1. “Lockerbie Bomber released for Sake of BP Libya Drilling Rights
BP was founded in the early twentieth century for the purpose of exploiting Iran’s oil, which, as Stephen Kinzer at Tomdispatch argues, it gradually convinced itself it actually owned.
And the word ‘exploit’ seems to have been central to the company’s ethos ever since.
Although the Republicans and some Democrats in Congress don’t seem all that upset about, like, the destruction of the entire Gulf of Mexico (and some have been apologizing to BP for the shoddy way the US government has treated the company, making it pay for the damage it caused and all)– nevertheless, there are stirrings toward a congressional investigation of the Megrahi release.“
2. “Scare-Mongering Keeps Us from Fixing the Economy
Fear-mongering about the deficits is a political calculation to win elections and strangle popular social programs. It has no economic value. If deficits were a problem, the yields on government debt (US Treasuries) would go up. But yields are historically low and headed lower. The GOP says that deficits are a problem. The market says that deficits are not a problem. Who is right and who is wrong? Smart people will trust the market and ignore the political opportunists.
There is no danger of inflation. The inflationists are wrong, just like the deficit hawks are wrong. They have been wrong for the last three years and they will continue to be wrong for the foreseeable future. The CPI is falling, commodities are teetering, gold is hanging by a thread. Without fiscal stimulus the economy will contract. And Fed chair Ben Bernanke is likely to let the economy contract by suspending quantitative easing (the bond purchasing program) until after the midterm elections. Why? Because Wall Street is mad that Obama criticized the banks publicly. The financial sector has its shifted support to the GOP. As an agent of the big banks, Bernanke will act on their behalf and withhold support until after the elections. That will ensure two years of political gridlock until Obama steps down in 2004.
The reason that so many professional economists (Stiglitz, Baker, Reich, Thoma, Weisbrot, Krugman etc) are frustrated with policymakers, is not because they are “ideological” or “Keynesian” or narrow minded, but because the matter has already been settled. We know what needs to be done to revive the economy. It’s just a matter of doing it.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20109
3. “G20 Toronto Riots perpetrated by Agents Provocateurs of the Police
It seems clear by now that the state’s policy is one of staging or inciting violence one day (while conveniently not arresting anyone during the actual occurrence of the violence) and then rounding up hundreds of protectors the next day and throwing them in jail (though they are not linked to the violence). The media helps create the manufactured connection between the arrests and the violence by incessantly looping images of smashed windows and burning cars one day and then images of mass arrests and sound bite headlines about the numbers of arrests etc. without any explanation or contextualization so as to suggest (without words) that the arrests must be somehow linked to the violence of the day before. We could deploy a counter-tactic that is fluid—such that if violence and/or property damage were to occur due to so-called black bloc tactics; we do not stick around waiting to be arrested the next day. We could have a contingency plan that dictates that when/if (staged) violence erupts; we disband and regroup according to media savvy back-up plans, perhaps moving our actions completely outside of the downtown area. This is one way to send the public a message of disowning the violence so that we cannot be faulted or scapegoated for it. Ultimately, our publicized plans for demonstrations should be used as bait to mislead and expose the police and media [10]. In turn we gain politically by humiliating the police and leaving nothing for the media to photograph except legions of over-funded riot cops and their undercover agents. “
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20110
4. “The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism
This “upscaling of ignorance”[4] gets worse. Richard Cohen, writing in The Washington Post about Sen. Michael Bennett, was shocked to discover that he was actually well-educated and smart but had to hide his qualifications in his primary campaign so as to not undermine his chance of being re-elected. Cohen concludes that in politics, “We have come to value ignorance.”[5] He further argues that the notion that a politician should actually know something about domestic and foreign affairs is now considered a liability. He writes:
[W]e now have politicians who lack a child’s knowledge of government. In Nevada, Sharron Angle has won the GOP Senate nomination espousing phasing out Social Security and repealing the income tax as well as abolishing that durable conservative target, the Education Department. Similarly, in Connecticut, Linda McMahon, a former pro wrestling tycoon, is running commercials so adamantly anti-Washington you would think she’s an anarchist. In Arizona Andy Goss, a Republican congressional candidate, suggests requiring all members of Congress to live in a barracks. This might be tough on wives, children and the odd cocker spaniel, but what the hell. Nowadays, all ideas are equal.[6]
The embrace of a type of rabid individualism, anti-intellectualism and political illiteracy is also at work in the Tea Party movement. As social protections disappear, jobs are lost, uncertainty grows and insecurity prevails, Tea Party members express anger over a weakened social state that represents one of the few institutions capable of providing the capital, policies and safety nets necessary to protect those who have been shaken by the economic recession.
…
As J. M. Bernstein pointed out in a New York Times opinion piece:
When it comes to the Tea Party’s concrete policy proposals, things get fuzzier and more contradictory: keep the government out of health care, but leave Medicare alone; balance the budget, but don’t raise taxes; let individuals take care of themselves, but leave Social Security alone; and, of course, the paradoxical demand not to support Wall Street, to let the hard-working producers of wealth get on with it without regulation and government stimulus, but also to make sure the banks can lend to small businesses and responsible homeowners in a stable but growing economy.[8]
As the belief in the libertarian agent, free of all dependencies and social responsibilities blows up in the face of the current economic meltdown, anger replaces critique and ignorance informs politics. Bernstein thinks that members of the Tea Party are angry because they have been jolted into recognizing how fragile their so-called individual freedom actually is and that it is the government that is somehow responsible for making them feel so vulnerable. Maybe so, but there is also something else at work here, less metaphysical and more pedagogical – a kind of intellectual vacuum produced at different levels of American society that cultivates ignorance, limits choices, legitimates political illiteracy and promotes violence.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20112
