Things to consider—

Since early 2011, Obama's been waging proxy war on Syria. Imported death squads masquerade as freedom fighters. The scheme's familiar. It repeats. It reflects US imperialism's dark side. In the 1980s, CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters battled Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers. Ronald Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." He characterized Contra killers the same way. —Stephen LendmanFor over a century now US ambassadors have acted as fifth columns in the nations they are embedded in, their role chiefly to foster corporate and plutocratic power and coordinate machinations against any truly pro-democratic government.•••••"The dead end identity politics of SF Pride, which sells out a peace hero like Bradley Manning to curry favor with the American ruling class, is what I had in mind. The empire loves your tameness, irrelevance and cowardice, SF Pride. You don’t bother the American ruling class — a five foot two, 105 pound soldier does because he has a conscience and because he didn’t make comfort the guiding principle of his life...." —Randy Shields
Nov 112011
 

Editor’s Note: We like Bill Moyers and sincerely appreciate his work over the years, and have few doubts about his good faith, HOWEVER, wise and bright as he is, he remains (like many of his generation) trapped within the confines of capitalist democracy and therefore incapable of envisioning radical changes beyond reformism. —PG

By Bill Moyers

This article is adapted from a speech Bill Moyers gave in October at Public Citizen’s fortieth-anniversary gala.

During the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains in 1890, populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease exclaimed, “Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us.”

She should see us now. John Boehner calls on the bankers, holds out his cup and offers them total obeisance from the House majority if only they fill it. Barack Obama criticizes bankers as “fat cats,” then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 a person. Continue reading »

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Nov 112011
 

By Daniel Morley, Senior Analyst, marxist.com


Consistent with its new capitalist DNA, China has quickly developed a new bourgeoisie, but this is just another sign that the inevitable problems that beset capitalism everywhere will manifest themselves in “the Middle kingdom” sooner or later.  The only question is with what ferocity and whether the authoritarian regime will be able to stem the tide when the floodgates burst open. —Eds. 

The bourgeoisie has never, anywhere, been able to find the key to unlock the mysteries of their own economic system. The only way to understand capitalism is to accept and to explain its contradictory, crisis-ridden nature. It cannot be perfected; its riddle will never be solved from within its confines. Precisely because the apologists of capitalism can never accept this fact, they are forever shifting from one side of the problem to the other.

Instead of seeing the whole picture, they respond to economic crises by abandoning the previous orthodoxy and suddenly embracing its opposite, which is equally one-sided. The evident failures of ‘monetarism’ and so-called ‘neoliberalism’ have led many to herald Keynesianism and the Chinese model as the long sought for answer to capitalism’s ills. A closer look at the Chinese economy, however, reveals equally deep contradictions. Continue reading »

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Nov 112011
 

BY BARRY GREY, WSWS.ORG

Corzine embodies the financial parasites at the top 0.1 percent of the income ladder whose swindling precipitated the global economic crisis and who have, with the assistance of Obama and his counterparts around the world, further enriched themselves from the social catastrophe they created.

Corzine

Even by the debased standards of American politics, the attempt of President Barack Obama to pass himself off as a populist tribune of the people and channel the anti-Wall Street protests behind his reelection campaign has reached new heights of cynicism and dishonesty.

It is yet another demonstration that the American ruling class operates on the assumption that the American people are hopelessly gullible and suffer from collective amnesia. Continue reading »

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