politics for the 99%

Published on Intrepid Report, by Frank Scott, June 23, 2014.

The destruction of Iraq, which began under the conservatively emotional Bush regime, continues under the liberally placid Obama administration. There are differences in style when an intelligent landscaper replaces a slack jawed gardener but the plantation they serve differs only in the cosmetic facade it sells the public, not the diseased crop it produces … // Continue Reading…

Published on World Socialist Web Site WSWS, by Johannes Stern, 21 June 2014.

The German bourgeoisie is responding to the debacle of US imperialism in Iraq by intensifying its campaign for militarism and war.

On Tuesday, during her first official visit to the US, German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen spoke out in favour of a strong Bundeswehr (German armed forces) participation in an international military intervention. Germany had “key positions and capabilities, which other countries do not”, she said. The UN had asked her “that Germany one day also lead a United Nations military peace mission”, and the defence ministry was considering how the Bundeswehr could be more heavily involved.   Continue Reading…

Published on Dissident Voice, by Ellen Hodgson Brown, June 20, 2014.

… When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80% stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail out the world’s largest insurance company. Today, however, central banks are on a global corporate buying spree not to bail out bankrupt corporations but simply as an investment, to compensate for the loss of bond income due to record-low interest rates. Indeed, central banks have become some of the world’s largest stock investors.   Continue Reading…

Published on rabble.ca /blog, by PENNEY KOME, 12 Jun 2014.

… Only a decade ago, a person who graduated with a five-year Masters of Business Administration degree could expect immediate six-figure salary offers. Now the Degree Bubble has burst. Between dumbed-down public education systems, an overabundance of graduates, and endless corporate and small business campaigns to drive down wages across the board, the value of degrees has suffered drastic deflation in the seven years between 2007, when our grad entered university, and his graduation this year.   Continue Reading…

Published on Labour List, by Emma Burnell, June 19, 2014.

How does social democracy work when there isn’t any money? That is the question that has been taxing those at the top of the Labour Party for some time.

Our immediate, Keynesian response to the crisis staunched the wound and arguably stopped a recession becoming a depression. But the crisis itself showed up the weaknesses of the late 20th century model of social democracy – that of relying on the redistribution of the proceeds of growth, not of changing how that growth affected people early and for the better.   Continue Reading…

Published on Spiegel Online International, by Philip Bethge, June 16, 2014 (Photo Gallery).

Over one third of humanity is undernourished. Now a group of scientists are experimenting with specially-bred crops, and hoping to launch a new Green Revolution — but controversy is brewing.

It may not make his family wealthy, but Devran Mankar is still grateful for the pearl millet variety called Dhanshakti (meaning “prosperity and strength”) he has recently begun growing in his small field in the state of Maharashtra, in western India. ”Since eating this pearl millet, the children are rarely ill,” raves Mankar, a slim man with a gray beard, worn clothing and gold-rimmed glasses … // Continue Reading…

in english

Audio with Paul Craig Roberts: The Crisis in Ukraine & The Geopolitical Chess Game, 70.18 min, uploaded by Red Ice Radio, June 15, 2014;

uploaded by RT:   Continue Reading…

Published on The Guardian, by Chris Arnade, June 15, 2014:

Cecily McMillan is behind bars, unlike any of the architects of the financial crisis. In an exclusive conversation with the Guardian, she explains why her sentence serves a purpose …;

A former banker visits the only member of Occupy Wall Street to receive a prison sentence: it sounds like the set-up of a joke or a parable of the modern age. Instead, it was a real scene last Thursday, when I went to see jailed OWS activist Cecily McMillan at Rikers Island.   Continue Reading…

Published on ZNet (first on Portside), by Peter Dreier, June 14, 2014.

An idea that only a year ago appeared both radical and impractical has become a reality. On Monday, Seattle struck a blow against rising inequality when its City Council unanimously adopted a citywide minimum wage of $15 an hour, the highest in the nation.   Continue Reading…

The Thai fishing industry is built on slavery, with men often beaten, tortured and sometimes killed – all to catch ‘trash fish’ to feed the cheap farmed prawns/shrimps sold in the west - Published on The Guardian, June 10, 2014: A six-month Guardian multimedia investigation has, for the first time, tracked how some of the world’s big-supermakets – Tesco, Aldi, Walmart and Morrisons are using suppliers relying on slave labour to put cheap prawns on their shelves. Slavery is back and here’s the proof … Thai ‘ghost ships’ that enslave and even kill workers are linked to global shrimp supply chain, Guardian investigation discovers modern day slavery:     Continue Reading…

Interview with Paul Craig Roberts – Published on OpEdNews, by Rob Kall, June 12, 2014.

As AUDIO, 116.54 min
(and rough, incomplete notes):

I talk for almost two hours with Paul Craig Roberts On Russia, De-dollarization, capitalism, Psychopaths, Ed Snowden and NSA, Monsanto GMO. Corporatization of the FDA and more … //

… Rob: What are your thoughts about Monsanto and GMO. You mentioned that in Russia, GMO seeds and farming are being treated as terrorism.   Continue Reading…

Published on Intrepid Report, by Paul Craigh Roberts, June 12, 2014 (see Paul Craigh Roberts also on World People’s Blog).

In my column, The Lies Grow More Audacious, I mentioned that Obama and the British prime minister, whom Obama has as a lap dog, just as George Bush had Tony Blair as lap dog, had managed to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany at the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion without mentioning the Russians.

I pointed out the fact, well known to historians and educated people, that the Red Army defeated Nazi Germany long before the US was able to get geared up to participate in the war. The Normandy invasion most certainly did not defeat Nazi Germany. What the Normandy invasion did was to prevent the Red Army from overrunning all of Europe.   Continue Reading…

Published on The Real News, by Paul Jay: … Mr. Johnson says the scale of the political investment of finance – six, seven hundred million dollars – is overwhelming. With the political power of finance, do we still have a democracy?

• Finance Is Building the Architecture of Their Own Rules, (3/8), 14.39 min, June 10, 2014;
• Reaganomics Was Crazy (2/8), 14.55 min, June 9, 2014;
• Growing Up in the Cauldron of 1960’s Detroit (1/8), 1.10 min, June 8, 2014.   Continue Reading…

Published on Russia Today RT, June 7, 2014.

A federal judge who ordered the National Security Agency to retain all records of its secret telephone surveillance related to an ongoing case has reversed the order – just a day after it was issued.

“In order to protect national security programs, I cannot issue a ruling at this time. The Court rescinds the June 5 order,” US District Judge Jeffrey White said from the bench on Friday.   Continue Reading…

Published on Global Research.ca, by Eric Zuesse, June 7, 2014.

… This civil war is of massive historical importance, because it re-starts the global Cold War, this time no longer under the fig-leaf rationalization of an ideological battle between “capitalism” versus “communism,” but instead more raw, as a struggle between, on the one hand, the U.S. and West European aristocracies; and, on the other hand, the newly emerging aristocracies of Russia and of China. Like had happened in World War I, this global war is between two contending aristocratic alliances. (That’s the standard thing, we historians know; it’s nothing unusual there.) However, the documentation of the history is much clearer and far faster for this new war, than for former global wars, regarding which of the two sides had really initiated it, and why … // Continue Reading…

Published on Global Research.ca, by Umberto Pascali, June 7, 2014.

The announcement that the agreement has been actually signed and not just discussed was made by Gazprom’s Chief Executive Officer, Alexander Dyukov.

Despite the pressures from Wall Street and its military, propaganda and political apparatus, 9 out of 10 consumers of Gazprom’s oil and gas agreed to pay in Euros. Of course, the big watershed was the Gazprom unprecedented 30-years $400Bl natural gas supply to China signed in Shanghai last May 21 in the presence of President Putin and President Xi Jinping in the middle of the Anglo-american sponsored violent destabilization of Ukraine.   Continue Reading…

Published on Dissident Voice, by Jan Oberg, June 6, 2014.

… It’s not always included in the definitions that democracy requires a reasonable level of knowledge and information, freely available. For instance, one often hears that India is the world’s biggest democracy but 26% of the people are still illiterate (287 million people).   Continue Reading…

Published on Spiegel Online International, Interview with Reiner Klingholz, by Maximilian Popp, June 5, 2014 (Translated from the German by Charles Hawley):
In recent years, Germany has begun attracting large numbers of highly qualified immigrants. Demographics expert Reiner Klingholz says that the development could be vital to the country’s future, despite ongoing problems with integration … //

… SPIEGEL: Why do children and grandchildren of Turkish immigrants have such a difficult time in school and on the labor market?   Continue Reading…

uploaded on YouTube by StormCloudsGathering:

The Psychology of Power, Part 1, 37.23 min, Jan 7, 2014;

Snowden, The NSA and a Crime of High Treason, 4.54 min, June 3, 2014 … //
… and 78 more videos in autoplay: The divide that separates the ruling class from from the people who actually keep society functioning keeps getting wider and wider. Nothing illustrates this fact quite like the “debate” over the NSA’s mass surveillance and Edward Snowden’s role in exposing it.
Sources and full transcript here.

Published on Intrepid Report, by Ellen Brown, June 4, 2014.

Funding infrastructure through bonds doubles the price or worse. Costs can be cut in half by funding through the state’s own bank.

“The numbers are big. There is sticker shock,” said Jason Peltier, deputy manager of the Westlands Water District, describing Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build two massive water tunnels through the California Delta. “But consider your other scenarios. How much more groundwater can we pump?”   Continue Reading…

Global Power Project: Part 4 of 4 Part Series – Published on Dissident Voice, by Andrew Gavin Marshall, June 1, 2014.
(Read Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 3 here).

… At the 1992 International Monetary Conference in Toronto, there was a general consensus among private bankers and public officials that, as a result of enormous over-lending to Latin America and developing countries throughout the previous debt-crisis decade, the task of financing “the transformation of the former Soviet Union to a market economy” could not be left to bank loans alone. Hilmar Kopper, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, told the conference attendees that commercial banks would only engage in large-scale financing if there were “government-guaranteed credits” and “an agreement on the old debt,” implying that the banks would essentially need the guarantee of a government bailout scheme if things got bad.   Continue Reading…

Published on Roarmag.org, by Joris Leverink, May 29, 2014.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the Gezi uprising, a small group of textile workers explores a radical alternative: occupy, resist, produce!

Diren!Kazova, reads the sign above a small shop and cultural center in Istanbul’s busy Sisli neighborhood. Inside, the floor is made of cobblestones, giving the visitor the impression of arriving at a type of indoor street market. Slogans like ’1st of May!’, ‘Resist Kazova!’ and ‘Long Live the Revolution!’ are written on the stones, scattered across the room. From the walls hang racks full of sweaters, hundreds of them. At first glance they appear to be just ordinary sweaters. That is, until one learns the story behind them. Then suddenly the sweaters turn into symbols of resistance, signs of defiance, and the materialized hope for a more equal society, a more just economy — yes, for a better world even … // Continue Reading…

… see article We’ve had more than enough revelations … and the American Majority has spoken, published on Intrepid Report, by Sibel Edmonds, May 30, 2014.

They say we need more revelations. I say we have had more than enough revelations on synthetic wars, atrocities, surveillance and torture. They wonder when the majority of Americans are going to speak up. And I say: The American Majority has already spoken—loud and clear.   Continue Reading…

Published on Russia Today RT, May 31, 2014.

Deprived of their basic needs, the four Saudi royal princesses kept in 13-year isolation by their father, King Abdullah, have surpassed 60 days without food.

The monarch’s daughters fell out of their father’s favor for speaking out against the ill treatment of women in the Gulf kingdom. It is also believed that the king was angry at the girls’ mother for not giving him a son.   Continue Reading…

Poverty in the European Union on the increase, on Real-World Economcs Review Blog, by merijknibbe. May 29, 2014 … people at risk of poverty or social exclusion … According to Deirdre McCloskey, poverty (and growth) is a much more important problem than inequality …;

680,000 Greek Children at Risk of Living in Poverty, on Greek Reporter, by Nikoleta Kalmouki, May 29, 2014;   Continue Reading…