As the summer of 2012 heats up, OWS will be more about disruption of the working class than trying to get the working class to join. The OWS strategy to cause a major disruption could be as simple as turning a knob … //

… OWS leadership most likely assume that their failure to get the working class is the fault of the 1% – or the bourgeoisie, as Lenin called them – who, thanks to capitalism, are “in a position to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat; these strata, so bribed, naturally behave as traitors.” 

You, your friends, and your neighbors, through imperialism (capitalism), are being bribed (earning a paycheck) by your bourgeoisie overlords (bosses) to be traitors (non-communist) – and that’s why the working class haven’t shown their solidarity to OWS.

The gloves are about to come off for the Occu-Proletariat, and they are about to target all the class traitors to the cause. The venom they have been reserving for the rich and/or Jews will now be spewed at the majority of their class peers – the turncoats who have chosen to keep being productive each day instead of camping in their own waste at Zuccotti Park.

How can they completely disrupt the nation, cost millions of dollars to major industries, and really put the screws to the working class? Occupy Air Toilets, of course.  The strategy would be simple. OWS members in each state would book flights on different airlines over one day. When the planes go up in the air, the Occupiers simply get up from their seats, walk into the restrooms, lock the doors and refuse to come out. The little “Occupied” sign would even be lit up – what a YouTube moment! Don’t be surprised to hear rumblings on the progressive grapevine about the Occupy Air Toilet J5SDS (July 5th Sit-Down Strike) to be held on the 87th anniversary of the Wagner Act, which set up the National Labor Relations Board.

Occupy Air Toilets would only be a first, high-profile strike at the transportation and service sectors – two sectors which have many friendly and sympathetic unionists willing to aid or simply look the other way. And after pulling similar stunts in buses, trains, bars, restaurants, and even elevators in high-rise office buildings by overcrowding them and refusing to leave, what will be the next step on the OWS agenda?

Things will escalate to explicit, widespread, coordinated crime and violence. Of course, it will be directed at the cops at first. At first. OWS will probably even bring back their original Day of Rage moniker from September 17, 2011. Why the “newfound” thirst for violence from the self-labeled non-violent movement? OWS will remember these words of Lenin: … (full text).
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/the_summer_of_disruption.html

… The New York-based advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless, which has frequently criticized the city’s annual street homelessness survey, cast doubt on the city’s findings when they were released last month. “Today’s release of the City’s street homeless survey estimates a 23 percent increase in street homelessness from last year and confirms what we already know – there are more and more New Yorkers sleeping on the streets and in the subway system each night,” Patrick Markee, Senior Policy Analyst for the Coalition said in a statement.

“Sadly, even this estimate understates the severity of the problem given that the City’s survey consistently fails to count many unsheltered homeless people. More needs to be done to provide appropriate housing and services to the growing number of homeless New Yorkers—especially the record numbers of homeless children.”

Last November, the Coalition for the Homeless released a report documenting how New York City’s homeless shelter population had grown to over 41,000 people—including 17,000 children—by the end of October 2011, the highest number ever recorded. According to that report, homeless families are staying in the municipal shelter system for longer periods, and the percentage of families entering the shelter system who’ve been homeless before has nearly doubled since 2005, when Mayor Bloomberg ended permanent housing programs for the homeless.

While Bloomberg set a goal in 2004 of reducing both the number of people who sleep on the streets and use the shelter system by two-thirds by 2009, the report released by the Coalition for the Homeless last November found that the total homeless shelter population was 33 percent higher than when Mayor Bloomberg took office; the number of homeless families was 45 percent higher.

Over the years, New York’s billionaire mayor has repeatedly demonstrated his indifference to the plight of the city’s homeless population and his contempt for the working class as it has been battered by the financial crisis unleashed by Wall Street. Refusing to implement any initiatives to address the underlying causes of homelessness such as poverty, housing costs, unemployment and mental illness, Bloomberg’s policies have been directed entirely towards forcing homeless individuals off the streets and out of sight.

Last Spring, the city eliminated the Advantage rent subsidy after it lost state funding for the program. The program was for low-wage workers, who had to pay 30 to 40 percent of their income for housing, with the subsidy making up the rest. Advocates for the homeless warned of a spike in homelessness after the Bloomberg administration immediately stopped admitting new participants. Their warnings proved correct. The Coalition for the Homeless report released last November, showed a 10 percent increase in the number of children in the shelter system between May and October of 2011.

Last year, the Bloomberg administration had also proposed a new policy of asking single adults seeking space in homeless shelters to prove they had no alternative housing in what was clearly a reactionary attempt to discourage homeless individuals from seeking space in the city’s shelters. However, last February, a State Supreme Court judge ruled that the administration could not impose the new regulations, siding with the City Council which had filed a lawsuit to block their implementation.

In another failed attempt to limit the number of people in the city’s shelters, the administration considered a plan earlier this year that would have required single adults currently living in shelters to return to their last place of residence. In return, the city would have offered furniture and possibly food stamps to residents who agreed to take the individuals back.

According to the proposed policy, if homeless single adults did not return to their former location, they would have been forcibly removed by an officer before becoming eligible for shelter again. And if family members or friends had refused to take back the individuals, homeless shelters would have had the authority to deny them space.

Bloomberg released a budget earlier this month that includes a proposal to cut 160 of the city’s youth shelter beds in order to save $7 million. This is despite the fact that there are only 250 youth shelter beds available in a city with an estimated 4,000 homeless youths.
(full text).

Links:

Egyptian presidential candidates outline counterrevolutionary programs in TV debate, by Johannes Stern, 17 May 2012;

City authorities in Frankfurt, Germany ban Occupy protest, by Sven Heymann, 17 May 2012.l

If there were any real terrorists, Jose Rodriguez would be dead.

Who is Jose Rodriguez? He is the criminal who ran the CIA torture program. Most of his victims were not terrorists or even insurgents. Most were hapless individuals kidnapped by warlords and sold to the Americans as “terrorists” for the bounty paid. 

If Rodriguez’s identity was previously a secret, it is no more. He has been on CBS “60 Minutes” taking credit for torturing Muslims and using the information allegedly gained to kill leaders of al Qaeda. If terrorists were really the problem that Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA claim, Rodriguez’s name would be a struck through item on the terrorists’ hit list. He would be in his grave.

So, also, would be John Yoo, who wrote the Justice [sic] Department memos giving the green light to torture, despite US and International laws prohibiting torture. Apparently, Yoo, a professor at the Boalt School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, was ignorant of US and international law. And so was the US Department of Justice [sic].

Notice that Rodriguez, “The Torturer of the Muslims,” doesn’t have to hide. He can go on national television, reveal his identity, and revel in his success in torturing and murdering Muslims. Rodriguez has no Secret Service protection and would be an easy mark for assassination by terrorists so capable as to have, allegedly, pulled off 9/11 … //

… If you were a Muslim terrorist seeking retribution for Washington’s crimes, would you try to smuggle aboard an airliner a bomb in your underwear or shoe in order to blow up people whose only responsibility for Washington’s war against Muslims is that they fell for Washington’s propaganda? If you wanted to blow up the innocent, wouldn’t you instead place your bomb in the middle of the mass of humanity waiting to clear airport security and take out TSA personnel along with passengers? Terrorists could coordinate their attacks, hitting a number of large airports across the US at the same minute. This would be real terror. Moreover, it would present TSA with an insolvable problem: how can people be screened before they are screened?

Or coordinated attacks on shopping malls and sports events?

Why should terrorists, if they exist, bother to kill people when it is easy to cause mayhem by not killing them? There are a large number of unguarded electric power substations. Entire regions of the country could be shut down. The simplest disruptive act would be to release large quantities of roofing nails in the midst of rush hour traffic in Boston, New York, Washington, DC; Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. You get the picture: thousands and thousands of cars disabled with flat tires blocking the main arteries for days.

Before some reader accuses me of giving terrorists ideas, ask yourself if you really think people so clever as to have allegedly planned and carried out 9/11 couldn’t think of such simple tactics, plots that could be carried out without having to defeat security or kill innocent people? My point isn’t what terrorists, if they exist, should do. The point is that the absence of easy-to-do acts of terrorism suggests that the terrorist threat is more hype than reality. Yet, we have an expensive, intrusive security apparatus that seems to have no real function except to exercise power over American citizens.

In place of real terrorists carrying out easy plots, we have “terrorist” plots dreamed up by FBI and CIA agents, who then recruit some hapless or demented dupes, bribing them with money and heroic images of themselves, and supplying them with the plot and fake explosives. These are called “sting operations,” but they are not. They are orchestrations by our own security agencies that produce fake terrorist plots that are then “foiled” by the security agencies that hatched the plots. Washington’s announcement is always: “The public was never in danger.” Some terrorist plot! We have never been endangered by one, but the airports have been on orange alert for 10.5 years.

The federal judiciary and brainwashed juries actually treat these concocted plots as real threats to American security, despite the government’s announcements that the public was never in danger.

The announcements of the “foiled” plots keep the brainwashed public docile and amenable to intrusive searches, warrantless spying, the growth of an unaccountable police state, and endless wars.

The “War on Terror” is a hoax, one that has been successfully used to destroy the US Constitution and to complete the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state. By destroying habeas corpus, due process, and the presumption of innocence, the “War on Terror” has destroyed our security. (full text).

The Social Security program . . . represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.”—President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977. “[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago . . . [The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.”—President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983. 

So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of horror stories like this:

• I’m a 68-year-old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00.
• Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.
• At no time during the 6–7 year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee my SS check to the tune of 15%.
• I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents . . . I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3500.00 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/20,000 before they attempted to collect.

Her debt went from $,500 to over $17,000 in 10 years?! How could that be? … //

… For students, at the very least the bankruptcy option needs to be reinstated, usury laws restored, predatory practices eliminated, and the cost of education brought back down to earth. One possibility for relieving the burden on students would be to give them interest-free loans. The government of New Zealand now offers 0% loans to New Zealand students, with repayment to be made from their income after they graduate. For the past twenty years, the Australian government has also successfully funded students by giving out what are in effect interest-free loans. The loans in the Australian Higher Education Loan Programme (or HELP) do not bear interest, but the government gets back more than it lends, because the principal is indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which goes up every year.

Predatory lenders are keeping us in debt peonage through misguided economics and bank-captured legislators. We have people who desperately want to work, to the point of going back to school to try to improve their chances; and we have mountains of work that needs to be done. The only thing keeping them apart is that artificial constraint called “money,” which we have allowed to be created by banks and let out at interest when it could have been created by public institutions for public purposes, either by direct issuance or through publicly-owned banks. We just need to recognize our oppressors and throw off their yoke, and the good times can roll again.
(full long text).

The beautiful image you see is not photoshopped. It is a photo of the heirloom “Glass Gem” maize variety recently rescued by seedsperson Greg Schoen and carefully stewarded by the Seeds Trust. When I saw this photo, I was overwhelmed. This, I thought, is a glimpse into the world we have denied ourselves because of how we choose to live. This is a picture of what kind of world we could live in if we only willed it … // 

… Capitalism is supposed to offer us unlimited choice: I can have whatever I want when I want it. What Schoen’s gorgeous corn kernals show us, however, is that “choice” is not diversity. Why would I want to “choose” to have tepid, shrinkwrapped corn in December when I can have 300 or more kinds of corn in August? We see this dynamic play out in virtually every sphere of society: I may be able to choose which film to see on Friday night from a stock of dozens, with new movies opening every week – but when I start to realize that Chernobyl Diaries is just a watered-down Paranormal Activity 2, at what point do I need to wonder how many Batman (or Twilight or Harry Potter) sequels will be enough?

There are few, if any, repositories of diversity so breathless, so awesome, as can be found in the natural world. So even when we’ve convinced ourselves that corn comes exclusively in yellow and light-yellow, the Earth has the capacity to shock us out of our complacency with such force as Schoen’s corn impressed on me. It’s moments like this – yes, something as simple as seeing a new seed varietal – when the utopian possibilities of our world confront us with dazzling urgency.

Margaret Thatcher left us with the legacy of TINA (There Is No Alternative). But Schoen’s “Glass Gem” shows us that it simply isn’t so. The choices we make as a society actively deprive us of access to these alternate ways of being. If we can see such marvels in a single ear of corn or a misshapen tuber, what awaits us if we reimagine the way we structure economic, judicial, parliamentary and cultural policies?

Perhaps this seems naïve – it may seem like a far leap from vegetables to social practices, ethics and mores – but what if we thought of naïvité in terms of its etymological roots: un naïf, the newly born, unencumbered. Such a perspective would surely look upon the capitalist system in which we live, which limits diversity, flattens our capacity for utopia and sets inexorable limits on the human and say: no, not that. Surely, it would choose instead to embrace the possibilities of a wondrous world as complex, multicoloured and beautiful as this photo; and as simple as an ancient seed. (full text).

Links:

Revolt;

Worldwatch Blogs;

Transforming Cultures;

Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity;

What Is and ISN’T the Economy for? on Worldwatch Blogs, May 9, 2012.

The economy sidles along. Sideways has become the constant theme this year and none of the news contradicts the notion that our malaise will linger. In view of the lack of leadership from Washington – the never ending American election cycle militates against actually doing anything other than run for re-election – we cannot expect dramatic policy initiatives of any stripe or color … //

… We have structural problems:  

• This is a bit like discovering you have some dreaded disease. Serious people all intone in calm and authoritative ways that the medicine will be bitter. It will also take years to show its effects. Along the way we all must try to hang in there, not get despondent, and look to the long term, when the economy will surely blossom. That far off spring will be nourished by an army of clever, hyper-productive, adaptable, and, presumably, low cost workers all of whom will be willing to accept flexible wages, lower benefits, and insecure employment. This re-structured workforce will be the envy of the world. It will allow the platonic vision of permanently low taxes to be coupled with permanently high profits, personal rugged self-reliance will displace flabby reliance on government hand outs, and our economy will soar. Just like it did in the Reagan years. [Insert wistful yearning noises here]
• Meanwhile the unemployed should endure. Yes this is a sad and rotten thing. But, hey, re-structuring takes time. And we have no alternative. None at all. No gain without pain is both a cliche and serious economic advice.
• The attraction of this ridiculous proposition is that its results are a long way off and it allows structuralists to avoid doing anything in the near term. They can be content that they have tried. They have thought things through. And they have found that nothing can be done – seriously anyway – about our high unemployment rates. Yes it is indeed a rotten and sad thing. But that’s the way of the world.

Hogwash:

• The odd thing about structuralists is that they are the very same crowd who got us into this mess. If we have structural problems it is because of their policies. Think about that. They were the advocates for massive deregulation. We were assured that the market magic they so fervently adore would act to eliminate problems. The market will take care of it. With “it” being whatever problem your cared to highlight.
• The relentless pursuit of shareholder value would ensure, inevitably ensure, the correct and efficient allocation of our nationals resources. After all shareholders are private folk, and we all know for certain that private folk know exactly what to do with resources. Better than the horribly inefficient government anyway.
• Workers will respond to their growing insecurity by throwing themselves into a frenzy of re-education and skill acquisition. The market will ensure, inevitably ensure, our workforce has competitive skills. Its about the incentives. We don’t need government subsidized training. We need to make people responsible for themselves. They’ll get on with it just as soon as the dead hand of government is lifted.

The list goes on:

• The structuralists won the debate back in the early 1980’s and went on a binge of structural correction. They recast the economy in image of their free market theory. They deregulated, attacked institutional rigidities [aka unions], stomped over wages, slashed at training programs, and happily structured away through two bubbles and a near historic economic collapse.
• In the aftermath of which they announce that our problems are all structural.
• A simple, refutation goes this way: an economy out of whack would have hot spots of high activity associated with weak spots where the structural problems were most corrosive. Some industries would be desperate to hire, would be paying high wages to attract labor, and would be booming along. Others would be shrinking, shedding labor, and be rife with bankrupt firms.
• None of this do we see.
• The weakness is across the board. No industries are hot spots. Employment is rotten throughout. And, curiously, corporate bankruptcies are relatively quiescent. There are no signs of the kind of lopsidedness typical of an economy laden by structural problems.
• And the recent record of our deregulated banking system is hardly great testimony to the asset allocating prowess of market magic.
• What’s are structuralists to do? With the project wallowing in its own mess, they double down. They cast aspersions at the cyclical argument to divert attention from their own failure and to prevent the public getting a proper and balanced view. They pose as being serious. They disparage alternatives. They discourage debate. They puff themselves up and engage in a self sustaining closed loop of a discussion.
• From which no effective policy will emerge because structure is not our major problem. Sure our education system needs buffing up – it has been neglected and underfunded for way too long. Sure we need better training for our workers – it was big business who slashed training programs first in the name of cost cutting. Sure we need to cut the burden of health care costs. Sure …
• But the fact remains. We have a demand problem. A cyclical demand problem. Our economy is stuck in a low gear because people are unwilling or unable to spend. Simple. Easy.
• But not fixable while the serious people dominate policy making.
• Sad. No?

(full text).

Link: Austerity was the big loser in the Greek elections, on RWER Blog, by Dean Baker, May 10, 2012.

In Germany, people are baffled by how hostile a country as religious as the United States can be to the principle of mandatory healthcare insurance. Not even conservatives question the system, which businesspeople say gives Europe’s largest economy a competitive advantage.

As the United States Supreme Court considers whether requiring people to have health insurance is unconstitutional, Germans are bewildered as to why so many Americans appear to be against universal coverage. 

They also question the continued portrayal of US President Barack Obama and his health reform backers as socialists and communists, noting that healthcare was introduced in Germany in the 19th century by Otto von Bismarck, who was definitely not a leftist, and is supported by conservative and pro-business politicians today.
“It’s a solidarity principle,” says Ann Marini, a spokesperson for the National Health Insurers Association. “Not every ‘S’ automatically means socialism.”

Marini and others say that mandated coverage is something that is simply not questioned in Germany. Furthermore, even the most pro-market politicians wouldn’t dare to dismantle the country’s health insurance system.

System Only Works if Everyone Takes Part: … //

… Don’t Religious Americans Love Their Neighbors?

But there are other reasons why Germans are confused about the US healthcare debate. The US comes across to not only Germans, but to many Europeans, as a religious country. God seems to be part of many US debates, especially ones surrounding the presidential campaign. In secular European politics, the Almighty is rarely if ever invoked.

“For me the US is a very religious country. It doesn’t matter which religion I look at — love thy neighbor is a very, very important point in religion,” health insurance spokesperson Marini says. For her, the apparent deep religiousness of many Americans doesn’t jibe with their unwillingness to be part of a healthcare community.

Politician Wolfgang Zöller, a member of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union party, argues that Christian principles support a national healthcare system and both are compatible with capitalism.

He wonders how a working class man with a family who doesn’t have insurance pays for an operation when he becomes sick.

“The question of health insurance is a humane question,” he says. “I want every person — independent of age, independent of income or pre-existing conditions — to have the possibility to be helped when he is sick.”

But that is not happening in the United States, according to numerous statistics.

The US ranks last out of 16 industrialized countries on a measure of deaths that might have been prevented with timely and effective care, according to a study released last year by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports independent healthcare research. Germany was in ninth place, according to the “National Scorecard on US Health Performance.”

Premature death rates are 68 percent higher in the US than in the best-performing countries. As many as 91,000 fewer people would die prematurely if the US could achieve the leading country rate, the report said. Instead, the study notes that “access to healthcare significantly eroded since 2006,” with more than 81 million working-age adults — some 44 percent of those aged 19 to 64 — uninsured or underinsured in 2010. This was an increase of 35 percent from 2003 levels.

Other advanced countries are managing to outpace the US in providing “timely access to primary care, reducing premature mortality, and extending healthy life expectancy, all while spending considerably less on healthcare and administration,” the study goes on.
And that’s exactly what Zöller says he’s talking about. When people become sick they should be helped regardless of their financial or social situation, he says.

“Otherwise you’re left with the famous saying, ‘the poor die young.’ And I don’t want that.” (full text).

Links:

Electric Dreams: Congested Streets Spark E-Scooter Trend, on Spiegel Online International, by Jürgen Pander, May 11, 2012: As cities become more crowded and traffic more snarled, commuters and engineers are searching for better ways to get around the world’s urban hubs. E-scooters, once considered an unpromising technology, are making a comeback as major car manufacturers rediscover their utility and sudden popularity …
See also Gallery: Two Wheels are Enough, 8 photos.

Ukraine – The Body Politic:
Part 1: Getting Naked to Change the World, by Dialika Neufeld, May 11, 2012;
Part 2: We Scream and Show Our Bodies;
See also the relevant Photo Gallery.

Safeguarding East Germany’s Dark Past: Agency Chief Says Stasi Archive Should Stay Open, by Stefan Berg, May 11, 2012;

… and: wikileaks on YouTube (any theme).

… In 2007 the collective vote for the radical left – comprising the New Anti Capitalist Party’s Besancenot, the Workers’ Struggle’s Laguiller, the Workers’ Party’s Schivardi and the Communist Party’s Buffet – was 3.3 million. This time it was 4.6 million, or a rise of 39%.  

And the spread of votes was impressive – the party gained at least 7% of the vote in all 96 French départements on the mainland (ie excluding the overseas territories) with more than 10% in 76 of départements and over 13% in 20 of them. Furthermore, a number of large cities without any communist tradition, like Grenoble, Lille, Montpellier and Toulouse gave the Left Front a score of over 15%.

Most importantly, it was the Left Front’s electoral boost that projected the overall left score – including the Socialists – to 15.7 million votes, a rise of 17%. In short, it was the Left Front, with its call for a ‘citizen’s revolution’ that will, assuming all the polling is correct, have projected Hollande to head of state. As Melenchon puts it, the Left Front is the real ‘dynamic’ force on the Left.

The personal performance of the former Socialist minister, his language that fuses the best of French revolutionary and republican tradition, his brilliance both at large rallies and on TV, are all part of the success story. But clearly so is the Left Front’s programme.

For sure, it is not a revolutionary set of policies. But it fills the political space that social democrats have vacated long ago. ‘Radical reformism’, some have called it.

A 100% tax on earnings over £300,000; full pensions for all from the age of 60; reduction of work hours; a 20% increase in the minimum wage; the nationalisation of energy companies; the creation of a well resourced public investment bank; a demand for the European Central Bank to lend to European governments at 1%, as it does for the banks; a categorical non! to the Fiscal Compact and a referendum with recommendation to withdrawal from the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

And running through Melenchon’s bid to remake France is a determination to end the chaos and environmental and social destruction of uncontrolled free markets and replace it with what Melenchon calls ‘ecological planning’. Above all, as the “Humans First!” title of the programme says, it aims to restore people to the centre of a new Sixth French Republic.

The rise and rise of this new force on the Left is part of a wider radicalisation of the French electorate, however.

On the right, this produced a shocking 18% vote for the anti-immigrant, anti-EU Marine Le Pen. This beats the historic 17% score of Jean Marie Le Pen in 2002. This saw him overtake the Socialists and stand in the run-off election with traditional right-winger Jacques Chirac, who defeated the far right candidate.

Once a party for the petite bourgeoisie, the racist Front National is now solidly embedded in the working class. One extensive poll found Marine Le Pen was backed by 35% of workers.

In this election Le Pen junior maintained the Front National’s strong position in the Mediterranean coast, first conquered by her father in the 1980s, and did well in the north east of France, and other places, where industry has suffered a dramatic neglect and decline. She also picked up votes from working class people who have been forced out of the cities because of escalating urban rents and house prices, and whose physical displacement has clearly been matched by a political and cultural displacement taking them out of the orbit of traditional parties of the left and right.

There’s a danger in misreading Le Pen’s score. In 2007 the votes for Le Pen senior and another far right candidate, Bruno Megret (a former leading figure in the Front National) polled 19% between them. What’s happened is that former Sarkozy voters among the working class have migrated far right, thanks not only to their disillusionment with his five year reign, but his head long lurch to the far right himself, with attacks on immigrants and latterly the adoption of an even more corrosive language of Petain, the Nazi collaborationist war-time leader.

Melenchon’s own analysis is that this has been a ‘transfusion’ of right wing voters further right, with examples being Lyon, Lille, Marseille and the town of Florange in Lorraine in the north east where a steelworks is under threat.

If the Front National has made further inroads into the working class, there were places where the Left Front’s and the Front National head to head clashes ended up with the Left Front coming out the better. In Marseille, while Sakozy lost 30,000 votes, Le Pen won 28,000 and the Left Front, after delivering a strong anti-racist message, gained 42,000 votes (compared to a net gain of just 1,000 for the Socialists). The message for Melenchon and supporters is that without the Left Front and its progressive and unashamedly pro-working class message, the far right would have done much better.

Nevertheless, the National Front is a major threat. The result has emboldened Le Pen to make a bid for leadership of the Right, a move that was underlined by her call to supporters to not only reject Hollande on Sunday but Sarkozy too. If, as both Le Pen and many commentators predict, Sarkozy’s UMP party is heading for meltdown  – with the more moderate wing alienated by their chief’s embrace of her nasty politics of hate and the right opting for the real thing – she has a historic opportunity to revamp the reactionary political camp into an Italian-style -populist neo-fascist movement.

The defeat of Sarkozy is all but discounted now. But how this radicalisation of French politics will be tested again in June’s Parliamentary elections. The Left Front is hoping to maintain its momentum. And while asserting its clear independence from the Socialists, it is currently discussing with them a pact to back the most promising candidate in constituencies where there is a risk of the Left not making it through to the second round voting.

Historically, the odds are on trends in Presidential elections to follow through in parliamentary elections. So a Left President and a Left parliament beckons. But for it to make a real difference, both to the French people, and Europe as a whole, a new French administration will need to embrace the spirit of rebellion of Melenchon’s ‘citizen’s revolution’. (full text).

(My comment: a top-radical change to the actual running economy behavior is analog to this old russian joke during soviet times. It claimed:
to find out if any change will be better, we Russians make first a test. So, in traffic if we want change from right of way into left of way, we let run 10% of our traffic in left of way. If the result is ok, we change the 100%.
The same laws are running for our economy:
1): we have to inactivate the running power elites, resp. their tools … and: the shit they put into our brain.
2): we have to implement a socially correct economy – worldwide.
3): Meanwhile we may discuss any new economic formula, as most of our humans are NOT ready for a real change … sorry, still too many excuses in the head and – at least in our western cities – even small people have too less empathy for others’ suffering … ).

Links:

stupid … I cannot let these questions;

The Financial Crisis Was Entirely Foreseeable.

Eager to find and amplify signs of mass radical potential in a period when the capitalist rich are ever more clearly destroying democracy and the Earth – the chances for a decent future – we on the United States left are understandably prone to underestimate the ideological power of the ruling class. Recently, for example, a comrade sent me a link  and suggested that I look at, and join him in celebrating, a December 2011 Pew Research Center opinion survey showing that nearly two-thirds of the American people think there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor. The percentage of Americans who think this has apparently risen 19 points since 2009.  

Pew attributes part of this public opinion to the success of the Occupy Movement in putting the problem of economic inequality into the political and media culture.[1] So does my correspondent, quite eagerly. I’m pretty sure they are right about that.

Identifying a Phenomenon v. Opposing It:

But so what? Perceiving that strong class conflict exists is simply not the same as thinking that America’s harsh class inequality (see below) is a problem that should be overcome and undone through reform and/or revolution. As Pew noted in the online write-up of its aforementioned survey, rising perceptions of class conflict do not necessarily mean increasing grievances toward the rich or support for measures to reduce inequality. In fact, as Pew staffer Rich Morin added, “a recent Gallup survey found that a smaller share of the public believes that income inequality is a problem ‘that needs to be fixed’ than held this belief in 1998 (45% vs. 52%):”[2] … //

… Educational Tasks Ahead:

I do not go through this unpleasant material to demoralize activists and others who share my faith in the urgent necessity of social and political action to reduce (and ultimately abolish) class inequality within the beyond the U.S. I do it rather to make two positive and hopeful (I think) suggestions on how to make the U.S. the left “organizers paradise” some radical thinkers say it ought to be.

First, in forming messages, strategies, vision, and tactics to push our movements forward in the current heavily business-poisoned political culture, we should always start with the whole truth regarding public opinion (and anything else that matters). The full truth regarding U.S. public opinion on class disparity is mixed from a left standpoint. It is good (from a left perspective) that more Americans think that the rich owe their wealth to luck and connections than think the wealthy earned their opulence through effort and skill. It is good that 72 percent of Americans think it is “important” to reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and poor (that’s the number you get when you add the “somewhat important” response to the December 2011 Gallup survey) and even that 88 percent think it is important to increase “equality of opportunity.” But it is bad (from a left view) that more Americans buy into the environmentally disastrous growth ideology (the “rising tide” toxin), that less than half and a declining (between 1998 and late 2011) percentage of Americans tell Gallup that inequality is a problem requiring a solution, that (just) more than half say inequality is “an acceptable part of our economic system” (whose system?), and that nearly as many Americans think the parasitic and privileged rich deserve their wealth as think that the rich got their fortunes from luck and privilege.

Second, acknowledging the considerable amount of bourgeois-hegemonic public opinion we still have to contend with in the U.S. helps us understand where we need to focus our energies in coming months and years. The Left has some daunting but basic and do-able educational work ahead on class inequality and its terrible consequences in America. Mass corporate-manufactured popular ignorance – a systematic, elite-imposed lack of information and of the opportunity to access meaningful information about social and political reality – is behind the disagreeable fact that vast swaths of the majority working class U.S. public continue to hold beliefs that undermine their own immediate situation and the broader fate of a livable Earth. I am certain that Gallup and Pew’s numbers would be much more progressive, radical, and environment-friendly if their surveys were given only after respondents were given significant accurate and reasonably framed information on:

• The real and shocking depth and degree of wealth and income disparity in the U.S. today and as it has deepened over the last four decades and as it has ebbed and flowed over the last 120 years.
• The deadly impact of the nation’s extreme concentration of wealth and income for functioning democracy.
• The role of such mechanisms of elite rule as campaign contributions, high-priced lobbyists, corporate media ownership, corporate public relations and advertising and more in turning American democracy into a plutocratic charade and subjecting U.S. politics and policy to “the unelected dictatorship or money” (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson’s excellent phrase).
• The wide prevalence of a strong work ethic among non-affluent working class majority Americans.
• The numerous deep institutional and other societal barriers to basic economic security and advancement most Americans face today.
• The remarkable structural, economic, social and cultural advantages rich people tend to enjoy from birth and to pass on from one generation to the next.
• The shocking depth and degree of poverty and related ills in the contemporary U.S. and the roles the wealthy Few play in creating that poverty and misery.
• The remarkable extent of ecological damage and the growing specter of Eco-cide and the rooting of that devastation in the growth- and accumulation-addicted workings of the profits system.

Misinformed: An Example: …

(full text, graphs and Endnotes 1 – 11).

Links:

Who rules America? by G. William D, /©2012;

Rising Share of Americans See Conflict Between Rich and Poor, on Pew Research Center, January 11, 2012;

Americans Prioritize Economy Over Reducing Wealth Gap, on Gallup /Economy, December 16, 2011;

Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time, by Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely, February 3, 2011.

Germany’s right-wing populists are fond of insulting Islam in order to attract attention. On Saturday, violence prone Salafists took the bait, resulting in a riot that left 29 police injured. Despite the clash, however, the anti-Islam party can continue to display their anti-Islam caricatures, a court has decided.  

It was clear from the start that the tiny, right-wing populist group Pro-NRW would stop at nothing to attract attention in the run-up to state elections in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia this Sunday. With Salafists in the state now reacting violently to Pro-NRW’s inflammatory parading of Muhammad caricatures in front of Muslim establishments, the splinter party appears to have gotten its wish.

On Saturday, violence flared anew when Salafists attacked police protecting a Pro-NRW demonstration in front of a Saudi Arabian school in Bonn. Twenty-nine officers were wounded, two of them having been stabbed, and more than 100 people were arrested. On Monday, a 25-year-old man was arrested and charged with attempted murder in the knife attacks.

Ralf Jäger, interior minister for the state, promised that there would be “severe consequences,” adding that he would “join the federal government in exploring all legal possibilities for countering these extremists.” The police president in Bonn, Ursula Brohl-Sowa, spoke of an “explosion of violence like we haven’t seen for some time.”

The Pro-NRW march in Bonn consisted of just over two dozen people, but some 500 to 600 counter-demonstrators also gathered, including, according to police estimates, some 200 Salafists who had travelled to Bonn from across the country. Several hundred police were also present to keep the two groups separated.

Deliberately Provoked: … //

… Campaigning, Pro-NRW Style:

Indeed, the violence of Saturday — coming on the heels of a similar confrontation between Salafists and Pro-NRW last week — would seem exactly what Pro-NRW had been hoping for. The stridently anti-Muslim party has spent years struggling, and failing, to attract the kind of attention comparable right-wing populist parties have achieved in virtually all of Germany’s neighboring countries. Sunday parliamentary elections in the group’s home state have spurned them to once again try to attract votes.

And provocation has been the cornerstone of that effort. “It is of course part of the campaign,” Pro-NRW spokesman Markus Wiener told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Monday. “We are a party that is critical of Islam and we wanted to show our standpoint.”

To do so, the group launched a “Muhammad caricature contest” earlier this spring and is now parading the “winners” in front of area mosques and other Muslim establishments. The move, of course, is cynically calculated to attract the kind of attention the formerly unknown Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten received after it published similar caricatures in 2005.

Whether the strategy has been successful will become clear once the votes are counted on Sunday. In the meantime, the Pro-NRW parade of provocation will continue. Bielefeld police had sought to ban a planned right-wing march in the city on Monday, but a court intervened and allowed the Pro-NRW demonstration to go forward. Some 15 anti-Muslim marchers took to the streets, along with 400 counter-demonstrators. This time, there were no immediate reports of violence. (full text).

Links:

Bye, bye, Merkozy: Will it be Merkollande?

… Economic collapse and the piqueteros:

The backdrop to Argentina’s rebellion was grimmer and more extreme than even the situation in Greece today (see page 17). Years of neoliberal policies had taken their toll. The official unemployment rate reached 17 per cent in 1996; in reality, it was even higher, with entire communities out of work. The country had no social security net or unemployment centres to help the jobless subsist and find work.   

The poor suburbs of Buenos Aires were the hardest hit, along with rural provinces. Entire neighbourhoods were left to fend for themselves without paved roads, electricity, sewage or transport. The major unions were ineffective, striking deals with the neoliberal Menem government to remain docile and failing to organise the growing ranks of unemployed.

‘You saw people deteriorate very quickly,’ says Fabián Pierucci, economist and former piquetero with the Movement of Unemployed in the neighbourhood of Solano. ‘Because how long can people go without eating, without being able to buy their medicine? You saw friends get thin and die like flies.’

From these forgotten neighbourhoods the piquetero (road blockade) movement of the unemployed was born. Living on the outskirts of the city, residents regularly witnessed food and goods they sorely needed trucked past their precarious homes and into the city. Seeing no alternative, they began to blockade major roads with burning tyres to draw attention to their destitution and demand government assistance.

As the economic situation deteriorated in 2001, the piquetero movement began to gain legitimacy among the middle classes, who joined it in the streets in response to additional pension and salary cuts implemented by a government scrambling to avoid the oncoming economic collapse. When bank accounts were frozen at the end of November, the country was on the brink.

Rather than appeasing the unrest and alleviating the burden of a collapsing economy, President Fernando de la Rúa declared a state of siege on 19 December. It was a decision that would spell the end of his presidency. Cacerolazos (noisy street protests), blockades and organised looting broke out throughout the country. Police repression merely fanned the flames of popular resistance, and within 48 hours both the economic minister and president had resigned, the latter being helicoptered away from the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada. Political legitimacy was lost.

Creativity amid crisis: … //

… Tools for the future:

These movements have all left their mark on Argentina. Though they may not have achieved all they had hoped, they pushed the boundaries of political imagination and showed the creative capacity of ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Still, for many, specifically those on the independent left like Fabián Pierucci and Eva Sinchecay, the movements missed a historic opportunity for structural change. Despite Argentina’s economic growth, they say the economic model is still based on unstable and short-term factors such as the international price of soy and the exploitation of natural resources.

‘With a globalised economy, you can have all the reserves you want and have the foreign debt under control, but does that mean you are financially autonomous?’ asks Pierucci. ‘How long will the model last? One year, two years, five years?’

Sinchecay, who still helps cartoneros in her community collect cardboard, says the social programmes have been insufficient in combating poverty. ‘We have seen three generations of people without work,’ she laments.

Pierucci believes Argentina has not seen the last of economic crises, and that despite the relative calm another could be on the way. ‘We can’t lose perspective that crisis is cyclical in the economy, and that each time it will be deeper,’ he says.

Despite maybe missing a historical moment, the strength of Argentina’s social protest and its people-based solutions to economic collapse have inspired social movements around the world. Protesters in Greece even adopted the slogan Que se vayan todos! (‘They all must go!’ – referring to politicians), popularised on the streets of Buenos Aires in December 2001.

In many ways, what emerged from Argentina’s collapse could be (and, to a lesser extent, has been) replicated in countries worldwide – occupations, worker-run businesses, neighbourhood assemblies. The extremity of the economic bust and the vacuum of power in Argentina created unique conditions for social movements to prise the country from neoliberal government and give birth to a new politics. But the same spirit of solidarity and possibility can be seen across the world today – and there is much that it can learn from the Argentinian experience. (full long text).

Link: The World from Berlin: Hollande Could Be a Better Partner than Sarkozy, on Spiegel Online International, by Daryl Lindsey, May 7, 2012.

… Shocking Letter Reveals Monsanto’s Contamination Dates Back 2 Years Before Deregulation:

A letter from Cal/West Seeds shows that evidence of contamination was withheld and the USDA turned a blind eye to proof of contamination in 2005 which shows it was planted at least two years before it was initially deregulated in 2005. As you can see for yourself, the official letter states:   

We first discovered the unintended presence of the Roundup Ready gene in our conventional alfalfa seeds in 2005. It was identified in one of our foundation seed production lots grown in California. We tested the foundation seed lot priot to shipping it to a producer who intended to plant it for organic seed production.

In another telling segment, the author writes:

We detected the presence of the … Roundup Ready gene in both our foundation seed and certified seed prior to deregulation. In order to protect the safety of the individual, some further contents cannot be divulged. Remember in the past, those who have stood up against Monsanto have received anonymous death threats — in one case, the threats were directed towards a mother and her children.

This video documents the timeline of events that led to the deregulation of Monsanto & Forage Genetics’ GMO alfalfa that is contaminating natural alfalfa.

(See video, online or also on YouTube: How Monsanto Planted GMO Alfalfa Before Allowed by USDA, 6.06 min)

As the video explains, the lawyers representing the farmers against Monsanto failed to hold an evidentiary hearing so the injunction (ban) against planting GMO alfalfa was removed and the case was sent back to the lower district court. The lawyers pursued no further action on this case.

Contamination levels are still very low, but will undoubtedly increase over time with unexpected results (like superweeds), so stopping the further planting of GM plants like alfalfa is of high concern. Furthermore, it would set a precedent for banning other GMO perennial plants as well — a monumental move in the legislative fight against GMOs. This letter, compounded with the other evidence presented in this article, is paramount in displaying just how serious of an issue genetic contamination is. What’s more, the USDA appears to have known the entire time. It’s time to spread the word. (full text).

Link: Another articles by Anthony Gucciardi: GMO AND THE DEVASTATION OF BEE COLONIES – Blamed for Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm, April 21, 2012.

• Star Trek Convention Las Vegas 2010: NIMOY, SHATNER, STEWART, DORN, SPINER, 6.24 min;
• Michael Dorn (Worf) tells a funny Patrick Stewart story at Fan Expo 2010, 1.11 min;
• Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes Panel at Emerald City Comicon 2011, 34.47 min;
• Sir Patrick Stewart, 33.10 min;
• Patrick Stewart Panel, 41.33 min: Chicago Wizard World had Patrick Stewart for a very special panel hosted by Chris Hardwick;
• Patrick Stewart at 2012 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, 41.37 min;  
• Patrick Stewart interview – Parkinson – BBC, 4.45 min;
• Star Trek The Next Generation Cast on the Joan Rivers Show Early 90’s: Part 1, 10.49 min; Part 2, 10.29 min; Part 3, 7.36 min; Part 4, 5.27min;
• Data Goes Nuts!…. and impersonates Picard, 8.39 min;
• Star Trek Convention Las Vegas 2010: Sir Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, 2.23 min;

… and Some Bloopers:

• TNG – Picard & Data Bloopers, 0.13 min;
• STNG Bloopers pt 1, 5.55 min;
• STNG Bloopers pt 2, 7.34 min;
• Star Trek Bloopers, 2.15 min;
• Star Trek TNG/DS9/Voyager Bloopers, 6.27 min;
• Best Blooper Ever – Star Trek 2009, 1.09 min;
• Star Trek bloopers tape, 8.37 min.

Patrick Stewart turned his back on Hollywood to return to England:

• Sir Patrick Stewart (1/2) HARDtalk, 14.08 min;
• Sir Patrick Stewart (2/2) HARDtalk, 10.30 min: Patrick Stewart will be instantly recognisable to millions around the world as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. Or as Professor Charles Xavier of X-Men. But after 17 years in Hollywood, he’s turned his back on it to return to England and to venues like London’s Young Vic – to his first love – Shakespeare and the theatre. In his latest role he’s even playing Shakespeare. So why choose small audiences in venues like this over the glamour of Hollywood?

Shakespeare:   

• Frost Over the World: Shakespeare’s troubled years, 24.00 min;
• Patrick Stewart doing Shakespeare in 1969, 4.49 min: From Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, episode 6;
• Patrick Stewart discusses playing Enobarbus, 1973 vs 1978, 6.22 min;

Macbeth:

• Patrick Stewart Talks About Macbeth, 1.58 min;
• Macbeth – Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow (Patrick Stewart), 1.54 min;
• Macbeth, 2.46 min;
• Sir Patrick Stewart of PBS’ Great Performances: Macbeth at 2011 Peabody Awards, 1.41 min;
• PBS interview with Sir Patrick Stewart on Macbeth, 10.48 min;
• Patrick Stewart speaks on Macbeth superstitions, 3.08 min;
• Theater Talk: Patrick Stewart, Rupert Goold, 25.09 min: Tony Nominee Patrick Stewart and director Rupert Goold of “Macbeth,” discuss Broadway’s new, hip & hi-tech revival of The Scottish Play;

Hamlet:

• Hamlet – The Royal Shakespeare Company – part. 1, 101.08 min;
• Hamlet – The Royal Shakespeare Company – part. 2, 81.22 min: Regia: Gregory Doran, Interpreti: David Tennant, Patrick Stewart, Penny Downie, Oliver Ford Davies, Mariah Gale.

See also:

• Fall of Eagles: Lenin returns to Russia, 10.24 min: The final scenes of Lenin (Patrick Stewart) in Fall of Eagles, documenting his return to Russia from exile in Switzerland following the February 1917 Revolution;
• Fall of Eagles: Lenin and Trotsky in London, 6.52 min;
• Patrick Stewart on Extras, 3.59 min:
• Sir Patrick Stewart at City Hall by Save Your Riverside, 1.58 min;
• Young Patrick Stewart (WITH HAIR!), 0.28 min.

*****  
Native American:

• Native American Indian Spirit of Meditation, 41.10 min;
• Native American flute meditation, 6.45 min;
• Heartbeat – Native American Flute & Healing Drum, 14.57 min;

Lifescapes:

• World Flutes: Part One, 21.57 min; Part Two, 21.01 min; Part Three, Final, 16.39 min;
• Celtic Voice: Part One, 15.34 min; Part Two, 20.46 min; Part Three, Final, 18.00 min;
• Celtic River: Part 1 of 2, 28.22 min; Part 2 of 2, 24.44 min;

Celtic Woman:

• New Journey Live at Slane Castle, Ireland (2006), 93.15 min;
• Concert in Dublin 2005, 50.48 min;
• Celtic Women: 85 top tracks in autoplay;

*****

• Complete chakra meditation, 44.35 min;
• Deep Meditation Music + Theta Waves, 30.29 min;
• 432Hz Schumann Resonance Meditation, 83.39 min;
• 432Hz Chakra vibrational Healing, 35.00 min;
• 528Hz DNA Frequency – UNLOCK Your Codons, 62.18 min;
• 528 hz Love Frequency, brain correction, 5.37 min;
• 528 Hz Love Healing Awakening, 10.00 min;
• HEALING FREQUENCY, 10.00 min;
• 741Hz Conscious and Intuitive Expansion Meditation Recalibrated to 432 Tuning, 83.38 min;
• 852Hz Solfeggio Meditation Video- Pure LOVE and Spiritual Order, 83.39 min;
• Guided Energy Body Revitalization Meditation, 41.16 min;
• 2012 Ascension Harmonics, 71.13 min;
• Consciousness Connector – Theta, 79.55 min;

*****

• Relaxation Piano Music I – Chopin, Schubert, Handel, Brahms & Others, 111.00 min;
• Handel – 53 top tracks videos in autoplay.

PARIS — French President Nicolas Sarkozy failed to deliver a knockout blow against leftist front-runner Francois Hollande in their only head-to-head debate in France’s presidential campaign, the last major hurdle just four days before Sunday’s election finale.  

Hollande — an understated man whom many expected to wither under Sarkozy’s sharp attacks — stood his ground, surprising some observers and even himself. But Wednesday’s much-awaited TV debate produced no outright winner, and appears unlikely to shake up the campaign.

The debate had shaped up as Sarkozy’s last stand and last chance to draw blood against Hollande, and it quickly turned into a verbal slugfest that broke little new ground on substance but exposed big differences in style … //

… Hollande fired back: “Europe isn’t out of the woods. It is today confronted with a possible resurgence of the crisis with a generalized austerity, and I don’t want that.”

Hollande further criticized tax reforms under Sarkozy seen by leftists as too friendly to the rich. Sarkozy countered, “Saying that we offered gifts to the rich … is slander. It’s a lie.”

At this, Hollande laughed.

Both the Socialists and conservatives have sought ways to lure voters who backed Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant National Front party who won a stunning 18 percent of the first-round vote.

Sarkozy denounced those who compared him to France’s Nazi collaborators because of his tough campaign rhetoric on immigrants.

“Borders are not a bad word,” Sarkozy said about his calls to limit the number of immigrants France takes in.

Hollande, meanwhile, took a similar position to Sarkozy when it came to special treatment for France’s large Muslim community.

He said he would not allow separate menus in public cafeterias or separate hours in swimming pools for men and women to satisfy Muslims’ demands, and also said he would firmly support France’s ban on the face-covering Islamic veils.

Sarkozy took a predator pose from the outset, leaning forward on the desk through much of the debate. Hollande frequently leaned back in his chair, raising his voice less often, and at one point even appeared to yawn.

Sarkozy’s assertive posture, in another setting, could be seen as a good thing for a debate. But one of the things his critics dislike most about him is a personality seen as too aggressive, so it may not work in his favor.

The debate was preceded by the kind of dramatic build-up normally reserved for a heavyweight boxing championship, even though experts say past debates have never swung a French election, regardless of who comes off better in the televised showdown. (full text).

Links:

French Elections: Cracks in the Neoliberal Consensus, on ZNet, (Source: Counterpunch), by Diana Johnstone, April 28, 2012;

Sarkozy and Hollande lock horns in TV debate, 3.01 min; on english Al Jazeera /YouTube;

French presidential election, 2012, on en.wikipedia.

Es war die aggressivste Debatte, die es in einem französischen Präsidentschaftswahlkampf je gab: Nicolas Sarkozy wollte unbedingt den Befreiungsschlag gegen seinen Herausforderer François Hollande. Er provozierte, agitierte. Und wurde Opfer seiner eigenen Taktik … //  

… Sich an einem Flamby die Zähne ausgebissen:

Seine Gegner hatten Hollande stets als “weich” verlacht, sie verspotten ihn als “Flamby”, nach einem Wackelpudding. Nach der Debatte schrieb ein Kommentator treffend auf Twitter: “Das war das erste Mal, dass sich jemand an einem Flamby die Zähne ausgebissen hat.”

Hollande parierte nicht nur Sarkozys Angriffe, sondern ging mit voller Kraft in die Offensive und konfrontierte den Präsidenten immer wieder mit seiner Bilanz, etwa mit den hohen Arbeitslosenzahlen und mit der Staatsschuld. Es gelang ihm dennoch, präsidialer zu wirken als Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hollandes Sieg vollzog sich auf der symbolischen Ebene. Je länger der Abend dauerte, desto mehr schien es, als vollziehe sich hier gerade ein Rollentausch, als sei der Kandidat bereits Präsident. In einem rhetorisch meisterhaft einstudierten Moment gegen Ende der Sendung ergriff Hollande das Zepter: Auf die Frage, was für ein Präsident er wäre, sagte er: “Ein Präsident, der die Franzosen respektiert. Kein Präsident, der Chef von allem sein will und der am Ende für nichts verantwortlich ist.”

Hollande: Ich als Präsident:

Darauf begann er 15 Mal hintereinander einen Satz mit der gleichen Formel: “Ich als Präsident der Republik – würde meinen Premierminister nicht wie einen Mitarbeiter behandeln. Ich als Präsident der Republik – würde nicht Spenden für meine Partei sammeln. Ich als Präsident der Republik – würde die Justiz unabhängig arbeiten lassen. Ich als Präsident der Republik – würde nicht den Hochmut besitzen, die Chefs des öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehens zu ernennen. Ich als Präsident der Republik – würde sicherstellen, dass mein Verhalten jederzeit vorbildlich wäre.”

Hollande setzte sich damit verbal bereits selbst ins Amt und malte sich zugleich als das Gegenbild von Sarkozy: als “normaler Präsident”. Dies war sein gewagtester Moment, aber auch sein stärkster. In der Nacht auf heute kursierte auf Twitter bereits ein mit Sound von Daft Punkt unterlegter Remix dieses Monologs: “Moi, président de la république”.

Ausgerechnet an dieser bedeutsamen Stelle unterbrach ihn Sarkozy einmal nicht. Er unternahm im Verlauf des Abends auch nicht den Versuch, sich den Franzosen bei diesem letzten großen Auftritt als geläutert zu präsentieren – obwohl sie ihn in ihrer Mehrzahl gerade wegen seines persönlichen Verhaltens ablehnen. Er versprach ihnen nicht, ein anderer Präsident zu sein, wenn er wiedergewählt werden sollte, geschweige denn, sympathisch zu wirken. Vielleicht dachte er, dass ihm das die Bürger ohnehin nicht abnehmen würden. Er wollte die Debatte zu einem Wettstreit der Kompetenz machen, doch am Ende war sie eben doch ein Wettstreit der Persönlichkeiten.

Sarkozy: Letzter Appell an die Wähler der Rechstpopulistin Le Pen:

Während Sarkozy sich zu einem Opfer der Medien und der Sozialisten stilisieren wollte, gab Hollande den Landesvater: Er wolle die Menschen “zusammenbringen”, sagte er, und zum Schluss, schon fast im Hermelinsmantel eines französischen Monarchen, sprach Hollande davon, dass er den Franzosen “Hoffnung und Vertrauen” einflößen wolle. Die Wahl sei klar: “Wollen die Franzosen weitermachen mit einer Politik, die nicht funktioniert hat? Oder wollen sie den Wandel, wollen sie eine industrielle, wirtschaftliche und moralische Sanierung unseres Landes?” … (ganzer Text).

Links:

élection présidentielle 2012 – parodies – a selection on YouTube.

Due to the consolidation of wealth and privilege into fewer and fewer hands, thus requiring escalating amounts of officially mandated surveillance and brutality to maintain social order, the natural trajectory of unregulated capitalism tends towards hyper-authoritarian excess, even towards fascism. Moreover, by the standards of capitalist ideology, and exacerbated by the rigged nature of economic and social arrangements—large segments of society are deemed losers, and, resultantly, will grow restive, if scapegoats aren’t invented to mitigate a sense of humiliation and displace rage.   

Accordingly, rightist demagogic fictions can seize the psyches of large segments of the general public: immigrant interlopers wreck the economy; minority layabouts suck-up public funds; gays and women, possessed of dubious morality, destroy the nation’s moral fabric; lefties are driven to challenge the system, but only because of their spite, born of jealousy.

The “purer” the form of capitalism the faster the rise of fascism. There is a dark and bitter grace to this: Fascism is the deranged agency that sends the capitalist machine into systemic runaway, thus the system crashes and burns—and out of its ashes and debris …, a more humane system can come into being.

Although the yearning for freedom is inborn, as is the case with the development of any skill or talent, one must open oneself to its promise by discipline and practice. Otherwise, attempts at exercising freedom—free will’s dance with resistant and changing circumstance—can be an ugly sight to behold.

Witness the following litany of the lost evinced by us, the denizens of late-stage capitalism: The dismal air haunted and minds distracted . . . cluttered by the ceaseless chatter of those dim ghosts of human discourse known as text messages and tweets; the parade of preening narcissists and prattling sub-cretins that is celebrity culture and Reality Television; the joyless bacchanal termed the nation’s epidemic of obesity … //

… Life in an authoritarian state, which is paternalistic by nature, arrests the psyche’s drive to self-awareness; it puts one to sleep with infantilizing bribes—e.g., all the bright and shiny things of the consumer state—as it manipulates by means of coercive fear—e.g., the looming dragons of poverty and police state intimidation.

“In Freud’s time we felt oppressed in the family, in sexual situations, in our crazy hysterical conversion symptoms, and where we felt oppressed, there was the repressed. Where do we feel that thick kind of oppression today? In institutions—hospitals, universities, businesses; in public buildings, in filling out forms, in traffic …”—James Hillman

There exist few viable alternatives within the present political set-up to address the degradations inflicted by the corporate state and the machinery of duopoly in place to maintain the systems reach and power—and there will not arrive a mainstream prince to confront the vain usurpers and slay the institutional dragons who cling to power in the present era. This is an unpleasant truth, but it is true nevertheless. The sooner one faces this reality: the hopelessly corrupt nature of the present system—the closer we, collectively, move towards the creation of alternative arrangements when the current one collapses from its own corruption.

Poets of previous generations warned that one’s soul could be lost in blind pursuit of vaults of riches and limitless knowledge. It is difficult not to laugh in derision or weep in anguish for a people who sell their soul for access to the contents of a convenience store. Addiction to fattening food speaks of our inner emptiness; so called Reality Television relates to our hunger for social engagement and communion; the images that haunt the corporate state media hologram attract us because we long for the images that rise from the soul.

In timeless stories, such as Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, the awakening kiss of a princely figure should not be misapprehended with gender-based overtones of exclusively male power and dominance. Instead, the symbolic prince should be read as—the possibility that unfolds as one’s true calling when one awakens to one’s circumstance. In our time, this timeless tale plays out as: The ongoing challenge we have been given to face and struggle against the life-devouring, institutional dragons of corporate state governance … (full long text).

(Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted here. Visit Phil’s website, and see his page on FaceBook).

Germany’s Pirate Party has gone from a tiny group of hackers to a significant force in an astoundingly short amount of time. Its growing pains are obvious to all, but the party could succeed in fundamentally changing German politics. First it must agree on what it stands for.  

Now she knows what it’s like. Now she knows what politics feels like. It can hurt, and it can be extremely draining. On Thursday evening, Marina Weisband decided she had had enough. She cancelled a television appearance and checked herself in to Berlin’s Charité Hospital feeling faint and dizzy.

By then Weisband, party manager of the Pirate Party, was already familiar with the new rigors of politics and the challenges presented by her own party. She had been in the eye of a shitstorm and had been rudely berated online, all because she had written things that others didn’t like.

Last Thursday evening Weisband, 24, became acquainted with the rigors of the old system. She was a guest on a talk show hosted by Michel Friedman, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who accused the Pirates of providing a political home to “Nazis, racists and anti-Semites” — about the worst possible insult in German politics … //

… Pirate Communication:

Yet, it isn’t so easy to revitalize a 63-year-old system, especially one that has also proven to be successful in many respects. It defends itself, but more than anything it absorbs challengers. Adversaries will be subsumed and changed, not the other way around. And that is precisely where we are today. Will the Pirates succeed in changing the system, or is the system changing the Pirates?

Their tools are the Internet and the computer, which they use to develop their policies. To understand the Pirates, it’s important to understand how they communicate with one another.

Their system, such as it is, can be illustrated by the case of Christopher Lauer, a 27-year-old member of the legislature in the city-state of Berlin. Recently, he came up with the idea of extending the terms of party leaders from one year to two, arguing that the party needs continuity in its leadership. The proposal will be put up for a vote at the party convention this weekend.

Lauer, though, wants to know what the Pirates think about his proposal before that, and he wants a recommendation from the grassroots to take to the convention. To that end, he uses the Liquid Feedback voting software to introduce his motion. Party members who have registered are entitled to vote.

The discussion takes place simultaneously on a Pirate Pad, an online document to which everyone can contribute. Lauer also promotes his proposal on Twitter, where he currently has 14,000 followers. Marina Weisband immediately retweets his idea to her own followers, of which she has 25,000. In this way, all it takes are a few clicks before Lauer’s idea reaches the majority of the party base. (full text).

Part 2: A Never-Ending Debate;
Part 3: Hacking Its Way to the Top;
Part 4: In Search of a Coherent;
Part 5: The Establishment’s View.

… Europe’s working poor:

• These people are the extreme edge of Europe’s working poor: a growing slice of the population that is slipping through Europe’s long-vaunted social safety net. Many, particularly the young, are trapped in low-paid or temporary jobs that are replacing permanent ones destroyed in Europe’s economic crunch.   
• Now, economists, European officials and social watchdog groups are warning that the situation is set to worsen. As European governments respond to the crisis by pushing for deep spending cuts to close budget gaps and greater flexibility in their work forces, “the population of working poor will explode,” said Jean-Paul Fitoussi, an economics professor at L’Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris.To most Europeans, and especially the French, this should not be happening. With generous minimum wage laws and the world’s strongest welfare systems, Europeans are accustomed to thinking they are more protected from a phenomenon they associate with the United States and other laissez-faire economies.
• But the European welfare state, designed to ensure that those without jobs are provided with a basic income, access to health care and subsidized housing, is proving ill-prepared to deal with the steady increase in working people who do not make enough to get by.
• The trend is alarming in hard-hit countries like Greece and Spain, but it is rising even in more prosperous nations like France and Germany.

Working poor living in the same condition as in the 19th century:

• “France is a rich country,” Mr. Fitoussi said. “But the working poor are living in the same condition as in the 19th century. They can’t pay for heating, they can’t pay for their children’s clothes, they are sometimes living five people in a nine-square-meter apartment — here in France!” he exclaimed, speaking of an apartment measuring about 100 square feet.
• In 2010, the latest year for which data were available, 8.2 percent of workers in the 17-nation euro zone were living under the region’s average poverty threshold of 10,240 euros, or $13,660, for single adult workers, up from 7.3 percent in 2006, according to Eurostat. The situation is nearly twice as bad in Spain and Greece.
• While direct comparisons are difficult because of different standards, the Labor Department estimated that 7 percent of single adult workers in the United States earned less than the poverty threshold in 2009 of $10,830 in 2009, up from 5.1 percent in 2006.
• France fares better than most European countries, at 6.6 percent, but perhaps nowhere is the phenomenon more startling. While the country seems to exude prosperity, the number of working poor is up from 6.1 percent in 2006, and experts predict it will grow.

In France, half the nation’s households earn less than 19,000 euros:

• The median monthly paycheck is 1,670 euros, 26 percent above the average for the entire European Union. But the high cost of living and the difficulty many people face in securing affordable housing – home prices have surged 110 percent in the last decade, and most rentals require large advance deposits –, leaves a growing number out in the cold.
• Ms. Dos Santos and her boyfriend, Jimmy Collin, 22, moved to the trailer because they did not want to live with their families and lacked money for a down payment on an apartment. Mr. Collin, a high school graduate with some additional technical training, searched for work for more than six months before landing a minimum-wage contract last year, at 1,375 euros per month, cleaning streets near Parisian jewels like the Eiffel Tower. He gets a small government stipend for low-income earners, but they still found it hard to save after paying taxes and living expenses. The wait for subsidized housing is more than five years.
• Ms. Dos Santos, also a high school graduate, jumped at the job at a Carrefour supermarket after she failed to find work through one of France’s national employment centers, where counselors meant to handle 120 cases have been overwhelmed lately with up to 500 each. But her boss will not let her work more than 35 hours a week, and she cannot find supplemental jobs.
• “It holds people back,” she said.

120,000 people are living on French camping sites: … //

… Children in Greece: To relieve the hardship:

• The collection of food for Greece by the Greek community of Zurich was concluded at the end of March, so that the food arrived at its destination before the Greek Easter festival on 15th April. In his sermon the Greek priest Emmanuel Simantirakis thanked for the 5 metric tons of food which will help to relieve the hardship a little.
• However, the donation activity of the Greek community of Zurich goes on. In view of the difficult situation at present in Greece they need your support, to help the needy children.
• The Greek community board of directors has therefore selected two child-care organizations, which they would like to support with your direct financial aid: www.sos-villages.gr and www.kivotostoukosmou.org.
• For this purpose the Zurich Greek community opened: a new Post Cheque Account named “GGZ helps children in GR”
• PC 60-329248-0.
• As the organizations depend on your help as quickly as possible, the first phase of this relief operation has to be concluded by the end of April 2012. The collected sum will be published on the web-site www.kinotita.ch.
• We are hoping for a vivid response and thank you all for your aid.

Increasing suiciderate caused by economic crisis: … (full text).

Links:

Tax dispute with Switzerland;

TRIALS WITHOUT CRIMES OR EVIDENCE;

The Meaning of Austerity Measures in the Eurozone;

The IOPS site (International Organization for a Participatory Society);

The Simpsons Go IOPS;

Chinese demography: An upside-down pyramid.

How does the Global Financial Crisis End? – Michael Maloney explains, uploaded by wesayuk.com, 14.49 min;

Eurozone debt crisis-News Analysis (12-02-2011), 24.55 min;

Ann Pettifor and Lee C Buchheit: Europe’s Sovereign Debt Crisis,  iby iea, 37.18 min, 1 year ago;

Questions: Joseph Stiglitz in conversation with Evan Davis, 35.04 min;

European sovereign debt crisis: Where is it headed? On the Edge with Max Keiser, 23.27 min, April 27, 2012.

Commodity market;

List of commodities exchanges.

Game-changing plays in any sport and at any level are tremendously exciting. Whether we’re watching Pop Warner football, middle school recreational soccer, high school basketball, or Major League Baseball, an extraordinary athletic play makes us stand up and cheer. If our team takes the lead as a result, so much the better … //  

… We can see that striving to make a big play is often a mistake and can easily lead to a loss. Forcing the action never works. Smart athletes stay within themselves, letting the game come to them. The best athletes are able, more often than not, to rise to the occasion when an opportunity presents itself. Then, in the context of the flow of the game, you’ll see the baseball flying over the fence or the beautifully arcing touchdown pass floating into the hands of the receiver.

This is especially true regarding exercise. When it comes to exercise, slow and steady wins the race. (1,2,3)
Trying to do too much usually results in an injury, which sets you back and wastes precious time in the recovery process. In strength-training, for example, lifting big weight is not the goal. Progressive, incremental gains are what build lifetime fitness. Aerobic exercise is similar. Going for a five-mile walk is a bad idea if you haven’t walked at all in six months or more. Going for an eight-mile run when you’re used to running three miles is another bad idea. Gradual increases in time and distance are what works.

Swinging for the fences is great when it happens. In exercise and fitness, achieving a personal best is cause for celebration. But in exercise and fitness, personal bests result from much effort and preparation. When you have a long-term, solid base of fitness, you can swing for the fences with confidence.

Chiropractic Care and Peak Performance:

• You exercise regularly and eat a wide variety of nutritionally balanced foods. You get sufficient rest. Your work is personally meaningful. You enjoy spending time with family and friends.
• This sounds like an ideal healthy life toward which many of us strive. A key action step that would help ensure overall health and wellness for this person (and us) is getting regular chiropractic care. Chiropractic care identifies and corrects spinal misalignments, restoring balance, harmony, and normal function to your body’s mechanical center and core musculature.
• Chiropractic care enables all the body’s systems to work well together, working from the inside-out to improve a person’s health and well-being.

(full text and Notes 1 – 3).
Homepage, About, latest Newsletter, What Makes Us Unique, Arabic Version, Location map, Contacts … and many more links …

Links for Health:

The Cholesterol Truth;

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice, on Reality Check, January 27, 2012.

Die Piratenpartei Deutschland verurteilt aufs Schärfste den vom Innenministerium bekannt gewordenen Gesetztesentwurf zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung (VDS), in dem es weiterhin um eine grundlegende Generalüberwachung geht.  

Die Provider sollen verpflichtet werden, die Telekommunikation und und IP-Daten verdachtslos auf Vorhalt zu speichern und bei Ermittlungen unmittelbar zur Weiterverarbeitung einzufrieren. Damit wird die gesamte deutsche Bevölkerung unter Generalverdacht gestellt. Die bereits mehrfach skandierte »Schutzlücke« ist nach einer Studie des Max-Planck-Instituts eine Illusion und versuchtes Totschlag-Argument.

»Es ist unerträglich mit anzusehen, dass die absurden Fantasien einer Totalüberwachung immer noch nicht der Vergangenheit angehören. Die PIRATEN haben bereits vor Jahren davor gewarnt, welche Begehrlichkeiten eine frenetische Datensammelwut erzeugt. Herr Friedrich beweist mit seinem Vorstoß diese Befürchtungen. Wenn CDU, FDP und SPD das gesamte Volk unter Generalverdacht stellen wollen, um Ordnungswidrigkeiten aufklären zu können, dann ist dies ein unbändiges Verhalten, das schleunigst abgewählt gehört«, so Sebastian Nerz, Vorsitzender der Piratenpartei Deutschland.

• Die PIRATEN fordern die Regierung auf, die Pläne zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung aufzugeben und auf EU-Ebene für die Abschaffung der VDS-Richtlinie 2006/24/EG einzutreten.
• »Es besteht faktisch auch kein dringender Handlungsbedarf, da derzeit der EuGH eine umfassende Überarbeitung der Richtlinien behandelt und deshalb auch keine Strafzahlungen zu erwarten sind«, ergänzte Nerz weiter.

Eine Klage vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht zieht die Piratenpartei bereits jetzt, für einen etwaigen Beschluss des Bundestages, in Betracht … (ganzer Text).

Links:

Piraten Partei Deutschland;

Sebastian Nerz ist neuer Vorsitzender der Piratenpartei Deutschland;

Sebastian Nerz on en.wikipedia, auf de.wikipedia, et aussi un peu sur fr.wikipedia;

Sebastian Nerz on Spiegel Online/Politik;

Portail Politique sur fr.wikipedia.

A crowd estimated at 250,000 people or more wound its way through Montréal April 22 in Quebec’s largest ever Earth Day march. They raised many demands: an end to tar sands and shale gas development, opposition to the Quebec government’s Plan Nord mining expansion, support for radical measures to protect ecosystems, and other causes. And many wore the red felt square symbolizing support to the province’s students fighting the Liberal government’s 75 per cent increase in post-secondary education fees over the next five years. The Earth Day march was the largest mobilization to date in a mounting wave of citizen protest throughout the province.  

In the vanguard have been the students, now in the eleventh week of a strike that has effectively shut down Quebec’s universities and junior colleges. In recent days they have battled court injunctions and mounting police repression. Their resilience has astonished many Québécois and inspired strong statements of support from broad layers of the population.[1] Equally surprising to many has been the government’s stubborn refusal to even discuss the fee hike with student representatives … //

… A Débat de Société:

The CLASSE began preparing for the strike early in 2011, publishing several issues during the year of an on-line tabloid journal, Ultimatum, containing detailed, well-argued articles on the issues and extensive reports on local activities. Each issue, up to 44 pages at one point, included reports on the popular upsurges in the Middle East and elsewhere internationally, with an emphasis on the leading role of students and youth. The Occupy movement was prominently covered. When the strike began in February of this year, Ultimatum switched to a two-page format issued almost weekly with updates on the strike’s progress.

Largely thanks to CLASSE’s intervention the strike has managed to move the public debate onto the students’ terrain, raising basic questions about the role of public education and its importance to the whole of Quebec society as a collective service that should be financed out of general government revenues, not on the backs of students as ‘consumers.’ Thus, while the strike movement’s immediate goal is to ‘block the increase’ in fees, the students have successfully placed the campaign in the context of an ongoing fight for la gratuité scolaire, free and universal access to post-secondary education. As the students argue, this remains a still unrealized objective of Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s.

The students’ case has been endorsed by the eminent sociologist Guy Rocher, a member of the Quebec government-appointed Parent commission in the 1960s that laid the basis for a massive overhaul of the province’s educational system, proposing an end to church control of the schools and the creation of a vast network of post-secondary educational institutions. In an interview published in Le Devoir, Rocher described free education as a “societal choice” that would cost only 1% of the Quebec budget. And the Parent commission, he recalled, said free post-secondary education was “desirable in the long term” and even proposed that the neediest students be given a salary while they studied.

In fact, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Canada is a signatory, provides that “Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education” [Article 13(2)(c)].

Aware that even stopping the current hike in fees requires a popular mobilization larger than what the students themselves can achieve, the CLASSE has called for creation of a broad united front of protest against the neoliberal offensive and linked the fees increase to a string of recent regressive measures. A statement issued for the April 14 march, “For a Quebec Spring,” stated:

“Cuts in social programs, lower taxes for corporations, record military expenditures, setbacks to women’s rights, massive layoffs, inaction on factory closings, raising the retirement threshold to 67 years, increase in education fees, imposition of the healthcare tax, increased electricity rates… The list of Liberal and Conservative injustices is a long one.”

Where Are the Unions?

And indeed, the students’ appeals have been supported by a wide array of organizations in civil society. The full list, regularly updated, can be found at the web site 1625$ de hausse, ça ne passe pas. But while all three trade-union centrals support the students and favour free education, they have so far failed to back their rhetoric with economic action – not even the one-day general strike in solidarity with the students promised by the CSN. A petition urging such action by the unions is now gathering mounting support. It urges the union leaders to speak out forcefully, to organize a “national mobilization, beginning perhaps with a one-day symbolic general strike across Quebec” and, if that proves insufficient to defeat the fee hike, to follow it up with stronger solidarity actions.

Meanwhile, the right-wing voices in the mass media – especially in English Canada – are becoming increasingly shrill in their attacks on the students. A case in point was a diatribe by Postmedia columnist Andrew Coyne, a regular member of CBC-TV’s “At Issue” panel, which the state television network presents as intelligent commentary on questions of the day. In an April 21 newspaper column, Coyne described the Quebec students as a “self-serving, self-satisfied, self-dramatizing collection of idiots,” and went on to propose that instead of paying the present 17% of the total cost of their education the students should pay the full tab – through a graduated tax on subsequent income! Such is the logic of the neoliberal ‘user pays’ principle.

And the Funding? … (full text and Notes 1 – 5).

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC not only gave unfettered free speech rights to corporations but paved the way for unlimited amounts of money to be poured into election campaigns, especially those of presidential candidates. However, what really made that ruling so significant was not that the court granted First Amendment rights to corporations—formerly reserved only for individual citizens—but that in doing so, the court legitimized an incestuous relationship between government and its corporate controllers … //  

… What some Americans may not have realized, however, is that these resulting prison labor industries, which rely on cheap, almost free labor, are doing as much to put the average American out of work as the outsourcing of jobs to China and India. “It’s bad enough that our companies have to compete with exploited and forced labor in China. They shouldn’t have to compete against prison labor here at home,” noted Scott Paul, Executive Director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

States influenced by ALEC are also seeking to replace public workers with prisoners who work not for pay but to get time off their sentences. Coupled with the trend towards privatized prisons—where, in exchange for corporations managing state prisons, states agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years—this expansion of the prison labor industry contributes to an environment in which there is a financial incentive for ensuring that more people are put and kept in jail. Thanks in large part to ALEC’s handiwork in introducing “three strikes” laws, “truth in sentencing” laws, and harsh immigration laws, approximately 13 million Americans are introduced to American jails in any given year.

Efforts to expose ALEC as a group enabling smoke-filled backroom deals and lambast them for their conservative ties and connections to controversial legislation have resulted in a recent exodus of members. This includes Coca-Cola, Kraft, and Intuit (which pulled out of ALEC in the wake of the controversy surrounding the Trayvon Martin shooting). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s are among the latest to break off relations with ALEC.

However, don’t let this corporate exodus from ALEC fool you into thinking that these corporations have grown a conscience or that they have given up on influencing the political process, influence which cannot in any way be matched by the average American through voting or writing letters to Congress members. The upcoming presidential election illustrates perfectly what the aim of Big Business in America is all about—money, power and influence. Why else would corporations be so careful to hedge their bets, divvying up their campaign donations between the leading contenders from the Republican and Democratic parties?

Rest assured, these corporations are not seeking candidates who will end wars abroad or reduce the deficit. They are seeking candidates who will serve their monetary interests and who will give them tax breaks, subsidies and government contracts—all at the expense of the average American taxpayer. Thus, the next time you turn on C-SPAN in an effort to observe Congress in action, keep in mind that the spectacle playing out before you is not so much democracy in action as it is a meeting in the boardroom of the corporate-state. And when next you see the president on television talking about his latest policy, what you are really seeing is the CEO of the corporate-state making his case for more government control over our lives. (full long text).

(About John W. Whitehead: Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book The Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online at amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted by e-mail. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available on their website).

Despite their victory in parliamentary elections, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have been weakened in the race to elect a successor to former President Hosni Mubarak, after their two most promising candidates were disqualified. Meanwhile ordinary Egyptians, who care more about making a living than religion, are looking for a strong leader for the country … //

… Desire for a Strong Man:  

For the candidates, being viewed by the public as a strong man will be a key factor in their success. The fact that a figure like Suleiman, who disappeared from public view after Mubarak was overthrown, was able to come practically from nowhere to become one of the top candidates also shows how insecure voters are, a little more than a year after the revolution.

Besides, the Egyptians will be electing someone whose responsibilities are not even clear yet, because the country still lacks a new constitution. This prompted the ruling military council to demand that the constitution be completed before the elections. But this will be difficult, since the constitutional convention has no longer existed since two weeks ago. The body, established by the parliament, was disbanded after the Islamists had awarded themselves the majority in the convention.

In addition to coming under growing pressure in recent weeks from the old elites and the military, the Muslim Brotherhood has seen its aura as a party of social rebels gradually disappearing. Cairo’s poor were undoubtedly offended by the disqualified candidate El-Shater’s offhanded remark that his companies were worth “only 25 million Egyptian pounds” (about €3.1 million or $4.1 million).

What is more important, however, is that while the Muslim Brothers have the largest number of seats in parliament, they have no significant posts in the government and the administration. The ordinary people care very little about the differences between the legislative and the executive. This confronts the Muslim Brotherhood with the dilemma of being held responsible for unemployment, uncertainty and inflation, even though it has no power to do anything about these problems — not yet, at least.

Inspired by the Turkish Example:

This explains the Brotherhood’s hasty decision to send its own candidate, El-Shater, into the race, even though it had consistently promised that it would not seek the presidency. The Muslim Brothers are determined to secure power while they still can.

For all its banner-waving and raging against “the enemies of the Islamic project,” the Brotherhood has accepted the disqualification of its candidate in order to avoid a falling out with the military council. It fears an investigation of the parliamentary election for fraud, as the secular camp is demanding. Two ambassadors from Arab countries in Cairo, who preferred not to be identified, estimate that if there were new elections, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists would probably fall short of the 50 percent mark.

Now the Brotherhood has only its alternate candidate, Mohammed Morsy, the somewhat bland chairman of their Freedom and Justice Party. But because Egyptians tend to vote for individuals rather than parties, the renegade Aboul Fotouh is expected to capture a large share of the Islamic vote. A doctor and former student leader, he has been popular since he once picked a quarrel with then-President Anwar Sadat in a televised debate.

Aboul Fotouh believes that democratic principles are compatible with Islam and leans toward the example set by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turks have enjoyed an impressive economic boom under Erdogan, whereas the economic situation in Egypt one year after the revolution is unpromising.

Egypt Needs a New Pharaoh: … (full text).

Link: Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh … is an Egyptian physician, former student activist and moderate[specify] Islamist politician. He is known for his staunch opposition to the Sadat and Mubarak regimes as well as his openness towards people of different political ideologies, a subject of controversy among supporters of Egyptian Islamic movements and organisations such the Muslim Brotherhood …