You know you are a Philistine when...

[blindpig]

I co-founded Occupy Wall Street. Now I'm headed to Davos. Why?
Micah White
Rejecting Davos is easy when one hasn’t been invited. Now that I have a chance to go, I want to discover its revolutionary potential

@beingMicahWhite
Sat 18 Jan 2020 02.00 ESTLast modified on Sat 18 Jan 2020 02.02 EST


‘What I discovered is that Davos is not one thing. There are many Davoses at Davos.’ Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

In a few days the world’s elite, CEOs and world leaders will descend on Davos for the World Economic Forum – and I’ll be there too, encountering the class I’ve been protesting against for most of my life.

My journey to Davos is an unlikely story: I’m a lifelong social activist who was nearly arrested during an anarchist anti-globalization protest against the World Economic Forum in 2002. Several years later, I co-created Occupy Wall Street, a social movement against income inequality and the influence of money on democracy that spread to 82 countries and nearly 1,000 cities. Now I’m going to Davos, not to protest but to participate.

The question I’m most often asked is: what do you hope to achieve by participating in the World Economic Forum?

Behind this question is a deep cynicism that anything good can come out of this gathering of the top 1% of the 1%.

For many activists, the total rejection of the World Economic Forum goes back to the anti-globalization movement and the founding of the World Social Forum as an alternative summit. The belief that the World Economic Forum is an irredeemable space is one of the implicit prejudices of contemporary activist culture.

Among the 99%, the cynicism toward Davos often takes the form of a conviction that the CEOs will neither listen nor change.

Of course, there is good reason to be skeptical of the World Economic Forum and the willingness of elites to make concrete changes that benefit the rest of us.

At Davos we will tell world leaders to abandon the fossil fuel economy
Greta Thunberg and others
Greta Thunberg
Read more
In the nine years since the Occupy movement forced income inequality into the mainstream discourse, there has been little to no progress on the issue despite its being ardently discussed by elites at Davos. In fact, the 99% is arguably in a worse position politically and economically today than we were when our encampments occupied the financial districts in 2011. Moreover, regulatory advances have been reversed and another financial crisis seems just around the corner.

And yet, rejecting Davos is easy when one has not been invited to attend. After all, invitations to the Forum are extremely rare, and much coveted by elites who pay exorbitant fees to attend. Only a handful of civil society representatives, and far fewer activists, have ever been offered the opportunity to go.

To turn down the World Economic Forum would mean believing that I can know in advance what will could come from going. On the contrary, my experience as an activist has taught me it is often the emergent and unexpected outcomes that end up being the most significant. I had to go to see what would happen if I went.

To understand what I could achieve at Davos, I first had to understand Davos.

In the hidden Davos opposing social forces, activists and elites, can put their egos and personas aside to speak freely
So I read every critical and positive perspective on the gathering, written by participants, that I could find. I watched the recently released documentary The Forum talked to civil society members who’d gone, and met with World Economic Forum staff in New York City.

What I discovered is that Davos is not one thing. There are many Davoses at Davos. And it is possible to reject one or more sides of the gathering while still finding revolutionary potential in another aspect of it.

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There is the official Davos comprised of outward-facing sessions organized by the World Economic Forum. These events are intellectual performances, livestreamed to the public and open to reporters. This is the carefully staged forum that outsiders see and which activists traditionally use as a platform to speak truth to power and denounce elites. (Remember Greta Thunberg’s “act like your house is on fire” or Rutger Bregman’s “taxes, taxes, taxes” rant that went viral?) But denunciations don’t instigate behavior change, even if they play well on social media, and activists are right to be skeptical of this performative Davos.

There is also the unofficial Davos of decadent corporate-hosted dinners and nightcaps attended by celebrities who fly in on private jets to party and are not invited to the Forum. These unofficial parties where the champagne flows freely are known to irk the founder of the World Economic Forum. They’ve come to be a fixture of Davos nonetheless. The 99% is rightly wary of this decadent Davos: it is everything Occupy detested, elites reveling in luxury.

And then there is the hidden Davos: the private, off-the-record events organized by the World Economic Forum. These secretive invite-only meetings are held under the Chatham House rule, a strict guideline that protects the anonymity of participants in order to facilitate frank discussion. These, along with the equally confidential bilateral meetings held between participants in corridors and hotel lobbies, is the Davos with the potential to usher in great social changes.

In the hidden Davos opposing social forces, activists and elites, can put their egos and personas aside to speak freely and find common cause for joint action on the global crises that impact us all – from income inequality to climate change. It is here that the argument can be made that elites must stop suppressing protest and instead harness the creative energy of social movements to achieve great changes. The Forum is perhaps the only place on earth where these opportunities for fraternization are possible.

I’m going to the World Economic Forum to find the hidden Davos. And the only way I know to get there is to keep following the unlikely activist path that has led me to the most powerful gathering in the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... reet-davos

More to this if you can stomach it.

We were right all along, doncha know? This is super platinum class philistinism.

[chlamor]

Whoa- guess Micah White is gonna find his "inner Davos"- bet he gets fat on that crap.

Sounds like New Age guru meets Occupy. You know I can rant BP but this one left me speechless.

[blindpig]

CHOMSKY AND OTHER LIBERAL INTELLECTUALS ASK US TO JOIN THEM IN THROWING IN THE TOWEL
Posted by MLToday | Feb 2, 2020 | Other Featured Posts



Chomsky and Other Liberal Intellectuals Ask Us to Join Them in Throwing in the Towel
By Stansfield Smith
February 1, 2020

Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Leslie Cagan, Ron Daniels, Kathy Kelly, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters, and Michael Albert wrote an Open Letter to the Green Party, asking them to support the 2020 Democratic candidate regardless of who wins the nomination. The Open Letter was in response to an article well worth reading by Howie Hawkins, The Green Party Is Not the Democrats’ Problem.
It has become all too common over the last 15 years to see erstwhile anti-imperialists, or at least harsh critics of the US government’s brutal policies at home and abroad, fold under corporate America’s unrelenting onslaught on humanity and the planet. It is reminiscent of how the mass Marxist Social Democratic parties capitulated to the impending imperialist massacre of World War I, or how the Western capitalist nations caved in to Hitler from 1937 on, until they saw the “greater enemy,” the Soviet Union, take the full fury of the Nazi forces and begin to beat them back.
Digging under the argument that Chomsky et al. present, we uncover a motherlode of cowardly unwillingness to organize, to mobilize, and do what is necessary to fight back. For instance, we have seen them capitulate on opposition to US invasion of Syria, with Chomsky even calling for US troops to continue the occupation. We have seen them acquiesce to the US-NATO war to overthrow Qaddafi, where the “Libyan Revolution” has brought slave markets in the country.
But let us look at what they say: the Greens should not run in states that take votes away from the Democratic nominee able to beat Trump. This argument is founded on a considerable amount of old-fashioned arrogance, an assumption that Greens are nothing more than disenchanted liberal Democrats who should come back home in a time of need. There is little evidence that in 2016 Green voters would have voted for Hillary against Trump if there were no Green candidate. Some may have, just as some may have voted for Trump, and probably a great number would not have bothered to vote.
The Open Leter also expresses a good dose of liberal middle-class arrogance in the assumption that Hillary was the lesser evil compared to Trump and his deplorables. Of course, we can never know what Hillary or any other losing candidate would have done as president, because they never won. It does seem pretty clear, though, that the national security state would have been happy with her functioning as its obedient champion in the White House. But now we have Trump, who openly attacks national security state war-mongering and its corporate media fake news. It also seems likely that Clinton would have involved us in a new war, which Trump periodically makes noises about but so far has avoided.
Hillary would also have been the lesser evil for the liberal elite by making the US empire more “respected” at home and abroad – that is, making the brutal operations of the empire more palatable for them. She would have made liberals prouder about what America supposedly stands for in the world, just as they were proud of the America of President Obama, as “the shining city on the hill.” Thinking the US empire represents a force for good in the world is a heartfelt need for American liberals.
For anti-imperialists the opposite is the case: what tears off the mask US imperialism wears, what shows the empire’s selfish greed and inhumanity to the world are important steps forward for people’s political education. In that, Trump, not having gone through the standard politicians’ dog-training school to learn how to cover up one’s greed, lies, and crudeness, has done a worthy job in showing to the world the true nature of the empire.
So long as liberals can think US imperialism is slowly improving, slowly reforming its excessive abuses, so long as they can rationalize some of its abuses, and so long as they can live comfortably inside the system, that for them is good enough.
But reality tells us US world hegemony is coming to an end. China is slowly pushing the US out of first place, and — shocking to liberals –is providing a vastly superior example of how to deal cooperatively with other countries, how to eliminate poverty, how to combat climate change. We are into the period where, as an empire declining in productive wealth, the US must become more nakedly a bully to maintain its control. It must rely more and more on endless war, on economic warfare, on corporate media disinformation, having less wealth available to buy acquiescence.
Both Clinton and Trump knew that and were on board with it. Clinton used traditional feel-good liberal rhetoric. Trump was outspokenly “America first,” and “white people first.” The difference between the two parties exists mainly on the level of rhetoric.
How to explain this ongoing liberal-left capitulation to corporate America’s pro-Democratic Party agenda? The working class, the great opposing power to capital, has not fought the corporate rulers and been defeated. It has not yet begun to fight. When it has been aroused and well led, as in the 1930s and 1940s, workers took on the biggest corporate giants, General Motors, US Steel, the coal barons, the US government and martial law, and beat them. In the late 1950s and 1960s working people, Black and white, rose up and crushed the entrenched 75-year-old Jim Crow system. However, the US working class today, the only giant powerful enough to combat corporate control, still remains for the most part quiescent, leaderless. It will again emerge from the shadows and make history.
Liberal-left intellectuals do not identify themselves primarily as allies of this one great countervailing power to corporate America. Probably they don’t even see it. Rather, they see a progressive milieu which can function as a pressure group in the orbit of the Democratic Party against what they see as a right-wing milieu around the Republican Party and Democratic Party bosses. As a result they operate from a perspective of weakness, and feel the popular force behind them continually diminishing since the last mass social upsurge, in 2002-3 against the war in Iraq. Consequently they have slowly and steadily shifted rightwards over the years.
However, mass movements and mass struggles come in waves followed by periods of quiescence, and inevitably a great new wave will appear.

https://mltoday.com/chomsky-and-other-l ... the-towel/

[blindpig]

chlamor
09-30-2008, 08:42 PM

To Hell with Good Intentions
by Ivan Illich

An address by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968. In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service "mission." Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request.

IN THE CONVERSATIONS WHICH I HAVE HAD TODAY, I was impressed by two things, and I want to state them before I launch into my prepared talk.

I was impressed by your insight that the motivation of U.S. volunteers overseas springs mostly from very alienated feelings and concepts. I was equally impressed, by what I interpret as a step forward among would-be volunteers like you: openness to the idea that the only thing you can legitimately volunteer for in Latin America might be voluntary powerlessness, voluntary presence as receivers, as such, as hopefully beloved or adopted ones without any way of returning the gift.

I was equally impressed by the hypocrisy of most of you: by the hypocrisy of the atmosphere prevailing here. I say this as a brother speaking to brothers and sisters. I say it against many resistances within me; but it must be said. Your very insight, your very openness to evaluations of past programs make you hypocrites because you - or at least most of you - have decided to spend this next summer in Mexico, and therefore, you are unwilling to go far enough in your reappraisal of your program. You close your eyes because you want to go ahead and could not do so if you looked at some facts.

It is quite possible that this hypocrisy is unconscious in most of you. Intellectually, you are ready to see that the motivations which could legitimate volunteer action overseas in 1963 cannot be invoked for the same action in 1968. "Mission-vacations" among poor Mexicans were "the thing" to do for well-off U.S. students earlier in this decade: sentimental concern for newly-discovered. poverty south of the border combined with total blindness to much worse poverty at home justified such benevolent excursions. Intellectual insight into the difficulties of fruitful volunteer action had not sobered the spirit of Peace Corps Papal-and-Self-Styled Volunteers.

Today, the existence of organizations like yours is offensive to Mexico. I wanted to make this statement in order to explain why I feel sick about it all and in order to make you aware that good intentions have not much to do with what we are discussing here. To hell with good intentions. This is a theological statement. You will not help anybody by your good intentions. There is an Irish saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; this sums up the same theological insight.

The very frustration which participation in CIASP programs might mean for you, could lead you to new awareness: the awareness that even North Americans can receive the gift of hospitality without the slightest ability to pay for it; the awareness that for some gifts one cannot even say "thank you."

Now to my prepared statement.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

For the past six years I have become known for my increasing opposition to the presence of any and all North American "dogooders" in Latin America. I am sure you know of my present efforts to obtain the voluntary withdrawal of all North American volunteer armies from Latin America - missionaries, Peace Corps members and groups like yours, a "division" organized for the benevolent invasion of Mexico. You were aware of these things when you invited me - of all people - to be the main speaker at your annual convention. This is amazing! I can only conclude that your invitation means one of at least three things:

Some among you might have reached the conclusion that CIASP should either dissolve altogether, or take the promotion of voluntary aid to the Mexican poor out of its institutional purpose. Therefore you might have invited me here to help others reach this same decision.

You might also have invited me because you want to learn how to deal with people who think the way I do - how to dispute them successfully. It has now become quite common to invite Black Power spokesmen to address Lions Clubs. A "dove" must always be included in a public dispute organized to increase U.S. belligerence.

And finally, you might have invited me here hoping that you would be able to agree with most of what I say, and then go ahead in good faith and work this summer in Mexican villages. This last possibility is only open to those who do not listen, or who cannot understand me.

I did not come here to argue. I am here to tell you, if possible to convince you, and hopefully, to stop you, from pretentiously imposing yourselves on Mexicans.

I do have deep faith in the enormous good will of the U.S. volunteer. However, his good faith can usually be explained only by an abysmal lack of intuitive delicacy. By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class "American Way of Life," since that is really the only life you know. A group like this could not have developed unless a mood in the United States had supported it - the belief that any true American must share God's blessings with his poorer fellow men. The idea that every American has something to give, and at all times may, can and should give it, explains why it occurred to students that they could help Mexican peasants "develop" by spending a few months in their villages.

Of course, this surprising conviction was supported by members of a missionary order, who would have no reason to exist unless they had the same conviction - except a much stronger one. It is now high time to cure yourselves of this. You, like the values you carry, are the products of an American society of achievers and consumers, with its two-party system, its universal schooling, and its family-car affluence. You are ultimately-consciously or unconsciously - "salesmen" for a delusive ballet in the ideas of democracy, equal opportunity and free enterprise among people who haven't the possibility of profiting from these.

Next to money and guns, the third largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world: the teacher, the volunteer, the missionary, the community organizer, the economic developer, and the vacationing do-gooders. Ideally, these people define their role as service. Actually, they frequently wind up alleviating the damage done by money and weapons, or "seducing" the "underdeveloped" to the benefits of the world of affluence and achievement. Perhaps this is the moment to instead bring home to the people of the U.S. the knowledge that the way of life they have chosen simply is not alive enough to be shared.

By now it should be evident to all America that the U.S. is engaged in a tremendous struggle to survive. The U.S. cannot survive if the rest of the world is not convinced that here we have Heaven-on-Earth. The survival of the U.S. depends on the acceptance by all so-called "free" men that the U.S. middle class has "made it." The U.S. way of life has become a religion which must be accepted by all those who do not want to die by the sword - or napalm. All over the globe the U.S. is fighting to protect and develop at least a minority who consume what the U.S. majority can afford. Such is the purpose of the Alliance for Progress of the middle-classes which the U.S. signed with Latin America some years ago. But increasingly this commercial alliance must be protected by weapons which allow the minority who can "make it" to protect their acquisitions and achievements.

But weapons are not enough to permit minority rule. The marginal masses become rambunctious unless they are given a "Creed," or belief which explains the status quo. This task is given to the U.S. volunteer - whether he be a member of CLASP or a worker in the so-called "Pacification Programs" in Viet Nam.

The United States is currently engaged in a three-front struggle to affirm its ideals of acquisitive and achievement-oriented "Democracy." I say "three" fronts, because three great areas of the world are challenging the validity of a political and social system which makes the rich ever richer, and the poor increasingly marginal to that system.

In Asia, the U.S. is threatened by an established power -China. The U.S. opposes China with three weapons: the tiny Asian elites who could not have it any better than in an alliance with the United States; a huge war machine to stop the Chinese from "taking over" as it is usually put in this country, and; forcible re-education of the so-called "Pacified" peoples. All three of these efforts seem to be failing.

In Chicago, poverty funds, the police force and preachers seem to be no more successful in their efforts to check the unwillingness of the black community to wait for graceful integration into the system.

And finally, in Latin America the Alliance for Progress has been quite successful in increasing the number of people who could not be better off - meaning the tiny, middle-class elites - and has created ideal conditions for military dictatorships. The dictators were formerly at the service of the plantation owners, but now they protect the new industrial complexes. And finally, you come to help the underdog accept his destiny within this process!

All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder. At best, you can try to convince Mexican girls that they should marry a young man who is self-made, rich, a consumer, and as disrespectful of tradition as one of you. At worst, in your "community development" spirit you might create just enough problems to get someone shot after your vacation ends_ and you rush back to your middleclass neighborhoods where your friends make jokes about "spits" and "wetbacks."

You start on your task without any training. Even the Peace Corps spends around $10,000 on each corps member to help him adapt to his new environment and to guard him against culture shock. How odd that nobody ever thought about spending money to educate poor Mexicans in order to prevent them from the culture shock of meeting you?

In fact, you cannot even meet the majority which you pretend to serve in Latin America - even if you could speak their language, which most of you cannot. You can only dialogue with those like you - Latin American imitations of the North American middle class. There is no way for you to really meet with the underprivileged, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on.

Let me explain this statement, and also let me explain why most Latin Americans with whom you might be able to communicate would disagree with me.

Suppose you went to a U.S. ghetto this summer and tried to help the poor there "help themselves." Very soon you would be either spit upon or laughed at. People offended by your pretentiousness would hit or spit. People who understand that your own bad consciences push you to this gesture would laugh condescendingly. Soon you would be made aware of your irrelevance among the poor, of your status as middle-class college students on a summer assignment. You would be roundly rejected, no matter if your skin is white-as most of your faces here are-or brown or black, as a few exceptions who got in here somehow.

Your reports about your work in Mexico, which you so kindly sent me, exude self-complacency. Your reports on past summers prove that you are not even capable of understanding that your dogooding in a Mexican village is even less relevant than it would be in a U.S. ghetto. Not only is there a gulf between what you have and what others have which is much greater than the one existing between you and the poor in your own country, but there is also a gulf between what you feel and what the Mexican people feel that is incomparably greater. This gulf is so great that in a Mexican village you, as White Americans (or cultural white Americans) can imagine yourselves exactly the way a white preacher saw himself when he offered his life preaching to the black slaves on a plantation in Alabama. The fact that you live in huts and eat tortillas for a few weeks renders your well-intentioned group only a bit more picturesque.

The only people with whom you can hope to communicate with are some members of the middle class. And here please remember that I said "some" -by which I mean a tiny elite in Latin America.

You come from a country which industrialized early and which succeeded in incorporating the great majority of its citizens into the middle classes. It is no social distinction in the U.S. to have graduated from the second year of college. Indeed, most Americans now do. Anybody in this country who did not finish high school is considered underprivileged.

In Latin America the situation is quite different: 75% of all people drop out of school before they reach the sixth grade. Thus, people who have finished high school are members of a tiny minority. Then, a minority of that minority goes on for university training. It is only among these people that you will find your educational equals.

At the same time, a middle class in the United States is the majority. In Mexico, it is a tiny elite. Seven years ago your country began and financed a so-called "Alliance for Progress." This was an "Alliance" for the "Progress" of the middle class elites. Now. it is among the members of this middle class that you will find a few people who are willing to send their time with you_ And they are overwhelmingly those "nice kids" who would also like to soothe their troubled consciences by "doing something nice for the promotion of the poor Indians." Of course, when you and your middleclass Mexican counterparts meet, you will be told that you are doing something valuable, that you are "sacrificing" to help others.

And it will be the foreign priest who will especially confirm your self-image for you. After all, his livelihood and sense of purpose depends on his firm belief in a year-round mission which is of the same type as your summer vacation-mission.

There exists the argument that some returned volunteers have gained insight into the damage they have done to others - and thus become more mature people. Yet it is less frequently stated that most of them are ridiculously proud of their "summer sacrifices." Perhaps there is also something to the argument that young men should be promiscuous for awhile in order to find out that sexual love is most beautiful in a monogamous relationship. Or that the best way to leave LSD alone is to try it for awhile -or even that the best way of understanding that your help in the ghetto is neither needed nor wanted is to try, and fail. I do not agree with this argument. The damage which volunteers do willy-nilly is too high a price for the belated insight that they shouldn't have been volunteers in the first place.

If you have any sense of responsibility at all, stay with your riots here at home. Work for the coming elections: You will know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to communicate with those to whom you speak. And you will know when you fail. If you insist on working with the poor, if this is your vocation, then at least work among the poor who can tell you to go to hell. It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don't even understand what you are doing, or what people think of you. And it is profoundly damaging to yourselves when you define something that you want to do as "good," a "sacrifice" and "help."

I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.

I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.

Ivan Illich is the author of Deschooling Society and other provocative books. Thanks to Nick Royal, Tim Stanton, and Steve Babb for helping to find this speech.

http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm

[chlamor]

Arguments about capitalism and socialism neglect an important fact: people are the agents in either system. People are by nature self-centered and biased. The outcomes in capitalism and socialism depend on the people who run them.

Capitalism works when the leaders understand the value of workers. The employee of one company is the customer of another company. The incomes of workers must be sufficient to purchase the products made by the various companies. When the incomes are insufficient, companies cannot sell what they produce.

The problem is not capitalism, it is globalization. As work went overseas and incomes in the United States dropped, companies sought other means for customers to purchase products. Now, private debt in the USA is enormous.

The advantage of capitalism is that it does not require global information. Companies and consumers just require one piece of information: the price. Knowing the price, companies and consumers can make decisions. But the price must be the natural outcome of market interactions. Price cannot be manipulated by government interference.

Under socialism, markets and companies are controlled by the government. The problem is the determination of the price. How does the government determine the multitude of prices?

We no longer have capitalism. This confuses people. We have a system of government control based on finance. We have a form of socialism that benefits the rich and powerful. The clearest example of socialist control was the bail out of Wall Street.

So, socialism may not work for the benefit of all people. The outcome depends on our leadership. We have found that even when we elect leaders that we think will help us, they help themselves. Obama is doing great. He is a millionaire. What about the people who elected him?

Ultimately, what matters most is our leaders. If we have good leaders, capitalism and socialism work.

[blindpig]

Arguments about capitalism and socialism neglect an important fact: people are the agents in either system. People are by nature self-centered and biased. The outcomes in capitalism and socialism depend on the people who run them.

Capitalism works when the leaders understand the value of workers. The employee of one company is the customer of another company. The incomes of workers must be sufficient to purchase the products made by the various companies. When the incomes are insufficient, companies cannot sell what they produce.

The problem is not capitalism, it is globalization. As work went overseas and incomes in the United States dropped, companies sought other means for customers to purchase products. Now, private debt in the USA is enormous.

The advantage of capitalism is that it does not require global information. Companies and consumers just require one piece of information: the price. Knowing the price, companies and consumers can make decisions. But the price must be the natural outcome of market interactions. Price cannot be manipulated by government interference.

Under socialism, markets and companies are controlled by the government. The problem is the determination of the price. How does the government determine the multitude of prices?

We no longer have capitalism. This confuses people. We have a system of government control based on finance. We have a form of socialism that benefits the rich and powerful. The clearest example of socialist control was the bail out of Wall Street.

So, socialism may not work for the benefit of all people. The outcome depends on our leadership. We have found that even when we elect leaders that we think will help us, they help themselves. Obama is doing great. He is a millionaire. What about the people who elected him?

Ultimately, what matters most is our leaders. If we have good leaders, capitalism and socialism work.

They never get tired of this story. Until I saw the bit about Obama I thought this was the guy with the cannon from way back. Maybe it is, exactly same shitck. "We no longer have capitalism. " Izzat you, Amy? 'Slice of time' capitalism, patriarchal capitalism, individuals as the prime movers of events, 'socialism for the rich', a cornucopia of bullshit.

Damn, forgot original sin.

[blindpig]

Dumbest fucking article I've read in a week, an OP from February 2008 with select responses.(too tangled to present in one post)

chlamor
02-13-2008, 07:36 PM

I Dreamt That Lincoln Had a Dream: Barack Obama, the American Theodicy, and the Spirit of American Democracy

by Saniel Bonder

http://www.opednews.com

I almost got thrown out of Harvard in 1969 for protesting the Viet Nam War, and never regretted it. Yet soon the limitations of mere political activism burdened me. I knew that without a corresponding revolutionary shift in our fundamental sense of who we are and what human life is about, our outward revolutions would be cosmetic. Yes, they were important. But they weren’t fundamental.

This led to my spiritual quest and work. I have never ceased to be a revolutionary. I’ve simply continued to try to help transform human nature and society from a different focus.


Along the way I’ve read about the American Revolutionary period and the Renaissance—times that dramatically shifted not just people’s outward lives but also the very mindset and disposition of the human spirit.

By contrast, I’ve felt something essential has been increasingly missing in action in American politics and society—first slain in leaders like the Kennedys and King, then mangled by Nixon, and later just falling asleep, getting lost, being forgotten, slipping away.

Then in the later 90s, I had a remarkable dream about that American essence. First I was seeing Abe Lincoln’s head and upper torso from behind. He was asleep, dreaming, disturbed. And then, suddenly, I was dreaming his dream with him:

A cartoon-like character was sitting by a roadside in the hot sun. He had little stick arms and legs like Mr. Peanut, but his body was a paper booklet. I knew immediately that his name was “The American Theodicy,” and that he was composed of primary documents expressing the spirit of America: The Declaration of Independence. The Bill of Rights and certain Constitutional Amendments. Perhaps Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Definitely Lincoln’s own Gettysburg Address.

The American Theodicy sat there weeping, abandoned and left behind. He’d been literally ripped out of the sprawling corpus of policies, judgments, regulations, agreements, and stipulations, and also deals and compromises, that have grown up to comprise American polity.

The dreaming Mr. Lincoln grieved.

I’d never heard the word “theodicy” before. It means, in Greek, “justification of God,” as in, how we can explain the existence of a benign God in the face of universal suffering and human evil. Or, “vindication of the divine attributes, especially justice and holiness, with respect to the existence of evil.”

It’s not necessary to make grand pronouncements about God, good, and evil to feel that the spiritual heart of America has been ripped out of our body politic. Especially, but not only, during the current administration. And not just by Republicans.

So in this presidential campaign I’ve been thrilled and delighted that, for the first time ever, a woman and a man of color have become the only serious Democratic contenders. That sheer fact is already a good portent. Like my friend Stephen Dinan (see his recent post), I was mostly leaning toward Hillary, with reservations. Then I saw Obama speak after the New Hampshire primary.

I marveled. I really had no idea how much I myself had been grieving for the American Theodicy—the spiritual charter of American Democracy, secular yet so numinous, our most precious gift to all humankind—until I saw and heard Obama speak that night and felt him give hope back to my heart.

Now, I’m an optimistic fighter for the human spirit and the fulfillment of our destinies. But as I felt our core values getting lost and undermined, I had increasingly despaired for decades about our nation. Here, now, this focused, dignified, courageous, wise, and vibrant man was giving me a transfusion of hope, there where I had been mourning without knowing it.

I’ve continued to marvel at Obama ever since. I’m not a starry-eyed idealist. I know this guy’s got his shadow side. Everybody does. Obama’s not perfect. Not even close. Nobody is. If we elect him, he will not always make everyone happy. And we will not just feel he’s God’s pure gift to America and humankind.

That doesn’t mean he won’t prove to be one of the most crystalline embodiments of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and our Revolutionary War—the spirit that brought forth our still-amazing Constitution—the spirit of the Gettysburg Address—that we have been blessed to have among us, maybe even since the flawed yet heroic Lincoln himself.

I appreciate comparisons to JFK, yes. But, historically, our current crisis—crises—may be nearly as grave, and as central to the very heartbeat of our country, as those we faced during and after the Civil War. We have to find out who we are as a republic again, and regenerate ourselves from the heart out.

The “Spirit of ’76” is a clarion name for the energy that suddenly arose in the year of the Declaration of Independence and propelled us into becoming the first democratic nation on Earth since ancient Athens. The “Spirit of American Democracy” is something alive that courses through Americans’ veins and slakes the thirst for freedom, tolerance, compassion, empowerment of one and all, and the infusion of hope where there has been empty despair, among countless people worldwide.

I continue to feel that Hillary Clinton is a truly great American, and one of the finest presidential candidates we have ever had, of any gender, any party. But something else is happening with Obama.


I now deeply believe that Barack Obama is manifesting that Spirit of America with almost unprecedented clarity and power. I believe that, with the help of many of all ages, races, creeds or not, of all economic strata and even all political inclinations, he can restore the American Theodicy to the living heart of our statutes, laws, and operating principles. I believe he has inherited a mantle of presidential leadership that can awaken our country to responsible care, inspiration, and stewardship of all our own people and lands, and regenerate our good works, name, and reputation abroad. I believe he can and will unite our country and take us into a new era of fundamental tolerance, respect, justice, and collaboration even amid our differences. I believe he will fearlessly and wisely find ways to help the world address terrorism, global warming, economic peril, and many other immense challenges. I believe it is his destiny-call to lead us in rescuing and resuscitating the generous, wise and mighty Spirit of America in our own time.

And—forgive me if I get mystical on you—I believe that somewhere, somehow, the spirit of Mr. Lincoln is no longer grieving.

Not as much.

Not any more.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/oped ... lincol.htm (http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/oped ... lincol.htm)
--------------------------------------

Intent on democratizing Eastern-style awakeness and integrating it with everyday Western life, Saniel Bonder is an acclaimed teacher, one of the foremost pioneers of evolutionary, embodied, and mutual enlightenment working today. A Harvard graduate, he has authored nine books, including "Great Relief: Nine Sacred Secrets Your Body Wants You to Know," "Healing the Spirit/Matter Split," "Waking Down: Beyond Hypermasculine Dharmas," and a novel, "While Jesus Weeps."

Saniel is the founder of the international Waking Down in Mutuality™ transformational process and network. Along with his wife and teaching partner Linda Groves-Bonder and dozens of colleagues trained under his guidance, he has helped many hundreds of people rapidly achieve stable spiritual awakenings of a kind that few historically ever could. Saniel and Linda are founding members of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, charter members of the Integral Spiritual Center, and members of American Zen master Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind Advisory Board. He is a dynamic speaker at conferences on spiritual freedom and planetary change.

Saniel and Linda offer their own version of the Waking Down in Mutuality™ energetic transmission and teaching as part of their total White-Hot Way™ path for serious seekers of spiritual and personal evolution. And this year, 2008, they are debuting their offering of HEARTgazing™, a “simple, powerful, non-sectarian way to strengthen your bodily connection to the Divine no matter what’s happening in your life.” This gentle yet profound technology is designed for use by anyone anywhere who hungers to deepen and grow in spiritual faith and all-around personal integrity, wellness, effectiveness, and joy.

A golf fanatic, Saniel has a "mental game" teaching on it--"Honest Swing Golf™." He also plays flutes. And, he'd cheerfully enter the "Most Happily Married Man on the Planet" reality show...

*********************************************

chlamor
02-13-2008, 08:08 PM
C'mon folks how can you possibly not recognize religious proseltyzing when you see it?

Doesn't matter if the author is trying to use a miniscule bit of a political sideshow as a front for the spiritual gospel, with a trademark it seems.

And then toss in some drippy American sentimentality for a time that never was and you have one of the most vapid pointless articles ever on this forum.

But wait. It DOES fit, quite perfectly in fact, with the Obama hype which is- ever there was- purely faith-based politics.

So Bama and Hillary are great Americans? Both of them as deep into corporate war-whoring as one can get. Tell the Iraqi children of their greatness. Two great Americans that VOTED FOR war funding EVERY TIME.

Two great Americans that promise to expand the US military in numbers and financing. It would be easy to go on all dayexpounding upon their corporate greatness. But of course people who base their opinions on faith can't be bothered by factual analysis.

So the "revolutionary" author thinks it time to manifest our crystalline beings into being all we can be as we to bring about the change we wish to see in the world? Where's my mantra?

Next time please just title the article, "My Political Goo Piece As An Act of Faith- But What I'm Really Saying Is It's All About Me."

How in the hell can something like this get published in a political blog and be taken seriously?

But alas Oprah and "The Secret" are the politics du jour in "post-modern" liberal America.

Wow. We are in trouble.

Waking Down in Mutuality™

White-Hot Way™

HEARTgazing™

"Honest Swing Golf™

What's up with the little tm's after all the "spiritual products?" Looks like capitalism to me.

This piece is nothing more than self-indulgent meanderings from a liberal elitist.

As an aside I'd say to the author you might want to skip the New-Agey platitudes and do the real investigative journalism of researching Obama's corporate allegiances and who advises him on policy and GASP! what the guy says, when he does, beyond his sloganeering.

Obama's a company man. He is the embodiment of the status quo as is Hillary and that matters not a bit on gender or race. Don't believe it, ask Goldman Sachs.

************************************************************************************

Kid of the Black Hole
02-13-2008, 08:11 PM

Dude, this had me in stitches the whole. I recommend everyone read his bio at the end first like I did because it really sets the tone:

You know he's a lunatic, but then he takes the plunge into comedy of the absurd. You think he's going to spend the whole article chanting OHM but then suddenly he becomes Captain America and drops the Obama bomb.

Second funniest thing I've read today

**************************************************************************************

blindpig
02-13-2008, 08:44 PM

I ought to kill you. That was fucking painful. I'm flat out of irony, the cynicism is bottomed out, low comedy no longer amuses.

***************************************************************

Two Americas
02-13-2008, 11:43 PM

This is great.


I almost got thrown out of Harvard in 1969 for protesting the Viet Nam War, and never regretted it. Yet soon the limitations of mere political activism burdened me. I knew that without a corresponding revolutionary shift in our fundamental sense of who we are and what human life is about, our outward revolutions would be cosmetic. Yes, they were important. But they weren’t fundamental.

This led to my spiritual quest and work. I have never ceased to be a revolutionary. I’ve simply continued to try to help transform human nature and society from a different focus.

There is that shift I talk about all of the time. We are still living in that era of seeking "a corresponding revolutionary shift in our fundamental sense of who we are and what human life is about."

"I was a political activist (what a joke that is - ALMOST got thrown out of HARVARD who-the-fuck-are-we-kidding?) - and hey don't get me wrong I have no regrets..."

But all of that stuff - reality - is just "cosmetic" and he wanted to seek deeper meaning, i.e. "who we are and what human life is about" good-fucking-god-I-kid-you-not.

This is just great.

Now listen up y'all.

I am pissed.

Dammit I am pissed - y'all ripped me off and you have been lying to me all this time.

I have been trying to talk about this and getting blank stares and shoulder shrugs. But there is is right there - proof positive. 40 years of being told that I was imagining this, or that it was of no consequence. Millions of people followed the lead of assholes like this. We are still living in the fog that this shit induced, dammit. Fuck, all that suffering, all of that confusion and frustration.

No wonder things are so fucked up. You can laugh at this guy, but what he is saying here runs our lives.

I am really pissed.

***************************************************************************************

Michael Collins
02-14-2008, 03:24 AM

That is pretty stupid. I thought you might be overreaching but you're dead on here.

While I wasn't a revolutionary in college, some considered me revolting.

*********************************************************************************

anaxarchos
02-14-2008, 11:51 AM

That is pretty stupid. I thought you might be overreaching but you're dead on here.

While I wasn't a revolutionary in college, some considered me revolting.

It was a very, very different time. Universities in particular gave a different picture of society. They were a reflection of the post-WW2 prosperity (now apparently proven to be quite transitory). The post WW2 investment in public universities, the focus on education as a means for social mobility, the impact, and then the Vietnam War's doubling of the impact, of the G.I. Bill on the composition of college students (who were older, more working class, more representative of the society) - all of these reinforced the Cold War-era platitude of "One Big Middle Class". In turn the social movements surrounding that environment were equally declassed. The Civil Rights movement, which birthed it all, put up the illusion of "black people" whose division into a radical mass and a conservative "elite" seemed obvious. That this was almost entirely illusory (the % of actual "black bourgeoise" being insignificant) did not keep the movement from appearing to be, first political and juridical, and then more broadly about "attitudes" (i.e. "racism"). What was illusion in the Civil Rights movement was much more practically realized in the cross-class movements for Gender Equality, Sexual Preference, Environmentalism, and so on. The criticism was often dead on but the underlying causes were never clear... and as the various anti-"ism" (racism, sexism, etal) got further and further from the core issues, they appeared even more deeply rooted in public attitudes and even less born of distinct class structures.

All of the above was profoundly reinforced by the cultural criticism of the times, which was often brilliant and superficial. This last conditioned the view of the second leg of the biped as well. In Foreign Policy, what America "opposed" were largely National Liberation movements, themselves cross-class alliances (of a very different and much more profound character) which articulated their goals and demands in the most general and popular of terms. In turn, the movements of potential draftees echoed back, "Give Peace a Chance".

Given all of it, the wonder is that anybody saw anything but "attitudes", "human nature", the need to transform "thinking" and ultimately, to do this by transforming one's "self".

This guy may be stupid but he is also typical... transcending his peers only with his mystical clap-trap and his apparent readiness to make a buck on it.

Auto, our generation might have taken the blinders off (from the 1950s) but it also saw the world through a camera obscura, taking touristic snapshots of the most trivial manifestations of far more rooted phenomena and then claiming that the act of picture taking itself was enough to exorcise the evil spirits (on whose actual composition, most didn't have a clue).

We have to mercilessly beat up the public ideas of these crackpots but frankly, I don't see it as a whit different from 99.44% of all of the claptrap I hear of a "political" or "progressive" origin.



***************************************************************

wolfgang von skeptik
02-14-2008, 04:18 PM

But you have to churn it around some more for it to make any sense:


I almost got thrown out of Vietnam in 1969 for protesting the Harvard War, and never regretted it.

And then you see how nonsensical it truly is.

Obama? Omama? I am so zombified by Moron Nation, I can no longer even sneer.

*********************************************

meganmonkey
02-14-2008, 04:35 PM

Damn, I just witnessed my first Obama-as-savior moment
.
A work-related colleague was chatting with another person in our office.

Conversation turned toward politics and I turned away from the conversation but continued to listen.

This woman said she had 'something like a revelation' last night, like 'the whole universe was aligned' to tell her that she had to vote for Obama.

OMG. I've seen it on websites but this was my first face-to-face experience.

I feel slightly ill.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130328021 ... 48254.html

[blindpig]

You know you are a Philistine when you're the Financial Times calling form socialist policies. Would have preferred the article but fuck their paywall.

The Financial Times Asks For Socialist Policies

On the same day the British Labour party announced the election of a center-rightt new party leader to replace the much denigrated socialist Jeremy Corbyn, the Financial Times(!) calls for the socialist policies Corbyn had planned to implement.

From today's FT editorial headlined:

Virus lays bare the frailty of the social contract (also here)

If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that it has injected a sense of togetherness into polarised societies. But the virus, and the economic lockdowns needed to combat it, also shine a glaring light on existing inequalities — and even create new ones. Beyond defeating the disease, the great test all countries will soon face is whether current feelings of common purpose will shape society after the crisis. As western leaders learnt in the Great Depression, and after the second world war, to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone.
...
Radical reforms - reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades - will need to put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.



Amen to that.

There was a time when I regularly bought the FT weekend edition to the read the economic discussions in it. The weekend edition also has a section that is titled "How to spend it". The newest luxury cars are tested and the greatest estates are discussed in it. I never had a craving to buy any of the things that section promoted. I thought that the snobbish section title was probably meant to be ironic.

Now the FT has finally found the right content for that section.

This editorial is a sea change. We will quite soon experience more of it.

Posted by b on April 4, 2020 at 17:43 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/04/t ... icies.html

MoA of course ain't no revolutionary and will be thrilled with any Keysenian 'solutions' presented. And while the people gonna need all the help they can get and a lot more and we should press for these measures to the max. We must make it clear that the only reason the bosses act like they give a damn is pitchforks & torches and they will be back to old tricks asap. Can't let Bernie Keynes define the situation, kick them when they are inadequate, kick them when they're down. The bosses are clearly uneasy.

When the death toll hits six figures not even Jesus can get re-elected. The Dems could make Bernie the next FDR, depends how really scared the bosses are. But I dunno, they are the worst party in history and could blow this too.

[blindpig]

Rachel Maddow Endorses Regime Change in Venezuela to “Push Russia Back,” Sympathizes With Bolton and Pompeo

May 10, 2020 Aaron Maté mercenaries, MSM, msm for regime change, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, regime change, US Imperialism, Venezuela
The top rated MSNBC host took her trademark brand of liberal militarism to new levels by branding efforts to avert a catastrophic war against Venezuela as – what else? – colluding with Russia.

By Aaron Mate

The loudest voice among the corporate media hack pack doubling down on Russiagate conspiracies is MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. On May 3, Maddow took her propaganda to an entirely new level of militaristic cheerleading, launching into a rant that offered de-facto encouragement for the current neocon cause-du-jour: regime change in Venezuela.



Maddow not only cast Trump as a Russian stooge for daring to discuss – and possibly de-escalate – the Venezuelan crisis with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the top-rated liberal cable news host expressed sympathy for John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the most militaristic members of the Trump administration.

Since the Trump administration first launched its coup attempt against the government of President Nicolas Maduro in January, Maddow and other conspiracy theorists have done their best to ignore it. For one, acknowledging this brazen coup effort would show their hyperventilation about “the Russian attack on our election” to be a hypocritical farce: it is far more difficult to liken stolen emails and juvenile Russian social media posts to Pearl Harbor or 9/11 when your supposedly “defenseless” country is openly trying to overthrow a foreign government via lethal sanctions, propping up the coup plotters, and trying to trigger a military revolt.Furthermore, the Trump administration’scoup attempt in Venezuela is yet one more development that undermines the notion of Trump and Putin secretly colluding to destroy American democracy. Indeed, Venezuela is one more site of US and Russian conflict, with Trump presiding over an unprecedented escalation of tensions.

As the Financial Times noted in February, as Russia pushes back against Trump administration attempts to remove the Maduro government through internal destabilization, “it is clear that the US and Russia are engaging in a new sort of proxy conflict in America’s backyard.” Last week, Politico observed that the conflict over Venezuela has become “a proxy battle… [threatening] a return to the tense Cold War years.” The Trump administration’s Venezuela compliments many other dangerous developments – Trump pulling out of the INF treaty; sending arms to Ukraine; seeking to block a German-Russia gas pipeline; increasing U.S. troop deployments to Russia’s borders, and many, many more examples that have simply tumbled down the memory hole.

As I documented in a recent Twitter thread, Maddow has been “leading purveyor of now debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, falsehoods and innuendo of the last 2+ years.” Looking back, I should have mentioned that Maddow has also been a vocal promoter of unhinged propaganda that encourages perilous tensions with Russia, and cultivates pro-war opinion among her base of extremely suggestible liberal viewers.

When Maddow finally broke her silence on Venezuela, it was on May 3, after Trump held a phone call with Putin to discuss, among other things, lowering the temperature on Venezuela. The diplomatic contact between two world leaders should have been considered routine, but in the feverish world of liberal conspiracism, it was another opportunity for hallucinatory claims of collusion and the posting of homophobic Trump-Putin memes on social media.



After a week of saber-rattling by Washington and a failed, violent coup attempt in Caracas, Maddow launched into an indignant pro-war diatribe:

Maddow: “Even though his whole administration spent all week saying that Russia was interfering in Venezuela, and propping up the Venezuelan dictator there, turns out President Trump now says: Putin isn’t doing that at all, because Putin told him so.

…And so, hey John Bolton and hey Mike Pompeo, are you guys enjoying your jobs right now? You each thought your job this week was to name, and shame, and threaten, and counter Russian government involvement in Venezuela while saber-rattling about how everybody else better get out of the way because the US is really mad about it. Guys, turns out your actual job is figuring out how and why you work for a president who says whatever Vladimir Putin tells him.”

Maddow went on to offer empathy for National Security Advisor John Bolton, noting that he had just told CNN this week that “the Russians like nothing better than putting a thumb in our eyes” and that their “behavior is unacceptable to us.” Maddow then mocked Bolton not for his hawkishness, but for the obvious incongruity between his stance and Trump’s:

Maddow: Yeah, you though that was your job. But not all. Not after Vladimir Putin gets done with President Trump today…. This is who you’re working for. You thought your job was to push Russia back because of what they’re doing in Venezuela. The president spent an hour on the phone with Vladimir Putin today. Putin told him he’s not in Venezuela so now the new position of the U.S. government in Venezuela.

Trump’s conciliatory comments track with accounts that have emerged of him being out of step with his top officials’ push for a coup in Venezuela. Trump, CNN reports, has been “expressing frustration that some aides are more openly teasing military intervention” in Venezuela. He has also “privately express[ed] concern over how solid [coup leader Juan] Guaido’s plans are to take power and win support from Venezuela’s military,” and has begun to “ask questions about the reliability of US intelligence that suggested senior members of Maduro’s inner circle were preparing to defect.”

Whether accounts of Trump’s second-guessing are correct or not, it is one more indictment of the delusional Russiagate media culture that one of its leading voices, Maddow, is actually discouraging a peaceful outcome in Venezuela, rather than welcoming moves towards de-escalation.

After two years of unhinged rhetoric and baseless conspiracy theories, Maddow seems increasingly eager to see the new Cold War turn hot.

Source URL: The GrayZone

https://orinocotribune.com/rachel-maddo ... nd-pompeo/

How anyone could think anything that came outta that 'goddamn idiot box' has any resemblance to truth is beyond me. Why would any decent person believe that liberals were in any fashion the friend of humanity is even more puzzling. She is Hannity for the well-mannered.

[blindpig]

Chomsky, Sanders, Others Launch Progressive International


Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Yanis Varoufakis are among the interim Council of over 40 advisors. | Photo: AFP

Published 11 May 2020 (15 hours 1 minutes ago)

In September, the Council will meet for the inaugural Summit of the PI in Reykjavik, Iceland, hosted by the Prime Minister of Iceland and the Left-Green Movement.

A coalition of left-leaning intellectuals, activists, and political leaders from around the world officially launched Monday the Progressive International with the support of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 and the Sanders Institute.

“Never before has international solidarity been more necessary—and more absent,” General Coordinator of the PI David Adler said, adding that “only a common international front can match the scale of our crises, reclaim our institutions, and defeat a rising authoritarian nationalism.”

At launch, the Progressive International is supported by an interim Council of over 40 advisors, including Iceland’s Prime Minister Katriin Jakobsdottir, intellectual Noam Chomsky, former Greek Minister of Economy Yanis Varoufakis, author Naomi Klein, and many others.

From Latin America, political leaders such as the Ecuadorean ex-president Rafael Correa; former Brazilian presidential candidate Fernando Haddad; former Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim; Bolivian former Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera are part of the founding members.

The idea was born in December 2018, when the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) and the Sanders Institute issued an open call proclaiming “it is time for progressives of the world to unite.”

On the launch of the group Monday, Chomsky in an interview with the Guardian said that the urgency created by the COVID-19 crisis has pushed deepening economic inequalities and the rise of the far-right.

So as autocratic neoliberalism stands as one way, “the other way is to try to dismantle the structures, the institutional structures that have been created; that have led to very ugly consequences for much of the population of much of the world, [and] are the source of this pandemic."



The activities of the initiative are divided across three pillars: the movement aimed to forge a global network; the Blueprint to develop a policy blueprint for a progressive international order; and the Wire which offers a wire service to the world’s progressive forces.

In September, the Council will meet for the inaugural Summit of the PI in Reykjavik, Iceland, hosted by the Prime Minister of Iceland and the Left-Green Movement, to analyze the challenges of the 21st century and consider proposals from the PI membership for its strategic direction.

“The ambitions of this initiative are undoubtedly high—no higher than the present crisis demands. But the Progressive International is only as powerful as its membership, and to reclaim the world after COVID-19, we will need a powerful movement of progressive forces,” Adler added, calling forces alike to join the movement.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cho ... -0012.html

Philistine International; Getting ahead of the popular revolt

Ya know it's bad. After a flirtation with fig leaves in the interest of cya capital and it's agents are making it clear: "Back To Business!" After all, 'they've done all they can do' and any further consideration of the human factor will cost too much in lost profits. Besides, as the less delicate reps of rapacity put it, 'we can't sink the economy for the sake of 7% of the population who are expensive to keep up and don't produce anything'. Who said Social Darwinism is dead? The handling of this event by the Commander in Chief has been horrible, shameful, ridiculous, but we can't let that paper over the fact that in pursuit of that last dime capitalism has built a house of cards, as singly devoted to profit as a drag racer is to flat out speed. It ain't made for this, or anything else either, which explains the lack of preparation, supplies, the fragility of the industrial supply chain, the viability of having a populace living paycheck to paycheck and goddamn near everything else which vexes the workers. People might get an inkling that something completely different might be desirable.

Enter: Capitalism's volunteer fire department

Not to worry; while the riot squad is putting down those protesting capitalist policies that are killing them an 'A' Team of gatekeepers, obfuscators, lying pigs and millionaire anarchists are assembling(being assembled?) in order to dissemble, misdirect, misinform and keep things from going too far. Because 'anything but communism'. And so we will get great heaping piles of reformism, anti-Trumpism, 50s anti-communism redux. And it will all mean nothing at all, a pro forma demonstration by petty booj suckfish in order to muddy the water and displace serious people from the discourse. They must be called out as the whores of capital that they are.