Now Just Five Men Own Almost as Much Wealth as Half the World’s Population

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By Paul Buchheit

Source: CommonDreams

Last year it was 8 men, then down to 6, and now almost 5.

While Americans fixate on Trump, the super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of 06/08/17, the world’s richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people.

Why Do We Let a Few People Shift Great Portions of the World’s Wealth to Themselves? 

Most of the super-super-rich are Americans. We the American people created the Internet, developed and funded Artificial Intelligence, and built a massive transportation infrastructure, yet we let just a few individuals take almost all the credit, along with hundreds of billions of dollars.

Defenders of the out-of-control wealth gap insist that all is OK, because, after all, America is a ‘meritocracy’ in which the super-wealthy have ‘earned’ all they have. They heed the words of Warren Buffett: “The genius of the American economy, our emphasis on a meritocracy and a market system and a rule of law has enabled generation after generation to live better than their parents did.”

But it’s not a meritocracy. Children are no longer living better than their parents did. In the eight years since the recession the Wilshire Total Market valuation has more than TRIPLED, rising from a little over $8 trillion to nearly $25 trillion. The great majority of it has gone to the very richest Americans. In 2016 alone, the richest 1% effectively shifted nearly $4 trillion in wealth away from the rest of the nation to themselves, with nearly half of the wealth transfer ($1.94 trillion) coming from the nation’s poorest 90%—the middle and lower classes. That’s over $17,000 in housing and savings per lower-to-middle-class household lost to the super-rich.

A meritocracy? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos have done little that wouldn’t have happened anyway. ALL modern U.S. technology started with—and to a great extent continues with—our tax dollars and our research institutes and our subsidies to corporations.

Why Do We Let Unqualified Rich People Tell Us How To Live? Especially Bill Gates! 

In 1975, at the age of 20, Bill Gates founded Microsoft with high school buddy Paul Allen. At the time Gary Kildall’s CP/M operating system was the industry standard. Even Gates’ company used it. But Kildall was an innovator, not a businessman, and when IBM came calling for an OS for the new IBM PC, his delays drove the big mainframe company to Gates. Even though the newly established Microsoft company couldn’t fill IBM’s needs, Gates and Allen saw an opportunity, and so they hurriedly bought the rights to another local company’s OS — which was based on Kildall’s CP/M system. Kildall wanted to sue, but intellectual property law for software had not yet been established. Kildall was a maker who got taken.

So Bill Gates took from others to become the richest man in the world. And now, because of his great wealth and the meritocracy myth, MANY PEOPLE LOOK TO HIM FOR SOLUTIONS IN VITAL AREAS OF HUMAN NEED, such as education and global food production.

—Gates on Education: He has promoted galvanic skin response monitors to measure the biological reactions of students, and the videotaping of teachers to evaluate their performances. About schools he said, “The best results have come in cities where the mayor is in charge of the school system. So you have one executive, and the school board isn’t as powerful.”

—Gates on Africa: With investments in or deals with Monsanto, Cargill, and Merck, Gates has demonstrated his preference for corporate control over poor countries deemed unable to help themselves. But no problem—according to Gates, “By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.”

Warren Buffett: Demanding To Be Taxed at a Higher Rate (As Long As His Own Company Doesn’t Have To Pay) 

Warren Buffett has advocated for higher taxes on the rich and a reasonable estate tax. But his company Berkshire Hathaway has used “hypothetical amounts” to ‘pay’ its taxes while actually deferring $77 billion in real taxes.

Jeff Bezos: $50 Billion in Less Than Two Years, and Fighting Taxes All the Way 

Since the end of 2015 Jeff Bezos has accumulated enough wealth to cover the entire $50 billion U.S. housing budget, which serves five million Americans. Bezos, who has profited greatly from the Internet and the infrastructure built up over many years by many people with many of our tax dollars, has used tax havens and high-priced lobbyists to avoid the taxes owed by his company.

Mark Zuckerberg (6th Richest in World, 4th Richest in America) 

While Zuckerberg was developing his version of social networking at Harvard, Columbia University students Adam Goldberg and Wayne Ting built a system called Campus Network, which was much more sophisticated than the early versions of Facebook. But Zuckerberg had the Harvard name and better financial support. It was also alleged that Zuckerberg hacked into competitors’ computers to compromise user data.

Now with his billions he has created a ‘charitable’ foundation, which in reality is a tax-exempt limited liability company, leaving him free to make political donations or sell his holdings, all without paying taxes.

Everything has fallen into place for young Zuckerberg. Nothing left to do but run for president.

The False Promise of Philanthropy 

Many super-rich individuals have pledged the majority of their fortunes to philanthropic causes. That’s very generous, if they keep their promises. But that’s not really the point.

American billionaires all made their money because of the research and innovation and infrastructure that make up the foundation of our modern technologies. They have taken credit, along with their massive fortunes, for successes that derive from society rather than from a few individuals. It should not be any one person’s decision about the proper use of that wealth. Instead a significant portion of annual national wealth gains should be promised to education, housing, health research, and infrastructure. That is what Americans and their parents and grandparents have earned after a half-century of hard work and productivity.

Google ‘News’ is hideous

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By Wayne Madsen

Source: Intrepid Report

Even before its recent “redesign,” which was claimed to provide an “uncluttered” look, Google News was one of the worst news aggregator sites on the Internet. Many longtime Google News users have complained about the site’s quality and dubious “news” content. Google has offered no reasonable explanations for its poor business decisions that have resulted in Google News being a repository for misleading news links. Keeping in mind that Google received its initial seed investment from the CIA’s IN-Q-IT, now known as IN-Q-TEL, the agency’s venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley, the CIA may be playing some sort of massive social network experiment on Google News users.

The fact that Google News programmers cannot seem to distinguish between “World News” and “U.S. News” is laughable for a multi-billion dollar company that has supposedly recruited the best and brightest technologists into its ranks. The following appeared under Google News’s “World News” section on July 3, 2017:

“Media reaps benefit from Trump attacks,” The Hill

“White House pays women 80 cents for every dollar paid to men,” CNN

“New Jersey welfare fund arrests spark anti-Semitic sentiment,” USA Today

“Police Say Abduction Suspect Viewed Sexual Fetish Website,” U.S. News & World Report, with a story on the same subject regarding the University of Illinois appearing in the Champagne/Urbana News-Gazette

“Colorado man mistakes son for intruder, shoots and kills him,” WHIO

“5 significant gas explosions in Pennsylvania in the past decade,” PennLive.com

Something is seriously wrong with Google’s algorithms or the foreign programmers they have hired, to the exclusion of American employees, do not realize that from a U.S. perspective, events in Washington, DC, New Jersey, Illinois, Colorado, and Pennsylvania do not constitute “World News.”

Even Google News’s Science offering is trashed by nonsensical click bait, such as a Washington Post story, titled “No, NASA is not hiding kidnapped children on Mars.” The story emanates from comments made on the Infowars show by Alex Jones and his guest Robert Steele about a secret program to kidnap children and send them to Mars. With the advent of the Trump presidency, those who were once considered “controversial” are now just plain crazy. Yet, such wild rantings are found under “Science” in Google News!

Google News’s search engine is no better. Some apologists for Google claim that the searches are tailored for each customer. If that is so, why do this editor’s searches on various countries and areas of the world come back with the first ten stories being about sports. I do not like professional sports and never visit sporting websites. Therefore, if Google is to be believed, no sports stories should be returned on searches on international place names.

As an example, the following comes back from Google News on a search for “Barbados”:

“Marion makes Africa umpire team,” The Nation

“Barbados lose football opener to Dominica,” Nation News

“Young Gems leave for Botswana,” Nation News

Try out a search for “South Africa,” not an insignificant country, and returned are:

“England v South Africa: Faf du Plessis to miss first Test for family reasons,” BBC Sport. Among professional sports, which I detest in general, cricket is dead last on the list of topics to be ignored. This “top news story” about South Africa is followed by:

“South Africa disappointed by Cosafa exit,” BBC Sport. Cosafa is the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations and not a Covfefe-like typo by Donald Trump. This is a totally unimportant story about professional football of the soccer variety. Who cares? I don’t. Ranked around number five is a story about an upcoming no-confidence vote by the South African parliament against Jacob Zuma, the president of the country. Yet, cricket and soccer stories are given more prominence by Google News.

Try another country, New Zealand, and the result is the same, except rugby is considered more important by Google News than anything else happening in the nation:

“Lions beat New Zealand on tiniest of margins, and a thrilling finale awaits,” The Guardian

“New Zealand club rugby player in intensive care with spinal injury,” Telegraph (UK). Sad story, but the player might have taken up a safer line of work, like programming actual news stories for Google News searches.

Ranked third by Google in the search return is a fairly important story:

“New Zealand’s immigration laws favour the rich, a South African family says.” Radio New Zealand.

Ranked fourth is another non-news topic concerning Google News’s other distraction affectation, Entertainment News:

“Katy Perry gushes about her great ‘love’ for New Zealand,” Newshub. Katy Perry? Really, who gives a crap about her? Hillary Clinton loves her, as do many women motorcyclists. I don’t and don’t want stories about Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, or Taylor Swift returned on searches about important events around the world. Unless, of course, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, along with Madonna, go missing on a flight over New Guinea and Don McLean writes a song about them. He could title it “American Magpies.”

Google News received five thumbs down before their recent “redesign.” Now, there are not enough thumbs in the world to express displeasure about them.

 

Putin, Xi Message To Trump: US Unipolar World Is Over

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By Finian Cunningham

Source: Information Clearing House

The US’ strategy has been to isolate Russia internationally. Evidently, it is Washington that is becoming more isolated on the global stage. This week in the run-up to the G20 summit in Germany, the reverse in fortunes could not be more glaring.

While North Korea was openly defying Washington with a breakthrough ballistic missile test, and US President Donald Trump was embroiled in his usual juvenile tweeting antics, Russia and China’s leaders were proudly consolidating their strategic alliance for a new multipolar global order.

Western media won’t acknowledge as much, but the meeting this week in Moscow between Putin and Xi Jinping was of historical importance. We are witnessing a global transition in power. And for the common good.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping bond through an apparent deep sense of mutual respect and wisdom about the political challenges facing today’s world. The two leaders have met on more than 20 occasions over the past four years. President Xi referred to Russia as China’s foremost ally and said that in a topsy-turvy world the friendship between the two was a source of countervailing stability.

On the breaking news of North Korea’s successful test launch of its first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), both Putin and Xi called for calm restraint. By contrast, US President Trump took to Twitter to taunt Kim Jong-Un. “Does this guy not have anything better to do with his life?” said Trump in words that could apply more pertinently to the American president.

Then the US and its South Korea ally also launched their ballistic missiles in a military drill aimed as a show of strength to Pyongyang. Kim Jung-Un responded that the ICBM was a “gift for the American bastards” on their Fourth of July Independence Day holiday and that there would more such gifts on the way.

Rather than escalating tensions, Putin and Xi put forward the eminently reasonable proposal that North Korea should freeze its missile tests and the US should likewise halt its military exercises on the Korean peninsula. All sides must convene in negotiations with a commitment to non-violence and without preconditions to strive for a comprehensive settlement to the decades-old dispute.

The contrast in Putin and Xi’s dignified, intelligent response with that of Trump’s petulance is clear proof of Russia and China showing real global leadership, whereas the Americans are just part of the problem.

But the Korean drama was only one illustration this week of how American ambitions of unipolar dominance have become redundant.

The G20 summit prelude of Putin hosting Xi in Moscow was followed by the Chinese president making a state visit to Germany on Wednesday two days before the gathering in Hamburg. Xi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly signed new trade deals between the world’s two leading export economies.

“Relations between China and Germany are at their historic best,”said Michael Clauss, Germany’s ambassador to Beijing. “The economic and political dynamic from a German perspective is moving toward the east.”

Of significance too was news this week the European Union is preparing to finalize a major trade pact with Japan.

It is also significant that Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on China and Russia to help mediate the Korean crisis immediately following Pyongyang’s ICMB test launch.

Evidently, Japan, despite being an ally of Washington, is reaching out to a multilateral solution as proposed by Moscow and Beijing.

In so many ways, therefore, whether on matters of security or trade and economy, the world appears to be moving inexorably toward a multipolar format as the most appropriate response to challenges.

Not so from the American point of view, especially under Donald Trump’s leadership. All nations seem to be nothing more than a footstool for the “exceptional” Americans who feel entitled to hector and browbeat everyone else to get what they want.

America’s isolation in the world was glimpsed at the G7 summit earlier this year in May when the other nations awkwardly diverged from Trump on his decision to withdraw the US from the global climate accord. Two months on, the isolation of Washington is even more vivid on the world stage as G20 leaders gather in Hamburg this weekend.

A Bloomberg News headline put it succinctly: ‘Trump risks uniting Cold War allies and foes against him’.

Trump’s quest for “America First” through trade protectionism and his narrow-minded unilateralism toward issues of global security have put America out on a limb as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

Where is the American “team player”, the supposed “leader of the free world”? All the self-proclaimed virtues are being seen for what they always were: overblown, pretentious and vainglorious bombast.

America is seen as nothing more than a selfish, hulking giant. Its trade imbalances with the rest of the world are not because of “rotten deals”, as Trump would have it, but rather because the American economy has ruined itself over many decades. The off-shoring of jobs by American corporations and gutting of American workers with poverty wages are part of it.

When America now talks about upholding international law and security, the rest of the world just laughs with bitter irony. The wars across the Middle East and the sponsoring of terrorism are largely US products of criminal regime-change intrigues. Who is this deluded head-case in Washington?

The same deluded head-case that has “beautiful chocolate cake” with China’s president in a Florida beach resort, and then proceeds to slap sanctions on China and make provocative military incursions on its territory. It’s not just Trump. It’s the whole American political leadership. The American ruling class has become so blinded by hubris that it can’t even see how the world it claims to dominate is collectively shutting the door on it and walking away.

Washington has no answers for today’s world challenges. Because simply put, Washington is the source of many of today’s problems. It has not even the modesty to acknowledge its responsibility. The only thing the US seems capable of is to make current problems fiendishly worse. The Korean crisis is an object lesson.

Presidents Putin and Xi are not scheming to usurp world domination, as Washington would have us believe. Only in Washington would a vision for a multipolar, more democratic global order be construed as something threatening and sinister. That’s because American ambitions of unipolar “full spectrum dominance” are actually threatening and sinister.

The world can be thankful it has genuine leaders in Putin and Xi who are forging ahead to create a multipolar global order. Fortunately, the strategic alliance between Russia and China is underpinned by a formidable military capability. Joint naval exercises this month carried out in the Baltic Sea are a vital insurance policy to back up what Moscow and Beijing are increasingly bold enough to say to the Americans.

That message, as Putin and Xi effectively gave to Trump this week, is that American ambitions of world domination are no longer acceptable and no longer tenable. Washington’s days of bullying the world with its moralizing hypocrisy and military aggression are over.

Saturday Matinee: Day of the Locust

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“The Day of the Locust” (1975) is a dark historical drama directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) with a screenplay by blacklisted writer Waldo Salt based on a novel by Nathaniel West. The plot follows aspiring art director Tod (William Atherton) who, after moving to Hollywood, becomes entangled in a community of desperate and deluded dreamers. The film’s exploration of the dark side of Hollywood and human nature is a likely influence on David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

Watch the full film here.

THE MADNESS OF WAR

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By Julian Rose

Source: Waking Times

It is essential to constantly remind ourselves, that war, apart from a very few exceptions, is a symptom of madness. Yet war is a disease which is largely taken for granted; considered ‘normal’ and unless it involves a large swathe of humanity, ignored. How did we allow ourselves to be trapped by such insanity?

In 2017, wars are as prevalent as ever. They are being manifest in the Middle East, in Africa, in South America, and in a lesser form, in almost all countries of the World. They are the result of a failure to recognize that killing another is actually killing one’s self. A failure to grasp that humanity is a collective made up of millions of individuals, all of whom share a common ancestry and, on a subconscious plain, a common aspiration and destiny.

There is no victory in war. War is an admission of defeat. When humans resort to mass killing of each other we see an expression of failure, never success. Not so long ago war was glorified and, for the victor, held up as an expression of supreme national pride. In fact, such an attitude was predominant in the species for thousands of years.

However two World Wars put an end to the hubris. The levels of destruction were so great and so many millions died brutal and ugly deaths, that a kind of ‘war weariness’ set-in amongst the survivors, and a new sense of the futility of it all became integrated into societies which had undergone the experience. The world looked like it might have learned its lesson; people had pounded each other, and the natural environment, into a sickening pulp, and there was no glorious aftermath. Just a sense of what ‘peace’ could actually mean.

There were, and are, still some who find war ‘exciting’, whose own lives are too dull and routine to find any thrill in the act of daily living. They look-on at wars in foreign territories as extensions of their own angst and frustrations. Such individuals find temporary comfort in watching others die.

This condition is more prevalent than many might realize; it is symptomatic of a world crushed by meaningless routine and managed by those lacking any manifest vision of something more deeply fulfilling to awaken starved imaginations.

Of course, a history of war will reveal that whole civilizations were born and dissolved via victory and defeat on the battlefield. It was believed that these blood baths were a price worth paying for the great accumulation of national wealth which followed them, if one was on the winning side. It is sobering to reflect that much of the fine architecture of old Europe is a result of plundered wealth.

War is made no less destructive by the fact that it can now be carried out by people sitting in air-conditioned ‘cockpits’ in Houston. People trained to kill ‘at a distance’. People whose chance of being themselves attacked by those they target, being pretty much nil. This type of killing is one step away from the ‘robotic soldier’, the envisioned battle field of the future and a direct of extension of the war games kids (and adults) play on their electronic gizmos.

But look, it’s still the same underlying disease. It’s still the fascination with the idea of somehow ‘coming out on top’ and having it over ‘an inferior’. It’s still reveling in destruction, on all planes of planetary life.

Children play war games. I used to play ‘Cowboys and Indians’. I was indoctrinated into ‘war thinking’ from a very early age. It was just after World War Two, and life in Britain was steeped in stories of heroism carried out by ‘our boys’ against the Nazis. Toy soldier armies ranged against each other across the sitting room floor as parents looked on with quiet acceptance. We soon graduated on to ‘cap guns’ and staged mock battles around the garden bushes and trees.

But nobody got killed in these ‘war games’ and the ground wasn’t turned into a sea of craters and toxic mud by our childhood antics. Other matters eventually attracted our curiosity and interest, and the guns and bows and arrows were dumped, unlikely to be seen again.

If mankind would only grow up, the same situation would repeat around the world. Adult individuals, blessed with a little responsibility and the slimmest glimmer of wisdom, would ‘move on’ to areas of interest that expressed an eagerness to support the planet, and not destroy it. A wish to explore new horizons of consciousness, and not to regress into thoughtless thuggery. A desire to meet and enjoy the company of other races and nationalities, and not to put a gun to their heads.

How can this madness have gone on so long? How can war still ‘be taken for granted’ in 2017?

Even those who argue vociferously for cutting back excessive CO2 emissions on the planet, don’t call for an end to war and ‘war games’ that are responsible for a large part of these emissions. They fail to realize that here is to be found the single largest transmission of toxic CO2 when set against any other global activity. I’m including a brief summary of the US position in 2013, just to illustrate the point:

“According to its own study, in 2013 the Pentagon consumed fuel equivalent to 90,000,000 barrels of crude oil. This amounts to 80% of the total fuel usage by the federal government. If burned as jet fuel it produces about 38,700,000 metric tons of CO2. And the Pentagon’s figures do not include carbon produced by the thousands of bombs dropped in 2013, or the fires that burned after the jets and drones departed. ” (Counter Punch).

Most environmentalists and climate change campaigners also ‘take war for granted’, it seems. It has been etched into our bones by an endless indoctrination process. A process whose symptoms can also be found in the way we are urged to be ‘aggressive’ and ‘competitive’ in order to make progress within the demands of the status quo. How much of what is called ‘education’ is about bringing out our creative potential instead of our aggressive potential? And how much is about cramming us with the means to ‘succeed’ in the mostly cut throat world of business and indeed, almost all professions?

We see the symptoms of aggression in daily life, and fail to question it. Is it any wonder that we fail to question war?

War is the most favored tool of the controlling powers. It supplies the coffers of the military industrial complex with an endless demand for production of weapons. The state then gets the pay-off and looks for another war to keep the cycle of death going. It is also a valuable diversionary tool for distracting the general public, while unpopular and controversial issues are pushed through the system, with only a few noticing.

Of course a great prize for warmongers in general, is anticipation of the breaking out of mother of all wars. And indeed, the ever looming threat of genocide never seems far off at the hands of those who play with power the way children play with their toy guns and swords, but without any of the child’s creativity. Today, in the USA in particular, megalomania has become wedded with a sort of Russian Roulette approach to who might present the next useful target for a bombing run or drone attack.

Witness how high the stakes get set in this fiendish game. Witness the Russian Federation and President Putin being ever further provoked by the West to take an aggressive step that could trigger a mega war scenario. The vicious taunting, without a shred of evidence to give it credence, is a mark of the madness which all too often grips those in power. Those who are determined to diminish all of life to a poisoned arrow of fabricated fear, which, if ever launched, would take all of humanity with it.

Let us be sure to keep a close eye on those whom we elect to administer our countries. The intoxication which comes with power is a very dangerous addiction, particularly when the play things at such people’s disposal are weapons of mass destruction. We need, more than ever, to be able to recognize the symptoms of megalomania and not confuse it with ‘strong leadership’. It is a major weakness in the delivery of what is called democracy, that so many people are still so easily fooled by those ‘standing for election’.

We are being pushed by ‘anti-life’ forces, some of whose origins are less than human, to see the planet and its people as expendable. To accept lies, deception and crude power-play as something akin to ‘normal’. To feel that it is not in our powers to bring deep change to a washed-out and degraded status quo. To believe that war is an ‘acceptable’ way of shifting around the totems of power.

It’s time we not only woke up, but got out of bed too. The hour is late, and this should add a significant degree of urgency to our endeavors. Mankind is blessed with deep powers of positive potential and these powers are far greater than the force which drives the war mongering anti-life minority. We are close to a tipping point in the growth of conscious awareness amongst caring human beings.

The key will be to channel this awareness into taking measures to regain control of our destinies.

To rid this world of those who hold its fate in their numb, insensitive hands. To act in unison and to defy all efforts to divide and conquer our growing sense of purpose and endeavor.

We can and we will, put an end to the madness of war. We must not wait for war to put an end to us.

 

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK Organic farming, a writer, actor, social entrepreneur and international activist. During the 1970’s he worked in experimental theatre as actor and assistant director, co-founding the The Institute for Creative Development, in Belgium, teaching holistic thinking and dramatic art. In the 1980’s he returned to the UK to take over the family farm and convert it to an organic system. His experience as a leader in reviving rural economies throughout the 1990’s, led him to be invited to join the advisory board of the South East of England Development Agency, and the Country Land Owners Association. He also served on the Oxfordshire Economic Partnership and was founder-chairman of The Association of Rural Businesses in Oxfordshire. In 2,000 he led an innovative project to revive regionally important market towns as centres of vibrant local activity and hubs for rejuvenated local food initiatives.

Julian is a prolific writer and broadcaster, his articles appear in a wide diversity of journals and on-line sites. Visit www.julianrose.info to find out about Julian’s highly diverse life and acclaimed books ‘Changing Course for Life’ and ‘In Defence of Life’.

It Is Bettter to Light One Candle than to Curse the Darkness

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By Harvey Lothian

Source: Dissident Voice

The world is in bad shape. Every reasonably intelligent, aware, objective person in the world knows, if only intuitively, that something is very, very wrong. There should not be this many armed conflicts, this much anger, this much violence, this much unemployment and underemployment, this much debt, this much homelessness, hunger, poverty, this ever widening gap between the income and wealth of the super rich and everyone else, and this much distrust in government and politicians. The future does not look good; a financial crisis and a socioeconomic collapse are just around the corner. Another World War or innumerable smaller wars seem almost certain.

Things are dark everywhere in the world, except in the offices and homes of the wealthy and highly connected people of the world. They control the world. There are no genuine democracies in the world, only oligarchies and dictatorships. The wealthy classes have never had it better. Never in recorded history has this class had higher income and wealth compared to the average working family. Oxfam reported that the richest 50% of the people own over 99% of the world’s wealth, the richest 1% of the world’s population hold over 50% of the world’s wealth, and the richest 62 people in the world has as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population, about 3.6 billion people.

Rich people’s insatiable greed has brought the world to this lamentable state. Make no mistake about it, the greed of the wealthy classes and their flunkies are responsible for the wretched state of the world today. We, the masses of the world, believed their lies because we are decent trusting people. We did not believe anyone would tell us such monstrous lies. The wealthy classes did, then they had us go to war against other innocent trusting people around the world while they looted the assets of our countries and stole our future. They have left us nothing but our confusion as to why our lives are going down the drain when we believed and tried our best to be patriotic citizens of our country. Our confusion is rapidly turning to anger as we learn more details about how the wealthy classes and leaders have deceived us, betrayed us, and ruined our lives. They have used us in the most despicable of ways; they used our trust, and naivety to rob and violate us to our very core, by destroying our lives and our hope and dreams for a better future for ourselves and our children.

To put this insanity in clear perspective, consider the following. Reliable U.N. agencies estimate that 32,000 children die around the world every day from hunger and hunger related diseases. They die because their parents do not have enough money to feed them a nourishing diet. Billions of people around the world live on one to three dollars a day, so we can safely say that if these 32,000 children’s parents earned $3 a day these children would not die. A tiny $96,000 a day given to these children’s parents, in wages for work performed, would save these children from what is apparently a painful death. That is $35,040,000 per year to save 32,000 innocent children, or, $1,095 per year to save one child. According to Forbes magazine there are 1,810 billionaires in the world worth a total of $6.5 trillion. Why do 32,000 children die every day from hunger and hunger related diseases, 224,000 every week, 11,648,000 every year when there is enough food to feed them and enough money to buy that food? Because we live in a totally insane world where accumulating wealth is more important to some that feeding hungry children.

There is no way out of the insane economic house of cards the rich have built except total collapse. The rich made that inevitable when they relentlessly incurred ever increasing amounts of federal debt, in our name, as they continually sent our well paying jobs to low wage countries making it impossible for us to reduce that debt through our taxes. They got super rich, we lost our good jobs and had enormous amounts of new debt piled on to us. This is not sustainable, the house of cards must eventually collapse. Or, our insane leaders will try to turn the world into one huge war zone.

We, the decent, sane people of the world now have an important decision to make; we can continue to curse the darkness the insane wealthy people of the world have created with their insane endless pursuit of more wealth, or, we can begin lighting candles by seeking and employing methods of solidly uniting us so we can defeat our common enemy and move us to a better way of living together. If we do not have a clear picture in our minds of how we want to live together in peace and harmony chaos will occur when the socio economic system collapses. We have to know where we are going, or we are lost.

Where do we want to go? The answer is obvious; we are all human beings, we all sprang from the same source, we are all brothers and sisters and all have exactly the same innate needs for food, water, shelter, warmth, sleep, social order, safety, security, stability, employment, a sense of belonging and love, and the opportunity to develop to our fullest potential. Simply put. we want and need to live in a world where countries are at peace with each other while we live in peace and harmony with each other in our country and we have the opportunity to lead decent normal lives while developing to our fullest potential.

The only way out of the horrendous mess of the collapsing house cards the greedy people have erected is if a vast majority of people around the world solidly unite as brothers and sisters under the motto, “All for one, one for all.” After the collapse occurs no one must be left without the necessities of life. Brothers and sisters take care of each other.

No kind of violence can be tolerated after the house of cards collapses. Violence breeds violence and solves no important long term problems. Brothers and sisters are not violent with each other.

Can we, the people of the world, do this? Can we solidly unite, watch out for each other, protect each other and help those in need? The alternative is too awful to think about. So, we must try. If we try we may succeed. It would be a wonderful world if we cared about others as much as we cared about ourselves; if we were all brothers and sisters. It is time to start lighting candles and stop cursing the darkness. Love thy neighbour as thyself. Or, at least try to do it.

 

Harvey Lothian is a 79-year-old and living on the Sunshine Coast of BC, Canada. His passions since a teenager have been history, politics, economics, sociology, social psychology, learning, traveling and reading. In recent years he has come to understand what Plato meant when he said all dogs have the soul of a philosopher.

Fake Everything — Confronting Our Ideological Hegemony

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By Janet Phelan

Source: Activist Post

The recent invocation of “fake news”—notably being levied by those on both sides of the political fence—points to more than allegations of conspiratorial efforts to sway the opinions of John Q Public. What we are seeing emerge is a challenge to the very protoplasm in which we live.

News is history, present tense. As such, accurate news is foundational to understanding the world we live in and the forces that mold it. It only takes a brief immersion into the recording of recent historical events to realize that the history books do not provide a faithful and truthful record.

According to many history books, JFK was felled by a lone assassin, a disgruntled ex-military and Communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Less than 25% of the American people believe this today.  A multiplicity of theories have sprung up in the wake of the Kennedy assassination; what can be agreed upon is that this event remains an open sore in the American psyche, unresolved and possibly unresolvable.

Foreknowledge surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the genesis of why we went to war in Iraq and, most currently, dispute as to who launched gas attacks in Syria (which seem to be impelling us towards war against Assad)—these pivotal events remain in dispute, while facile news reports, bleeding into the history books, provide inadequate answers to troubling questions as we march on towards an increasingly dim future.

If we cannot trust news and history, what can we trust?

Very little, as it turns out….

FAKE LAWS

The US’s legal system is nearly bullet proof, we are told. The separation of powers between the three branches of government ensures an independent judiciary, pivotal to the foundational promise of freedom and justice for all. I have harped enough in these pages over the years as to the weaponization of our legal system, which can be and is levied against targeted groups.

The reality is that there is no law, in terms of its equal application. And if there is no equal application, then what we have is not law but the naked exercise of power. The recent revelations that judges are laundering under the table bribes is only further evidence that we are living in a state of legal nullity.

FAKE HUMAN RIGHTS

Our much revered Constitutional protections are reflected in a number of international human rights treaties, most of which the US has refused to sign or ratify. On the rare occasion of US ratification, such as with the Convention Against Torture, we can see where the US has resorted to schizophrenic babble in her efforts to justify her behavior. Senator Tom Cotton’s recent declaration that “waterboarding is not torture,” which echoes previous assertions by President Bush, should have alerted us that the US intends to honor no international accords. Certainly not where human rights are involved.

The international human rights community has increasingly accommodated US imperatives here, morphing from an original mandate to political support of the oppression that it is tasked with addressing.

For example, let’s take a look at Front Line Defenders, an international Dublin based NGO whose website declares that “The mission of Front Line Defenders is to protect, defend, support, and act for and with human rights defenders whose lives and health are at risk because of their peaceful and legitimate activities.”

A review of FLD’s 230 open cases reads like a carefully vetted political tract. Third World journalists and human rights defenders in China, the Russian Federation and Iran top the list. There is not one single case involving a First World individual. Not one from the US, not one from Western Europe.

Perhaps such individuals have never seen the need to contact FDL, you wonder. The answer is a resounding NO. FDL refuses its services to Western journalists and human rights defenders.

FDL’s financial statements provide a clue to its political decision making of which human rights defenders it will assist and which it will throw to the lions. FDL admits to having received 2,535,982 Euros in government sponsorship in 2016, up from 2,351,474 in 2015. Public donations accounted for a mere 38,900 of last year’s income, which totaled 4,688,641 Euros. Its state sponsors include Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany and the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights. Its corporate sponsors include George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, among others.

Article19, the international press freedom NGO, also appears to be toeing the line in terms of trumpeting the causes of vetted Third World journalists. Article19 has admitted to getting funding from the US State Department and while it maintains offices in the Americas, it notably excludes US journalists at risk from its services or reports.

You may still not believe that Western journalists and human rights defenders may currently be at risk. These NGOs have done a very good job in keeping up that perception.

FAKE FOOD

We are not only living in a state of falseness. We are also eating it. The supermarket food is not only GMO-laden. It is also laced with carcinogens and Alzheimer’s inducing agents. This report from the venerable National Institutes of Health is ten years old but deserves to be revisited.

In the intervening decade, the push to contaminate otherwise healthy food, such as yogurt, with cancer inducing fake sugars, has only increased.

And if you thought that your brain was immune to chemical attack, this report should stop you in your tracks. As the so called age related diseases of dementia and Alzheimer’s are now occurring in younger populations, one might want to start asking why the push to chemicalize our bodies, our brains, our environment and our futures.

FAKE MEDICINE

That would be not only vaccines. Many so called beneficial medicines are now found to cause severe illness. Drug induced liver diseases, drug induced renal diseases, drug induced neurological and auto immune diseases—one wonders sometimes if the cure is worse than the illness. The pervasiveness of medically induced medical conditions has led Dr. Josh Axe to declare that “Conventional Medicine is the Leading Cause of Death.”

FAKE RELIGION

Somewhere in the Old Testament, between the Garden of Eden and Moses coming down from the mountain with those venerable tablets, a certain perception of man’s place in the universe got launched. Genesis declared the following: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Man appears to have taken this to heart.

Dominionism. Manifest Destiny. The White Man’s Burden. Colonialism. Wars for Oil and Wars of Eugenics. All these speak to a mindset wherein man is allowed, no, entitled to assert his mastery over the earth and, if he has enough brute strength, over his fellows. The world view of humans living with, living among, not in ascendency over but in cooperation with, has largely fallen to the Biblical imperative of asserting control over and manipulation of an increasingly beleaguered planet.

Recent research points to the possibility of an entirely different reality than what we have assumed. In as yet unpublished research by Ana Willem, she writes that

The crux of the notion or argument pointing towards existence as a holographic reality, or that points to the Universe (or more correctly, Multiverse as per the work of Richard Amoroso and Elizabeth Rauscher in their book ‘The Holographic Anthropic Multiverse’) being a holographic reality, hinges on the physical and mathematical co-existence of different dimensions in which information or energy is shared or actedon in a way that it is transformed.

Willem goes on to write that

The point of departure for my work is the Mayan Calendar, and more specifically the ‘base’ Tzolkin calendar which is created using the numbers 13 and 20 to create a 260 day calendar grid. The calendar is assembled in a grid using the number 13 as the count of columns, and the number 20 as the count of rows. It is created by starting at the top-left cell of the grid, and counting to 13 as you move down the first column. When you hit the 14th row of the first column, you start counting over again at 1 as you continue to move first down, and then to the next column, and then down again, until you have counted to thirteen 20 times, and the 260 day grid is filled.

According to her,

Part of my work studies the various ways in which the Matrixes I am discovering diverge from the work on Toroidal Vortexes of Rothko and Powell. In addition, I found that the spliced grid created a numerical topology in which the inherent ‘scale’ of a given numerical matrix creates sections of coherent waves that cycle in between the harmonic topologies representing infinity and zero, changing polarity at each crest, and then cycling back. They occur only in specific sections of the spliced the matrix, and interweave like a family of related sine-like waves through one another in a way that resembles highways or streams. This is one way that the matrices I am studying are different than the ones being researched by Powell and Rothko. Much like the topologies being studied by Rothko and Powell, and being made into actual machines/products by Daniel Nunes), the phenomenology of what I have discovered acts very much like a machine.

The million dollar question, asserts Willem, is “what it means or how it specifically relates to the idea of a Holographic Anthropic Multiverse is not yet answered.”

If we are to survive this century, we will need to do more than drain the swamp. We will need to reassess not only the circumstances which bespeak profound efforts at deception by our leaders. We will also need to reassess our place in the universe, with humility and frankness. Our continued trumpeting that God is on our side, that we are in fact formed in His image—and by implication, His representative on this earth, has pushed us to the brink of apocalypse. If we are to survive ourselves, we must first recognize who we are—and who we are not.

 

Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino County Sentinel, The Santa Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press Telegram, Oui Magazine and other regional and national publications. Janet specializes in issues pertaining to legal corruption and addresses the heated subject of adult conservatorship, revealing shocking information about the relationships between courts and shady financial consultants. She also covers issues relating to international bioweapons treaties. Her poetry has been published in Gambit, Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea One and other magazines. Her first book, The Hitler Poems, was published in 2005. She is also the author of a tell-all book EXILE, (also available as an ebook). She currently resides abroad.

 

The Choice: Traitor to Empire, or Traitor to Mankind

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By John Rohn Hall

Source: Dissident Voice

I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all. You live in the belly of the beast.

— Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara

A birth certificate from somewhere between the beast’s belly and its beating heartland condemns me to the dubious distinction of being among the privileged 5% of humans who claim United States Citizenship. A population which demands the right to consume 25% of earth’s resources while billions of our fellow-humans go hungry. A shame it was wasted on me, for I’ve never been one to make my country proud. Basically, I’ve always been a bad American. Cases in point: I never stand for The Star-Spangled Banner, nor do I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of Retroperistalsis. I no longer believe in, nor vote in sham, mockery-of-democracy U.S. elections. I make no investments in Wall Street, for fear of inadvertently supporting The Military-Industrial Complex. If I happen to turn on the evening so-called news, I can’t resist calling Lester Holt “America’s House Negro”, for Holt’s Nightly Lies loudly confirm what Chris Hedges tells us: “No real journalist makes $5 million a year…Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.” And I pray regularly to whatever gods may be that Empire dies with a whimper, rather than a bang…and soon. There is little doubt that I am, and have for many years, been a traitor to Empire and its agendas of Neo-colonialism and wars for profit.

Fifty years ago, while Che Guevara was being summarily executed by the C.I.A. and its Bolivian Military stooges, my lifelong battle against Empire was just beginning. Che’s last words were some of the most prophetic ever spoken, as he looked his assassin in the eyes and said: “Shoot coward. You are only going to kill a man.” Only the good die young, they say. It is said that Che is much more powerful in death than he was in life, as a half century later, his legacy lives on and grows. Two years after his demise, he’d lit fire of discontent beneath a whole generation of Americans, and stood posthumously by my side as I gave the U.S. Army my very best middle-fingered salute, thereby refusing induction into the most over-funded, offensive, aggressive, killing force the world has ever known.

My neighbors and acquaintances are not evil or bad people. They’re simply oblivious to what George Carlin lovingly called “the big red, white, and blue dick” being shoved up their asses by the likes of Lester Holt and his cadres in criminal propaganda on a nightly basis. Americans are to be pitied for their willful ignorance. If I were a Christian, I’d ask God to forgive them, for they’re a bunch of clueless jackasses who know not what they do. But not being a believer in the imaginary bearded man in the stratosphere, I write. Not that I have any delusions of being omniscient, but my moderate level of enlightenment has been reached, one step at a time, one book or article at a time, and Che’s sword is now my pen. Che’s rifle, my Hewlett-Packard. The pen (in certain circumstances) is mightier than the sword. If Che had fought the Revolution, in the belly of the beast, with bullets, he would have been eliminated long before 1967. Lucky for me, thus far, Empire only executes the highest-level truth-talkers and traitors to the Military-Industrial agenda.

NBC demoted Brian Williams for the high crime of telling his own personal lies, instead of just the official ones, then replaced him with Mr. Holt. I’d seriously doubt whether either of these corporate whores, or any of their collaborating competitors give a rat’s ass whether their thousand-dollar-a-sentence blather bears any resemblance to the truth. Truth is the enemy of the overlords they serve, and has no place in the nightly news agenda, nor in any facet of Empire’s Disinformation Network. Truthful coverage of Empire’s latest wars for profit: Forbidden. Questioning the basic good intentions of our exceptional government: Not allowed. Tow the line, learn and regurgitate the fabrications du jour, read all recent directives from the C.I.A., keep your nose clean, your Armani Suit pressed, and God Bless America.

My insouciant neighbors and acquaintances have never heard of Noam Chomsky, and know nothing of Manufactured Consent. They have never seen a copy of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States. They have no idea that “War (really) is a Racket” (Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler). They’d likely not even blink an eye at the atrocities wrought against the Southern half of The Western Hemisphere by the U.S.A. and its European counterparts, as artfully reported by Eduardo Galeano in Open Veins of Latin America. Hugo Chavez gave a copy to Barack Obama shortly before his mysterious and suspicious demise. Too bad Barack never read it. Not that he would have cared, being well programmed by the C.I.A.

When I’ve tried to explain to mainstream Americans the dastardly scheming of the C.I.A. in foreign countries; its economic hit men and jackals, bribery, coup d ‘etat, assassination, and finally bombs and bullets…as exposed by ex-C.I.A. Operative John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the responses are glazed, dazed expressions. I might as well be talking to four-year-olds when explaining that 9-11 was an inside job, as proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by such sources as Michael C. Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon, or that the C.I.A. and other branches of our government eliminated J.F.K. for choosing the path of peace, as explained by James W. Douglass in his masterpiece, J.F.K. and the Unspeakable. The subtitle of the J.F.K. volume is “Why He Died and Why it Matters”, but what really matters to my adult four-year-olds is whatever professional gladiator games happen to be in season.

Americans don’t want to hear that “terrorism” is nothing but the direct result of Empire’s overreach and military incursions into every little resource-rich, under-militarized country on earth. Who, outside a few conspiracy theorists like me could give a shit about Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy, which includes “Blowback”, and exposes The U.S. Military’s Empire of Bases and aspirations for complete world domination? If I happen to mention The Great American Holocaust (the most deadly in earth’s history), as graphically illuminated in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of The United States, in oblivious company, white faces gaze at me in wonder…wondering why I’d care about the slaughter of a few tens of millions of inferior beings. One of the biggest secrets in the U.S.A. is the mystery of the most enduring, morally upstanding, and advanced civilization in earth’s history; a story expertly told by my friend Jeff J. Brown in China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations. After 100 years under the heavy hand of Empire, the sleeping dragon is once again rising. Empire knows it…thus the so-called Pivot to Asia Strategy, and another $60 billion gift for The Pentagon.

The few of us who’ve come to understand the intrinsic evil, and violence on every level, of the United States of America, reach a point where a choice must be made. As U.S. Citizens, we can choose denial and ignore our own enlightenment, thus remaining part of the problem. Or we can cross The Rubicon, as Caesar did, and by doing so becoming traitors to Empire, enemies of the state, and strangers in our own land. If we choose the latter, alea iacta est; the die is cast, and there is no going back. Ignorance may be bliss, but the truth shall set ye free.

Empire is on a collision course with destiny. It’s a runaway train, carrying enough Weapons of Mass Destruction to turn our fading blue planet into shades of smoldering gray, and end life on earth as we know it. Never underestimate the blind, ignorant greed and mindless dreams of dominance of the sociopaths in the cab of Empire’s Engine. You know it. I know it. We are soldiers in Empire’s Underground Army, armed only with words, ideas, brilliance, open eyes, and hope. Those bearing arms need not apply. The battlefield of this war is for the minds of the insouciant. Somehow we must awaken an entire population which only pretends to sleep, and has no interest in buying what we’re selling. Always remember how lucky we are. We’re fighting the most important fight of all. Here in the belly of the beast.

Hasta la victoria siempre!