Mankind: Death by Corporation, Part III – the TPP as Corporate Deathstar

By Dr Brian Moench, UCS

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(Image: Jared Rodriguez )

 The White House staffers who ran the conference seemed like sincere people, trying to work within the system to back us away from the cliff of a climate crisis.  But key here is “within the system.” It turns out the clean break that must be made from the dirty energy corporations, including those fracking for natural gas, won’t happen in time, or perhaps ever, because “within the system” refers to a state where the profitability of those powerful corporations has supremacy over a livable climate and the survival of much of the human race.

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In Parts I and II of Mankind: Death by Corporation, we looked briefly at what amounts to ruthless, psychopathic behavior of our largest corporations spanning most major industries.  But aided and abetted by “sincere” government officials, corporations are working behind the scenes, rapidly assembling the corporate “Death Star” to be unleashed upon citizens throughout the world, allowing them virtually unchecked control of our food supply, our land, air, water, wallets and our future.
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An in-house editorial in the New York Times on July 5, began, “For all its rabid partisanship, Congress has shown time and again that it is willing to come together to deregulate corporate America.” This new corporate giveaway is a bill in the Senate sponsored by Democrats and Republicans that would, for all intents and purposes, end the “independence” of independent regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.  These independent agencies were established to be accountable to Congress – not the White House – with the goal of insulating them from political arm-twisting.
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On paper, the Senate bill’s “benign” goal is to ensure that new rules appropriately balance costs and benefits.But this is simply a euphemism for more deregulation, which itself is a euphemism for unleashing the corporate hounds on a hapless public. The bill would hollow out protection for investors, patients, consumers and workers.  For example, it would essentially eliminate the possibility of the meager financial reforms in Dodd-Frank from ever seeing the light of day.
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This bill is just a warm-up act. While the public and the media sleep, the real corporate “Death Star,” the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), is being forged in secret. The term “partnership” hardly sounds ominous. But for the last two years TPP negotiations that could have unprecedented consequences to citizens throughout the world have been going on among a dozen Pacific Rim nations. No information has been made available to the press or the public – and only extremely limited access has been allowed to a few members of Congress. But last year a document was leaked to the watchdog group, Public Citizen, revealing the current US position and the reason for the secrecy. The contents are surreal and shocking, and prima facie evidence for how corporations have become the master puppeteers of government.
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The leaked document reveals that the trade agreement would subordinate domestic law and policy to a binding international governance system. Specifically, TPP would (1) severely limit regulation of foreign corporations operating within US boundaries, giving them greater rights than domestic firms, (2) extend incentives for US firms to move investments and jobs to lower-wage countries, (3) establish an alternative legal system, creating “investor states” that give foreign corporations and investors new rights to circumvent US courts and laws, allowing them to sue the US government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for lost revenue due to US laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges or their investment “expectations.”
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Despite NAFTA’s failures, corporations are arm-twisting the federal government to pursue trade agreements as inevitable and necessary for economic progress. But 26 of the 28 chapters of this agreement have nothing to do with trade. TPP was drafted with the oversight of 600 representatives of multinational corporations, who essentially are awarding themselves whatever they want: new ground rules for environmental and public health protection, worker safety, and further off-shoring of what was once a domestic workforce.
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Wall Street intends to use the provisions of the TPP to resume gorging themselves on risky financial products such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion bailout of AIG. TPP is part of Big Pharma’s agenda to expand, strengthen and prolong pharmaceutical monopoly protections and constrain the production of generics. Any TPP country could gain access equal to domestic firms’ to US government contracts and the US would agree to waive “Buy America” procurement policies for all of the firms operating in the TPP countries. The loss of domestic jobs inherent in that policy would not be offset by American firms having access to government contracts in other countries, as the American procurement market is seven times larger than the combined market in all the other TPP countries.
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Eighty-four percent of the seafood consumed by Americans is imported, mostly from TPP nations. In monitoring the safety of imported seafood, the FDA currently only looks for residue of 16 drugs and tests only 0.1% of all imported products. The TPP would lead to even more imported seafood. Already WTO panels have ruled against the US meat country-of-origin labeling requirements and voluntary dolphin-safe tuna labels in challenges brought by other WTO countries. Past trade agreements have included an “equivalence rule” requiring the United States to permit imports of meat, poultry and now possibly seafood products that do not meet US food safety standards.
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A leaked copy of the working agreement in Feb. 2011 included provisions that make it easier for copyright owners to sue for violations, make downloading things like music a crime, and encourage Internet Service Providers to institute a “three strikes” policy that would kick users of the internet out after three infringement accusations.
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Residents of the West should be particularly alarmed. TPP would allow plunder of our natural resources by foreign corporations allowed to bypass US law. Disputes over Western land contracts for mining and timber, for example, would be settled by international tribunals. Even if you are oblivious to environmental concerns, you should be outraged at the total circumvention of national sovereignty. Foreign investors could bypass our legal framework, take any dispute to an international tribunal and pursue compensation for being denied access to our resources.
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It gets worse. Those tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as “judges” and as advocates for the corporations suing the governments.  American taxpayers could be forced to pay those corporations virtually unlimited compensation for curtailing their profits via domestic laws that currently protect our air, land and water. Furthermore, there would be no appeal of decisions made by these tribunals.
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All of this sounds like a Glenn Beck conspiracy hallucination. Oh, that we could bury this frightening tale so easily. Unknown to most Americans, predecessors of these tribunals already exist, having been established by the WTO.  These kangaroo courts for corporations have already ordered governments to pay over $3.5 billion in investor-state cases under existing US agreements. This includes payments over bans of toxic chemicals, land-use policies, forestry rules and more. More than $14.7 billion remain in pending claims under US agreements alone. Even when governments win, they often must pay for the tribunal’s costs and legal fees, which average $8 million per case. Using these “investor-state” privileges, Chevron is trying to evade responsibility for an enormous oil spill in Ecuador; Phillip-Morris is circumventing Australia’s cigarette labeling laws; Eli Lilly is attacking Canada’s drug patent laws; European firms are fighting Egypt’s post-revolution minimum wage increase and South Africa’s post-Apartheid affirmative action law. The Canadian Cattlemen for Fair Trade sued the US for a ban on imports of live Canadian cattle after the discovery of a case of mad cow disease in Canada. The TPP would expand the scope of domestic protection policies that could be attacked.
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The current cast of TPP characters includes United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Japan. Any other country that signs on to conform their domestic policies to TPP rules will be invited to join as well. In fact the US has ambitions to extend the TPP to half the world’s population.
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TPP is much worse than trade agreements like NAFTA, which itself eviscerated middle class jobs and wealth in the US. The clear winners are those who sit in the control towers of international corporations. The clear losers are everyone else. The US Chamber of Commerce can’t get it signed fast enough. Mitt Romney urged immediate signing by the United States last year. And the best we can hope for with President Obama is that the gremlins that are his trade advisers haven’t yet told him what toxic ingredients they have poured into the TPP stew of which we will be forced to partake.
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To the extent that corporations pool resources and expertise toward a common goal, they have been engines to the advancement of civilization. It’s hard to imagine an affordable i-phone being created and sold by your next-door neighbor out of his garage, or skyscrapers or aircraft carriers (in case you think those are necessary) being financed or built by the neighborhood gardening club.  But when that corporate goal becomes to make money only, and life’s most basic necessities – clean air, clean water, non-contaminated food, intact ecosystems, and a livable climate – stand in the way of making that money, many of the most powerful corporations have indeed become a gang of Frankenstein monsters, turning on us with a zombie-like indifference, with diabolical schemes of profitability at our expense, even to the point of dragging us into the abyss of an apocalyptic, uninhabitable world.
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So where do we find humans who wear the disguise of accomplished, gifted, and honorable people, and yet when there is money to be made are willing to jump into the corporate phone booth and emerge not as Superman but as Vishnu, from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita, who declares, “‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds?” We need look no further than last year’s presidential race to get a glimpse of a corporate Vishnu.
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Mitt Romney was celebrated as an iconic family man – devoted husband and father – a rare politician above moral reproach. His business skills would get us all back to work. But when he operated as a “captain of industry,” he was able to rationalize a much different moral compass. I have previously written about the “other” Mitt Romney, so I will only reprise one element of his business career here.
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In the early 1990s, while he was a devout and highly respected leader of the Mormon Church, Romney steered his company, Bain Capital, into a lucrative partnership with Philip Morris, helping create a very successful, groundbreaking strategy to boost Russian youth smoking rates. Mitt’s not stupid: he knew, if he stopped to think about it, that what he was doing would lead to illness and death for of thousands, perhaps millions. But he was thinking about millions – in dollars, not people. But the depth of Romney’s slippery moral transfiguration is only fully understood by appreciating that nothing is more forbidden in the Mormon Church than smoking, something I am personally very familiar with, having been a missionary for the Mormon Church. During the day, Mitt’s wallet was being fattened by addicting kids to cigarettes, and at night, Mitt would literally have to interrogate his fellow church members on their Mormon worthiness, which prohibited smoking. Such is the mind of a corporate Vishnu. Mitt has lots of close company – Rex Tillerson of Exxon, the Koch Brothers, Robert Fraley of Monsanto, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and hundreds of others.
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Some might say that “Death by Corporation” is just another way to tell the age-old story of greed or lust for power. But in today’s world, with the global reach of corporations, and their technological capability for destruction, those unrestrained pathologic urges smoldering within just a few key individuals are hurtling us all toward consequences unimaginable, and a future irredeemable.
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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Brian Moench is president of  Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.



Bezos, Tina Brown and the Looting of the Washington Post

Follow the Money

by LOUIS PROYECT

Glitterati queen Tina Brown, perfect maggot for a decomposing media.


Glitterati queen Tina Brown, perfect maggot for a decomposing media.

Recently two major media sales transactions involved properties associated with the Washington Post. The first was the sale of the Post itself to Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com; the other was the sale of Newsweek/Daily Beast to IBT Media. Until its sale in 2010 to high-fidelity magnate Sidney Harman, Newsweek was part of the Washington Post’s media empire. Tina Brown launched the Daily Beast, a center-right version of the Huffington Post, in October 2008, which merged with Newsweek two years later. In a bid to capitalize on the Internet revolution, the print edition of Newsweek was terminated in December 2012 and all efforts were directed toward making the website a success. No doubt its failure had more to do with the stale content that Tina Brown was proffering, something no amount of new media gold sequins could rescue.

On August 6th Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post pundit, made the case for his new boss on Chris Matthews’s “Hardball”.

“20 years from now, do you think we`re going to be dealing with physical newspapers delivered on your doorstep? Twenty years from now, I`m not sure we are. Right now, that`s what, 70 percent, maybe 80 percent of the Washington Post revenue, most print newspapers` revenue.

“So what I think Bezos does is not to slay or get rid of that legacy business. It generates the cash. It generates a lot of money and he`s not averse to cash.

“But the advantage of having somebody like Bezos owning the paper is number one, it`s going to be private. So, we`re not going to have Wall Street analysts, you know, anxious about next quarter`s figures. Number two, he`s got pockets deep enough for use to do the experimentation and the innovation that we need to do on the online side –“

One imagines that Bezos has lots of experimentation and innovation planned for the paper but not exclusively on the technical side. While not so nearly well known as a political player like Chris Hughes, the gay billionaire co-founder of Facebook who bought the New Republic and is now making plans to run for Congress in upstate NY, Bezos will no doubt use the editorial pages of the paper as a bully pulpit for his libertarian politics. As A.J. Liebling once said, “Freedom of the Press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

One of the hotly debated topics in the academy is whether the U.S. is “declining”, achieving more urgency with the growth of China as a major economic power. If this debate is not so easily decided given the challenge of weighing massive and often contradictory amounts of data, it might be more easily resolved on the ideological front. In the German Ideology, Karl Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” That being the case, when one puts the propagandist for the ruling class—Tina Brown—and Jeff Bezos, a prominent member of the ruling class, under the microscope, decline is certainly the first word that comes to mind.

Tina Brown, a British citizen, came to the U.S. in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair, fresh from her success editing The Tatler, a magazine started by Richard Steele in 1709. After taking it over in 1979, the 26 year old Brown told the N.Y. Times the secret of her success there: “People love to read about people who have money”. With such a credo, no wonder Newsweek went bust. Today it has an article titled “I had a bird-poop facial”, just the sort of thing an intellectually curious reader can sink his or her teeth into.

After taking over Vanity Fair, Brown rode the crest of the last big upsurge of the American economy when the wealthy one percent was more the objection of affection than hatred. If the U.S. did not have a royalty, like the kind that Brown twitted with a mixture of affection and disdain in her biography of Princess Di, at least it had people like Donald Trump. (If the reference to Trump as royalty seems far-fetched, just remember Prince Harry going to a costume ball in a Nazi uniform.)

Vanity Fair was and is the perfect reading material while sitting in a doctor or dentist’s waiting room. What better way to get your mind off some root-canal work than an article about Jennifer Anniston’s new romance? Landing the top post at Vanity Fair was a sign that you had made it in the publishing world. Not only was it lucrative, it was guaranteed to get you the best table at Elaine’s. This must have been the main appeal to Graydon Carter, who eventually replaced Brown. When he was at Spy magazine, Carter used to refer to Trump as a short-fingered vulgarian. Once he got the job at Vanity Fair, Carter crossed the red velvet rope into the vulgarian’s private club, from whence he has never emerged.

Nobody would have much trouble with Tina Brown running Vanity Fair since she and the magazine were made for each other. However, when publishing baron Si Newhouse decided to reassign her to run the New Yorker magazine in 1992, feathers were ruffled near and far.

Jamaica Kincaid, one of the few Black writers at the magazine, spoke for many other writers (even though she regarded them as “Old white men who went to Harvard or Yale mostly”) in an October 19, 1996 interview with the London Telegraph. When asked if she clashed with Brown, Kincaid said, “I didn’t mind that Tina Brown was a tyrant. I wouldn’t mind if she was a tyrant and smart, but she’s stupid.” For emphasis, she added, “I don’t like stupid people.” In the course of the interview, she also referred to her as “a bully” and “Joseph Stalin in high heels with blonde hair from England”.

Despite increasing the magazine’s circulation (well, H.L. Mencken once said “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people“), there were rumors that the magazine was not making the profits that Newhouse coveted. So, in 1998 Brown went on to work for Harvey Weinstein, the very embodiment of short-fingered vulgarianism, in a new media venture centered on a magazine called Talk. You can get an idea for the magazine’s sensibility from the top guests at a party celebrating its launch: Madonna, Salman Rushdie, Demi Moore and George Plimpton. This would have inspired Dante to add a tenth circle in hell.

After Talk, Tina Brown went on to her next Hindenburg type disaster, the Daily Beast. As stated above, she derived the name from a fictional paper in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, a satire on the newspaper industry. One wonders whether she adopted this name in a rare moment of insight about her role in bourgeois media. Despite his Tory politics, Waugh was quite good at nailing the British aristocracy’s doddering character. In many ways, “Scoop” conveys what life at places like the Washington Post and Newsweek is all about.

The Daily Beast of Waugh’s novel is run by one Lord Copper, whose toadying foreign editor can never answer “yes” or “no” to his boss’s queries but only “Definitely, Lord Copper” and ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper”. Before Hitchens went off the deep right end, he wrote an introduction to a 2000 edition of “Scoop” with these observations that not only make one want to read the novel but mourn Hitchens’s defection to the world of Lord Copper:

“The manners and mores of the press, are the recurrent motif of the book and the chief reason for its enduring magic…this world of callousness and vulgarity and philistinism…Scoop endures because it is a novel of pitiless realism; the mirror of satire held up to catch the Caliban of the press corps, as no other narrative has ever done save Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page.”

Probably the less said about Bezos, the better. While Brown is a celebrity-worshipping hack, Bezos is a slave-driving real-life version of the Simpson’s Mr. Burns.

While most readers and I use amazon.com, one would prefer to see it or something like it owned by society rather than private investors. In many ways, it hearkens back to “Looking Backward: 2000-1887”, Edward Bellamy’s utopian socialist novel, one in which the second millennium is already 13 years old. Bellamy is the anti-Luddite, predicating his more just and equitable world on the basis of advanced technology. When I read the book in high school, I did not become a socialist but it certainly opened my eyes to the possibility that people could democratically manage their affairs. When the hero of Bellamy’s novel asked his host from the future world how private ownership could be superseded, the answer suggested a certain Nostradamus capability from the author:

“When innumerable, unrelated, and independent persons produced the various things needful to life and comfort, endless exchanges between individuals were requisite in order that they might supply themselves with what they desired. These exchanges constituted trade, and money was essential as their medium. But as soon as the nation became the sole producer of all sorts of commodities, there was no need of exchanges between individuals that they might get what they required. Everything was procurable from one source, and nothing could be procured anywhere else. A system of direct distribution from the national storehouses took the place of trade, and for this money was unnecessary.”

Of course, there’s that messy job of removing Bezos’s greedy talons from those warehouses…

While Bezos would be appalled by Bellamy’s socialist utopian vision, he is something of a futurist himself. In 2000, the year of Bellamy’s future world, Bezos launched a space travel company called Blue Origin. The initial goal would be to sell thrill rides on rocket ships to rich bastards like him and Richard Branson, who expressed interest in a partnership. But ultimately, the goal would be to create “space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people orbiting the Earth”, according to a report by Amy Martinez in the April 23, 2012 Seattle Times.

Perhaps that colonizing project reflects a certain anxiety on Bezos’s part about a working class grown resentful of one percent greed, particularly the warehouse workers who were shocked to discover that their boss preferred to keep ambulances outside their workplace to carry heat stroke victims to the hospital rather than install air conditioning. After doing a cost-benefit study, ambulances were the way to go. Such workers might one day decide to use pitchforks on the ruling class and a retreat to safe ground by its members has to be considered.

One must not begrudge any decision by the descendants of Jeff Bezos or Donald Trump to live like kings and queens in outer space just as long as workers are aimed with laser weaponry to bring down any rocket ships bent on counter-revolution.

But the best way to think about the parting of the ways between rulers and ruled is Leon Trotsky’s advice in “If America should go Communist”, a 1934 article that surely would have won Edward Bellamy’s approval even if I have problems with Trotsky’s nod to advertising. If he could have anticipated what someone watching a baseball game on television would have to put up with today, he would have reconsidered his remarks. But the rest of it makes perfect sense, especially the last sentence:

“The American soviets would not need to resort to the drastic measures that circumstances have often imposed upon the Russians. In the United States, through the science of publicity and advertising, you have means for winning the support of your middle class that were beyond the reach of the soviets of backward Russia with its vast majority of pauperized and illiterate peasants.

“As to the comparatively few opponents of the soviet revolution, one can trust to American inventive genius. It may well be that you will take your unconvinced millionaires and send them to some picturesque island, rent-free for life, where they can do as they please.”

Louis Proyect blogs at http://louisproyect.wordpress.com and is the moderator of the Marxism mailing list. In his spare time, he reviews films for CounterPunch.



Provoking Russia

Washington’s Drive For Hegemony is a Drive to War
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

It was five years ago that the president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvilli, who was installed in power by the Washington supported “Rose Revolution,” launched a military invasion of South Ossetia, a break-away province under its own government.

The Georgian attack killed Russian peace-keeping troops and numerous Ossetians.

The Russian military response overwhelmed the US trained and equipped Georgian army in 5 days to the embarrassment of Saakashvilli and his Washington sponsors.

Washington began the training and equipping of the Georgian military in 2002, and continues to conduct joint military exercises with Georgia. In March and April of this year the US again conducted joint military exercises with Georgia. Washington is pushing to have Georgia admitted as a member of NATO.

Most analysts regard it as unlikely that Saakashvilli on his own would violate the peace agreement and attack Russian troops.  Certainly Saakashvilli would have cleared the aggression with his Washington sponsor.

Saakashvilli’s attempt to recover the territories was an opportunity for Washington to test Russia. Washington saw the attack as a way of embarrassing the Russian government and as a way of testing Russia’s response and military in action.  If Russia did not respond, the government would be
howeconembarrassed by its failure to protect its interests and the lives of those Russia regards as citizens.  If Russia did respond, Russia could be denounced, as it was by President George Bush, as a bully that invaded a “democratic country” with a Washington-installed president.  Especially interesting to Washington was the ability to observe the Russian military’s tactics and operational capabilities.

North Ossetia is part of Russia.  South Ossetia extends into Georgia. In 1801 Ossetia and Georgia became part of Russia and subsequently were part of the Soviet Union.

Under Russian law former Soviet citizens have the right to be Russian citizens.  Russia permitted Georgia to become independent, but South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the 1990s.

If Washington succeeds in installing Georgia into NATO, then an attempt by Georgia to recover what it regards as lost territories would escalate the conflict.  An attack by Georgia would comprise an attack by the US and NATO against Russia. Despite the risk to Europe of being pulled into a war with Russia, this month the chief of Denmark’s Home Guard was in Georgia on Washington’s mission discussing cooperation between the defense ministries of Denmark and Georgia on regional security issues.

Georgia lies to the East of the Black Sea.  What “regional security issues” does Georgia have with Denmark and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?  NATO was established to defend Western Europe against Soviet attack.

Finland and Sweden remained neutral during the Cold War, but both are now being recruited by NATO.  NATO lost its purpose with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet, it has been greatly expanded and now includes former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire.  NATO has become a cover for US military aggression and supplies troops for Washington’s wars.  Georgia’s troops are fighting for Washington in Afghanistan and fought for Washington in Iraq.

Washington kept NATO alive and made it into a mercenary army that serves Washington’s world empire.

In a provocation to both Russia and China, the US is currently conducting military exercises in Mongolia.  Troops from Korea and Tajikistan, formerly part of the Soviet Union, are also participating. Washington calls such operations “building interoperability between peacekeeping nations.”  Obviously, foreign military forces are being incorporated into the Empire’s army.

Are Americans aware that Washington is conducting military exercises all over the world, is surrounding Russia and China with military bases, and now has an Africa Command?  Have Congress and the American people signed off on Amerika Uber Alles? Shouldn’t Washington and the military/security complex be reined in before Washington’s aggression triggers a nuclear war?

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury (under Reagan, of all things!) and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format.



OpEds: Lavabit email shuts down after refusing to comply with “crimes against the American people”

By Steve James, wsws.org

ladarLevinsonTexas-based secure email provider Lavabit has closed down its operations rather than “become complicit in crimes against the American people” by complying with demands from the US government, apparently for access to the mail company’s servers and customer information.

On Wednesday, Lavabit, which has about 350,000 users, posted a notice on its website from owner Ladar Levinson (left).

Levinson wrote. “I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.”

 

 

He explained that after “significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on—the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.”

Levinson warned that “without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

The persecution of Lavabit by the US government is undoubtedly connected to the fact that the company’s most well-known client is whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also aimed at undermining the ability of internet users to easily engage in secure communication that cannot be accessed by the National Security Agency.

Two months ago Snowden, a former intelligence contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton, exposed the architecture of the unprecedented and all-pervasive internet surveillance regime operated by the US government’s NSA and its allies around the world. Snowden is the target of an unprecedented international manhunt orchestrated from the US. He has been given temporary asylum in Russia, although his security and life remain in great danger.

Snowden is reported to have been a Lavabit user since 2010. It is likely that Lavabit has, at the very least, received orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) seeking metadata and content from Snowden’s email history or similar request from the US surveillance agencies.

Those on the receiving end of FISA rulings are generally mandated to not reveal any information about what they have been asked to turn over. Should those under investigation become aware of the efforts directed against them, the government can issue a gag order insisting that nothing is made public.

Lavabit’s action is likely in response to government demands that go beyond Snowden. According to the Wired website, court records show that in June Lavabit complied with a “routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland… Whatever compelled him [Levison] to shut down now must have been exceptional.”

Lavabit may have received demands for the sort of blanket access to its services that, according to Snowden’s exposures, has been given to the NSA by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and a swathe of major US tech corporations under their PRISM and related spying programs.

Lavabit’s encrypted email provision was viewed as among the most secure in the world. The company was founded in 2004 as Nerdshack LLC, specifically in response to concerns that Google’s popular Gmail service “was actively violating the privacy of its users by displaying ads related to keywords in their email,” according to the company’s website.

The company’s small number of developers constructed a “highly convoluted” encryption of mail stored on Lavabit’s servers, making mail inaccessible even to Lavabit employees. According to the accompany, this “ultimately makes it a massive pain in the rear for agencies like the NSA to decrypt.”

“In theory, an attack with unlimited computing resources could use brute force to decipher the original message”, the company noted, but “in practice, the key lengths Lavabit has chosen equal enough possible inputs that a brute force attack shouldn’t be feasible for a long time to come.”

The decision by Lavabit was followed by an announcement from Silent Circle, which offers a range of secure communication services, that it was pulling out of email provision entirely. Silent Circle was co-founded by Phil Zimmerman, the developer of PGP encryption software. According to a statement from the company, it had not yet been contacted by US law enforcement agencies, but “could see the writing on the wall.” It suspended email because it could not guarantee security of its managed encryption service, in which Silent Circle handled encryption keys and certificates for its users.

In fact, Silent Circle explained, the SMTP, POP3 and IMAP protocols in use for email cannot be secure. These protocols necessarily generate metadata on senders, recipients and timestamps for every single email created, even if the content itself is encrypted.

Silent Circle explained that it intended to continue offering secure phone, video and text services with full end to end encryption.

In the end, there can be no technical fix for the turn by the world’s leading capitalist powers to saturation digital surveillance. The internet and related technologies point to the astonishingly progressive possibilities opened up by modern communications technology. But at the behest of a narrow super-rich minority, this is being utilized as a vast digital surveillance network where every action can be saved by the authorities for current and future targeting and repression.

Snowden’s actions generated mass outrage at the extent of the operations he revealed. Opinion polls have consistently sided with Snowden against the US government. The response from the US government, however, has been to escalate its assault on free communications.

The turn to police states and universal surveillance can only be opposed by the transformation of popular anger at spying into a political mobilisation of working people in a struggle for world socialism. Only on this basis can democratic rights be preserved, expanded and modern technology used to advance the interests of all humanity.



Forget The Color Purple: Oprah’s all about the Green, and other thoughts on the matter

Prefatory note—

Oprah Winfrey revealed she had a racist encounter while shopping in Switzerland — and the country's national tourist office issued a public apology for the experience. Switzerland is desperately trying to make peace with Oprah Winfrey. A trip to a tony Zurich shop ended in a disturbing racial encounter for the billionaire media mogul — a national humiliation that forced the Swiss tourism board to issue a public apology.


Oprah Winfrey revealed she had a racist encounter while shopping in Switzerland — and the country’s national tourist office issued a public apology for the experience. Switzerland is desperately trying to make peace with Oprah Winfrey. A trip to a tony Zurich shop ended in a disturbing racial encounter for the billionaire media mogul — a national humiliation that forced the Swiss tourism board to issue a public apology. (NY Daily News)

Mainstream liberals are characteristically howling from the rooftops with sanctimonious rage at the snub recently suffered by one of their favorite icons, poor Oprah Winfrey, the multibillionaire that could, after she was apparently racially profiled when trying to buy a $38,000 crocodile handbag at a Swiss luxury shop.

Racial profiling is abhorrent, and the snub was very real, plus dissing is always painful, so in that regard we’re totally on Oprah’s side. But, as usual, there’s more to this little incident than meets the eye. People forget that when it comes to cruel snobbishness the Europeans, well schooled in the reality of ancestral class divisions by millennia of having to kiss il culo of their supposed “betters”, still have the edge over the Americans, where the pretense of egalitarianism is a consummate art.  

Thus, at least in the old world, many in the “servant” class have internalized the very same racial and social prejudices polluting the minds of their masters. Butlers and manservants, declared Wodehouse, are often more insufferable than the lords they serve. Not to mention that pervasive as American pop culture and media are, some Europeans still don’t have a clue who Oprah Winfrey is, just like most Americans never heard of Johnny Halliday or Jean-Luc DelarWe regularly rerun articles of compelling and lasting interest. We wish the truths told in such articles had become obsolete, had been retired by social change and good leadership. Unfortunately that rarely happens.  This is one of such essays.

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But the critics, already so busy decrying racism, are missing the class angle, where Ms. Winfrey is in the doghouse. For in her casual attempt to buy a $38,000 handbag, almost three times the net annual salary of an American minimum wage worker, made of crocodile, no less, Winfrey reminds us all that she ain’t no tribune of the people, that she belongs squarely with the 0.001%, the parasitic oppressors, and that she lives and spends with the crass abandon and obscene self-indulgence of fellow billionaires, justifying such lifestyle of excess via occasional, well publicized “charity” stunts.

Of course, many brainwashed Americans, and other similarly misguided spear- carriers in that perennial legion of idiots, well indoctrinated in the canon of Darwinist hyper individualism, devotees of self-flagellation through a celebration of deepening inequality, will say there’s nothing wrong with making billions and spending that money any which way you bloody want. To which we may respond: even the superrich, practically a lost cause when it comes to elementary decency, should be held to account when they have chosen an image of benign populism, as Ms. Winfrey has.

The above may have alerted the reader to the fact that Oprah Winfrey’s name does not exactly elicit warm and fuzzy feelings with us, and that we remain dubious about her putative charms, virtues, and accomplishments. A masscult goddess par excellence, although she certainly did not create the cesspool that defines American television, she certainly thrived in that insalubrious brew, her own Horatio Alger story giving the treacherous medium a patina of egalitarianism it does not deserve. Not because lucky mediocrities from all corners cannot make careers in it and do, but because precisely their well trumpeted success (and few have tasted success as Winfrey), reinforces the myth that the American Dream is alive and well in this new age of corporate royalty. Even for African Americans, which, as her case and Obama’s suggest, is the biggest lie of all.

Old readers of Cyrano’s Journal, our flagship site currently in the hands of Rowan Wolf, may recognize the byline of Jason Miller, the brilliant and combative former editor whose cultural and political analyses, which included profiles of megacelebrities, have lost none of their power in the intervening years. So see for yourselves if the lady deserves all those tears after you read his deconstruction of Oprah Winfrey, as he saw it six years ago.—Patrice Greanville

*In the addendum we offer a full account of the incident, as reported by the NYT.

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(Originally posted WED SEP 12, 2007)
Forget The Color Purple: Oprah’s all about the Green

By Jason Miller, Cyrano’s Journal/Thomas Paine’s Corner

“The other kids were all into black power,” Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But “I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman … Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy.”

Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society’s warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.

Oprah Winfrey ostensibly possesses the mythical Midas Touch, a generous spirit, deep spiritual wisdom, and, in the eyes of those blinded by their adoration, the credentials of a saint. Yet despite appearing destined for canonization, Oprah injects heavy doses of infectious pus into the already deeply abscessed wound of the American psyche.

How could anyone who’s noted for having said, “Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine,” have such a pernicious effect on our culture?

Let’s “count the ways…with a passion put to use.”

To truly understand the depth of the damage Oprah inflicts on our society, we need to step outside of our bourgeois indoctrination and see her for what she truly represents. Manifesting the Horatio Alger Myth on steroids, Oprah is a wet dream come true for our criminal class of ruling elites sometimes referred to as the plutocracy. She provides them with “irrefutable” and ubiquitous anecdotal evidence which “proves” the idiotic delusion that America is a meritocracy where everyone has a realistic chance of getting rich, if they just work hard enough. The reality is that the richest 20% of US Americans own over 80% of the wealth and the long-term trend has been toward an ever increasing concentration of treasure into a smaller number of strong-boxes(1).

Comfortably administering her dominion from “The Promised Land,” her 42 acre estate near Santa Barbara, CA (which she purchased for a cool $50 million), Oprah surpassed the $1.5 billion mark in net worth in 2006 while earning the tidy sum of $260 million. See what happens when you devote yourself to excellence (and narcissism) instead of “wasting your time” parading about in a dashiki to pursue “ridiculous” ideals like civil rights and egalitarianism? Others did that for her. And now Oprah’s very existence proves that economic inequalities and barriers to upward mobility have been eliminated for all of us, right?

Well, not exactly. Consider that in the United States “the average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as the average white family…..[and] the average African-American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family(2).” Meanwhile, in the most affluent nation in the world (in which 12% of the population is black), “Saint Oprah” is the only black billionaire and one of only two blacks to make the Forbes 400.

Despite the innumerable exploitative workings of the capitalist pyramid scheme which enable the obscene opulence of Oprah and her miniscule number of peers (while concurrently damning billions of others to live in varying degrees of economic misery), she certainly has no qualms. In fact, she gushes about her unconscionable accumulation of treasures. From the 4/11/06 People Magazine article, Oprah Winfrey: Wealth Is ‘A Good Thing:’

[Speaking in Baltimore on Monday at a fundraiser for Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School, Winfrey told the audience, “I have lots of things, like all these Manolo Blahniks. I have all that and I think it’s great. I’m not one of those people like, ‘Well, we must renounce ourselves.’ No, I have a closet full of shoes and it’s a good thing.”

Winfrey, 52, who is reportedly worth more than $1 billion, said she doesn’t feel guilty about her wealth. “I was coming back from Africa on one of my trips,” she said. “I had taken one of my wealthy friends with me. She said, ‘Don’t you just feel guilty? Don’t you just feel terrible?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I do not know how me being destitute is going to help them.’ Then I said when we got home, ‘I’m going home to sleep on my Pratesi sheets right now and I’ll feel good about it.’ “(3)]

The Oprah mystique affords her and her fellow members of the opulent ruling class a potent psychological weapon (which they wield like a cudgel) to sustain their cultural hegemony, thus perpetuating their virtual monopoly on the wealth and power of the US. And be it conscious or otherwise, Oprah has betrayed her own race and class by shilling her core philosophy that “not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.” While personal responsibility is undeniably important and human beings do have the potential to pull themselves out of difficult circumstances (i.e. abject poverty), for every Oprah who “makes it,” there are tens of millions, regardless of race, who work tenaciously and are never able to overcome the tremendous barriers erected by the ruling class. Yet Ms. Winfrey would have us believe that if she can do it, anyone can. And if you don’t, just what the hell is wrong with you?

Aside from the significant impediments that face all US Americans (excepting those who are born into our de facto aristocracy and can rise to the top regardless of how lazy, depraved, and ignorant they may be—think George W. Bush), many blacks face nearly overwhelming structural barriers which keep them mired in chronic destitution.

Thanks to the courageous efforts of civil rights activists, institutionalized and overt racism are fading in the United States. However, Oprah’s very existence as a black billionaire and the “you can do and be anything you want if you work hard” pseudo-wisdom she so gleefully dispenses to the masses would indicate that America’s poor (and its impoverished blacks in particular) no longer face incredibly long odds as they employ vigorous efforts to improve their socioeconomic conditions.

Consider this excerpt from Paul Street’s “Skipping Past Structural Racism” (http://www.blackcommentator.com/85/85_think_street.html):

“…reflecting (via e-mail) on a commentary in which liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert argued that inner-city blacks’ material poverty reflected their own poor values and behavior. “There is a need for” a “values discussion” among “the poorest African-Americans,” my correspondent acknowledges. “But,” he added:

“there are three points to add. One is that [the] hypersegregation [of urban blacks into nearly all-black de-industrialized ghettoes] creates objective conditions that incentivize (perhaps even require) certain anti-social behaviors. The second is whether the values evidenced by the poorest are actually anti-American values. If we consider that the norms of the protestant work ethic have been devalued in American society – consider conspicuous consumption, state gambling expansion, frightening anti-intellectualism, Wall Street’s shenanigans, sexual revolution, and that recreational drug use knows no racial barrier – how different is the “underclass” from the rest of America? The final point is the somewhat sad notion that those who have been most disadvantaged by American society must somehow quickly develop the values and norms necessary to overcome those disadvantages, to “function,” concomitant with undertaking political struggle to dismantle structural barriers. What is more is that if we accept that the values Herbert holds in high esteem are not reinforced generally throughout American society, we are absurdly expecting one group of super-disadvantaged people – without additional assistance and against the mainstream of American society – to somehow morph into some kind of ubervolk.

“As the great ‘historical materialist’ Karl Marx once wrote,’men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.’”

Hard as it may be for Oprah and her fellow moneyed elites to fathom, Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” was a pernicious suburban legend, and that most people, given an environment affording them reasonably accessible options, wouldn’t consciously choose to perpetually wallow in the misery, indignity and self-destruction associated with chronic and inter-generational poverty. Not everyone is blessed with exceptional talent, intellect, or drive, but that doesn’t mean they deserve a life of suffering so that a tiny fraction of humanity can live as Croesus did.

With the vast numbers of people she influences, Ms. Winfrey plays an instrumental role in sustaining the false consciousness that keeps us in the poor and working classes pursuing the one in 20 million dream she projects, staunchly opposing the creation of viable publicly funded social uplift programs, and fighting amongst ourselves based in large part upon the malevolent lie that personal responsibility is the ONLY reason so many blacks remain “ghettoized,” unemployed, drug-addicted, and imprisoned.

Man the barricades, Ms. Winfrey, here come the “barbarian hordes” to raid our treasury!

But Oprah didn’t reach her perch atop the capitalist pyramid as one of its chief apologists simply by virtue of her existence as an anomalous opulent black woman (portrayed as what could be the “norm” if only more people subscribed to her “wisdom”). She also plays a very active role in contributing to the bourgeoisie cause.

A common lever of appeasement employed by our de facto aristocracy in the United States is to exercise faux benevolence by making charitable donations. After accumulating shameless affluence through abject exploitation of the Earth and its sentient beings, they show the masses their “humanity” by giving a mere fraction of their ill-gotten gains to a pet cause or two.

Oprah is no exception. Despite being known for her “generosity,” she remains one of the wealthiest people on the planet, maintaining her sprawling estate in California and, at last count, four other lavish abodes with high dollar zip codes. Bear in mind that Forbes recently gauged Oprah’s fortune to be about $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, her crowning philanthropic achievement is her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. This “charitable act” is cynical and self-serving. Its chief beneficiaries are those with a strong interest in maintaining the maleficent inequitable distribution of wealth. Here’s why:

  1. Oprah invested $40 million in this school, a mere 2.67% of her net worth.
  1. For those questioning the use of the word “invested,” this was indeed a shrewd and calculated investment for Oprah. By “donating” this relatively paltry sum, she will reap huge dividends in terms of increased popularity, goodwill, power, and influence. Her Harpo juggernaut will continue to gain momentum.
  1. In a world where 30,000 children die of starvation each day, Oprah has elected to build a posh, luxurious academy equipped to educate a mere 152 girls. Winfrey’s scheme was such an abuse of resources that the South African government withdrew its support of the project.
  1. In a vain quest to “make her childhood right”, Oprah is “rescuing” the poor black female attendees of her school by providing them with a regal, lavish existence. Just what the world needs–152 more highly educated elitists who are immersed in the paradigm that the suffering of the many to ensure the comfort of the few is the “way of the world.”
  1. Oprah’s principal lesson to her “girls”? Looking to her as their example, they will learn that once they have attained their affluence and power they will need to ease their conscience and help maintain the social order. The lesson is that to do so they will simply need to donate a sliver of their bounty in such a way that it enhances their public image and fulfills their narcissistic needs.

As we prepare to examine Oprah’s most deleterious effect on our society, consider the depth and breadth of her impact as characterized by Vanity Fair:

“Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope.”

Biographer Kitty Kelly added:

“As a woman, she has wielded an unprecedented amount of influence over the American culture and psyche…There has been no other person in the 20th century whose convictions and values have impacted the American public in such a significant way. … I see her as probably the most powerful woman in our society. I think Oprah has influenced every medium that she’s touched.”

Now let’s analyze one of Oprah’s recent and most spiritually corrosive “contributions” to the fetid cesspool we euphemistically call a culture in the United States. In February of this year, Ms.Winfrey used her leviathan media platform to introduce her minions to The Secret, a book that characterizes Christ as a “prosperity teacher.” Leave it to the high priestess of Mammon to promote a means to overcome the seemingly irreconcilable contradictions between the compassionate teachings of Jesus and the avaricious selfishness of capitalism.

Here’s what the Oprah Winfrey Show website had to say about The Secret:

“It’s making headlines around the world—and buzz just keeps building. Some say it’s the secret to creating the life you truly want—losing weight, making money, finding love. See why people everywhere are talking about The Secret.”

James Arthur Ray, whose “credentials” include, “…almost going bankrupt, [which] forced him to focus on the life he truly wanted. Now he runs a multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to teaching people how to create wealth in all areas of their lives,” joined forces with Winfrey to plug The Secret, a book rife with myriad inane mythologies the ruling class loves to perpetuate.

Again, from Oprah’s website:

[According to James, there is scientific evidence to back up the spiritual practices and laws defined in The Secret. “Science tells us that everything is energy, and so your thoughts are energy. Your body, your cash, your car—everything you think is solid, if you put it under a high-powered microscope, it’s just a field of energy and a rate of vibration,” he says. “And so are we. So if you think you’re this meat suit running around, you have to think again.”

“One way to describe this energy is by comparing it radio waves, “The frequency you give out through your thoughts and your emotions is what you have a tendency to manifest in your life,” Michael says. “Whether those thoughts and emotions are conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter.”

This means that if you are sending out the same negative energy over an over—whether thoughts or feelings—you will attract like energy back to you. James says that when bad things happen people might ask, “Oh, God, why me?” “Because it is you,” he says(4).]

Forget the immediate insult of James’s barrage of pseudo-scientific gibberish. People have been using that technique to peddle their snake oil for years. The core issue here is that in The Secret, James and company are hawking a particularly toxic brew. Oprah, Secret author Rhonda Byrne, and their fellow hucksters would have us believe that Tony Robbins or Gandhi would be equally at home applying The Secret’s “spiritual practices” based on “scientific evidence” to create the life they “truly want.”

At first blush its obvious remarketing of the shopworn “philosophies” related to the power of positive thinking seems benign enough, but thanks to its Oprah’s validation sparking its wild popularity and wide acceptance, The Secret is significantly reinforcing some very nasty strands of our cultural DNA, which is no small blessing to the moneyed elites atop our economic hierarchy.

While to a person who values critical thought and the pursuit of true meaning in their life The Secret would serve little purpose beyond perhaps kindling or toilet paper, future archaeologists may hail it as a Rosetta Stone to unlock the mysteries of our perverse, mean-spirited, and jejune society. Byrne was careful to incorporate nearly every revolting aspect of American culture, including narcissism, self-absorption, victim-blaming, hubris, consumerism, immediate gratification, acquisitiveness, Mammon worship, hyper-individuality, selfishness, and an unwavering faith in any belief that “forces” the world to conform to our desires.

In typical Oprah Book Club fashion, Winfrey’s enthusiastic endorsement sent the sales of Byrne’s abomination soaring into orbit. Thank you, Oprah.

As the abundant evidence indicates, despite her impeccable image and the ostensibly “positive influence” she has upon the untold millions who have yet to shatter the intellectual shackles of their acculturation and indoctrination, Oprah Winfrey is a member of our cynical pecunious ruling class and acts as a highly effective shill for their agenda.

Forget the good and benevolent image she projects. Oprah ultimately serves to distract, obfuscate, and lead us into the increasingly over-crowded cul-de-sac of “fuck thy neighbor; what’s in it for thee” savage capitalism. As a part of our filthy plutocracy, she is an enemy to the poor and working class. We need to start viewing her through that lens.

Notes:

(1) http://multinationalmonitor.org/…

(2) ibid

(3) http://www.people.com/…

(4) http://www2.oprah.com/…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Miller —in his words— “was a wage slave of the American Empire who had freed himself intellectually and spiritually.”  For several years he served as Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate editor and published Thomas Paine’s Corner as a personal blog within Cyrano’s.  Later he became a vocal advocate for the cause of animal rights. 

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ADDENDUM

Oprah Winfrey and the Handbag She Couldn’t Have

By CHRISTINE HAUSER, The New York Times

When Oprah Winfrey, one of the most famous television personalities and wealthiest women in the United States, walked into a luxury store in Zurich last month, she spied an expensive Tom Ford crocodile handbag in a locked case. The price: 35,000 Swiss francs, or the equivalent of about $38,000.

But Ms. Winfrey left the shop empty-handed. Not because she could not afford it, but Ms. Winfrey, who is black, was steered to less expensive handbags by a saleswoman even after trying several times to see the one she wanted.

During an interview with “Entertainment Tonight” this week that included a discussion about how she had experienced racism in her life, some of it subtle, sometimes more overt, she said she tried several times to see the bag.

“No, it’s too expensive,” Ms. Winfrey said the shopkeeper told her.

“One more time, I tried,” Ms. Winfrey said. “I said, ‘But I really do just want to see that one,’ and she said, ‘Oh, I don’t want to hurt your feelings,’ and I said: ‘O.K., thank you so much. You’re probably right, I can’t afford it.’ And I walked out of the store,” Oprah recounted. “Now why did she do that?”

“It still exists,” said Nancy O’Dell, the interviewer, speaking about racism.

“Of course it does,” Ms. Winfrey replied.

She did not mention the name of the store in that interview, but the story has attracted international media coverage that has broadened discussion of the event to overall problems with racism in Switzerland. It also has prompted Swiss tourism officials to apologize.

The Swiss-German language newspaper Blick did a video interview with Trudie Goetz, the owner of the store, which was called Trois Pommes and is on Zurich’s exclusive shopping street Bahnhofstrasse. Reuters reported that it also interviewed the owner on Friday.

“This is an absolute classic misunderstanding,” Ms. Goetz told Reuters. “This has nothing to do with racism. I am here for everyone and the customer is king.”

Reuters reported that the bag was known as the “Jennifer” model and made by the designer Tom Ford. It quoted Ms. Goetz as saying the sales assistant had wanted to show Ms. Winfrey that it was also available in other materials, which may have given her the impression the shop did not want to sell it to her.

“Of course that’s not the case. Who wouldn’t want to sell a purse for 35,000 francs?” Ms. Goetz said.

Ms. Winfrey was in Zurich to attend the wedding of her friend, the American singer Tina Turner.

Forbes reported in June that Ms. Winfrey is No. 1 on its list of the most powerful celebrities. It said she made an estimated $77 million from June 2012 to June 2013, down from $165 million in the same period the previous year. “While she wasn’t the highest earner on our list, her money, mixed with strong fame scores in metrics like press mentions and social networking power, pushed her to the top,” it said.

But Ms. Winfrey has been shunned at luxury shops before. As my colleague Alessandra Stanley reported in 2005, Ms. Winfrey was turned away from the Hermès flagship store on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris at closing time, even though there were still other people inside. The rebuff was interpreted by many people as having racist tones, arguing that Ms. Winfrey would have been treated better had she been white.

Robert Chavez, the chief executive officer of Hermès USA, later appeared on Ms. Winfrey’s talk show to publicly apologize, after she expressed hurt when the company had done so in private.

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Comments (select)

Not exactly a fan…ever since she lost all that weight then said, “if I can do it, anyone can do it”.  Yes, anyone with a personal chef and unlimited resources can lose the weight just like you did!

She’s a little Leona(sp) Helmley(sp) to me, kind of evil…and unbelievably out of touch.

I remember when she visited New Orleans after Katrina.  You could tell she didn’t want to touch anyone, it was just a big publicity stunt to keep the huddled masses brainwashed.  Stay home, Oprah!

It’s all what I call the “beauty queen hypothesis”.  You know, the theory that all it takes to become “Miss America” is “hard work”.  Yep, that’s all it takes, plus being born gorgeous.

In Oprah’s case, all it took was being born with some really, really good talent in being persuasive.  Better than average would be an understatement.  It also took a grandmother who taught reading when Oprah was 3, a father who cared about education, being an honor student, etc, etc.

Few people who are born and raised poor are exposed to all that or have what it takes to be an honor student.

Oprah and all her grandiosity make me want to puke.  The minute I see her on ANYTHING, I turn the channel.

So, I’m with you, diarist.

by TeresaInSammamishWA on Wed Sep 12, 2007 at 08:14:46 AM PDT