Dollarocracy

Sober, probing, research-based analysis of where we stand today:

http://www.thenation.com/article/176140/dollarocracy

Boston, 4/18

Adam Gopnik, in The New Yorker: 

....But all of our experience suggests that it is not “fundamentalism” alone but an aching tension between modernity and a false picture of a purer fundamentalist past that makes terrorists.

And it was an American story, too, in what could only be called a hysterical and insular overreaction that allowed it to become the sole national narrative. I happened to be in London on 7/7—a far more deadly and frightening terrorist attack—and by 7 P.M. on that horrible day, with the terrorists still at large (they were dead already, but no one knew that) the red double-decker buses were rolling and the traffic was turning and life, though hardly normal, was determinedly going on. The decision to shut down Boston, though doubtless made in good faith and from honest anxiety, seemed like an undue surrender to the power of the terrorist act—as did, indeed, the readiness to turn over the entire attention of the nation to a violent, scary, tragic, lurid but, in the larger scheme of things, ultimately small threat to the public peace.

The toxic combination of round-the-clock cable television—does anyone now recall the killer of Gianni Versace, who claimed exactly the same kind of attention then as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did today?—and an already exaggerated sense of the risk of terrorism turned a horrible story of maiming and death and cruelty into a national epic of fear. What terrorists want is to terrify people; Americans always oblige.   

Experts tell us the meaning of what they haven’t seen; poets and novelists tell us the meaning of what they haven’t seen, either, but have somehow managed to fully imagine. Maybe the literature of terrorism, from Conrad to Updike (and let us not forget Tolstoy, fascinated by the Chechens) can now throw a little light on how apparently likable kids become cold-hearted killers. Acts of imagination are different from acts of projection: one kind terrifies; the other clarifies. 

There's an argument to be made for deciding to shut down the city at the time they did, I think.  But Gopnik is one of the first to remind us of the dual nature of today's necessary task.  Namely, to "separate thinking about terrorism from thinking about the way that we represent it."

Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets

Today the Guardian put a story on its front page about the biggest gamble in human history. 

Governments, corporations and pension funds have $6 trillion worth of unburnable carbon assets on the books -- that means that either their investments pay off and the planet tanks, or we avert climate catastrophe and those investments are worthless.  -350.org 

Needless to say, if Obama allows KeystoneXL, then he is directly complicit in this economic idiocy/global suicide.

A summary and link to the full report is here:  http://www.carbontracker.org/wastedcapital 

Apple's profits double, tax rate falls to Romney level: 9.8%

(Please disregard the possible degree mill that produced this infographic as a strange form of advertising. Diploma mills are some of the most exploitive, predatory and shameful enterprises out there.)


Apple's profit margins are simply criminal.  $319 for each new iPhone, net profit.  Foxconn gets $8/phone assembled.  The situation in China is unsustainable, to say the least, politically, environmentally, and socially.  A few casino capitalists are getting very, very rich for at most another decade before shit hits the fan.

At what cost?

 

Bravo

#OWS Friday

• All the live streams are collected here: http://www.iamliverightnow.com/

(Austin, TX is especially good right now.)

• Denver (and Seattle) were shut down by police this morning (some arrested). Huge crowds and victory in NYC this morning.

#OWS

• http://www.occupystream.com/

• Matt Taibbi "My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters"

• Keith Gessen, "On Wall Street"

• From n+1, "The Police and the 99%"

• Elizabeth Warren has announced that she has raised $3.15 million in just six weeks, with 19 out of every 20 donations under $100. Show your grassroots support and chip in $3!

• From The Guardian:

If we believe democracy is the best way to govern our residential communities, then it likewise deserves to govern our workplaces. Democracy at work is a goal that can help build this movement.

We all know that moving in this direction will elicit the screams of "socialism" from the usual predictable corners. The tired rhetoric lives on long after the cold war that orchestrated it fades out of memory. The audience for that rhetoric is fast fading, too. It is long overdue in the US for us to have a genuine conversation and struggle over our current economic system. Capitalism has gotten a free pass for far too long.

• From Bernie Sanders: Six Reform Proposals

• Occupy Boston could use some timely support.

boilerplate Rethuglican lies, rebutted

David Koch: Cancer Survivor, Spreading Cancer

Literally:



David Koch is a cancer survivor. He also knows that one of his factories is giving cancer to an entire town, and the EPA (thanks in no small part to his own lavish campaign of lies) is too weak to stop it. What kind of person does this? Someone for whom there is a special place in hell, if only such a place existed. David Koch can re-join Ayn Rand there.

Today is a big day for Occupy Wall Street

Update: Live video here.

Meanwhile, in the news this morning:

Some of the nation’s largest banks are being accused of defrauding military veterans and taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars. In a new lawsuit, companies including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, CitiMortgage, Countrywide Home Loans, Washington Mutual Bank and GMAC Mortgage are accused of illegally raking in hundreds of millions of dollars through hidden fees in the refinancing of veterans’ homes. The loans have been available under a government provision for retired or active-duty veterans. The case was brought by two whistleblowers who work as mortgage brokers in Georgia. They allege over one million veterans may have been subjected to fraud, and that the fees may have pushed tens of thousands of loans into default or foreclosure, at massive cost to taxpayers.

Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail.

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

#OccupyWallStreet

Very Much Alive and Growing: Day 14 of Occupy Wall Street

• The testimonials on http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/ keep coming, and they are downright heart-breaking.

• There is a new central hub for all the protests springing up in each state, here: http://www.occupytogether.org/

• From a great article in The Guardian:

But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.

Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like "Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?"

It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before.

Perhaps, it's not surprising. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we're all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart.

What we've learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the "third world debt crisis". But the global south fought back. The "alter-globalisation movement", was in the end, successful: the IMF has been driven out of East Asia and Latin America, just as it is now being driven from the Middle East. As a result, the debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity".

The form of resistance that has emerged looks remarkably similar to the old global justice movement, too: we see the rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below. What's different is largely the target: where in 2000, it was directed at the power of unprecedented new planetary bureaucracies (the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Nafta), institutions with no democratic accountability, which existed only to serve the interests of transnational capital; now, it is at the entire political classes of countries like Greece, Spain and, now, the US – for exactly the same reason. This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged....

• Last but not least, check out the dedicated You-Tube channel

Solidarity.

Not dead yet!

• http://socialistworker.org/2011/09/28/sparks-of-labor-resistance

• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/world/as-scorn-for-vote-grows-protests-surge-around-globe.html?_r=2

• http://www.businessinsider.com/a-massive-union-just-voted-to-side-with-the-wall-street-protesters-2011-9

Keystone XL Must Not Happen

The corporate media have finally begun to think about covering the largest ongoing civil disobedience the environmental movement has produced in a generation. Over 700 people have been arrested so far at the White House. If you haven't heard about the Keystone XL pipeline fantasy, you need to watch these two videos immediately and get yourself to DC, or make a phone call to the White House poll-takers right now at the very least. Tell them you support/demand a Presidential veto: 202-456-1111):

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Again, all Obama has to do here is say "no" and this project does not happen.

Meanwhile a new report has now thoroughly exposed the oil industry's outright lies for what they are. (One of the corporations set to buy the Alberta oil is even co-owned by the Saudi government (hat tip Naomi Klein).

A new report from Oil Change International lays out the case, based on data and documents from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Canadian National Energy Board, corporate disclosures to regulators and investors, and analysis of the rapidly shifting oil market.

The facts:

• Keystone XL is an export pipeline. The Port Arthur, Texas, refiners at the end of its route are focused on expanding exports to Europe, and Latin America. Much of the fuel refined from the pipeline’s heavy crude oil will never reach U.S. drivers’ tanks.

• Valero, the key customer for crude oil from Keystone XL, has explicitly detailed an export strategy to its investors. Because Valero’s Port Arthur refinery is in a Foreign Trade Zone, the company can carry out its strategy tax-free.

• In a shrinking U.S. market, Keystone XL is not needed. Since the project was announced, the oil industry acknowledges that higher fuel economy standards and slow economic growth mean declining U.S. oil demand, even as domestic production is booming. Oil from Keystone XL will therefore displace American crude from new, “unconventional” domestic fields in Texas or North Dakota.“Oil is a fundamentally global market – the idea that the pipeline enhances our energy security is a scam.” said Kretzmann. “Let’s hope the Obama Administration doesn’t fall for it. In fact, the only way to truly reduce our dependence on foreign oil is to reduce our dependence on all oil. Let’s not fool ourselves that we will achieve ‘energy independence’ by serving as a middleman for access to overseas markets.” [download the full report here]

Once again, that number to call is: 202-456-1111

Last post on the BP/Halliburton/TransOcean Macondo well blowout....is Keystone XL next?

Courtesy of Dibgy's thoughtful post here:

Obama's last chance to earn any volunteer work from me

It's bad enough Barack Obama is actively working to help cover up and grant immunity to financial industry crimes, [UPDATE: more about which here], but if he fails to heed the largest environmental protests of recent times and block the Keystone XL pipeline, then he's clearly just a one-term anti-environmental putz.

• Jim Hansen's now-famous "game over" letter is here.

• The facts about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline are available here, and include:

1. For every barrel of tar sand oil produced, six barrels of freshwater from the Athabasca River are polluted and stored in 30 square mile toxic ponds that sit adjacent to the river.
2. These ponds are already leaking over 3 million gallons of toxic water into the Athabasca River every day.

3. The pipeline is set to cross over the Ogalalla Aquifer which irrigates one-third of all crops in the Midwest and provides eight states with drinking water.

4. Producing a barrel of Tar Sand oil emits three times more greenhouse gases than producing a barrel of conventional oil.

5. Extraction of the Tar Sands requires permanently disturbing one of the largest, intact old-growth forests left on Earth. The destruction of this forest will destroy habitat and prevent the boreal forest from providing ecosystem services that at present moment are catching and storing carbon from our climate.

6. If this pipeline and current development of the tar sands continues as planned, it will release twice as many greenhouse gases as are currently produced by all the cars and trucks in Canada.

7. Scientific research predicts that more than 166 million birds will die from habitat loss and drowning in the toxic pools over the next 30-50 years if development continues as planned.

8. Large game species are exhibiting tumors and mutations as a result of consuming toxic water. Nearby moose have been found to have over 33 times the safe amount of arsenic in their meat, a staple for indigenous populations.

9. Communities downstream from the tar sands are already exhibiting respiratory problems, rare forms of cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.

10. The Koch Brothers, the same corporation dedicated to spreading lies about climate change and funding the tea party, is set to be the primary profiteer from building this pipeline.

Last Word on the BP Oil Atrocity

Concentrated wealth blocks new ideas

Great post by Jared Bernstein.

THREE MELTDOWNS confirmed at Fukushima

One of them actually began within 5 hours of the earthquake, readers of TEPCO propaganda might be surprised to hear. The Washington Post reports. And more.

Germany, like Italy, knows what's what.

The Cancer Industry is Collecting Donations

Happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For those still unaware, here is how the scam functions:

These people make money polluting with impunity, saturating our world with organochlorines such as pesticides (DDT was the first) which have been directly linked to causing the cancer pandemic (now affecting 1 in 2 men, 1 in 3 women). These cynical bastards then shamelessly raise money from a traumatized population for research on expensive "treatments" that don't work (and often even cause other forms of cancer) and financially destroy entire families while making these same industries even more obscenely rich, all the while censoring any hint of a discussion about CAUSES or PREVENTION.

Guess who originally founded and still holds veto power over all Breast Cancer Awareness Month material? Look it up. The sad truth is that this collection of powerful and interrelated corporate interests is not even remotely interested in a "cure," less it can be spun into yet another problem that will make them even more money. They have it far too damn good. And don't expect any of your child's fundraising to be used for any research that might hurt their bottom line. When it comes to the mounting body of evidence about CANCER CAUSES and REAL PREVENTION (not just "early detection" so they can start selling you drugs sooner) these same people are criminally neglectful.

Fred, David and Charles Koch, Inc.

Update: And then there's this...

Seriously, what a bunch of weirdos, signifying everything that is most wrong with America.

Shamelessly dishonest, self-important extremist mediocrities with their deluded self-serving Ayn Rand sound-bot psuedo-philosophy and more blood money than is healthy for any democracy to let fester in private hands.

I mean, it sure seems to me anyway, that once a corporation is allowed by law to intimidate its employees into voting for whoever the bosses say, especially when it is for some batshit crazy, fundamentalist politician who will turn around and cut their wages even more and hurt their families, then this is not a country worth living in anymore. Certainly it is antithetical to any "freedom-loving democracy."

In light of which barbaric mediocrity, may the Koch brothers' losing continue.

“Now, companies like Koch Industries are free to send out newsletters persuading their employees how to vote. They can even intimidate their employees into voting for their candidates.” Secunda adds, “It’s a very troubling situation.”

[...]

Further into the company newsletter is an article headlined “What’s a Business to Do?” It portrays corporate titans like the Kochs [net worth over $44 Billion] as freedom-fighting underdogs, modern-day Sakharovs and Mandelas targeted for repression by Big Government statists: “Citizens who are openly critical of the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels or the out-of-control government of the United States are being shouted down by politicians, government officials and their media and other allies.”

In this scenario, Big Government wants to muzzle the Kochs before they can spread their message to the people. That message comes down to preaching the benefits of lower wages.

[...]

Travis McKinney, an employee at a Portland Georgia-Pacific distribution center, says, “They drill into your head things like ‘The 10 Guiding Principles of Koch Industries.’ They even stamp the ten principles on your time card.”

McKinney, a fourth-generation employee of Georgia-Pacific, says relations have sharply deteriorated since Koch Industries bought the company in late 2005. He and fellow employees at three Georgia-Pacific distribution centers are locked in a yearlong contract battle with the new Koch Industries management. Workers there, members of the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific (an affiliate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union) recently voted unanimously to reject management’s contract and voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if management continues to try to impose cuts in benefits and job security in the new contracts. (read the whole thing)