Wall Street Bosses Run America
They’re more powerful than standing armies. What they say goes. They decide policy. They rule the world. They do it by controlling money, credit and debt.
They manipulate markets for self-enrichment. Grand theft is official Wall Street policy. Government officials wink, nod, and permit the grandest of grand larceny to persist.
Financial giants recycle their executives in and out of Washington. They strip-mine economies for profit. They buy politicians like toothpaste. Whatever they want they get.
They do it at the expense of government of, by and for everyone equitably and just.
On October 2, 15 lords met with Obama. They did so at the White House. They gave him their marching orders.
They came to assert their demands. They’re uncompromising. They’re ruthless. They want business as usual continued. They want more than ever.
They want more bailouts. They want bail-ins. They want personal bank accounts, pensions and other assets confiscated.
They want more crushing neoliberal harshness. They want America thirdworldized. They want it looking like Greece.
Budget and debt ceiling debates conceal their ugly agenda. What’s ongoing is a longstanding orchestrated swindle. Bipartisan complicity supports it.
Social America is on the chopping block for elimination. Another grand bargain plans it. Expect it once current theatrics end…
Share this:
Bigger than that: (The difficulty of) looking at climate change
Bigger than that: (The difficulty of) looking at climate change. (FULL ARTICLE)
Late last week, in the lobby of a particularly unglamorous downtown San Francisco building, a group of passionate but polite activists met with a bureaucrat who stepped forward to hear what they had to say about the fate of the Earth. The activists wanted to save the world. The particular part of it that might be under their control involved getting the San Francisco Retirement board to divest its half a billion dollars in fossil fuel holdings, one piece of the international divestment movement that arose a year ago.
Sometimes the fate of the Earth boils down to getting one person with modest powers to budge.
The bureaucrat had a hundred reasons why changing course was, well, too much of a change. This public official wanted to operate under ordinary-times rules and the idea that climate change has thrust us into extraordinary times (and that divesting didn’t necessarily entail financial loss or even financial risk) was apparently too much to accept….
Share this:
A revolution comes in stages — Occupy or otherwise
A revolution comes in stages — Occupy or otherwise. (FULL ARTICLE)
All of us hold an idea about how progressive change might happen, whether or not we spell it out explicitly. For some it’s an elaboration of grassroots alternative-building, for others it starts with flooding legislators with advocacy. One way or another, we all have one. But, while reading Nathan Schneider’s important recent piece on the Occupy movement in The Nation, I was reminded of the power of a theory of change to shape our actions.
Nathan — who is also an editor at Waging Nonviolence — turns to the theory of change developed by my friend Bill Moyer, the late civil rights organizer who went on to influence a number of social justice campaigns. Bill identified a series of eight stages that successful movements tend to go through on their way to victory; he called his theory the Movement Action Plan. Nathan finds that Bill’s fifth stage helps us understand Occupy in the past year or so, when a lot of participants have felt discouraged. Bill found that successful movements usually go through a let-down after the adrenalin rush of sudden growth in stage four, only to recover in stage six and have a chance of winning.
The eight stages of the Movement Action Plan: (source: Wikipedia)
- Critical social problem exists
- Prove failure of official institutions
- Ripening conditions
- Take off
- Perception of failure
- Majority public opinion
- Success
- Continuation…
Related articles
- Memo to Washington: The Occupy Movement Lives (rinf.com)
- Two Years After Occupy Wall Street, a Network of Offshoots Continue Activism for the 99% (familysurvivalprotocol.com)
- Searching for Sustainable Models of Activism, Two Years After the Occupy Movement (truthdig.com)
- Occupy and Academia (locatingthesocial.wordpress.com)
Share this:
Harper’s 5 Stages of Grief Over Climate Change | John McKay
Harper’s 5 Stages of Grief Over Climate Change | John McKay. (FULL ARTICLE)
The IPCC published an intensely detailed report on climate change last week. Even the 36 page executive summary is packed with detail, graphs and data all of which drives any reasonable person to the conclusion that climate change is real and largely driven by human activity. Consider its first conclusion: “Global mean surface air temperatures over land and oceans have increased over the last 100 years.”
There is no denying it, “we” have a problem. Admitting that you have a problem is probably the most difficult first step for a Prime Minister addicted to “bull horn diplomacy,” intolerance of dissent, and dumbed down public policy. Yet, even for PM Harper it is difficult to deny a 95 per cent certainty.
You have to have some sympathy for the Minister of the Environment who is obliged to maintain the Harper fiction regardless of the evidence and how foolish that it may make her look. To do so would be to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change and the fact that her government has done little to deal with that reality. That would be counterproductive to the PM’s efforts to secure approval for the Keystone XL pipeline. So, poor Minister Aglukkaq is left to dangle in the winds of non-sequiturs and contradictions….
Related articles
- Climate change report sparks partisan attack by Environment Minister Aglukkaq (macleans.ca)
- The 5 Stages of Grief (heyredhey.com)
Share this:
Housing Market Had Major Correction, Nobody Noticed: Royal LePage
Housing Market Had Major Correction, Nobody Noticed: Royal LePage. (FULL ARTICLE)
What if Canada had a housing market correction and no one noticed?
That’s what real estate expert Phil Soper says has played out over the past year: the sharpest decline in home sales since the Great Recession.
“Canada experienced a significant housing market correction over the last four quarters that most in the nation missed entirely,” Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage, said in the company’s third-quarter report.
“Many regions experienced dramatic slowdowns in the number of homes trading hands, but news of double-digit unit sales declines went largely unnoticed, over-shadowed by a macabre fascination with the prospect of a U.S.-style home price collapse, which of course never transpired.”
Until recently, Toronto and a number of other major markets experienced a sales slump, but little to no decline in prices. The number of homes for sale also dropped during that time as sellers also stepped aside, keeping pricing stable….
Related articles
- 3rd quarter real estate report – Canada emerges from the housing market correction nobody noticed (jenellecameron.wordpress.com)
- Edmonton’s housing market dropping after hot summer (globalnews.ca)
- Boomers like their homes and gardens, and they’re not rushing to downsize to condos (vancouversun.com)
- Foreign buyers fuelling sales in luxury real estate market: report (macleans.ca)
Share this:
Cyclone Phailin Threatens Tens Of Thousands In Eastern India
Cyclone Phailin Threatens Tens Of Thousands In Eastern India. (FULL ARTICLE)
BHUBANESHWAR, India — BHUBANESHWAR, India (AP) — Officials ordered tens of thousands of coastal villagers to flee their homes Friday as a massive cyclone — so large it filled nearly the entire Bay of Bengal — gathered strength and headed toward India’s eastern seaboard.
Officials cancelled holy day celebrations and stockpiled emergencies supplies in coastal Orissa and Andhra Pradesh states, with forecasters saying Cyclone Phailin will hit the region Saturday evening.
The Indian Meteorological Department warned that Phailin was a “very severe cyclonic storm” that was expected to hit with maximum sustained winds of 210-220 kph (130-135 mph). If the storm continues on its current path without weakening, it is expected to cause large-scale power and communications outages, and shut down road and rail links, officials say. There would also be extensive damage to crops.
Satellite images of the storm showed its spinning tails reaching nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the east coast of India to the west coast of Myanmar, an area roughly the size of France.
Using trucks and buses, authorities evacuated 40,000 people from 40 villages to government-run shelters, schools and buildings in five districts of Orissa state, said Surya Narayan Patra, the state revenue and disaster management minister….
Related articles
- Wind, rain, sea pound India as large cyclone nears (kansascity.com)
- Waves pound India as Cyclone Phailin approaches (telegraph.co.uk)
- Thousands batten down and flee eastern India as Cyclone Phailin prepares to cause chaos (metro.co.uk)
Share this:
Plundering the planet: a report to the Club of Rome
Plundering the planet: a report to the Club of Rome. (FULL ARTICLE)
Related articles
- Club Of Rome Founder Proposed “Global Matrix” Of Manufactured Consent (blacklistednews.com)
- The Club of Rome Has Been Hacking Away at America Since Before FDR (freedomoutpost.com)
- The Single Most Illuminating Article You Will Ever Read On Global Warming (climatism.wordpress.com)
Share this:
Review: The Five Stages of Collapse by Dmitry Orlov
Review: The Five Stages of Collapse by Dmitry Orlov. (FULL ARTICLE)
At some point, those of us who accept the inevitability of a complete societal collapse, driven by resource depletion and rapid climate change, have to wonder what more can be gained by our continued attempts to persuade the masses.
Granted, our efforts do succeed in enlisting a steady trickle of new recruits into the ranks of the “walking worried”—to quote a term used by collapsitarian Julian Darley—but the public at large still dismisses our appeals out of hand. What reason is there to believe that further efforts at spreading the truth will bring different results? More and more, it’s starting to seem like the sensible approach is to get out of the awareness-raising business entirely and focus our energies instead on providing practical guidance to those who are willing to hear it.
This is certainly the view of collapse thinker and writer Dmitry Orlov, whose latest book, The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors’ Toolkit, was released by New Society Publishers in May. As indicated by its subtitle, this much-anticipated offering from one of the best authors on the subject seeks not to convince readers that a collapse is imminent, but to suggest approaches and strategies for managing it when it comes. “[T]his is not a ‘We must…’ book or an ‘Unless we…’ book, or even a ‘We should…’ book,” writes Orlov. “There is no agenda here—just the assumption that collapse will happen, the conjecture that it can be analyzed as unfolding in five distinct phases and, based on quite a bit of research, the conclusion that each phase will require a different set of adaptations from those who wish to survive it.”…
Related articles
- Doug’s Review of Dmitry Orlov’s ‘Reinventing Collapse’ and ‘The Five Stages of Collapse’ (wchildblog.com)
- TFMR: Preparing for Political Collapse – Orlov’s Stage 3 (silveristhenew.com)
- DMITRY ORLOV ~ ‘Reinventing Collapse’ Review (financearmageddon.blogspot.com)
- Big Thinkers: Orlov’s Book and Current Events – Part 1 (tfmetalsreport.com)
Share this:
Arafat poisoning claim backed by journal – Europe – Al Jazeera English
Arafat poisoning claim backed by journal – Europe – Al Jazeera English. (FULL ARTICLE)
One of the world’s leading medical journals has supported the possibility that Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium 210.
The British The Lancet journal has published a peer review of last year’s research by Swiss scientists on Arafat’s personal effects.
It endorsed their work, which found high levels of the highly radioactive element in blood, urine, and saliva stains on the Palestinian leader’s clothes and toothbrush.
The work of the experts at Lausanne University, Switzerland, was triggered by an Al Jazeera investigation, and also led to Arafat’s body being exhumed in November 2012 for further testing.
In October 2004, Arafat fell ill, suffering from a number of symptoms, including nausea and abdominal pain.
Within a few short weeks, his health became significantly worse, and he was transferred from his base in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, to Percy Hospital in France.
His situation continued to worsen, and he suffered from acute renal failure, and entered into a neurological coma.
By November 4, 2004, he died of a cerebral haemorrhage, at the age of 75.
…
Related articles
- Arafat poisoned to death: Medical journal (theiranproject.com)
- New evidence suggests Arafat poisoning (worldbulletin.net)
- Arafat poisoned to death: Journal (rinf.com)
Share this:
The Life And Death Of A Massive Debt Bubble In Seven Charts | Zero Hedge
The Life And Death Of A Massive Debt Bubble In Seven Charts | Zero Hedge. (FULL ARTICLE)
On September 5, 2008, Citi’s Matt King wrote a report titled “Are the brokers broken?” which in its rhetorical question (the answer was and still is yes), implicitly explained why ten days later the world would experience the largest bankruptcy in the history of western civilization, crushing confidence in the financial system to this day, and forcing the Fed for five consecutive years to be the marginal source of credit money in a “not without training wheels” world in which the longer the central bank is the only backstop of anything and everything, and where failure and risk are prohibited through artificial means, the less faith there is in any and every financial counterparty. So when Matt King sat down to pen his latest warning in which he showed how the world is now “positioning for the wrong sort of recovery”, we naturally listened. Below are the key charts which not only show the lifecycle of the source of every modern Keynesian empire’s boom and best, namely debt, but why 5 years later, “the slate has still not been wiped clean.”…
Related articles
- Charts from Lacy Hunt’s Presentation at Casey Research October Summit (safehaven.com)
- A debt ceiling solution is coming, here’s when (forexlive.com)
- Peter Schiff On The Debt Ceiling Delusions | Zero Hedge (olduvaiblog.wordpress.com)
- The Credit Bubble Is Not Only Back, It Is 94% Bigger Than In 2007 (zerohedge.com)
Olduvaiblog: Musings on the coming collapse 