CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM

Civil, military and religious institutions are sinking into the swamp of corruption while citizens are increasingly distancing themselves from them. However, the social and political force to organize and guide real change has yet to emerge. This is where the work of the Convention can help: to create the conditions for the emergence of a driving force for the new Chile but time is running out because the oligarchy is gambling to save from the shipwreck the system built by means of state terrorism during 17 years of dictatorship.

The pools which Japan intends to dump originated from the Fukushima Nuclear disaster. Japan insists that because they will only contain Tritium and not other radio-active elements, they will be safe to dispose into the Pacific. Paul Derienzo fears this sets a dangerous precedent for future dumps: “Maybe they’ll dodge a bullet on this tritium release, because its only 120 years and the ocean, but do you think that will be the end of it? Then you’ll never hear the end of it. They did it then, and they’ll do it again. These same tritium pools are underneath every nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactors create tritium like crazy.”

ED CURTIN—Now we have endless digital propaganda that is the “remedy” for loneliness.  Ah, all the lonely people, keeping their masks in a jar by the side of the door together with Eleanor Rigby.  They think they know what their masks are for but don’t know why they are lonely or that they have been played with. Masks upon masks are donned to ward off the fear that is pumped out through the electronic airwaves.  It is doubtful that many ever heard of William Casey or can imagine the breadth and depth of the propaganda that he and his current protégés in the intelligence agencies and corporate media dispense daily.

“When everything the American people believes is false.”  Casey must be smiling in hell.

BRUCE LERRO—The process of politics is governing. Governing is a larger process which refers to general patterns and interlocking systems across both public and private spheres by which all social life is organized and managed, whether it be a monarchy, aristocracy or a democracy. Governance is a process; government has institutions for implementing and sustaining that process. Some scholars say that there can be governance without government and that networks might replace them. Institutionalists counter that networks are incapable of coping with conflict and reconciling collective goals.

MICHAEL HUDSON—As Amar Bhide pointed out in a landmark Harvard Business Review article, Efficient Markets, Deficient Governance, anonymous, freely traded shares inherently lead to poor governance. Public companies cannot share critical business information that investors need to make informed decisions. Transient shareholders also lack the motivation and means to improve the performance of the companies they’ve invested in. Bhide has pointed out in other venues that while all other types of investments, such as derivatives and venture capital, existed in pre-modern times, arms length share trading did not because stock is a legally vague and weak promise.