Global rebellion: The coming chaos?

As the crisis of global capitalism spirals out of control, the powers that be in the global system appear to be adrift and unable to propose viable solutions. From the slaughter of dozens of young protesters by the army in Egypt to the brutal repression of the Occupy movement in the United States, and the water cannons brandished by the militarized police in Chile against students and workers, states and ruling classes are unable are to hold back the tide of worldwide popular rebellion and must resort to ever more generalized repression.

Simply put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy can no longer be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. The ruling classes have lost legitimacy; we are witnessing a breakdown of ruling-class hegemony on a world scale.

To understand what is happening in this second decade of the new century we need to see the big picture in historic and structural context. Global elites had hoped and expected that the "Great Depression" that began with the mortgage crisis and the collapse of the global financial system in 2008 would be a cyclical downturn that could be resolved through state-sponsored bailouts and stimulus packages. But it has become clear that this is a structural crisis. Cyclical crises are on-going episodes in the capitalist system, occurring and about once a decade and usually last 18 months to two years. There were world recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the early 21st century.

Structural crises are deeper; their resolution requires a fundamental restructuring of the system. Earlier world structural crises of the 1890s, the 1930s and the 1970s were resolved through a reorganisation of the system that produced new models of capitalism. "Resolved" does not mean that the problems faced by a majority of humanity under capitalism were resolved but that the reorganization of the capitalist system in each case overcame the constraints to a resumption of capital accumulation on a world scale. The crisis of the 1890s was resolved in the cores of world capitalism through the export of capital and a new round of imperialist expansion. The Great Depression of the 1930s was resolved through the turn to variants of social democracy in both the North and the South - welfare, populist, or developmentalist capitalism that involved redistribution, the creation of public sectors, and state regulation of the market.

Globalization and the current structural crisis

To understand the current conjuncture we need to go back to the 1970s. The globalization stage of world capitalism we are now in itself evolved out the response of distinct agents to these previous episodes of crisis, in particular, to the 1970s crisis of social democracy, or more technically stated, of Fordism-Keynesianism, or of redistributive capitalism. In the wake of that crisis capital went global as a strategy of the emergent Transnational Capitalist Class and its political representatives to reconstitute its class power by breaking free of nation-state constraints to accumulation. These constraints - the so-called "class compromise" - had been imposed on capital through decades of mass struggles around the world by nationally-contained popular and working classes. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, globally-oriented elites captured state power in most countries around the world and utilized that power to push capitalist globalization through the neo-liberal model.

Globalization and neo-liberal policies opened up vast new opportunities for transnational accumulation in the 1980s and 1990s. The revolution in computer and information technology and other technological advances helped emergent transnational capital to achieve major gains in productivity and to restructure, "flexibilize," and shed labor worldwide. This, in turn, undercut wages and the social wage and facilitated a transfer of income to capital and to high consumption sectors around the world that provided new market segments fuelling growth. In sum, globalization made possible a major extensive and intensive expansion of the system and unleashed a frenzied new round of accumulation worldwide that offset the 1970s crisis of declining profits and investment opportunities.

However, the neo-liberal model has also resulted in an unprecedented worldwide social polarization. Fierce social and class struggles worldwide were able in the 20th century to impose a measure of social control over capital. Popular classes, to varying degrees, were able to force the system to link what we call social reproduction to capital accumulation. What has taken place through globalization is the severing of the logic of accumulation from that of social reproduction, resulting in an unprecedented growth of social inequality and intensified crises of survival for billions of people around the world.

The pauperizing effects unleashed by globalization have generated social conflicts and political crises that the system is now finding it more and more difficult to contain. The slogan "we are the 99 per cent" grows out of the reality that global inequalities and pauperization have intensified enormously since capitalist globalization took off in the 1980s. Broad swaths of humanity have experienced absolute downward mobility in recent decades. Even the IMF was forced to admit in a 2000 report that "in recent decades, nearly one-fifth of the world’s population has regressed. This is arguably one of the greatest economic failures of the 20th century".

Global social polarization intensifies the chronic problem of over-accumulation. This refers to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, so that the global market is unable to absorb world output and the system stagnates. Transnational capitalists find it more and more difficult to unload their bloated and expanding mass of surplus - they can’t find outlets to invest their money in order to generate new profits; hence the system enters into recession or worse. In recent years, the Transnational Capitalist Class has turned to militarized accumulation, to wild financial speculation, and to the raiding of sacking of public finance to sustain profit-making in the face of over-accumulation.

While transnational capital’s offensive against the global working and popular classes dates back to the crisis of the 1970s and has grown in intensity ever since, the Great Recession of 2008 was in several respects a major turning point. In particular, as the crisis spread it generated the conditions for new rounds of brutal austerity worldwide, greater flexibilization of labor, steeply rising under and unemployment, and so on. Transnational finance capital and its political agents utilised the global crisis to impose brutal austerity and attempting to dismantle what is left of welfare systems and social states in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, to squeeze more value out of labor, directly through more intensified exploitation and indirectly through state finances. Social and political conflict has escalated around the world in the wake of 2008.

Nonetheless, the system has been unable to recover; it is sinking deeper into chaos. Global elites cannot manage the explosive contradictions. Is the neo-liberal model of capitalism entering a terminal stage? It is crucial to understand that neo-liberalism is but one model of global capitalism; to say that neo-liberalism may be in terminal crisis is not to say that global capitalism is in terminal crisis. Is it possible that the system will respond to crisis and mass rebellion through a new restructuring that leads to some different model of world capitalism - perhaps a global Keynesianism involving transnational redistribution and transnational regulation of finance capital? Will rebellious forces from below be co-opted into some new reformed capitalist order?

Or are we headed towards a systemic crisis? A systemic crisis is one in which the solution involves the end of the system itself, either through its supersession and the creation of an entirely new system, or more ominously the collapse of the system. Whether or not a structural crisis becomes systemic depends on how distinct social and class forces respond - to the political projects they put forward and as well as to factors of contingency that cannot be predicted in advance, and to objective conditions. It is impossible at this time to predict the outcome of the crisis. However, a few things are clear in the current world conjuncture.

The current moment

First, this crisis shares a number of aspects with earlier structural crises of the 1930s and the 1970s, but there are also several features unique to the present:

The system is fast reaching the ecological limits of its reproduction. We face the real spectre of resource depletion and environmental catastrophes that threaten a system collapse.

 - The magnitude of the means of violence and social control is unprecedented. Computerised wars, drones, bunker-buster bombs, star wars, and so forth, have changed the face of warfare. Warfare has become normalized and sanitized for those not directly at the receiving end of armed aggression. Also unprecedented is the concentration of control over the mass media, the production of symbols, images and messages in the hands of transnational capital. We have arrived at the society of panoptical surveillance and Orwellian thought control.

 - We are reaching the limits to the extensive expansion of capitalism, in the sense that there are no longer any new territories of significance that can be integrated into world capitalism. De-ruralization is now well-advanced, and the commodification of the countryside and of pre- and non-capitalist spaces has intensified, that is, converted in hot-house fashion into spaces of capital, so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never before seen. Like riding a bicycle, the capitalist system needs to continuously expand or else it collapses. Where can the system now expand?

 - There is the rise of a vast surplus population inhabiting a planet of slums, alienated from the productive economy, thrown into the margins, and subject to sophisticated systems of social control and to crises of survival - to a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitation-exclusion. This raises in new ways the dangers of a 21st-century fascism and new episodes of genocide to contain the mass of surplus humanity and their real or potential rebellion.

 - There is a disjuncture between a globalising economy and a nation-state based system of political authority. Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and have not been able to play the role of what social scientists refer to as a "hegemon", or a leading nation-state that has enough power and authority to organise and stabilize the system. Nation-states cannot control the howling gales of a runaway global economy; states face expanding crises of political legitimacy.

Second, global elites are unable to come up with solutions. They appear to be politically bankrupt and impotent to steer the course of events unfolding before them. They have exhibited bickering and division at the G-8, G-20 and other forums, seemingly paralyzed, and certainly unwilling to challenge the power and prerogative of transnational finance capital, the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale, and the most rapacious and destabilizing fraction. While national and transnational state apparatuses fail to intervene to impose regulations on global finance capital, they have intervened to impose the costs of the crisis on labor. The budgetary and fiscal crises that supposedly justify spending cuts and austerity are contrived. They are a consequence of the unwillingness or inability of states to challenge capital and their disposition to transfer the burden of the crisis to working and popular classes.

Third, there will be no quick outcome of the mounting global chaos. We are in for a period of major conflicts and great upheavals. One danger is a neo-fascist response to contain the crisis. We are facing a war of capital against all. Three sectors of transnational capital in particular stand out as the most aggressive and prone to seek neo-fascist political arrangements to force forward accumulation as this crisis continues: speculative financial capital, the military-industrial-security complex, and the extractive and energy sector. Capital accumulation in the military-industrial-security complex depends on endless conflicts and war, including the so-called wars on terrorism and on drugs, as well as on the militarisation of social control. Transnational finance capital depends on taking control of state finances and imposing debt and austerity on the masses, which in turn can only be achieved through escalating repression. And extractive industries depend on new rounds of violent dispossession and environmental degradation around the world.

Fourth, popular forces worldwide have moved quicker than anyone could imagine from the defensive to the offensive. The initiative clearly passed this year, 2011, from the transnational elite to popular forces from below. The juggernaut of capitalist globalization in the 1980s and 1990s had reverted the correlation of social and class forces worldwide in favour of transnational capital. Although resistance continued around the world, popular forces from below found themselves disoriented and fragmented in those decades, pushed on to the defensive in the heyday of neo-liberalism. Then the events of September 11, 2001, allowed the transnational elite, under the leadership of the US state, to sustain its offensive by militarizing world politics and extending systems of repressive social control in the name of "combating terrorism".

Now all this has changed. The global revolt underway has shifted the whole political landscape and the terms of the discourse. Global elites are confused, reactive, and sinking into the quagmire of their own making. It is noteworthy that those struggling around the world have been shown a strong sense of solidarity and are in communications across whole continents. Just as the Egyptian uprising inspired the US Occupy movement, the latter has been an inspiration for a new round of mass struggle in Egypt. What remains is to extend transnational coordination and move towards transnationally-coordinated programmes. On the other hand, the "empire of global capital" is definitely not a "paper tiger". As global elites regroup and assess the new conjuncture and the threat of mass global revolution, they will - and have already begun to - organize coordinated mass repression, new wars and interventions, and mechanisms and projects of co-optation in their efforts to restore hegemony.

The only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity along the lines of a 21st-century democratic socialism in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature.

The Road to Nowhere

Peaceful protests are nice. The people exercising their lawful rights... However, because of the nature of the beast, the police (who are the 'security guards' of Corporate greed and cruelty) are going to get violent and ugly. Because they are violent and ugly by nature. And, when they do, they are going to violate the people's Constitutional Rights. Because these rights are a sham... they only exist if you have money, position, and power.

In the United States,and in the world, the only recourse the people really have is violent revolution. Or, at least, the threat of violent revolution. Not so much in the streets - because the forces of evil control the streets - but in the back-alleyways, the kitchens, the bathrooms... wherever the people are in control... And, the people can be in control wherever they want... The deliveryman, the cook, the plumber, the gardener, the local mechanic... anybody could be an 'agent of justice'...

The weapons of choice of the people's militia are the ice-pick, the pen, pencil, a sharpened stick, a piece of pipe, a hammer, a wrench, rat poison, or any of a variety of everyday things... the people take their weapons from their enemies... a rifle and you become a sniper... a home-made bomb and you blow up the local country club... poison in a cup of coffee, or a doughnut... they use pepper spray and the people use battery acid and bleach... home made napalm, booby traps, sticks smeared with human excrement... there is no end to ingeniousness... everything can become a weapon.

Snitches cannot be tolerated... the people must make examples of those who cooperate with the Enemy... thousands of Charles Mansons... cutting off the extremities of their children, wives, mothers, cousins... violent revolutionaries must be as brutal to their enemies as they are kind to their friends.

After all, we do not want war or violence - it is the Enemy that uses brutality as their tool. They are out there beating up kids and spraying old women with pepper spray... they are dropping bombs and flying their 'drones'... shooting up people's weddings and assassinating their leaders... If they want war we can give it to them. From all directions. The pool man could be an assassin... Julio down at the car wash... the fry cook at Mickey D's...

There is no place the Enemy can hide... the people are everywhere. The Enemy is EXTREMELY vulnerable.

Why then, do they seek their own destruction? Why do they push the people to violent confrontation?

Because they think they can! That is the fundamental error of repression. But deep inside the reptile mind of the right wing conservative... where he (or she) really lives... is a smouldering fear... of the reality of the ultimate outcome of violence and brutality... the cost is just too high to justify the expenditure of energy, time and money... Because, in the end, lies certain defeat and the destruction of everything of value... The 'reaction' has never won against the people, and reactionaries know it. That is the source of their fear. 

And, the people shall use that fear to bring the Enemy to his knees.... 

The Spirit of Black Friday

If you'd like to study people reduced to the lowest common denominator, go to Walmart on Black Friday.

Looking at the news and video sharing sites recently, we're confronted with striking images of shoppers during Black Friday. Every year, this behaviour seems to get more extreme; mass crowds, arguments and even fights break out, all over the change to buy popular products at reduced prices. What can this behaviour tell us about our society and ourselves; what, from the view of Socialism, is the true gift of Black Friday?

What is within is manifested without

Socialism, in common with many other spiritual traditions, holds that our internal state affects our external situation. For example, a person who is anxious may create stressful situations in their lives to help themselves work through that anxiety, or a person who has unresolved anger may create an event where they can see the effects of anger working in someone else, to help themselves realise that they need to resolve their emotions.

Our understanding of the Socialist Vision, as well as other law of attraction teachings like The Secret, tells us that what we see and feel within us becomes our reality, whether that is enjoyable or unpleasant to us. It also tells us that the blocks and wounds that we hold become physical challenges and behaviours, giving us the opportunity to recognise them.

What Creates Black Friday Fever?

So what is the behaviour of our culture at times like Black Friday revealing to us about our internal states?

From watching the videos, I see frantic consumption; consumption not only of material goods, but of concepts about what is important and what is not, what is real, and what is not, and what it means to be a person in our society.

It would be easy to resign ourselves to a perception of this behaviour and this consumerism as a negative thing. Certainly, the drastic need for us to acquire physical, material goods and what they represent to us doesn't appear to be a healthy expression of our natures, especially when it becomes violent and out of control.

Looking Past the Literal

But Socialism can show us another way of looking at this. If we can forget the literal behaviour and our emotional reaction to it, and learn to look past it to the level of soul and spirit, we see a very different picture, one that is, in fact, encouraging and positive when channelled appropriately.

When I look past the frantic physical expression of consumerism of Black Friday, I see a people who are hungry. Mythically, we are a people who desire so strongly; we want so fully; we have a need to fill a deep hole within us, and are searching with a huge amount of energy for something to fill it.

When I see people desperately buying clothes and games and toys and appliances, I see people who are looking for something, and have simply forgotten where to look. That's not to say that clothes and games and toys and appliances and all those other things aren't good or enjoyable, but just that they're not what we need deep down, in that place where we're not physical beings but souls of spirit and light.

What are We Really Looking For?

Socialism and other spiritual traditions tell us that what we need most of all is Spirit; a connection with the Source that nourishes us from the inside. If we forget how to maintain that relationship with our souls, we become desperately hungry. But no physical thing can quell that hunger, and that's the gift of Black Friday.

The True Gift of Black Friday

It reminds us that no matter how much we buy, or have, or think we need, we are hungry for something much more profound and lasting. And it shows us that we still believe that we can find what we long for; we're still searching and creating and asking for it, sometimes so strongly that we forget what it is that we're looking for. As a people, Black Friday shows us that we're still alive and yearning, and that all we have to do is remember where to look.

Meanwhile back at Walmart

We see that people who believe that the worth of human beings is based on their ability to consume are ignorant of the real meaning of life. Your possessions do not define you - they enslave you! A fat bitch with a 55-inch LED TV is still a fat bitch... A shithead with a new PS3 is still a shithead... Material possessions do not transform you into anything other than what you already are. You are still a 'wage slave' headed for bankruptcy, no matter how much shit you charge on your credit card... You still feel empty inside no matter how much you buy.

The truth is, your real value is based on how much you contribute to your community, and the world you live in, not how much you buy....

#OCCUPYXMAS

You’ve been sleeping on the streets for two months pleading peacefully for a new spirit in economics. And just as your camps are raided, your eyes pepper sprayed and your head’s knocked in, another group of people are preparing to camp-out. Only these people aren’t here to support occupy Wall Street, they’re here to secure their spot in line for a Black Friday bargain at Super Target and Macy’s.

Occupy gave the world a new way of thinking about the fat cats and financial pirates on Wall Street. Now lets give them a new way of thinking about the holidays, about our own consumption habits. Lets’ use the coming 20th annual Buy Nothing Day to launch an all-out offensive to unseat the corporate kings on the holiday throne.

This year’s Black Friday will be the first campaign of the holiday season where we set the tone for a new type of holiday culminating with #OCCUPYXMAS. As the global protests of the 99% against corporate greed and casino capitalism continues, lets take the opportunity to hit the empire where it really hurts…the wallet.

On Nov 25/26th we escape the mayhem and unease of the biggest shopping day in North America and put the breaks on rabid consumerism for 24 hours. Flash mobs, consumer fasts, mall sit-ins, community events, credit card-ups, whirly-marts and jams, jams, jams! We don’t camp on the sidewalk for a reduced price tag on a flat screen TV or psycho-killer video game. Instead, we occupy the very paradigm that is fueling our eco, social and political decline.

Historically, Buy Nothing Day has been about fasting from hyper consumerism – a break from the cash register and reflecting on how dependent we really are on conspicuous consumption. On this 20th anniversary of Buy Nothing Day, we take it to the next level, marrying it with the message of #occupy…

We #OCCUPYXMAS.

Shenanigans begin November 25!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26. As a federal and popular holiday in the U.S., Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.

The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated to give thanks to God for guiding them safely to the New World.  The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days, providing enough food for 13 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans. The feast consisted of fish (cod, eels, and bass) and shellfish (clams, lobster, and mussels), wild fowl (ducks, geese, swans, and turkey), venison, berries and fruit, vegetables (peas, pumpkin, beetroot and possibly, wild or cultivated onion), harvest grains (barley and wheat), and the Three Sisters: beans, dried Indian maize or corn, and squash.

On Thanksgiving Day, families and friends usually gather for a large meal or dinner. Consequently, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is one of the busiest travel periods of the year. Thanksgiving is a four-day or five-day weekend vacation for schools and colleges. Most business and government workers (78% in 2007) are given Thanksgiving and the day after as paid holidays. Thanksgiving Eve, the night before Thanksgiving, is one of the busiest nights of the year for bars and clubs, as many college students and others return to their hometowns to reunite with friends and family.

This year, as the economic noose tightens around the American worker's neck, many people are down-scaling their traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. Keep in mind, comrades, that the missions and churches will be serving free Thanksgiving Dinners. Also, there is the Banquet Turkey TV Dinner. Which can be complimented with a small package of dinner rolls, a can of cranberry sauce, and an individual pumpkin pie - for about $4.00 a pop. Walmart has TV Dinners for 88-cents. A dinner for two can be obtained for five dollars - provided you have some way to heat it up.

No matter how you decide to celebrate Thanksgiving, the main thing is to join together with others to give thanks.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Occupy Democracy

The First Amendment Upside Down. Why We Must Occupy Democracy

You’ve been seeing this across the country … Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed … Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly — protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top.

And what’s Washington’s response? Nothing. In fact, Congress’s so-called “supercommittee” just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.

And a revolving door has developed between official Washington and Wall Street – with bank executives becoming public officials who make rules that benefit the banks before heading back to the Street to make money off the rules they created.

Other top officials, including an increasing proportion of former members of congress, are cashing in by joining lobbying power houses and pressuring their former colleagues to do whatever their clients want.

Millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street and in executive suites aren’t contributing all this money out of sheer love of country. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations.

Why else do you suppose tax rates on the super rich are now lower than they’ve been in three decades, and why – even though the long-term budget deficit is horrendous – those rates aren’t rising? Why else do the 400 richest Americans (whose wealth is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million Americans) now pay an average tax rate of only 17 percent?

Why do you think Wall Street got bailed without a single string attached – not even being required to help homeowners to whom they sold mortgages, who are now so far under water they’re drowning? And why does the financial reform legislation have loopholes big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through?

And why else are oil companies, big agribusinesses, military contractors, and the pharmaceutical industry reaping billions of dollars of government subsidies and special tax breaks?

Experts say the 2012 presidential race is likely to be the priciest ever, costing an estimated $6 billion. “It is far worse than it has ever been,” says Republican Senator John McCain.

If there’s a single core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top endangers our democracy. With money comes political power.

Yet when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with all this, they’re told the First Amendment doesn’t apply. Instead, they’re treated as public nuisances – clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces.

Across America, public officials are saying Occupiers have to go. Even in universities – where free speech is supposed to be sacrosanct – peaceful assembly is being met with clubs and pepper spray.

The First Amendment is being stood on its head. Money speaks, and an unlimited amount of it can now be spent bribing and cajoling politicians. Yet peaceful assembly is viewed as a public nuisance and removed by force.

This is especially worrisome now that so many Americans are in economic trouble. The jobs recession grinds on, seemingly without end. Homes are being foreclosed upon. Qualified students cannot afford college. Or they’re forced to take on huge debt loads they can’t repay in a jobless economy. Schools are firing teachers. Vital social services are being axed.

How are Americans to be heard about what should be done about any of this if they are not allowed to mobilize and organize?  When the freedom of speech goes to the highest bidder, moneyed interests have a disproportionate say.

Now more than ever, the First Amendment needs to be put right side up. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.

America's New Poor

In Forsyth County's rolling subdivisions near Atlanta, Easy Street seems to run forever. What recession? The average household here earns $88,000 - the highest in Georgia, 13th highest in America.

But for more families here, prosperity is a pretense. The job's lost, the savings are gone, and the big house is either in foreclosure or on its way. And just keeping food on the table is a struggle.

So Forsyth's newly-needy file into local food banks.

Yesterday's GIVERS have become today's TAKERS.

"People lost their jobs and went from great incomes to no incomes," said Sandy Beaver, Sandy Beaver leads The Place, Forsyth County's biggest non-profit center for social services. She calls those who visit The Place "the new poor."

The Place's main mission: Feed the hungry.

"Who are the new poor in this county?" asked Strassmann.

"The new poor could be you, me, your neighbor, your church member, somebody who has been affected by the economy," she said. "Many of our people who have come for assistance used to be our donors. And they'll say, 'I never thought I'd have to do this, never in my wildest dreams.'"

"People who two, three four years ago, the hunger would have been unimaginable?" asked Strassmann.

People like these married retirees in their 70s, too embarrassed to appear on camera. They said they could not feed themselves snow without help.

They retired comfortably in their early 50s. But now, after bad investments, a ruined portfolio, and costly medical issues, they qualify for food stamps - and could lose the house.

"Taking the food was really tough," the woman said. "The hard part was, we used to give it, and now I'm taking it back, you know?" she said, crying.

Nearly 15 percent of Americans are now receiving food stamps, a record level, and a jump of about two-thirds since 2007.

One in SIX Americans - 49 million people - say they have trouble putting food on the table.

At Forsyth County's Lambert High, eight percent of kids now get free lunch, double the number three years ago.

Gladys Sasso-Alvarez directs the district's help for needy students: "Sometimes they feel embarrassed that they are getting free breakfast and lunch. They think no one will know about it. But it was something deep inside of them, you know - they feel it is an embarrassment to eat for free."

Forsyth and its neighboring counties have also seen a spike in another group of the new needy: People like Raymond and Alexa Price.

He's a retired soldier, a combat vet who came home from Afghanistan last year with severe PTSD.

"All I want is a job. I don't really want any body's handouts," Raymond Price said.

She's nine months pregnant. Neither can work. They also support her 16-year-old son, all on government benefits of $1,600 a month.

"The freezer's really bare," said Alexa Price. "We just - we do what we can. We do what we can, to try to make it stretch and last."

The Prices came last week for a box of non-perishables handed out by Atlanta Falcon football players. They were volunteering for Operation Homefront, a group that helps feed military families.

Any day now, the Prices will have the joy of a baby daughter - and the stress of one more mouth to feed.

In Forsyth yesterday, cars lined up for donated Thanksgiving food.

It's one more sign this Thanksgiving week that hard times have come to Easy Street.

"There's still people losing jobs every day," said Sandy Beaver. "There's still people losing homes every day. And I always wonder, where do they do? When they lose a home, where do they go? 'Cause we don't always see them after that."

Where will you go?

Police Response to the Occupy Movement

Police response to the Occupy Movement is absurd and excessive. 

All across the country, cops are cracking down on protesters with force. Even critics of Occupy Wall Street will concede that the police are public servants, and public servants have no business treating the public this way.

By and large, Occupy has been a peaceful affair. Certainly pepper-spraying protesters while they sit calmly in a row is a gross abuse of power. It should have our collective blood boiling, whether or not we even agree with the protesters themselves. What was meant to be a protest against economic equality quickly morphs into a protest against the police state.

And make no mistake, the powers of the police in this country have grown out of hand. Articles have been written at length on the militarization of the police, of SWAT team abuses, and the way that the war on terror and the war on drugs have both contributed to what is really just a war on individual liberty. Occupy Wall Street may need to grow up and evolve, but a far greater and more pressing issue facing this country is what to do about the security state we’ve erected about us at the local, state, and federal level.

Between the Patriot Act and the War on Drugs, it’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

See articles:

• Militarization of the Police
• SWAT Team Abuses
• 9/11 Chart of the Day
• Condemn the Use of Force

PS - The image of the police, in the United States, has been tarnished to such an extent that it will take years to clean it up. A starting point would be citizen review of every single use of force by the police. And, criminal penalties for abuse of police power. 

With power comes responsibility, and those who abuse power must be punished severely.

Bye Bye American Pie

As the economy stumbles the American standard of living recedes. Forty-four million people are using food stamps and in one year that figure will be 60 million. Washington and Wall Street say “what, me worry?” Of course not; they are the “masters of the universe.”

Who cares that the issuance of food stamps is up 80%, as long as the bonuses on Wall Street and in banking continue to flow and bureaucrats get higher and higher salaries and benefits? The high cost of health insurance, no longer affordable to most have increased and Medicaid users are up 17%, as the program costs increased 36%. Those on welfare rose 18%, as costs rose 24%. It is now evident to many that the choice of early retirement in the late 1990s at 52 and 59 years old was a big mistake. Many must now work into their 70s, or starve. Many retirees are forced to reenter the workforce. Recently there were 2,000 job openings and 75,000 people applied. How is that for recovery? The birth/death ratio is bogus and real unemployment is 22%. The economy needs 2 million new jobs a year and that is impossible. Good paying jobs are still being off shored and outsourced. How about the millions without jobs now for years? While all this transpires the Fed bails out Wall Street, banking and government and leaves crumbs for the dispossessed.

The big picture is dreadful, but government, Wall Street and the media won’t tell you that. Truth has nothing to do with business. They all spin one lie after another. It reminds one of the old song, “Anything Goes.”

Those running Washington from behind the scenes know America can never pay off and liquidate its debt. That is why there is little effort to do so. The real idea is to destroy the country. 

In the United States, we see more than 50% of the population functionally illiterate and this same group essentially pays little or no taxes, and lives off  benefits payed by the government. That does not include the illegal alien population that pays virtually no taxes. Spending far beyond tax receipts can only mean eventually that the deficits will eventually enslave the nation and its people.

The banks create money and credit out of thin air monetizing buying and holding sovereign debt as well as debt clogging the balance sheets of the financial sector. In Washington the administration is considering an oil tax increase as the public pays more than $4.00 a gallon for gasoline. We can expect more and more of this non-income taxation. Each tax increase and each loss in services brings less purchasing power, and creates inflation.

In the US the top 10% of American workers will end up paying 75% of total income taxes. (While the top 1% pay 17%.) This has already started an exodus of high-income earners to leave the country over the past 15 years, and the numbers are increasing exponentially. That in turn throws an added burden on American taxpayers.

At the bottom of all of our problems is corporate greed and cruelty. A state of war exists between Corporate Capitalism and the people of the United States. It's the 1% against the rest of us no matter how you slice it or dice it... The big corporations have taken control of our government, media and police. And, they are confident that they will win the struggle for mastery of the United States and the world. They make our laws, tell us what to think, and beat us down when the need arises... Step out of line and you'll lose your job, your house, your car and your family.

As we switch to the Middle East we see serious trouble coming. In fact it probably is the groundwork for World War III, the event needed from an historical prospective to begin a new world war to cover up the economic and financial collapse now taking place. 

Iran is the target of the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, but it has an edge at the moment. Naval and air solutions lack the ability to threaten Iran’s center of gravity, its large ground force. The intrusions already made have been dangerous and the US lacks ground troop ability. One thing learned over the centuries of warfare is that if you conquer you have to occupy. Each place you occupy involves leaving troops that are lost to the vanguard. The US simply does not have the troops to occupy or to engage massive Iranian forces. In addition a war with Iran that probably would become WWIII, would cost trillions that the US doesn’t have. As opposed to the past, America’s allies outside the region don’t have the stomach for war, or the resources and appetite for involvement. Their militaries are skeletons of what they had in the past.

How do we get out of this mess?

We have to wake up the American people!

All of us, from every walk of life, from every religious and political perspective, from every race and ethnicity, must unite against the real enemy: Corporate greed and cruelty! 

Corporate Capitalism is not compatible with Freedom, Democracy and Social Justice!

Austerity Alternatives

We've got the PROgressives and the CONservatives - the PROS and CONS - and, somewhere in the middle is Former Secretary of Labor (under Bill Clinton) Robert Reich. He is a very smart guy. Unfortunately, there aren't that many smart guys left in government. They are still dragging their feet in Washington. Waiting for the 2012 Presidential Election. By then it will be too late.

What are you going to do? Get politically active? Or, buy a gun? 

The choice is yours...

Free Speech Isn't Free Anymore

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted. 

First things first. The Supreme Court’s rulings that money is speech and corporations are people have now opened the floodgates to unlimited (and often secret) political contributions from millionaires and billionaires. Consider the Koch brothers (worth $25 billion each), who are bankrolling the Tea Party and already running millions of dollars worth of ads against Democrats. 

Such millionaires and billionaires aren’t contributing their money out of sheer love of country. They have a more self-interested motive. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations. 

Wall Street is punishing Democrats for enacting the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (weak as it is) by shifting its money to Republicans. The Koch brothers’ petrochemical empire has financed, among many other things, candidates who will vote against environmental protection.

This tsunami of big money into politics is the real public nuisance. It’s making it almost impossible for the voices of average Americans to be heard because most of us don’t have the dough to break through. By granting First Amendment rights to money and corporations, the First Amendment rights of the rest of us are being trampled on. 

This is where the Occupiers come in. If there’s a core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth poses a grave danger to our democracy. 

Yet  when Occupiers seek to make their voices heard — in one of the few ways average people can still be heard — they’re told their First Amendment rights are limited. 

The New York State Court of Appeals along with many mayors and other officials say Occupiers can picket — but they can’t encamp. Yet it’s the encampments themselves that have drawn media attention (along with the police efforts to remove them). 

A bunch of people carrying pickets isn’t news. When it comes to making views known, picketing is no competition for big money .

Yet if Occupiers now shift tactics from passive resistance to violence, it would spell the end of the movement. The vast American middle class that now empathizes with the Occupiers would promptly desert them. 

But there’s another alternative. If Occupiers are expelled from specific geographic locations the Occupier movement can shift to broad-based organizing around the simple idea at the core of the movement: It’s time to occupy our democracy.

Internationalism

Here's the problem with Internationalism: We can learn from what is going on in the rest of the world; We can advocate Solidarity; We can praise the efforts of those who are doing good, and say, "God Bless them." But, under current US laws we cannot make actual contact with anyone - or we become 'enemies of the state'. And, our own government can come down on us like a ton of bricks.

Besides, in this stage of the game, we have to put America first. To do otherwise is to commit political suicide.

When times are tough, and they are tough right now, people don't give a rat's ass about foreigners and their problems. Right now we have to take care of our own people first. Maybe later we can worry about helping other people, I don't know. What I do know is we don't have a snowball's chance in hell of changing anything in the United States if we shift the focus somewhere else.

That means, all you guys out there - from all those other countries - have got to do your best with what you've got. We can't help you and you can't help us. Good luck and God bless you. I appreciate you reading my blog. To say the least, it is very flattering that you would do so.

As to the question of immigration: No way can we support more 'free-loaders' sucking up our jobs and benefits. People are hungry, homeless, unemployed and without medical treatment - American workers! (Right here in the United States.) Until they are taken care of we need to shut down our borders. Otherwise, we are just fucking ourselves, and creating more cheap labor for corporate capitalism.

In theory, we should greet everyone with open arms. But, in practice, they would hang us from the nearest lamp post for being traitors to our own people.

The sad truth is, that there is a world of difference between theory and practice. This is something that the idealist can't get a grip on. But idealists don't win in politics. And, they usually wind up getting burned at the stake.

We need to win. Otherwise, all this is just mental masturbation. In my life, I have seen so many idealists sacrifice themselves for nothing. No gains have been made, nothing has changed, they just become martyrs without advancing their cause... I don't want that for any of you. I want us to win.

To win the political struggle in the United States, we must be as American as apple pie. Hot dogs. Baseball. And the Fourth of July. To try to promote any internationalist nonsense would be like landing in Washington DC in a flying saucer, and telling the world that we are all brothers. They would simply blow you away and claim it was an 'alien invasion'.

And, that's the Truth!

Shrink the Military!

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is crying to Congress that cuts in defense spending will lead to the Pentagon 'recalibrating' its defense strategy.

Funny, the government wants the American people to 'recalibrate' their dreams of prosperity and the 1% don't care... cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid - and a slew of other programs - is OK, but, Jesus, the Pentagon has to have those nuclear missiles and all that high-tech bullshit... Otherwise, the Department of Defense can't guarantee our safety.

But, we're not really talking about 'safety' here - we're talking about $$$! The Pentagon can 'lose' $30 billion dollars and Congress just shrugs and says, "If we cut military spending we'll have to re-think our strategy."

It's time we did just that.

The military of the United States is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world. (See Military Deployments)

It's time we brought the boys home... Let other nations protect themselves! There is no longer any threat from the Soviet Union... The only threat is 'Terrorism' - which is created by these deployments! The only way the terrorists can win is if they constitute a majority... if they constitute a majority then let their voice be heard - that's the 'democratic' way!

The problem is the Corporate Capitalists don't give a damn about 'democracy'. They want those natural resources. They want $$$. That's why they spend Billions to buy our so-called representatives.

Our problem is corporate greed, not 'terrorism'. That's the war that we need to fight. We need to send troops to occupy Wall Street. We need to send the Homeland Security to arrest the 1% and send them to Guantanamo Bay...

Corporate cruelty causes more casualties than so-called terrorism... But, who has the power to oppose it?

Surely, not the President or Congress. They are not about to 'bite the hand that feeds them'.

Eventually, the people are going to rise up and take care of their own problems.

Until that day comes, there can be no solution to our problems....

The Power of Love

Veteran Brisbane activist Gary McLennan spoke at an Occupy Brisbane rally on November 5. An abridged version of his speech is below.

***

Friends, I want to thank you sincerely for the invitation to speak to you today. It remains for me a badge of honour, a great honour, that I’ve been asked twice to speak to the Occupy Brisbane movement.

I said when I first spoke to you that your movement represented the best hope for the kind of world that I wanted my grandchildren to grow up in.

I believed that then and I still believe it now.

Since I spoke to you first, you’ve been mocked in the media. You’ve been ridiculed and made fun of in the media, the newspapers and in cyberspace. Politicians from all sides have sneered at you.

And their loyal servants, the Queensland police force, have attacked you, harassed you and broken up your camp.

In the face of all that scorn and all that ridicule it is still very true that you are the best hope for a world ruled by compassion, love and decency.

I want to say a few things about the world we have. We live in a world ruled, and organised and run for the very people who have mocked you.

What is the world they have created like? Look north, south, east, west, anywhere — its not working.

This morning I read about the economic crisis in Greece. I also read of an economic crisis in Cyprus, Italy and Denmark. The whole of Europe trembling on the brink of economic destruction.

Poverty and misery is waiting for the people of Europe. And here in Brisbane, politicians and the media dare to make fun of you.

They have destroyed the world. They have ruined the planet. And yet they mock us. The politicians say “you’ve made your point, now go away”.

We say to them, you have not got our point at all. We are saying that you control the world and the world is not working. We want a better world. And we will stay here until we get it.

In America — the heart of capitalism, the heart of the beast — millions upon millions live and die in poverty. And more people are everyday joining the homeless.

That’s the economic system. It’s created a world where 1% owns almost all the wealth and we don’t even get the crumbs anymore.

Now this system can’t stabilise itself. The crisis of 2008: they said they’d solved it. There’s now a crisis in 2011: if they “solve” this it will be worse than in 2008 and the next crisis will be worse and worse.

Some people are saying what are they on about? What are they talking about? What’s wrong with Australia? When their jobs go, when their pensions go, they will come to you and say yes, you were right.

Now there is another source of criticism of the world we live in. And that is a moral criticism. Because make no mistake about it: you hold the moral high ground. You are the good people, and they are the bad people.

They are the rulers of a world run by greed, fear and hatred.

I do not want to live in that kind of world. Instead of a world dominated by greed, I want a world where wealth is shared equally.

Instead of a world of fear, I want a world full of compassion. Instead of a world full of hatred, I want a world full of the power of love. And this movement wants that too.

Here Comes Trouble

It is increasingly more difficult to be good American citizens when we are living in a society that is governed by the Mad Hatter's Tea Party... The big question is: What is a good citizen to do when our politicians are bought and paid for by alien interests? When we are brutalized by our own police forces? When our government betrays us at every turn? When our media is owned, lock stock and barrel, by the evil forces of corporate cruelty?

America is a wonderful experiment in freedom and democracy. But it only works if and when its citizens participate fully in its government.

How can that happen when we are blocked at every turn by corporate greed?

How can we, as American citizens, extricate ourselves from the march toward totalitarianism? What are our options? How far should we go?

Do we resist? Rebel? Engage in civil war? Protest? Or, shall we merely go along - like lambs being led to the slaughter?

Make no mistake, we are headed for a disaster of the greatest magnitude. We are headed for the loss of our liberty and enslavement by the 1% that has taken over our nation - while we slept!

Millions of voices are saying, "Hey, this is not right. We must do something." But real solutions are lacking. 

The 'secret police' are watching us. Reading our Emails, listening to our phone calls. Reading our blogs. Creating files with our names on them...

Outside the police are dressed like a futuristic army... menacing, threatening, trying to intimidate us... Our government is erecting camps where we can be placed in 'protective custody' without due process of law... 'Patriot' Acts... Homeland Security... We all have become potential terrorists. When we peacefully assemble the agents of corporate greed attack us, beat us to the ground, throw hand grenades into our midst and gas us... 

Who does this government serve? Surely, not the people...

Meanwhile, while we struggle to be heard, the critical issues have been ignored. Tick tock, the clock is ticking... Overpopulation, Global Warming, depletion of resources (such as oil, coal, natural gas, etc.), a crumbling economy, homelessness, unemployment, the health care crisis... We are running short on water for Christ's sake! And, everybody knows that starvation is widespread in the world... But, we turn our eyes away from the horrors of the greed crisis - while our politicians smugly say, "Why don't they get a job?"

Things are so bad in the world that people are blowing themselves up in sheer frustration!

So, what do we do about it? 

Can we bring this monster down by using Constitutional means, or do we have to get uglier than the forces of repression, brutality, and corporate cruelty?

We are being pushed in a direction that we don't want to go... But, if there is no civil recourse we will be forced to fight, rather than become slaves. And fight we will! For the Enemy is weak and has many soft spots... the police, the government, the 1%... are all vulnerable. 

They over-react because they are trying to project the image of strength. But it is only a facade. In reality, they are weak because they have a lot to lose... Fear of loss... Fear of being discovered... Irrational actions... Emotion... Looking at the details rather than the Big Picture...

The crisis of greed exists because the nation's leadership worships weakness... It has no real vision for the Future....

Republican 'Big Lie'

George Orwell once explained that when a public is stressed and confused, a Big Lie told repeatedly can become the accepted truth. Adolph Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that “the size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed” and that members of the public are “more easily prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.”

The Big Lie is that our economic problems are due to a government that’s too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it.

The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity. Since the debt bubble burst, most Americans have had to reduce their spending; they need to repay their debts, can’t borrow as before, and must save for retirement.

The short-term solution is for government to counteract this shortfall by spending more, not less. 

The long-term solution is to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely (for example, through a more progressive income tax, a larger EITC, an exemption on the first $20K of income from payroll taxes and application of payroll taxes to incomes over $250K, stronger unions, and more and better investments in education and infrastructure.)

Here's the thing: the American people are getting their ass kicked by the greed crisis... the Corporate Capitalists know that they control our politicians and our government and they are rubbing our noses in it. The Republicans are guilty of public theft when they rob our children to fatten the bank accounts of the wealthy... 

We must attack corporate cruelty in all of its forms wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head. And right now, that ugly head is on the Republican party!

'Socialized' Medicine

"The term ['socialized medicine'] was popularized by a public relations firm working for the American Medical Association in 1947 to disparage President Truman's proposal for a national health care system. It was a label, at the dawn of the cold war, meant to suggest that anybody advocating universal access to health care must be a communist. And the phrase has retained its political power for six decades."

Fact: Most industrialized countries, and many developing countries, operate some form of publicly-funded health care with universal coverage as the goal. According to the Institute of Medicine and others, the United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care.

How did this happen?

Medicine = $$$ 

The Corporate Capitalists want to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the American Worker. You get sick and you either pay or die. You work all your life and when you get old you loose everything the first time you need an operation. It is a predatory system. The people involved in its administration are heartless bastards who have little or no regard for human suffering, or human life.

The Veterans Health Administration, the military health care system, and the Indian Health Service are examples of socialized medicine in the stricter sense of government administered care, although for limited populations.

Medicare and Medicaid are forms of publicly-funded health care, which fits the looser definition of socialized medicine. Part B coverage (Medical) requires a monthly premium of $96.40 (and possibly higher) and the first $135 of costs per year also fall to the senior and not the government.

A poll released in February 2008, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and Harris Interactive, indicated that Americans are currently divided in their opinions of socialized medicine, and this split correlates strongly with their political party affiliation. Two-thirds of those polled said they understood the term "socialized medicine" very well or somewhat well. When offered descriptions of what such a system could mean, strong majorities believed that it means "the government makes sure everyone has health insurance" (79%) and "the government pays most of the cost of health care" (73%). One-third (32%) felt that socialized medicine is a system where "the government tells doctors what to do". The poll showed "striking differences" by party affiliation. Among Republicans polled, 70% said that socialized medicine would be worse than the current system. The same percentage of Democrats (70%) said that a socialized medical system would be better than the current system. Independents were more evenly split, with 43% saying socialized medicine would be better and 38% worse. According to Robert J. Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health, "The phrase ‘socialized medicine' really resonates as a pejorative with Republicans. However, that so many Democrats believe that socialized medicine would be an improvement is an indication of their dissatisfaction with our current system." Physicians' opinions have become more favorable toward "socialized medicine".

A 2008 survey of doctors, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, shows that physicians support universal health care and national health insurance by almost 2 to 1.

There has been much debate in recent years about whether health care is a privilege or a right. The Corporate Capitalists say that only those who can afford health care have the right to it. 

The Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest binding documents in history. Written in antiquity, its principles are held sacred by doctors to this day: treat the sick to the best of one's ability, preserve patient privacy, teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation, and so on. "The Oath of Hippocrates," holds the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics (1996 edition), "has remained in Western civilization as an expression of ideal conduct for the physician." Today, most graduating medical-school students swear to some form of the oath, usually a modernized version. Indeed, oath-taking in recent decades has risen to near uniformity, with just 24 percent of U.S. medical schools administering the oath in 1928 to nearly 100 percent today.

HIPPOCRATIC OATH: MODERN VERSION

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of over treatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

(—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.)

In most medical schools, students recite the Hippocratic Oath together to mark the start of their professional careers. The soon-to-be physicians swear to uphold the ethical standards of the medical profession and promise to stand for their patients without compromise.

Though the oath has been rewritten over the centuries, the essence of it has remained the same: "In each house I go, I go only for the good of my patients."

But the principles of the oath are under an "unprecedented threat. Doctors are under constant pressure to compromise or ration their care in order to please lawmakers, lawyers and insurance companies.

Doctors are increasingly expected to decide which expensive tests and treatments they can and cannot provide for their patients. Their dual role as examiner and cost-cutter can then potentially compromise patients' care, particularly when insurers and hospital administrators urge physicians to only perform "medically necessary" treatment.

The average person thinks that 'medically necessary' care means all care that might potentially be beneficial. But the reality is that it's a wide-open term. 

Care may be denied for a variety of reasons, including whether patients have consented to cheaper treatment options through their health insurance plans. What that means, is that doctors who ration care on behalf of insurance providers may simply be following their patients' wishes — even if patients are not aware that they're receiving sub par treatment.

In the real world, the choices aren't made clear in the employee benefits office. In the real world, the cheap health plan and the expensive health plan both promise you 'medically necessary' care and you don't really know what that means. So you sign up for this care and you think, 'Aha! This one's cheaper than the other. And it's promising medically necessary care. You don't really know that one car is a Cadillac and one car is a Chevy. These two plans are being presented to you as Cadillacs. And so you say, 'I'll buy it.' But in fact, in terms of the care it makes available, it's cheap because it's a Chevy, not a Cadillac.

Talking about potential trade offs in care is a conversation that doctors and policymakers need to have, because it's inevitable that our health care system will need to find ways to set limits on care.

We cannot afford anything like what we're spending on health care today, and we're certainly not going to be able to afford what we're projected to spend in the future. We spend almost a fifth of our national income today on medical care. And within 25 years, unless we change dramatically, we're going to be spending a third of our national income on medical care. And we're doing that by borrowing from our nation's future.

What does this mean to you?

If we continue to turn our backs on the idea of "Socialized' medicine, Corporate Capitalism will continue exploiting and promoting sickness - until no one will be able to afford to get well. The vampire will have sucked the last drop of blood out of its victim. And, the victim will die. 

That victim is you! So, when you hear the Republicans, and the Conservatives, say that "Socialized medicine is Communism," what they are really saying is, "Fuck you!" 

And, that's the Truth!

NATO Defeated in Libya

While they can pretend all they want, NATO lost the war against Libya. The stated purpose of NATO's mission according to the UN Resolutions was to "protect civilians." A huge farce, they coined the ridiculous term R2P, right to "protect." On that count, NATO is a failure, a total and complete disaster.

It is estimated that at least 100,000 Libyans have been murdered both by NATO bombings and by actions of the terrorists and mercenaries that NATO has dumped into the country. NATO used dirty weapons, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous and fuel air bombs...horrid anti-human weapons of mass murder.

NATO's Rasmussen, in an arrogant, smug statement called the Libya operation which killed thousands of civilians 'one of the most successful in NATO history.' When they make the claim the mission was to protect civilians, it is unfathomable for him or anyone to say that they were "successful." Rasmussen and all the other criminals of NATO are shameless.

Their true mission was to stage a coup against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, which is why there is all the crowing about a "victory" and "success."

NATO is so very concerned about civilians that their use of depleted uranium has deposited into the Libyan atmosphere radiation of unknown magnitude. By comparison, the radiation in Iraq they are responsible for equals 250,000 Nagasaki bombs.

It is time for the citizens of the world to wake up and see what's being done in their name. Would they approve their government arming and supporting terrorists who are listed on government terrorist lists? Supporting and arming al Qaeda? Making it possible for many weapons from Libya to fall into the hands of al Qaeda so that now they are listed as one of the most well equipped armies in the world?

Will there be tears and gnashing of teeth when one of those shoulder fired missiles shoots down a civilian airliner? Is your government "fighting terrorism" or is it enabling terrorism and causing it to strengthen, increase and grow in unprecedented proportions? Is your government installing a gaggle of terrorists as a "government"? How does that work?

NATO has exposed itself for what it really is. It is a cold blooded killing machine, a terrorist organization steeped in the filth of its own lies and pretensions.

NATO was morally defeated by the truth. The ideas of Gaddafi are now spreading worldwide where before they were unknown. NATO will be militarily defeated by the freedom resistance forces of Libya, by people who refuse to give up their way of life and the country of their heritage, a great and proud heritage.

Popularly elected Alexander Lukashenko noted that while he is constantly being referred to improperly as the "last dictator of Europe" no one elected the charlatan murderous criminals of the EU. They appointed themselves.

Elections in the west are a farce, only the rich who have been approved by the elites can hope to be "elected." The results are manipulated from beginning to end.

On the other hand, the Libyan Jamahiriya cannot be defeated because it's the democratic will of the people, not some single leader. People's committees regularly make the decisions. NATO's so-called act of decapitation has only resulted in the people reorganizing their collective will.

The act of decapitation exists only in the dreams, will and fantasy of the western scum. The Libyan people, united against NATO and its terrorists cannot be defeated. There is no love for that scurvy that has turned the country into a hell on earth, one where any turning the corner might lead to death, torture, mutilation, rape, robbery. Women cannot go out of the house, they are not safe in the house, nor are children. Being black is a death sentence.

So if their purpose was to decapitate Libya, again, NATO has failed miserably. With this history of abject failure, NATO creeps into position to move against their next victims: Syria and Iran. Who is going to stop them and call them to account for their many crimes?