LUKE DARBY—But the scope goes far beyond merely sowing dissent and skepticism. While billionaires and the companies they run have spent years insisting that climate change either doesn’t exist or is overblown, they’ve known the reality of the situation for a long time. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, for example, used to donate to the Seasteading Institute, which aimed to build floating cities in order to counteract rising sea levels. And Exxon Mobil allegedly knew about climate change in 1977, back when it was still just Exxon and about 11 years before climate change became widely talked about. Instead of acting on it, they started a decades-long misinformation campaign.
Category:
PLUTOCRATS
Hedges: “Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion”
6 minutes readChris Hedges speaks on 3/29/2014 at the “One Nation Under Surveillance” civil liberties conference at CCSU in CT. He’s introduced by Mongi Dhaouadi, Executive Director of CAIR-CT. Hedges was one of he plaintiffs in a suit against the government “indefinite detention” policy. He’s a former Middle East bureau chief of the New York Times He’s written “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”, “What Every Person Should Know About War”, “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning”, and other books.
These figures make clear that the policies of the Macron administration are based on lies. Masses of people are being told they must accept cuts to wages and salaries, the evisceration of unemployment benefits, a broad expansion of temporary work, planned cuts to health care and pensions, and the end of lifetime employment in the public sector because there is no money. But this is a political fraud.
Bolsonaro: a Monster Engineered by Our Media
13 minutes readJONATHAN COOK—Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite’s power.
The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US.
DARWIN HOLMSTROM—The ruling elite seems to be just getting started in its efforts to regain control of the narrative. Whether its blatant attempts at censorship will put the social media toothpaste back in the tube and stifle the spread of information not approved of by Ministry of Truth remains to be seen, but one thing is certain; the ruling elite resorting to such heavy-handed tactics for controlling the peasantry indicates a high level of desperation on their part.
