Month: June 2014

Inclusive Capitalism? What an Oxymoron!

Food shortages and the fossil fuel climate crisis with its droughts, floods and other destructions are among the ways people experience the downside of capitalism in daily life. Both are the result of the rich having too much control of the wealth produced by society and the large majority having too little. The rich are so deeply invested—directly and indirectly—in fossil fuels that they will cling to its use to the bitter end. Economic systems controlled by and for the few at the top cannot and will not make the changes needed to meet the needs of all, or even provide a soft landing for the many caught in the various crises.

So yes, the rich have much to worry about when they steal the food, heat, jobs, shelter, income and other survival basics—not to mention human dignity.

Yes to our independent imagination

The No side’s worry isn’t just over the political, economic and social potentialities of independence, immense as they are. It’s the deeper alarm any establishment feels when watching a collective stirring of the independent imagination.

The Soaring Profits of the Military-Industrial Complex, The Soaring Costs of Military Casualties

War profits have soared with the series of military interventions in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The arms industry lobbyists pressure Congressional and Pentagon decision-makers to link up with the pro-Israel lobby as it promotes even deeper direct US military involvement in Syria, Iraq and Iran. The growing ties between Israeli and US military industries reinforce their political leverage in Washington by working with liberal interventionists and neo-conservatives. They attack Obama for not bombing Syria and for his withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. They now clamor for sending US troops back to Iraq and call for intervention in Ukraine.

From Orwell’s “1984″: Color Revolutions and Irregular Warfare Against Eurasia

If the Eurasian Union becomes a successful political and economic union, the United States, Britain, Western Europe, and Japan will be confined to an economically anemic and socially decadent coastal «Rimland» where the few remaining assets will be fought over by the hungry jackals of the banking houses of Wall Street, City of London, and Frankfurt. The outbreak of wars in Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq are but the first shots of the impending war between «Oceania» and «Eurasia».

Who Shot Argentina?

To this day, there is no love lost between the IMF and Argentina, since the fund presided over Argentina’s terrible economic collapse of 1998-2002, as well as numerous failed policies in the years prior. But when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of vulture funds trying to collect the full value of Argentine debt that they had bought for 20 cents on the dollar, even the IMF was against the decision.

Burn, Men in Black, burn

Although the majority of Iraqis reject balkanization, Sunnis will keep accusing Shi’ites of being Iranian pawns, and Shi’ites will keep accusing Sunnis of being the House of Saud’s fifth column. ISIS will keep getting loads of cash from wealthy Saudi “donors”. The US government will keep weaponizing Sunnis in Syria against Shi’ites and (perhaps) conducting soft “targeted military strikes” for Shi’ites against Sunnis in Iraq. Welcome to Divide and Rule run amok.

Did Obama Know that ISIS Planned to Invade Iraq?

“I think we have to understand first how we got here. We have been arming ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) in Syria. ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, has been collaborating with the Syrian rebels whom the Obama administration has been arming in their efforts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

On Eurofascism

What is surprising is the position of the European countries, which are tailing the U.S. and doing nothing to prevent a further escalation of the crisis. They should understand better than anybody, that Nazis can only be stopped with force. The sooner this is done, the fewer victims and less destruction there will be in Europe.

ISIS in Iraq stinks of CIA/NATO ‘dirty war’ op

Details leaking out suggest that ISIS and the major military ‘surge’ in Iraq – and less so in neighboring Syria – is being shaped and controlled out of Langley, Virginia, and other CIA and Pentagon outposts as the next stage in spreading chaos in the world’s second-largest oil state, Iraq, as well as weakening the recent Syrian stabilization efforts.

Jihadism and the Petroleum Industry

While the Western media portray the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant as a group of jihadists reciting the Qur’an, the ISIL has started the oil war in Iraq. With the help of Israel, it has cut off Syria’s supply and guaranteed the theft of oil from Kirkuk by the local government of Kurdistan. The sale will be assured by Aramco who will camouflage this diversion as increased “Saudi” production.

Iraqis Are Not ‘Abstractions’

The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or wounded during the politically motivated “surge” and in the carnage both before and afterwards can remain, for folks like the neocons at the Post, “something of an abstraction.” And the media can avoid mention of the 1,000 U.S. troops killed in 2007 protecting what often amounted to sectarian Shia militias ethnically cleansing Baghdad of much of its Sunni population — as well as defending the Bush/Cheney legacy.

The Ghoulish Face of Empire

The black-clad fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, sweeping a collapsing army and terrified Iraqis before them as they advance toward Baghdad, reflect back to us the ghoulish face of American empire. They are the specters of the hundreds of thousands of people we murdered in our deluded quest to remake the Middle East. They are ghosts from the innumerable roadsides and villages where U.S. soldiers and Marines, jolted by explosions of improvised explosive devices, responded with indiscriminate fire. They are the risen remains of the dismembered Iraqis left behind by blasts of Hellfire and cruise missiles, howitzers, grenade launchers and drone strikes. They are the avengers of the gruesome torture and the sexual debasement that often came with being detained by American troops. They are the final answer to the collective humiliation of an occupied country, the logical outcome of Shock and Awe, the Frankenstein monster stitched together from the body parts we left scattered on the ground. They are what we get for the $4 trillion we wasted on the Iraq War.