Beyond Protest: Saving our planet with ‘Deep Green Resistance’

By Rady Ananda

From what makes an effective resister to effective resistance strategies, in Deep Green Resistance, Aric McBay, Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen lay out the reasons for and methods of bringing down industrial civilization.  The goal is saving the biosphere, and with it, Homo sapiens.

In Endgame, a two-volume tome that everyone should read, Jensen writes, “Bringing down civilization means depriving the rich of their ability to steal from the poor, and it means depriving the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet.” He backs this up with his Twenty Premises.

DGR agrees: “It means thoroughly destroying the political, social, physical, and technological infrastructure that not only permits the rich to steal and the powerful to destroy, but rewards them for doing so.”

Cops kill 3 as farmers protest water project, land seizure near Mumbai

By Rady Ananda

On August 9, police shot nine farmers, killing three, who were part of a mass protest against a water pipeline project in Baur Village, 50 miles east of Mumbai, India.  Police also smashed cars, fired tear gas and threw rocks at farmers as they fled the violence.  This was all caught on video:

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Kantabai Thakar (age 40), Moreshwar Sathe (40) and Shyam Tupe (29) were fatally shot by police.  Over 100 others were injured, and nine vehicles damaged in the lethal attack on protesters, report several news outlets in India.

Understand the Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order

By Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
Preface to the Second Edition

Barely a few weeks after the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, overthrowing the elected government of President Salvador Allende, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This economic shock treatment had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys”.

At the time of the military coup, I was teaching at the Institute of Economics of the Catholic University of Chile, which was a nest of Chicago trained economists, disciples of Milton Friedman. On that September 11, in the hours following the bombing of the Presidential Palace of La Moneda, the new military rulers imposed a 72-hour curfew. When the university reopened several days later, the “Chicago Boys” were rejoicing. Barely a week later, several of my colleagues at the Institute of Economics were appointed to key positions in the military government.

Resurrection and the Sociopath

Rand, Hickman and Greenspan: United in Common Purpose

By Volaar

Last year about this time I found myself steeped in a post-graduate rhetorical analysis of the front pages of the website Stormfront.org and two Patriot Movement sites.  The details of contemporary rhetorical analysis go beyond the mere study of words, so I won’t bore you.   But the “a-ha” moment I received at the end of my qualitative analysis is worth mentioning, at some point, in light of all the ballyhoo surrounding the latest remake of Ayn Rand’s last novel, Atlas Shrugged, and Rand’s many “contributions” to the neo-conservative movement of the post-industrial, post-modern United States of America.

Defying U.S., Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide Returns Home

By Democracy Now
March 18, 2011

In defiance of the Obama administration, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is headed back to Haiti today for the first time since being ousted in a 2004 U.S.-backed coup. Hours ago, Aristide, his family, and a delegation of supporters boarded a plane in South Africa bound for Port-au-Prince. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman is with the Aristides to document their journey home. She filed this report from Johannesburg.

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IMF Rates Up Dictatorships Just Before Revolutions

By Michael Collins

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an embarrassing error just two days before the start of the Libyan people’s revolution on February 17. This quote from an IMF country study appeared in a previous article: “The outlook for Libya’s economy remains favorable.” IMF Feb 15 This advice was 180 degrees off target. The Libyan economy has ceased functioning as protests and popular demands imploded the Gaddafi regime. (Image)

Further investigation unearthed a specific pattern of positive IMF endorsements for each of the nations experiencing popular uprisings that are sweeping the region. When the IMF blesses a nation’s progress for conforming to the economic policies underlying globalism, watch out! There is a popular rebellion in the wings.

Egyptian Labor Uprising Against Rubinites

By Matt Stoller
Naked Capitalism

Via Wikileaks, we learned that the son of the former President of Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, had an interesting conversation in 2009 with Senator Joe Lieberman on the banking crisis. Gamal is a key figure in the forces buffeting Egypt, global forces of labor arbitrage, torture, and financial corruption. Gamal believed that the bailouts of the banks weren’t big enough – “you need to inject even more money into the system than you have”. Gamal, a former investment banker trained at Bank of America, helped craft Egypt’s industrial policy earlier in the decade.

Clinton, Biden Betray Obama Over Egypt; Kerry Likely To Take State Department

by Volaar

Washington insiders are chattering about Hillary Clinton’s duplicity in dealing with Obama and Mubarak’s long-time CIA friend, Frank Wisner.  Apparently, Hillary was offering support to Wisner as if the President supported her policy.  However, Obama’s several phone calls to the Middle East explaining his political stand on Egypt suggest otherwise.

Why Mubarak Is Out

This piece provides deep background on the interplay of forces — progressive, repressive, labor, business, military, police, and criminal factions in Egypt — leading to the ongoing collapse of Mubarak’s regime. ~ Ed.   (H/T to Claudia)

[Image from Lefteris Pitarakis/AP]

By Paul Amar
Jadaliyya.com

The “March of Millions” in Cairo marks the spectacular emergence of a new political society in Egypt. This uprising brings together a new coalition of forces, uniting reconfigured elements of the security state with prominent business people, internationalist leaders, and relatively new (or newly reconfigured ) mass movements of youth, labor, women’s and religious groups. President Hosni Mubarak lost his political power on Friday, 28 January [though he officially resigned on Feb. 11]. On that night the Egyptian military let Mubarak’s ruling party headquarters burn down and ordered the police brigades attacking protesters to return to their barracks. When the evening call to prayer rang out and no one heeded Mubarak’s curfew order, it was clear that the old president had been reduced to a phantom authority. In order to understand where Egypt is going, and what shape democracy might take there, we need to set the extraordinarily successful popular mobilizations into their military, economic and social context. What other forces were behind this sudden fall of Mubarak from power? And how will this transitional military-centered government get along with this millions-strong protest movement?

Venezuela’s Enabling Law: 5 Questions & Answers

Venezuela's National Assembly in December passed the Ley Habilitante, or Enabling Law, granting the President the authority to decree laws for the benefit of torrential rain victims (Agencies)

Venezuela ranks fifth among countries with the lowest level of malnutrition in Latin America and is among the world’s top 10. Still, the world’s media, owned by neoliberal capitalists who support a corporate global dictatorship, continues to paint Hugo Chavez as a devil, especially since Venezuela passed the “enabling law.” But, the US also has such a law; it’s called a signing statement. Further, the US presidency (first under Bush and continued under Obama) has usurped complete dictatorial control thru various unconstitutional laws passed, with several more now under consideration.

Global elites hate Chavez because he is taking back land and natural resources formerly owned by multinational corporations and giving it to Venezuela’s peasants and state-run companies. As to direct defense of what he is doing, below is this 5-point response by Correo del Orinoco International:

Leaked Cable: Hike food prices to boost GM crop approval

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

In a January 2008 meeting, US and Spain trade officials strategized how to increase acceptance of genetically modified foods in Europe, including inflating food prices on the commodities market, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

During the meeting, Secretary of State for International Trade, Pedro Mejia, and Secretary General Alfredo Bonet “noted that commodity price hikes might spur greater liberalization on biotech imports.”

It seems Wall Street traders got the word. By June 2008, food prices had spiked so severely that “The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845, the year the magazine first calculated the number,” reports Fred Kaufman in The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it.

‘Tis The Season To Be Stripped Bare

Lady Liberty at Christmas, 2010 C.E.

By Volaar

Texas can be a nutty place, especially this time of year.  Rushing people whirling and spinning, stepping around, over and through one another where before an air of southern gentility prevailed.  Politeness might once again prevail, but not until the headlong masses have secured their place among the lucky fifty percent who will find this year’s festivities close enough to par to call it a wonderful day. 

An Impossible Honesty

by Volaar

So what is it like to age, mature and grow older in AynRandistan?

When I was in my twenties, it was a distant concern, a lower priority than when and where the next party would be thrown.

When I was in my thirties, it was the burden of the older workers who seemed to be placed in my path to annoy and slow me down.

When I was in my forties, it was a predator that knocked on the door I refused to answer.  Sometimes it would go away, and sometimes it would return with several armed friends.

A Top Secret Communique From The Obvious One

Greetings From The Obvious One

By Volaar

Hello my fellow Americans, Captain Obvious here – reporting live from behind the enemy lines erected on 9/11/2001 by a criminal junta funded, it seems, by multiple sovereign fiduciary entities for which it has become a capital crime to reveal the truth about in a court of law.  That would be a capital crime punishable by death sans judge or jury of one’s peers.

Hillary Clinton recently stated that Wikileaks has attacked the international community.  To those who prevaricate for a living, the truth seems the ultimate weapon of assault.

So how did this pathetic reversal of contemporary reality take place? 

Happy Military/Industrial Complex Junta Day!

November 22, 1963, Friday, democratic government in the United States of America was murdered in downtown Dallas.

What we have learned since the sine quo non of white-wash investigations, the Warren Report, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

1.        Lyndon Baynes Johnson, future President of the US, and H. L. Hunt (member of the Lamar Hotel, Suite 8F, Houston group) played crucial roles in the conspiracy to assassinate President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

2.        Jack “Ruby” Rubinstein worked as a Union informant for future President of the US, Richard Milhous Nixon from as early as 1947.

Fit Hits Shan At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

By Richard Volaar

Fit hits shan, shan generates sparks, sparks cause fire, Fotomat burns down, no film at eleven.

Joe Biden has been tasked to consider invoking the 25th Amendment against Barry Soetoro, our beloved Narcissist-in-Chief, Barak Hussein Obama.

V

Faith not in any god but in our own humanity.  This is all that any Creator would hope to inspire.

Review of The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Review of the book by Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors

By Kéllia Ramares

This is not an ordinary book on financial literacy that will tell people about the differences between banks and credit unions, the role credit scores play in our personal lives, or how to access small business financing. This book is a compilation of essays by some of the most socially conscious political and economic minds of our time, writes Kéllia Ramares.

The neo-liberal assault on Bhopal

BUZZ THIS

Guest blogged by Anil Sadgopal

India’s ruling class refuses to learn any lessons from the biggest industrial genocide in human history that took place in Bhopal more than 25 years ago

Within two days of the Bhopal verdict amounting to burial of justice, the Government of India, at Washington’s request (read ‘US nuclear corporations’ insistence’), agreed to dilute a key provision of the draft Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, now before the Parliament. This related to Section 17 (b) of the Bill, the only provision that had the teeth to deter the nuclear industry from taking its safety obligations lightly. Not that the rest of the Bill had drawn any lessons from Bhopal either. The Bill provides for only a limited liability of the operators of the nuclear plants by putting a ‘cap’ of Rs 500 crores for the compensation to be paid by them, the rest of it to be borne by the State out of public funds. If the Bill is passed by the Parliament in its present shape, the people of India would be required to pay for being killed and maimed by transnational corporations! This is the latest government model of Public Private Partnership (PPP).

West Virginia workers speak on mine disaster

Tom

By Andre Damon and Samuel Davidson
World Socialist Web Site

Miners, their family members and neighbors spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about the conditions that led to Monday’s deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia.

Tom, 52, a disabled worker who lives down the road from the Upper Big Branch mine, spoke of how Massey Energy Company controls the lives of the people in the area. “I grew up here,” he said, “and when we were kids we used to go and play on that mountain. Now it is all private property. If you go up there they want to arrest you for trespassing.