sure that knowledge of these systems does not spread widely. Those benefiting from the current system will work hard to make sure it stays firmly entrenched. When was the last time you heard a corporate media network discuss monetary reform?

Once we have local control of money, food production, energy generation,and governance, the current paradigm of corporate and big money control of our systems will simply become obsolete. It will simply fade into oblivion as it becomes less and less relevant. There will be no need to confront the system. Once we awaken and change our ways, we will “manifest an end to their game”.

Those who sell their souls, for their daily bread
may not take the time, to think of what’s ahead

There have always been those who would sell their souls and use the excuse “it’s my job” to justify their actions. From those who tortured Jesus to more modern times with concentration camp guards to even more currently the mercenaries who were hired to confront those seeking to protect their water supplies from pipeline companies.

Think about this, these mercenaries are people who left the communities they pledged to “protect and serve” to answer a call to “protect and serve” corporate interests in another community, while these same corporate interests were placing local people’s water supplies at serious risk.

These mercenaries were the tip of the spear, there were many behind the scenes who acted as enablers for their behaviors. There were the corporate executives, prosecutors, judges, minor bureaucrats, and politicians without whose support, such injustices could never take place. Those who served helping these forces have “sold their souls for their daily bread.”

“It was my job” is not an acceptable response when it curtails the access of life sustaining necessities of fellow human beings.

It is very easy to develop an “I see nothing” attitude, or to allow oneself to be silenced by monetary gain by “playing along” with those who control and manipulate the system. It is time to witness, it is time to speak up, it is time to resist when you see injustice taking place.

Those that are insatiable, always seeking moar
ever quite so willing, to send others to war

Why do we accede, to their self served schemes
rather than just simply, following our dreams

Once we awaken we will no longer serve those who think only of themselves and their own self serving schemes. YOU can start making a huge difference by the way you spend YOUR money. Think about this, when you give your money to someone or some corporation, as you are transferring some of your your power to them. Is this really something you wish to do?

Do you shop at a local merchant or do you save that 35 cents by buying from Amazon? Do you give a percentage of every purchase to the big banks by using credit cards or do you pay in cash? Do you buy animal products humanely produced? Do you buy organic food or food produced using chemicals that threaten our ecosystem (and your health?) Do you bank at a “too big to fail bank” or a local community bank or Credit Union? Sometimes the lowest price or convenience is not the best buy and can carry an even higher unseen cost.

As we develop our own resilient local communities and economies, our dependencies on the corporate model will be reduced, weakening their tight grip on us. Mother Teresa once said “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

Once we will awaken, we will clearly see
many of the others, who’ve also broken free

This is the best part of the awakening process. It is easy to think that the problems we face are overwhelming and that nothing can be done. The powers that be want us to think that way. Yet as we awaken, it becomes very clear that there are so many more of us that feel this same way than we originally believed. Once we awaken we become aware of others who have broken free. It is very empowering once we realize we are not alone. A critical mass is forming. It turns out that it takes only 10% of a population to bring about real changes.

We live in a world of abundance. There is enough air, water, and food for every person, animal, and plant on the planet. We have the resources and ability to make our existence here a paradise, to continue to develop socially, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. It is within our power to create a true golden age on this blue oasis floating through space and attain wondrous levels of development on a personal, family, community, regional, and global level while creating this paradise.

Multi-Billion Dollar Giveaway to Amazon

Posted on by
2

By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephanLendman.org

Seattle-based Amazon is like corporate predator Walmart, exploiting communities, along with harming local businesses and workers for maximum productivity and profits.

The company’s $100 billion dollar CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t get super-rich by being worker and community friendly – just the opposite, the way all Western corporate giants operate and most others, power, profits, and crushing competition their priorities.

That’s what predatory capitalism is all about – benefitting from harmful practices, polar opposite the way many, maybe most, locally owned and run small enterprises.

A London Guardian investigation revealed “numerous cases of Amazon workers being treated in ways that leave them homeless, unable to work or bereft of income after workplace accidents.”

One worker’s experience is similar to countless others, saying Amazon “cost me my home. They screwed me over and over, and I go days without eating.”

This “case is one of numerous reports from Amazon workers of being improperly treated after an avoidable work injury,” the Guardian explained, adding:

“Amazon’s warehouses were listed on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s ‘dirty dozen’ list of most dangerous places to work in the United States in April 2018.”

“The company made the list due to its pattern of unsafe working conditions and its focus on productivity and efficiency over the safety and livelihood of its employees.”

“Amazon’s emphasis on fulfilling a high demand of orders has resulted in unsafe working conditions for its warehouse employees.”

Numerous workers “succumb to the fatigue and exhaustion of the fulfillment center work environment and quit before getting injured.”

The company lied claiming it prioritizes worker safety, expressing “pr(ide)” in its shameful record, causing enormous harm to countless numbers of workers at its fulfillment centers.

On November 13, Amazon announced two new headquarters locations, besides its current Seattle one.

Additional ones will be in suburban Washington’s Arlington, Virginia’s Crystal City and Queens, NY Long Island City.

An astonishing 238 US cities competed for what the company calls its HQ2. In January, 20 finalists were chosen for its second headquarters –  19 in America, Toronto the only one abroad.

Up for grabs is about 50,000 promised jobs and around a $5 billion investment. Whenever a corporate headquarters is sought,  cities and regions compete by offering companies huge tax breaks and other benefits – at the expense of small local businesses and cuts in public services.

For ordinary people, having major operations like Amazon, Walmart, and other corporate predators in communities is more of a curse than benefit.

Economics Professor Edward Glaeser said the downside of competition for companies like Amazon is it “become(s) a contest for throwing cash at the giant(s).”

The same thing goes on when professional sports teams consider moving to a new city, or the International Federation Association Football (FIFA) World Cup and International Olympic Committee (IOC) select locations for future events.

New stadiums become fields of schemes, not dreams, ordinary people in chosen areas harmed so super-wealthy ones can benefit hugely.

New York City won the bidding for one of two Amazon HQ2 locations by throwing $2.1 in tax incentives at the company – money badly needed for public education, affordable housing, and other vital public services lost to benefit Amazon.

The company’s move to NYC will cost area taxpayers around $61,000 for each of 25,000 promised jobs – double the per capita $32,000 for Virginia residents for the same number of promised jobs, according to Bloomberg, adding:

Amazon’s presence in these cities will likely “exacerbate the already fragile public transportation system and clogged roadways, and raise housing prices.”

Arlington, VA won its bid by offering Amazon $573 million in tax breaks and other benefits.

Locating one of two HQ2 locations there is related to the company’s pursuit of a $10 billion Defense Department cloud-computing contract it’s the front-runner to get.

In summer 2014, it got a $600 million Amazon Web Services cloud-computing contract for the CIA, linking the company and its Washington Post subsidiary to Langley, the broadsheet serving as its mouthpiece.

Bezos has a disturbing history currying favor with national security officials. Winning a major Defense Department contract will assure the company serves its interests along with the US intelligence community’s – at the expense of world peace, stability, and rights of ordinary people everywhere.

City officials betray their residents by throwing enormous amounts of money at deep-pocketed corporate giants to lure them to their areas – well able to defray the cost of expansion and conducting business operations without government handouts.

Yet it’s been the American way for time immemorial – Washington, states and cities financing enterprises from the earliest days of the republic.

The more concentrated business gets, the more power companies have over government – doing their bidding at the expense of ordinary people nationwide.

Amazon’s HQ2 is one of countless other examples of the same dirty business – getting enormous amounts of public money diverted from the general welfare.

CEOs should have been the fall guys; why are they still heroes?

Posted on by
Reply

By Carl Rhodes

Source: aeon

On 15 September 2008, the giant financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, starting a chain reaction that saw the global economy spiralling toward total collapse. The global financial crisis that ensued revealed just how fragile and unstable the world economic order really was. If there was ever a time that neoliberal capitalism should have faced a legitimation crisis, this was it.

One only needs to think back to December 2008 when the then US president Barack Obama scolded the heads of the largest US auto firms for flying to Washington in private jets to ask for financial bailouts. As one Democratic Party representative added: ‘Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it.’

For a short time after the crash, those on the top of the corporate ladder seemed as powerless as those on the bottom. The failure demonstrated that neither chief executive officers (CEOs) nor their financial advisors had much of an idea of how the market worked or how to control it. All that was left for modern citizens was to brace themselves as a runaway global free market fell off the proverbial cliff. The CEO suddenly appeared like a fall guy for the crash rather than as a hero.

Fast-forward 10 years, and it’s hard to believe that the economic and political supremacy of the CEO could have even been put into radical question the way it was in 2008. CEOs never really lost their stride and, now more than ever, they are considered to be visionaries and idealised as leaders. Nor did they lose their corporate jets. Other than for a brief symbolic belt-tightening immediately after the crisis, CEOs were soon flying high again on company planes.

Today, business founders such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or even Larry Fink epitomise a new class of celebrity CEOs, seen by so many as personal heroes who can save the world, and the same goes for the larger array of employee CEOs such as Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase or Tim Cook at Apple. Yet all the while, CEOs participate in a world economy wracked by increasing inequality, as epitomised by the kind of obscene CEO remuneration that sees the likes of Amazon’s boss Jeff Bezos earning almost a million times that of the workers in his warehouses.

More ominously, millions of Americans voted for an ostentatiously super-rich CEO, electing Donald Trump as their president. In his acceptance speech, Trump praised his own business acumen as being key to his political success: ‘I’ve spent my entire life in business, looking at the untapped potential in projects and in people all over the world. That is now what I want to do for our country.’

The barely interrupted veneration of the CEO as a hero, marked most expressively by the Trump presidency, has brought us to a point today where CEOs are not just valued for their skills in business but have become role models in all walks of life. We now live in what we call a ‘CEO society’: a society where corporate leadership has become the model for transforming not just business, but all human activity, where everyone from politicians to jobseekers to even those seeking love are expected to imitate the qualities of the lionised corporate executive.

The contemporary adulation and admiration of CEOs raises the question of what enabled their continued idolisation, given what could well have been their fall from grace 10 years ago? At the time, many hoped that the sad devastation of the crisis might open the door for an economic and political paradigm shift that would usher in a fairer, more equal and just society. It’s not that this promise of change has not arrived, it’s that it seems farther away than ever.

After 2008, for a brief time, people clamoured for CEOs to be held accountable and be prosecuted. This was, not least, a practical matter. With jobs being lost, shop fronts being boarded up, and politicians crying austerity, what people wanted above all else was economic recovery. Yet with the world’s top executives in disgrace, who could lead such a dramatic economic revival?

What arose from peril was a novel fantasy of executive-led recovery that allowed the shattered reputation of the CEO to stage a prompt, if not miraculous, comeback. This played into an appealing crisis narrative. With such a narrative, all faith must be invested in the recuperation of an imaginary golden past that existed before the upheaval. Most recently, this has manifested in Brexit’s investment in the promise of a renewed British sovereignty, as well as in populist political rallying cries such as ‘Make America Great Again’.

These desires for recovery and return are of course perfectly understandable, and they clearly shed light on why ideologies of free-market heroism thrived again after crisis. But this still only scratches the surface of why CEOs continue to be idolised by so many. Whereas individual executives from Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals to Harvey Weinstein of Miramax might be reviled for their greed, corruption or abuse of power, the CEO – as an ideal – has been reinstated with a solid-gold allure.

The financial crisis pointed to a deep insecurity rested in the fear that it was futile for humans to control the economic world that we had created, and this reverberated with a more general fear that we lack agency more widely. Suddenly, people were pushed into facing the possibility that their lives were lost to the whims and unpredictable fate of a supernatural market. Where since the advent of the 20th century it had been righteously condemned that ‘money is the secular God of the world’, now it was feared that finance had become an even more reckless God, one who cared little for the humans who worshiped at his gilded altar.

The quick rehabilitation of the image of the CEO in the popular imagination was not just a practical matter of wanting to hold on to the material benefits afforded by neoliberal capitalism. It was a psychic measure needed to counteract the fear of dehumanisation at the hands of a runaway Frankenstein economy. In other words, we just wanted to pretend that someone was in control, even if all the facts and evidence were telling us that this wasn’t the case. Everything could be forgiven if hope could be returned.

The retention of the CEO myth was an assertion of the power of individuals to shape events and control their destiny. To achieve this meant holding on to the heroic character of the CEO such that people might regain a sense of control over their own lives too.

Maintaining faith in the CEO was less a matter of empirical fact and more a symptom of a human need to find something to believe in at the end of a hard-earned day; with the reality too hard to bear, the fantasy had to return. Held out was the promise that everyone could receive grace if only he accepted the modern CEO gospel. This is the very same faith that allows people to believe that the business acumen of an impetuous, loud-mouthed, misogynist bully is able to lead America to greatness. When Trump said that he would run the US like a business project, ‘under budget and ahead of schedule’, enough people believed him to pave his way to the White House.

CEOs represent the ability to be in control of a market that appears uncontrollable and uncaring of its profound human costs. This desire for control belies the reality for too many people of being on the wrong side of the rising tide of inequality, and of being subjected to the tyranny of a new singleminded political authoritarian intolerance. Let’s hope that with the next crisis we learn that we need to let go of the fantasy of the CEO.

Has America Become a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy?

Posted on by
4

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”—They Live, John Carpenter

We’re living in two worlds, you and I.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released 30 years ago in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.

In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”

In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”

Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

Sound familiar?

Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.

We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.

Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary.

But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?

The answer is the same in every age: fear.

Fear makes people stupid.

Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.

The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live.

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.

Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.

Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month.

The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?

Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.

Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.

Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.

If we’re watching, we’re not doing.

The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own.

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he restores hope by delivering America a wake-up call for freedom.

That’s the key right there: we need to wake up.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

The real battle for control of this nation is not being waged between Republicans and Democrats in the ballot box.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

True Revolution

Posted on by
1

Artwork by Patricia Allingham Carlson

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

A radical change in human behavior away from its patterns of oppression, exploitation, war and ecocide will necessarily involve a drastic transformation in humanity’s relationship with thought. I’ve been saying this over and over again in different ways for a long time now, and yet I still get criticisms saying that I have useful insights but I don’t provide any plan of action.

The transformation in human consciousness is the plan of action. I really don’t know how to say it any clearer than that. And I will go so far as to say that that it is the only plan of action which will pull us out of our destructive patterns and into a healthy state of collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem. Unless we radically change the way we function above the neck, we will keep killing, consuming and destroying like a bunch of mindless automatons until everything is dead. I really don’t see any other way out of this.

I understand the criticism, though. When people read about the problem of capitalist ecocide and oligarchic strangulation, they don’t want to hear a bunch of stuff about mass ego death and spiritual enlightenment, they want to hear about nationwide demonstrations or organizing the working class or forming a new political party or cryptocurrencies or ending the Federal Reserve, or something along those lines depending on where they believe the problem is localized. In general, they want a fairy tale about people coming together to effect drastic, sweeping changes and turn the status quo on its head, which they will do because something something reasons, cough cough.

Seriously, why do people think revolution happens? Why do they believe their ideas have a chance of winning out over the existing paradigm? There are many who espouse dissident opinions more as a sort of ideological fashion statement than because they actually want to change the world, but presumably a lot of the people promoting Marxism, libertarianism, anarchism etc are doing so because they genuinely would like to see a world in which the status quo is overturned and replaced with something more wholesome. But why would that happen? Why would millions or billions of people overturn existing power structures and replace the current system with something drastically different in a world where plutocrats buy up massive amounts of media influence to convince everyone to keep everything the same?

It doesn’t seem like many proponents of revolution and change have really thought about this very much. They have a good idea, and they can envision a world in which that idea is implemented, but getting from the idea to its manifestation seems like it’s often a jumbled mess in a lot of dissidents’ minds, not unlike the “Phase 1: Collect underpants / Phase 2: ??? / Phase 3: Profit” model of the Underpants Gnomes from South Park. Most dissident voices I see are primarily interested in Phase 1, and to a much lesser extent in Phase 3. Phase 2 is what I’m interested in, and in my opinion it necessarily involves a drastic shift in human consciousness.

People are not going to deviate from their patterns and suddenly begin shrugging off ruling power structures for no reason. Revolutions historically happen for one of two reasons: (1) things get sufficiently bad to make people lash out against their government out of sheer desperation, and/or (2) people are manipulated into revolting by other powerful forces. Historically neither of these things ever lead to the creation of a stable, beneficent government that takes good care of its citizens or the world, so neither will be sufficient for creating a world in which humanity takes good care of itself and its environment, and even if that were not the case it’s unlikely that either will ever be allowed to occur by an establishment so powerful and skillful at manipulation as the US-centralized empire.

So if there is to be a people’s revolution which is effective in both (A) removing our oligarchic oppressors from power and (B) leading to the creation of a healthy, harmonious new paradigm, it will necessarily come from a place that is historically unprecedented. It will involve people rising up against existing power structures not because things got so bad they had no choice, nor because they were manipulated into it by other rival power structures, but because people realized collectively that it is in their best interests to do so.

This would require a level of wisdom and insight that the majority of human beings simply do not possess right now. Right now, most people are very easily manipulated into advancing establishment interests by plutocrat-controlled media, and until that changes there will never be an effective and beneficial revolution. For that to change, humanity is going to have to shed its ubiquitous habit of creating mental egoic patterns which make us susceptible to manipulation via fear, greed, and herd mentality.

This doesn’t mean that the existing systems of capitalism and government aren’t going to have to change; of course they’ll have to change. But they’re not going to change unless we find a way to wake up from the deeply conditioned egoic patterns which are the norm in the world we were born into. We’ll keep repeating and repeating the same old patterns in whatever way we’ve been conditioned to until we either go the way of the dinosaur or find a way to transcend our conditioning.

So yes, true revolution means abandoning the insane strategy of endless economic expansion in a world made up of finite space and resources, but it also means seeing through the illusory nature of our sense of self and ceasing to believe the babbling mental narratives which are premised upon it. Yes, true revolution means ceasing the worldwide frantic, futile scramble to do what ever it takes in order to get the right kind of numbers in our bank account so we don’t starve to death in an arbitrary economic system based on imaginary bureaucratic fiat, but it also means bringing our unconscious coping mechanisms into consciousness and healing our childhood traumas. Yes, true revolution means organizing and engaging in politics and creating new systems together, but it also means learning to really love the most tender, guarded parts of ourselves which we used to leave unattended running on autopilot in our subconscious mental processes.

I firmly believe that we are capable of such a collective awakening, and there are experts in the field of inner transformation who claim to have observed signs that such an awakening may be underway. Teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti and Jac O’Keefe all say something is very different in their field of work, and individuals are now having an easier time awakening from egoic consciousness than they used to. Spontaneous shifts are becoming commonplace to the point where teachers like Tony Parsons now center their entire body of teaching around the possibility of snapping out of one’s old perceptual frame of reference without engaging in any spiritual practices at all.

Of this potential for large scale awakening, Tolle says the following:

“I see signs that it is already happening. For the first time there is a large scale awakening on our planet. Why now? Because if there is no change in human consciousness now, we will destroy ourselves and perhaps the planet. The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology, is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die: that is our only choice now. Without considering the Eastern world, my estimate is that at this time about ten percent of people in North America are already awakening. That makes thirty million Americans alone, and in addition to those people in other North American countries, about ten percent of the population of Western European countries are also awakening. This is probably enough of a critical mass to bring about a new earth. So the transformation of consciousness is truly happening even though they won’t be reporting it on tonight’s news. Is it happening fast enough? I am hopeful about humanity’s future, much more so now than when I wrote The Power of Now. In fact that is why I wrote that book. I really wasn’t sure that humanity was going to survive. Now I feel differently. I see many reasons to be hopeful.”

There aren’t many people who’d be in a position to say if human consciousness has been making a marked shift over the last few years, but Tolle, who interfaces with that information constantly as an essential part of his work as a spiritual teacher, is certainly one of them.

So there are reasons to believe it is possible for us to pull up from our omnicidal, ecocidal, exploitative trajectory and create something new together. We may pass this test yet. But even if I’m wrong about that, what the hell else are we going to do? What better chance do we have, and what more productive way is there to spend one’s time on this earth than coming to a deep and abiding insight into your true nature? From my point of view, the front lines of the revolution are in our own consciousness here and now, not as some intriguing marginal facet of the battle for humanity, but as its source, its heart, and its apex.

Know thyself, oh rebel. Know thyself and save the world.

Digital Book Burners

Posted on by
Reply

By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Another Day in the Empire

Jamie Fly, a former high-ranking Bush era neocon, believes you shouldn’t have the right to post on social media.

“Fly went on to complain that ‘all you need is an email’ to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites’ accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance,” write  Jeb Sprague and Max Blumenthal. 

This attitude shouldn’t come as a surprise. Neocons believe they are a special breed, the chosen few of an intellectual crème de la crème, and the rest of us are merely bread and circus spectators on the sidelines as they forge our collective history (and increasingly possible ruin). 

Fly is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. He “served” in the National Security Council and the Defense Department during the Bush presidency. He also worked at the Claremont Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. Fly tutored presumptive presidential candidate Marco Rubio on foreign policy and he is the former director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a staunch neocon advocacy group founded by arch neocons William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Dan Senor. 

He is now a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund, an organization funded by the US government and NATO. The German Marshall Fund organized the Alliance for Securing Democracy and its Hamilton 68 effort to destroy alternative media under the false (and largely debunked) claim it is a cutout for Russia and Vladimir Putin who are, we are reminded daily, dedicated to destroying democracy and taking down the exceptional and indispensable nation. 

Jamie Fly and his coconspirators Laura Rosenberger and J.M. Berger know the Russians aren’t responsible for thousands of alternate media websites and social media accounts. They know this phenomenon, which began with the birth of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, is homespun and has absolutely nothing to do with Russia. It is their mission to make sure the establishment is free to promulgate its lies and war propaganda without counterbalance and the interruption of truth. 

These folks are digital book burners on par with Nazis who burned books in Berlin on the Opernplatz in May of 1933. Like the Nazis, they want to silence those who counter the narrative. For the Nazis, the targets were communists, socialists, anarchists, and all who opposed fascism, while our new book burners—liquidators of heresy against the ruling elite—are focused on groups and individuals challenging the lies and half-truths of the state regardless of ideology.

For the elite, populism and nationalism represent a twin threat to the emerging globalist scheme of a one-world government and currency directed by a cadre of unelected bureaucrats and ideologues. 

Donald Trump portrayed himself as a patriot and nationalist—Make America Great Again—however after the election the same old crowd of CFR operatives, Goldman Sachs alumni, and hardcore neocons staffed his administration, thus making the realization of his campaign promises virtually impossible. 

The ruling elite, their functionaries and proxies have declared war on “alternative facts,” that is to say information contrary and even hostile to the narrative. While it is true the corporate media has lost some influence, it still projects a powerful influence on public opinion, especially in the current highly polarized political climate.

For instance, it is now assumed a Trump supporter send bombs to Democrats, and this has become a trending topic on social media. There is zero evidence a Trump supporter had anything to do with this incident, and yet the hashtag “MAGABomber” has gone viral on social media, demonstrating how easily it is to sell lies and fabrications to a polarized public. 

Fly and his digital book burning associates will not stop until the last vestiges of the alternative media are wiped out. This process is underway now with a number of popular alternative media websites losing significant traffic following removal from social media. 

As Mr. Fly says, this is only the beginning. They will not stop until the challenge is defeated and the digital information landscape is once again completely in control of the psychopaths at the top and their well-paid minions pushing the idiotic lie that Putin and the Russians are responsible.