LIFE UNDER CAPITALISM

TERJE MALOY—Our leading media and their key people are – in the spirit of Chomsky’s “socialization” –  often themselves part of the networks of the transatlantic elite. Some of the most important institutions in this regard include the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission (see in-depth study of these networks).Indeed, most well-known publications basically may be seen as “establishment media”.

ALAN MACLEOD—Despite being decidedly unpopular (December polls put his approval rate at around 30 percent, with nearly 70 percent disapproval), Macron was elected president in 2017. As France’s centrist parties crumbled, the first round of the election was close to a four-way tie, but only Macron and fascist National Front leader Marine Le Pen qualified for the runoff vote. Macron won the second round easily, but abstention was high, and nearly 12 percent chose to go to polling stations and post blank ballots as a form of protest or disgust.

CHRIS HEDGES—All of the utopian promises of globalization have been exposed as lies. Allowing banks and corporations to determine how we should order human society and govern ourselves did not spread global wealth, raise the living standards of workers or implant democracy across the globe. The ideology, preached in business schools and by pliant politicians, was a thin cover for the rapacious greed of the elites, elites who now control most of the world’s wealth.

ERIC ZUESSE—The problem in America isn’t either Obama or Trump; it’s neither merely the Democratic Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the Deep State. That’s the reality; and the process that got us here started on 26 July 1945 and secretly continued on the American side even after the Soviet Union ended and Russia promptly ended its side of the Cold War.

ERIC ZUESSE—The basic distinction is class, not ethnicity. The cause of all these wars — not only international but also civil conflicts — is the unlimited greed of the wealthiest. Ethnicity is merely used by them in order to expand their own wealth.