(via Incase at flickr.com, creative commons)

 (Disclaimers: I’m not a major fan of Hedges, though the book excerpts look worthy.  I haven’t finished the film yet as it’s hard on my particular eye-brain configuration, so I may not have much to say about it, although I’ll try to watch in snatches.  Both of the items I’m presenting are by way of copy and paste PSA’s.)

Opening his piece on the new film ‘Obey!’ by British filmmaker Temujin Doran and based on Chris Hedges’ book Death of the Liberal Class, Paul Haeder writes at Dissident Voice writes:

“The greatest evil perpetrated,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons. [snip]

The one hour deal links to why the liberal class, the liberals, the REI and NPR progressives, are killing us all with death by a thousand cuts with digital daggers.

In the end, they don’t really care that we have massive class divides, major ageism issues, that we have daily cuts to the public goods and public commons and public welfare.

They continue to consume as Consumopithecus Anthropocene. [snip]

Read the book, Death of the Liberal CLass. Check out this inventive one hour reading of some of the book’s passages.

Here, again, Hedges on education –

“We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.”

You can watch the 55-minute film is at the end of the post.  If it’s good, and if it’s clearly demonstrative of the fact that we’re living under corporate rule in this nation, it might be a good one to use to convince others.  Sheldon Wolin was the first one to use the term ‘inverted totalitarianism’ as far as I know.

It seems that I should issue a warning with the film, as it was hard on many viewers eyes and heads.  THD said it was in the nature of  a ‘Brave New World’ format, so…be advised you  might not like the visuals at all.

Most major media are focused on Capriles’ charges of ‘over 3200 electoral incidents’ that caused Maduro to win (read: rigging the election’) this morning.  In the run-up to the election, they also trumpeted the fact that there are deep divisions within the nation (heh), and the ‘hideous shape’ the nation’s infrastructure (including power generation), economy and oil revenue decreases is in, all, of course, down to Hugo Chavez’s corruption and mismanagement.  Only independent media have brought us the other side of the story.  I only wish I’d ever know half of it before Hugo’s death.  The attacks are obviously underpinned by the hatred of socialism, and the fact that it was a people’s movement that launched him into the Presidency.  Oh, and…his nationalizing the oil industry.  ‘Regime change’ is on the docket.

Jack Balkwill of Liberty Underground News had this to say this morning; his headline was: ‘The Bolivarian Revolution Continues’:

Among news media where most Americans get their news, most brought up election irregularities suggesting interference by the socialist government, but none questioned whether there had been cheating by the oligarch candidate, despite polls predicting he would lose by double digits prior to the election (if he did so much better than predicted, why wouldn’t he be the one accused of cheating?). 

Many in corporate media alleged that Venezuelan state media played a role in the socialist victory, but none pointed out that the overwhelming majority of the Venezuelan mass media are under the control of the oligarchs and supported Capriles. 

(by Anthony Freda via wendydavis @flickr.com)

In the first independent evaluation of top-secret classified internal U.S. intelligence accounting of drone attacks since the Bush administration launched America’s secret aerial drone warfare on Oct. 7, 2001, Jonathan Landay of McClatchy News has brought news that belies the Obomba administration’s claims about the program.  That day during the Bush administration, a missile-carrying Predator took off for Afghanistan from an airfield in Pakistan on the first operational flight of an armed U.S. drone, assumedly targeting the Al Qaeda camps that were allegedly harboring and training those who’d been deemed to have operational plans past the Twin Towers attack. 

Many of us at this site, but certainly not all, have known from our reading independent and foreign sources that the claims Obomba, John Brennan, et.al. have made as to the rigorous investigations into evidence that their targets were indeed ‘a baseball card deck’ of ‘terrorists intent on harming the Homeland’ was hooey.  But now the first mainstream news outlet has proven it, and it’s now part of the public record.  Whether or not Americans will be able to reset their comforting  ‘We only efficiently assassinate the Worst of the Worst terrorist leaders who mean harm to us’ beliefs isn’t likely; a plurality of us still believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, no matter that it’s been disproven countless times.  Propaganda thrives because we want to believe the easy lie rather than the uncomfortable and unvarnished truth.  We are exceptional, and exceptionally gullible. 

(US Embassy, the Hague, via flickr.com)

When a nation’s rulers no longer consider the Common Good, it is clearly in decline. Dredd writes that as earlier consensus continues to evaporate, a society begins to feed on itself, in a form of cultural and social cannibalism; the common weal is no longer considered.  From the wiki on the common weal:

‘The “middle class and poor” is an obvious representative for the standard, because those are the common people, as shown by the history and definition of the phrase “the common weal” which is the old English form of “the common good”.

A song written by Tracy Chapman has been haunting me; it’s a metaphor for so many of the ills in our nation that keep us from enjoying any of FDR’s Four Freedoms:

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

‘Anywhere in the world’ is too much to trace back, but the bang, bang, bangs in this country still resound from at least the middle of the last century.

Bang, bang: Sorry, no more worker strikes that might affect the bidness of America, which is it’s only bidness (gotcha, ya rotten Commies).  ‘People have  the right to work free of union interference!’

(by ecolabs via flickr.com)

Since the 2008 meltdown and massive bailout of the financial sector, and the ensuing egregious financial thievery that was delivered to homeowners, students, pensioners, workers, small businesses and most of the 99%, many of us have suffered grievously.  Given that as after the crash of 1929, it was the perfect time to do a reset and create strict laws that would slow down the nefarious banksters on Wall Street and elsewhere, we’d hoped that old regulatory laws would have been reinstated at the very least.  But no; the TBTF banks are more powerful than ever in their consolidated forms, lending less, selling more unregulated derivatives than ever, and the failures to prosecute financial fraud are almost total; ‘pre-emptive prosecutions’ (smallish fines) rule.

As this iteraton of capitalism continues to run even more wild, trammeling the 99% and hijacking the fruits of our labor to ever more execrable degrees, there have been increasing conversations here about alternatives, often just in comment streams not entirely related to diaries.  My own increasing interest in alternatives largely were due to the aforementioned failures plus the reading of thrilling declarations I’ve done for many posts on the global Indigenous movements that are coming out of the shadows.  My heart and beliefs, I’ve discovered, often lie more completely with them, thus I’ve listened more acutely as they indict capitalism and neoliberalism as the root causes of their poverty, the planets pollution, food and water insecurity.  ‘Third-worlders see it first’ (Buffy Sainte Marie), and we the 99% are increasingly becoming third-worlders living in a Banana Republic.

In other words: because capitalism has so outstripped and mooted Democracy now, it means that the economic model effectively IS our government now.  Whether you call it fascism, or Inverted Totalitarianism, or anything else.  It’s unfair, unsustaianable … and just plain wrong.

Please understand that I’m an utter novice in the alternatives field, so I’ll get things wrong; I’m confident that you will set me straight.  I’m hoping that the post will serve as a shell for your contributions, including answering questions others may have.  It may seem a bit disorganized, but I want to space the videos out.

Our own PeasantParty, long-time student of Dr. Richard Wolff’s Marxist economics, has agreed to co-host.  OmAli will likely bring her understanding into the discussion, and a number of other denizens have expressed interest in contributing their own preferred alternatives.

 ‘For each child that’s born, a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are’

we are mothers of courage, fathers of time
we are daughters of dust and sons of great vision
we are sisters of mercy and brothers of love
we’re lovers of life and the builders of nations
we’re seekers of truth and keepers of faith
makers of peace and the wisdom of ages

We are our grandmothers prayers
and we are out grandfathers dreamings
we are one…’

Imagine for a moment that at our cores, we are all those things, with almost limitless potential for growth, love, justice, and regard and innate knowledge that we’re a tiny bit of a magnificent whole when we’re born.  It’s often said that at least in western society, our programming begins soon after birth, and by the time we reach age six, our minds and bodies are already on auto-pilot, reacting mainly to our unconscious mind’s directives, definitions, family relationships, and socializations.  Then for most of us, our schools trained us further as obedient to authoritarianism, homogeneity, rote learning, forced to metaphorically ‘only color within the lines’.  Our creativity is stifled and suspect; our value to society is calibrated and parsed as ‘earning potential’ or patriotic contributions; we’re assured we ‘can all grow up to be President one day’ if we just work hard enough toward that goal.

As I type, the government of Cyprus, the European Central bank and the IMF are in negotiations over how to ‘save’ the economy and banks of the tiny island. (live feed here).  In order to secure the ten billion euro bailout they’d been promised earlier.  But in a recent burst of calumny, the deal Cyprus was given was to plunder the savings accounts of real people to the tune of 6.9% (holding less than 100,000 euros) to 9.9% (accounts over 100,000 euros) as a one time tax to aid the banks via the government.  The theft is the sort that John Perkins, Naomi Klein, and others have warned us was coming to us.  Even Michael Hudson said in this recent interview that “even Karl Marx wasn’t cynical enough to have predicted where we are now with banking” (or something close).

One of the most insidious parts of IMF loans is that the contract with recipient nations agree to resets of the terms of the initial agreement if (and more likely: when) a nation doesn’t meet its repayment schedule; some ‘austerity measures’ can come with the deal up front.  Pension fund ‘buy-ins’ (plunders), as in Ireland, decreased social safety nets, privatization of taxpayer funded commons, etc.  Given that many of the citizens in the Middle East and global south became early victims of these loans, they got the message quickly that these loans weren’t altruistic for the 99%, just huge gifts to the banks, multinationals, and conscienceless profiteers.  ‘Constructed’ disasters and natural disasters bring out the World Bank and IMF as well, but those are a whole ‘nother subject.

When Cyprus’s president Nicos Anastasiades recently announced the ‘haircuts’ for bank accounts to save the banking system and the government, the crowds understandably went wild.  Who wouldn’t, given that the bank shareholders wouldn’t suffer one jot, but as we’ve learned only too well here, the Lemon Socialism that ‘free market capitalism’ has become means: the Banks take the risks, reap the profits, and when they find themselves too toxic or illiquid and need bailouts so they don’t topple, the little guy provides the dough.  Nice way to make a living if you’re a sociopath.  Cyprus’s legislature, in a burst of democracy, rejected the deal.  But now comes the hardest parts: making a deal.  Parliament hasn’t met yet as of this diary’s publication, indicating the arguments are still ongoing.

In the US, of course, it’s a bit different, since The Ben Bernank keeps printing money (giving zeo percent loans to banks to sit on in order to construct the next massive bubble/s), or buying up their bonds and toxic debt at fictitious valuations, keeping ‘Mr. Market’ (as Yves Smith calls Wall Street) massively inflated.

“Aha!,” the headlines read today; The Market tells us that it’s not concerned that contagion will spread here from Cyprus!  A deal’s about to be reached!  Nothing to shiver about here!”

But trust is gone now, as citizens sense that the whole financial charade is…a charade, and built on nothing but inertia by now.  And the fear that robbing citizen savings accounts is spreading, and folks in Italy, Spain, New Zealand and other nations know their futures are about to be on the chopping blocks next.

Public banking specialist Ellen Brown says, ‘oh, yes: it can happen here,’ and explains why that is, what’s at stake, and what’s needed: public banks and political will.

Russia was apparently the last hope for Cyprus, but the finance minister found no buyers for banks during his recent trip to Mother Russia.  I suppose it was thought feasible since Russian mafia are said to own about 30% of their bank deposits, but ‘no joy there’ means plans B, C, and D are being considered.  The live feed reports some pretty wild swings, so who knows how it will turn out short-term for Cyprus, or the world of global finance.  Separating the Better Banks from the Sickest Banks is on offer (to slow down the need for recapitalization or detoxification); as is changing the metrics of the deposit grabs, and several other possibilities.  New rules for withdrawing money and cashing checks are being rafted as I type, as well.

On March 19, self-styled ‘Euro-skeptic’ British MP Nigel Farage offered this advice after hearing of the Cyprus bank deposit grab:  “Get your money out while you still can.”

(video here)  I’ll bet a few bankers would like to terminate him with extreme prejudice, lol.  Talk about inciting a panic run on banks!  But seriously, no one knows exactly which event might precipitate the Big Fall of the Rigged-Casino Financial Machine.

Again in the ‘could it, will it happen here’ category comes our beloved Fed Chair, who says … nothing of any value, nothing that refutes the possibility.  Here’s Ben ‘adjusting his tools’ at the FOMC two days ago:

As the proprietor of Washingtonsblog.com says: