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naked capitalismPaul Tioxon
Paul Tioxon:If our society were nothing but apps for smart phones and tablets, maybe dissent could be crushed. There is a lot more to dissent than what is carried on fiber optic cables. Occupy showed that boots on the ground controlling territory sends a more powerful message than slogans on blogs, even a million blogs.
Equally of concern for America future is the Chinese towns and cities in open revolt. The future holds more than the jackboot smashing our faces over and over, if China is any indication or Russia for that matter, expect more open revolts of towns and cities.
Anti capitalist dissent did not just start in America in Zucotti park, it has gb
F. BeardAnti capitalist dissent goes back in the most relevant manner for decades in this country. Many people radicalized have created platforms for societal change, such as credit unions, which were extremely limited in scope for years, but have branched out into consumer and small business lending that are recreating the decentralized, extensive Savings and Loan system that worked for decades as the financial engine for building the middle class standard of living. There used to be over twenty five thousand such banks, most are gone in consolidation into the TBTF entities.
Paul TioxonCredit unions are not truly radical; they just “share” the profits of counterfeiting and usury with their depositors.
“The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.” The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.
Everything that would revolutionize society does not have to be truly radical in some drastic dramatic sense, it would just have to be placed in the service of society, not capitalism. The credit union system is a not for profit enterprise. They pay no taxes, but operate in a less costly manner for the benefit of people not profits. They are regularly reviled by the bankers that you seem to hate. They are attacked as dead beats with an unfair competitive advantage, the lack of desire to make profit so strong, that the very structure of their enterprise is devoid of profit accumulation and capital formation.
They are so radical to the government, that when Reagan came to power it sought to destroy the National Consumer Coop Bank back in 1980. It stopped a national coop movement and Community Development Corporation movement dead in its tracks. It is unfortunate that little attention is given to simple solutions that have proved their validity to a solution of the problems of capitalism. That is of course, IF you think capitalism has only been corrupted and with a few tweaks here and a lot of honest people there, all will be well. That we just need to act on the correct theory, that there is just one correct theory and it is impossible that the future replacement of capitalism could exist with it side by side in the present.
I would draw your attention to radical solutions that are working in the here and now. That there can be several solutions, based on different theories, and they can work in concert as capitalism destroys itself. I would like to continue to eat, to be heated in the winter, and my standard of living would be nice to maintain, as simple as it is. But without taking the mechanism of state and of capitalism and putting them into service for the people, instead of profits, and worrying about the ontological implications of fictitious capital instead, I am afraid we will all starve and or freeze to death without operating institutions that we are even vaguely familiar with in order to survive into the future.
Here is a model for an economy that exists now, side by side with the much larger global capitalist system, but can grow over time.
http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=4056
Neither Revolution Nor Reform: A New Strategy for the Left
By Gar Alperovitz
“For over a century, liberals and radicals have seen the possibility of change in capitalist systems from one of two perspectives: the reform tradition assumes that corporate institutions remain central to the system but believes that regulatory policies can contain, modify, and control corporations and their political allies. The revolutionary tradition assumes that change can come about only if corporate institutions are eliminated or transcended during an acute crisis, usually but not always by violence.
But what happens if a system neither reforms nor collapses in crisis?”
Alex SL:
Given that … the U.S. economy has turned socialist (at least for friends of those with control of the money spigot)
I really, really, really with people would stop calling the government being owned by large companies “socialism”. It is socialism if the government owns the companies (and not even then if the goal is not to achieve greater equality, it could be argued). Please make an effort here, this is not rocket science.
toxymoron s
scraping_by:I would contest that argument. ‘Socialism’ is aiming at greater equality, yes, but without reference to ‘company ownership’. If the government owns the companies (or the companies own the government, that distinction is superficial), you either have fascism or communism. Fascism is when the companies decide where to loot (oops, ‘invest’), communism is where the state directs the investment.
In that sense, China is still communist, while the USA is now a fascist state. France, germany, and most of Europe were ‘socialist’ countries, in a sense that huge sums of public money were spent on the population to protect from the worst excesses of the current crisis. Luckily we have Merkozy trying to put an end to all that.
falun bongThink of three threads of socialism.
- The first is group ownership of assets. This is traditional ownership of resources by tribes, clans, families, villages, etc. Often called the commons. Under attack everywhere by legal systems run by insiders.
- The next is Marxist socialism, which is the government ownership of means of production. Think Sweden, Russia, Nebraska, North Dakota, etc.
- The last is Nationalist Socialism, also known as Fascism or Corporatism. The government and business are one. Of course, we know the senior partner, don’t we?
The current power constellation is undoubtedly corporatism, that is, nationalist socialism. We have the business lords served by the government lackeys, including cleaning up their messes.
kievite:What an interesting debate. I’d just broaden it a bit to encompass the overarching concept of “freedom”. America was the world’s shining beacon in this regard, and the received wisdom among Americans is that the country still stands for “freedom” and is the “free-est country”. We bomb people across the globe apparently because they don’t yet have our “freedom”.
I wonder how much longer it will be before this outdated myth and utter falsehood dies out. Patriot Act, Guantanamo, NDAA, TSA, “if you see something, say something”, and now SOPA should serve as coffin nails. Today’s America is about global corporate, government, and military dominance and control in ways that would make Founding Fathers and WWII veterans vomit, All that’s left is the daily Orwellian re-education of the sheeple, “war is peace”, “ignorance is strength” etc.
That’s the real definition of “fascism” cited above: an unholy alliance of corporations, the government and the military. In America today the only thing missing is the brown shirts. Think about it next time you see Newt Gingrich on your telescreen…
As for Russia dealing with NGO I think George Washington can benefit from reading STRATFOR analysis (free from their site: http://www.stratfor.com) Russian Protests Alone Pose Little Threat to Putin (December 12, 2011).
There has been public confirmation that Washington has increased its financial aid to groups inside Russia, by $9 million in the past few weeks alone. These groups include one of the most prevalent watchdogs to denounce the elections as well as a number of media outlets that have devoted heavy coverage to the protests. Putin has accused Washington of stirring up resentment against the Kremlin and Putin.
This is not a new tactic by the United States, which has a multi-billion-dollar budget to fund and support non-governmental organizations, media outlets and other groups operating in Russia. However, the move at this time is critical, because Washington has an immediate vested interest in depicting Putin as weak.
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September 22, 2014 | consortiumnews.com
By driving a wedge between President Obama and President Putin over Ukraine, America's neocons and the mainstream media can hope for more "shock and awe" in the Mideast, but the U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, including $1 trillion more on nuclear weapons, writes Robert Parry.
The costs of the mainstream U.S. media's wildly anti-Moscow bias in the Ukraine crisis are adding up, as the Obama administration has decided to react to alleged "Russian aggression" by investing as much as $1 trillion in modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.
On Monday, a typically slanted New York Times article justified these modernization plans by describing "Russia on the warpath" and adding: "Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington's escalating confrontation with Moscow."
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
But the Ukraine crisis has been a textbook case of the U.S. mainstream media misreporting the facts of a foreign confrontation and then misinterpreting the meaning of the events, a classic case of "garbage in, garbage out." The core of the false mainstream narrative is that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis as an excuse to reclaim territory for the Russian Empire.
While that interpretation of events has been the cornerstone of Official Washington's "group think," the reality always was that Putin favored maintaining the status quo in Ukraine. He had no plans to "invade" Ukraine and was satisfied with the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Indeed, when the crisis heated up last February, Putin was distracted by the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Rather than Putin's "warmongering" – as the Times said in the lead-in to another Monday article – the evidence is clear that it was the United States and the European Union that initiated this confrontation in a bid to pull Ukraine out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's orbit.
This was a scheme long in the making, but the immediate framework for the crisis took shape a year ago when influential U.S. neocons set their sights on Ukraine and Putin after Putin helped defuse a crisis in Syria by persuading President Barack Obama to set aside plans to bomb Syrian government targets over a disputed Sarin gas attack and instead accept Syria's willingness to surrender its entire chemical weapons arsenal.
But the neocons and their "liberal interventionist" allies had their hearts set on another "shock and awe" campaign with the goal of precipitating another "regime change" against a Middle East government disfavored by Israel. Putin also worked with Obama to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, averting another neocon dream to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
The Despised Putin
So, Putin suddenly rose to the top of the neocons' "enemies list" and some prominent neocons quickly detected his vulnerability in Ukraine, a historical route for western invasions of Russia and the scene of extraordinarily bloody fighting during World War II.
National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, one of the top neocon paymasters spreading around $100 million a year in U.S. taxpayers' money, declared in late September 2013 that Ukraine represented "the biggest prize" but beyond that was an opportunity to put Putin "on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."
The context for Gershman's excitement was a European Union offer of an association agreement to Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych, but it came with some nasty strings attached, an austerity plan demanded by the International Monetary Fund that would have made the hard lives of the average Ukrainian even harder.
That prompted Yanukovych to seek a better deal from Putin who offered $15 billion in aid without the IMF's harsh terms. Yet, once Yanukovych rebuffed the EU plan, his government was targeted by a destabilization campaign that involved scores of political and media projects funded by Gershman's NED and other U.S. agencies.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover who had been an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, reminded a group of Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations." Nuland, wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, also showed up at the Maidan square in Kiev passing out cookies to protesters.
The Maidan protests, reflecting western Ukraine's desire for closer ties to Europe, also were cheered on by neocon Sen. John McCain, who appeared on a podium with leaders of the far-right Svoboda party under a banner honoring Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. A year earlier, the European Parliament had identified Svoboda as professing "racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views [that] go against the EU's fundamental values and principles."
Yet, militants from Svoboda and the even more extreme Right Sektor were emerging as the muscle of the Maidan protests, seizing government buildings and hurling firebombs at police. A well-known Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader, Andriy Parubiy, became the commandant of the Maidan's "self-defense" forces.
Behind the scenes, Assistant Secretary Nuland was deciding who would take over the Ukrainian government once Yanukovych was ousted. In an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland crossed off some potential leaders and announced that "Yats" – or Arseniy Yatsenyuk – was her guy.
The Coup
On Feb. 20, as the neo-Nazi militias stepped up their attacks on police, a mysterious sniper opened fire on both protesters and police killing scores and bringing the political crisis to a boil. The U.S. news media blamed Yanukovych for the killings though he denied giving such an order and some evidence pointed toward a provocation from the far-right extremists.
As Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said in another intercepted phone call with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Asthon, "there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition."
But the sniper shootings led Yanukovych to agree on Feb. 21 to a deal guaranteed by three European countries – France, Germany and Poland – that he would surrender much of his power and move up elections so he could be voted out of office. He also assented to U.S. demands that he pull back his police.
That last move, however, prompted the neo-Nazi militias to overrun the presidential buildings on Feb. 22 and force Yanukovych's officials to flee for their lives. Then, rather than seeking to enforce the Feb. 21 agreement, the U.S. State Department promptly declared the coup regime "legitimate" and blamed everything on Yanukovych and Putin.
Nuland's choice, Yatsenyuk, was made prime minister and the neo-Nazis were rewarded for their crucial role by receiving several ministries, including national security headed by Parubiy. The parliament also voted to ban Russian as an official language (though that was later rescinded), and the IMF austerity demands were pushed through by Yatsenyuk. Not surprisingly, ethnic Russians in the south and east, the base of Yanukovych's support, began resisting what they regarded as the illegitimate coup regime.
To blame this crisis on Putin simply ignores the facts and defies logic. To presume that Putin instigated the ouster of Yanukovych in some convoluted scheme to seize territory requires you to believe that Putin got the EU to make its reckless association offer, organized the mass protests at the Maidan, convinced neo-Nazis from western Ukraine to throw firebombs at police, and manipulated Gershman, Nuland and McCain to coordinate with the coup-makers – all while appearing to support Yanukovych's idea for new elections within Ukraine's constitutional structure.
Though such a crazy conspiracy theory would make people in tinfoil hats blush, this certainty is at the heart of what every "smart" person in Official Washington believes. If you dared to suggest that Putin was actually distracted by the Sochi Olympics last February, was caught off guard by the events in Ukraine, and reacted to a Western-inspired crisis on his border (including his acceptance of Crimea's request to be readmitted to Russia), you would be immediately dismissed as "a stooge of Moscow."
Such is how mindless "group think" works in Washington. All the people who matter jump on the bandwagon and smirk at anyone who questions how wise it is to be rolling downhill in some disastrous direction.
But the pols and pundits who appear on U.S. television spouting the conventional wisdom are always the winners in this scenario. They get to look tough, standing up to villains like Yanukovych and Putin and siding with the saintly Maidan protesters. The neo-Nazi brown shirts are whited out of the picture and any Ukrainian who objected to the U.S.-backed coup regime finds a black hat firmly glued on his or her head.
For the neocons, there are both financial and ideological benefits. By shattering the fragile alliance that had evolved between Putin and Obama over Syria and Iran, the neocons seized greater control over U.S. policies in the Middle East and revived the prospects for violent "regime change."
On a more mundane level – by stirring up a new Cold War – the neocons generate more U.S. government money for military contractors who bestow a portion on Washington think tanks that provide cushy jobs for neocons when they are out of government.
The Losers
The worst losers are the people of Ukraine, most tragically the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, thousands of whom have died from a combination of heavy artillery fire by the Ukrainian army on residential areas followed by street fighting led by brutal neo-Nazi militias who were incorporated into Kiev's battle plans. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's 'Romantic' Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers."]
The devastation of eastern Ukraine, which has driven an estimated one million Ukrainians out of their homes, has left parts of this industrial region in ruins. Of course, in the U.S. media version, it's all Putin's fault for deceiving these ethnic Russians with "propaganda" about neo-Nazis and then inducing these deluded individuals to resist the "legitimate" authorities in Kiev.
Notably, America's righteous "responsibility to protect" crowd, which demanded that Obama begin airstrikes in Syria a year ago, swallowed its moral whistles when it came to the U.S.-backed Kiev regime butchering ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (or for that matter, when Israeli forces slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza).
However, beyond the death and destruction in eastern Ukraine, the meddling by Nuland, Gershman and others has pushed all of Ukraine toward financial catastrophe. As "The Business Insider" reported on Sept. 21, "Ukraine Is on the Brink of Total Economic Collapse."
Author Walter Kurtz wrote:
"Those who have spent any time in Ukraine during the winter know how harsh the weather can get. And at these [current] valuations, hryvnia [Ukraine's currency] isn't going to buy much heating fuel from abroad. …
"Inflation rate is running above 14% and will spike sharply from here in the next few months if the currency weakness persists. Real wages are collapsing. … Finally, Ukraine's fiscal situation is unraveling."
In other words, the already suffering Ukrainians from the west, east and center of the country can expect to suffer a great deal more. They have been made expendable pawns in a geopolitical chess game played by neocon masters and serving interests far from Lviv, Donetsk and Kiev.
But other victims from these latest machinations by the U.S. political/media elite will include the American taxpayers who will be expected to foot the bill for the new Cold War launched in reaction to Putin's imaginary scheme to instigate the Ukraine crisis so he could reclaim territory of the Russian Empire.
As nutty as that conspiracy theory is, it is now one of the key reasons why the American people have to spend $1 trillion to modernize the nation's nuclear arsenal, rather than scaling back the thousands of U.S. atomic weapons to around 900, as had been planned.
Or as one supposed expert, Gary Samore at Harvard, explained to the New York Times: "The most fundamental game changer is Putin's invasion of Ukraine. That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible."
Thus, you can see how hyperbolic journalism and self-interested punditry can end up costing the American taxpayers vast sums of money and contributing to a more dangerous world.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
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