What Special Interests are Bankrolling the 2012 Presidential Candidates?

By: Michael Beckel & Brad Hooker (opensecrets.org)

Last month, most presidential candidates released their first fund-raising reports in what's likely to be the most expensive presidential election in history and the first in which neither majority party candidate participates in the nation's public financing system.

So how do the major candidates stack up in terms of who is bankrolling their campaigns?

A new Center for Responsive Politics analysis shows that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has raised more than 25 percent of his funds this year from the finance, insurance and real estate sector. That's $4.65 million from the financial sector out of $18 million in overall receipts. FULL STORY

Alessio Rastani - Eurozone Market Will Crash Within 12 Months

NATO's War on Libya is Directed against China: AFRICOM and the Threat to China's National Energy Security

By: F. William Engdahl (globalresearch.ca)

The Washington-led decision by NATO to bomb Gaddafi's Libya into submission over recent months, at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of at least $1 billion, has little if anything to do with what the Obama Administration claims was a mission to "protect innocent civilians." In reality it is part of a larger strategic assault by NATO and by the Pentagon in particular to entirely control China's economic achilles heel, namely China's strategic dependence on large volumes of imported crude oil and gas. Today China is the world's second largest importer of oil after the United States and the gap is rapidly closing.

If we take a careful look at a map of Africa and also look at the African organization of the new Pentagon Africa Command—AFRICOM—the pattern that emerges is a careful strategy of controlling one of China's most strategically important oil and raw materials sources.

NATO's Libya campaign was and is all about oil. But not about simply controlling Libyan high-grade crude because the USA is nervous about reliable foreign supplies. It rather is about controlling China's free access to long-term oil imports from Africa and from the Middle East. In other words, it is about controlling China itself. FULL STORY

Destroying a Country's Standard of Living: What Libya Had Achieved, What has been Destroyed

By: Michel Chossudovsky (globalresearch.ca)

"There is no tomorrow" under a NATO sponsored Al Qaeda rebellion.

While a "pro-democracy" rebel government has been instated, the country has been destroyed.

Against the backdrop of war propaganda, Libya's economic and social achievements over the last thirty years, have been brutally reversed:

The [Libyan Arab Jamahiriya] has had a high standard of living and a robust per capita daily caloric intake of 3144. The country has made strides in public health and, since 1980, child mortality rates have dropped from 70 per thousand live births to 19 in 2009. Life expectancy has risen from 61 to 74 years of age during the same span of years.

According to sectors of the "Progressive Left" which have endorsed NATO's R2P mandate: "The mood across Libya, particularly in Tripoli, is absolutely —like there’s just a feeling of euphoria everywhere. People are incredibly excited about starting afresh. There’s a real sense of rebirth, a feeling that their lives are starting anew.
The rebels are casually presented as "liberators". The central role of Al Qaeda affilated terrorists within rebel ranks is not mentioned.

"Starting afresh" in the wake of destruction? Fear and Social Despair, Countless Deaths and Atrocities, amply documented by the independent media.

No euphoria.... A historical reversal in the country's economic and social development has occurred. The achievements have been erased. FULL STORY

Reading List: William Blum - Killing Hope (PDF)

Killing Hope is an exhaustive yet comprehensible look at U.S and CIA interventions since the Second World War. Offering not only a thorough and complete guide, Bloom's work also succeeds at proving that not a single intervention has resulted in greater autonomy or peace.

Both emotional and extremely well grounded in hard evidence, Killing Hope is an excellent resource for the already well read, and the newly interested alike. Bloom offers background information, as well as deeper insight, and never fails to point out the flaws that have been strategically kept secret within the CIA's own files.

WILLIAM BLUM - KILLING HOPE - PDF

Capitalism is the Crisis (Documentary)

Faster than light particles found, claim scientists

By: Ian Sample (guardian.co.uk)

It is a concept that forms a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe and the concept of time – nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

But now it seems that researchers working in one of the world's largest physics laboratories, under a mountain in central Italy, have recorded particles travelling at a speed that is supposedly forbidden by Einstein's theory of special relativity. FULL STORY

US builds drone bases in Africa & Arab Peninsula

By: JoAnne Allen (reuters.com)

The United States is building a ring of secret drone bases in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of an aggressive campaign against al Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing U.S. officials.

One base for the unmanned aircraft is being established in Ethiopia and another base has been installed in the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, the newspaper reported. FULL STORY

Haters Gonna Hate

Unemployed? It's All Part Of God's Plan For You

Americans who believe God has a plan for their lives are more likely to think the government "does too much," more likely to oppose unemployment benefits for healthy people and more likely to believe in the "American dream" that anything is possible for those who work hard.

Interestingly, the study also revealed that those who held such beliefs made less money than strong disbelievers. And that they tended to be less educated than disbelievers. That last finding isn’t a surprise. FULL STORY

Reading List: Corliss Lamont - The Philosophy of Humanism

Since the earliest days of philosophic reflection in ancient times in both East and West thinkers of depth and acumen have advanced the simple proposition that the chief end of human life is to work for the happiness of humans upon this earth and within the confines of the Nature that is our home. This philosophy of enjoying, developing, and making available
to everyone the abundant material, cultural, and spiritual goods of this natural world is profound in its implications, yet easy to understand and congenial to common sense. This human-centered theory of life has remained relatively unheeded during long periods of history. While it has gone under a variety of names, it is a philosophy that I believe is most accurately designated as Humanism.

CORLISS LAMONT - THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM - PDF

'Occupy Wall Street' protester arrests

IMF issues dire warning on world economy

The world economy has entered a "dangerous new phase" of sharply lower growth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned.

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, said late on Tuesday that the global economy's "recovery has weakened considerably", adding that "strong policies are needed to improve the outlook and reduce the risks".

The IMF expects the US economy to grow just 1.5 per cent this year and 1.8 per cent in 2012, down from its June forecast of 2.5 per cent in 2011 and 2.7 per cent next year.

As a result, the international lending organisation has sharply downgraded its economic outlook for the US and Europe through the end of next year.

To achieve even that still-low level of growth, the US economy would need to expand at a much faster rate in the second half of the year than its 0.7 per cent annual pace in the first six months.

Last month Standard & Poor cut the long-term US credit rating by one notch to AA+ with a negative outlook, amid fears about budget deficits. FULL STORY

The Social-Democratic Illusion

By: Immanuel Wallerstein (iwallerstein.com)

Social-democracy had its apogee in the period 1945 to the late 1960s. At that time, it represented an ideology and a movement that stood for the use of state resources to ensure some redistribution to the majority of the population in various concrete ways: expansion of educational and health facilities; guarantees of lifelong income levels by programs to support the needs of the non-”wage-employed” groups, particularly children and seniors; and programs to minimize unemployment. Social-democracy promised an ever-better future for future generations, a sort of permanent rising level of national and family incomes. This was called the welfare state. It was an ideology that reflected the view that capitalism could be “reformed” and acquire a more human face. FULL STORY

Overthrow Inc.: Peter Ackerman’s quest to do what the CIA used to do, and make it seem progressive

By: Stephen Gowans (axisoflogic.com)

This is a long read, but a fruitful, perhaps vital one for anyone interested in overthrowing a government - be it the overthrow of a foreign government in the crosshairs of the U.S. imperialists - or the overthow of an imperial government. It appears to be the new way of doing foreign policy business in Washington. Robert Helvey and Gene Sharp met with the Venezuelan opposition for training for a ¨non-violent" overthrow of the Chávez govenment in 2003 - after their 2002 violent coup proved unsuccessful. There is also a powerful message in this article for anti-war activists and the anti-war movement in the west. One of the methods of guerrilla warfare is that of entering the enemy camp, taking their weapons for use against them. Ackerman's "non-violent resistance" could be just such a weapon. FULL STORY

Death of Privacy: 'Your cell phone - Big Brother's best friend'

Maoist Rebel News - China Converting US Debt To Gold

Peter Joseph - Zeitgeist solutions for the world (Interview)

Maoist Rebel News - Lung Cancer Vaccine by Cuban Communism

September 17 - Occupy Wall Street

The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?

The most exciting candidate that we've heard so far is one that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it.

This demand seems to capture the current national mood because cleaning up corruption in Washington is something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind. If we hang in there, 20,000-strong, week after week against every police and National Guard effort to expel us from Wall Street, it would be impossible for Obama to ignore us. Our government would be forced to choose publicly between the will of the people and the lucre of the corporations. MORE INFO

Mumia Abu-Jamal - Corporate Supremacy Still

Reading List: Peter Marshall - Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism

"The goal of an egalitarian, communal society has always united Marxists and leftist socialists, some of the latter (often if not always described as anarchists) refusing any truck with centralized power At various times, such ideas have found relatively wide appeal, and this era is one—expressed for instance in the antiglobalization movement's emphases on local control and direct democracy—making Marshall's comprehensive treatment a timely read. Newly revised and updated, this indispensable history of social libertarian thought now reaches into the 21st century—touching upon themes echoed in other recent titles, including Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing. Marshall casts a wide net, gathering all traces of antiauthoritarian socialist thought in works from Lao Tzu through Noam Chomsky, social ecology, and the Zapatistas. Readers will be repeatedly rewarded by Marshall's judiciousness and close readings of both the great names in anarchist history—Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Tolstoy—and less expected contributors—Rousseau, Swift, and Burke. Blowing away cobwebs of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, this is a stimulating portrait of a highly varied but distinctive political ideal, tradition, and practice arising from the enduring human impulse to be free." - Publishers Weekly

@bookdepository.com

Reading List: Daniel Guerin - Anarchism (PDF)

DANIEL GUERIN - ANARCHISM - PDF

Noam Chomsky - U.S. Economic Crisis (Interview)

CNN’s Tea Party partnership: ‘odd’ at best, ‘unethical’ at worst

By: Dylan Stableford (yahoo.com)

Handicapping how presidential candidates perform in debates is a tricky proposition. But in this case, the pundits agree: The co-hosts of Monday night's Republican debate--CNN and the Tea Party Express--made for "one of the oddest political matches in recent memory." FULL STORY

16 New Super-Earths Just Discovered

Source: space.com

Now Watching: Donnie Darko - Director's Cut (2004)

Percentage of U.S. Citizens Under 18 Living in Poverty

Census Data Shows Rising Poverty in U.S.

By: Catherine Dodge (bloomberg.com)

The U.S. poverty rate rose to the highest level in almost two decades and household income fell in 2010, underscoring the lingering impact of the worst economic slump in seven decades.

Data released by the Census Bureau today showed the proportion of people living in poverty climbed to 15.1 percent last year from 14.3 percent in 2009, and median household income declined 2.3 percent. The number of Americans living in poverty was the highest in the 52 years since the U.S. Census Bureau began gathering that statistic. Those figures may have worsened in recent months as the economy weakened. FULL STORY

Dermot Sreenan - Crime and Punishment: An Anarchist View

Justice is a great concept, but it has little place in capitalist society. Once you start to question this economic system you find that so much of what we are told is lies. The very attributes which capitalism boasts: Law, Order and Justice, are like props on a film set. The closer you examine them the more hollow and fake they prove to be.

In order to enforce justice you first of all have to decide what's criminal. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim in the 1890's wrote "What confers a criminal character on an act is not the nature of the act but the definition given it by society. We do not reprove certain behaviour because it is criminal; it is criminal because we reprove it." In other words what society deems a crime is a crime. FULL STORY

Jeremy Scahill - Triple Canopy replacing Blackwater in Iraq (Interview)

Slavoj Zizek - Crisis of Democracy

"The Money Masters" (Documentary)

October 2011 - Stop the Machine! Create a New World!

Stop the Machine! Create a New World!

A Call to Action - Oct. 6, 2011 and onward
October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.

We call on people of conscience and courage—all who seek peace, economic justice, human rights and a healthy environment—to join together in Washington, D.C., beginning on Oct. 6, 2011, in nonviolent resistance similar to the Arab Spring and the Midwest awakening.

A concert, rally and protest will kick off a powerful and sustained nonviolent resistance to the corporate criminals that dominate our government.

Forty-seven years ago, Mario Savio, an activist student at Berkeley, said, "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

Those words have an even greater urgency today. We face ongoing wars and massive socio-economic and environmental destruction perpetrated by a corporate empire which is oppressing, occupying and exploiting the world. We are on a fast track to making the planet unlivable while the middle class and poor people of our country are undergoing the most wrenching and profound economic crisis in 80 years.

"Stop the Machine! • Create a New World!" is a clarion call for all who are deeply concerned with injustice, militarism and environmental destruction to join in ending concentrated corporate power and taking direct control of a real participatory democracy. We will encourage a culture of resistance—using music, art, theater and direct nonviolent action—to take control of our country and our lives. It is about courageously resisting and stopping the corporate state from destroying not only our inherent rights and freedoms, but also our children’s chance to live, breathe clean air, drink pure water, grow edible natural food and live in peace.

As Mother Jones said, "Someday the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit!"

We are the ones who can create a new and just world. Our issues are connected. We are connected. Join us in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6, 2011, to Stop the Machine.

October2011.org

Maoist Rebel News - No Child is Illegitimate

Enaa - Marxist View of the State

Mumia Abu-Jamal - Cash Culture

Reading List: Karl Marx & Frederick Engels - The Communist Manifesto (PDF + Audiobook)

KARL MARX & FREDERICK ENGELS - THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO - PDF

Michael Moore vs. Westboro Baptist Church

Wikileaks: UN Peacekeepers Traded Food For Sex

By: Laura Burke (ap.org)

United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast enticed underage girls in a poor part of the West African nation to exchange sex for food, according to a United States Embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.

The cable written in January 2010 focuses on the behavior of Beninese peacekeepers stationed in the western town of Toulepleu, an area that has been at the crosshairs of the nation's 10-year-long conflict.

A random poll of 10 underage girls in Toulepleu by aid group Save The Children U.K. in 2009 found that eight performed sexual acts for Benin peacekeepers on a regular basis in order to secure their most basic needs. "Eight of the 10 said they had ongoing sexual relationships with Beninese soldiers in exchange for food or lodging," the diplomat wrote in the cable, citing information shared with the embassy by a protection officer.

On Tuesday, United Nations spokesman Michel Bonnardeaux confirmed that in April, 16 Beninese peacekeepers were repatriated to Benin and are barred from serving in the U.N. following a yearlong investigation. FULL STORY

Now Watching: Red State (2011)

WikiLeaks: U.S. Troops Executed Iraqi Children In 2006 Raid, According To U.N. Sources

(huffingtonpost.com)

An unclassified U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks contains claims that U.S. forces executed ten Iraqi civilians, half of whom were children aged five or younger, in 2006 and then tried to cover it up.

McClatchy reports that questions from a local U.N. investigator in Iraq, and from Philip Alston, the organization's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions to U.S. military were ignored and have still not been addressed, five years later.

Alston's memo noted that the bodies of the dead civilians, who had all been shot in the head, were handcuffed.

Digital Journal notes that at the time the executions took place:

"U.S. military officials in Iraq said eyewitness accounts of the incident were likely false, and later said the matter warranted no further investigation. The officials refused to reveal unit identities which might have taken part in the killings."

The Pentagon has not commented on the allegations raised by the new cable. FULL STORY

The New American Fascism and the Tea Party

Commenting on how the German working class movement could have stopped his debased regime from gaining power, Hitler once exclaimed, “Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.” Today, as capitalism breaks apart, the working class is left with the historical task of organizing itself as a force. Not only against capitalism, but against a radical right-wing that will also attempt to constitute itself as an alternative to the current state of affairs.

Today a new movement in the U.S., commonly known as the “Tea Party,” is finding its place in the back rooms of community centers, in the pews during Sunday church service, and the offices of corporate elites and business owners. And, it is time for its adversaries to respond in kind. Fascist movements, however skewed and modernized, are alive and well in present times. It is foolhardy not to take note of their mobilizing, however juvenile it may look to people aware of the issues. The Tea Party Movement is a neo-fascist movement. FULL STORY

"PsyWar" (Documentary)