15.Oct.2012 - FREE BOOK! Israel Threatens Force, U.S. Bombing of Iraq, GOP p.o.v. is Irrelevant, How to Save the Middle Class, Why Sin is a False Concept, the Moderate Mitt Myth, Obama's War Record, Wal-Mart vs. the Staff of Life, How the Media Put Us At Risk, Bill Maher to Right-Wing Christians, Creating a Nation of Narcissists, Low Wages and High Unemployment

This month, we are giving away a FREE copy of The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Simply go to our Facebook page, and start sharing our posts. The person or organization that shares the most DH posts by Halloween wins the book!  

 

You are viewing this from http://www.dustcircle.com. Also, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for exclusive content.

Going Bankrupt on Planet Earth: The Debate Subject for the Ages

As expected, the deficit and debt were both discussed in the first presidential debate on domestic policy. However, despite this year’s endless American summer and adevastating drought that won’t leave town, climate change wasn’t. What would you bet that it won’t be a significant topic in the final debate on foreign policy either? Only one conclusion seems reasonable: climate change has no place on this American planet.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/13-4

Israel Threatens Force Against Aid Boat to Gaza

Finland said Saturday that Israel had warned it would "take action" and "use force" against an aid boat headed for Gaza.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/13-0

US Bombing of Iraq: The Toxic Legacy Continues

A new study links the U.S. bombardment of Iraq to a toxic legacy of birth defects in two of the country's heavily hit cities.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/14-0

Koch Brother Facing Federal Lawsuit For Allegedly Imprisoning Employee

William Koch is facing a federal lawsuit for allegedly and illegally imprisoning and interrogating an employee. Kirby Martenson, a former executive for a number of Koch subsidiary companies, claims that he was fired, imprisoned, and interrogated for an excessive amount of time at the Old West ghost town replica that Koch built recently.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/13/koch-imprisoning-federal-lawsuit/

Clinging To Nonsense: The GOP POV Is Usually Wrong And Thus Irrelevant

After Biden kicked ass in the Veep Debate, some conservatives were posting stuff like, “Sorry to burst your bubble, but Republicans see it differently.” Well, the GOP see a lot of things differently, and it doesn’t make them right.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/13/clinging-to-nonsense/

The Root Of All Delusion – Libertarian ‘Oracle’ Just A Bunch Of Hot Air

It happens every year: noted Libertarian soothsayer Wayne Allyn Root makes his annual predictions, which he then clings to for the rest of the year, updating them if his earlier predictions fall to pieces. This year, as they have done before, Fox News is trotting him out to rally up the base, claiming his predictions in years past as evidence that, in this case, it will be a blowout year for Mitt Romney.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/13/fraudulent-libertarian-oracle/

How to Save the Middle Class

Many Americans don’t know where the Great Middle Class came from. They see it as a natural outgrowth of “free-market capitalism” when it was really the product of conscious government policies, starting with the New Deal. That confusion must be addressed in this political season, says Beverly Bandler.

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/10/13/how-to-save-the-middle-class/

Why Sin is a False and Morally and Biologically Backward Concept

Marc at Bad Catholic got the impression that atheists think being a Christian is only about hating gay people and being irrational and so set out to explain why he is a Christian. His post started out with a discussion of suffering as useless pain that supposedly can have no worthwhile secular answers. I challenged his views of suffering and the potential for atheist responses to it on Wednesday.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2012/10/why-sin-is-a-false-and-morally-and-biologically-backward-concept/

The 'Moderate Mitt' Myth

he way a presidential candidate campaigns for office matters to the country. A campaign should demonstrate seriousness of purpose and a set of core beliefs, and it should signal to voters whether a candidate shows trustworthiness and judgment. Those things don't seem to matter to Mitt Romney.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/13970-the-moderate-mitt-myth

Global Food Supply System Could Collapse, 2013 Could Experience A Major Hunger Crisis
World grain reserves are so dangerously low that severe weather in the US or other food-exporting countries could trigger a major hunger crisis next year, said a report by John Vidal in The Observer [1] on October 13, 2012. John cited a UN warning. The food crisis is growing in the Middle East and Africa.

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc141012.htm

Obama's War Record

When Sen. Barack Obama ran for the presidency in 2008 many wishful-thinking Democratic voters viewed him as a peace candidate because he opposed the Iraq war (but voted yes on the war budgets while in the Senate). Some others assumed his foreign/military policy would be along the lines of Presidents George H. W. Bush (whom Obama admires) or Bill Clinton. Some who identified as progressives actually thought his foreign/military policy might tilt to the left.

http://www.countercurrents.org/smith141012.htm

A Vulture Capitalist for a Vulture Culture

Delusional Romney belief systems -- whether more trickle-down folly, indefensible tax cuts, or "God's on our side" exceptionalism -- serve as cover for an ever nastier, reactionary vulture culture. Under-regulated vulture capitalism preys on government regulation and legislation, environmental wellbeing (decimating forests, ocean life, coastal waters, and strip mining sites), low-wage workers here or overseas -- plus badgering phantom "socialists" who challenge spoiled-brat banksters, Koch Bros., or the Rove brigade. That overfed horde sustains the extremist GOP vulture culture, at war with women, fair taxation, democratic elections that count minorities, gay rights, basic science, and healthy food -- in a word, rationality.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Vulture-Capitalist-for-a-by-Robert-S-Becker-121014-410.html

The Israel Lobby and the Road to War

Israel is like a spoiled child who has grown stronger, more willful, and outright dangerous under the nurturing care of its US parent -- a parent who has lost all authority and can no longer restrain its juvenile delinquent progeny. The US-Israeli "special relationship" has destabilized the Middle East and made war much more likely than it would be otherwise. Israel can act in the knowledge that there will be no consequences for its actions, that it will not be held accountable or blamed -- in public -- in any way for what follows.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Israel-Lobby-and-the-R-by-Justin-Raimondo-121013-946.html

Walmart versus The Staff of Life

The Bible terms bread "the staff of life" -- but Walmart finds it one more opportunity for exploitation of its "shoppers."  In our small town, there are few food stores and no bakeries, so we are forced to buy our own Daily Bread at the Big W.  It was not so long ago that Walmart had a section with overproduced bread and other bakery items at a forty percent discount, which was helpful to us retirees.  Then, earlier this year, with of course no publicity, they cut that discount to thirty-five percent.  Now, lo and behold, we have found a further cut, to a discount of only thirty percent on this bread!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Walmart-versus-The-Staff-o-by-Eugene-Elander-121014-872.html

How The Media Put Us At Risk With The Way They Report About Risk

A new study regarding a high-profile risk…mercury…has two important findings; there may be an association between in-utero mercury exposure and ADHD as kids grow up, but the children of pregnant mothers who ate more fish generally had better overall cognitive health. Beyond those findings, though, the study also teaches an important lesson about another risk, a risk that is far greater than the risk of mercury; the risk of how the news media cover risk in the first place.

http://bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/how-the-media-put-us-at-risk-with-the-way-they-report-about-risk

Bill Maher to Right-Wing Christians: If You Do God's Work, Why Are You Always Wrong?

"Is the problem that you can't follow instructions, or is Jesus just dicking you around?" Maher asks.

http://www.alternet.org/bill-maher-right-wing-christians-if-you-do-gods-work-why-are-you-always-wrong

Creating a nation of narcissists

Police Arrest 16-Year-Old Girl Protesting Mom’s Lay-Off From Bain-Owned Company

Watch 2 Canadians Discover That The US Is Now A Police State

Danny DeVito & Bill Maher on GMO Labeling

Student Debt Waltz cantastoria - People's Puppets of OWS

US and Israel Recognize Iran Not Near a Bomb

Low wages and high unemployment are paralyzing the global economy

Criminalizing Dissent

 

By Chris Hedges

I was on the 15th floor of the Southern U.S. District Court in New York in the courtroom of Judge Katherine Forrest last Tuesday. It was the final hearing in the lawsuit I brought in January against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I filed the suit, along with lawyers Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran, over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We were late joined by six co-plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg.

This section of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military, which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within “the homeland” as well as those abroad.

Time for Sanctions Against the USA

• 
• 

User Rating:  / 0 

PoorBest 

POST 09 AUGUST 2012

BY RODNEY SHAKESPEARE

US President Barack Obama

With its usual insufferable arrogance, its egregious hubris, and its all-encompassing self-righteous, bumptious hypocrisy, the USA is proposing to revoke the license of Standard Chartered, a British bank, for trading with Iran. 

Completely controlled by an aggressive, expansionist Zionism, the USA wants to impose its sanctions against Iran on everybody else.

It does not matter if all sixteen of the USA’s intelligence agencies clear Iran of making a bomb (as do MI6 and Israel’s Mossad); the USA demands stringent sanctions against Iran to be implemented by every country around the world. It does not matter if those sanctions wreck a country’s economy because, such is its hatred of a modern, rapidly developing and successful Iran (which is a complete contrast to the corrupt feudalisms of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Gulf Sheikdoms), the USA demands complete obedience.

Indeed, even if those sanctions result in widespread war with millions killed, the USA smiles because its deep video-arcade longings to inflict death everywhere are coming to pass.

Of course, the UK, controlled by compliant Zionists like UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, is pleased to agree because it naively believes that sanctions against Iran are in its long term interest.

Which is a big mistake. The long term interest of the UK is to trade openly and naturally with modern, democratic Islamic nations right throughout the Middle East. Cosying up to corrupt, kleptomaniac, torturing feudalisms is about as stupid a historical error as could ever be made.

But all is not lost. As with the Olympics there can be surprises. Coming out of nowhere (or rather, in this case, from the Standard Chartered Bank) a star bursts into the sky!

So step forward a brave man who puts the spineless William Hague to shame!

Step forward Richard Meddings, finance director of the Standard Chartered Bank!

Responding to warnings about the bank’s Iranian operations, Richard Meddings spoke with remarkable economy and a deeply felt anger.

“You (swearword) Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?”

Yes, precisely and splendidly put, Richard Meddings. Thank you. More than anybody else you deserve a Gold Medal! 

Decent British people have been despairing that there would ever be anybody in the UK who would have the courage to tell the Americans (controlled by the Zionists) and the British government (controlled by the Zionists) that they have no right to demand that a country cannot trade with another country.

Say it again, Richard Meddings, so that we may get it deeply into our minds! 

“Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?” 

Indeed, it’s time to give the bullies of this world a taste of their own medicine. If sanctions are implemented against a country which (totally unlike Israel and the USA) is behaving lawfully), then those who implement the sanctions must have sanctions implemented against them. Those who sanction must themselves be sanctioned. 

That means sanctions against the USA, Israel and the UK. 

And let nobody think that such sanctions are impossible because, right the way around the world, countries are quietly (and not so quietly) making new regional agreements and arrangements, all of which are essentially aimed at breaking the economic and political power of the West. This is happening simply because the West (particularly in its Zionist aggressions) is becoming everywhere hated. 

In a profound way, the West has declared war on the ordinary people of the world, particularly if they are Muslims. Always supporting the most tyrannical of regimes, the West has told people everywhere that they can be deprived, tortured and assassinated as long as it is in the interests of Zionism to do so.

And, believe it or not, the same deprivations and assassinations will soon be coming to the USA itself. By 2015, there will be 30,000 (thirty thousand) drones patrolling the American skies (with President Obama, telling a big lie, if there ever was one, that those drones will not be armed with missiles). 

Meanwhile, the USA Homeland Security Agency has just bought 450,000,000 dum-dum bullets (they are the ones which explode on impact) with another 250,000,000 on order. This is because, with 50,000,000 people on food stamps, real unemployment around 20-22% and the middle classes having had a real income decline for twenty five years, the USA is approaching civil war. The drones, missiles, bullets bombs (and, Heaven knows, even depleted uranium munitions) are going to be inflicted on a people who are still supinely tolerating the infliction on others elsewhere.

But let us remember the splendid Richard Meddings. Let decent people everywhere stand up and demand that, from now on, those who sanction will themselves be sanctioned. 

If countries can agree among themselves not to use the American dollar in their trade relations, if the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation can break past patterns with new security and economic arrangements, if South American countries can say that they are sick of being exploited, then it can only be a matter of time before those who arrogantly sanction others find that the boot is now on the other foot and they themselves are sanctioned in return. 

RS/HJL

Source: PressTV

Authoritarianism Masquerading Behind a Fig Leaf of Democracy

submit

Become a Fan

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Dave Lefcourt (about the author)

 Become a Fan  (12 fans)   -- Page 1 of 1 page(s)

opednews.com

President Obama with national security advisors discussing "kill lists" in Oval Office
Lately, as I read the newspapers, peruse the web sites for the occasional exceptional investigative reporting that expose the official corruption and wrongful policies that at once elucidates and enlightens, there's the sense it seems gigantic and all encompassing at the same time.

Drones, surveillance, secret Justice Department memos giving "legal" cover for assassinations authorized by the president, persecution of whistleblowers, now a bill from the Senate Intelligence Committee that wants prosecution of lower level and career public officials, even former government employees "legally" preventing them from "providing background or off the record information regarding intelligence activities to the media," with only "the director, deputy director and designated public officials of intelligence agencies" excluded. [1]

America the Great ... Police State

By Gore Vidal, Truthdig

01 August 12

The works of Gore Vidal will live on, even as we mourn his passing. We decided to share with you one of his essays that would be very timely if he had written it today. -- SMG/RSN

or those of us who had hoped that the Obama administration would present us with a rebirth of the old republic that was so rudely erased a few years ago by that team of judicial wreckers, Bush and Gonzales, which led, in turn, to a recent incident in Cambridge, Mass. that inspired a degree of alarm in many Americans. But what was most alarming was the plain fact that neither the president nor a "stupid" local policeman seemed to understand the rules of behavior in a new America, where we find ourselves marooned as well as guarded (is that the verb?) by armed police who have been instructed that they are indeed, once armed, the law and may not be criticized verbally or in any other way and are certainly not subject to any restrictions as to whom they arrest or otherwise torment.

This is rather worse than anyone might have predicted, even though the signs have been clear for some years that ours is now a proto-fascist nation and there appears to be no turning back; nor, indeed, much awareness on the part of our ever-alert media. Forgive me if you find my irony heavy, but I too get tired of carrying it about in "the greatest nation in the country," as Spiro Agnew liked to say.

I was first made aware of this development in 1946 when I was limping around in army uniform in New York City and noticed that the local police (admired by none) were beginning to run wild, possibly because so many of the able-bodied young had, like myself, been serving for some years overseas. I recall that some sort of parade was being held and what looked to be a thousand or two citizens were trying unsuccessfully to cross Fifth Avenue. I waited on a street corner for an hour in my uniform, limping from my disability earned by my service in the war. But after nearly an hour of waiting, I stopped a policeman who was wandering idly around and asked him politely when I’d be able to cross Fifth Avenue. He shrieked at me, "Go call da mayor!" And I said, "Oh I will, I will." Actually, I did know the mayor at that time, but he was not available on that sacred day. I did make a protest as a veteran who had mustered out with a disability for life, but this seemed to be a cause of great merriment. In any case, that was my first experience of a Nazi-like police force in New York City, a city pretty much home to me from childhood on.

When I Started Hating America

“This chamber reeks of blood.”
 
By Randy Shields.
July 20, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --  Yesterday, July 19, was former Democratic senator and presidential candidate George McGovern’s 90th birthday.

I thought of McGovern recently because I was trying to pin down when I first started hating America. I’ve been a little tired of all these Osama and Anwar al-come-lately’s and the glory they get for hating America when many of us have toiled unpaid and unknown hating America for decades. The way I see it is these are foreign terrorists taking what ought to be American jobs. (To be fair, Anwar al-Awlaki wasn’t a foreigner, he was an American citizen, just like his 16 year- old son, Abdulrahman, and Obama killed both of them in separate drone strikes.)

Also bolstering my America-hating street cred: Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki both initially collaborated with the US government which I’ve never done. (Bin Laden worked with the CIA  in the 1980s to drive out the Russians from Afghanistan. In 2002 al-Awlaki was invited by congressional staffers to be the first imam to conduct a prayer service at the US Capitol to “improve relations” between Muslims and the American government that’s murdering them like there’s no tomorrow.) Boogeymen though they became, bin Laden and al-Awlaki strangely imagined that the American government would not double cross them  (leaving American troops in Muslim holy lands, starting brand new wars in the Middle East, etc.) No one from the coal mining desecrated hills in West Virginia to the racist police state along the Mexican border or the stop-and-frisk streets of NYC would make such a mistake about the US government.

I’d like to report that I was hip enough to hate America when I was still in the womb — that I could immediately sense America’s malevolent vibrations — but, hard head that I am, it actually took 16 years. (Although I was said to be a “terror,” I grew up when even the scuzziest American president didn’t drop bombs on 16 year-old American kids.)

Here’s how it happened: My mother and I stuffed envelopes for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign and we were very happy we had such a good man to support.

I was too young to vote but I was looking forward to being on the winning team. It would be unthinkable that the American people would choose the corrupt, racist, warmonger Nixon over McGovern, who was a World War II war hero running on a platform of ending the Vietnam War. For the country to choose Nixon would mean that something was deeply wrong with the American people.

Triple dog duh!

McGovern got landslided in 1972 and the American working class has been landsliding the world ever since in proud ignorance, cowardly violence and infinite obedience. So I say, contra Carl Sandberg: the people, no, hail no, for god sakes, no. I know as a Marxist I’m supposed to promote working class solidarity but I’m never really feeling the love. The union guys I work with don’t know anything about May Day, Big Bill Haywood or surplus value but they’re  idiot savants when it comes to fantasy football, Philly strip clubs and the most Eden-like places to blow away defenseless animals.

People are always making excuses for the American working class, echoing Jimmy Carter’s maggot-gagging line about America deserving “a government as good as its people.” I say America is the same old racist genocider it started out as, it just goes into hibernation for awhile, dormant like a retrovirus. Genocide and stealing from people of color was kind of like our first love — we never got over it and we’re always trying to replicate it. If America wasn’t the same old racist genocider, we would have made reparations to indigenous peoples, black Americans, the several million we killed during the Vietnam War and the million Iraqis killed in our latest rampage. The problem is that America never gets corrected, there’s never enough Geronimos, John Browns or Ho Chi Minhs to go around.

I’d like to see what happens when the American working class gets pushed to the wall, that revolutionary crisis when we’re impelled to rebel, the tipping point when the price of a gallon of gas gets higher than a pack of Marlboros. Will we turn to reaction and lay waste to the nearest defenseless minority or will we unite in solidarity and lay waste to the capitalist tapeworms?

It’s hard to relate to something as alienated and shut down as the American working class, maybe because they never learn anything, as in the Wisconsin recall vote, where they chose a tentacle of the Kochtopus, or a Globescan poll of two weeks ago which showed that 58% of Americans believe that rich people deserve their wealth. The kicker: it was up 1 point over the same 2008 poll — this, after the capitalist magicians turned public money into personal bonuses, 401Ks into 201Ks, vibrant neighborhoods into ghost towns and the greatest destruction of black wealth in 100 years, to which Don Corleobastardone and his chief unenforcer Eric “Fold’em” Holder say “Fugettaboutit!” as far as any fraudsters being prosecuted. Number one in the same poll were  Australians, 61% of whom enjoyed being fucked by the capitalist class, up from 53% in 2008. Way to go champs/chumps! Throw another prole on the barbie! All props to the Greeks who came in the lowest at 9%, though it remains to be seen how many of the other 91% can be leveraged into torches, pitchforks and Molotov cocktails.

In 1976, when I was 20, a really cool thing happened: newsman Paul Duke of the Public Broadcasting System did several shows on 3rd party presidential candidates. There was a libertarian, a communist, a couple socialists (one of whom was Julius Levin of the Socialist Labor Party) and a few others. It was refreshing to hear these candidates explain their platforms and philosophies, their critiques of the Democrats and Republicans. You won’t get a national TV show today with people respectfully and rationally discussing why the American government should be overthrown and what would replace it. Parents, please teach your children well that the “freedom” to surf the web while taking a dump is not the same as having meaningful political choices.

I was very excited about what Julius Levin was saying about the socialist industrial union form of government: a government based on industry instead of an anachronism like territory, a government of nurses, farmers, machinists, secretaries, plumbers, etc., democratically elected at every level — local, regional and national — from all workplaces with no union reps making any more money than the average worker. This all-industrial council of workers would replace the nonproductive pampered professional politicians called Congress. In short, industrial unionism would make Jefferson’s citizen-legislators real — ALL the citizens: blacks, women, unpropertied white males, everybody. 

Capitalism’s Supreme Court weather vanes would be sent packing and the Whitey House would be turned into a museum honoring working class heroes. I imagine a fun and funky gift shop also, a kind of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, “honoring” 200 years of various capitalist administrations and their absurdities — for instance, it might sell blue dresses and cigars to commemorate the Clinton years.

At the end of Paul Duke’s show there was contact info for each political party so I wrote to the SLP. In no time at all I went from disillusionment about McGovern’s walloping four years earlier to my blood being on fire with Marx’s “Paris Commune,” Gustav Bang’s “Crises in European History” and everything that the great American Marxist Daniel De Leon ever wrote. Here were long dead people whose thoughts were more relevant to my experience in the world than all the obfuscation and lies of Carter, Ford and Reagan.

Despite all the media we have, does a young person today have an opportunity to get exposed to people who have a fundamentally different view of the world than the ruling class? Paul Duke’s show came out of the blue, I wouldn’t have known to “search” for Socialist Industrial Unionism, for example, because I didn’t know that it existed. It came to me because the ruling class let it come to me, it was a more open and freer time.

Thanks, Paul Duke. And thanks, world, for letting me in and come of age when you did, that remarkable gust of freedom between when the Beatles came (1964) and Nixon went (1974.) After 1974, it was all over, the last victory for the American working class was probably Nixon saving the wolf with the Endangered Species Act, though, as everything is always up for grabs under capitalism, wolves are now being hunted again. For the last 40 years it’s been nothing but reaction and unremitting working class defeat.

George McGovern accomplished something that we still see the fruits (and vegetables) of today: he chaired the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs which released the 1977 “Dietary Goals for the United States,” commonly called “The McGovern Report.” The committee gathered studies on human health and nutrition and took testimony from a diverse group of Americans and concluded that, for better health, Americans should eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and less meat, dairy products and sugar. This report incensed animal slavers, especially in McGovern’s home state of South Dakota, and he was defeated for reelection in 1980.

The aftermath of the McGovern Report is instructive as to how immaterial truth and science are under capitalism. First off, after furious meat and dairy industry lobbying, many of the initial conclusions of the report were watered down. And in the years that followed, despite the bounty of healthy food and health knowledge available, despite study after study showing the superiority of plant-based diets, despite how much easier it is to be a vegan now than in 1977, despite all of the awareness raised by animal activists about how cruelly farm animals are raised and killed, despite the work of environmentalists showing how wasteful and destructive animal agriculture is, despite the work of biologists and animal behaviorists showing that other animals have social, emotional and psychological lives just like we do, despite philosophers making powerful cases that there are no morally relevant differences between us and most other animals — despite all of this, 10 billion farm animals are now raised and killed each year in America (not including fish) versus less than 4 billion in 1977 when the McGovern Report was released. Six billion more animals killed each year than 35 years ago, an onslaught of mind-boggling suffering, waste of resources and death. As befits our air-headed world, I know many vegans who view the present as a golden age because we can get every little vegan thing for our own personal consumption while the 10 billion farm animal deaths-per-year number doesn’t budge. Capitalism is the Devil, and the Devil can be very accommodating.

The McGovern Report won the intellectual battle and that’s only strengthened as years go by. But in the real world of blood and money, corporate welfare and relentless brainwashing advertising, the meat industry prevailed. Subsidies are still given for animal products that the government itself says we should minimize eating, not to mention all the grain and water subsidies and cheap grazing rights on public land. The government also helps American factory farmers sell their wasteful polluting confinement systems to China and other countries. As these nations take on the rich western diet their previous good health disappears and they start having the same chronic diseases seen in Americans. If we can’t beat them militarily we’ll help them destroy themselves nutritionally and environmentally.

Every movement for a better world — civil rights, environmental, antiwar, animal lib — bumps up against the profit motive of capitalism, finds out how much/little is possible and then slinks back into ineffectiveness and irrelevance because, for these movements to progress any further, they must end capitalism. In my neck of the woods that means macho idiot savants conquer women and non-humans beings but refuse to fight the only battle that matters against the capitalist masters.

Anyway, thanks Senator McGovern for trying to stop the war, thanks for visiting impoverished areas of America in the 1960s and bringing them to the attention of the rest of the country and expanding the food stamp program in response, thanks for your first speech on the senate floor in 1963 criticizing Kennedy’s policy on Cuba and being the first senator to criticize the Vietnam War that same year, thanks for changing the equation about how the nation looks at food and health, even if it’s mostly in peoples’ minds and not their tongues. You probably outlived all those animal farmers who ousted you from office and I bet, no matter what physical condition you are in, you are more ethically fit than anyone in the current US Senate. Happy 90th!

And now, a coda. This is McGovern addressing his senate colleagues in 1970 for their lack of opposition to the Vietnam War. Imagine any of today’s venal, cowardly US Senators — working as they do for Lockheed, Israel and Wall Street — saying anything like this even though the words are more pertinent than ever:

“Every Senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land – young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes. There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us.”

“This chamber reeks of blood.”

Unpopular, unconstitutional war waged by a murderous arrogant emperor with a compliant congress, a little somethin’ somethin’ we can believe in!

Randy Shields can be reached at music2hi4thehumanear@gmail.com.

This article was originally published at Counterpunch

The New Totalitarianism: How American Corporations Have Made America Like the Soviet Union

AlterNet / By Sara Robinson

 160 COMMENTS

Free-market capitalism was supposed to save us from the tyranny of faceless apparatchiks. But that's not what happened.

 

July 15, 2012  |  

Photo Credit: Viajar24h.com

LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?

Join our mailing list:

Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email.

The great power struggle of the 20th century was the competition between Soviet-style communism and "free-market" corporatism for domination of the world's resources. In America, it's taken for granted that Soviet communism lost (though China's more capitalist variant seems to be doing well), and the superiority of neo-liberal economics -- as epitomized by the great multinational corporations -- was thus affirmed for all time and eternity.

There's a small problem with this, though. An old bit of wisdom says: choose your enemies carefully, because over time, you will tend to become the very thing you most strongly resist. One of the most striking things about our victorious corporations now is the degree to which they've taken on some of the most noxious and Kafkaesque attributes of the Soviet system -- too often leaving their employees, customers, and other stakeholders just as powerless over their own fates as the unhappy citizens of those old centrally planned economies of the USSR were back in the day.

It's not just that the corporations have taken control over our government (though that's awful enough). It's also that they've taken control over -- and put serious limits on -- our choices regarding what we buy, where we work, how we live, and what rights we have. Our futures are increasingly no longer our own: more and more decisions, large and small, that determine the quality of our lives are being made by Politburo apparatchiks at a Supreme Corporate Soviet somewhere far distant from us. Only now, those apparatchiks are PR and marketing executives, titans of corporate finance, lobbyists for multinationals, and bean-counting managers trying to increase profits at the expense of our freedom.

Before The Collapse

By Timothy V. Gatto

Countercurrents.org

A few observations:

1. The Media is controlled by the government and most of what you see and hear from it is a lie.

2. The United States is engaged in wars all over the planet for resources.

3. Sociopaths run our government.

4. The U.S. government is attempting to destroy our basic civil liberties to consolidate their power.

5. The Bankers are stealing America's wealth.

6. Our economy in America is collapsing.

7. Anyone that is critical of the current policies is considered to be mentally ill, a malcontent or a "terrorist".

8. The U.S. is in an economic depression.

9. There is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans.

10. (Most importantly) Many people understand what is going on (and the numbers are growing larger every day) and the government of the USA had no idea this would come so swiftly.

This is the situation we find ourselves in. We have a few ways to deal with it. Americans can revolt, remain passive or ignore reality. We can move to another country, commit suicide or spend all of our savings like there will be no tomorrow.

Basically, the day has arrived where the proverbial piper is rolling into town and someone's got to pay him. The trouble is that there is no money in the bank. Obama isn't going to pay him, and neither is Congress. Nobody in Washington will part with any money unless it's for weapons.

We are not in a good position. The government of this country actually believed that we would remain ignorant forever. The truth is I also believed the people of this nation would prefer to remain ignorant of the true state of affairs. I still believe that if there were a way for Americans to stick their fingers in their ears and sing until the situation resolved itself, they would.

But the reality is they can't. The situation is not going to resolve itself and go away. Things will get better or things will get worse, but they will not remain the same. The banks are going to fail, we are going to find ourselves getting shot at or bombed or many of us will get arrested for expressing our opinion.

I don't exactly know where I'm going with this piece, but I know that I want to make one thing clear to anyone that reads this: If you believe that "someday" the American people will wake up, or that "someday" Americans will understand the true nature of the corporate duopoly (Republicans and Democrats) or that "someday" the floor is going to drop out beneath this huge pack of lies we call our nation's history, that "someday" is today.

I'm oversimplifying the situation but not too much. The country won't go to pieces before midnight, but in historical terms, the fall of the empire is right around the corner. Many people today (but not as many as yesterday) will see everything collapse and won't have a clue as to why the collapse is occurring. There are others that will wonder why it didn't happen sooner. One thing will be apparent; no one will be able to ignore it.

I'd like to see a few things happen before the fall;

1. Trials for war crimes to include people in the two Bush regimes, the Clinton and the Obama regimes. Some of the charges should be murder, conspiracy, torture, unlawful imprisonment and blackmail.

2. For the bankers and other members of the Wall Street criminal gang: Conspiracy, blackmail. Theft and racketeering.

3. For the Flag Grade Officers of the military (Admirals and Generals): Conspiracy, numerous war crimes in violation of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice), murder and graft.

4. For Members of Congress: Impeachment for dereliction of duty and failure to do their oversight duties as spelled out in easily read English contained in the U.S. Constitution.

5. For the U.S. Supreme Court: Impeachment for favors given to wealthy corporations in violation of the People's General Welfare provision in the U.S. Constitution.

Of course there should be others that should be charged with crimes, but that would be determined by the Attorney General or a Special Prosecutor. I only hope that charges be brought against those who are guilty of malfeasances or murders or any other violations of the law.

My other hope is that this all occurs before the collapse of the U.S., and I hope its televised and in color.

Tim Gatto is former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America, Tim is a retired Army Sergeant. He currently lives in South Carolina. He is the author of "Complicity to Contempt" and "Kimchee Days" available at Oliver Arts and Open Press.