Obama Is Preparing for War in South America

Interview with Eva Golinger…

1 Mike Whitney—-The US media is very critical of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He’s frequently denounced as “anti-American”, a “leftist strongman”, and a dictator. Can you briefly summarize some of the positive social, economic and judicial changes for which Chavez is mainly responsible?

Eva Golinger—-The first and foremost important achievement during the Chávez administration is the 1999 Constitution, which, although not written nor decreed by Chávez himself, was created through his vision of change for Venezuela. The 1999 Constitution was, in fact, drafted – written – by the people of Venezuela in one of the most participatory examples of nation building, and then was ratified through popular national referendum by 75% of Venezuelans. The 1999 Constitution is one of the most advanced in the world in the area of human rights. It guarantees the rights to housing, education, healthcare, food, indigenous lands, languages, women’s rights, worker’s rights, living wages and a whole host of other rights that few other countries recognize on a national level. My favorite right in the Venezuelan Constitution is the right to a dignified life. That pretty much sums up all the others. Laws to implement these rights began to surface in 2001, with land reform, oil industry redistribution, tax laws and the creation of more than a dozen social programs – called missions – dedicated to addressing the basic needs of Venezuela’s poor majority. In 2003, the first missions were directed at education and healthcare. Within two years, illiteracy was eradicated in the country and Venezuela was certified by UNESCO as a nation free of illiteracy. This was done with the help of a successful Cuban literacy program called “Yo si puedo” (Yes I can). Further educational missions were created to provide free universal education from primary to doctoral levels throughout the country. Today, Venezuela’s population is much more educated than before, and adults who previously had no high school education now are encouraged to not only go through a secondary school program, but also university and graduate school.

The healthcare program, called “Barrio Adentro”, has not only provided preventive healthcare to all Venezuelans – many who never had access to a doctor before – but also has guaranteed universal, free access to medical attention at the most advanced levels. MRIs, heart surgery, lab work, cancer treatments, are all provided free of cost to anyone (including foreigners) in need. Some of the most modern clinics, diagnostic treatment centers and hospitals have been built in the past five years under this program, placing Venezuela at the forefront of medical technology.

Other programs providing subsidized food and consumer products (Mercal, Pdval), job training (Mission Vuelvan Caras), subsidies to poor, single mothers (Madres del Barrio), attention to indigents and drug addicts (Mission Negra Hipolita) have reduced extreme poverty by 50% and raised Venezuelans standard of living and quality of life. While nothing is perfect, these changes are extraordinary and have transformed Venezuela into a nation far different from what it looked like 10 years ago. In fact, the most important achievement that Hugo Chávez himself is directly responsible for is the level of participation in the political process. Today, millions of Venezuelans previously invisible and excluded are visible and included. Those who were always marginalized and ignored in Venezuela by prior governments today have a voice, are seen and heard, and are actively participating in the building of a new economic, political and social model in their country.

2 MW—On Monday, President Chavez threw a Venezuelan judge in jail on charges of abuse of power for freeing a high-profile banker. Do you think he overstepped his authority as executive or violated the principle of separation of powers? What does this say about Chavez’s resolve to fight corruption?

Eva Golinger—-President Chávez did not put anyone in jail. Venezuela has an Attorney General and an independent branch of government in charge of public prosecutions. Chávez did publicly accuse the judge of corruption and violating the law because that judge overstepped her authority by releasing an individual charged with corruption and other criminal acts from detention, despite the fact that a previous court had not granted conditional freedom or bail to the suspect. And, the judge released the suspect in a very irregular way, without the presence of the prosecutor, and through a back door. The suspect then fled the country.

This is part of Venezuela’s fight against corruption. Unfortunately – as in a lot of countries – corruption is deeply rooted in the culture. The struggle to eradicate corruption is probably the most difficult of all and will probably not be achieved until new generations have grown up with different values and education. In the meantime, the Chávez administration is trying hard to ensure that corrupt public officials pay the consequences. That judge, for example, engaged in an act of corruption and abuse of authority by illegally releasing a suspect and therefore was charged by the Public Prosecutor’s office and will be tried. It has nothing to do with what Chávez said or didn’t say, it has to do with enforcing the law.

3 MW—Why is the United States building military bases in Colombia? Do they pose a threat to Chavez or the Bolivarian Revolution?

Eva Golinger—-On October 30th, the US formally entered into an agreement with the Colombian government to allow US access to seven military bases in Colombia and unlimited use of Colombian territory for military operations. The agreement itself is purported to be directed at counter-narcotics operations and counter-terrorism. But a US Air Force document released earlier this year discussing the need for a stronger US military presence in Colombia revealed the true intentions behind the military agreement. The document stated that the US military presence was necessary to combat the “constant threat from anti-US governments in the region”. Clearly, that is a reference to Venezuela, and probably Bolivia, maybe Ecuador. It’s no secret that Washington considers the Venezuelan government anti-US, though it’s not true. Venezuela is anti-imperialist, but not anti-US. The US Air Force document also stated that the Colombian bases would be used to engage in “full spectrum military operations” throughout South America, and even talked about surveillance, intelligence and reconnaisance missions, and improving the capacity of US forces to execute “expeditionary warfare” in Latin America.

Clearly, this is a threat to the peoples of Latin America and particularly those nations targeted, such as Venezuela. Most people in the US don’t know about this military agreement, but it they did, they should question why their government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, is preparing for war in South America. And, in the midst of an economic crisis with millions of people in the US losing jobs and homes, why are millions of dollars being spent on military bases in Colombia? The US Congress already approved $46 million for one of the bases in Colombia. And surely more funds will be supplied in the future.

4 MW—What is ALBA? Is it a viable alternative to the “free trade” blocs promoted by the US?

Eva Golinger—-The Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas – Trade Agreement for the People, is a regional agreement created five years ago between Venezuela and Cuba, and now has 9 members: Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Dominica. ALBA is a trade agreement based on integration, cooperation and solidarity, contrary to US trade agreements which are based on competition and exploitation. It promotes a way of trading between nations that assures mutual benefits. For example, Venezuela sells oil to Cuba and Cuba pays with services – doctors, educators and technological experts that help to improve Venezuela’s industries. Venezuela sells oil to Nicaragua and Nicaragua pays with food products, agricultural technology and aide to build Venezuela’s own agricultural industry, which long ago was abandoned by prior governments only interested in the rich oil industry. ALBA seeks to not just provide economic benefits to its member nations, but also social and cultural advances. The idea is to find ways to help members develop and progress in all aspects of society. ALBA recently created a new currency, the SUCRE, which will be used as a form of exchange between member nations, eliminating the US dollar as the standard for trade.

5 MW—Are US NGO’s and intelligence agents still trying to foment political instability in Venezuela or have those operations ceased since the failed coup?

Eva Golinger—-In fact, the funding of political groups in Venezuela, and others throughout Latin America that promote US agenda, has increased since the April 2002 coup against President Chávez. Through two principal Department of State agencies, USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US government has channeled more than $50 million to opposition groups in Venezuela since 2002. The USAID/NED budget to fund groups in Venezuela in 2010 is nearly $15 million, doubled from last year’s $7 million. This is a state policy of Washington, which the Obama Administration plans to amp up. They call it “democracy promotion”, but it’s really democracy subversion and destabilization. Funding political groups favorable to Empire, equipping them with resources, strategizing to help formulate political platforms and campaigns – all geared towards regime change – is a new form of invasion, a silent invasion. Through USAID and NED, and their “partner NGOs” and contractors, such as Freedom House, International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, Pan-American Development Foundation and Development Alternatives, Inc., hundreds of political groups, parties and programs are presently being funded in Venezuela to promote regime change against the Chávez government. US taxpayer dollars are being squandered on these efforts to overthrow a democratically elected government that simply isn’t convenient for Washington. Remember, Venezuela has 24% of world oil reserves. That’s a lot!

6 MW—How hard has Venezuela been hit by the economic crisis? Do the people understand Wall Street’s role in the meltdown?

Eva Golinger—-Actually, the Chávez government has taken important steps to shelter Venezuela from the financial crisis. People here in Venezuela absolutely understand Wall Street’s role in the crisis and know that the US capitalist-consumerist system is principally responsible for causing the financial crisis, but also the climate crisis that the world is facing. The Venezuelan government took preventive steps against the financial crisis, such as withdrawing Venezuela’s reserves from US banks two years ago, creating cushion funds to ensure social programs would not be cut and diversifying Venezuela’s oil clientele so as not to be dependent solely on US clients. Recently, several banks have been nationalized by the Venezuelan government and others have been liquidated. But this was more due to the mismanagement and internal corruption within those banks. The Venezuelan government reacted quickly to take over the banks and guarantee customers’ savings would not be lost. In fact, it’s the first time in Venezuela’s history that no customers have lost any of their money during a bank liquidation or takeover. This is part of the Chávez Administration’s policy of prioritizing social needs over economic gain.

7 MW—Here’s an excerpt from a special weekend report by Bloomberg News:

“Americans have grown gloomier about both the economy and the nation’s direction over the past three months even as the U.S. shows signs of moving from recession to recovery. Almost half the people now feel less financially secure than when President Barack Obama took office in January…Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans think the economy will improve in the next six months….Only 32 percent of poll respondents believe the country is headed in the right direction, down from 40 percent who said so in September.” (Bloomberg)

The frustration and disillusionment with the US political/economic system has never been greater in my lifetime. Do you think people in the United States are ready for their own Bolivarian Revolution and steps towards a more progressive, socialistic model of government?

Eva Golinger—-The rise of Barack Obama neutralized a growing sentiment for profound change inside the US. Hopefully, the slowdown in US activism will only be temporary. South of the border, there is tremendous change taking place. New social, political and economic models are being built by popular grassroots movements in Venezuela, Bolivia and other Latin American nations that seek economic and social justice. I believe strongly that models in process, like the Bolivarian Revolution, provide inspiration and hope to those in the US and around the world that alternatives to US capitalism do exist and can be successful.

The US has a rich history of revolution. There are many groups inside the US dedicated to building a better, more humanist system. Unity and a collective vision are essential aspects of building a strong movement capable of moving forward. Every nation has its moment in history. This is the time of Latin America. But there is great hope that the people of the US will soon unite with their brothers and sisters south of the border to bring down Empire and help build a true world community based on social and economic justice for all.

Eva Golinger, winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named “La Novia de Venezuela” by President Hugo Chávez, is a Venezuelan-American attorney from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, “The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela” (2006 Olive Branch Press), “Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela” (2007, Monthly Review Press), “The Empire’s Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion”, “La Mirada del Imperio sobre el 4F: Los Documentos Desclasificados de Washington sobre la rebelión militar del 4 de febrero de 1992” and “La Agresión Permanente: USAID, NED y CIA”. Since 2003, Eva, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and CUNY Law School in New York, has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about the US Government’s efforts to destabilize progressive movements in Latin America. Her first book, The Chávez Code, has been translated and published in six languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian & Russian) and is presently being made into a feature film.

‘Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down” a New Academic Research Says

One-quarter of Europeans believe that “Jews have too much influence“

31% agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.”

45.7% of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”

About 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon

According to new research conducted by Bielefeld University hatred towards Muslims decreased over the past year while hatred of Jews is growing. Israelis must be concerned. The sudden drop in European Islamophobia doesn’t fit into the Zionist global plan in which Muslims are cornered and ostracised as reactionaries while Israel is dropping bombs in the name of democracy and liberalism. According to the leading Israeli paper Ynet, “the level of resentment against most minorities declined – sexism considerably, Islamophobia slightly. There were only two exceptions: homophobia and anti-Semitism.”(1)

Interestingly enough Ynet reports that “the percentage of people who believe ‘that there are too many Muslims’ in their country is especially high in those countries that actually have a low percentage of Muslims living in them.” One possible explanation may that within European countries benefiting from a large Muslim population, the fear of Islam is actually dissipating. This is not at all surprising given the fact that both Islamic and Christian cultures share very similar universal values and ethical precepts. Unlike Jewish ideology that maintains a certain level of tribal, cultural and social segregation and supremacy, Muslim communities seem to collectively merge into the working classes through the work place, education and economy.

Jewish Power

According to the research very many Europeans are concerned with Jewish domination and power. “One-quarter of Europeans (24.5%) believe that “Jews have too much influence“, and nearly one-third (31%) agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.” Bearing in mind the embarrassing fact that 50% of MPs in Britain’s shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel we can safely assume that, unlike our politicians, the voters out there are largely waking up to the danger of Zionist infiltration.

Ynet also has some ‘good news’ to report. “61.9% say that Jews “enrich our culture”, especially in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany.” The fact that Jews and ex Jews (in particular) enrich European life is indeed hard to ignore, yet setting aside Lord Cashpoint Levy and Uri ‘Spoon Bending’ Geller, it seems as if, amongst those Jews who contribute to European cultural life, not many openly identify with Israel and its crimes.

As much as Israel uses every possible means to drag us all into an endless war against Islam, the Europeans are coming to terms with the devastating reality of Zionist murderous brutality. Some 45.7% of the Europeans either “somewhat or strongly” agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” In case someone fails to understand the meaning of it all, I will say it plainly: almost half of the Europeans accept that Israel employs genocidal tactics. They basically agree that Israelis are the Nazis of our time. According to Ynet, about 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

Zionism was there to create a civilized loveable Jew. Not only has it failed, thanks to Israel and Zionism, the resentment towards Jews seem to be greater than ever. The meaning of it all is rather obvious. Israel and its supporting lobbies failed to internalise the real universal meaning of the Holocaust: ‘love thy neighbour’. Instead of ethnic cleansing, starving and dropping white phosphorous, Israel should have learned to live amongst others.

If Europe is as democratic as it claims to be, this clear, escalating animosity towards Israel, Zionism and their relentless lobbies will mature eventually into a political shift.

(1) A clarification is needed here: ‘anti-Semitism’ is a misleading notion. When people refer to ‘anti Semitism’ what they really mean is ‘anti Jewish feelings’. The notion of ‘anti-Semitism’ is there to give a false impression that Jews are a racial group. The truth of the matter is obvious, Jews are neither a race nor have they established a racial continuum. In fact no one resents Jews for their racial belonging or ethnicity. Anti Jewish feelings is in most cases a political and ethical reaction to Jewish tribal politics, Zionism, Israel, Israeli lobbying, global Zionist affairs, Jewish ideology, Jewish supremacy, Israeli war crimes and so on.

Europe: Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down by Sarah Stricker
Ynetnews 6.12.09

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3815828,00.html

Study on ‘group-focused enmity’ conducted by researchers from University of Bielefeld in Germany finds hatred of Muslims decreased over past year, while hatred of Jews and homosexuals growing. Poland defined as most racist country

Right-wing parties are growing stronger in Europe, and Swiss citizens have even voted in favor of a ban on mosque minarets, yet the fear or hatred of Islam in the continent has dropped over the past year, according to a study conducted in Germany and published Sunday. However, hatred of Jews and homosexuals is on the rise.

For the last eight years, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at the University of Bielefeld has been running an annual study called “German Conditions” to learn about “group focused enmity“ such as xenophobia, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and prejudices against unemployed, disabled, homeless or homosexual people in Germany.

Due to the financial crisis and the fears of the future, poverty and unemployment that are being stoked by that, the researchers expected a rise this year.

But compared to last year’s results (as well as those of 2002), the level of resentment against most minorities declined – sexism and racism even considerably, Islamophobia slightly. There were only two exceptions: Homophobia and anti-Semitism.

Hatred of both groups is on the rise as they are considered to be found also among people of a high status.

Beate Küpper, one of the study’s main researchers, believes that the financial crisis may in fact be a possible explanation for that. Küpper said that although in comparison to other European countries Germany was on average, it was staggering that in the light of German history, 48% still agreed with anti-Semitic statements.

For the first time, the study also compared xenophobia among European countries like Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Poland, and Hungary. According to their findings, the level of prejudices against minorities in Europe is alarming.

About 50.4% of the population agreed that “there are too many immigrants” in their country, 54.4% believe that “the Islam is a religion of intolerance.” Interestingly enough, the percentage of people who believe “that there are too many Muslims” in their country is especially high in those countries that actually have a low percentage of Muslims living in them.

Nearly one-third (31.3%) of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “there is a natural hierarchy between black and white people”. A majority of 60.2% stick to traditional gender roles, demanding that “women should take their role as wives and mothers more seriously.” Some 42.6% deny equal value of gay men and lesbian women and judge homosexuality as “immoral”.

Hiding behind criticism of Israel

Anti-Semitism is also still widely spread in Europe. The team of scientists from the universities of Amsterdam, Bielefeld, Budapest, Grenoble, Lisbon, Marburg, Oxford, Padua, Paris, and Warsaw found that 41.2% of Europeans believe that “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era”. The highest degree of affirmation was in Poland – 72%, and the lowest in the Netherlands – 5.6%.

One-quarter of Europeans (24.5%) believe that “Jews have too much influence“, and nearly one-third (31%) agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind. On the other hand, 61.9% say that Jews “enrich our culture”, especially in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany.

They study also measured the degree of anti-Semitism hidden behind a specific criticism of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians that uses anti-Semitic terms such as “war of persecution” and a generalization to “all Jews”.

Some 45.7% of the Europeans (apart for France, where this facet of anti-Semitism was not measured) somewhat or strongly agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” About 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

Overall, the level of anti-Semitic attitudes varies quite a lot across Europe with comparably lower levels of anti-Semitic attitudes in Britain and the Netherlands and significantly higher levels in Portugal, and especially Poland and Hungary.

Dr King Spanks Obama: Part 4

Some months ago, at the 23rd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Celebration in San Francisco, attendees were asked to answer the question, “What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?” [1] This article series is an effort to provide Dr. King an opportunity to answer that question for himself from the pages of a book he wrote in 1967 entitled: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”. But more than a mere contrast between two persons, this article series seeks to compare recent American history with contemporary struggles, and to explore visions of a more desirable future. This is the spirit of Dr. King’s book title and of Obama’s campaign slogan, “Change We Can Believe In”. At this point, we’ve reached chapter 5 of Dr. King’s book, which advances the following centerpiece of his philosophy:

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income… This proposal is not a “civil rights” program, in the sense that that term is currently used. The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967 [2]

Now termed the “Basic Income Guarantee” (BIG), this measure doesn’t receive quite the discussion or popular acclaim that it did 40-years ago. But it has been advanced by a historic list of prominent supporters, including Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith, and more recently, Richard C. Cook. [3] This essay will argue that higher levels of economic democracy are a prerequisite, not a byproduct, of such a measure. Meanwhile, with a vast body of contemporary support, Barack Obama has recently advanced a similar proposal:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14-percent — 14-percent of its gross national product — on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim’s talking about when he says ‘everybody in, nobody out’, a single-payer health care plan, universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately, because first we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.” — Barack Obama, 2003 [4]

At first glance, Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might seem to be on the same page, or at least somewhere in the same ballpark. But now that Democrats have finally taken back the White House and Congress, Rob Kall asks an essential question: “Who would have thought that Obama’s health care plan would enrich big Pharma and raise profits for health insurers while raising taxes on small businesses and threatening to jail people who were uninsured?” [5] As Progressives Democrats of America complain, “the one option that would produce enough savings to include every single American, contain rising costs, and ensure no one ever faces a medical bankruptcy again was never seriously considered despite the fact that 86 members of Congress have co-sponsored HR 676, The Medicare for All Act. Congress has failed to debate the one option that nearly 60% of doctors and nurses support, most Americans want, along with a growing number of unions, cities and towns” — single payer health care. [6]

In my home state of Washington, the Spokesman Review reports: “The 1 in 5 adults lacking insurance stand to sink the financial stability of the state’s health care providers… Many health care providers have softened the losses by charging more for those with insurance… We’re reaching a point where we can’t sustain this system”. [7] Even from a strictly “free market” perspective, this continuing trend is a market failure [8] that the Obama administration now seeks to mandate for every US citizen instead of a more sustainable single payer system that was originally proposed. According to Stephen Lendman: “If Obamacare is enacted, it will cost more, deliver less, leave millions uninsured, millions more underinsured and leave a broken system in place. It will enrich the insurance, drug and large hospital chain cartels at the expense of universal coverage. It will solidify a class-based system delivering the best care money can buy. Others will get sub-standard treatment, and for millions none at all.” [9] Kate Randall adds, “Obama’s health care counterrevolution is of a piece with his entire domestic agenda. It parallels the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, the imposition of mass layoffs and wage and benefits cuts in the auto industry, and a stepped-up attack on public education and on teachers.” [10]

Nonetheless, public support for Barack Obama and his alleged “centrist” approach appears to remain fairly high, as for some reason he was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. According to the Nobel committee, Obama has created “a new climate in international politics.” But Paul Craig Roberts remands:”Tell that to the 2 million displaced Pakistanis and the unknown numbers of dead ones that Obama has racked up in his few months in office. Tell that to the Afghans where civilian deaths continue to mount as Obama’s “war of necessity” drones on indeterminably. No Bush policy has changed. Iraq is still occupied. The Guantanamo torture prison is still functioning. Rendition and assassinations are still occurring. Spying on Americans without warrants is still the order of the day. Civil liberties are continuing to be violated in the name of Oceania’s ‘war on terror’. Apparently, the Nobel committee is suffering from the delusion that, being a minority, Obama is going to put a stop to Western hegemony over darker-skinned peoples. The non-cynical can say that the Nobel committee is seizing on Obama’s rhetoric to lock him into the pursuit of peace instead of war. We can all hope that it works. But the more likely result is that the award has made ‘War is Peace’ the reality.” [11] So the Nobel committee has essentially discredited themselves and the Peace Prize itself by awarding it to a warmonger like Barack Obama. This should raise serious questions about how they were coerced into doing so, and by whom.

When Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he responded, “I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize. After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.” [12]

Meanwhile, the violence driven by American imperialism continues to spread throughout the world while most black Americans are still chained to the “lowest rung of the economic ladder” as Dr. King lamented more than 40-years ago. While they are joined by a growing population of whites, Hispanics and other races, it is significant to note that an inordinate proportion of African Americans still find themselves living in poverty. In fact, Professor David Harvey suggests the recent mortgage foreclosure crisis is largely a racial phenomenon, “a financial Katrina”, with its devastation focused mainly in the inner-city of places like Cleveland, Detroit and Baltimore where the concentration of ethnic minorities is typically highest. [13] [14] The Chicago Tribune reports that “deep recession is hitting African-Americans more severely than the overall population”. As the nation’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate nudged toward 10 percent, the African-American jobless rate was 15.5 percent with Illinois blacks at 18.6 percent in the third quarter, according to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute.

The Tribune goes on to say: “The United States historically has seen higher unemployment rates for minorities, but the gap has widened in this recession, in part because of job losses in the manufacturing and auto sectors. And the jobless growth, coupled with the predatory lending that flourished in segregated neighborhoods during the real estate boom, have led to dramatic spikes in mortgage foreclosures, sending home values into a downward spiral. The bottom line: A silent depression for African-Americans”. [15] According to Larry Pinkney, “the underbelly of this nation is the black underclass. Instead of becoming smaller and moving out of poverty and disenfranchisement, the black underclass has grown much, much larger and become even more impoverished and disenfranchised”.

In chapter 5 of his book, Dr. King implores the American black population to educate themselves and to become more actively involved in politics. [2] While some have successfully heeded this call to action, Pinkney further observes, “The relatively small black elite has shamelessly, in complicity with the elite of its white counterpart, helped spawn an insidious new form of racism and economic apartheid. Moreover, members of the black underclass are themselves chastised and blamed by this insidious black elite and intelligentsia for being the economic and social victims of a callous, avaricious, capitalist system which now finds itself in deep trouble nationally and globally”. [16]

But is it any surprise that a black rise to power under capitalism would be proportionately similar to a white rise to power under the same system? Is it any surprise that the interests of “black power” would closely match and collaborate with the interests of “white power”? Under capitalism, is it any surprise that the interests of power are directly opposed to the interests of the remaining population regardless of skin color? Is it any surprise that a black President would advance an agenda very similar to most of his lily white predecessors?

In chapter 2 entitled, “Black Power”, Dr. King argues, “The problem of transforming the ghetto is, therefore a problem of power — a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to preserving the status quo.” With this, Dr. King obviously understands that opposing interests are involved. But until this antagonism is dissolved, any personal transition from one pole to the other merely erases one’s sympathetic relationship with the opposing pole. There is no incentive for any President of the United States to “transform the ghetto”, as his position of power is contingent upon the powerlessness of others. So the goal of “equality”, which Dr. King so fervently pursued, is not for any individual or group to rise to power over others, but to dismiss the existing power structure as much as possible in all human activity in order to maximize democracy and to minimize opposing interests. “Are we seeking power for power’s sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live? If we seek the latter, violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.” In chapter 2, Dr. King goes on to say:

“Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice… There is nothing essentially wrong with power. The problem is that in America power is unequally distributed. This has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in white. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.” [17]

Many argue that one year is not nearly long enough for any President to effect “change” in these regards. And granted, President Obama probably didn’t intend “Change We Can Believe In” to suggest he could solve all the world’s problems overnight. But it does seem entirely reasonable for us to expect him to at least initiate a “change” of direction in the most damaging trends. Instead, Barack Obama continues to deliberately fortify those trends in the same direction they have been headed for the past 40-years since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by his own government. [18] “For the first time in humanity, over 1 billion people are chronically hungry”, says a United Nations World Food Programme online video. The US Department of Agriculture reports recently that in 2008, one in six US households were “food insecure”, the highest number since the figures were first gathered in 1995. [19] Once again, these aren’t static snapshots, they are dynamic and growing economic trends.

How is it that citizens of the wealthiest nation in human history increasingly find themselves living in tents and under bridges and without adequate nourishment? At the same time, how is it that 75-percent of all American youth aged 17-24 are too fat and stupid to pass a military entrance exam? [20] [21] Is all this due to irresponsibility amongst the lower classes, or is it because of upper class greed? The best answer is probably that our class-based socioeconomic system is inherently is designed to channel economic wealth and political power away from producers and into the hands of non-producers. Whether we are aware of the fact or not, each of us consent to this antagonistic relationship and actively contribute to its predominance through daily participation.

One argument against this conclusion is that increasing numbers of workers, involuntarily displaced by technological advancement and other economic developments, qualify as “non-producers” who have no share in the wealth and power generated by production. But the result of their displacement is increased competition for jobs at the individual level, which tends to drive aggregate wages down. So the active role of rising unemployment and a growing “underclass” is to reduce and discipline the remaining workforce, to increase its productive output and to drive wages down, thereby delivering more wealth and power into the hands of a shrinking upper class. While some analysts might refer to this as “economic efficiency”, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. presents another view:

“Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will… We have come to the point where we must make the non-producer a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution… The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other… The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking. The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” [2]

While Dr. King’s vision is both admirable and perhaps attainable, he also anticipates “fierce opposition”. Moreover, he seems to realize his suggested measures are impossible without “deep structural change” implemented through “some form of constructive coercive power”. [22] For example, in chapter 5 of his book, King states: “It was not the marching alone that brought about integration of public facilities in 1963. The downtown business establishments suffered for weeks under our almost unbelievably effective boycott. The significant percentage of their sales that vanished, the 98 percent of their Negro customers who stayed home, educated them forcefully to the dignity of the Negro as a consumer.” [2]

It might be surmised from this that Dr. King merely advocates consumer activism whereby people “vote with their dollars.” But consumers can’t vote with dollars they don’t possess. Moreover, unemployment and poverty are structural features of the predominant economic system, not a mistake or an aberration that can be corrected through some kind of reform. So effective withdrawal of mass consent for the existing wage-based system involves more than a mere “boycott” or failure to participate. Structural transformation of the decision-making process involves the construction of an entirely new socioeconomic system where human beings are no longer enslaved by either masters or wages. Further study indicates that Dr. King not only understood the severe limitations of his prior campaigns but that he also had much higher goals in mind:

“We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination were not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolent protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically. We did not have leisure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws and lines of development. Although our actions were bold and crowned successes, they were substantially improvised and spontaneous. They attained the goals set for them but carried the blemishes of our inexperience… The future of the deep structural changes we seek will not be found in the decaying political machines. It lies in new alliances of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, labor, liberals, certain church and middle-class elements.” [2]

Here, Dr. King describes what David Harvey has more recently termed The Right To The City: “The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of daily life we desire, what kinds of technologies we deem appropriate, what aesthetic values we hold. The right to the city is, therefore, far more than a right of individual access to the resources that the city embodies: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city more after our heart’s desire. It is, moreover, a collective rather than an individual right since changing the city inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power over the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake ourselves and our cities is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” [23]

Both Dr. King and Professor Harvey go on to suggest that transforming our social relations to effect deep structural change involves far more than mere labor movements or consumer uprisings or civil rights activism or ecological arguments or mournful cries from the unemployed, homeless and starving. Instead, a unified cooperative alliance amongst all these common interests is essential to effect the needed transition from capitalism toward a more equitable and sustainable socioeconomic system. David Harvey insists that democratic control of productive surplus is imperative, and Dr. King is very explicit in defining his view of cooperative alliance:

“A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each component group and a common interest into which they merge. For an alliance to have permanence and loyal commitment from its various elements, each of them must have a goal from which it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others.” [2]

So a truly cooperative “alliance” involves a set of “common interests” with no “basic conflict”. There is nothing complicated about this, as most human interests are generally held in common and are best managed democratically. The most obvious exceptions are any sort of personal drive for financial independence or political power, derived through private accumulation and exclusive individual control of capital surplus. These pursuits tend to promote hostile relations with others and establish opposing sets of interests. Everyone wants control of capital surplus — and everyone should have it — democratically. For the very essence of capital is social improvement, and there is no justification for that power to be concentrated in the hands of an exclusively entitled minority. Economic democracy and political service are collaborative, not individual, pursuits, and the wreckage of our dying system is potentially fuel for more universal and sustainable levels of human cooperation. Unemployed capital and unemployed labor living side-by-side is always an opportunity to transform the system. So there is no reason Dr. King’s dream of racial equality through the abolition of poverty can’t materialize. But there is also no reason to expect such blessings to be delivered from the President of the United States or his floundering Congress. As Dr. King further suggests:

“When a people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance when they have accumulated the power to enforce change. When they have amassed such strength, the writing of a program becomes almost an administrative detail. It is immaterial who presents the program; what is material is the presence of an ability to make things happen. The powerful never lose opportunities — they remain available to them. The powerless, on the other hand, never experience opportunity — it is always arriving at a later time. The deeper truth is that the call to prepare programs distracts us excessively from our basic and primary tasks… Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands. We must develop, from strength, a situation in which the government finds it wise and prudent to collaborate with us. It would be the height of naiveté to wait passively until the administration had somehow been infused with such blessings of goodwill that it implored us for our programs. The first course is grounded in mature realism; the other is childish fantasy.” [2]

The abolition of poverty will begin here and now — in the United States of America — with a deliberate and aggressive expansion of the cooperative business sector supported by a network of publicly owned banks. [24] For higher levels of economic democracy are a prerequisite, not a byproduct, of programs like Basic Income Guarantee and Single Payer Health Care. To demand progressive programs from a conservative government is “the height of naiveté”. To expect a conservative government to magically become progressive with the election of a black man to the Presidency is “childish fantasy”. The challenge and the responsibility for the pursuit of progressive measures belongs to individuals and firms at the community level who already understand the root of the problem and the potential solutions. Lots of people simply “don’t get it”, and that’s okay. The responsibility of those who do understand is not to persuade or convince those who stubbornly object, but to transform social relations at the community level by providing a superior living example of economic democracy [25] to others who are more receptive.

Michael Moore recently distributed a list of “15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now” in these regards. [26] But as stated above, the most urgent measures on that list involve democratizing the workplace and capital investment: 1) Fire your boss and reorganize the workplace cooperatively. 2) Close your bank account and deposit your money in a credit union or some other form of publicly owned bank. That is, any kind of system that does not feed back into the currently predominant debt-based monetary system. The combination of both measures is a large-scale dismissal of the current socioeconomic system. Instead of money being loaned into circulation at interest from a fractional reserve and exclusively controlled by a handful of private bankers, cooperative firms will pool some portion of their productive surplus into an investment fund which is democratically ploughed back into the economy in the form of grants, specifically for the purpose of expanding the cooperative business sector.

Thus, money is earned, not loaned, into circulation, and economic growth for the sake of political power is no longer an imperative. The newborn economy will deliberately operate parallel to — and in direct competition with — the existing system, and it will steadily grow from within it. The main criteria for success is a transfer of popular consent from the old system to the new. So transition will most likely be slow and painful, and the new system must constantly innovate to develop and maintain competitive advantage without compromising the basic principles of the democratic local cooperative. Laws and customs will eventually change. But until they do, the challenging cooperative economy must be led voluntarily by a growing body of individuals and organizations who already understand the urgent need for deep systemic transformation. Without this fundamental understanding in mind, any movement against capitalism will certainly fail.

In summary, British philosopher James Allen (1864 – 1912) wrote a short volume called “As A Man Thinketh” during the turbulent Industrial Revolution of late nineteenth-century England. In that small book he presents the following overview of human cooperation: “It has been usual for men to think and to say, ‘Many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor.’ Now, however, there is among an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment to say, ‘One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves.’ The truth is that oppressor and slave are cooperators in ignorance, and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. A perfect Knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor; a perfect Love, seeing the suffering which both states entail, condemns neither, a perfect Compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed.” [27]

Notes:

[1] Staff. (February 02, 2009). “What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?”. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/news/article/what_would_dr_king_want_to_say_to_barack_obama/

[2] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press. Excerpts from chapter 5. ISBN 0807005711

[3] Wikipedia. (11-23-2009). “Economic democracy: National dividend”. Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy#National_dividend

[4] Obama, Barack. (2003). “Obama on single payer health insurance”, speech to the AFL-CIO. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE

[5] Kall, Rob. (11-10-2009). “Top-down blowback; The GOP Discovers that the Grassroots Bites Back”. OpEd News. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Top-down-blowback-The-GOP-by-Rob-Kall-091110-686.html

[6] Progressive Democrats of America. (07-23-2009). “The Mad as Hell Doctors Road Tour”. PDA Web site. http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/alliances/2009-07-23-09-33-18-alliances.php

[7] Stucke, John. (11-20-2009). “Ranks of uninsured swell in state”. Spokesman Review. Spokane, WA. pg 1. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/nov/20/ranks-of-uninsured-swell-in-state/

[8] Kendall, David. (09-03-2009). “Health Care and the Free Market”. OpEd News. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Health-Care-and-the-Free-M-by-David-Kendall-090830-360.html

[9] Lendman, Stephen. (11-18-2009). “Universal Single Payer Health Care Coverage: An Economic Stimulus Plan”. Countercurrents. http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman181109.htm

[10] Randall, Kate. (07-28-2009). “Obama’s health care counterrevolution”. World Socialist Web Site http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/pers-j28.shtml

[11] Roberts, Paul Craig. (10-10-2009). “Warmonger Wins Peace Prize “. Countercurrents. http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts101009.htm

[12] King, Dr. Martin Luther. (12-10-1964). “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech”. Nobelprize.org. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html

[13] Harvey, David. (11-21-2009). “Race and the Mortgage Crisis”. WordPress. http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/race-and-the-mortgage-crisis/

[14] Harvey, David. (10-29-2008). “A Financial Katrina – Remarks on the Crisis”. City University of New York Graduate Center: Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey. http://davidharvey.org/2008/12/a-financial-katrina-remarks-on-the-crisis/

[15] Bergen, Kathy. (11-06-2009). “African-Americans hit inordinately hard by recession”. Chicago Tribune. Chicago, IL. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-black-jobs-nov06,0,2759566.story

[16] Pinkney, Larry. (11-05-2009). “And What of the Black Underclass?”. The Black Commentator. http://www.blackcommentator.com/349/349_kir_black_underclass_printer_friendly.html

[17] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press. Excerpts from chapter 2. ISBN 0807005711

[18] Douglass, James W. (March 15. 2000). “The King Assassination: After Three Decades, Another Verdict”. Christian Century. http://www.precaution.org/lib/09/prn_king_assassination_another_verdict.000315.htm

[19] Goodman, Amy. (11-19-2009). “Hungering for a True Thanksgiving”. Information Clearinghouse. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24016.htm

[20] Wallace, William S. (06-01-2009). “Most young people don’t meet standards for military service”. Spokesman Review. Spokane, WA. pg 1. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2008/jun/01/most-young-people-dont-meet-standards-for/?print-friendly

[21] Davenport, Christian, and Emma Brown. (11-06-2009). “Most young unfit for military”. Washington Post-ABC News poll reported in the Spokesman Review. Spokane, WA. pg 1. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/nov/06/most-young-unfit-for-military/

[22] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press. Excerpts from chapter 4. ISBN 0807005711

[23] Harvey, David. (2008). “The Right To The City”. Text: http://davidharvey.org/media/righttothecity.pdf. Video Lecture: http://www.a0n.com/medellin/righttothecity.htm

[24] Dorrien, Gary. (05-15-2009). “A Case For Economic Democracy”. OpEd News. http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=A-Case-for-Economic-Democr-by-Gary-Dorrien-090513-750.html

[25] Wikipedia. (11-23-2009). “Economic democracy”. Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy

[26] Moore, Michael. (10-22-2009). “Michael Moore’s Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now. MichaelMoore.com. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/michael-moores-action-plan-15-things-every-american-can-do-right-now

[27] Allen, James. (B 1864 – D 1912) (published 1992). “As A Man Thinketh”. Barnes & Noble. pg 37

Muslims In 21st Century America: Violent Clashing Culture

Part1: Basic incompatibility of Western thought and Muslim theocracy…

“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims,” said radio talk show host Peter Boyles last week on www.khow.com in Denver, Colorado.

Boyles’ remarks followed a horrific mass killing by Muslim U.S. Army Major Nadal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan blasted away at 42 military personnel and civilians as they stood defenseless in line awaiting deployment processing for the Middle East. He screamed, “Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar!” while unloading his firearms into the bodies of U.S. troops.

A female off-duty police officer waded into the chaos with her gun blazing until she brought him down with four shots. He lays in a Fort Hood hospital bed in critical condition.

His condition stands as a warning and a metaphor for the United States of America as it places itself in critical danger by importing millions from incompatible cultures and languages into America at breakneck speed. It reminds me of students in a chemistry class pouring unknown chemicals into a beaker and hoping it doesn’t boil over or blow up.

This incident isn’t the first time. U.S. Army Muslim Sergeant Hasan Akbar threw a grenade into a tent at the beginning of the Iraq War, which killed three U.S. Army officers.

The philosopher Emanuel Kant said, “Religion and language are the two great dividers of humanity.”

First of all, Islam’s basic tenant means, “Submission.” Imams say that Islam remains a religion of peace, but they fail to tell listeners that peace will arrive only when Islam becomes the sole religion in the world. Its prime directive in the Koran reads, “…convert or kill all non-believers, starting with the Jews.”

If you look at Islam in the modern world, its terror tactics began in Munich, Germany 1972 with the mass killings of Jewish athletes at the Olympics. From that point, every major mass murder, or killing attempt across the planet stems from Muslim terrorists at regional levels all the way to the 19 Muslims that brought down the World Trade Towers. Muslim terrorists brought down Pan American airlines at Lockerbie, blew up barracks filled with soldiers in Africa, bombed night clubs in Balli, killed Theo Van Gogh, train bombings in Madrid, Spain; subway bombings in London, 9/11, Fort Dix six, and dozens of other killings or attempted bombings. Muslims place ‘fatwa’s’, (a death threat for life) against writers, speakers and political leaders such as Hirsi Ali in Holland for standing up against Islam. Muslims do not tolerate free speech, free choice of religion and they do not tolerate women as equals.

Two weeks ago, in Detroit, Michigan, 11 Muslims fought FBI agents with calls to create a separate Muslim state in Michigan under Sharia Law. Muslims rioted in Sweden this summer against Jewish tennis players playing in that country. Muslims rioted in November 2007 in France.

Amil Imani , “Islam is Fire” , September 12, 2009, said, “The Islamic fire, fueled by immense oil income, is raging in certain regions of the world, smoldering in others, and is ready to ignite in yet other parts of the world. It is imperative for the free people of the world to abandon all illusions about Islam and put out its fire, once and for all. Multiculturalism, live and-let live, is a delusion of kind-hearted naïve people. Islam, as fractured as it is, is a non-compromising mono-culture; a cruel culture of a primitive people handed down by Muhammad some 1400 years ago.”

Most Americans sit and watch with total oblivion of the march of Islam into America. In 1990, only 100,000 Muslims inhabited the United States. Today, over eight million spread across the country with over 1,000 mosques and growing. We import over 1,500 Muslim refugees every thirty days into America. They stand in diametrical opposition to a republican form of government and equal rights for women.

At the same time, honor killings, female genital mutilation, violence toward women and hostility toward Americans accelerates.

“Immigrants devoted to their own cultures and religions are not influenced by the secular politically correct façade that dominates academia, news-media, entertainment, education, religious and political thinking today,” said James Walsh, former Associate General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. “They claim the right not to assimilate, and the day is coming when the question will be how can the United States regulate the defiantly unassimilated cultures, religions and mores of foreign lands? Such immigrants say their traditions trump the U.S. legal system. Balkanization of the United States has begun.”

For example, Muslims practice female genital mutilation (FGM). It’s 6th century Dark Ages barbarism alive in the 21st century. It occurs today in Detroit, Michigan, Freemont, California and Denver, Colorado, and wherever Islam grows in America. Seven years ago, hundreds of cases of little girls suffering from infected genitalia, after being slashed with razors and glass, landed in Colorado hospitals from the FGM ritual. Islamic practitioners, without sterile room technique or anesthesia, cut out the labia majora and minora as well as the clitoris of girls, usually less than nine years of age.

Led by Colorado House Representative Dorothy Rupert, lawmakers passed a new law to halt it. The practice didn’t stop; it torpedoed underground. What happens when Muslim culture becomes the majority and votes it into legal practice?

Have you seen a country devolve? In the Middle East today, Muslims stone women to death for adultery. They won’t allow women to drive. Women cannot go out in public without a male relative at their side. They demand separate swimming pool times for men and women. They make women hide their faces with a burka into ‘non-beingness’. They practice Sharia Law which proves harsh and diametrically opposed to parliamentary law.

Don’t think it can happen in America? Fox News, July 25, 2008 reported a Muslim honor killing in Garrett, Texas when a 12 year old girl called 911, screaming, “My dad shot me; I am dying.” She died before an ambulance arrived. Reason: father didn’t like her wearing western jeans and blouses.

In Clayton County, Georgia, July 10, 2008, a Pakistani immigrant father, Chaudry Rashid strangled his daughter for not accepting his choice of a husband. She wanted a divorce. She was 14 when she died.

In New York, February 16, 2009, FOX News, Joshua Rhett Miller reported, “The estranged wife of a Muslim television executive feared for her life after filing for divorce last month from her abusive husband,” her attorney said — and was found beheaded Thursday in his upstate New York television studio. Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37, was found dead on Thursday at the offices of Bridges TV in Orchard Park, N.Y., near Buffalo. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, has reportedly been charged with second-degree murder. “She was very much aware of the potential ramification of her filing for divorce might have,” said attorney Elizabeth DiPirro, whose law firm represented Aasiya Hassan in the divorce proceeding. “But she wanted to proceed despite the potential for it to erupt.”

Under Sharia Law in the Middle East, such an ‘honor killing’ remains accepted in Islamic society. Ann Curry on NBC hosted a news piece, “Honor Killings in America.” She reported on the astounding rise of honor killings in America by Muslim immigrants.

Last week, in Glendale, Arizona, an immigrant father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, ran down with his Jeep truck and killed his daughter Noor for being too “Westernized.” Her crime? She liked to wear jeans. A sane person might ask, “Why did he immigrate to America and why did he bring his daughter?”

Worldwide, Muslim husbands and brothers kill 5,000 women every year, year in and year out—for disobeying them. (Source: Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts, November 8, 2009, “American dream doesn’t include this nightmare) And, they get away with it because Sharia Law condones honor killings. You see, Mohammed the prophet proved an illiterate tribal war leader who cut his enemies’ heads and fingers off if they disobeyed him. His barbarism remains with Islam today.

As their numbers grow in host countries, they displace laws, culture, language and finally, take over. America will prove the last stand of humanity and Christianity against Islam’s onslaught. So, far, the USA is losing its language, customs and culture—to Islam. Of course, you see the same nightmare occurring in Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Austria, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Spain and Germany.

Part 2: Three parts of ‘soft’ Jihad, political correctness and Robert Spencer

The Coming U.S. Budget Attack

The United States is moving backwards…fast. State budget cuts are decimating essential health and social services; public education is being destroyed; the social safety net is in tatters. To make matters worse, all of this is occurring when the loss of jobs stands at a twenty-six year high with no end in sight.

But this is only phase one. The federal government intends to balance its books too, at the expense of society’s neediest. Instead of governors presiding over painful cuts, the President will be doing the gutting. And although his proposed budget isn’t due until February, the President’s spokespeople are priming the media to play a major propaganda role in what will be a colossal blow against working and poor people.

Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, has been particularly busy promoting the future cutbacks, repeating that “the country must live within its mean;” “deficits must be brought down dramatically” — something that will “require very hard choices.”

What are these hard choices? One possible option is no longer available. The biggest annual deficit producer is the U.S. military, which Obama will not radically reduce. Instead, he will increase it; Taxpayers will pay $660 billion (!) in 2010 toward the military. And maybe more — military commanders see more fighting in the future, not less; consequently, they want more money. The New York Times reports:

“…Admiral. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not say how much additional money would be needed, but one figure in circulation within the Pentagon and among outside defense budget analysts is $50 billion.” (November 4, 2009).

Senate Democrat John Murtha thinks only $40 billion extra will do the trick, making the military budget an even $700 billion for 2010.

A different “hard choice” that could fix the deficit is to drastically raise taxes on the very wealthy. To this end, Obama has made the wholly-inadequate pledge to “roll back the Bush tax cuts.” Taxing the super-rich an extra 4 percent isn’t going to do the trick; not even close. At bare minimum, their taxes should be raised an additional 35 percent, to the pre-Regan level. But Obama would never propose such an idea.

The solutions Obama has proposed are the ones that Geithner is actually referring to when he says “very hard choices.” Last January, Obama told the conservative Washington Post that, to lower deficits, he would “reform entitlement programs” — social security, Medicare, etc. Reform in this case means to eliminate, or drastically reduce. The Washington Post reports:

“President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare “bargain” with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.”

When will this happen? The Post answers: “[the] administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.” (January 16, 2009). The upward swing in the stock market gave Geithner the green light to begin his anti-entitlement public relations campaign.

By choosing not to drastically reduce military spending and not to greatly increase taxes for the super rich and corporations, Obama will have few other options: the federal deficit is too high, especially after the Bush/Obama bank bailouts.

These bailouts, combined with decades of reduced taxes for the very wealthy, created the conditions that led to our “deficit crisis.” The solution that Obama is proposing will further devastate millions already suffering from unemployment, unlivable wages, and little hope for the future.

It can be further presumed that, while Obama is getting the U.S. “financial house in order,” the Federal Reserve will assist by increasing interest rates — something demanded by U.S. foreign creditors — thereby significantly risking cutting into Wall Street’s most recent profits and opening up the possibility of transforming our Great Recession into another full-blown depression.

This is not a matter of “if,” but “when.” The imbalances in the U.S. economy are too massive; a giant “restructuring” must take place. The bank bailouts merely intensified the already enormous economic contradictions. Who pays for this restructuring will shape the future for years to come. As Obama implements his anti-worker plan, he will encounter tremendous resistance. The once-loved President will leave office more hated than Bush.

Once the Obama illusion is completely shattered, workers can begin to act independently. We must demand that the corporate elite pay for the crisis they created. Their efforts to push this crisis onto us must be fought at every step. This can be done by clearly articulating our solutions to the crisis — taxing the super-rich and the corporations, a massive public works campaign, and ending foreign wars (for starters) — and promoting these ideas through local and national coalitions of labor unions, community groups, students, the unemployed, etc. If we are united and fighting for a clear vision of the future, we will win. If we rely on the Democrats to solve this problem our fate is sealed.

U.S. Sustainable Immigration Policy For All Americans

The United States races into the 21st century like a seasick captain at the helm of a battleship plowing into Hurricane Katrina. The more he vomits, the bigger the mess to clean up. The further he heads into the 50 foot waves, the sooner he could be washed overboard. The worse the storm grows, the more the windows fog up so he cannot see where he’s going in rough seas. The more he tries to maintain a steady rudder, the faster his ship takes on water to ultimately follow the Titanic’s fate.

Today, our country, the United States of America, charges full steam ahead into a Human Katrina in the 21st century that becomes fiercer, more powerful and more ominous with every year that passes. If ‘people’ represent the North Atlantic waters of Titanic’s sinking moment—and they do—the United States cannot maintain itself as to sustainability, clean water, food, energy and quality of life.

Every 30 days, the USA takes on 200,000 to 240,000 immigrants from a never ending line of an added 77 million annually of desperately poor from around the world. They add up to over 2.5 million annually pouring into the USA. They stress our infrastructure, overwhelm our water supplies, our food supplies, our hospital facilities, our educational systems and overload our prisons.

At the bow of the Titanic, our most populace state: California–adds 1,700 mostly immigrants net gain per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year on their way to adding 20 million to their already overloaded 38 million in 2009. They destroy 250,000 acres of wilderness annually to cope with their added human payload. They add 400 cars net gain daily. California represents everything happening to America—and none of it equates to good.

As Governor Schwarzenegger said, “We are out of money….” He’s not only out of money, but he’s loaded up with a $26 billion debt, gridlocked highways, toxic air, trashed schools, filled prisons, 86 bankrupted hospitals and ER wards and water shortages. The cause? Unrelenting, massive and unending legal and illegal immigration!

In Dr. Otis Graham’s “Unguarded Gates: A History of America’s Immigration Crisis”, he writes, “Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide, but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all–ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.”

Al Gore, gracing Newsweek Magazine this week, pitches to stop global climate change. He pretends to solve the problem but he won’t whisper the cause.

The eminent US demographic expert, Dr. Albert Bartlett said, “Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases of population, locally, nationally, or globally.”

Can you? Can adding 200,000 immigrants monthly to the USA solve our toxic air over our cities? Gridlocked highways? School crowding? Water shortages? Energy costs? Hospital facilities? Enhance our quality of life?

As Mike Matz said in a Denver Post article, we lose 6,000 acres daily to human encroachment and expect to lose another 1.26 billion acres of wilderness within 35 years, i.e, ‘ecological footprint’ or, the amount of land that must be destroyed to support one American. That number equals 12.6 acres of land.

“In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.” ~Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971

Yes! I could present a dozen more examples of this “Human Katrina” swamping our country. You read about them daily, so you know what I speak about.

So how do we stop this mess without sinking our country as surely as the Titanic sank?

Dr. Jack Alpert said, “TEMPORAL BLINDNESS is a limitation in cognitive process. People with temporal blindness cannot gather and process available information into predictions of future conditions. Their processes cannot connect future conditions to a causing behavior. When their processes do create unpleasant predictions, and identify the causal behavior, they fail to create enough present meaning for the future conditions to motivate a change in that behavior.”

What’s causing our ship to sink? Fact: mass immigration.

What do we do about it? Take action!

Let’s propose a “US Sustainable Immigration Policy” of 100,000 or less annually in order to keep our country afloat today, next decade and throughout the 21st century.

Why 100,000? That many people egress the country annually. Voila! Net gain of zero!

Simple, smart, proactive, reasonable and sustainable!

Yes, you can become emotional citing that this nation’s greatness stemmed from its greatness via immigration. That was a mathematical possibility then, but now, a non-mathematical equation. We cannot continue with unrelenting immigration.

Thirty years from now our kids will ask two questions. If we fail to engage a “US Sustainable Immigration Policy”, they will be swimming in 100 million more people fighting for diminished water, resources, energy and clean air. They will gasp, “What were you thinking?”

Or, if we do enact an immigration policy, and we do not add 100 million people, and our kids enjoy quality of life, a decent living, and a balanced and thriving environment, they might ask, “Were my parents smart or what?!”

As a nation, as a culture, as a people, we must think about the 7th generation to come. How will they be able to live, eat, work, play and enjoy their lives if we fail to act responsibly?

Each of us carries a sacred trust to our children and the children of the future of this amazing United States of America as well as our planet. I urge every person reading this column to join www.numbersusa.com and become a faxer of prewritten letters to your Congress critters. Also, www.capsweb.org ; www.alipac.us ; www.firecoalition.com ; www.thesocialcontract.com and www.fairus.org .

This will prove THE single greatest issue facing our civilization in the 21st century. By our collective action, we can turn this Ship of America toward calmer, more peaceful and viable waters.

U.S. Filling Up With Dumb People: Chaos of Illiteracy

Part 2: Ethnic division, welfare, balkanization, clashing cultures.

Over 18 million human beings starve to death in third world countries around the world annually. According to the World Health Organization,10 million of them are children that die of starvation or related conditions yearly. When you watch religious channels featuring appeals to “Save the Children” in Africa, South America and Asia, what constitutes the driving condition of their plight?

Illiteracy! Culture! Profligate fecundity!

At the same time, how can the Western world in Europe and North America enjoy endless ‘all you can eat’ buffets seven days a week that created over 180 million obese people in the United States alone?

Education! Culture! Personal choice!

What happens when a highly educated society, culture and people such as the United States degrades or devolves its educational systems toward illiteracy and loss of personal accountability?

Look around you!

You watched that process clutch at the throat of American educational system for the last 40 years— and today; it’s got us by the carotid artery.

What do 35 million Americans subsisting on food stamps indicate? Answer: poor or no educational achievement.

APATHY AND TOLERANCE: THE MOST DEADLY VIRTUES OF AMERICAN SOCIETY

Personal responsibility: do you think 400,000 pregnant women that arrive annually in America, unlawfully, will birth tomorrow’s responsible citizens? Do you think millions of unwed American mothers that bring 1,2,3,4 and five children into this world using welfare “Aid to Dependent Children” will rear responsible, intelligent and contributing future citizens?

Personal accountability: do you think the 1.2 million high school dropouts annually in the USA will become thriving, contributing and responsible future citizens? You see, that number of academic failures has been mounting for over 10 years, thus, more than 11 million illiterate kids wandering the streets of America.

Do you think ethnic groups that abhor education or quit from their own lack of parental guidance, drive and academic ability – will remain docile in the burgeoning slums? Here or worldwide? I address that dilemma in Chapter 20: Burgeoning Cities of Poverty in America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. {Copies available:1 888 289 7715}

ABSOLUTE VOID OF DECENT STRATEGIC PLANNING

“Most cities in developing countries already have pressing concerns, including crime, lack of clean water and sanitation, and sprawling slums,” said Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund. “But these problems pale in comparison with those that could be raised by future growth. If we do not plan ahead, it will be a catastrophe.”

Please note that China, India, Mexico, Bangladesh, Rio, Indonesia, etc. constitute present day catastrophes already manifesting.

Where does this lead to?

What do we see happening in the USA?

Why won’t anyone address it?

Illiteracy can and will kill our civilization! No if’s, and’s or but’s! And the “when” is easily predicted.

Social Interaction EXPLOSIONS Are Inevitable.

The fact grows that the United States injects volatile mixtures of incompatible cultures, antagonistic races (e.g. – Jewish and Muslims), illiteracy and multiple languages into its core culture— hoping that it won’t explode. Yet, you can see the explosions, strife and conflict already manifesting in Great Britain, France, Holland, Norway, Germany, Austria, Spain and elsewhere.

Cultural Assimilation is NOT Happening.

In “The Silent Catastrophe” by Jared Taylor, October 12, 2009, he said, “Part of the problem for immigrants is adjusting to the U.S.; Hispanics born here are more likely to finish high school than those who immigrate as children. However, the graduation rate slightly decreases for the second U.S.-born generation (85.1 percent vs. 85.9 percent), so that in 2007, even after three generations in the United States, Hispanics had a dropout rate that was still 2.3 times the white rate – and 33 percent higher than the black rate.

“Big-city public school districts, which are heavily black and Hispanic, have appalling track-records.

In Detroit, only 26.8 percent of students graduated on time in 2006. (76 percent in 2008 reported by Brian Williams, NBC) The other worst performers were Philadelphia: 39.1 percent, Dallas: 40.7 percent, Los Angeles: 47.7 percent, and Washington, DC: 48.8 percent. Jefferson High School, which is 90 percent Hispanic and 10 percent black, had the worst dropout rate in Los Angeles: 58 percent.

“That is not the figure for students who fail to graduate on time; it is those students do not graduate at all.”

Today, newspapers and magazines publish to a sixth grade reading level for audiences across this country! The U.S. Army manuals scale their educational efforts to a 4th grade level.

Taylor continued, “The American workforce has historically been the best educated in the world: 85 percent of adult Americans are high school graduates, up from just 25 percent in 1940. Twenty-eight percent have a college degree, a fivefold increase since 1940. Better education helped raise real average per-capita income in the United States 40 percent between 1980 and 2000 – but that money had less purchasing power.

California Illiteracy; Legal AND Illegal Immigrants

“According to a 2007 report from the Migration Policy Institute, an estimated 400,000 legal immigrants and 350,000 illegal immigrants were illiterate in their native languages, much less English. This contributed to the first decline in literacy in California’s history. In 2003, its adult illiteracy rate of 23 percent— up 50 percent in the most recent 10 years— put it last among all states.”

Please note that California suffers an estimated five (ten ?) million illegal immigrants and five million recently arrived legal immigrants. It suffers a gigantic, untaxed underground economy resulting in $24 ($47 ?) billion in debt. Across the USA, immigrants cost taxpayers, according to economist Edwin Rubensetin, www.thesocialcontract.com — $346 billion annually across 15 federal agencies.

“The California Dropout Research Project at U.C. Santa Barbara estimated in 2009 that because high school dropouts commit more crime than students who stay in school, dropouts cost California $1.1 billion annually in law enforcement costs and victim damages while they are still minors,” said Taylor. “This estimate did not include lost productivity costs as adults or continuing public outlays for adult criminals and indigents.”

“For the U.S. economy, the implication of these trends is really stark,” said Patrick Callan, president of the center.

Andrew Sum of Northeastern University in Boston works with ETS on research projects said, “There is no time that I can tell you in the last hundred years,” he says, when literacy and numeracy have declined, “but if you don’t change outcomes for a wide variety of groups, this is the future we face.”

“If blacks, Hispanics, and immigrants are excluded from the American results, our performance rises from 12th, to 2nd in reading and 5th in math,” said Taylor. “This means immigrants, blacks, and Hispanics are dragging our rating down to 12th from 2nd and 5th. Likewise, the oldest Americans (56 and older) came in second in reading whereas younger Americans, those 26-35 and 16-25 years old, ranked 11th and 14th, respectively.

The oldest age groups— the ones with the most whites— are doing the best, while the youngest groups with the fewest whites do the worst. The ETS also found that native-born blacks and Hispanics performed at only the 28th percentile, compared to other rich countries, and immigrants at only the 17th percentile.”

In 2009, we suffer $35 million in shoplifting DAILY within the United States by those that lack education, personal responsibility and accountability.

As the inequities accelerate, we face entrenched and growing slums that will drive food stamp usage beyond our ability to feed our citizens. As they grow more volatile, expect balkanization, ethnic separation and confrontation. As inequities grow between the haves and have not’s, expect extreme disrespect for law and order.

Finally, why continue importing 2.5 million immigrants into this country annually when we cannot support or employ our own citizens?

Additionally, when you see 600,000 Muslim immigrants added to the Detroit, Michigan region— sporting a 76 percent dropout rate from area high schools— you can count on illiterate, upset, angry and culturally incompatible Muslim-Americans taking their frustrations out on the rest of us.

Expect growing domestic violence, honor killings, FGM, rapes and much worse as now experienced in Sweden, France and Great Britain, and, of course here in the U.S. Check out the numbers, take action at www.NumbersUSA.com and join as if your kids’ lives and this civilization depended on it. In Truth, it does.

Is Capitalism on the Ropes?

Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff…

1. Mike Whitney—In your new book, “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know”, you allude to right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a “free market” ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? (“The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” By Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, Monthly Review Press)

Michael Yates: Corporate America began to wage what turned out to be a one-sided war against working people in the mid-to late-1970s, when it became apparent that the post-World War Two “Golden Age” of U.S. capitalism was over. As profit rates fell, businesses began to develop a strategy for restoring them. This strategy had many prongs, and one of them was ideological, that is, a struggle for “hearts and minds,” to use a military term now being applied to Afghanistan. The presumed failure of Keynesian economics, marked by the simultaneous existence of escalating inflation and unemployment, gave the ideological struggle its foundation. Maybe there had been too many restrictions placed on the market, and these restrictions (minimum wages, health and safety regulations, laws facilitating union organizing in labor markets; public assistance in the form of money grants, housing subsidies, and the like; restrictions on the flow of money internationally) had led to results opposite those that liberal Keynesians had thought most likely. If these complex arguments could be tied to simple cliches, like “get the government off our backs,” “the unions have gotten too powerful” (with always a hint that they are too radical thrown into the argument), and “welfare queens” (with that always popular whiff of racism), they could provide ideological cover for what was really a matter of corporate economics, namely the making of money.

This ideological attack bore fruit quickly. President Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Volcker, under the guise of fighting inflation, immediately began to snuff the life out of working class communities by forcing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent. Today, Volcker is treated like a hero by Democrats and above reproach (though ignored by President Obama’s more right-wing economic advisors), which shows just how far to the right economic discourse has moved. What Carter began, Reagan completed, firing the Air Traffic Controllers and putting the nail in labor’s coffin. Behind the scenes in all of this and growing in strength for the next twenty years (funded by wealthy business leaders) or so were the right-wing think tanks you mention. Just as retired generals go to work for military contractors and defeated politicians become lobbyists, government economic advisors get jobs at Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute. The staffs of these ideological centers churn out endless position papers and studies, which find their way into our newspapers and the offices of our congresspersons. A gigantic network of professors, journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and, today, a television network (Fox) bombard us with right-wing propaganda. That all of this has been successful is seen by the fact that the shibboleths of neoliberalism—such as the needs for privatization of public entities, the free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the evils of raising the minimum wage—are all commonplaces today.

While the public now knows that something is rotten, I am not sure that neoliberal ideas are so under attack that they will lose their sway. I think that the tenacity of these ideas owes something to the lack of an ideological alternative, which, in turn, is due to the abject failure of organized labor to provide one. For example, we need universal health care. Labor, however, has not consistently argued in favor of this or supported it at all. Now Congress is poised to enact healthcare legislation that might well be worse than the profit-driven system we have all come to hate. Labor should refuse to support this legislation, but I doubt it will. Then, when the new healthcare plans fail to deliver the goods, the right-wing will be lying in wait, ready to pounce and say, “See, we told you so. The government always makes things worse.” In other words, until there is a radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to lose its drawing power.

Fred Magdoff: Although these institutions were very successful, along with a number of other forces, in shaping public attitudes toward the economy, the reality of the current severe economic conditions are causing many, including some economists, to rethink their views of how “efficiently” markets function in the real world (as opposed to their ideological make-believe world) and that some different approaches may be needed. People seem to understand that the “big players” played a major role in the crisis, but most of the anger has been placed on the outrageous salaries of the top echelon. Of course, this is just “chump change” compared to the massive amounts at that are transferred to the wealthy through the speculative casino that our economy has become.

2. MW—Socialism has a huge public relations problem. Wouldn’t you agree that socialism has been effectively discredited in the U.S. media and that, even now–with unemployment soaring at 10 percent and more than 300,000 foreclosures per month–the average American worker still believes in the virtues of capitalism? How do you explain this phenomenon?

Michael Yates: Part of my answer here can be seen in my response to your first question. Socialism has, indeed, been discredited here, partly due to its rejection by its natural supporter, namely the labor movement. The CIO expelled in the late 1940s and early 1950s the left-wing forces who built the great industrial unions. When it did this, it abandoned the worker-centered ideology that might have laid the basis for support here for at least the kind of social democracy we find in the Scandinavian nations. This left the ideological field to the enemies of social democracy and socialism. Of course, we cannot ignore the long and inglorious history of police-state repression of those persons and organizations that championed socialism. Our government has never hesitated to arrest, imprison, and even kill the enemies of capitalism. So it has been dangerous to be a radical here, though not so much today when radical ideas aren’t taken seriously and there are no powerful radical organizations left. Suppose that after the Second World War, the left in the labor movement had grown, and the left-led unions had continued to successfully organize workers and win good collective bargaining agreements. Suppose that they had built upon their impressive worker education programs, made inroads in the South, and fought hard against U.S. imperialism and the Cold War. We might have a much different political terrain on which to fight today.

Two other factors that must be considered in the attachment of the working class to capitalism are racism and imperialism. In the past, employers routinely pitted white workers against black, and one weapon they used was to associate black workers (and the civil rights movement) with communism (It was interesting to note in this connection the attempts to make Obama out to be a radical socialist). The claim that black union supporters were reds helped to solidify white support for capitalism. By the same token, anti-imperialist struggles in the poor nations of the world (often former colonies of the rich countries) were typically led by political radicals. These could be made out to be anti-American, and then those in the United States who allied themselves with these struggles could also be labeled anti-American, despite the fact that they might also be supportive of policies that would benefit working people. The schools and the media could be counted out not to try to set anyone straight on any of this.

Now, having said this, I must also say that to the extent that left forces in the United States identified themselves uncritically with the former Soviet Union and its extremely undemocratic political system, they sometimes played into the hands of those opposed to socialism. And I must also admit that socialist forces were, at their strongest, never powerful enough here to force their best ideals permanently into the consciousness of the working class majority. Finally, in the past, the success of capitalism in the United States allowed for some sharing of the wealth with workers, and this, too, made people less willing to entertain radical ideas.

Old and deeply ingrained ideas die hard, and unless there are forces at work to develop new ones and unless there is at least widespread experimentation with new ways to organize production and distribution, little is likely to change, even in the face of economic catastrophe, such as so may working men and women are facing right now. Quite the contrary, workers might be persuaded that actions detrimental to their long-term self-
interest need to be taken, such as, for example, draconian measures against immigrants.

Fred Magdoff: There is no question that the term socialism has a public relations problem. But while it’s true that most people don’t fully understand the basic workings of the capitalist system nor what socialism is, there are indications that many people are ready to talk about alternatives—and that includes socialism. The positive public response to Michael Moore’s movie, “Capitalism,” is one indication. But a Rasmussen poll last spring found that only 58% of American’s say that capitalism is better than socialism. For adults under 30, 37% preferred capitalism and 33% preferred socialism. It’s not clear what the poll results really mean. But it does indicate that people are willing to hear about and talk about alternatives to capitalism.

3. MW—In a chapter titled “Neoliberlism” you focus on the disparity of wealth in the US today. Here’s an excerpt:

“By 2006 the top 1 percent of households received close to a quarter of all income and the top 10 percent got 50 percent of the income pie. In 2006, the 400 richest Americans had a collective net wealth of $1.6 trillion, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million people. This degree of income and wealth inequality was last seen just before the beginning of the Great Depression.” (pg 50)

Let’s ignore the moral issue for now, and focus on the supply/demand question. Is it possible for an economy to produce sufficient demand when more and more of the wealth and income goes to the upper 5 or 10 percent of the population? (isn’t this proof that capitalism is inherently crisis-prone?)

Michael d. Yates: If a certain amount of output is produced, an equal amount of income is generated. So, conceptually, there could be enough demand to buy the output, no matter that the incomes generated are getting more unequally distributed. It certainly has been the case that the rich people now getting such a large share of the pie spend gobs of money. And rich foreigners spend a great deal of money in the United States as well. However, the rich also save a lot of money (the more they get, the more they save), and this money does not enter immediately into the spending flow. Working people, on the other hand, can be counted on, by virtue of the limited income that they command, to spend all of their income. Therefore, the more income the rich have, the more savings there will be, and, unless some way is found to convert all this saving into spending on newly-produced goods and services, the more likely it is that there will be a crisis caused by not enough spending (and its corollaries of unsold goods and services and unemployed labor). If we understand that growing inequality is the normal trajectory of capitalist economies, a trajectory only mitigated by the power of organized working people to win a bigger share of the pie for themselves and to compel the government to intervene in the marketplace on their behalf, then it is correct to say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone for this reason alone.

Growing inequality also creates other potential problems for the system. Sometimes it can generate a political crisis, a crisis of legitimacy so to speak. The rich exert tremendous political power, and this power grows as those at the top command a larger and larger share of a society’s income. To the rest of us, the game looks increasingly rigged, with us having little chance to improve our circumstances through individual efforts. More inequality also has harmful social and economic consequences that we don’t normally think of. Recent research has shown that if we compare two entities (two states in the United States, for example) with equal average incomes but different degrees of inequality, then the place with more unequal incomes will also have higher rates of infant mortality, arrest and imprisonment, school dropouts, low infant birth weights, and many other measures of social well-being. Growing inequality actually kills some of us, makes some of us sicker, and puts some of us in jail.

I want to add an important point. To say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone, because of a tendency toward income inequality or whatever other reason, is not the same as saying that these economies are on their deathbeds, no matter how severe a crisis may be. It is possible for an economy to exist in a crisis or a prolonged period of slow growth (stagnation) without it being ready to collapse. In the end, it is political struggle, that is, class struggle, that truly destabilizes an economy and generates conditions in which it is possible to imagine the birth of a new system.

Fred Magdoff adds: It is one of the many contradictions of the system. If ordinary folk are paid well they can buy a lot of stuff and help keep the system going. So from the point of view of the system as a whole, higher paid workers would help the economy. However, there is only one driving force for individual capitalists–and that’s to make as much money as possible. What might be better for the overall economy can be of no concern to the individual trying to maximize profits. For an analogy, let’s take a look at ocean fishing. Almost every fish species is being fished to the point at which the population crashes. It would make sense for all of the companies operating the large trawlers to cooperate and fish less in order to preserve the resource on which they depend. So what’s good for their long-term future is sacrificed as each individually tries to maximize their catch and therefore profits.

4. MW—Here’s another excerpt from the book: “In 2006, the financial sector employed about 6 percent of the workers but ‘produced’ 40 percent of the profits of all domestic firms.”(pg 56) A few paragraphs later you add that, “Making money without actually making something turned out to be the largest growth sector of the U.S. economy from the early 1980s to the present crisis.”

This seems to imply that as manufacturing and other parts of the “real” economy have become less lucrative, the trading of paper assets has become Wall Street’s new profit-center, the Golden Goose. What impact has the “financialization” of the economy had on ordinary working people?

Michael Yates: I think that an answer here has two parts. First, it was the neoliberal “revolution” begun in the 1970s that did immense harm to working people. For example, unionization rates began to fall dramatically in the 1980s, as Reagan began his “magic of the marketplace” assault on the working class. Real wages (the purchasing power of our paychecks) began to stagnate in the 1970s and are not much higher today than then. Relatively high-wage public employment began to endure a long period of privatization, which also damaged working class living standards. The move toward “free trade” did workers here no good, as manufacturing began to flee our shores for low-wage havens abroad. None of these things had to do with financialization per se.

Second, however, once the neoliberal attack on working class living standards took hold and incomes began to flow upward, those with a great deal more money began to look for ways to put this money to work. The corporations that they owned also had higher profits, and they did the same. The United States has always had a robust financial sector, though in the past, it was not the tail that wagged the dog as far as our system of production and distribution was concerned. Neoliberalism brought with it a deregulation of international movements of money and goods and services. [It is important to note that we see neoliberalism as a political response to capital’s quest for restored profits beginning in the mid-1970s when the post-Second World War two economic boom ended and the slow growth (stagnation) common to mature capitalist economies reasserted itself.] These, in turn, required a certain amount of financial innovation, to reduce, for example, the risks of fluctuations in currency exchange rates and sharp changes in political conditions that could threaten investments. From these innovations came still more, until finance began to take on a life of its own. And while neoliberalism and direct corporate actions inside workplaces did reduce costs and raise profits, they did not create nearly enough capital spending opportunities (investment) to absorb the growing individual savings and business profits. Finance of one kind or another then began to be seen as a place to dispose of surplus and make still more money. Leveraged buyouts, stock market speculations, real estate “investments,” all took off from the 1980s on, absorbing money that could not find enough opportunities in the real economy of production. As these things happened, financial “innovation” exploded, with all of the alphabet soup of financial instruments we describe in our book.

This explosion of finance proved detrimental to working people in a number of ways. Leveraged buyouts inevitably resulted in the hollowing out of what were often perfectly viable businesses. Companies were saddled with debt, assets were stripped and sold, and workers were furloughed by the tens of thousands. The inflation of asset values gave rise to the notion that it was the job of managers to increase the share price of their businesses—in any way possible. Businesses came to be thought of as mere collections of assets rather than entities that produced things. Asset inflation gave rise to asset speculation and the development of ever more complex financial instruments, all leading sooner or later to financial bubbles and the inevitable bursting of the bubbles. As we have seen, the bursting of financial bubbles has had tremendously negative impacts on working people: shuttered workplaces and unemployment to name but the primary ones. The last bubble, in real estate markets, was harmful to workers not only after it burst but also as it was developing. In the aftermath of the dot.com bubble, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed Board of Governors, directed Fed policy to pressure interest rates down to very low levels. This helped to push loose money into real estate. As house prices began to rise, banks and brokers started to encourage working people to do two things: borrow money against the appreciated value of their homes and buy homes, either as first-time buyers or as purchasers of more expensive homes (after selling old ones). Working people were eager to do both because they saw houses as sources of cash to compensate for stagnating household incomes and as a form of wealth that could help secure them against the hazards of ill health, lost pensions, or college-age children needing money for school. Working class households began to take on large amounts of debt, making themselves more vulnerable, even as they thought they were making wise financial decisions. Ironically, those who saw their incomes rise so high because of neoliberalism were now, in effect, loaning money to those who didn’t fare so well. As banks accumulated mortgages, farsighted Wall Street swindlers saw golden opportunities to develop a slew of new financial instruments based upon the packaging and repackaging of mortgages into new and exotic instruments. Greenspan played their shill, arguing that they had uncovered the secret of hedging infallibly against risk. From here it was but a short step to the criminal schemes of Countrywide and a host of other financial institutions. The billions of dollars made were used not only to finance a new gilded age of revoltingly lavish consumption but to corral the most tractable politicians money could buy.

Fred Magdoff adds: Financialization of the economy created the possibilities for people to take on more and more debt—credit cards, new cars, 2nd mortgages, etc. It was the selling of a lifestyle way beyond people’s ability to pay for it plus the easy access of loans that created the bind that many people find themselves in today. In essence, it allowed people to live beyond their means. They were encouraged to take on debt as their house values seemed headed up forever, and the great rise in foreclosures and bankruptcies is the unfortunate result of the financialization of the economy. Also, those people who had retirement money in individual accounts or with pension systems and thought that they had become very wealthy, now found themselves with much less to rely upon.

5. MW—In the last couple of decades, consumer debt has skyrocketed, as you note, “doubling from 1975 to 2005, to 127 percent of disposable income.” (pg 60) Have we gone as far as we can without deleveraging and paying down debts? What happens to a credit-dependent economy when the consumer can no longer increase his/her debt-load? Is this just the beginning of a decades-long down-cycle?

Michael Yates: Certainly no entity—not a person, a family, a business, even a government— can take on rising levels of debt (relative to income) indefinitely. Sooner or later, the piper has to be paid. Working-class consumers took on large amounts of debt, to compensate in part for stagnating wages and incomes, and, it is important to note, to pay for health problems and other household traumas. This meant that the burden of the debt rose, since income wasn’t rising as fast as the debt, and also because the interest rates charged on credit cards and subprime mortgages were so high. We at Monthly Review have been decrying the rise of consumer debt for many years, and we said that the debt chickens would come home to roost sooner of later. I must say that I was surprised that debt could be broadened and deepened for so long. The ingenuity of creditors in extending loan periods and devising so many new forms of debt has to be admired for its audacity. Then, the ways in which these debts were packaged and sold so that more debt could be extended was truly breathtaking. Unfortunately, consumers ultimately couldn’t pay and all hell broke loose. Now, with so much unemployment, workers are truly strapped. They will not be borrowing so much or spending so much anytime soon. [One interesting recent development is that, as some households have defaulted on debts or simply stopped making payments, consumer spending has showed a bit of an upward tick!] So the question arises: what spending will fuel a sustained recovery? It won’t likely be consumer spending. Capital spending was stagnating to begin with and was the root cause of the crisis. There are no new “epoch-making” innovations on the horizon that would generate the amounts of investment that were brought forth by the automobile. U.S. exports seem a very unlikely demand support. That leaves the government. In a capitalist economy, especially one like the United States with its lack of a history of generally accepted public spending, it seems very unlikely that public spending will make up for shortfalls in aggregate demand. Already, there are widespread entreaties (and not just from the far right) urging the federal government to wind down in spending programs—well before, I might add, the economy has recovered. As we see it, the United States is, indeed, in for a long period of stagnation, a “down cycle” as you put it.

Fred Magdoff: This is one of the major constraints on the system. The economy is in a process that economists call “deleveraging,” which is just another way of referring to somehow getting rid of debt. Some are able to pay off what they owe, a few are able to renegotiate down some of their debt, many are losing their homes, and some are going bankrupt. Until this works its way out, and a lot of debt is shed one way or another, there will be a drag on the “consumer” portion of the purchases. This is particularly significant to the U.S. economy because it is so dependent on consumer purchases—in 2007, these absorbed approximately 70% of the goods and services produced.

6. MW— “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” is as lucid and compelling summary of the financial crisis as any I have read. In the closing chapter you state that capitalism is undergoing a “crisis of legitimacy” and that “the system can never deliver what is needed for us to realize our capacities and enjoy our lives…That “instead of private gain” the purpose of society and the economy is “to serve the needs of people, by providing the necessities of life for all, without promoting excessive consumption (consumerism) while protecting earth’s life support systems.”

All of the things that which kept capitalism in check–progressive taxation, crucial regulations, and the power of unions–have either been reversed, repealed or greatly eroded. More and more people are beginning to see the greed which governs the system, and it scares them. But is the country really ready for structural change or will the vision of an economy which “serves the needs of its people” be dismissed as “pie-in-the-sky” Utopianism?

Michael Yates: Well, first thank you Mike for the kind words. They are much appreciated. Typically, the best we have been able to hope for from the public in the United States has been an amorphous populism; people are willing to say that the system is corrupt and that it is biased in favor of the rich. But proposals for change, much less a radical transformation of the economic system, are rare commodities. I think things would be different, however, if we had a real labor movement, one that was rooted in communities, broad in its composition, and not afraid to have principles and stand by them come hell or high water. This should be the lesson that progressives learned from the right-wing. The talking heads of Fox may seem insane to us, but they and their intellectual gurus almost never deviate from the set of reactionary principles with which they began to transform the “common sense” of the nation. We suggest at the end of our book that we ought to ask ourselves if a return to the pre-economic crisis status quo is what we want. In the best of times, there is plenty of unutilized labor, a degraded environment, poverty, dead-end jobs, and much more that is not so desirable. So we chose a number of alternative outcomes to what we have now that we think have mass appeal, from universal healthcare to basic food guarantees. However, as you say, these might well, and I think will cause people to react with a pie-in-the-sky indifference. What might make working men and women stand up and take notice would be for these goals to have a mass-based advocate, one that would make these goals matters of rigid principle and begin to fight for them through mass actions. We might think that the right-wing ideologues we see on television are insane. Yet, come hell or high water, they stick to their guns. Their political and economic adherents have wielded tremendous power for a long period of time, and even today when they seem to be losing their grip on the national “common sense,” they can still mobilize the faithful. The left needs to take a lesson from this. More particularly, the labor movement must take a firm and rigid stand on issues like national health care, food security, environmental degradation, full employment, good and cheap housing, U.S. war-making and imperialis, racism, and a host of others. Then it must educate members rigorously and constantly about such principles. Most importantly, it must begin to actively fight to achieve them, activating its millions of members and allies, wherever it can find them. It is through action, bold and unafraid, that people’s minds will get changed and a new “common sense” developed.

Having said this, I think it is clear that the labor movement, as currently constituted, is not up to the tasks at hand. Too many unions are moribund, stuck in the failed labor-management cooperation mind set of the past and run by people too old and infirm to do much of anything. So, not only will we have to have a worker-led opposition to the status quo, fighting to change it radically, but this opposition will have to be built on a new basis. There are some hopeful signs, such as the development of community-based worker centers, mainly in immigrant communities. These may be models for the labor movement of the future.

Fred Magdoff: Just getting what should be the most reasonable reforms through Congress is a major effort, which usually fails or is corrupted in the process. Look what’s happening with health care “reform.” Even if a “public option” is finally part of the bill, it will be a bill that helps some people, but is primarily a boon to the health care industry, which will get a lot of new revenue. It’s not a bill designed with the single purpose in mind: how can we supply medical care for everyone at reasonable cost. Rather it’s a bill designed with significant input from the for-profit sector that will end up supplying them with extra profits. It is clear that government-run systems (and there are a variety of ways to do this) are far cheaper and more efficient and can actually cover everyone. SO, it seems as though piecemeal reform is a) very difficult to obtain and b) can be reversed as the power of the wealthy increases. A system is needed that can break the power of the wealthy and create a real political and economic democracy in order to be able to meet the basic needs for all the people.

Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff, “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” Monthly Review Press, New York

U.S. Filling Up With Dumb People: Immigration’s Ultimate Dilemma

“Transforming the American dream into the American tragedy.”

Part 1: Illiteracy leads to shoplifting, babies, crime, gangs…

As an educator in Colorado through the 70s, 80s and 90s, I watched academic standards and expectations drop like a brick in a bucket of water, like a jet fighter plane auguring into the ground, like water cascading over Niagara Falls.

As if guided by an invisible hand nationwide, administrators forced teachers to dumb down the academic requirements. Teachers passed kids to the next grade level… whether those children performed… or not.

Good students dragged down by their illiterate peers

As they failed to cement their educational foundations with the basics— the gaps in their math, science, reading and English skills— created terrible frustrations in their personal lives. When their irritation levels became too great, they ‘gave up’ their pursuit of minimal levels of educational achievement.

Often, while being ‘pushed’ up through grade levels, they acted out their annoyances with disrespect for teachers as they became malcontents, troublemakers or shut down altogether to cope with their growing lack of self-esteem… and failures.

Cannot think critically, read at a fifth grade level or balance a check book.

This year, Paul Robeson High School in Chicago, Illinois featured 115 pregnant girls. That equals not only 115 dumb girls, but 115 dumb boys, which will beget 115 more troubled babies facing horrific futures on all counts. Thus, millions drop out or ‘graduate’ functionally illiterate, i.e., cannot think critically, read at a fifth grade level or balance a check book.

To completely upend and degrade the educational systems of America, the late U.S. Senator Teddy Kennedy, in 1965, passed a bill to inject 1.2 to 1.5 million immigrants into the equation annually. While some are doctors and nurses, to be sure, others come from third-world nations with precious few academic skills. They arrive with dozens of languages, cultural bias against education and hostility toward learning.

Forty years later, we have 100 million people added to the United States from disparate cultures around the world, as K-12 educational systems around America grind on in total chaos.

With a 600,000 Middle Eastern immigrant load in central and suburban Detroit, Michigan, as reported by NBC’s Brian Williams, “…76 percent of high school students in Detroit schools flunked out this June… other cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston feature similar dropout rates from 50 to 60 percent… each year 1.2 million teens hit the streets illiterate.”

That leads up to the distressing fact that 1 in 7 Americans remains functionally illiterate:

Illiteracy Statistics

• 42 million American adults can’t read at all; 50 million are unable to read at a higher level that is expected of a fourth grader.
• The number of adults that are classified as functionally illiterate increases by about 2.25 million each year.
• 20 percent of high school seniors can be classified as being functionally illiterate at the time they graduate.

Source: National Right to Read Foundation

Where Illiteracy Leads

• 70 percent of prisoners in state and federal systems can be classified as illiterate.
• 85 percent of all juvenile offenders rate as functionally or marginally illiterate.
• 43 percent of those whose literacy skills are lowest live in poverty.

Source: National Institute for Literacy

Yet, with those disturbing figures, our U.S. Congress, by their action and by their inaction, imports an added 2.5 million legal and illegal immigrants into this country every year. That equals over 200,000 every 30 days. AND THE FOLKS FROM THIRD-WORLD NATIONS HAVE HIGH BIRTH RATES. Their kids overwhelm our schools… subverting education for our own children. The immigrants themselves face daunting challenges as to culture, language and jobs.

In Denver, we suffer 85 languages and a 67 percent Denver Public Schools flunkout rate, as reported by the now defunct Rocky Mountain News in a story “What Happened?” Ironically, the ‘Rocky’ bankrupted in 2008 because not enough people could read! The same holds true for dozens of cities across our country.

Becoming a nation of dummies in the 21st Century

What happens when somebody cannot read, write or perform simple math?

If they cannot obtain a labor job, they pursue crime, drugs, alcohol, welfare, homelessness and worse. Such uneducated women usually become pregnant and their children become abused, live in poverty and become wards of the state. Over 13.4 million American children live below the poverty line according to Katie Couric in a recent telecast. An astounding 35 million Americans subsist on food stamps.

Massachusetts; A Glaring Example.

What happens when young adult women fail their educational pursuits? Let’s use one state to show you the underbelly of what’s happening to the United States:

Nearly nine of every 10 teen-agers who gave birth in Massachusetts were unmarried, the highest percentage of out-of-wedlock teen-age births of any state in the nation. According to the most recent data available from the National Center for Health Statistics, 86 percent of the 7,018 mothers under age 20 who gave birth in this state two years ago were not married.

The percentage was higher in Boston, hitting 92 percent. In Springfield, 90 percent of teen-age mothers were unmarried. “It is staggeringly high,” said state Health and Human Services Secretary Charles D. Baker Jr. Additionally, it is estimated that 80 percent of unwed teen mothers end up welfare.

The declining quality of the American work force.

In a penetrating article, Jared Taylor, “The Silent Catastrophe” October 12 2009, “One great, avoidable evil we face is the declining quality of the American work force. The Census Bureau tells us that if immigration continues at its current rate of some two million people a year, whites will become a minority of the under-18 child population in just 14 years— in 2023— and will become a minority of the working population just 16 years later.

The greatest increase will be in Hispanics, who are now dropping out of high school at higher rates than blacks, doing little better than blacks when they manage to stay in school, and are the group least likely to go to college. Demographers are beginning to warn that as well-educated, white baby boomers retire and are replaced by poorly educated blacks and Hispanics, the productivity gains of the last several hundred years will be reversed, and the United States could go into a tailspin.”

“We have the possibility of transforming the American dream into the American tragedy,” says Irwin Kirsch, senior research director at the Educational Testing Service. He warns that our increasingly non-white and immigrant workforce threatens not only our standard of living, but the very survival of republican government (the U.S. is a Republic) based on an informed middle class.

“Here are some of the facts,” said Taylor. “In 2007, 93.5 percent of white and 93.1 percent of Asian 18- to 24-year-olds had graduated from high school. The figures for blacks and Hispanics were 88.8 percent and 72.7 percent, meaning that Hispanics were more than four times more likely than whites… and 2.4 times more likely than blacks… to have failed to graduate from high school.”

Painfully, as witnessed in Detroit, so many poor people shoplifted from grocery stores and retail merchants that the businesses bankrupted or vacated the inner city. Thus, the poor cannot find a place to buy their groceries… even with food stamps. On a national scale, shoplifters hoist $35 million a day in goods from retail stores. We all pay for that massive theft. Think of the implications of adding 70 million more immigrants (half of whom are illiterate) to our cities across America.

John Wayne said, “Life is tough, but it’s even tougher if you’re stupid!”

Next — Part 2: Consequences from rapidly growing illiterate numbers.

Made in China

Importing America To Its Own Death…

During the Bolshevik Revolution that led to communist Russia, Comrade Vladimir Lenin said, “Sell the capitalists enough rope and they will hang themselves!”

Nearly 100 years later, Lenin’s predictions reveal his veracity with chilling fruition. The United States bleeds $11 trillion in debt. It suffers a $700 billion annual trade deficit, mostly with China, which by the way thrives as a communist nation selling us lots of ‘rope’, i.e., consumer goods. We import another $700 billion in oil annually from other countries. We borrow $2 billion daily to float our sinking economy. The average American’s credit card debt equals $9,425.00 according to NBC’s Brian Williams. We suffer 15 million unemployed American workers and 35 million subsisting on food stamps.

How did Lenin’s foreshadowing come to pass? How could he know that we would bring our downfall upon ourselves?

First of all, every empire in history fell to its own manifest destiny (ego), avarice and greed. Today, the U.S. empire features 572,000 military personnel on 700 bases in 120 countries around the world. Their purpose? Few Americans could tell you! The costs accelerate to unimaginable levels.

Secondly, major capitalists, the ‘gatekeepers’ or money changers, however you want to call them, ‘own’ the power to make their choices realized. Some call them the Rothchilds, Bilderbergers, etc. The fact remains, they pull all the money strings. We remain their puppets.

For instance, in the past 15 years, the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates, ‘persuaded’ our U.S. Congress to implement H-1B, H-2B and L-1 visas that brought foreign workers into this country to displace 1.0 million U.S. IT workers. How? Those visa beneficiaries arrived from third world countries and worked at a third the wage. Additionally, big manufacturing firms insourced jobs, outsourced jobs and offshored jobs. Maytag moved to Mexico. Levi Straus moved to India. Schwinn bikes moved to Taiwan, etc.

If you visit a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Sears, Penny’s, Kohl’s and hundreds of other retail outlets, you will notice 80 to 90 percent of the hard and soft goods “Made in China” ; “Made in Mexico” : “Made in Pakistan” : “Made in Bangladesh”, etc. The most popular cars sold in America originate from Japan, Korea and Germany.

Each year, China sells the United States $700 billion in goods. Unlike Clinton, we ‘inhale’ that much junk from China! The United States sells China $67 billion in goods annually as reported by Charles Gibson on ABC last week! How’s that for ‘free trade’ and you can see the communists figured out how to sell us enough ‘rope’ to kill ourselves—and we are! China holds nearly $1 trillion of our treasury bills. We feel the squeeze of our debt every year as we pay out over $540 billion in interest on our debt. Our leaders ‘keep’ us fighting at a cost to taxpayers of $12 billion a month wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for eight friggin’ years! Are you feeling incensed?

If you look inside the USA, you see Hormel, Tyson Chicken, McDonald’s, Berger Chef, Pizza Hut, Chipotle’s, Taco Bell, and many more as well as construction firms, landscaping firms, roofing firms and car washes hiring unlawful immigrants by the millions. At least 10 million unlawful immigrants work jobs at 21st century slave wages while our citizens stand in unemployment lines or live on welfare. At the same time, we lose our jobs to illegal aliens, or see our wages downgraded, or watch our schools, culture and language vanish in front of our eyes—those few corporate chiefs make horrific profits—while we pay for illegal aliens’ educations, medical care and incarceration. How did we arrive at this obscene juncture?

Because our corrupt capitalists can make many more billions of dollars! And, they can get away with it because their lobbyists “pay off” our U.S. Senators and House Reps to NOT enforce our laws against such activities. Of recent note, former U.S. House Rep. John “Duke” Cunningham serving an eight year jail sentence for taking $2.4 million in construction bribes. How about House Rep. William Jefferson hiding $100,000 in cash in his freezer?

How many scoundrel U.S. Congressional reps haven’t been caught? My estimate: dozens if not a hundred in the U.S. House and Senate.

Notice also, that AIG just awarded more annual bonuses of $6 to $10 million to their corporate bosses—after failing—and after we taxpayers bailed them out!

You cannot help but lament, “What a country!”

Not only that, we citizens fail to demand accountability. We citizens shop at Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other stores by the millions, which means we kill our own American jobs and manufacturing.

How can I say that? Just look at our economy. We’re in debt up to our nostrils! We’re dangling at the end of an economic rope bull-hooked into our wallets by 535 members of U.S. Congress and the last four presidents. And our newest president, Barack Obama, rides and talks the same bull!

As Mark Twain once said, “Suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of congress—ah, but I repeat myself.”

The greatest flaw of our founding fathers: not placing a 12 year term limit on every position in Congress. The cronyism, personal greed and outright materialism of most of them defy a sane man’s imagination.

Amazingly, the American voters stupidly re-elect such men as the late Teddy Kennedy for 44 years of incompetence, John McCain for 30 years of failing to protect our borders, Robert Byrd who can barely totter across the Senate floor, Arlen Spector with full blown cancer for 35 years and the list grows. Those men and some women bring death to this republic, but we elect them again and again to kill us and our futures.

You might think that importing 160,000 foreigners every month, in the form of legal immigrants, would stop with 14 million Americans unemployed and 35 million living on food stamps. But you would be wrong! Not only will Congress continue, but those 535 men and women will vote for an amnesty that will lead to adding 100 million people to this country in 26 years, over 70 million immigrants.

Lenin’s prophesy continues and Mark Twain remains right on the money—while the American people watch their language, culture and way of life swirl the toilet. America: made “in” and owned “by” China!

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