Posts Tagged ‘bailout’
Obama @ the UN: The Overwhelming Arrogance of American Imperialism
From WSWS.org
Obama at the UN: The arrogant voice of imperialism
By Bill Van Auken
24 September 2010
President Barack Obama used his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Thursday to defend US wars and state terror abroad and to proclaim that the economic crisis has been resolved thanks to his Wall Street bailout.
The US president received a noticeably tepid response from the assembled UN delegates. While in his first address to the body last year, he was able to pose as a fresh alternative to the crimes carried out by the Bush administration, by now it has become clear to most on the international stage that his administration’s policies are largely in continuity with those of its predecessor.
In its tone and its content, the Obama speech was the authentic and arrogant voice of US imperialism.
Parroting remarks delivered by George W. Bush from the same podium, Obama began by invoking September 11, 2001, once again exploiting the terrorist attacks of that day to justify the acts of military aggression committed by both US administrations in the intervening nine years.
In the same breath, he referred to Wall Street’s financial meltdown of September 2008, as an event that “devastated American families on Main Street,” while “crippling markets and deferring the dreams of millions on every continent.”
These two events were presented as the source of the core challenges confronting the US administration. Supposedly in response to the first, the Obama administration has continued and escalated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan, while reaffirming Washington’s “right” to carry out unilateral military aggression anywhere on the planet.
In response to the second, the administration continued the massive bailout begun under Bush, committing more than $12 trillion to propping up the US banks and financial institutions, while holding none of those involved responsible for the criminal forms of speculation practiced on Wall Street.
Obama claimed that the so-called Wall Street reform legislation passed by his administration would ensure “that a crisis like this never happens again.” It does nothing of the kind, placing no serious limits on the speculative activities and profitability of the big banks and leaving Wall Street to continue with “business as usual.”
“The global economy has been pulled back from the brink of a depression,” Obama told his UN audience. This statement flies in the face of the grim conditions confronting working people on every continent. This includes the US itself, where the official unemployment rate remains near 10 percent, the unemployed and underemployed account for 17 percent of the workforce, some 30 million people, and one out of every seven Americans is living below the poverty line.
While profits have returned to pre-crisis levels, the reality is that none of the underlying contradictions that have given rise to the deepest world economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s has been resolved. They have only grown in intensity. The response of the ruling classes throughout the world has been to redouble their attacks on the working class in an attempt to force it to pay for this crisis.
Obama followed his assertion about the economy being pulled back from “the brink” with an even more absurd claim that he would not “rest until these seeds of progress grow into a broader prosperity, not only for all Americans, but for peoples around the globe.”
In the US, throughout Europe and in much of the rest of the world, governments are pursuing unprecedented austerity policies that are ripping up basic social rights and dramatically lowering the living standards of working people. Meanwhile, Obama himself spoke before a global poverty summit the day before his speech, warning the world’s poorest that Washington was determined to break their cycle of “dependency.”
The US president’s lies about the economy were followed by the fraudulent claim that the military operations his administration is pursuing abroad are aimed at upholding “our common security.”
Obama said that he is “winding down the war in Iraq” and will pull out all of its occupation troops by the end of next year. At the same time, he declared Washington’s intention to forge “a lasting partnership with the Iraqi people,” by which he means maintaining a US protectorate over the oil-rich country in order to advance the geo-strategic interests of American capitalism.
He said that the drawing down US troops in Iraq had allowed the US military to be “refocused on defeating al Qaeda and denying its affiliates a safe haven” in Afghanistan. This is another lie. US military and intelligence officials acknowledge that there are no more than 100 al Qaeda members in all of Afghanistan. The nearly 100,000 US troops deployed in that country are not combating “terrorism,” but asserting US neo-colonial control in a bid to advance Washington’s quest for hegemony in Central Asia.
In one of the speech’s more chilling passages, Obama bragged that “from South Asia to the Horn of Africa, we are moving toward a more targeted approach” in the war on terror, that did not require “deploying large American armies.” In other words, while constrained in its ability to carry out another major military occupation, US imperialism is pursuing its policies by means of assassinations, drone missile attacks and the deployment of elite killing squads, and has arrogated to itself the right to target and kill its perceived opponents anywhere on the planet.
Obama used the speech to once again threaten Iran. Only days before his appearance at the UN, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech urging elements within the Iranian ruling elite to carry out regime change in the country. He reiterated the vow made in his speech last year that Iran “must be held accountable” for its alleged violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
At least a quarter of Obama’s address was dedicated to the US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian “peace talks” that appear to be on the brink of yet another breakdown in the face of Israeli intransigence and provocation.
For all the hackneyed rhetoric about the “Holy Land” and “our common humanity,” the Obama administration is pursuing these negotiations as a means of solidifying support among the Arab regimes for its escalating threats of aggression against Iran and to further its domination of the Middle East.
The content of the speech made clear the US administration’s unwavering complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. Obama urged that a limited moratorium declared by the Israeli government be extended beyond September 26, when it is set to expire. He said Israel should do this because it “improved the atmosphere for talks,” not because the entire settlement activity in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is a violation of international law and multiple UN resolutions. In the same breath, the US president asserted that “talks should press on until completed,” presumably regardless of what Israel does.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has insisted that his government will not extend the moratorium, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had initially insisted that his delegation would be forced to walk out if it does not. An ever-pliant servant of Washington, Abbas has since indicated that he might back down on this threat.
The rest of Obama’s remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian question had an Orwellian flavor, in which Israel was presented as the victim. “The slaughter of innocent Israelis is not resistance—it’s injustice,” Obama declared. He made no mention of the slaughter of 1,400 Palestinians in the US-backed siege of Gaza in 2008-2009 or the criminal attack on the Gaza aid flotilla that killed nine Turkish civilians last May. The day the US president spoke, the UN issued a report charging that Israel’s actions were illegal and employed an “unacceptable level of brutality,” meriting war crimes prosecution.
The US president concluded his speech with an exaltation of “democracy” and “human rights,” which again echoed similar language employed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
In Bush’s case, this phony democratic rhetoric was employed to justify US imperialism’s drive for dominance in the Middle East, where Washington demonstrated its commitment to “human rights” by carrying out mass killings, the detention of tens of thousands without charges or trial, and the infamous acts of torture at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantánamo.
In Obama’s case, the posturing as the global champion of democratic rights is no less contemptible. The target, however, appears to have shifted.
The Council on Foreign Relations, the establishment thinktank that enjoys close ties to the administration and the State Department, spelled this out. Noting Obama’s “full-throated endorsement of democracy as the best form of government,” it commented: “Yet the appeal of such an idea faces challenges at bodies like the UN. This is not, for example, the future world that Chinese leaders envision.”
Indeed, Obama followed his celebration of democracy by calling attention to his upcoming trip to Asia, ticking off the countries he will visit—India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan—and praising each for having promoted “democratic principles in their own way.” The itinerary includes the four largest countries that US strategists envision as bulwarks against the expansion of Chinese influence.
On the same day that Obama delivered his speech, the New York Times published a front-page article on the increasingly tense US-China relationship that was clearly based on the perspective of the US administration. The Times reported that “rising frictions between China and its neighbors in recent weeks over security issues have handed the United States an opportunity to reassert itself—one the Obama administration has been keen to take advantage of.”
It noted that Washington has inserted itself into territorial disputes between China and Southeast Asian countries, organized provocative joint military exercises with South Korea near Chinese waters and has solidified its alliance with Japan, largely in opposition to China’s influence.
Under conditions of rising conflicts between Washington and Beijing over currency and trade relations, Obama’s praise for “democracy” at the UN represents a thinly veiled threat of new and far more catastrophic eruptions of American militarism.
BP’s Slimy and Infamous History as the forefront of British Imperialism
Arm of the British Empire British Petroleum’s Assault on America
June 15, 2010 by JackBlood
by John Hoefle
June 12–British Petroleum is not a corporation, at least not in the way that many Americans think of corporations. What British Petroleum {really} is, is an instrument of the British Empire’s unrelenting war upon the vast majority of the people of the world. British Petroleum is part of a network of giant imperial cartels, created with the aim of replacing sovereign nation-states as the ruling entities of the planet. Under this system, an imperial financier oligarchy runs the cartels, which in turn control the world. This system, marketed as “globalization,” is actually a return to the methods of the evil and corrupt British East India Company.
The drama now playing out in the Gulf of Mexico, in the halls of government in Washington and London, and in the boardrooms of Wall Street and Threadneedle Street, reflect both the astonishing success of this British assault upon humanity, and the necessity for the people of the United States to defeat this attack. If we are to survive, the British Empire and its instrumentalities must be destroyed.
No one should be surprised at the breathtaking arrogance of BP, which has a sordid history of disregard for human life, an imperious disdain for the environment, and a demonstrated unwillingness to pay for anything that cuts into its profits, such as safety equipment, basic maintenance, and oil-spill clean-up capability. The company has been convicted of felonies, one arising from the 2005 explosion of its Texas City, Texas, refinery, in which 15 people were killed, another involving the illegal dumping of hazardous materials in Alaska. It was still on probation for the latter offense, when its Gulf of Mexico well blew out in April. BP was also the company responsible for handling the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but proved so unwilling to meet its obligations that Exxon stepped in to handle the mess. It is, literally, a criminal operation.
That criminality is by design. British Petroleum was formed in 1909, as Anglo-Persian Oil Company, as a monopoly on the oilfields of what is now Iran. The British Monarchy was determined to convert its naval vessels from coal to oil, to maintain the empire’s supremacy on the seas. It was also determined to deny its rivals access to the oil, for the same purpose. This drive to lock up oil supplies led to the creation of an imperial oil cartel–a cartel of giant oil companies–which controls the global production, distribution, and processing of oil today, and controls the mechanisms by which prices are set. This corporate oil cartel does not control all of the world’s oil, but it controls enough to make it a significant factor in the empire’s dominion over nations. To this day, British Petroleum remains an asset of the British Monarchy.
British Petroleum’s sibling in this operation, is the Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell, the result of a 1907 merger between Royal Dutch Petroleum of the Netherlands and Shell Transport and Trading of the United Kingdom. One of the founders of Royal Dutch Petroleum was Sir Henri Deterding, who ran the company for 36 years, and was later notorious for his support of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Royal Dutch Shell also provided a cover for the intelligence operations of Lord Victor Rothschild, whose family played a major role in the company. Lord Victor’s son, Jacob, the current Baron Rothschild, today runs the Inter-Alpha Group of imperial financiers, which, as we shall see, is joined at the hip with British Petroleum and Goldman Sachs.
– Fascism –
Support for the Nazis runs deep in these companies and their controllers. The late, but not lamented, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party, and part of the industrial espionage unit of the notorious I.G. Farben, of concentration-camp infamy. Prince Bernhard was a founder of the Bilberberg Group, and with Britain’s Prince Philip, of the World Wildlife Fund, two organizations dedicated to pushing imperial fascism. Philip is the creature who has dedicated his life to reducing the world’s population by two-thirds (including you), and has expressed his desire to be reincarnated as a deadly virus so that he may continue to play an active role in that genocide.
These two oil giants are an essential component of the British Empire’s control over raw materials, along with mining companies such as Rio Tinto, Anglo-American, Cargill, and others, which exert significant control over the minerals, metals, petroleum products, food supplies, communications facilities, and finance, necessary to run the modern world. The project to create these cartels was officially launched at the Bilderberg annual meeting in 1968, although this was merely the repackaging of a much older idea.
The plan, as introduced by Lehman Brothers banker and U.S. Anglophile George W. Ball, was for the creation of a “world company” as a replacement for the nation-state. The plan was explicitly Malthusian, based upon the idea that corporations were much better suited to managing the world’s scarce resources than were nations and their governments. Governments, the Bilderbergers complained, had an unfortunate tendency to place the welfare of their people–or at least some of them–above the welfare of the imperial fatcats of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal empire. Far better, the oligarchs insisted, to let bloodless corporations–answerable only to the empire–run the show. It was an explicitly corporatist conception, corporatism being the method by which Benito Mussolini ran his Venetian-dominated fascist state. Under corporatism, the state becomes an appendage of the corporations.
Which brings us back to the case of British Petroleum.
– Corporatism –
What is the U.S. Government under President Barack Obama, if not a corporatist state protecting an imperial cartel-company? At every step of the Gulf crisis, the Obama Administration has acted to protect British Petroleum. The same British Petroleum which has lied at every step, downplaying the volume of oil shooting out of the seabed, denying the existence of underwater plumes, pointing accusing fingers at its partners on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and wasting resources on public relations campaigns, when it needs to be fixing the problem. Through it all, the Obama camp is right there with the company, helping it spread its lies, while taking none of the obvious measures to stop the spill, launch the clean-up, and protect the nation from this attack.
Belatedly, as a sop to public fury, President Mustache has been talking tough, looking for, as he put it, some “ass to kick.” The British, for their part, have begun publicly complaining about Obama’s “anti-British” rhetoric, and wringing hands against the “bloodlust” directed at Britain. Others complain about calling the firm British at all, asserting that it is now a “global” (read, “imperial”) company without nationality. (Thanks for confirming our thesis.)
This “war of words” is a play staged for public consumption. The British Empire is accustomed to working in areas where the local populations hate it, and have developed their psychological operations accordingly. The colonial office learned long ago that, often the best way to protect your local political assets, is to publicly criticize them–sometimes the most vociferous anti-British voice is actually a British agent! So Obama, a British agent, talks tough, the British complain, and the spin machine paints a phony picture of trouble in a relationship that is actually quite cozy.
Obama may indeed be getting angry at the beating his reputation is taking, but his anger is irrelevant, as he remains fully under British control. He is a prisoner of his own Nero-like fantasies. He, and his Administration, remain servants of the Brutish Empire which controls both him and British Petroleum. As long as Obama remains President, the U.S. will remain a corporatist state.
– Behind the Lies –
And, as long as British Petroleum continues to control the crime scene in the Gulf, it remains impossible for outsiders to know exactly what went wrong in the well and on the rig, as well as what the real situation is with the well and its environs today. It has been shown that we cannot believe a word the company says. Neither can we believe the statements of our own government, which has already been forced by events to back off on earlier lies. What we can say, with a fair amount of certainty, is that the situation is far more dire than either party will admit, that much of what we are being spoon-fed is disinformation, and that the clean-up operations are far short of what is required.
British Petroleum has consistently treated this as if it were a public relations problem, rather than a physical disaster. CEO Tony Hayward publicly lamented that he wanted “his life back.” As if anyone gives a damn about his inconvenience, when 11 people died on his rig, a large section of the American economy and way of life has been destroyed, and the oil flows relentlessly into the Gulf, into the marshes and beaches, and out into the Atlantic.
The British are arguing that punishing the company for this “accident” is unfair, because of the amount of British pension-fund investment in the company. Just as we have seen in the financial crisis, the empire is demanding that its assets be rescued, to save the “little people.” How shameless can they get, and how stupid do they think we are, to push such blatant lies?
However, with this lying line of argument, they do bring us closer to the truth. For British Petroleum, it is largely about the money. In fact, one can make a strong case that British Petroleum is more like a hedge fund that controls oil assets, than an industrial corporation. It outsources much of its operations to contractors. In the case of the well in question, it leased the drilling rig from Transocean, and hired Halliburton to perform some of the well maintenance; British Petroleum’s main role seems to have been stopping safety measures and improperly pushing for premature completion of the well.
We will not speculate in this article about what actually may have happened to this rig, and what is now occurring beneath the waters of the Gulf, but we will say that there are serious questions about British Petroleum’s version of events, and of the authenticity of some of the photographs and videos the company is providing. Given the consistent lying from these weasels, they are not entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
– Spooks –
On the night of June 7, 2010, according to a {Bloomberg} report, “a group including Vittorio Colao, head of telecom company Vodafone Plc, Martin Sorrell, chief of advertising for WPP Plc, and John Sawer, director-general of the [British] intelligence agency MI6,” gathered at British Petroleum’s headquarters in London “to show support for Tony Hayward.”
Just what, we wonder, is MI6’s involvement in this affair? MI6 is the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), which works, incidentally, for the Crown, not the government. Oil companies are, after all, known for providing cover for the intelligence services’ operations all over the world. Could the SIS be involved in any way?
We also note with interest the intelligence connections of Halliburton and Transocean–the latter of which is registered in Rothschild-dominated Zug, Switzerland. Halliburton not only is the company of former Vice President Dick Cheney, but has long-standing connections to the U.S. intelligence community, notably through the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Transocean is the result of a series of mergers, including the offshore drilling operations of Schlumberger, which, at least in part, is an intelligence agency operating inside an oil-services company. Schlumberger had a hand in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, through the person of Jean de Menil, husband of a Schlumberger heiress, a Schlumberger executive, and a member of Permindex, the Synarchist assassination bureau.
Could the presence of all these spook-related outfits on the Deepwater Horizon rig be related in ways which remain hidden? We don’t know at this point, but we do know that the official story is full of holes, and the whole affair cries out for investigation.
Finally, we note with interest the incestuous relationship between British Petroleum, Goldman Sachs, and the Inter-Alpha Group. Take the case of Sir Peter Sutherland, a Knight Commander of the British Monarchy’s Order of St. Michael and St. George. Sir Petey was, at the same time (2001-09), chairman of British Petroleum; chairman of Goldman Sachs International, the bank’s London branch; and a director of the Inter-Alpha Group’s Royal Bank of Scotland. Sutherland was previously chairman of AIB, the Irish member of Inter-Alpha, and is a former director-general of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization, which plays an important role in promoting globalization. Sutherland, still at Goldman Sucks, is the chairman of the Fabian Society’s London School of Economics, which trained many of the jerks who blew up the world…
From the streets of Athens: “The struggle of humanity against authority”
On May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, 2010, 200,000 people took to the streets in Athens in a general strike.
Here are some details from the blog Occupied London on the current situation in Greece.
First, the background, then the May 5th update…
After the Greek Riots
A few bullets fired by a cop and a kid lying dead on the street. Cities burn for weeks. For the spectacle-hungry media machine, the story begins and ends here. All else, before and after, is void.
Follow the corporate media and the Greek revolt died a long, long time ago. What’s happening in Greece at the moment? What’s the revolt’s legacy, where did all that energy go? Why should you care, screams the media machine, haven’t you heard? The revolt has died. And, even more importantly, The King is dead!
Back on the ground, of course, the revolt is far from dead. Its legacy is very much alive, getting inscribed deeper day after day. The police, having ridden itself from the burden of neutrality, can openly cooperate with fascist thugs, who feel confident enough to throw molotov cocktails against demonstrators in solidarity with undocumented migrants (Athens, July 8). Undocumented migrants, in turn, are explicitly the aim of the most recent wave of state repression: “First we’ll go for the migrants, then for the anarchists”, as the minister of public order so eloquently put it. Even he seems to be unable to catch up with the events: the only December demonstrator still in prison is held (still without trial) precisely because he is an anarchist and therefore consists “a threat to democracy” (wording of the court of misdemeanours, Athens, July 8).
The greek state seems conscious in that it cannot take another revolt of the size of December’s – and determined in not allowing this to happen.
Under this wave of repression, solidarity links are more important than ever. Armed with the experience of December, with the certainty that the return to normality is not option. Armed with a belief in a more just world – and not much else. Democracy has chosen its enemies: The migrants, the anarchists, all the outsiders unable or unwilling to fall back in line.
Having reported on December’s revolt and its immediate aftermath, this blog will now go on to cover everyday life in Greece as it is today. Expect eye-witness reports from everyday struggles, from the demonstrations in Athens (mostly) and in other cities across the country. Reports on the hunger strike of Thodoros Iliopoulos, the last prisoner of the revolt.
Please don’t expect any “impartial” reports (as if these could ever exist). This is an anarchist take on the situation in the country. A democracy that wages war on migrants and anarchists; a democracy armed with fascist thugs, with molotov cocktails and hand grenades; a democracy producing the silent death of the concentration camp (a silence reproduced and amplified by the media machine) is a democracy worth fighting against. Let’s make some noise.
(below is the “about” section of this blog as it went live on December 8, 2008 – two days after Alexis’ assassination).
On the night of December 6th, police shot 15-year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in cold blood in the Eksarhia district of Athens. Since that night, Athens and tens of other greek cities have been burning.
On the same night, up to 10,000 people took the streets of Athens on a spontaneous demonstration, burning and smashing banks, ministries and multinational shops. Ever since, tension has been increasingly escalating: universities are occupied, as are most of the high schools in the country. Barricades are being put up around Athens; clashes with the police are constant.
On Tuesday, 9.12, the funeral of Alexandros is taking place and a general strike is called for Wednesday the 10th – a day both sides are building up for.
The purpose of this blog is to provide up-to-date information on the Greek riots, directly from the streets. Authors are contributing from the Greek cities of Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras.
The updates will be irregular and as frequent as permitted, given the circumstances. The updates will be mostly text-based. Confirmed reports will be presented as such – and so will rumours. We are not journalists and we are not objective; we chose sides in the social war a while ago.
In memory of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
The struggle of humanity against authority, as always, continues.
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May 6, 2010 update
The statement below was issued a few hours ago by the anarchist squat of Skaramanga and Patision in Athens.
The murderers “mourn” their victims
(Regarding today’s tragic death of 3 people)
The enormous strike demonstration which took place today, 5th of May turned into a social outflow of rage. At least 200,000 people of all ages took to the streets (employees and unemployed, in the public and private sector, locals and migrants) attempting, over many hours and in consecutive waves, to surround and to take over the Parliament. The forces of repression came out in full force, to play their familiar role – that is, of the protection of the political and financial authorities. The clashes were hours long and extensive. The political system and its institutions reached a nadir.
However, in the midst of all this, a tragic event that no words can possibly describe took place: 3 people died from infusions at the branch of Marfin Bank on Stadiou Avenue, which was set ablaze.
The state and the entire journalistic riff-raff, without any shame toward the dead or their close ones, spoke from the very first moment about some “murderer-hooded up youths”, trying to take advantage of the event, in order to calm the wave of social rage that had erupted and to recover their authority that had been torn apart; to impose once again a police occupation of the streets, to wipe out sources of social resistance and disobedience against state terrorism and capitalist barbarity. For this reason, during the last few hours the police forces have been marching through the center of Athens, they have conducted hundreds of detentions and they raided – with shootings and stun-grenades – the anarchist occupation “space of united multiform action” on Zaimi street and the “migrant haunt” on Tsamadou Street, causing extensive damage (both these places are in the Exarcheia neighbourhood of Athens). At the same time the threat of a violent police eviction is hanging over the rest of the self-organised spaces (occupations and haunts) after the Prime-ministerial speech which referred to soon-to-come raids for the arrest of the “murderers”.
The governors, governmental officials, their political personnel, the TV-mouthpieces and the salaried hack writers attempt in this way to purify their regime and the criminalise the anarchists and every unpatronised voice of struggle. As if there would ever be the slightest of chances that whoever attacked the bank (provided the official scenario stands) would possibly know there were people inside, and that they would torch it alight regardless. They seem to confuse the people in struggle for themselves: them who without any hesitation hand over the entire society to the deepest pillage and enslaving, who order their praetorians to attack without hesitation and to aim and shoot to kill, them who have lead three people to suicide in the past week alone, due to financial debts. [NOTE: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POINT. Politicos and corporate CEOs think everyone is like they are: willing to kill for an agenda…. Theirs is the lowest motive possible: avarice. They simply cannot imagine anyone risking their lives or livelihoods for an altruistic goal, such as peace or justice].
The truth is that the real murderer, the real instigator of today’s tragic death of 3 people is “mister” Vgenopoulos, who used the usual employers’ blackmailing (the threat of sacking) and forced his employees to work in the branches of his bank during a day of strike – and even in a branch like the one of Stadiou Avenue, where the strike’s demonstration would pass through. Such blackmailing is known only too well by anyone experiencing the terrorism of salaried slavery on an everyday level. We are awaiting to see what excuses Vgenopoulos will come up with for the relatives of the victims and for the society as a whole – this ultra-capitalist now hinted by some centers of power as the next prime minister in a future “national unity government” that could follow the expected, complete collapse of the political system.
If an unprecedented strike can ever be a murderer…
If an unprecedented demonstration, in an unprecedented crisis, can ever be a murderer…
If open social spaces that are alive and public can ever be murderers…
If the state can impose a curfew and attack demonstrators under the pretext of arresting murderers…
If Vgenopoulos can detain his employees inside a bank – that is, a primary social enemy and target for demonstrators…
…it is because authority, this serial murderer, wants to slaughter upon its birth a revolt which questions the supposed solution of an even harsher attack on society, of an even larger pillage by capital, of an even thirstier sucking of our blood.
…it is because the future of the revolt does not include politicians and bosses, police and mass media.
… it is because behind their much-advertised “only” solution, there is a solution that does not speak of development rates and unemployment but rather, it speaks of solidarity, self-organising and human relationships.
When asking who are the murderers of life, of freedom, of dignity, the ferments of authority and capital, they and their tuft hunters only need to take a look at their own selves. Today and every day.
HANDS OFF FREE SOCIAL SPACES
IT IS THE STATE AND THE CAPITALISTS WHO ARE THE MURDERERS, TERRORISTS AND CRIMINALS
EVERYONE TO THE STREETS
REVOLT
from the open assembly of the evening of 5/5/2010
______________________ China Rose’s Comment _____________________
No one involved in the general strike action wanted to kill bystanders. The purpose of anarchism is to take actions to save lives by fighting for social change. The bank management knew that. They also knew that the bank should have been shut down, and that if their employees got hurt, anarchists would be blamed. Can anyone doubt that they are capable of deliberately putting their employees in harm’s way, of being willing to sacrifice their employees lives? Particularly for a political message? EMPLOYERS do this EVERY DAY. This is the nature of capitalism.
Two examples: Look at Massey Energy and BP in the US.
Massey Energy was cited for mine safety violations continuously. They sneered at the regulations, and refused to put safety controls in place. They didn’t give a DAMN about the lives of their faithful employees. Now, over 30 miners are dead, suffocated or burned to death underground.
BP operated an offshore drilling rig without adhering to safety standards or preparing for the possibility of an oil spill. When the rig blew up, their employees were blown to bits. People’s lives throughout the entire Gulf region have been ruined, along with a precious ecosystem and all its animals. The suffering caused by this massive oil spill is beyond measure.
These corporations — and ALL corporations — refuse to even protect their own employees. They are victimizing entire regions for ugly profit. Every day. They lie, cheat, connive, manipulate, steal and kill — for profit. They are the world’s greatest criminal syndicates, and banks enable them to thrive. Banks are parasites that feed off the work and sweat of everyday people. They will do anything to stop journalists, whistleblowers or activists who are becoming too effective. They murder with impunity — regularly. That is what corporations DO. That’s what the state does.
The state’s job is to protect and defend corporations. They’ll dispatch police and military by the tens of thousands to enforce corporate rape and plunder. They’ll rob and kill their owns citizens to perpetuate corporate dominance and murder innocent people in other countries by the millions to expand their empires.
BANKS AND CORPORATIONS — and their GOVERNMENT FLUNKIES AND WHORES KILLED THOSE 3 BANK EMPLOYEES. They will continue to kill UNLESS STOPPED.
Thanks for the memories! America salutes her Commander-in-Chief!
News Item! May 9, 2010. Obama decides to EXPAND drone attacks. Whatta guy! What a murderer!
Watch the Slide Show… then click on the photo links below it.
The starving, mutilated orphans of Afghanistan salute you! You are a real hero! So do patriotic Americans!
Americans should bear in mind: this is where our tax dollars are going — not to schools, roads, bridges, health care, jobs programs or housing in the US, but to create weapons of mass destruction to be deployed anywhere in the world that needs a new dictator, new weapons and new death squads. The rest of our public monies are going to massacre poor people in Afghanistan, to burn and mutilate them, and destroy their homes and villages. And just in case we don’t like it, the shock doctrine and its military backup is coming directly into our own communities.
Of course, most of the US Treasury’s funds were plundered and given to the top BANKS, the same BANKS that are robbing us with interest rates, fees and collections, and taking our homes and farms away. Who gets our tax dollars? The top 1/2 of 1% of the population. Screw everyone else….US citizens have no more rights… And they call this democracy. That’s a sick joke.
Pretty damn heroic, Obama!
Watch the Slide Show… and click on the photo links below it.
Then, if you can, donate to RAWA.
Finally! A Bi-Partisan Police State!
I am so sick and tired of “gridlock” and “squabbling” in Congress. Can’t we all just get along (by going with with the program)? Finally, we have a government with bi-partisan support. A government that has unlimited power to oppress its citizens, a federal-state coalition of military, police and corporate interests with the ability to arrest, detain, torture and even assassinate its any American, anywhere, at any time… yippee.
I feel so relieved… Hope and change, baby!
Democrats vote to renew Patriot Act
By Bill Van Auken
27 February 2010
With almost no debate, the Democratic leadership in Congress pushed through an unamended extension of the USA Patriot Act’s most notorious provisions, granting sweeping powers to eavesdrop and seize library, Internet and other personal records of US citizens.
The provisions were set to expire by Sunday. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the legislation before then, securing his administration the ability to continue and expand the domestic spying and attacks on basic democratic rights that he and other Democrats had pretended to oppose under the Bush administration.
The three extended provisions give US intelligence agencies the power to: 1) conduct “roving” wiretaps without specifying a particular phone number or e-mail account; 2) force institutions to surrender credit, banking, medical, mental health and library records; and 3) spy on so-called lone-wolf foreign nationals, who have no affiliation to either terrorist organizations or foreign governments.
The Senate approved the one-year extension Wednesday by a voice vote and without any debate. The House followed suit on Thursday night, voting 315 to 97 in favor of the legislation.
Originally, the three provisions were to expire at the end of December, but Congress passed a two-month extension late last year, while continuing to discuss proposed amendments that would ostensibly introduce greater protection of privacy and constitutional rights.
Last fall, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved President Obama’s request to renew the measures after debating various limited proposals to increase judicial oversight and otherwise reform the legislation, while keeping its essential powers intact. The Obama administration offered no support for even the most modest changes, with both the Justice Department and the FBI calling for the provisions to be extended as is.
Among the proposed changes was an amendment that would have barred the government from using National Security Letters (NSLs)—administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon—to obtain confidential records of US citizens who are not suspected of terrorism or espionage. Another would have let the “lone-wolf” provision expire. A third would have required the government to issue written statements setting out the factual basis for obtaining an NSL. There was also a proposal to allow recipients of NSLs limited ability to challenge the so-called gag orders that bar them from informing anyone that they have been targeted for investigation.
A separate proposal called for the repeal of the section of the FISA Amendments Act that granted blanket immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government in its illegal warrantless wiretapping program.
Seeking bipartisan consensus on the legislation, all of these measures were defeated, with the committee ultimately adopting—with eight Democrats voting in favor and only three against—virtually meaningless proposals introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee and chairman of the Senate intelligence panel.
Even these toothless amendments were stripped from the final extension resolution. Democratic leaders justified the action on the grounds that it was necessary to secure Republican support.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy justified extending the worst abuses in the Patriot Act without any changes by declaring, “I would have preferred to add oversight and judicial review improvements to any extension of expiring provisions in the USA Patriot Act, but I understand some Republican senators objected.”
The media has largely attributed the Democrats’ support for the renewal of the Patriot Act provisions and the scrapping of any attempt to amend them as an attempt to avoid any debate that would allow the Republican minority to portray them as “soft on terrorism” in the run-up to the midterm election.
While no doubt such cowardice and opportunism govern all of the decisions made by the Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the reality is that support for the police state measures introduced with the Patriot Act has been bipartisan from the outset.
The measure was passed by the Senate in 2001 with just one dissenting vote and under conditions in which members of Congress acknowledged that they had not even read the legislation. The Democrats have provided the necessary votes for approving every attack on democratic rights enacted since, while leading members of the party in Congress have collaborated in covering up illegal surveillance activities.
While the Democratic Party won the 2008 election based on a platform that explicitly promised to overturn unconstitutional provisions in the Patriot Act and halt “the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime,” since coming to office the Obama administration has continued and expanded these practices.
Successive reports have revealed that hundreds of thousands of NSLs have been issued since the Patriot Act was initially enacted, and there have been repeated revelations of illegal spying on American citizens—including reporters writing stories placing intelligence agencies in a bad light. Nonetheless, the Obama administration Justice Department insisted that there was no real abuse of authority under the Bush administration, and that therefore the act should be renewed.
At the same time, the administration has intervened repeatedly in lawsuits challenging illegal wiretapping under the Bush administration, invoking the “state secrets privilege” to have them quashed. Last October, US Attorney General Eric Holder used this method to seek the dismissal of a suit demanding a halt to the National Security Agency’s illegal dragnet surveillance of AT&T Internet communications and to hold Bush administration officials responsible for this unconstitutional program accountable.
The Obama White House opposes such lawsuits because it does not want its own powers curtailed and fears that any prosecution of former officials could set a legal precedent that could be used against it.
Similarly, it has opposed any probe of senior Bush administration and CIA officials responsible for the torture and killing of detainees, under conditions in which the Obama administration has upheld the policies of rendition and administrative detention without charges or trials.
Just as with its foreign policy that continues the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and an economic policy designed to defend Wall Street at the expense of workers’ jobs, wages and benefits, the Obama administration is continuing the wholesale assault on democratic rights initiated by its predecessor.
The staggering repudiation of the promises made by the so-called candidate of “change” is not a matter merely of Obama’s own duplicity. He heads a government that is dedicated to the defense of the essential interests of a financial oligarchy.
Under conditions of deepening economic crisis and in the face of ever-wider social polarization at home, it can defend these interests only by embracing the unconstitutional methods adopted by the Bush administration. The Obama White House is continuing to build up a police state not for use against some ubiquitous terrorist threat, but to counter the inevitable growth of mass struggles by the American working class.
Put On the Freakin’ Magic Glasses!!!
Magic Glasses
Thanks to KevinCow @ Something Awful
Oh, and if you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to watch John Carpenter’s funky masterpiece, “They Live”
Celebrate The Ides of April: Steal Something from Work Day
Since we are now donating 25% of our paychecks to provide Goldman-Sach’s CEO’s with fur-lined limousines, sold golid toothpicks and cocaine subscriptions, why not celebrate Tax Day (The Ides of April) by STEALING! It worked for the bankers… so let’s follow their example — with THEFT. Just think of yourself as a future Treasure Secretary as you sneak those office supplies – or equipment – out of the building. Embezzlement isn’t embezzlement anymore, it’s not even creative accounting. It’s success, man!
Turning King’s Dream into a Nightmare (Garnishing the Sepulchers of the Righteous)
Turning King’s Dream Into a Nightmare
Posted on Jan 17, 2010
By Chris Hedges
Martin Luther King Day has become a yearly ritual to turn a black radical into a red-white-and-blue icon. It has become a day to celebrate ourselves for “overcoming” racism and “fulfilling” King’s dream. It is a day filled with old sound bites about little black children and little white children that, given the state of America, would enrage King. Most of our great social reformers, once they are dead, are kidnapped by the power elite and turned into harmless props of American glory. King, after all, was not only a socialist but fiercely opposed to American militarism and acutely aware, especially at the end of his life, that racial justice without economic justice was a farce.
“King’s words have been appropriated by the people who rejected him in the 1960s,” said Professor James Cone, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York and who wrote the book “Martin & Malcolm & America.” “So by making his birthday a national holiday, everybody claims him, even though they opposed him while he was alive. They have frozen King in 1963 with his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. That is the one that can best be manipulated and misinterpreted. King also said, shortly after the Selma march and the riots in Watts, ‘They have turned my dream into a nightmare.’ ”
“Mainstream culture appeals to King’s accent on love, as if it can be separated from justice,” Cone said. “For King, justice defines love. It can’t be separated. They are intricately locked together. This is why he talked about agape love and not some sentimental love. For King, love was militant. He saw direct action and civil disobedience in the face of injustice as a political expression of love because it was healing the society. It exposed its wounds and its hurt. This accent on justice for the poor is what mainstream society wants to separate from King’s understanding of love. But for King, justice and love belong together.”
Malcolm X, whose refusal to appeal to the white ruling class makes it impossible to turn him into an establishment icon, converged with King in the last months of his life. But it would be wrong to look at this convergence as a domestication of Malcolm X. Malcolm influenced King as deeply as King influenced Malcolm. These men each grasped at the end of their lives that the face of racism comes in many forms and that the issue was not simply sitting at a lunch counter with whites—blacks in the North could in theory do this—but being able to afford the lunch. King and Malcolm were deeply informed by their faith. They adhered to a belief system, one Christian and the other Muslim, which demanded strict moral imperatives and justice. And because neither man sold out or compromised with the power elite, they were killed. Should King and Malcolm have lived, they would have become pariahs.
King, when he began his calls for integration, argued that hard work and perseverance could make the American dream available for rich and poor, white and black. King grew up in the black middle class, was well educated and culturally refined. He admitted that until his early 20s, life had been wrapped up for him like “a Christmas present.” He naively thought that integration was the answer. He trusted, ultimately, in the white power structure to recognize the need for justice for all of its citizens. He shared, as most in his college-educated black class did, the same value system and preoccupation with success as the whites with whom he sought to integrate.
But this was not Malcolm’s America. Malcolm grew up in urban poverty, dropped out of school in eighth grade, was shuttled between foster homes, abused, hustled on city streets and ended up in prison. There was no evidence in his hard life of a political order that acknowledged his humanity or dignity. The white people he knew did not exhibit a conscience or compassion. And in the ghetto, where survival was a daily battle, nonviolence was not a credible option.
“No, I’m not an American,” Malcolm said. “I’m one of 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the … victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I! I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare!”
King, especially after he confronted the insidious racism in Chicago, came to appreciate Malcolm’s insights. He soon began telling Christians that “any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion in need of new blood.”
“King began to see that Malcolm was right in what he was saying about white people,” Cone told me. “Malcolm saw that white people did not have a conscience that could be appealed to to bring justice for African-Americans. King realized that near the end of his life. He began to call most whites ‘unconscious racists.’ ”
The crude racist rhetoric of the past is now considered impolite. We pretend there is equality and equal opportunity while ignoring the institutional and economic racism that infects our inner cities and fills our prisons, where a staggering one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated. There are more African-American men behind bars than in college. “The cell block has replaced the auction block,” the poet Yusef Komunyakaa writes.
The fact that prison and urban ghettos are populated primarily with people of color is not an accident. It is a calculated decision by those who wield economic and political control. For the bottom third of African-Americans, many of whom live in these segregated enclaves of misery and deprivation, little has changed over the past few decades; indeed, life has often gotten worse.
In the last months of his life, King began to appropriate Malcolm’s language, reminding listeners that the ghetto was a “system of internal colonialism.” “The purpose of the slum,” King said in a speech at the Chicago Freedom Festival, “is to confine those who have no power and perpetuate their powerlessness. … The slum is little more than a domestic colony which leaves its inhabitants dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated and humiliated at every turn.” The chief problem is economic, King concluded, and the solution is to restructure the whole society.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were, as King and Malcolm knew, meaningless slogans if there was no possibility of a decent education, a safe neighborhood, a job or a living wage. King and Malcolm were also acutely aware that the permanent war economy was directly linked to the perpetuation of racism and poverty at home and often abroad.
In a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam” he gave at Riverside Church a year before his assassination, King called America the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” a quote that won’t make it into many Martin Luther King Day celebrations. King’s strident denunciation of the Vietnam War and economic injustice at the end of his life saw many white liberals, members of his own staff, as well as allies within the political power structure, turn against him. King and Malcolm, in the final days of their lives, were lonely men.
“There are many ways in which Malcolm’s message is more relevant today,” said Cone, who also wrote “A Black Theology of Liberation.” “King’s message is almost entirely dependent on white people responding to his appeals for nonviolence, love and integration. He depends on a positive response. Malcolm spoke to black people empowering themselves. He said to black people, ‘You may not be responsible for getting yourself into the situation you are in, but if want to get out you will have to get yourself out. The people who put you in there are not going to get you out.’ King was appealing to whites to help get black people out. But King gradually began to realize that African-Americans could not depend on whites as much as he had thought.
“King did not speak to black self-hate and Malcolm did,” Cone said. “King was a political revolutionary. He transformed the social and political life of America. You would not have Barack Obama today if it had not been for King. Malcolm was a cultural revolutionary. He did not change the social or political structures, but he changed how black people thought about themselves. He transformed black thinking. He made blacks love themselves at a time when they hated themselves. The movement from being Negro and colored to being black, that’s Malcolm. Black studies in the universities and black caucuses, that’s Malcolm. King never would have done black studies. He taught a course at Morehouse on social and political philosophers and did not include a black person. He didn’t have W. E. B. Du Bois or Frederick Douglass. None of them. He had all the white figures like Plato and Aristotle. Malcolm helped black people to love themselves.”
King and Malcolm would have excoriated a nation that spends $3 trillion waging imperial wars in the Middle East and trillions more to fill the accounts of Wall Street banks while abandoning its poor. They would have denounced the liberals who mouth platitudes about justice for the poor while supporting a party that slavishly serves the interests of the moneyed elite. These American prophets spoke on behalf of people who had nothing left with which to compromise. And for this reason they did not compromise.
“You can’t drive a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress,” Malcolm said.
“I’ve decided what I’m going to do,” King preached at one of his last sermons at Ebenezer Baptist Church. “I ain’t going to kill nobody in Mississippi … [and] in Vietnam. I ain’t going to study war no more. And you know what? I don’t care who doesn’t like what I say about it. I don’t care who criticizes me in an editorial. I don’t care what white person or Negro criticizes me. I’m going to stick with the best. On some positions, cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when a true follower of Jesus Christ must take a stand that’s neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take that stand because it is right. Every now and then we sing about it, ‘If you are right, God will fight your battle.’ I’m going to stick by the best during these evil times.”
Urgent: Help Save Iceland (Greece/Portugal/US) from Crisis Capitalism
The IMF / WORLD BANK KILL COMMITTEE has a new target. Here’s the global financial master plan: Embezzlement & extreme private wealth > extortion & extreme public debt, ie, bailouts > total crisis and the destruction of a country > natural disasters, hunger, slavery, disease and totalitarian oppression. Sound familiar? Thanks, Milton Friedman.
Next on the agenda, Iceland. If they don’t cooperate, can we expect: Death squads? Accusations, defamation and slander? USAID, Endowment for Democracy, covert actions? Invasion, occupation? UN sanctions? School of the Americas? Blackwater?
Yesterday, Central and South America.
Day Before Yesterday, Africa.
Today, Iceland.
Read all about it on the excellent blog, Snippets and Snappets. Article is from Alex Jones’ Infowars.
LISTEN UP FOLKS,
THIS IS ANOTHER LITTLE WELL HIDDEN CRISES
THAT COULD HAVE VERY VERY SERIOUS IMPLICATIONS
FOR ALL OF US AT THE RATE
OUR FINANCIAL SITUATIONS ARE HEADING.
January 15, 2010
Iceland may be the first Western democracy to be forced into South-American style debt-slavery. The IMF, in concert with the UK and the Netherlands, has
attempted to strongarm the recently impoverished Island of 317,000 into paying over 3.6 billion pounds ($6.3bn) ~ $86,000 per Icelandic family ~ at 5.5% interest for the next generation.
The money is not conventional government debt, but arises from the collapse of a private multi-national bank during the financial crisis.The issue is so serious that the entire nation will vote on
the issue towards the end of February 2010.
On December 30, 2009, after extraordinary diplomatic threats, Iceland’s parliament passed narrowly a bill agreeing to pay the onerous terms. Only a few months earlier parliament had agreed to the full amount, but under more reasonable conditions.
The people of Iceland must be internationally supported, so they can feel safe in voting down debt-slavery. If Iceland falls, it won’t be long before other countries suffer similar financial extortion.
There is a reason people hate it for what it does.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute
Research related links
A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland Against Financial Blackmail
EU/IMF Revolt: Greece, Iceland, Latvia May Lead the Way
Iceland Political Leader Calls For Debt Moratorium As Government Crumbles
Mark Dice On the Street Gets People to Sign Petition to Raise Inflation 100%
A near-riot and parliament besieged: Iceland boiling mad at credit crunch
Address On Iceland &The IMF, Debt Moratorium, And Tobin Tax
Canadian MP Libby Davies reads 9/11 petition in Parliament
9/11 Truth: How Many People Question The Official Account?
Public Health Official: Canada Needs “No Fault” Compensation for People Harmed by Vaccine
Stop the Bailout! Save America!
Sigur Ros — The Soul of Iceland (their exquisite video Heima is all about the countryside & the people of Iceland)
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE – Global disaster capitalism (and extortion vis-a-vis The World Bank) exposed
The China Rose 
