Why We Must Be Concerned About Russia

Once More, Economy Exhibits Weakness

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZAPRIL 30, 2014

As has happened so many times since the recovery began nearly five years ago, the economy turned in another disappointing quarterly performance, surprising even the most pessimistic observers as growth in the first three months of 2014 slowed to a near-standstill.

Five Years Ahead of Schedule

China to pass US as largest economy
World’s richest power since overtaking Britain in 1872, the US is about to be surpassed by China, a shift previously not expected until 2019.

More Sanctions on Evil Russia!

U.S. PUTS MOST SERIOUS SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA

Russian rich people will not be served at Starbucks, McDonalds or Whole Foods , Putin will be charged $10 in American currency to mail any letters to the U.S. and NBA playoffs will be blocked from Russian TV.

Global Community ( U.S., Israel and Nato lap dogs ) stand firm against Russian imperialism and bloody violence against freedom loving Ukrainians who took over democratically elected regime and replaced it with U.S, Israel and Nato lapdogs.

Obama and Kerry unite in threatening further sanctions if Russian invasion that nobody else knows about continues.

Kerry likens Russian system to apartheid while Obama calls it slavery. Americans express strong support for policy, except for Starbucks, McDonalds and Whole Foods.

Mind Control by Repetition: A Series

Russia is evil.

Obama was born on another planet.

400 American billionaires mean the country is a democracy.

Corporate Capital’s wholly owned Democratic party is repressive Socialism.

Corporate Capital’s wholly owned Republican party is free marketism.

Corporate Capital’s wholly owned nation of consumers is bi-partisan freedom and democracy.

Thousands of homeless humans and millions of well fed pets means we should lecture the world on how to have a great democracy.

Hundreds of foreign military bases and trillions spent on military power mean we are an exceptional nation of a master race of chosen people sent by god to kill for peace and democracy.

Venezuela’s upper middle class minority is fed up with poor and working class Venezuelans getting an even shake so we must help destroy their democratically elected government.

Like the one in the Ukraine.

And the one in Egypt.

Etc.

Believe Only Half of What You See and None of What You Hear

That advice in song (I Heard It Through The Grapevine) from a great Motown artist of the 1960s(Marvin Gaye) was never more meaningful than at present, especially concerning the alleged crisis in the Ukraine.

While it certainly is a crisis for the people who live there, any notion that the USA is experiencing some menacing threat to our freedom to buy drugs, guns, cosmetics and pet food is to make mountain ranges out of mouse droppings. If you believe what you are told by an administration and media that make the three stooges seem superior foreign policy analysts, then prepare for:

Today the Ukraine, tomorrow … New Jersey?

Corporate functionaries posing as reporters have never been more subservient to their masters when cross examining a misinformed if not hopelessly ignorant president with harsh questions trying to lead him to answers about declaring war. This in a nation wallowing in unemployment, poverty and near bankruptcy while its government offers loan guarantees and armaments to a U.S./NATO financed anti-democratic opposition in a country on Russia’s borders.

The hatchet job on public consciousness makes Gaye’s quote sound like a benign reaction. Russian president Putin is made to seem a murderous fiend in much that Americans see and hear when in comparison to the witless crew here, he is a great statesman and leader of a country that must again be reckoned with as a global power after years of being treated as just another stall at the mall.

Putin has exercised state control of capitalism that certainly does not change that system’s mindless pursuit of private profit at all costs, but reigns in the morally bankrupt accumulation of most of that profit by a tiny handful of individuals, as is the rule in the USA.

When Russia was turned over to the free market privateers a few grabbed what were once public assets and accumulated billions of dollars in a very short time. After Putin assumed the presidency he not only put a lid on that class of oligarchs, as they are called in Russia (here they are seen as saints, benefactors and holy people), but also locked up some of the worst thieves of what had been public wealth. Whatever his shortcomings may be, he is a giant by comparison to capital’s bipartisan servants here who bail out financial speculating bankers with public money after they’ve robbed the nation blind, rather than throw them in prison.

And American politicians and media servants to corporate rule depict Putin as a monster. Of course. And George Bush was a genius. And Obama is the prince of peace.

As is too often the case, this would be hilarious if it wasn’t so deadly serious. An idiotic western force of the USA and its NATO lapdogs, is bringing us all close to disaster by possibly bungling into a war more terrible than all those we have recently waged on weak nations. This time, the opponent would be capable of inflicting horrendous damage on the USA, which has not been the case since the fall of the old Soviet Union. Putin is much too smart to want such a military confrontation but he is also much too strong to back down from a real military threat on Russia’s borders, however stupid the political cretins might be to make such a threat.

The NATO profiteers have been closing in on Russia since the fall of the Soviets, all the time making promises of non-interference and harmonious relations while treacherously setting up military bases on its borders. A nation that lost more lives than any other in the Second World War, Russia has very good reason to be extremely sensitive about what kind of regimes it is surrounded by, having been invaded and suffered millions of dead when those borders were open to invaders in the past. One has to only think for a moment of the incredible expenditure of hundreds of billions for an alleged defense of America, with most of that poured into fleets, bases and armaments thousands of miles from the USA, and wonder which nation is “hypocritical”, “paranoid”, and bordering on total “lunacy”. American hustlers for mass murder from congress to Fox TV to the New York Times have used those words to describe Putin.

Are we a mental health crisis center posing as a nation?

Much of the rest of the world, if not most of the American people, are aware of U.S. involvement in not only backing the destruction of the Ukrainian government but working with and financing many of the people who overthrew a regime that had little support, but was at least democratically elected. You know, like Bush, Obama and other brilliant, peace loving and much beloved by all, American leaders? An american member of the feminist branch of neo-liberal murder inc. was heard on the phone discussing which western flunkies “we” should support and dealt with the choice favored by Europeans in an all american manner: she said – heard on the recording everywhere but in most places here, “fuck the E.U.”, indicating our great respect for the lap dog we call the European Union.

There is common knowledge elsewhere of the millions if not billions the U.S. has spent to help destroy a regime it liked even less than most Ukrainians, in order to replace it with one they seem to despise even more. A recent visit to the un-elected government by a CIA luminary is just business as usual in our meddling in other nation’s affairs, while Russian concern about its neighbor is treated as a sign of lust for global domination.

If we remain politically comatose under the barrage of propaganda and blatant lies we have had crammed into our heads these fools may lead us into a bigger and far more dangerous nuclear confrontation than imagined in years past.

Consider Marvin Gaye’s warning even further than he and if it’s what “they” show you, believe none of what you see either. And demand that the small group in our governing class who haven’t yet succumbed to the mind numbing madness gripping the majority that you will not stand for it. An outpouring of opposition from the public did keep us out of Syria and while we have helped cause a national disaster in that besieged nation, it could have been even worse. A war in the Ukraine would top that blood bath by far and might very well come home to us. Don’t let it happen.

Origin of the Free Market

The Pioneer

     Humanity's Great Inventions:  No one knows who invented the wheel that moves carts and machines, but we know who invented the wheel that drives the economy.  It was Marco Licinio Craso, born 115 years before Christ.

     He discovered that the market depends on the push and pull of supply and demand for goods and services.

     To put this economic law into practice, he founded a company in Rome.

     Thus was born the first private firefighting firm.

     It was a great success.

     Don Marco set fires, then charged to put them out.

                             -----Eduardo Galeano, Voices of Time

Things That Make You say "Doh!"

NRAIPAC vows to buy more politicians, weapons and media than ever before.

Rifle group to merge with Israelis and form most powerful lobby in the history of freedom, democracy and marketing.

Dow Rises.

Hope Fades

Lance Headstrong Claims Entire Government Takes Performance Enhancement Medication

“ How do you think we have the mess we’re in? These people have all been stoned for ages now.”

Obama, McCain, Clinton, Bush, congress, bankers and others will confess on Oprah, You Tube and new app which frees fingers for nose picking while ordering pizza, watching its delivery and learning about democracy by watching Oprah and YouTube.

Audience expected to be in tens of millions.

Highest in history.

Group supporting gun marriage calls liberals “Anti-Love Hate Criminals”

They vow to take their case to the Supreme Court if needed.

“We love our guns, personally, morally, and yes, sexually, and we demand the rights all other married people have” said gun advocate Mike “macho” Swishman, chair of LAGBLAB, the “Lick a Gun Barrel, Love a Bullet” weapon marriage support group.

LGBSTV group considers lawsuit over similarity of acronyms.

Legal business considers profit windfall from all the lawsuits.

Dow Rises More.

Hope Fades Even More.

Nation cries “Doh!”

Kerry Joins Nazi Anti-Semites!

Israeli Settlement Plan Derailed Peace Talks, Kerry Says

By MARK LANDLERAPRIL 8, 2014

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that Israel’s announcement of 700 new apartments for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem precipitated the bitter impasse in peace negotiations last week between Israel and the Palestinians.

Private Financing = Private Government? Really?

 

Outrage over the most recent decision of our Court of Supreme Profits is understandable if coming from people only recently introduced to the American market system of private control of everything, especially the electoral process. But those who’ve been tilting at this windmill for many years really need to stop and think:

How can they go on trying to simply control and not end private financing of elections and still believe in an alleged public power they call democracy?

Conscientious citizens have long been discouraged at the power of money over the political process and expressed frustration along with feeble attempts to limit rather than end such private control over what is supposed to be a democracy. More recently there has been a growing awareness that such power is at the root of economic inequality, social

injustice, environmental destruction and minority anti-social controls that are bringing the nation and the globe closer to ruin. The present angry response needs to become a demand for public financing of all politics in America or it will  amount to the usual reforms that simply make buying and selling politicians a bit more involved with paperwork but still profitable to the minority that owns and operates the nation.

When Common Cause was formed a generation ago by people genuinely disgusted with our deformed-by-dollars-democracy, what resulted was the corporate rich combining their campaign investments into collective funds, political action committees and other accounting techniques to avoid any real change in the system. Instead of millionaires making personal purchases, a group of millionaires pooled smaller individual contributions into a fund even larger than their previous political bank accounts allowed. Common Cause still tries to control wealth by creating more jobs for accountants and lawyers. Since it introduced sincere but substantially useless financing changes, national, state and local elections have increased in costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. Presidential elections now involve billions spent on the branding, packaging and hyping of political products costing American taxpayers more and more, at an electoral mall that is an even greater disgrace to the notion of democracy than previous constitutional commodity marketing.

This process is an integral part of the same system that is destroying nature at a faster pace, making fewer people wealthier than ever before, and placing the burden of their increased profits on the degradation of material life and the absorption of greater loss for millions of taxpayers. Inequality reigns supreme, the rich have become much richer, they still run the country and with even more control than before. Progress? Through financial reform of private electoral financing? Would rape become tolerable if rapists wore white gloves and took their victims to dinner before the assault?

The spectacle of wanna-be American presidential candidates publicly lining up to privately kiss a billionaire’s lower anatomy, while professing their passionate love for his favorite charity Israel, has become ordinary. The conservative Talmudic Toadies who participated in this shameful performance have been criticized by some liberal  Zionist Zealots, but the regular prayer meetings conducted by the AIPAC Israeli lobby in our (?) nation’s capital at which most of congress is in dutiful attendance is a bi-partisan fund raising orgy for both sides of the bought-and-owned one party hired class of politicians. And of course it isn’t only Israel that gets a wholesale deal on political power; that’s only regarding foreign policy concerning the Middle East.

All aspects of corporate profiteering are handled by political investments which guarantee support for making greater private profits, which accrue to less and less people, with the loss mounting for a growing majority.

This is not only nothing new but has been the American “way” since that “way” was founded by the original 1% way back in 1776. It’s just getting much, much worse and if all this righteous anger at the Supremes is channeled into simply putting more bookkeeping and accounting expenses on (alert for the irony challenged) an already over-burdened billionaire class, it will continue to get worse until a social collapse brings on total breakdown.

Public financing of all elections is one in a series of absolute necessities – others include public banking - if we have any notion of ever having a democracy. The idea that we used to have one and it is being taken away is only half correct. The majority in this nation has never for one microsecond had a national democracy. Local and smaller elections can indeed feel, seem and sometimes are truly democratic, but even they have been diminished by the power of private financing. Until a public, democratically funded electoral process becomes the demand and reality, all else will simply represent another way to manipulate good people into carrying bad people and more important, a rotten system, on their backs. Our collective national spine will suffer ultimate breakdown under the weight of this massive, anti-democratic and anti-social system.

Public financing of elections will not solve all our problems , but it will  help solve most of them and in the process take a giant step towards real power for the people, instead of the present hypocritical theory and practice hideously disguised under the name of democracy.