Excellent article Chris. Unregulated capitalism without a maximum wage is not financially or environmentally sustainable and it is not compatible with true Christianity or democracy. The right wing dictator supporters, think that the robber barons will give them a piece of the pie because they are white. In reality, they will lose their minimum wage and all social spending including social security, food stamps, earned income tax credit..., and they will be cast into the world labor pool where the going labor rate is less than a dollar an hour. A world where the old and handicapped and all the useless eaters will be left to die of covid or a fungus or starvation, regardless of race. There are about 1,500 right wing am hate radio stations in America. Also the billionaire globalists own the television stations and the newspapers as well. The rich will pay the poor to kill the poor, while flying from Nation to Nation to avoid being cornered by the angry mobs. First and foremost, we must maintain our democracy to keep the ability to replace Biden, Trump and all of the bought off leaders of the last 60 years. If the crazy GOP Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, and causes a Great depression and a dictator gets elected, it will be too late. Very few dictators are benevolent. Now doesn't look like a very good time to be bringing more babies on board the planet. But that won't stop the non-thinkers, only the thinkers. There will be a Utopia for the rich and a dystopia for the poor, at the same time.
This is a powerful cri-de-cœur manifesto on behalf of the worker - of the union-member worker - and against the autocratic faux-democracy of the US - determined to further entrench the privilege of the über rich and corporations. I'm Australian - but I see so many parallels here - clearly "learnt" by our own oligarchic vested interests from the "example" of "our-great-and-powerful friend" - so many of our bright young ones enticed to study at the Chicago School of Economics - at Harvard School of Business - programs wherein ethics seems to have been unknown. I was a proud unionist - of the NSW Teachers Federation - from my first year of teaching when I was still 21 - the school's union representative - despite only two+ years earlier newly emerged from a fundamentalist Protestant sect for which syndicalism was aligned with Satan. I was a member of no political party until just three years ago (a membership now resigned from) when a new movement appeared seeking proper reconciliation with First Australian, decent and respectful treatment for asylum-seekers - demonised here more-or-less by both sides of the political divide though with truly inhuman abuse and torture by the coalition party we see here as allied to the Trumpian Republicans of the US - then in power already for seven years - until the brave little protest party I had joined was swamped by others known as the TEAL - a loose alliance of others who garnered all the headlines and attention - in the lead up to the Federal elections held here in May, 2022 when the incumbents were blown away. The party I had joined was part of a Zeitgeist. Attacks on unions by the Rupert Murdoch NewsCorp TV/Radio/newspaper attack dogs (holding over 70% of Australia's media outlets) and its trademark divisiveness - continue unabated - despite "helping their boys and girls" to lose every state and territory election - and the federal one, too over the past three years. Only tiny Tasmania remains within their control. It suggests hope - yet not any hope for Julian Assange! Following US "orders" in provoking China, in aiding the oligarchs of Ukraine... Again, Chris - such clarity in your enunciation of these matters. (As Robert Billyard states just below - 29 vassal states of the US in NATO - and I noted to-day that Stoltenberg was telling (!!) Australia how to respond to adding assistance to Ukraine - Australia now virtually an adjunct member of NATO - despite our location between the South Indian and South Pacific Oceans.) Yesterday in London the newly appointed Australian High Commissioner (Ambassador - to a British Commonwealth nation) met with Julian Assange in Belmarsh - though afterwards he - Stephen SMITH - refused to say anything about what had been discussed - prevented - he said - by an agreement with Julian Assange. I do not believe that! I can't see why he could not have left with Julian Assange and taken him to sanctuary in the Australian High Commission - vast by comparison with the little Ecuadorean Embassy which for so long offered Julian sanctuary till the forces and money of the US brought that to an end.
Great speech but here's the conundrum. My union, the National Education Association (retired member), like many big unions, is entirely beholden to the Democratic Party. I have never succeeded in getting them to stand against any DNC policies, no matter how destructive to their membership. Like the DNC, the effort to reform them from within is a waste of time and energy. What's best done about that, Chris? Yours dreaming of a #GeneralStrike, Lisa
"Janet Yellen’s need to orchestrate unemployment to bring down inflation is, for them, a vital fact. "
Inflation is one of those key words that has suffered an Orwellian redefinition. It used to mean a spiral in which both wages and prices rise. Nowadays the rise in prices overwhelms the rise in wages. Nevertheless interest rates are pushed up to stamp out even a slight increase in the power of labor. Nothing will be done about prices.
It's astonishing that in a country as large as the United States, there isn't a political party aligned with, or dedicated to, representing workers and worker rights. The decimation of labor unions was deliberate, and it stifled the organized voice of labor, plus it eliminated the political and economic education that unions routinely engage in. It's a helluva parlor trick to make a working person believe the boss is his benefactor and that being a "right-to-work" employee is freedom.
Those who possess the emotional and intellectual fortitude to face what lies before them will always be in the minority. There is a numbing comfort that comes with surrendering moral autonomy for abject servility and obedience, and this comfort is especially attractive in a crisis.
Because of the disproportionate amount spent on the military, Americans must endure the neglect of environmental needs, the financial insolvency and decay of our cities, the deterioration of our transportation, education, and health care systems, and the devastating effects of unemployment and underemployment upon millions of households and hundreds of communities. In addition, there are the frightful social and psychological costs, the discouragement and decline of public morale, (anomie) the anger and suffering of the poor and the not-so-poor, the militarization and violence of popular culture, ubiquitous presence of the protean security and surveillance apparatus, and the application of increasingly authoritarian solutions to our social ills….
If we are to mobilize resistance to the empire, we must appeal not only to people’s moral values but to their self-interest (and I do not mean their selfishness). People may rally around the banners of empire when convinced that their security and survival are at stake. They will not choose morality if they think it brings endangerment to them and their loved ones. Nor will they choose disarmament and peaceful conversions if they think it will show weakness and invite aggression against themselves and their families.
So they must be shown that the republic is being bled for the empire’s profits, not for their well-being. That real national security means secure jobs, safe homes, healthcare for all, access to higher education without incurring debt peonage, and a clean environment. They must be informed that this empire, which is paid for by their blood, sweat, and taxes, has little to do with protecting them or people abroad and everything to do with victimizing them in order to feed the power and profits of the few. The global military apparatus they grudgingly support at such immense costs to the national treasury, does not serve their interests. To cut it drastically will not leave us prey to some foreign adversaries. On the contrary, to lay down the sword and use our labor and national treasure for peaceful reconstruction so desperately needed at home and abroad is not to become a weak nation but a truly great one.
Mainstream pundits and propagandists label our desire to move away from corporate militarism and imperial domination as weakness, folly, isolationism, or self-defeating pacifism and yes, even treasonous. But there is another name for the course of action that aims to wrest the wealth and power out of the hands of the military-industrial complex, the protean security and surveillance apparatus, and the Davos jetting World Economic Forum players, and give it back to the people so that they become the agents of their own lives and social conditions: it is called democracy, the victory of the republic, the consent of the governed over the dogma and dictates of the small group of oligarchs, plutocrats, and authoritarian ruling class of empire
“Those who do not move do not notice their chains”. Rosa Luxumberg.
The Republican oligarchs in Iowa, despite 61% of voters not wanting the private education bill passed, went ahead anyway with what will surely end up being the single largest upward transfer of wealth in the state's history.
The Private School Funding Bill was presented to voters by Gov. Reynolds as simply parental choice and school choice, an opportunity for less fortunate students to attend a private school.
Of course, the reality is much different. We're dealing with far right Republicans, after all. Billions of public dollars are being transfered from the state's general fund and placed directly into the hands of a relatively small group of private school investors under the guise of "school choice" and "parental choice."
Who are the investors? How much money, exactly? What corporations are getting the money? How will the money be spent?
No one beyond the main corporate and government players will have a clue because Iowa's corporate-controlled far-right Republican legislature passed a law criminalizi g any inquiry or oversight into what will be billions of dollars of formerly public money that is now owned by private corporations.
The entire private school argument is simply the Republican's way of getting their hands on all that money, money that used to belong to all Iowans. The whole nauseating affair has been a massive, illicit money grab right from the start.
I'm sorry for the long post, but it needs to be known that within a week of passing the private school bill, plus the gag law prohibiting accountability or even inquiry into who has the money and how it's being used, Iowa's ever fair-minded and frugal right wing legislature declared war on SNAPS recipients. They have spent a couple of weeks reducing benefits and tightening eligibility requirements. It's been a nauseating, right wing shit show that reveals their true dark character and self-serving intent.
You see, Iowa's fascist Republican legislature is just making sure that those single mothers knocking down 10 bucks an hour at a convenience store, most of which goes to child care, isn't making too much money to qualify for a few food stamps and by god they're going to root them out.
Billions for faceless, unknown corporations with literally NO QUESTIONS ASKED - such an inquiry may get you arrested in Iowa, but they go after food stamps recipients.
This is presently the corrupt conservative Republican culture that is destroying Iowa and the country as a whole.
Ronald Reagan was the gilded knight who laid down before the rich and powerful, bequeathing them a largesss beyond all measure. His assault on the working American and the various "lower" classes as he saw them served as a huge spike in the coffin of the United States. Reagan was a whore to profiteers and oligarchs.
This is an historic document explicating the near total control of the peoples of America and the West by entrenched, systemic force. Well done, Chris.
My take: Striking for more just wages in a suppressed workforce may be less embraced than an orchestrated declaration that peace is our right and our present order is failing us.
Perhaps when President Biden pronounces the western hemisphere a “united,” front representing democracy and democratic values, as he will on Pan American Day next week, an unscheduled response could be poetic in timing and tenor. It ought to be easy for many “comfortable” Americans to acknowledge that our values are absent in a system that is fundamentally opposed to humanity. I think this is a message that can have left and right support. It is pre-political pro-humanity.
Great report. Mr. Hedges: "The legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, along with the media and universities, have been seized by a tiny cabal of billionaires and corporations who pass laws and legislation that consolidate their power and obscene wealth at our expense." and the solution to eliminate this problem is given by Robert Reich in his interesting article linked in this report:
"The majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, believe the ultra rich should pay higher taxes. There are many ways to make them do so: closing the stepped up basis loophole, raising the capital gains tax, and fully funding the Internal Revenue Service so it can properly audit the wealthiest taxpayers, for starters.
Beyond those fixes, we need a new wealth tax: a tax of just 2 percent a year on wealth in excess of $1 million. That’s hardly a drop in the bucket for centi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but would generate plenty of revenue to invest in healthcare and education so that millions of Americans have a fair shot at making it. "
Healthy and well educated union members and citizens in all our institutions will be able to save our democracy.
Not only do Americans have to take back what is there's, there are 29 other NATO vassal states colonized as slave states to the empire.
Excellent article Chris. Unregulated capitalism without a maximum wage is not financially or environmentally sustainable and it is not compatible with true Christianity or democracy. The right wing dictator supporters, think that the robber barons will give them a piece of the pie because they are white. In reality, they will lose their minimum wage and all social spending including social security, food stamps, earned income tax credit..., and they will be cast into the world labor pool where the going labor rate is less than a dollar an hour. A world where the old and handicapped and all the useless eaters will be left to die of covid or a fungus or starvation, regardless of race. There are about 1,500 right wing am hate radio stations in America. Also the billionaire globalists own the television stations and the newspapers as well. The rich will pay the poor to kill the poor, while flying from Nation to Nation to avoid being cornered by the angry mobs. First and foremost, we must maintain our democracy to keep the ability to replace Biden, Trump and all of the bought off leaders of the last 60 years. If the crazy GOP Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, and causes a Great depression and a dictator gets elected, it will be too late. Very few dictators are benevolent. Now doesn't look like a very good time to be bringing more babies on board the planet. But that won't stop the non-thinkers, only the thinkers. There will be a Utopia for the rich and a dystopia for the poor, at the same time.
This is a powerful cri-de-cœur manifesto on behalf of the worker - of the union-member worker - and against the autocratic faux-democracy of the US - determined to further entrench the privilege of the über rich and corporations. I'm Australian - but I see so many parallels here - clearly "learnt" by our own oligarchic vested interests from the "example" of "our-great-and-powerful friend" - so many of our bright young ones enticed to study at the Chicago School of Economics - at Harvard School of Business - programs wherein ethics seems to have been unknown. I was a proud unionist - of the NSW Teachers Federation - from my first year of teaching when I was still 21 - the school's union representative - despite only two+ years earlier newly emerged from a fundamentalist Protestant sect for which syndicalism was aligned with Satan. I was a member of no political party until just three years ago (a membership now resigned from) when a new movement appeared seeking proper reconciliation with First Australian, decent and respectful treatment for asylum-seekers - demonised here more-or-less by both sides of the political divide though with truly inhuman abuse and torture by the coalition party we see here as allied to the Trumpian Republicans of the US - then in power already for seven years - until the brave little protest party I had joined was swamped by others known as the TEAL - a loose alliance of others who garnered all the headlines and attention - in the lead up to the Federal elections held here in May, 2022 when the incumbents were blown away. The party I had joined was part of a Zeitgeist. Attacks on unions by the Rupert Murdoch NewsCorp TV/Radio/newspaper attack dogs (holding over 70% of Australia's media outlets) and its trademark divisiveness - continue unabated - despite "helping their boys and girls" to lose every state and territory election - and the federal one, too over the past three years. Only tiny Tasmania remains within their control. It suggests hope - yet not any hope for Julian Assange! Following US "orders" in provoking China, in aiding the oligarchs of Ukraine... Again, Chris - such clarity in your enunciation of these matters. (As Robert Billyard states just below - 29 vassal states of the US in NATO - and I noted to-day that Stoltenberg was telling (!!) Australia how to respond to adding assistance to Ukraine - Australia now virtually an adjunct member of NATO - despite our location between the South Indian and South Pacific Oceans.) Yesterday in London the newly appointed Australian High Commissioner (Ambassador - to a British Commonwealth nation) met with Julian Assange in Belmarsh - though afterwards he - Stephen SMITH - refused to say anything about what had been discussed - prevented - he said - by an agreement with Julian Assange. I do not believe that! I can't see why he could not have left with Julian Assange and taken him to sanctuary in the Australian High Commission - vast by comparison with the little Ecuadorean Embassy which for so long offered Julian sanctuary till the forces and money of the US brought that to an end.
Great speech but here's the conundrum. My union, the National Education Association (retired member), like many big unions, is entirely beholden to the Democratic Party. I have never succeeded in getting them to stand against any DNC policies, no matter how destructive to their membership. Like the DNC, the effort to reform them from within is a waste of time and energy. What's best done about that, Chris? Yours dreaming of a #GeneralStrike, Lisa
"Janet Yellen’s need to orchestrate unemployment to bring down inflation is, for them, a vital fact. "
Inflation is one of those key words that has suffered an Orwellian redefinition. It used to mean a spiral in which both wages and prices rise. Nowadays the rise in prices overwhelms the rise in wages. Nevertheless interest rates are pushed up to stamp out even a slight increase in the power of labor. Nothing will be done about prices.
When speaking of workers' movements in the US, one name that should never be missed is Staughton Lynd:
https://sbahour.medium.com/staughton-lynd-died-staughton-lynd-lives-on-1b6d676068f4?sk=882073e4c500b958309e2ce680bf07cf
It's astonishing that in a country as large as the United States, there isn't a political party aligned with, or dedicated to, representing workers and worker rights. The decimation of labor unions was deliberate, and it stifled the organized voice of labor, plus it eliminated the political and economic education that unions routinely engage in. It's a helluva parlor trick to make a working person believe the boss is his benefactor and that being a "right-to-work" employee is freedom.
Those who possess the emotional and intellectual fortitude to face what lies before them will always be in the minority. There is a numbing comfort that comes with surrendering moral autonomy for abject servility and obedience, and this comfort is especially attractive in a crisis.
Because of the disproportionate amount spent on the military, Americans must endure the neglect of environmental needs, the financial insolvency and decay of our cities, the deterioration of our transportation, education, and health care systems, and the devastating effects of unemployment and underemployment upon millions of households and hundreds of communities. In addition, there are the frightful social and psychological costs, the discouragement and decline of public morale, (anomie) the anger and suffering of the poor and the not-so-poor, the militarization and violence of popular culture, ubiquitous presence of the protean security and surveillance apparatus, and the application of increasingly authoritarian solutions to our social ills….
If we are to mobilize resistance to the empire, we must appeal not only to people’s moral values but to their self-interest (and I do not mean their selfishness). People may rally around the banners of empire when convinced that their security and survival are at stake. They will not choose morality if they think it brings endangerment to them and their loved ones. Nor will they choose disarmament and peaceful conversions if they think it will show weakness and invite aggression against themselves and their families.
So they must be shown that the republic is being bled for the empire’s profits, not for their well-being. That real national security means secure jobs, safe homes, healthcare for all, access to higher education without incurring debt peonage, and a clean environment. They must be informed that this empire, which is paid for by their blood, sweat, and taxes, has little to do with protecting them or people abroad and everything to do with victimizing them in order to feed the power and profits of the few. The global military apparatus they grudgingly support at such immense costs to the national treasury, does not serve their interests. To cut it drastically will not leave us prey to some foreign adversaries. On the contrary, to lay down the sword and use our labor and national treasure for peaceful reconstruction so desperately needed at home and abroad is not to become a weak nation but a truly great one.
Mainstream pundits and propagandists label our desire to move away from corporate militarism and imperial domination as weakness, folly, isolationism, or self-defeating pacifism and yes, even treasonous. But there is another name for the course of action that aims to wrest the wealth and power out of the hands of the military-industrial complex, the protean security and surveillance apparatus, and the Davos jetting World Economic Forum players, and give it back to the people so that they become the agents of their own lives and social conditions: it is called democracy, the victory of the republic, the consent of the governed over the dogma and dictates of the small group of oligarchs, plutocrats, and authoritarian ruling class of empire
“Those who do not move do not notice their chains”. Rosa Luxumberg.
The Republican oligarchs in Iowa, despite 61% of voters not wanting the private education bill passed, went ahead anyway with what will surely end up being the single largest upward transfer of wealth in the state's history.
The Private School Funding Bill was presented to voters by Gov. Reynolds as simply parental choice and school choice, an opportunity for less fortunate students to attend a private school.
Of course, the reality is much different. We're dealing with far right Republicans, after all. Billions of public dollars are being transfered from the state's general fund and placed directly into the hands of a relatively small group of private school investors under the guise of "school choice" and "parental choice."
Who are the investors? How much money, exactly? What corporations are getting the money? How will the money be spent?
No one beyond the main corporate and government players will have a clue because Iowa's corporate-controlled far-right Republican legislature passed a law criminalizi g any inquiry or oversight into what will be billions of dollars of formerly public money that is now owned by private corporations.
The entire private school argument is simply the Republican's way of getting their hands on all that money, money that used to belong to all Iowans. The whole nauseating affair has been a massive, illicit money grab right from the start.
I'm sorry for the long post, but it needs to be known that within a week of passing the private school bill, plus the gag law prohibiting accountability or even inquiry into who has the money and how it's being used, Iowa's ever fair-minded and frugal right wing legislature declared war on SNAPS recipients. They have spent a couple of weeks reducing benefits and tightening eligibility requirements. It's been a nauseating, right wing shit show that reveals their true dark character and self-serving intent.
You see, Iowa's fascist Republican legislature is just making sure that those single mothers knocking down 10 bucks an hour at a convenience store, most of which goes to child care, isn't making too much money to qualify for a few food stamps and by god they're going to root them out.
Billions for faceless, unknown corporations with literally NO QUESTIONS ASKED - such an inquiry may get you arrested in Iowa, but they go after food stamps recipients.
This is presently the corrupt conservative Republican culture that is destroying Iowa and the country as a whole.
Lede buried:
"France is giving us a powerful lesson in how to pit popular power against a ruling elite."
Ronald Reagan was the gilded knight who laid down before the rich and powerful, bequeathing them a largesss beyond all measure. His assault on the working American and the various "lower" classes as he saw them served as a huge spike in the coffin of the United States. Reagan was a whore to profiteers and oligarchs.
Once again Chris, thanks.
Keep writing Chris we need you
This is an historic document explicating the near total control of the peoples of America and the West by entrenched, systemic force. Well done, Chris.
My take: Striking for more just wages in a suppressed workforce may be less embraced than an orchestrated declaration that peace is our right and our present order is failing us.
Perhaps when President Biden pronounces the western hemisphere a “united,” front representing democracy and democratic values, as he will on Pan American Day next week, an unscheduled response could be poetic in timing and tenor. It ought to be easy for many “comfortable” Americans to acknowledge that our values are absent in a system that is fundamentally opposed to humanity. I think this is a message that can have left and right support. It is pre-political pro-humanity.
Is there a video of this talk posted anywhere?
Great report. Mr. Hedges: "The legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, along with the media and universities, have been seized by a tiny cabal of billionaires and corporations who pass laws and legislation that consolidate their power and obscene wealth at our expense." and the solution to eliminate this problem is given by Robert Reich in his interesting article linked in this report:
https://inthesetimes.com/article/robert-reich-elon-musk-capitalism-inequality-wealth-tax
"The majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, believe the ultra rich should pay higher taxes. There are many ways to make them do so: closing the stepped up basis loophole, raising the capital gains tax, and fully funding the Internal Revenue Service so it can properly audit the wealthiest taxpayers, for starters.
Beyond those fixes, we need a new wealth tax: a tax of just 2 percent a year on wealth in excess of $1 million. That’s hardly a drop in the bucket for centi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but would generate plenty of revenue to invest in healthcare and education so that millions of Americans have a fair shot at making it. "
Healthy and well educated union members and citizens in all our institutions will be able to save our democracy.