Tag Archives: Oligarchy

Color Revolution Comes Home?

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By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Source: Popular Resistance

The United States has perfected the art of regime change operations. The US is the largest empire in world history with more than 1,000 military bases and troops operating throughout the world. In addition to military force, the US uses the soft power of regime change, often through ‘Color Revolutions.’ The US has been building its empire since the Civil War era, but it has been in the post-World War II period that it has perfected regime change operations.

Have the people of the United States been the victims of regime change operations at home? Have the wealthiest and the security state created a government that serves them, rather than the people? To answer these questions, we begin by examining how regime change works and then look at whether those ingredients are being used domestically.

Color Revolutions and Regime Change Operations

Almost from the start, the CIA’s role has been more than intelligence gathering. It has been a key player in putting in place governments friendly to the United States and conducting other operations, e.g. the CIA is currently involved in drone strikes.

One of the first regime change operations of the CIA was Operation Ajax conducted in Iran, and led by Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, who was president when the US solidified its global empire ambitions. The CIA was founded in 1947 and the regime change coup in Iran was 1953. Greg Maybury writes in “Another Splendid Little Coup“: “Placing to one side an early dress rehearsal in Syria in 1949, the Iran coup was the first post-War exercise in regime change upon the part of Anglo-American alliance…”  Just this month the US government released documents showing the CIA and State Department’s planning and implementation of the coup against the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. This release supplements one from 2013 that did not reveal the full role of the US in the coup.

The Iran coup was crude compared to more modern efforts but had the ingredients that have become common – civil society protests against the government, media reports supporting the protests, agents within the government supporting the coup and replacement of the government with a US-friendly regime. The Iran coup may have been the most costly mistake in US foreign policy because it undermined a secular democratic government in Iranthat could have been the example for the region. Instead the US installed the brutal Shah of Iran, whose rule ended in the 1979 revolution, in which, as Maybury reports, the US was also implicated because it felt the Shah had overstayed his welcome.

The Iran coup was perceived as a great CIA success, so it was copied in other Middle Eastern countries as well as countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Regime change is still a major tool of US foreign policy. There is a long-term ongoing coup campaign in Venezuela, with its most recent episode last week in which a helicopter attack on the Supreme Court was tied to the US DEA and CIA. The US has allied with oligarchs, supported violent protests and provided funds for the opposition, which has also worked to undermine the Venezuelan economy — a tactic the US has used in other coups, e.g. the coup of Allende in Chile.

The coup in Ukraine, which the media falsely calls a ‘democratic revolution,’ was, as the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor says, “the most blatant coup in history.” The CIA and State Department played the lead roles.

Victoria Nuland, an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, bragged that the US spent $5 billion to build civil society opposition against a government that leaned toward Russia. The government funded civil society opposition through US AID, which is the open vehicle for what the CIA used to do covertly, along with the National Endowment for Democracy. This funding was used to build oppositional civil society groups and create destabilization. They focused on the issue of corruption, which exists in every government, and built it up to a centerpiece for regime change. The US allied with extremist right-wing groups in Ukraine.

The US picked the new leaders of Ukraine. This included Petro Poroshenko, whom U.S. officials refer to as “Our Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko” in a classified diplomatic cable from 2006 . The selected Prime Minister was Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Before the coup, Victoria Nuland told the US Ambassador to Ukraine that ‘Yats’ should be the prime minister. And, the Finance Minister was Natalia Jaresko, a long-time State Department official who moved to Ukraine after the US-inspired coup, the Orange Revolution, to become a conduit for US funding of civil society through her hedge fund. She was a US citizen whom Poroshenko made a Ukrainian on the day she was appointed Finance Minister. To top it off, fmr. Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and fmr. Secretary of State John Kerry’s longtime financial ally, Devon Archer, were put on the board of the largest private gas corporation in the Ukraine. Yet, the US media refuses to call this complete take over of the country by the United States a coup and instead describes Russia as the aggressor.

The US has perfected regime change operations from the 1950s up through today. The standard method of operation is finding an issue to cause dissent, building opposition in a well funded civil society ‘movement’, manipulating the media, putting in place US friendly leaders and blaming US opposition for the coup to hide US involvement. This approach is consistent no matter which party is in power in the US.

The Kleptocratic Oligarch Coup In The United States

Let’s apply the lessons from around the world to the United States. There is no question the US is an oligarchy. We say no question because recent political studies have proven it in multiple ways.

One difference in the US is that money plays an outsized influence in US elections. The wealthy can buy the government they want through campaign donations and by anonymous spending but the tools of color revolutions are still needed to legitimize the government. Legitimacy is getting harder to buy. Many realize we live in a mirage democracy. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs reported in 2016 the extent of the loss of legitimacy of US government:

“Nine in 10 Americans lack confidence in the country’s political system, and among a normally polarized electorate, there are few partisan differences in the public’s lack of faith in the political parties, the nominating process, and the branches of government.”

Jimmy Carter has pointed to the “unlimited bribery” of government as turning the US into an oligarchy. The government needs to use the tools of regime change at home in order to create an veneer of legitimate government.

The Donald Trump presidency, which we regularly criticize, brings a lot of these tools to the forefront because Trump beat the system and defeated the elites of both parties. As a result, Democratic Party propaganda is being used to undermine Trump not only based on his policies but also through manufactured crises such as RussiaGate. The corporate media consistently hammers home RussiaGate, despite the lack of evidenceto support it. Unlike the Watergate or Iran-Contra scandals, there is no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to get elected. And, the security state – the FBI and the agencies that conduct regime change operations around the world – is working to undermine Trump in a still unfolding domestic coup.

Civil society also has a strong role. John Stauber writes that:

“The professional Progressive Movement that we see reflected in the pages of The Nation magazine, in the online marketing and campaigning of MoveOn and in the speeches of Van Jones, is primarily a political public relations creation of America’s richest corporate elite, the so-called 1%, who happen to bleed Blue because they have some degree of social and environmental consciousness, and don’t bleed Red.  But they are just as committed as the right to the overall corporate status quo, the maintenance of the American Empire, and the monopoly of the rich over the political process that serves their economic interests.”

Civil society groups created or aligned with the Democratic Party are defining the new form of false-resistance as electing Democrats. The Democrats, as they have done throughout history as the oldest political party, know how to control movements and lead them into ineffectiveness to support the Democratic Party agenda. We described, in “Obamacare: The Biggest Insurance Scam in History,” how this was done skillfully during the health reform process in 2009. This new resistance is just another tool to empower the elites, not resistance to the oligarchic-kleptocrats that control both parties. In fact, a major problem in progressive advocacy is the funding ties between large non-profits and corporate interests. The corruption of money is seen in organizations that advocate for corporate-friendly policies in education, health care, energy and climate, labor, and other issues.

Color Revolution Tools Used In The US

Now the tools the US uses for regime change around the world are being used at home to funnel activist energy and efforts into the Democratic party and electoral activities. In order to resist this new “resistance” we need to be aware of it and how it operates. We need to see through propaganda, such as RussiaGate, and attempts to manipulate the masses through scripted events that are portrayed as organic, such as the recent “sit in” by Rep. John Lewis and Sen. Cory Booker on the Capitol steps, or through highly emotional cultural content that portrays the plutocratic parties as parties of the people. We have to remember that the root issue is plutocracy and the US has two plutocratic parties, often referred to as “The Duopoly.”

We must continue to focus on the issues that are in crisis such as the economy, health care, education, housing, racism, inequality and militarization at home and abroad. We must fight for these issues independent of political party. We must be clear and uncompromising in our demands so that we are not taken off track. And we must have a clear vision of the future that we want to see.

Popular Resistance is a co-convener of the People’s Congress of Resistance. The People’s Congress will bring people together from around the US to meet in Washington, DC this September to outline a vision from the grassroots. A draft of that vision will be circulated over the next few months so that many people will provide input. Check out the People’s Congress here and get involved however you are able.

3 Signs You Might Be a Pawn of the New World Order

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By Sigmund Fraud

Source: Activist Post

The mother lode of all conspiracies is the New World Order. In essence, it is a high-level, multi-generational plan to render all sovereign national governments subservient to an unelected, supranational, authoritarian world government. In this scheme, the people of planet earth will be micromanaged with strict social, technological and financial controls. It is the total consolidation of global power into the hands of a ruthless, minority elite who aim to rape the planet and enslave the human race.

They can’t do it alone, though, they need your help. They need witting and unwitting minions to set the brush fires of revolutionary change in our towns and cities. They need pawns to agitate and disrupt the relative peace, and to upend the status quo with turmoil. They need senseless, animal-like violence, caught on camera and replayed ad infinitum on cable news and social media. They need terror, of both the foreign and domestic variety. They need fear in the streets, and fear in the minds of the proles.

Most of all, though, they need you to create chaos, so that they can bring order.

The powers that be, those demons of the deep state, those orchestrators of fear, famine, debt and war, cannot achieve their plan without leading the masses into confusion and disarray, for only then will the masses demand an end to their own freedoms and privacy. And sadly, it appears their army of minions is growing in strength and audacity.

In the aftermath of Charlottesville it is more clear than ever that there is no shortage of pawns for the New World Order. The armies of ignorance are gathering, and here are three signs you might be among them.

1. You’re Playing the Divide and Conquer Game

Left vs. Right. Black vs. White. Republican vs. Democrat. Citizen vs. Immigrant. Communist vs. Fascist. Have vs. Have Not. My Team vs. Your Team. Me vs. You.

There a thousand and one ways for a society to faction and split apart, but without community and unity we are lost, doomed and done. If you’re entrenched in one side of any dualistic paradigm, seeking to convert or to crush the other side, then you’re playing right into the hands of the NWO.

The tactic of top-down divide and conquer is the oldest play in the book of how to overthrow sovereign people. The rulers foment conflict amongst the people, then step out of the way and let them fight it out, so that they can step in later as the benevolent savior… big brother.

If you’re playing this game, then you’re doing their work for them.

2.) You’re a Vocal Supporter of the War Du Jour

Today the drums are beating for a nuclear assault against North Korea… and military intervention in Venezuela. Just recently we’ve been told we need to prepare for conflict with Russia, and that an invasion of Syria is in our best interests. Prior to that we destroyed Libya and Iraq, we occupied Afghanistan, and we’ve been using the war on drugs and the war on terror as casus belli for interference in dozens of countries around the world.

The imperial mindset is several generations deep in America, and the citizenry has all but fully abandoned the anti-war stance in favor of gung-ho, jingoistic cheerleading of any and all military escapades.

The New World Order is brute force, but in our hyper-connected world they need to create the appearance of public support in order to advance the military industrial colonization of the world. It cannot do this without the public support and advocacy of at least some segment of the proletariat.

If you’re always on board for the expansion of international conflict, taking cues from mainstream media in this regard, and demanding action against all of our perceived enemies, you are aiding and abetting the New World Order.

3.) You Direct Your Anger and Frustration Towards Anyone but Those at the Very Top of the Pyramid

Zero doubt there are a million problems plaguing our complex world today, and it can be comforting to blame someone whom you can look in the eye, someone who is unprotected by the wealth and security afforded by the oligarchy. Emotional reactions to the stresses in our modern world are to be expected, but without knowledge of the contemporary power structures pulling the big strings, those reactions can be sorely misdirected onto lesser players and other pawns.

The truth is out there. At the root, a geo-political financial elite is conquering the world through manipulation of currencies, the imposition of astronomically insurmountable levels of public and private debt, and full-spectrum military dominance of uncooperative nations. This program is far above and beyond the capacity of your fellow citizen.

If you’re convinced that taking your outrage to the streets in war against your fellow countrymen is going to solve the problems of the world, you’re helping to fulfill the goals of the New World Order.

Final Thoughts

Social unrest and civil war are the final stepping-stones to a brave new authoritarian future. In order to get there, the American people must exhibit a self-motivated and determined resolve for violence against each other.

The New World Order needs blue pill takers, those people who deliberately choose ignorance in exchange for spurious peace of mind. They need useful idiots to help distract the rest of the population from the crimes of the oligarchy. They need armies of volunteer foot soldiers and pawns who will create the conditions necessary for martial law and even broader restrictions of rights and freedoms.

For the New World Order to succeed, we must ultimately demand our own slavery.

The Status of the Global Oligarchy

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By Francesca de Bardin

Source: Global Research

The term oligarchy is derived from the Greek words meaning “rule or command by a few.” The term is generally used in the derogatory sense to describe a tyrannical system that practices oppression to ensure obedience. While oligarchies are generally associated with antiquity and as being localized, many of today’s larger democracies can justifiably be called oligarchies. The following is a brief discourse on how modern oligarchs manage control over societies, using power exercised through economic and political means. Today the global oligarchy is controlled by a few hundred families.

Many modern democracies are systems where the actual differences between political rivals are very small, and in these systems the oligarchic elite impose strict limits on what constitutes an acceptable and respectable political position. As for the “politicians”, their careers depend heavily on unelected economic, political, and media elites. Therefore, we have the popular saying, “There is only one political party.” An oligarchy, as we know, is a governing structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, or military control, and so on. In these governing structures control is maintained by a few prominent families who typically pass their influence from one generation to the next. But, inherited power is not the only means of transference.

While oligarchies are often controlled by a few powerful families whose children are reared and mentored to become inheritors of power, this power is not always exercised openly, and most oligarchs prefer to remain “the power behind the throne,” so to speak. Perhaps the best example of such a family, the Rothschild’s continue the long tradition of innovation based on a steady accrual, over more than two centuries, of expertise, experience, and immeasurable wealth. Their businesses continue to be at the forefront of global financial and commercial activities.

There are other “oligarchs” also in control however, but in addition to the “old money” influences, the oligarchs have now created a “new money” cabal of influencerswho play an ever-increasing role economically, politically, and at the structural level as well. “Unlimited” money, whether it is old or new, exerts a massive force. As an example of how money plays a role in the American system, a radio interview on the Thom Hartmann Program in July 2015 featured former president Jimmy Carter saying that the United States is now an oligarchy in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” According to the former president, both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, “look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.”

President Carter is not alone in his assertions. Other contemporary authors have also characterized current conditions in the United States and Western Europe as being oligarchic in nature. One, Jeffrey A. Winters, PhD Yale, 1991, professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of Oligarchy, argues that

“oligarchy and democracy operate within a single system, and American politics is a daily display of their interplay.”

Of course, there are many others among today’s great thinkers who profess oligarchs essentially rule us. Through the watchful eyes of independent media and academics willing to voice their dissent, the reality of the global oligarchy comes into view. While most people have always understood that the rich rule, most shy away from believing in a truly Orwellian control conspiracy. The fact is, oligarchies exist in small towns, large cities, and in countries today, and we really do have an alliance of oligarchic dynasties that is global.

Not only do these modern oligarchs exert control over the governmental tiers, they also influence the philosophy and ideas nurtured in academia, through social institutions, and especially the policy institutions of the world. One example was recently outlined by Author Steven MacMillan, who’s editor of the Analyst Report, who went so far as to suggest that institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations, are in fact “part of a shadowy network of private organizations that stretches across the globe to influence policy of most nation states.”

While the mainstream insists anti-oligarch voices are merely conspiracy theorists, hundreds of experts are now revealing the truth of this “1984” system bent on complete takeover. In a Guardian piece from 2015, author Seumas Milne framed the argument that:

“Escalating inequality is the work of a global elite that will resist every challenge to its vested interests.” 

He goes on to briefly outline the dysfunctional systems these oligarchs have set in place for decades now, but what’s significant about his report is the ever increasing greed of these elites. As world systems, markets, and resources contract and become depleted, the oligarchs feel the pressure to extract still more from us. The simple way of putting this is to frame them as “addicts of growth”, or insatiable tyrants when all is said and done. When solutions for rising inequality are suggested, those in power balk at every turn these days. Austerity, increased tax burdens on the middle and lower classes, still more borrowing at the national and corporate level, even war with Russia over resources seem to be on the table to prop up this oligarchy. Many experts contend that it was this global elite’s unrealistic response to the changing global landscape that caused most of today’s geo-political crises.

There is some good news however. Although the global oligarchy aims to have total control of the world, it has not yet reached that goal. This oligarchy is not monolithic, there is competition among them and turf warfare. This can be seen in the competition for resources and wealth worldwide, and especially in the new anti-Russia propaganda. The oligarchs are infighting in many cases, the Ukraine situation represents a good case study for this. So, this infighting, along with individual opposition via economic and political factions, tends to block the global oligarchy from cementing full control. Furthermore, grassroots citizen movements are attempting to oppose these modern aristocrats as well, and together the movements have the ability awaken the greater citizenry and challenge the oligarchy.

Our Political Parties Are Obsolete

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

When the parties do finally implode, the general mood will be: good riddance.

History informs us that once something is obsolete, it can disappear far faster than anyone expected. While we generally think of obsoleted technologies vanishing, social and political systems can become obsolete as well.

Should a poor soul who entered a deep coma a year ago awaken today, we must forgive his/her astonishment at the political wreckage left by the 2016 election. The Democratic Party, a mere year ago an absurdly over-funded machine confident in an easy victory in the presidential race, is now a complete shambles: its leadership in free-fall, its Fat-Cat donors disgusted, and its demented intoxication with pinning collaboration with Russia on the Trump camp eroding whatever feeble legacy legitimacy it still holds. What the party stands for is a mystery, as its Elites are clearly beholden to insiders, special interests and Corporate donors while glorifying the worst excesses of globalism and the National Security State’s endless war on civil liberties.

The newly awakened citizen would also marvel at the chaotic war zone of the Republican Party, in which the Insider Warlords are battling insurgent Outsiders, while the same Elites that fund the Democratic machine are wondering what they’re buying with their millions of dollars in contributions, for it’s unclear what the Republican Party stands for: it’s for Small Government, except when it’s for Bigger Government, which is 95% of the time; it’s for more law enforcement and the militarization of local police, and more intrusion into the lives of the citizenry; it’s for stricter standards for welfare, except for Corporate Welfare; it’s for tax reform, except the thousands of pages of give-aways, loopholes and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations all remain untouched, and so on: a smelly tangle of special interests masked by a few sprays of PR air freshener to the millions left behind by the globalization that has so enriched Corporate America and the class of financier-owners, bankers, insiders and technocrats–the same group that funds and controls both political parties.

Political parties arose to consolidate centralized control of the central state.We have now reached the perfection of this teleology: the political elites and the financial elites are now one class. In our pay-to-play “democracy,” only the votes of wealth and institutional power count.

As I have often noted here, the returns on centralization are diminishing to less than zero. The initial returns on centralizing capital, production and social-political power were robust, but now the centralized cartel-state is eating its own tail, masking its financial bankruptcy by borrowing from the future, and cloaking its political bankruptcy behind the crumbling facades of the legacy parties.

Now that technology has enabled decentralized currency, markets and governance, the centralized political parties are obsolete. They are the political equivalent of buggy whips, and those holding tight to the fantasy that their current dissolution will magically be transformed into unity by some future leadership will be disappointed.

The fragmentation of the political parties is not temporary–it is permanent. As I discussed yesterday, political and social fragmentation are the consequence of economic fragmentation–these are self-reinforcing dynamics, as fragmentation in one feeds fragmentation in the others.

Those who have gotten rich inside the bloated machinery of the parties will never accept their era has ended. The dreams of private jets and millions of dollars in contributions die hard. But the voters and donors are both waking up to the cold reality that the parties are nothing but wealth distribution machines that sluice millions from financial elites to various political elites.

All the legacy claims of both parties ring false; neither party gives a hoot about the working class, small business or civil liberties. Their entire game plan is to whip up hot-button social issues to distract a fragmented citizenry and arouse last-gasp emotional loyalty to empty slogans.

Is it any wonder that people are abandoning both parties and claiming Independent status? All the core systems of the nation are failing, visibly, painfully, badly, and yet all the parties can dredge up is more of the same and TINA–there is no alternative.

The citizen who just awakened also awakened to the truth: the legacy parties have no solutions; their game plan is to milk the system as long as they can before it collapses in a rotten heap of corruption, fraud, collusion, debt and profiteering that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

When the parties do finally implode, the general mood will be: good riddance. A centralized spoils system is no longer a viable way to govern the nation. Political systems everywhere are facing a choice: Decentralize or die.

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.

America’s Oligarchs Will Control 70% Of National Wealth By 2021

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By Whitney Webb

Source: AntiMedia

America’s rich just won’t quit getting richer, according to a new study released in mid-June by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm. The study, which seeks to analyze the global wealth management industry, as well as the evolution of private wealth, uncovered some startling statistics that suggest that global financial inequality will grow significantly by the year 2021.

The firm found that the already massive gap between the world’s wealthy elite – the approximately 18 million households that hold at least more than $1 million in assets – and everyone else is continuing to widen at a remarkable rate. The estimated 70 million people who make up these households were found to control 45 percent of the world’s $166.5 trillion in wealth. And in just four more years, it is estimated that they will control more than half of the world’s wealth, despite representing less than 1 percent of the world’s current population.

However, while rising inequality is a global phenomenon, it is especially pronounced in the United States. While wealth inequality in the U.S. is by no means an unknown phenomenon, the U.S. is significantly more unequal than most other countries, with the nation’s elite currently holding 63 percent of the private wealth. The U.S. elite’s share of national wealth is also growing much faster than the global average, with millionaires and billionaires expected to control an estimated 70 percent of the nation’s wealth by 2021.

The U.S.’ high wealth inequality largely owes to post-World War II government policies that have seen almost a quarter of all national income go to its wealthiest residents. Meanwhile, wages for the majority of Americans have remained stagnant for decades – in contrast to the richest Americans, their future economic outlook is incredibly bleak by comparison.

The U.S. is also home to more billionaires and millionaires than anywhere else in the world, which partly explains how U.S. policy has come to favor them over the years. According to Bloomberg, two out of five millionaires and billionaires live in the United States – and their ranks are growing.

While the world’s richest citizens may be pleased by the results of BCG’s recent study, there is plenty for them to be worried about if history is any indicator. Indeed, history shows that societies with drastic wealth inequality are much more unstable and more likely to experience drastic economic failure or outright societal collapse.

For instance, a 2014 study conducted by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center noted that over-consumption and wealth inequality have occurred in the collapse of every civilization over the last 5,000 years. That same study also warned that rising inequality could easily lead to an unsustainable use of resources and the “irreversible collapse” of global industrial civilization.

This warning seems particularly prescient, given that wealth inequality in the U.S. is well above that of past civilizations that eventually collapsed as a result of these factors. For example, at the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the top 1 percent of the Roman elite controlled just 16 percent of the society’s wealth, a measly figure compared to the percentage commanded by the 1-percenters of the U.S.

While the BCG study paints a rosy picture for the world’s millionaires and billionaires, particularly in the United States, they should be gravely concerned that their growing accumulation of wealth could have drastic consequences – not just for those poorer than them, but for everyone.

The Crisis of US Imperial Governance and the Struggle for a New World

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By Danny Haiphong

Source: Black Agenda Report

“Economic crisis at home and endless war abroad has placed finance and monopoly capital in political disarray.”

When I was here last year, I spoke a lot about ideology and how the struggle for social transformation in the mainland of imperialism partly depended upon the ideological development of oppressed people trapped within US borders. The 2016 elections were beginning to pick-up momentum, but it was unclear what direction they would go. Fast-forward to the present and, I don’t know about you all, but I am exhausted. The election of Donald Trump has presented both new and old challenges. It has created an almost circus-like political environment with dire consequences for the masses. What precipitated the circus-show is a crisis of governance that has been intentionally misunderstood by US imperialism’s corporately owned media and political elite.

To distort the crisis, a state of anti-Russian madness has been prescribed to medicate political consciousness in rapidly changing times. The rise of China and Russia has exposed the bankruptcy of US imperialism on all fronts. Economic crisis at home and endless war abroad has placed finance and monopoly capital in political disarray. Donald Trump took advantage of the chaos. He spoke about jobs, he spoke about wars, and he spoke to the growing insecurities of white Americans of working and middle class status who no longer can rely on the wages of whiteness for guaranteed prosperity. The duopoly and its capitalist masters had no one to offer, indeed nothing to offer, so Trump rode in on his orange horse to become the head of state of imperialism.

“The rise of China and Russia has exposed the bankruptcy of US imperialism on all fronts.”

The ruling class does not want people in the United States to understand the context of the Trump Presidency. It has reapplied Cold War fears with Russia as the prime target. Russia’s geopolitical moves away from imperialism have been deemed just as criminal as China’s economic supremacy. The US does not depend as much on Russia in the economic sense, but it trembles in fear at the prospect of growing Russian economic activity across Eurasia. Yet, provoking Russia militarily will lead to World War. This is a risk the ruling class appears willing to take as the anti-Russia narrative in the US has only intensified since Hillary Clinton made the erroneous claim of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

According to the US ruling class and its “intelligence officials,” Russia promotes “fakes news” to assist Donald Trump. Russian President Vladimir Putin lurks in our social media, and is hacking his way through algorithms to smear the US political system. Russia is infecting minds with its Russia Today “propaganda” arm. The Ruskies have no regard for the damage they have caused to so-called US democracy. Putin wants total control of the US and will wield his most talented social media users to get the job done. This is what the corporate media sounds like these days.

“The U.S. trembles in fear at the prospect of growing Russian economic activity across Eurasia.”

Of course, the US ruling class doesn’t want to talk about how US intelligence already collects the numbers, emails, and calls of every single person in the world who uses a cell phone or computer. They don’t want to tell you about how the US has interfered in every election in Russia since the Soviet Union fell, or how it has led bloody proxy wars and coups in over fifty countries in as many years. They don’t want to discuss how Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the millions of incarcerated people in the US or the fact that it is the US monopoly capitalist economy, not the emerging capitalist economy of Russia, which has automated many of the jobs and siphoned much of the wealth that once belonged to a privileged sector of US workers. No, it would rather attention be placed on the Russian boogeyman.

Anti-Russian hysteria doesn’t just distract the broad masses of people from the legitimate causes of the conditions afflicting the working and unemployed. It feeds into an atmosphere of war that strikes the very roots of the US social order. Imperialism is the rule of monopoly and finance capital. This system has run its course. It cannot hold onto political legitimacy any more than it can spur economic development beyond the meager 1 to 2 percent growth calculated year after year. In a sense, war is all the system has left. And war is exactly what the ruling class will get, with or without Trump.

“They don’t want to tell you about how the US has interfered in every election in Russia since the Soviet Union fell, or how it has led bloody proxy wars and coups in over fifty countries in as many years.”

War with Russia is today’s clarion call for “American unity.” In times of crisis, the US imperial state has relied on war to bring political and economic relief from domestic crisis. Every major US-led war has in part been waged for this purpose. What differs now is that war with Russia could bring about the destruction of humanity. Scientists have confirmed that nuclear war could make the planet uninhabitable.

What is also different about this current war drive with Russia is how it marks the historical conclusion of the current stage in the world imperialist order. When the US threatened nuclear war with the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 and the Cuban missile crisis almost two decades later, the world was in the midst of a transition from Western monopoly capitalism to proletarian socialism. Revolutions in Vietnam, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, to name a few, threatened to undo the very notion of private property. And while US and Western backlash nearly eliminated the socialist bloc by 1991, the imperialist order entered a transition stage of its own that some call “neo-liberalism.”

Neo-liberalism has greatly expanded the reach of capitalism’s tentacles and widened the impact of capitalist crisis since its inception in the late 1970s. Neo-liberalism has unleashed unfettered capitalist production by imposing economic stagnation on participating countries. Meanwhile, China’s socialist model has paved a different path, one marked by unprecedented growth and poverty reduction. China has understandably attracted underdeveloped nations so desperately seeking to escape from the clutches of neo-colonial impoverishment. Russia has grown close to China, providing both countries with much assistance in the way of constructing a multi-polar economic arrangement based on the principles of sovereignty and mutually beneficial cooperation. According to the logic of neo-liberal capital, only war with Russia and China can save the system from itself.

“War with Russia could bring about the destruction of humanity.”

This conclusion stems from the fact that neo-liberal capital is not growing, it is contracting. Eighty-percent of workers are near-poor in the US while six mega billionaires hold ownership of over half of the planet’s wealth. Concentrated profit does not mean that all is well with the ruling class. Internal contradictions are eating the capitalist system alive. Neither finance capital nor its monopoly investors can arrest the resultant decline. The growth of technology to speed up production and profit has left millions stuck in permanent unemployment. A high-tech system of production is an expensive system of production, requiring lower wages and debt to absorb the falling rate of profit. Global overproduction has thus developed alongside mass misery.

Such conditions are at the root of mass incarceration, where millions of mostly Black and poor workers are warehoused in cages because there is nothing on the outside that the system can offer. They are also the root of mass surveillance, as the system must keep tabs on an increasingly restless population and justify infringements on civil liberties as necessary counter-terror measures. The War on Terror and Drugs have been prerequisites toward keeping the population scared and its attention away from the US capitalist overlords who fund and support drug trafficking and terrorism for political gain. And when all else fails, blame Russia.

“The system must keep tabs on an increasingly restless population and justify infringements on civil liberties as necessary counter-terror measures.”

The struggle against neo-liberal capital and anti-Russian hysteria is a struggle to transform and revolutionize society. This struggle requires both practical political organization and ideological development. There will be no revolution without revolutionary thought, and no revolution without revolutionary action. All too often the left is debating which one is the most important for the future success of a revolutionary movement. The answer is both, together.

For most, this explanation is understandably too broad to inform individual political energy. Liberal thought and action thus becomes attractive because it hides behind the cloak of the possible and pragmatic. It is easier to think in terms of electoral politics than in global struggle. It is far more simple to advocate for a cooperative economy or universal basic income without spelling out the broad context that prevents their formation. In order for any material victories to be won on a mass scale, the victors must understand the world in which they fight.

“A movement for social transformation in the US has still yet to be born.”

Conscious struggle has brought about meaningful and deep changes in recent years. Mumia Abu-Jamal is now receiving Hep-C treatment after years of struggle with the State of Pennsylvania. The release of Chelsea Manning and Oscar Rivera Lopez also come to mind. Solidarity with Cuba freed the Cuban 5 and has given the socialist nation more opportunities to develop its economy. But these victories have come in the midst of great cost. A movement for social transformation in the US has still yet to be born, as the presence of dozens of political prisoners and the ongoing US blockade against Cuba reminds us.

Not once did I mention the Democratic or Republican Party. Both parties have done their part to create the crisis before us. A rejection of the two-parties means an embrace of the struggle against imperialism worldwide. It means that the nations with US targets on their backs should be seen as potential allies. Yes, this includes Russia. And Syria. It includes the left movements in Latin America. In the spirit of Malcolm X, the Black liberation movement, and the historic anti-imperialist struggle around the world, the time has come to search for real bonds of solidarity around the world to aid in the struggle against white supremacy, capitalism, and empire in the US and the West. Let no one, not even those who call themselves “the left,” tell you otherwise.

 

Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He canbereachedatwakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

Deep State, shallow politics, dumb economics

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By Frank Scott

Source: Intrepid Report

In 1965, the USA had 780,000 people in prison, jail, on parole or on probation.

By 2010, that population had grown by more than nine times, to 7 million and the prison business was booming as never before, creating profits, jobs and unparalleled human misery.

In 1954, the integration of public schools was seen as a great victory for civil rights and Americans now designated as “people of color”*. Today more than 50% of the prison population is designated as “people of color” and the disintegration of the entire public school system continues for all Americans designated as people.

In 2015, there were 536 billionaires in the U.S.A. In a nation of more than 325 million people, that represents less than 2 millionths of one percent of the population. For the textually challenged, that looks like this:.000002%

Wow.

How hard those truly brilliant people must have worked to achieve those riches. And one of them was Donald Trump!

Imagine how many cases they had to plead in court, classes to teach in school, buses to drive, meals to prepare, floors to wash, crops to pick, mail to deliver and deals to make? Well, actually, they mostly made deals using their great wisdom and brilliance at investing wisely. You and I could do as well if we worked as hard and were as smart and industrious as they are, including Donald Trump!

And if we were paid a thousand dollars an hour for our hard work, and we worked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, maybe if we stashed all that cash and didn’t spend any of it we might have a billion dollars.

Nope.

In fact, if you worked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year and did that for ten years, at one thousand dollars an hour, never stopped, never took any time off and never spent any of the money and just stashed it, you still wouldn’t have a billion dollars.

Is this a great democracy or what?

In that same year of 2015, America’s GDP for pets, which was $38.5 billion in 2006, had grown to $60.3 billion. Twelve companies insured 1.4 million pets owned by 79.6 million American families (65% of households) with premiums amounting to 660.5 million dollars.

163.8 million dogs and cats are comfortably housed in a political economy that has half a million of its people homeless and more than 20% of its children living in poverty. This is certainly reason enough for us to demand that Russia, North Korea, Syria and other nations adopt our democratically civilized way of living or suffer the consequences of our superior wrath. Right?

As of March1, 2017, our national debt was close to $20 trillion, which is more than our GDP, which is truly a gross domestic product. We the people of this great democracy pay more than $440 billion a year in interest on that debt.

Who do we pay it to?

Where’d they get the money to loan us?

Who prints and backs this money supply?

If you have any money among your plastic, look at one of the bills of any denomination and note that the power behind the cash is not the dead presidents or Rockefeller, Carnegie, Zuckerburg, Soros, Bezos, Visa or MasterCard but something called “The United States of America.”

That is not a private bank or a billionaire. That’s you. That’s us.

Remember, we, the public, print the money, in our name, and somehow it gets to a private source which loans it to us and charges us interest for the privilege. Would you like to buy a bridge?

Our personal debt, incurred to keep the economy going with our consuming and owed to the same market gods, was over $18 trillion. Almost as high as our public debt. Somehow, we owe it to the same people who loaned us our own money for public expenses. Wow.

Are they really smart?

Or are we really stupid?

Many Americans are treated as lower than scum for being working class and “uneducated.” Why are so many Americans so “uneducated”? Could it have anything to do with the fact that at some point they went through grammar and high schools taught by (drum roll) college-educated people**? And winding up with presidents like a truly brilliant rich guy with degrees from Yale and Harvard (wow!) who starts wars in the Middle East that have gone on longer than any in our history, with the consent of 534 out of 535 democratically (?) elected college graduates in congress?

Whether the organized crime lobby (Wall Street, banks, billionaires) supports guns for individuals, Israelis or the Military Industrial Complex, it remains in control of the political economics of American government. NRAIPAC and its ilk own, rent and control the White House, Congress and Corporate media. That was the case before Trump and still is the case now.

We need resistance to that system of minority control itself, and not simply the servants it hires, leases, rents or outright owns. As long as we allow a gallon of milk to cost more than a gallon of gasoline, as long as we tolerate an economics that will sustain a disease as long as profits for its treatment are greater than profits for its cure***, we not only face long range climate disaster but a much shorter range political economic calamity.

Global capitalism threatens immediate and growing poverty, war, human misery and planetary destruction no matter which political pinhead, pimp or ho lives in the subsidized residency we call the white house. As long as we allow the richest and smallest minority in our history to put only their servants up for our votes, calling this a democracy reduces us to the best-dressed peasants on the Titanic. We need to end the fundamentalist religion of private profit marketing that is becoming a greater menace by the minute and begin democratic action in a social revolution that expresses majority public interest, desire and need. Fast.

 

Notes

*All members of the human race are “of color” save for a small group called albinos. Some of us have darker or lighter skin but skin tone is of no more racial significance than brown hair, green eyes or long legs. Innocents, the ignorant and morons who still believe otherwise are science deniers at best, and anti-human at worst, no matter their skin tone.

**Those with a stake in maintaining their incomes & consumption are unlikely to participate in efforts to bring about radical change”—Michael D. Yates

***Check cancer, for starters; a multi-multi billion-dollar industry