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TPP: A Trade Deal from Hell
by Stephen Lendman
Obama and political Washington support an alphabet soup of repressive police state laws, other freedom destroying measures, and hellish trade deals.
SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA threaten online freedom. Free speech and civil protections are endangered species. So are other inviolable rule of law provisions. With bipartisan support, they're heading for the trash bin of history.
Obama officials secretly negotiated and adopted ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). It established unrestricted supranational global trade rules. Its provisions trample on national sovereignty, privacy and personal freedoms.
The Western Welfare State: Its Rise and Demise and the Soviet Bloc
James Petras
Introduction
"The ‘Great Reversal’ appears to be a long-term..."
One of the most striking socio-economic features of the past two decades is the reversal of the previous half-century of welfare legislation in Europe and North America. Unprecedented cuts in social services, severance pay, public employment, pensions, health programs, educational stipends, vacation time, and job security are matched by increases in tuition, regressive taxation, and the age of retirement as well as increased inequalities, job insecurity and workplace speed-up.
The demise of the ‘welfare state’ demolishes the idea put forth by orthodox economists, who argued that the ‘maturation’ of capitalism, its ‘advanced state’, high technology and sophisticated services, would be accompanied by greater welfare and higher income/standard of living. While it is true that ‘services and technology’ have multiplied, the economic sector has become even more polarized, between low paid retail clerks and super rich stock brokers and financiers. The computerization of the economy has led to electronic bookkeeping, cost controls and the rapid movements of speculative funds in search of maximum profit while at the same time ushering in brutal budgetary reductions for social programs.
Jefferson is spinning
Mary Shaw
As I write this on the July 4th holiday, 2012, it occurs to me that Thomas Jefferson is surely spinning in his grave.
When he and the other Founding Fathers created this nation 236 years ago today, their vision was of a society in which "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
At the same time, they recognized that a true democracy requires an informed electorate. In a letter to William Charles Jarvis in 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
PRI Regains Mexican Presidency
by Stephen Lendman
Like its northern neighbor, wealth and power dominate Mexican politics. Elections are notoriously tainted. Populist candidates are excluded. The late John Ross said Mexico perfected the art of electoral theft.
Longstanding problems fester. For millions, they're unbearable. They include extreme poverty, unemployment, underemployment, deep-seated private and public corruption, drug-related crime and violence, and political repression.
Beyond lip service, none of the candidates addressed them. Conditions are worse now than years earlier.
Sunday's election changed nothing. Privately, Nieto assured Washington that business as usual will continue.
AMERIKA’S LAST INDEPENDENCE DAY
Allen L Roland
2012 could well mark the last celebration of our once brave and free Republic whose firm moral bearings have slowly been eroded by a cancerous military industrial complex and the sinister emergence of a fascist corpocracy.
Enjoy this fourth of July; watch the patriotic parades and fireworks, wave your flags and stuff yourself with hamburgers and hotdogs ~ but beware, this could well be Amerika’s last independence day. The moral pillars of our Republic have almost disintegrated and beneath the ruins lay a rapidly blooming fascist corpocracy.
Failure in Geneva
by Stephen Lendman
Morning headlines belie continued conflict on the ground. East/West divisions remain. Nothing changed but political rhetoric from Geneva.
After Annan's so-called peace plan, violence increased because Washington planned it that way.
Expect it to continue now. America needs conflict and instability to further regime change plans. Peace and stability defeat its interests.
AP ran a June 30 headline with no text, saying:
"Clinton urges UN Security Council to pass sanctions authorizing military action in Syria"
Government by the Banks, for the Banks: The ESM Coup D’Etat in Europe
by Ellen Brown
On Friday, June 29th, German Chancellor Angela Merkel acquiesced to changes to a permanent Eurozone bailout fund—“before the ink was dry,” as critics complained. Besides easing the conditions under which bailouts would be given, the concessions included an agreement that funds intended for indebted governments could be funneled directly to stressed banks.
According to Gavin Hewitt, Europe editor for BBC News, the concessions mean that:
[T]he eurozone’s bailout fund (backed by taxpayers’ money) will be taking a stake in failed banks.
Risk has been increased. German taxpayers have increased their liabilities. In future a bank crash will no longer fall on the shoulders of national treasuries but on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a fund to which Germany contributes the most.
Big Pharma wants nano-scavengers in its drugs
By Rady Ananda
Activist Post
To clean up its drugs that are contaminated with genotoxic ingredients (which are also carcinogenic), Big Pharma may deploy lab-created, nanosized, polymer-based scavengers.
But is the cure any safer?
New research explains that:
A variety of chemical compounds, intermediates, and reagents are used during the process of synthesizing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Some of these chemicals, intermediates, and reagents, as well as byproducts of synthetic processes, can have toxic properties and be present as impurities at low levels in the API or final drug formulation....
The kinetics of acrolein scavenging in the presence of the API iodixanol and the scavenging capacity of resins were demonstrated in this paper.
They found a nanopolymer so efficient it cleans up 97.8% of acrolein without eating the active pharmaceutical components.
Yum… drugs with nanobots.
Anti-Tyranny Quotes for These Times
Compiled by Gary G. Kohls, MD
“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
"The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." -- Mohandas Gandhi
"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul." -- Gandhi
"Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Spurious Terrorism Indictments
by Stephen Lendman
On May 19 and 20, NATO occupied Chicago violently. Downtown residents were in virtual lockdown. No-fly zones were imposed. Elaborate barricades were erected. Constitutional rights were suspended.
Getting around was hazardous. Anyone could be stopped, searched, interrogated, or arrested. Chicagoans were under siege.
NATO is the world's first global war-making alliance. Largely a US imperial tool, it's a killing machine. Its 28 members and dozens of partner states comprise about one-third of the world's nations. They menace humanity. For days, thousands protested nonviolently during their Chicago summit. Police brutality confronted them.
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