STATE PREYING ON THE CHILDREN TO FEED THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX - TO CREATE A SLAVE UNDERCLASS
This is a timely article, although this process from school to prison pipeline has been going for sometime now. Essentially what is transpiring, the big picture, is the creation of an entire underclass as prison fodder - AND THEY START BY GOING AFTER YOUR CHILDREN. Do you think the judicial system is there to help your kids? Let me disabuse you of that misconception, the dragnet is getting larger and larger and if you do nothing to stop this your children, everyone's kids are going to be exposed to this process, it is now accelerating - do not say I never warned you.
"More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?
The charge on the police docket was "disrupting class". But that's not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of "you smell".
"I'm weird. Other kids don't like me," said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. "They were saying a lot of rude things to me. Just picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then they said: 'Put that away, that's the most terrible smell I've ever smelled.' Then the teacher called the police."
The policeman didn't have far to come. He patrols the corridors of Sarah's school, Fulmore Middle in Austin, Texas. Like hundreds of schools in the state, and across large parts of the rest of the US, Fulmore Middle has its own police force with officers in uniform who carry guns to keep order in the canteens, playgrounds and lessons. Sarah was taken from class, charged with a criminal misdemeanour and ordered to appear in court.
Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing "inappropriate" clothes and being late for school.
8 YEAR OLD KID
In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 "Class C misdemeanour" tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.
"We've taken childhood behaviour and made it criminal," said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer who represented Sarah Bustamantes. "They're kids. Disruption of class? Every time I look at this law I think: good lord, I never would have made it in school in the US. I grew up in Australia and it's just rowdy there. I don't know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws."
The British government is studying the American experience in dealing with gangs, unruly young people and juvenile justice in the wake of the riots in England. The UK's justice minister, Crispin Blunt, visited Texas last September to study juvenile courts and prisons, youth gangs and police outreach in schools, among other things. But his trip came at a time when Texas is reassessing its own reaction to fears of feral youth that critics say has created a "school-to-prison pipeline". The Texas supreme court chief justice, Wallace Jefferson, has warned that "charging kids with criminal offences for low-level behavioural issues" is helping to drive many of them to a life in jail.
The Texas state legislature last year changed the law to stop the issuing of tickets to 10- and 11-year-olds over classroom behaviour. (In the state, the age of criminal responsibility is 10.) But a broader bill to end the practice entirely – championed by a state senator, John Whitmire, who called the system "ridiculous" – failed to pass and cannot be considered again for another two years.
Even the federal government has waded in, with the US attorney general, Eric Holder, saying of criminal citations being used to maintain discipline in schools: "That is something that clearly has to stop."
As almost every parent of a child drawn in to the legal labyrinth by school policing observes, it wasn't this way when they were young.
The emphasis on law and order in the classroom parallels more than two decades of rapid expansion of all areas of policing in Texas in response to misplaced fears across the US in the 1980s of a looming crime wave stoked by the crack epidemic, alarmist academic studies and the media.
"It's very much tied in with some of the hyperbole around the rise in juvenile crime rate that took place back in the early 90s," said Deborah Fowler, deputy director of Texas Appleseed, an Austin legal rights group, and principal author of a 200-page study of the consequences of policing in Texas schools. "They ushered in tough, punitive policies. It was all part of the tough-on-crime movement."
Part of that included the passing of laws that made the US the only developed country to lock up children as young as 13 for life without the possibility of parole, often as accomplices to murders committed by an adult.
As the hand of law and order grew heavier across Texas, its grip also tightened on schools. The number of school districts in the state with police departments has risen more than 20-fold over the past two decades.
"Zero tolerance started out as a term that was used in combating drug trafficking and it became a term that is now used widely when you're referring to some very punitive school discipline measures. Those two policy worlds became conflated with each other," said Fowler.
In the midst of that drive came the 1999 Columbine high school massacre, in which two students in Colorado shot dead 12 other pupils and a teacher before killing themselves. Parents clamoured for someone to protect their children and police in schools seemed to many to be the answer.
But most schools do not face any serious threat of violence and police officers patrolling the corridors and canteens are largely confronted with little more than boisterous or disrespectful childhood behaviour.
"What we see often is a real overreaction to behaviour that others would generally think of as just childish misbehaviour rather than law breaking," said Fowler. Tickets are most frequently issued by school police for "disruption of class", which can mean causing problems during lessons but is also defined as disruptive behaviour within 500ft (150 metres) of school property such as shouting, which is classified as "making an unreasonable noise".
Among the more extreme cases documented by Appleseed is of a teacher who had a pupil arrested after the child responded to a question as to where a word could be found in a text by saying: "In your culo (arse)", making the other children laugh. Another pupil was arrested for throwing paper aeroplanes.
Students are also regularly fined for "disorderly behaviour", which includes playground scraps not serious enough to warrant an assault charge or for swearing or an offensive gesture. One teenage student was arrested and sent to court in Houston after he and his girlfriend poured milk on each other after they broke up. Nearly one third of tickets involve drugs or alcohol. Although a relatively high number of tickets – up to 20% in some school districts – involve charges over the use of weapons, mostly the weapons used were fists.
The very young are not spared. According to Appleseed, Texas records show more than 1,000 tickets were issued to primary schoolchildren over the past six years (although these have no legal force at that age). Appleseed said that "several districts ticketed a six-year-old at least once in the last five years".
Fines run up to $500. For poorer parents, the cost can be crippling. Some parents and students ignore the financial penalty, but that can have consequences years down the road. Schoolchildren with outstanding fines are regularly jailed in an adult prison for non-payment once they turn 17. Stumping up the fine is not an end to the offending student's problems either. A class-C misdemeanour is a criminal offence.
"Once you pay it, that's a guilty plea and that's on your record," said Simpkins. "In the US we have these astronomical college and university expenses and you go to fill out the application to get your federal aid for that and it says have you ever been arrested. And there you are, no aid."
In Austin, about 3% of the school district's 80,000 pupils were given criminal citations in the 2007/8 school year, the last date for which figures are available. But the chances of a teenager receiving a ticket in any given year are much higher than that because citations are generally issued to high-school pupils, not those in kindergarten or primary school.
The result, says the Appleseed report, is that "school-to-prison pipeline" in which a high proportion of children who receive tickets and end up in front of a court are arrested time and again because they are then marked out as troublemakers or find their future blighted by a criminal record.
From her perch on the bench in an Austin courtroom, Judge Jeanne Meurer has spent close on 30 years dealing with children hauled up for infractions, some serious, others minor. Some of the difficulties faced by teachers can be seen as Meurer decides whether a parade of children should be released to await trial or held in custody. Meurer switches between motherly and intimidating depending on what she makes of the child before her.
"Some of them are rough kids," she said. "I've been on the bench 30 years and you used to never have a child cuss you out like you do now. I appreciate the frustrations that adults have in dealing with children who seem to have no manners or respect. But these are our future. Shouldn't we find a tool to change that dynamic versus just arresting them in school and coming down with the hard criminal justice hammer?"
Many of those who appear in front of Meurer have learning problems. Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of police in schools. Simpkins describes the case of a boy with attention deficit disorder who as a 12-year-old tipped a desk over in class in a rage. He was charged with threatening behaviour and sent to a juvenile prison where he was required to earn his release by meeting certain educational and behavioural standards.
"But he can't," she said. "Because of that he is turning 18 within the juvenile justice system for something that happened when he was 12. It's a real trap. A lot of these kids do have disabilities and that's how they end up there and can't get out. Instead of dealing with it within school system like we used to, we have these school police, they come in and it escalates from there."
Sometimes that escalation involves force. "We had one young man with an IQ well below 70 who was pepper-sprayed in the hallway because he didn't understand what the police were saying," said Simpkins. "After they pepper-sprayed him he started swinging his arms around in pain and he hit one of the police officers – it's on video, his eyes were shut – and they charged him with assault of a public servant. He was 16. He was charged with two counts of assault of a public servant and he is still awaiting trial. He could end up in prison."
Austin's school police department is well armed with officers carrying guns and pepper spray, and with dog units on call for sniffing out drugs and explosives.
According to the department's records, officers used force in schools more than 400 times in the five years to 2008, including incidents in which pepper spray was fired to break up a food fight in a canteen and guns were drawn on lippy students.
In recent months the questionable use of force has included the tasering of a 16-year-old boy at a high school in Seguin, Texas, after "he refused to cooperate" when asked why he wasn't wearing his school identification tag. He then used "abusive language". The police said that when an officer tried to arrest the boy, he attempted to bite the policeman. The youth was charged with resisting arrest and criminal trespass even though the school acknowledges he is a student and was legitimately on the grounds.
Sometimes the force is deadly. Last week, Texas police were accused of overreacting in shooting dead a 15-year-old student, Jaime Gonzalez, at a school in Brownsville after he pointed an air gun, which resembled a real pistol, at them outside the principal's office. The boy's father, also called Jaime, said the police were too quick to shoot to kill when they could have wounded him or used another means to arrest him. "If they would have tased him all this wouldn't have happened," he told the Brownsville Herald. "Like people say there's been stand-offs with people that have hostages for hours … But here, they didn't even give I don't think five minutes. No negotiating." The police say Gonzalez defied orders to put the gun down.
Meurer says she is not against police in schools but questions whether officers should regard patrolling the playground the same way they go about addressing crime on the streets.
"When you start going overboard and using laws to control non-illegal behaviour – I mean if any adult did it it's not going to be a violation – that's where we start seeing a problem," she says. "You've gradually seen this morphing from schools taking care of their own environments to the police and security personnel, and all of a sudden it just became more and more that we were relying on law enforcement to control everyday behaviour."
Chief Brian Allen, head of the school police department for the Aldine district and president of the Texas school police chiefs' association, is having none of it.
"There's quite a substantial number of students that break the law. In Texas and in the US, if you're issued a ticket, it's not automatically that you're found guilty. You have an opportunity to go before the judge and plead your case. If you're a teacher and a kid that's twice as big as you comes up and hits you right in the face, what are you going to do? Are you going to use your skills that they taught you or are you going to call a police officer?"
But Allen concedes that the vast majority of incidents in which the police become involved are for offences that regarded as little more than misbehaviour elsewhere.
"Just like anything else, sometimes mistakes are made." he said. "Each circumstance is different and there's no set guideline. There's also something called officer discretion. If you take five auto mechanics and ask them to diagnose the problem of a vehicle, you'll come up with five different solutions. If you ask five different doctors to diagnose a patient, a lot of times you'll have five different diagnoses. Conversely, if you ask five different police officers if they would write a ticket or not for the same offence, you possibly have five different answers."
Parents who have been sucked into the system, such as Jennifer Rambo, the mother of Sarah Bustamantes, wonder what happened to teachers taking responsibility for school discipline.
"I was very upset at the teacher because the teacher could have just stopped it. She could have said: OK class, that's enough. She could have asked Sarah for her perfume and told her that's inappropriate, don't do that in class. But she did none of that. She called the police," she says.
Politicians and civil liberties groups have raised the same question, asking if schools are not using the police to shift responsibility, and accountability, for discipline.
"Teachers rely on the police to enforce discipline," says Simpkins. "Part of it is that they're not accountable. They're not going to get into trouble for it. The parent can't come in and yell at them. They say: it's not us, it's the police."
That view is not shared by an Austin teacher who declined to be named because he said he did not want to stigmatise the children in his class.
"There's this illusion that it's just a few kids acting up; kids being kids. This is not the 50s. Too many parents today don't control their children. Their fathers aren't around. They're in gangs. They come in to the classroom and they have no respect, no self-discipline. They're doing badly, they don't want to learn, they just want to disrupt. They can be very threatening," he says. "The police get called because that way the teacher can go on with teaching instead of wasting half the class dealing with one child, and it sends a message to the other kids."
The Texas State Teachers Association, the state's main teachers union, did not take a position on ticketing at the recent debate in the legislature over Whitmire's proposal to scrap it. But the association's Clay Robison says that most teachers welcome the presence of police in schools.
"Obviously it looks as if some police officers are overreacting at some schools. I'm a parent and I wouldn't want my 17-year-old son hauled in to court if he and another student got in to an argument in a cafeteria. Police officers need to exercise a little bit of common sense but the police are what they are. They enforce the law," he says. "At the same time, years ago, at a school in one of the better neighbourhoods of Austin, a teacher was shot to death in his classroom. It's still a very rare occurrence but it does happen. Anything that increases the security of the teacher is good so they don't have to worry about personal safety and they can concentrate on teaching the kids. We get complaints from some teachers that the police aren't aggressive enough at moving against some of the older juveniles, those that they feel actually do pose a danger to the teachers or the other students."
Because of Sarah Bustamentes's mental disorders, a disability rights group took up her case and after months of legal battles prosecutors dropped the charges. Ask her how she feels about police in schools after her experience and she's equivocal.
"We need police in school. In my school it can get physical and it can turn out very bad," she says. "But they should stop issuing tickets. Only for physical stuff or bullying. Not what you do in class.""
The official website for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is the latest victim in a massive online attack against both the government and entertainment industry.
The Bureau's official website, FBI.gov, went down Thursday evening after hacktivists participating in campaigns waged by the loose knit collective Anonymous attacked a series of sites in retaliation for a raid earlier in the day against the Megaupload service.
Following a federal raid that not only shut down the file sharing service Megaupload but also led to more than 20 warrants being served and at least seven arrests internationally, hacktivists took to the Web to respond. The result was an attack on the sites of several entertainment industry and government sites that crippled many of them. The websites for the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group were among the first to go, with the sites for US Copyright Office, Warner Music, BMI, and RIAA following suit shortly after. At around 7:40 PM ET, FBI.gov finally went down.
Anonymous have also issued this video, declaring the launch of Operation Blackout, and stating:
This is not only an Anonymous collective call to action… this is a call for a worldwide internet and physical protest against the powers that be."
As I have written previously, SOPA is merely the codification of what has been transpiring for a long time, all laws are merely the "official" version of what has been common practice. So, for those of you who thought that this process would never occur without its legal hashtag passing (SOPA), think again. This is what happens when you allow six companies to own almost everything you see and hear - approximately 90%, and this is what will always happen under this current system, it will fall into the hands of the few.
There is only one thing I will add to Pirate Bays post, I wrote this on Disinfo, site (interestingly in regard to SOPA again), and for some reason people do not understand why these media corporations try to sell junk to the people. The problem is that you do not understand what corporate media is all about, here is what I mean:
"Let me share something here, I only mention this not because no one knows this, but that it was not mentioned. Some of the posts here seem to not understand the nature of the beast that we are dealing with - corporations and the US government (merely a franchise of the elite) partner with one another. There is a symbiotic relationship between what the moneyed elite want in the USA and the corporate media, all one has to do as an example, is look at all of the companies that want to sell technology to the government (their wet dream) which further invades what thread bare privacy the public is left with.
When you are talking about something like SOPA you have to understand that elite interests will use whatever "legitimate" industries they can to control the population. This is what media in the corporate sense really is, whether it is informational (news) or entertainment (which is supposed to tell you what "normal" is supposed to be) - they work hand and glove. Another example, if you want to just look at the entertainment aspect, is how often Hollywood works with the military industrial complex - to make war attractive, or to spin that we are always the "good guys" in whatever conflict. Informational media is just a mixture of silence in what the powers that be do not want spotlighted or just bold faced lies (both on foreign and domestic issues)."
There are reasons why I don't have a hard time understanding why President Obama would do this, I just have no misgivings about what this country's ruling elite are all about - they engorge the moneyed elite further, this is what government officials are all about. If you think any differently I would say your views strike me as somewhat naive. If you think you can vote your way to peace, I consider that really strange - the largest protest against war in history is recorded in regard to the Iraq War - did that stop anything? Moral suasion does not move reprobates like these war mongers, the force of the people has been the only option repeatedly, we are in no different position today. The president does not take orders from the peoples will, he listens to the moneyed few, and the corporate media will not mention these clandestine operations because they are at the beck and call of their paychecks (hence the media silence). This lust for war will never be sated under the current system, it has to be dismantled by any means necessary.
Cynthia McKinney
"It is with great disappointment that I receive the news from foreign media publications and Libyan sources that our President now has 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in Malta and they are about to make their descent into Libya.
For those of you who have not followed closely the situation in Libya, the resistance to the rule of the National Transitional Council is strong. The National Transitional Council (NTC) cast of characters has about as much support on the ground as did Mahmoud Abbas before the United Nations request for Palestinian statehood or Afghanistan's regal-looking but politically impotent Hamid Karzai or for that matter, George W Bush after eight years.
The NTC not only has to contend with a vibrant, well-financed, grassroots-supported resistance, but the various militias of the NTC are now also fighting each other. I believe this "sociocide" of Libyan society, as we previously witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan before it, is part of a carefully crafted plan of destabilization that ultimately serves U.S. imperial interests and those of a Zionist state and its US agents who are bent on Greater Israel's suzerainty over huge swaths of Arabic-speaking populations. Pakistan is also on the list for neutering in Muslim and world affairs, saddled with its own unpopular civilian leadership that finds itself in the hip pocket of the United States for survival, often getting sat upon by its fiscal guarantor.
The "Arab Spring" has sprung and the indelible fingerprints of malignant foreign financed operations must be erased if the people are to have a chance to truly govern themselves. Unfortunately, these foreign-inspired organizations are present and operating in just about every country in the world. The threat is ever-present like sleeping cells–all that is needed is that the right word to "activate" be given. Both Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez can write tomes on the impact of the National Endowment for Democracy in the political life of their countries.
In other words, those who create the chaos have a plan and in the midst of chaos, they usually are the ones who will win. Those who wrote the plan of this chaos were affiliated with the Project for a New American Century–read "A Clean Break" if you already haven't. General Wesley Clark told us of the plan to invade and destroy the governments of seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. "These people took control of the policy in the United States," Clark continues. He concludes, "This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and … collaborators from the Project for a New American Century: they wanted us to destabilize the Middle East." Richard Perle, Bill Kristol publicize these plans and "could hardly wait to finish Iraq so they could go into Syria," Clark goes on. "The root of the problem is the strategy of the United States in this region. Why are Americans dying in this region? That is the issue," he finishes.
Now, from Libya, reports are that even while the Misrata rebels (NATO allies responsible for the murder of hundreds of Libyans, including Moatessem Gaddafi) attempted to scale the petroleum platforms in Brega (an important oil town in Libya), they were annihilated by the Apache helicopters of their own NATO allies. A resistance Libyan doctor-become-journalist reported yesterday that all of the petroleum platforms are occupied by NATO and that warships occupy Libya's ports. Photographs show Italian encampments in the desert with an announcement that the French are to follow.
Another news outlet reports that Qataris and Emiratees are the engineers now at the oil plants, turning away desperate Libyan workers. While long lines exist for Libyan drivers to get their gas, foreign troops ensure the black gold's export. Libyans lack enough food and the basics, the country has been turned upside down, and contaminated with uranium while the true number of dead and unaccounted for remains high and unknown. Thousands of young Libyans, supporters of the Jahamiriya, languish under torture and assassination in a Misrata prison where a humanitarian disaster is about to unfold because Misrata rebels want to kill them all and have already attacked the prison once to do so. An urgent appeal to contact the International Red Cross was issued yesterday to help save the lives of the prisoners. And finally, Black Libyans continue to be targeted for harassment and murder in Libya by US/NATO allies on the ground. Teaching hate, given the images of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan released yesterday, urinating on Afghani dead bodies, is not a difficult thing to do, it would seem. Videos are posted of Black Libyans being beaten, whipped, threatened, harassed, and humiliated. These videos remind me of the antebellum South–reminiscent of the days of slavery and The Confederacy. So, when I use the word "descend" to describe U.S. anticipated actions, I mean just that: U.S. troops are about to descend into the hell on Earth created by their President and the leaders of other countries who approved of, aided, or participated in the death of Libyan-owned society. A report from last night indicates that one militia, fearing other militias, even invited foreigners in to protect them.
I hope the report that I'm reading from 12 January 2012 is not true. I hope our President has not sent 12,000 troops of occupation to Malta destined for Libya. Lucy Grider-Bradley (of our DIGNITY Delegation) just yesterday reminded me of the words of a high-ranking Libyan Jahamiriya Foreign Ministry representative who just happened to be at the Tunisia/Libya border office at the same time we were waiting there. He said, "Let the Americans come. We want them to taste our sandwiches. We will give them the same serving they got in Vietnam."
Please write to our President (at www.whitehouse.gov) and ask him not to send troops of occupation (or whatever "euphemism de jour" this Administration chooses to use) to Libya.
To save the lives of the young men in prison, please e-mail the International Red Cross at any or all of the e-mail addresses given below:
And then, please view the most recent addition to the extremely valuable work of a young documentarian, Julien Teil, who caught Amnesty International red-handed in proselytizing the lies in the lead-up to this Libya debacle that they tried to take back. In short, Amnesty admits that the "African mercenaries" was just a rumor from the start. How many Black Libyans are suffering and have died because this woman and others like her safely ensconced in their seats of authority used them to proffer lies instead of protect the truth? The video is in both French and English and can be viewed here.
Lastly, there is one thing you can do: refuse to vote for war. Your vote is your most precious political asset. When you vote for Congressional representatives who, in turn, vote for war, you allow the people who made the coup–the people that General Wesley Clark talked about–you allow them to win. Overturn the coup by voting for peace. Cast your vote for peace. Ignore the pundits on the Sunday morning talk shows and vote for peace. Turn off the crap TV and vote for peace. Don't even listen to your friends who think you've gone crazy, just vote for peace.
Cindy Piester, a documentarian who hosted the last event that I attended with my aunt in Ventura, California, just finished a film, "On the Dark Side in Al Doura – A Soldier in the Shadows" in which Dick Cheney says that the United States has to "work toward the dark side, spend time in the shadows, in the intelligence world." He goes on to say, "A lot of what needs to be done will have to be done quietly without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies." View her extremely well-done and sad film here, and please, don't let this gang of coup plotters take you and this country into the shadows where we don't need or want to be.
THIS DID NOT GO AWAY WHEN OBAMA TOOK OFFICE (BELOW):
MILITAINMENT, A SUPERB DOCUMENTARY THAT COMES IN 13 PARTS ON YOUTUBE. I SUGGEST YOU WATCH ALL OF THE VIDEOS, GRAB A BEER AND SOME POPCORN, AND SEE WHAT ASININE SAPS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE MADE INTO...(BELOW)
"Samir Amin is proposing a way out of the current situation of capitalism in crisis. Nations should socialize the ownership of monopolies, de-financialise the management of the economy and de-globalise international relations."
INTRODUCTION
"The historical circumstances created by the implosion of contemporary capitalism requires the radical left, in the North as well as the South, to be bold in formulating its political alternative to the existing system. The purpose of this paper is to show why audacity is required and what it means.
WHY AUDACITY?
1. Contemporary capitalism is a capitalism of generalized monopolies. By this I mean that monopolies are now no longer islands (albeit important) in a sea of other still relatively autonomous companies, but are an integrated system. Therefore, these monopolies now tightly control all the systems of production. Small and medium enterprises, and even the large corporations that are not strictly speaking oligopolies are locked in a network of control put in place by the monopolies. Their degree of autonomy has shrunk to the point that they are nothing more than subcontractors of the monopolies.
This system of generalized monopolies is the product of a new phase of centralization of capital in the countries of the Triad (the United States, Western and Central Europe, and Japan) that took place during the 1980s and 1990s.
The generalized monopolies now dominate the world economy. 'Globalization' is the name they have given to the set of demands by which they exert their control over the productive systems of the periphery of global capitalism (the world beyond the partners of the triad). It is nothing other than a new stage of imperialism.
2. The capitalism of generalized and globalized monopolies is a system that guarantees these monopolies a monopoly rent levied on the mass of surplus value (transformed into profits) that capital extracts from the exploitation of labor. To the extent that these monopolies are operating in the peripheries of the global system, monopoly rent is imperialist rent. The process of capital accumulation – that defines capitalism in all its successive historical forms – is therefore driven by the maximization of monopoly/imperialist rent seeking.
This shift in the center of gravity of the accumulation of capital is the source of the continuous concentration of income and wealth to the benefit of the monopolies, largely monopolized by the oligarchies ('plutocracies') that govern oligopolistic groups at the expense of the remuneration of labor and even the remuneration of non-monopolistic capital.
3. This imbalance in continued growth is itself, in turn, the source of the financialisation of the economic system. By this I mean that a growing portion of the surplus cannot be invested in the expansion and deepening of systems of production and therefore the 'financial investment' of this excessive surplus becomes the only option for continued accumulation under the control of the monopolies.
The implementation of specific systems by capital permits the financialisation to operate in different ways:
(i) the subjugation of the management of firms to the principle of 'shareholder value' (ii) the substitution of pension systems funded by capitalization (Pension Funds) by systems of pension distribution (iii) the adoption of the principle of 'flexible exchange rates' (iv) the abandonment of the principle of central banks determining the interest rate - the price of 'liquidity' – and the transfer of this responsibility to the 'market'.
Financialisation has transferred the major responsibility for control of the reproduction of the system of accumulation to some 30 giant banks of the triad. What are euphemistically called 'markets' are nothing other than the places where the strategies of these actors who dominate the economic scene are deployed.
In turn this financialisation, which is responsible for the growth of inequality in income distribution (and fortunes), generates the growing surplus on which it feeds. The 'financial investments' (or rather the investments in financial speculation) continue to grow at dizzying speeds, not commensurate with growth in GDP (which is therefore becoming largely fictitious) or with investment in real production.
The explosive growth of financial investment requires – and fuels – among other things debt in all its forms, especially sovereign debt. When the governments in power claim to be pursuing the goal of 'debt reduction', they are deliberately lying. For the strategy of financialised monopolies requires the growth in debt (which they seek, rather than combat) as a way to absorb the surplus profit of monopolies. The austerity policies imposed 'to reduce debt' have indeed resulted (as intended) in increasing its volume.
4. It is this system – commonly called 'neoliberal', the system of generalized monopoly capitalism, 'globalized' (imperialist) and financialised (of necessity for its own reproduction) – that is imploding before our eyes. This system, apparently unable to overcome its growing internal contradictions, is doomed to continue its wild ride.
The 'crisis' of the system is due to its own 'success'. Indeed so far the strategy deployed by monopolies has always produced the desired results: 'austerity' plans and the so-called social (in fact antisocial) downsizing plans that are still being imposed, in spite of resistance and struggles. To this day the initiative remains in the hands of the monopolies ('the markets') and their political servants (the governments that submit to the demands of the so-called 'market').
5. Under these conditions monopoly capital has openly declared war on workers and peoples. This declaration is formulated in the sentence 'liberalism is not negotiable.' Monopoly capital will definitely continue its wild ride and not slow down. The criticism of 'regulation' that I make below is grounded in this fact.
We are not living in a historical moment in which the search for a 'social compromise' is a possible option. There have been such moments in the past, such as the post-war social compromise between capital and labour specific to the social democratic state in the West, the actually existing socialism in the East, and the popular national projects of the South. But our present historical moment is not the same. So the conflict is between monopoly capital and workers and people who are invited to an unconditional surrender. Defensive strategies of resistance under these conditions are ineffective and bound to be eventually defeated. In the face of war declared by monopoly capital, workers and peoples must develop strategies that allow them to take the offensive.
The period of social war is necessarily accompanied by the proliferation of international political conflicts and military interventions of the imperialist powers of the triad. The strategy of 'military control of the planet' by the armed forces of the United States and its subordinate NATO allies is ultimately the only means by which the imperialist monopolies of the triad can expect to continue their domination over the peoples, nations and the states of the South.
Faced with this challenge of the war declared by the monopolies, what alternatives are being proposed?
First response: 'market regulation' (financial and otherwise).
These are initiatives that monopolies and governments claim they are pursuing. In fact it is only empty rhetoric, designed to mislead public opinion. These initiatives cannot stop the mad rush for financial return that is the result of the logic of accumulation controlled by monopolies. They are therefore a false alternative.
Second response: a return to the post-war models.
These responses feed a triple nostalgia: (i) the rebuilding of a true 'social democracy' in the West, (ii) the resurrection of 'socialisms' founded on the principles that governed those of the 20th century, (iii) the return to formulas of popular nationalism in the peripheries of the South. These nostalgias imagine it is possible to 'roll back' monopoly capitalism, forcing it to regress to what it was in 1945. But history never allows such returns to the past. Capitalism must be confronted as it is today, not as what we would have wished it to be by imagining the blocking of its evolution. However, these longings continue to haunt large segments of the left throughout the world.
Third response: the search for a 'humanist' consensus.
I define this pious wish in the following way: the illusion that a consensus among fundamentally conflicting interests would be possible. Naive ecology movements, among others, share this illusion.
Fourth response: the illusions of the past.
These illusions invoke 'specificity' and 'right to difference' without bothering to understand their scope and meaning. The past has already answered the questions for the future. These 'culturalisms' can take many para-religious or ethnic forms. Theocracies and ethnocracies become convenient substitutes for the democratic social struggles that have been evacuated from their agenda.
Fifth response: priority of 'personal freedom'.
The range of responses based on this priority, considered the exclusive 'supreme value', includes in its ranks the diehards of 'representative electoral democracy,' which they equate with democracy itself. The formula separates the democratization of societies from social progress, and even tolerates a de facto association with social regression in order not to risk to discrediting democracy, now reduced to the status of a tragic farce.
But there are even more dangerous forms of this position. I am referring here to some common 'post modernist' currents (such as Toni Negri in particular) who imagine that the individual has already become the subject of history, as if communism, which will allow the individual to be emancipated from alienation and actually become the subject of history, were already here!
It is clear that all of the responses above, including those of the right (such as the 'regulations' that do not affect private property monopolies) still find powerful echoes among a majority of the people on the left.
6.The war declared by the generalized monopoly capitalism of contemporary imperialism has nothing to fear from the false alternatives that I have just outlined.
So what is to be done?
This moment offers us the historic opportunity to go much further; it demands as the only effective response a bold and audacious radicalization in the formulation of alternatives capable of moving workers and peoples to take the offensive to defeat their adversary's strategy of war. These formulations, based on the analysis of actually existing contemporary capitalism, must directly confront the future that is to be built, and turn their back on the nostalgia for the past and illusions of identity or consensus.
AUDACIOUS PROGRAMS FOR THE RADICAL LEFT
I will organize the following general proposals under three headings: (i) socialize the ownership of monopolies, (ii) de-financialise the management of the economy, (iii) de-globalise international relations.
SOCIALIZE THE OWNERSHIP OF MONOPOLIES
The effectiveness of the alternative response necessarily requires the questioning of the very principle of private property of monopoly capital. Proposing to 'regulate' financial operations, to return markets to 'transparency' to allow 'agents' expectations' to be 'rational' and to define the terms of a consensus on these reforms without abolishing the private property of monopolies, is nothing other than throwing dust in the eyes of the naive public. Monopolies are asked to 'manage' reforms against their own interests, ignoring the fact that they retain a thousand and one ways to circumvent the objectives of such reforms.
The alternative social project should be to reverse the direction of the current social order (social disorder) produced by the strategies of monopolies, in order to ensure maximum and stabilized employment, and to ensure decent wages growing in parallel with the productivity of social labor. This objective is simply impossible without the expropriation of the power of monopolies.
The 'software of economic theorists' must be reconstructed (in the words of François Morin). The absurd and impossible economic theory of 'expectations' expels democracy from the management of economic decision-making. Audacity in this instance requires radical reform of education for the training not only of economists, but also of all those called to occupy management positions.
Monopolies are institutional bodies that must be managed according to the principles of democracy, in direct conflict with those who sanctify private property. Although the term 'commons', imported from the Anglo-Saxon world, is itself ambiguous because always disconnected from the debate on the meaning of social conflicts (Anglo-Saxon language deliberately ignores the reality of social classes), the term could be invoked here specifically to call monopolies part of the 'commons'.
The abolition of the private ownership of monopolies takes place through their nationalization. This first legal action is unavoidable. But audacity here means going beyond that step to propose plans for the socialization of the management of nationalized monopolies and the promotion of the democratic social struggles that are engaged on this long road.
I will give here a concrete example of what could be involved in plans of socialization.
'Capitalist' farmers (those of developed countries) like 'peasant' farmers (mostly in the South) are all prisoners of both the upstream monopolies that provide inputs and credit, and the downstream ones on which they depend for processing, transportation and marketing of their products. Therefore they have no real autonomy in their 'decisions'. In addition the productivity gains they make are siphoned off by the monopolies that have reduced producers to the status of 'subcontractors'. What possible alternative?
Public institutions working within a legal framework that would set the mode of governance must replace the monopolies. These would be constituted of representatives of: (i) farmers (the principle interests), (ii) upstream units (manufacturers of inputs, banks) and downstream (food industry, retail chains ) and (iii) consumers, (iv) local authorities (interested in natural and social environment - schools, hospitals, urban planning and housing, transportation), (v) the State (citizens). Representatives of the components listed above would be self-selected according to procedures consistent with their own mode of socialized management, such as units of production of inputs that are themselves managed by directorates of workers directly employed by the units concerned as well as those who are employed by sub-contracting units and so on. These structures should be designed by formulas that associate management personnel with each of these levels, such as research centers for scientific, independent and appropriate technology. We could even conceive of a representation of capital providers (the 'small shareholders') inherited from the nationalization, if deemed useful.
We are therefore talking about institutional approaches that are more complex than the forms of 'self-directed' or 'cooperative' that we have known. Ways of working need to be invented that allow the exercise of genuine democracy in the management of the economy, based on open negotiation among all interested parties. A formula is required that systematically links the democratization of society with social progress, in contrast with the reality of capitalism which dissociates democracy, which is reduced to the formal management of politics, from social conditions abandoned to the 'market' dominated by what monopoly capital produces. Then and only then can we talk about true transparency of markets, regulated in institutionalized forms of socialized management.
The example may seem marginal in the developed capitalist countries because farmers there are a very small proportion of workers (3-7 percent). However, this issue is central to the South where the rural population will remain significant for some time. Here access to land, which must be guaranteed for all (with the least possible inequality of access) is fundamental to principles advancing peasant agriculture (I refer here to my previous work on this question). 'Peasant agriculture' should not be understood as synonymous with 'stagnant agriculture' (or 'traditional and folklorique'). The necessary progress of peasant agriculture does require some 'modernization' (although this term is a misnomer because it immediately suggests to many modernization through capitalism). More effective inputs, credits, and production and supply chains are necessary to improve the productivity of peasant labor. The formulas proposed here pursue the objective of enabling this modernization in ways and in a spirit that is 'non-capitalist', that is to say grounded in a socialist perspective.
Obviously the specific example chosen here is one that needs to be institutionalized. The nationalization / socialization of the management of monopolies in the sectors of industry and transport, banks and other financial institutions should be imagined in the same spirit, while taking into account the specificities of their economic and social functions in the constitution of their directorates. Again these directorates should involve the workers in the company as well as those of subcontractors, representatives of upstream industries, banks, research institutions, consumers, and citizens.
The nationalization/socialization of monopolies addresses a fundamental need at the central axis of the challenge confronting workers and peoples under contemporary capitalism of generalized monopolies. It is the only way to stop the accumulation by dispossession that is driving the management of the economy by the monopolies.
The accumulation dominated by monopolies can indeed only reproduce itself if the area subject to 'market management' is constantly expanding. This is achieved by excessive privatization of public services (dispossession of citizens), and access to natural resources (dispossession of peoples). The extraction of profit of 'independent' economic units by the monopolies is even a dispossession (of capitalists!) by the financial oligarchy.
DE-FINANCIALIZATION: A WORLD WITHOUT WALL STREET
Nationalization/socialization of monopolies would in and of itself abolish the principle of 'shareholder value' imposed by the strategy of accumulation in the service of monopoly rents. This objective is essential for any bold agenda to escape the ruts in which the management of today's economy is mired. Its implementation pulls the rug out from under the feet of the financialisation of management of the economy. Are we returning to the famous 'euthanasia of the rentier' advocated by Keynes in his time? Not necessarily, and certainly not completely. Savings can be encouraged by financial reward, but on condition that their origin (household savings of workers, businesses, communities) and their conditions of earnings are precisely defined. The discourse on macroeconomic savings in conventional economic theory hides the organization of exclusive access to the capital market of the monopolies. The so-called 'market driven remuneration' is then nothing other than the means to guarantee the growth of monopoly rents.
Of course the nationalization/socialization of monopolies also applies to banks, at least the major ones. But the socialization of their intervention ('credit policies') has specific characteristics that require an appropriate design in the constitution of their directorates. Nationalization in the classical sense of the term implies only the substitution of the State for the boards of directors formed by private shareholders. This would permit, in principle, implementation of bank credit policies formulated by the State – which is no small thing. But it is certainly not sufficient when we consider that socialization requires the direct participation in the management of the bank by the relevant social partners. Here the 'self-management' of banks by their staff would not be appropriate. The staff concerned should certainly be involved in decisions about their working conditions, but little else, because it is not their place to determine the credit policies to be implemented.
If the directorates must deal with the conflicts of interest of those that provide loans (the banks) and those who receive them (the 'enterprises'), the formula for the composition of directorates must be designed taking into account what the enterprises are and what they require. A restructuring of the banking system which has become overly centralized since the regulatory frameworks of the past two centuries were abandoned over the past four decades. There is a strong argument to justify the reconstruction of banking specialization according to the requirements of the recipients of their credit as well as their economic function (provision of short-term liquidity, contributing to the financing of investments in the medium and long term). We could then, for example, create an 'agriculture bank' (or a coordinated ensemble of agriculture banks) whose clientele is comprised not only of farmers and peasants but also those involved in the 'upstream and downstream' of agriculture described above. The bank's directorate would involve on the one hand the 'bankers' (staff officers of the bank – who would have been recruited by the directorate) and other clients (farmers or peasants, and other upstream and downstream entities).
We can imagine other sets of articulated banking systems, appropriate to various industrial sectors, in which the directorates would involve the industrial clients, centers of research and technology and services to ensure control of the ecological impact of the industry, thus ensuring minimal risk (while recognizing that no human action is completely without risk), and subject to transparent democratic debate.
The De-financialisation of economic management would also require two sets of legislation. The first concerns the authority of a sovereign state to ban speculative fund (hedge funds) operations in its territory. The second concerns pension funds, which are now major operators in the financialisation of the economic system. These funds were designed - first in the US of course - to transfer to employees the risks normally incurred by capital, and which are the reasons invoked to justify capital's remuneration! So this is a scandalous arrangement, in clear contradiction even with the ideological defense of capitalism! But this 'invention' is an ideal instrument for the strategies of accumulation dominated by monopolies.
The abolition of pension funds is necessary for the benefit of distributive pension systems, which, by their very nature, require and allow democratic debate to determine the amounts and periods of assessment and the relationship between the amounts of pensions and remuneration paid. In a democracy that respects social rights, these pension systems are universally available to all workers. However, at a pinch, and so as not to prohibit what a group of individuals might desire to put in place, supplementary pensions funds could be allowed.
All measures of de-financialisation suggested here lead to an obvious conclusion: A world without Wall Street, to borrow the title of the book by François Morin, is possible and desirable.
In a world without Wall Street, the economy is still largely controlled by the 'market'. But these markets are for the first time truly transparent, regulated by democratic negotiation among genuine social partners (for the first time also they are no longer adversaries as they are necessarily under capitalism). It is the financial 'market' – opaque by nature and subjected to the requirements of management for the benefit of the monopolies – that is abolished. We could even explore whether it would be useful or not to shut down the stock exchanges, given that the rights to property, both in its their private as well as social form, would be conducted 'differently'. We could even consider whether the stock exchange could be re-established to this new end. The symbol in any case – 'a world without Wall Street' – nevertheless retains its power.
De-financialisation certainly does not mean the abolition of macroeconomic policy and in particular the macro management of credit. On the contrary it restores its efficiency by freeing it from its subjugation to the strategies of rent-seeking monopolies. The restoration of the powers of national central banks, no longer 'independent' but dependent on both the state and markets regulated by the democratic negotiation of social partners, gives the formulation of macro credit policy its effectiveness in the service of socialized management of the economy.
AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL: DELINKING
I use here the term 'delinking' that I proposed half a century ago, a term that contemporary discourse appears to have substituted with the synonym 'de-globalisation'. I have never conceptualized delinking as an autarkic retreat, but rather as a strategic reversal in the face of both internal and external forces in response to the unavoidable requirements of self-determined development. Delinking promotes the reconstruction of a globalisation based on negotiation, rather than submission to the exclusive interests of the imperialist monopolies. It also makes possible the reduction of international inequalities.
Delinking is necessary because the measures advocated in the two previous sections can never really be implemented at the global scale, or even at a regional level (e.g. Europe). They can only be initiated in the context of states / nations with advanced radical social and political struggles, committed to a process of socialization of the management of their economy.
Imperialism, in the form that it took until just after the Second World War, had created the contrast between industrialized imperialist centers and dominated peripheries where industry was prohibited. The victories of national liberation movements began the process of the industrialization of the peripheries, through the implementation of delinking policies required for the option of self-reliant development. Associated with social reforms that were at times radical, these delinkings created the conditions for the eventual 'emergence' of those countries that had gone furthest in this direction – China leading the pack, of course.
But the imperialism of the current era, the imperialism of the Triad, forced to retreat and 'adjust' itself to the conditions of this new era, rebuilt itself on new foundations, based on 'advantage' by which it sought to hold on to the privilege of exclusivity that I have classified in five categories.The control of:
• technology; • access to natural resources of the planet • global integration of the monetary and financial system • systems of communication and information • weapons of mass destruction.
The main form of delinking today is thus defined precisely by the challenge to these five privileges of contemporary imperialism. Emerging countries are engaged in delinking from these five privileges, with varying degrees of control and self-determination, of course. While earlier success over the past two decades in delinking enabled them to accelerate their development, in particular through industrial development within the globalized 'liberal' system using 'capitalist' means, this success has fueled delusions about the possibility of continuing on this path, that is to say, emerging as new 'equal capitalist partners'. The attempt to 'co-opt' the most prestigious of these countries with the creation of the G20 has encouraged these illusions.
But with the current ongoing implosion of the imperialist system (called 'globalization'), these illusions are likely to dissipate. The conflict between the imperialist powers of the triad and emerging countries is already visible, and is expected to worsen. If they want to move forward, the societies of emerging countries will be forced to turn more towards self-reliant modes of development through national plans and by strengthening South-South cooperation.
Audacity, under such circumstances, involves engaging vigorously and coherently towards this end, bringing together the required measures of delinking with the desired advances in social progress.
The goal of this radicalization is threefold: the democratization of society; the consequent social progress achieved; and the taking of anti-imperialist positions. A commitment to this direction is possible, not only for societies in emerging countries, but also in the 'abandoned' or the 'written-off' of the global South. These countries had been effectively recolonized through the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s. Their peoples are now in open revolt, whether they have already scored victories (South America) or not (in the Arab world).
Audacity here means that the radical left in these societies must have the courage to take measure of the challenges they face and to support the continuation and radicalization of the necessary struggles that are in progress.
The delinking of the South prepares the way for the deconstruction of the imperialist system itself. This is particularly apparent in areas affected by the management of the global monetary and financial system, since it is the result of the hegemony of the dollar.
But beware: it is an illusion to expect to substitute for this system 'another world monetary and financial system' that is better balanced and favorable to the development of the peripheries. As always, the search of a 'consensus' over international reconstruction from above is mere wishful thinking akin to waiting for a miracle. What is on the agenda now is the deconstruction of the existing system - its implosion - and reconstruction of national alternative systems (for countries or continents or regions), as some projects in South America have already begun. Audacity here is to have the courage to move forward with the strongest determination possible, without too much worry about the reaction of imperialism.
This same problematique of delinking / dismantling is also of relevance to Europe, which is a subset of globalization dominated by monopolies. The European project was designed from the outset and built systematically to dispossess its peoples of their ability to exercise their democratic power. The European Union was established as a protectorate of the monopolies. With the implosion of the euro zone, its submission to the will of the monopolies has resulted in the abolishment of democracy which has been reduced to the status of farce and takes on extreme forms, namely focused only on the question: how are the "market" (that is to say monopolies) and the "Rating Agencies" (that is to say, again, the monopolies) reacting? That's the only question now posed. How the people might react is no longer given the slightest consideration.
It is thus obvious that here too there is no alternative to audacity: 'disobeying' the rules imposed by the "European Constitution" and the imaginary central bank of the euro. In other words, there is no alternative to deconstruct the institutions of Europe and the euro zone. This is the unavoidable prerequisite for the eventual reconstruction of 'another Europe' of peoples and nations.
In conclusion: Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.
What I mean by audacity is therefore:
(i) For the radical left in the societies of the imperialist triad, the need for an engagement in the building an alternative anti-monopoly social bloc. (ii) For the radical left in the societies of the peripheries to engage in the building an alternative anti-comprador social bloc.
It will take time to make progress in building these blocs, but it could well accelerate if the radical left takes on movement with determination and engages in making progress on the long road of socialism. It is therefore necessary to propose strategies not 'out of the crisis of capitalism', but 'out of capitalism in crisis' to borrow from the title of one of my recent works.
We are in a crucial period in history. The only legitimacy of capitalism is to have created the conditions for passing on to socialism, understood as a higher stage of civilization. Capitalism is now an obsolete system, its continuation leading only to barbarism. No other capitalism is possible. The outcome of a clash of civilizations is, as always, uncertain. Either the radical left will succeed through the audacity of its initiatives to make revolutionary advances, or the counter-revolution will win. There is no effective compromise between these two responses to the challenge.
All the strategies of the non-radical left are in fact non-strategies, they are merely day-to-day adjustments to the vicissitudes of the imploding system. And if the powers that be want, like le Guépard, to 'change everything so that nothing changes', the candidates of the left believe it is possible to 'change life without touching the power of monopolies'! The non-radical left will not stop the triumph of capitalist barbarism. They have already lost the battle for lack of wanting to take it on.
Audacity is what is necessary to bring about the autumn of capitalism that will be announced by the implosion of its system and by the birth of an authentic spring of the people, a spring that is possible."
[1] Samir Amin, Sortir de la crise du capitalisme ou sortir du capitalisme en crise ; Le temps des cerises, 2009. [2] Samir Amin, Ending the crisis of capitalism or ending capitalism. Pambazuka Press 2011 [3] Samir Amin, Du capitalisme à la civilisation ; Syllepse, 2008. [4] Aurélien Bernier, Désobéissons à l'Union Européenne ; Les mille et une nuits, 2011. [5] Jacques Nikonoff, Sortir de l'euro ; Mes mille et une nuits, 2011. [6] François Morin, Un monde sans Wall Street ; Le seuil, 2011.
since the early 1980s the underlying trend in the United States has been for a bigger share of national income going to corporate profits and less to employees, and
2.now under Obama the rate of redistribution has reached an unprecedented level."
PROTESTING ALONE IS A SURRENDER OF THE POWER TO THE PRESENT FALSE SYSTEM (AS IF THEY WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR THE PEOPLE), REVOLUTION AND OVERTURNING THE SYSTEM IS TO RECOGNIZE THE NATURE OF THE SYSTEM AND TO ASSERT THE TRUE POWER OF THE PEOPLE.
I have repeatedly mentioned on this site that there are new "laws" coming, which will make people criminals, and that the goal is to have approximately 33,000,000 million in prison by the year 2100. When goals like this are espoused they can come in no other way except by purposeful creation, so that we will not only have the worse gaps between rich and poor, but that it will be remedied by an incarceration rate which reflects that gap.
"Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, has been called "the most dangerous bill in the history of the United States of America." It would grant the U.S. government new authority over the public's right to grow, trade and transport any foods. This would give Big brother the power to regulate the tomato plants in your backyard. It would grant them the power to arrest and imprison people selling cucumbers at farmer's markets. It would criminalize the transporting of organic produce if you don't comply with the authoritarian rules of the federal government."
They want to deliver you signed and sealed to the large agri-corp interests, you are to be delivered on the silver platter of these corporations interests - in the name of "protecting you." They do not just want a gap between the rich and poor, they want you to starve too.
"(NaturalNews) The Food Safety Modernization Act looks like it's headed to become law. It's being hailed as a "breakthrough" achievement in food safety, and it would hand vast new powers and funding to the FDA so that it can clean up the food supply and protect all Americans from food-borne pathogens.
There's just one problem with all this: It's all a big lie.
Here are the ten biggest lies that have been promoted about S.510 by the U.S. Congress, the food industry giants and the mainstream media:
Lie #1 - Most deaths from food poisoning are caused by fresh produce
Here's a whopper the mainstream media won't dare report: Out of the 1,809 people who die in America every year from food-borne pathogens (CDC estimate), only a fraction die from the manufacturer's contamination of fresh produce. By far the majority of food poisoning is caused by the consumption of spoiled processed foods, dead foods and animal-human transmission of pathogens.
For example, one of the largest food-borne killers according to the CDC is Toxoplasma gondii, a disease that people acquire from cat feces coming into contact with their food, which can happen right in their own homes (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/Vol5n...). Salmonella poisoning accounts for 553 deaths a year. As a reference for relative risk, over 42,000 people die each year from road accidents in the USA, meaning driving a car has a roughly 7600% higher chance of killing you than eating fresh produce. (http://www.driveandstayalive.com/in...)
In terms of food-borne illness, many of the deaths come from things like spoiled tomato sauce, spoiled canned foods and spoiled pasteurized milk. S 510, of course, does absolutely nothing to address these food contamination deaths, since those foods are considered "sterilized" at the time of sale.
Lie #2 - Under S.510, the FDA would only recall products it knows to be contaminated
Not true. S.510 merely requires the FDA to have "reason to believe" a food is contaminated. So right there, that means all raw milk will be targeted by the FDA because even without conducting any scientific tests at all, the FDA can say it has "reason to believe" the milk is contaminated merely because it is raw.
In other words, the FDA no longer needs science to outlaw a food product. It merely needs an opinion.
Is this "reason to believe" section really true? Yep, and here's how it was amended:
SEC. 208. ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION OF FOOD. 23 (a) IN GENERAL. - Section 304(h)(1)(A) (21 U.S.C.24 334(h)(1)(A)) is amended by (1) striking ''credible evidence or information indicating'' and inserting ''reason to believe''; (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi...)
In other words, in negotiating this bill, the U.S. Senate removed the requirement that the FDA needed "credible evidence" in order to recall a product and, instead, replaced that with the FDA only needing "reason to believe."
It is utterly amazing that the U.S. Congress would give the FDA to conduct large-scale product recalls and even imprison people based entirely on what the agency "has reason to believe."
Last time I checked, the FDA held some pretty bizarre (if not downright moronic) beliefs, including this jaw-dropping whopper: The FDA literally believes that there is no food, no herb, no vitamin or supplement that has any ability to prevent disease of any kind. They don't even believe limes can prevent scurvy, and you'd have to nutritionally illiterate to believe that.
The FDA believes foods are inert and that all the amazing phytonutrients in those foods (carotenoids, antioxidants, therapeutic fats like omega-3 and so on) are utterly useless for human biology.
This belief, held by the FDA that has now been put in charge of the food supply, is the belief system of an insane government agency that has completely lost touch with reality while abandoning nutritional science.
Lie #3 - They didn't tell you that nearly 70% of grocery store chickens are contaminated with salmonella every day
Yep, it's true: Amid all the fear-mongering over salmonella, everybody forgot to notice that the vast majority of fresh chickens sold at grocery stores every single day are widely contaminated with salmonella (http://www.naturalnews.com/028661_c...). Yet S 510 does absolutely nothing to address this. It's not even mentioned in the bill.
In fact, it is these contaminated chickens that end up cross-contaminating the fresh produce in many kitchens across America. So the so-called "food poisoning" that's often blamed on spinach or onions often originates with the contaminated chicken meat people bring home and slice on their kitchen cutting boards.
Lie #4 - S.510 will exclude and protect small farmers
The Tester Amendment, which was finally included in S.510, excludes farmers who sell less than $500,000 worth of food each year from the more onerous paperwork and compliance burdens described in the bill. But this dollar amount is not indexed to inflation, meaning that as the U.S. dollar continues to lose value due to the Federal Reserve counterfeiting machine running at full speed (more "quantitative easing," anyone?), food prices will continue to skyrocket -- and this will shift even small family farms into the $500,000 sales range within just a few years.
In fact, a single-family farm with just four people could easily sell $500,000 worth of fresh produce a year right now, even before inflation. Remember, $500,000 is not their profit, but rather the gross sales amount. The profits on that might be only $50,000 or even less.
Furthermore, this $500,000 threshold means that small, successful farms that are doing well and would like to expand will refuse to hire more people or expand their operations. To avoid the tyranny of S 510, small farms will try to stay small, and that means avoiding the kind of business expansion that would create new jobs.
Lie #5 - The FDA needs more power to enforce food safety
The FDA already has the power to effectively recall foods by publicly announcing a product has been found to be contaminated. The FDA already has the power to confiscate "misbranded" products, too, and it could easily use this power to halt the sale of contaminated food items.
But the FDA simply refuses to enforce the laws already on the books and, instead, has sought to expand its power by hyping up the e.coli food scares. The ploy apparently worked: Now in a reaction to the food scare-mongering, the FDA is being handed not just new powers, but more funding, too! And you can bet it will find creative new ways to put this power to work suppressing the health freedoms and food freedoms of the American people.
Lie #6 - Fresh produce is contaminated because of a lack of paperwork
There is no evidence that requiring farms to fill out more paperwork will make their food safer. The real cause of produce contamination is the existence of factory animal farms whose effluent output (huge rivers of cow feces, basically), end up in the water supply, soils and equipment that comes into contact with fresh produce.
The food contamination problem is an UPSTREAM problem where you've got to reform the factory animal operations that now dominate the American meat industry. S.510, however, does absolutely nothing to address this. Factory animal farms aren't even addressed in the bill!
Lie #7 - The American people are dying in droves from unsafe fresh food
The truth is that Americans are dying from processed food laced with toxic chemical additives, not from fresh, raw produce. Partially-hydrogenated oils, white sugar, aspartame, MSG and artificial food colors almost certainly kill far more people than bacterial contaminations.
The American public is also dying from pharmaceuticals -- anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 people a year are killed by FDA-approved drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/001894.html), most of which have been approved under the guise of blatantly fraudulent science and drug company trickery. The FDA doesn't seem to mind. In fact, it has been a willful co-conspirator in the scientific fraud carried out by Big Pharma in the name of "medicine." (http://www.naturalnews.com/027851_h...)
To think that the FDA -- the very same agency responsible for the Big Pharma death machine -- is now going to "save us" by controlling food safety is highly irrational.
Lie #8 - The FDA just wants to make food "safer"
Actually, the FDA wants to make the food more DEAD. Both the FDA and the USDA are vocal opponents of live food. They think that the only safe food is sterilized food, which is why they've supported the fumigation, pasteurization and irradiation efforts that have been pushed over the last few years.
California almond growers, for example, must now either chemically fumigate or pasteurize their almonds before selling them (http://www.naturalnews.com/021776.html). This has destroyed the incomes of U.S. almond farmers and forced U.S. food companies to buy raw almonds from Spain and other countries.
Lie #9 - Food smuggling is a huge problem in America
One of the main sections of S.510 addresses "food smuggling." Yep -- people smuggling food across the country. If you've never heard of this problem that's because it's not actually a problem.
Not yet anyway.
But there's a reason why they put this into the bill: Because they're probably planning on criminalizing fresh produce and then arresting people for transporting broccoli with the "intent to distribute."
But there's a reason why they put this into the bill: Because they're probably planning on criminalizing fresh produce and then arresting people for transporting broccoli with the "intent to distribute."
Yep, farmers bringing fresh produce to sell at the weekend farmer's market could soon be arrested and imprisoned as if they were drug smugglers. Hence the need for the "food smuggling" provisions of S.510.
Soon, we will all have to meet in secret locations just to trade carrots for cash.
Lie #10 - S.510 will make America's food supply the safest in the world
Actually, even with S.510 in place, America's food supply is among the most chemically contaminated in the world, second only to China. You can find mercury in the seafood, BPA in the canned soup, yeast extract (MSG) in the "natural" potato chips, and artificial petrochemical coloring agents in children's foods.
Eating the "Standard American Diet" is probably the single most harmful thing a person can do for their health. It's the fastest way to get cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Every nation in the world that begins to consume the American diet starts to show record rates of degenerative disease within one generation. This is the "safe food" that the U.S. Senate is now pushing on everyone.
Remember, with S.510, SAFE = DEAD. And the FDA says it wants to keep everybody safe."
INDEFINITE DETENTION OF AMERICANS AND SOPA - THE WAR IS ON
What is the difference between China and the USA in activity with their populations? Zero apparently, when citizens can be detained indefinitely by the military in prison and web communications are monitored and censored at will. There is little to no difference between public centralism (communist/capitalist China, keeping the worst of both worlds) and private centralism (capitalist USA). The only question that needs to be asked, will we be oppressed by the powers that be like those in China and willingly live under this oppression?
It is definite that the new bill regarding indefinite detention includes American citizens, there is no possible other reading, especially when specific amendments were rejected. The only item missing in all of this exegesis of the bill is WHY this is introduced.
Almost on its heels is SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act which promises to ban from the internet those involved in what is called theft of others property, intellectual or otherwise. Once again we find broad language which can be used in any particular fashion, or blurred language.
"The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry."
So back to this question, WHY is all of this being introduced at this time? Apparently the powers that be are getting very nervous about the status quo remaining intact. The people have not been cut a break for a long time, and they have balanced the errors of a moneyed elite on the backs of the rank and file population. Actually they intend to let matters get much worse for the 99%, and the processes of cuts have already cut large swaths from the cloth of any safety net or entitlements for the people. In other words they fear the ramifications if they continue the current route, and they have no intentions of serving anyone else but the moneyed elite, because this has always been the charter from the beginning.
They have noted the great uprisings that have occurred globally, and specifically in the belly of the beast, the USA. So they have allowed these two issues to drive their agenda of coercive force - the gathering together of the people into an opposing force, and one of the chief instruments used to disseminate information and solidify some form of global solidarity, the internet. Marry to it the primal concern for the loss of an industry which cannot keep up with the times (corporate media, both informational and popular), the ones who censor through lies and the absence of information thereof (news) and who try to tell you how to live (pushing popular fantasies), to try to regain the control of the population - make what is familiar, subservient and loyal the only media. Sow the seeds of fear in the dissenters by threatening them and even use indefinite detention, to stop the wave of protest that might turn revolutionary. THAT is what is essentially taking place with these freedom killing bills, they did not just happen by accident unless you have a stochastic bent, but they are planned. Proving that this current system needs to be totally dismantled by the people.
What the above video seems to touch on, but very lightly (so it will have to be further explored) is how SOPA essentially destroys free speech in this forum, which holds the potential of reaching millions across the globe. Free speech is a useless phase without the potential too reach the great mass of people, indeed, without an equal platform there is essentially no free speech, just such in meaningless phrase. You need media to express free speech, and the internet is such a forum.
However for years, purposefully the conventional media has been controlled and an ordinary person rarely has the financial ability to own radio or TV means, or the means to start a world class newspaper, etc. As I said above, the doors have purposefully been shut to the rank and file people, and if it is used it is severely limited to a sound-byte or a short paragraph in response and subject to editors and many forms of concision.
Anyone can own a private or public computer or means to the internet, and this is why all should be up in arms about SOPA. Because it would destroy forums, social media and networking. These are the seminal ideas of change which a movement can be based upon, and it will be impossible to monitor multiple millions as their thoughts and ideas are exchanged. Yet though this bill SOPA, entire websites can be shut down because of perceived infraction (which may not in fact be true, but used for other purposes). This will result in the entire web being shut down, or every single post will have to be cleared on a daily basis. SOPA will destroy the internet, and I have no other alternative but to believe that this is its purpose, and the only way to stop this is to stop the powers that be by any means necessary.
AS I HAVE SAID MANY TIMES BEFORE, CODIFICATION INTO LAW IS MERELY THE LAST STEP IN SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN PREVIOUS USED AND USURPED, BY DECLARATION OR SECRETIVELY FOR MANY YEARS. IT IS THE LAST NAIL IN THE COFFIN USUALLY FOR THE PEOPLE.
*the above is just an example of an area of monopolistic media preservation*
"Murphy faintly hoped Obama would emulate Truman. However, Senate bill sponsor Carl Levin said he insisted on subjecting US citizens to the same draconian treatment as foreign nationals. The original Senate bill excluded them. At his request, they were added."
This did not just begin with Reagan, but is the recent trend of the same since the beginning (below):
"Under the controversial defense spending act that is awaiting approval from US President Barack Obama, lawmakers can give the Executive Branch the go-ahead to wage a war over the Web against any nation deemed a threat to America. Specifically, Section 954 [National Defense Act 2012], "Military Activities in CyberSpace," states, "Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the capability, and upon direction by the president may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our nation, allies and interests."
The White House originally said that it would veto NDAA FY 2012 if it made it off Capitol Hill, but only days before it left Congress, Press Secretary Jay Carney told the media that the president's advisers will no longer recommend such action. Thus, the inking of Obama's name to the document will not just give him the power to pursue computer attacks, but also the ability to detain American indefinitely, employ tactics of torture on prisoners and send his own citizens to foreign institutions for prosecution."
Just in case some did not get the sleight of hand verbally in this document, let me clarify it for you. Any distinction regarding the enemy in the so-called "war on terror" between foreign activity and American activists/dissenters has been abolished. Just like it has in the matter regarding detention, so this naturally follows - the Pentagons cyberwar activity can be unleashed on American citizens as well as foreign entities, because the American citizenry has not been distinguished from the enemy. The protection of America in the oath is against enemies both foreign and domestic, NOT oppression of the people both foreign and domestic at the pleasure of the few.
Obama says he will enter an written addendum to the bill as he signs it, but the only distinction made in the addendum is not to clarify what actions the government can take against dissenting American citizens, but what agencies will be involved in the war on terror waged against the American citizens. So the FBI is also named as an agency, which is precious little difference especially if one realizes that the FBI is primarily the domestic political police - not crime fighters as they have been billed in popular media. I just thought I would make this clarification not only for the people, but to inform the powers that be that we are watching and know what you are doing and intend to do, and you are spelling out your own eventual demise.
"IF TYRANNY AND OPPRESSION COMES TO THIS LAND, IT WILL BE IN THE GUISE OF FIGHTING A FOREIGN ENEMY." JAMES MADISON
"We justify our cowardice to the forces that oppress us with a discourse of moralizing humanism. The rejection of revolutionary violence is anchored in the spirit of those who oppose the system while defending the values it teaches."
"UNDER A GOVERNMENT, WHICH IMPRISONS UNJUSTLY, THE TRUE PLACE FOR A JUST MAN IS ALSO IN PRISON." HENRY DAVID THOREAU, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
SO THE GENERAL IDEA IS NOT TO JUST BECOME ANOTHER BRICK (BELOW):
Hey, even Justin Raimondo hits some good ones occasionally, even though he obsesses on an America that never existed and is full of myth. He just might be right that the empires sites will be set on a new enemy and war (Iran), to deflect the easily distracted American public away from the real domestic offenders which have brought us to our current condition (and still some have no idea what is coming) -
CORPORATE BANKRUPTCY IS BIG BUSINESS - OR, ELITE WAYS TO STEAL FROM THE WORKERS
"When Steve Miller, the vulture capitalist who drove Delphi into the ditch of America's dreams, declared, "Bankruptcy is a growth industry," he was smiling, but he wasn't joking.
Bankruptcy in the US isn't a sign of economic distress or mismanagement. It's a business plan -- calculated, cunning, and void of redeeming social value. American Airlines is the latest in a long line of financial obscenities that make vulture capitalists salivate.
If we had a president we could believe in, he would not only call out the National Guard to protect the constitutional rights of citizens at Occupy protests, he would defend the vested benefits earned by workers with the full moral and institutional authority of his office. It won't happen.
We must cease and desist from unrealistic expectations and mount our own counteroffensive. US courts routinely aid and abet the extortion of workers and the plunder of pension plans. Capitalism isn't above the law in the United States, it is the law. Peace and solidarity activists are hounded, harassed, and arrested but the forcible transfer of wealth from the working class to the investing class is protected concerted activity.
American Airlines ordered 460 new planes from Boeing and Airbus less than five months ago at a cost of $38 billion. Those contracts will be honored even as American Airlines plans to dump pensions underfunded by about $10 billion for approximately 130,000 workers and retirees.
American Airlines doesn't pretend to offer a business plan that promises better management. The only benefits American Airlines purports to extract from bankruptcy are pension evasion and concessions from unions facing a court-ordered firing squad.
The crib notes for this business plan read: bankruptcy = profit. The longhand reveals the moral compunction of a crocodile.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) estimates that a default at American Airlines could be the largest in US history. The PBGC itself is teetering on the edge of insolvency. In 2004, a report by the Center on Federal Financial Institutions said the PBGC "is insolvent on the basis of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and would be shut down if it were a private insurer."
US bankruptcy courts protect the assets of US corporations invested outside the United States from creditors. You can bet your mother's paycheck American Airlines' parent company, AMR Corp., has cash and assets stashed in ports all over the world.
Labor has a legitimate lien on Capital. A pension isn't a gamble or an investment -- it's earned with hard steadfast work.
A company that cancels its pension obligations should not be permitted to profit from it. The trend toward bankruptcy as a growth industry in the United States is a clear indication that we aren't in a recession. We are experiencing a restructuring at the expense of everyone who works for a living.
We won't win this struggle in court. The operative word for rank-and-file workers isn't competition, concession, or compromise. The operative word is "Occupy."
Bankruptcy at American Airlines shouldn't be allowed to fly."
"As the Occupy movement keeps developing, it seeks solutions for the economic and political dysfunctions it exposes and opposes. For many, the capitalist economic system itself is the basic problem. They want change to another system, but not to the traditional socialist alternative (e.g., USSR or China). That system too seems to require basic change.
The common solution these activists propose is to change both systems' production arrangements from the ground up. Every enterprise should be democratized. Workers should occupy their enterprise by collectively functioning as its board of directors. That would abolish the capitalist exploitative system (employer versus employee) much as our historical predecessors abolished the parallel exploitative systems of slavery (master versus slave) and feudalism (lord versus serf).
In workers' self-directed enterprises, those who do the work also design and direct it and dispose of its profits: no exploitation of workers by others. Workers participate equally in making all enterprise decisions. The old capitalist elite -- the major corporate shareholders and the boards of directors they choose -- would no longer decide what, how, and where to produce and how to use enterprise profits. Instead, workers -- in partnership with residential communities interdependent with their enterprises -- would make all those decisions democratically.
Only then could we avoid repeating yet again the capitalist cycle: (1) economic boom bursting into crisis, followed by (2) mass movements for social welfare reforms and economic regulations, followed by (3) capitalists using their profits to undo achieved reforms and regulations, followed by (1) again, the next capitalist boom, bust, and crisis. US capitalism since the crash of 1929 displays this 3-step cycle.
In democratized enterprises, the workers who most need and benefit from reforms would dispose of the profits of enterprise. No separate class of employers would exist and use enterprise profits to undo the reforms and regulations workers achieved. Quite the contrary, self-directing workers would pay taxes only if the state secures those reforms and regulations. Democratized enterprises would not permit the inequalities of income and wealth (and therefore of power and cultural access) now typical across the capitalist world.
Actually existing socialist systems, past and present, also need enterprise democratization. Those systems' socialization of productive property plus central planning (versus capitalism's private property and markets) left far too much unbalanced power centralized in the state. In addition, reforms (guaranteed employment and basic welfare, far less inequality of income and wealth, etc.) won by socialist revolutions proved insecure. Private enterprises and markets eventually returned and erased many of those reforms.
Traditional socialism's problems flow also from its undemocratic organization of production. Workers in socialized state enterprises were not self-directed; they did not collectively decide what, how, and where to produce nor what to do with the profits. Instead, state officials decided what, how, and where to produce and how to dispose of profits. If socialist enterprises were democratized, the state would then depend for its revenue on collectively self-directed workers. That would institutionalize real, concrete control from below to balance state power from above.
Workers' self-directed enterprises are a solution grounded in the histories of both capitalism and socialism. Establishing workers' self-directed enterprises completes what past democratic revolutions began in moving societies beyond monarchies and autocracies. Democratizing production can finally take democracy beyond being merely an electoral ritual that facilitates rule by the 1% over the 99%."
"After the atrocious massacre that began on the 19th of November, and following the aggressive charade staged by the MB and the SCAF since Monday, the revolution continues throughout the country.
Please watch this video and circulate it as widely as possible throughout the day. Follow @mosireen (http://www.mosireen.org ) for more documentary footage, interviews and ongoing coverage of the continuing uprising in Tahrir and around the Cabinet, as well as testimonies from victims of CSF & military violence, torture, and military trials."
