Great article on OWS - by Brendan O’Neill @ Spiked-online.com

In the increasingly whiffy camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, amid placards declaring ‘The End is Nigh’, apparently a new kind of politics is being born. Young women talk about ‘politics starting again’. The media cheerleaders of the Occupy movement claim it represents ‘a substantive change not just to the nature of modern politics, but to the way in which it is done, demanded and delivered’. From New York to Madrid to Tokyo, the inhabitants of the so-called tent cities proudly declare themselves ‘citizens of a new world’.

Is all this occupying really the start of something new? No. And not only because on the rare occasion when the protesters issue a coherent demand they end up echoing ideas we’ve heard a thousand times before. (Their call for tougher independent regulation of the financial industry was pilfered from the Financial Times.) More fundamentally, their globally contagious protest represents the death agony of something old rather than the birth pang of something new. What we’re witnessing is the demise of the progressive left, but – and here is the Occupy movement’s twist – that demise is dolled up as something good, something positive, where instead of addressing the vacuum at the heart of modern left-wing thinking, the occupiers make a virtue out of it.

Around the world, the occupiers are adapting to the decayed state of radical left-wing thinking, moulding themselves around the organisational and political disarray of the left. All the negative things about the left today – the lack of big ideas, the dearth of daring leaders, the withering of organisational structures – are repackaged as positives. Leaderlessness is transformed into a virtue, the enabler of a fairer, more consensual form of politics. The absence of overarching ideology is sexed up as ‘liberation from dogma’. Even the thoughtlessness of the Occupy movement, both in terms of its lack of deep thinking and the way it has spread across the globe in a fairly thoughtless, meme-like fashion, is turned into a good thing: this is ‘unthought’, declares one observer, where creeds emerge ‘without much articulation of why they’re necessary, [almost] as reflexes’.

Time and again, the Occupy movement makes a virtue of vacuity. Consider its celebration of leaderlessness. A placard at Occupy London says: ‘We have no leaders.’ Writing in the Washington Post, a supporter of Occupy Wall Street says ‘this is a leaderless movement’. The celebration of leaderlessness is meant to sound radical, proof that these people don’t need a Trotsky-style orator to tell them how to think or what to do. They’re free-spirited creatures who, in the words of the BBC’s resident Wannabe Marxist, Paul Mason, are ‘independent of any democratic structures and party hierarchies… living the dream of a communal, negotiated existence’.

Yet leadership isn’t simply about charismatic men bellowing instructions to crowds of nodding bods. Real political leadership represents the embodiment of an ideal, a goal, which people subscribe to and are willing to fight for. In eschewing leadership, or rather in celebrating the objective reality of a lack of decent leaders, the occupiers are actually turning their noses up at idealism and political purpose, at the very basic idea of having a goal and a strategy for achieving it. Indeed, the Washington Post piece says the wonderful thing about this ‘leaderless movement’ is that it doesn’t have ‘an official set of demands… there are no projected outcomes, no bottom lines, no talking heads’.

Here, we can glimpse what the celebration of leaderlessness really represents: an accommodation to the dearth of visionary thinking on the modern left. The great irony, of course, is that far from this leaderless movement being a hotbed of original, out-there thinking, ‘liberated from dogma’, there’s an extraordinary level of political conformism amongst the occupiers. They actually acknowledge this, but once again it gets sexed up, turned from an obvious fault into a ‘new way of doing politics’, a ‘reflex’ or ‘unthought’. One sympathiser writes about the phenomenon of ‘thought contagion’, where these protests are being ‘memetically reproduced’ around the world. The idea that this movement is really a meme – a meme being ‘an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person’ – is now repeated everywhere in pro-Occupy literature. Some even cite Dawkinite theories of the ‘Meme Machine’ to explain the speedy spread of the Occupy movement.

That the occupiers are happy to discuss themselves in evolutionary biologist terms, as a contagion, is remarkable. Here, they’re making a virtue out of their lack of political consciousness, borrowing phrases from tomes on culture and evolution to try to make their inability to decide what they’re for sound like something sexily ‘reflexive’.

The phenomenon of ‘thought contagion’ – where we see the same ideas, slogans and even public-speaking methods being adopted in all the occupations – is actually a consequence of the occupiers’ eschewing of leadership. Far from liberating them from dogma, their refusal to organise, to lead, to draw up and distribute coherent demands makes them susceptible to all kinds of lazy thinking. Where a group that knows what it is for is, to a certain extent, insulated from external pressure, sustained by its own inner logic and principles rather than being constantly remoulded by faddish thinking, the fantastically amorphous Occupy movement is shaped and reshaped, like putty, by whimsy, style, the needs of the media.

So, at the St Paul’s camp there was much uncritical parroting of utterly mainstream ideas, from the demand that we have a ‘knowledge economy’ instead of a manufacturing one (copyright New Labour) to the notion that material aspiration causes mental illness (a bizarre idea born in academia and since embraced by political leaders). The thing that the occupiers imagine makes them free from bourgeois ideas that have apparently invaded the masses’ brains – their rejection of leadership and ideology – actually makes them susceptible to being clobbered by new received wisdoms.

The most striking thing at St Paul’s is the protesters’ obsession with ‘process’. All they talked about was the process of organising the camp: how to recycle, contact the camp doctor, engage with the police. Unable to say what the occupation is for, they have become myopically obsessed with simply ensuring that it chugs along, that it stays put. And of course, this existential stasis also gets sexed up. As one radical reporter puts it, a ‘common theme’ in the various Occupy camps around the world is ‘the fetishisation of form and process over ideology’. A Guardian commentator implores the occupiers to ‘resist the pressures to clarify their aims’ and instead to ‘dig in and fortify their camps’. He reckons the occupiers shouldn’t give in to the ‘nutter multitudes’ – that’s you and me – who want everything to be pigeonholed.

This is a see-through attempt to repackage serious ideological disarray as a daring refusal to bow to the external pressure to define one’s objectives, to stake one’s claim. The irony is that the Occupy movement has actually allowed itself to be utterly defined by external forces, becoming impressively conformist in both its outlook and its style. Every mainstream eco-piety finds expression in this movement. David Cameron-style demands for the punishment of bankers are here, too. Placards bombard you with trendy buzzwords like ‘sustainability’ and ‘empathy’. The low-horizoned thinking of the decadent modern bourgeoisie is widespread in the camps; indeed, according to Der Spiegel, top European politicians are ‘firmly on the side of the demonstrators’. When Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto, they aimed to make ‘the ruling classes tremble’. The Occupy movement, having made a virtue of its own shallowness and lack of big humanistic vision, merely makes the ruling classes smile with patronising approval.

SOURCE

Rivero - American Nationalist - Buys Japanese

Rivero's posted a picture of a Nissan he's having to use whilst his own car (another Nissan) is in for repairs. He says he misses his old Honda.


I know his cars are manufactured in USA, but nevertheless, the point remains. He could buy a Ford, or GM, or....

If he buys domestically produced Japanese cars because they're cheaper, then he can hardly complain that companies choose to offshore production. If they didn't, whilst others do, they will lose sales because of higher costs.

If he buys domestically produced Japanese cars because they're better quality, then he can hardly blame the US government policy and its supposed encouragement of offshoring for the decline of American manufacturing.

OWS London

OWS London have successfully managed to turn the subject of their protest into a legal/ethical fight with St Paul's Cathedral.

By camping outside St Paul's the protesters have managed to transfer responsibility for dealing with them onto the church, completely sidelining the Stock Exchange, Lombard St, capitalism, etc. Now the church is wracked by debate about how to deal with the protesters - it is the church that has been forced to undertake legal action to remove them, not "international capitalism" etc. Pathetic.

The protesters made a big deal about the initial words of support the protest received from the Cathedral's clergy. But now those same people have asked the protesters to move on, they are refusing. Cynical. Obviously they don't really care about the respect due to the church and its ministers, they were simply exploiting it for political gain. Disgusting.

Get up, and move somewhere else. Like the Stock Exchange? Doesn't take Sherlock Holmes, does it?

Rivero supports OWS, but not revolt in Syria

How does that make sense? As if Syria is more liberal and democratic than USA? As if USA is more repressive and despotic than Syria? What a joke.

BBC are reporting that "Syria protesters call for no-fly zone". Why? Because "at least 37 people have been killed in crackdowns during protests calling for the downfall of the government held across Syria after Friday prayers."

Rivero goes crazy about one person in USA being severely hurt in OWS protests. Well, sure. But in Syria 37 people died in one night! According to the BBC, "More than 3,000 people have died in the unrest since protests broke out in March."

But check WRH's Syria section? See if Rivero expresses any outrage about it? Rather he's played it down, making out it is all a western inspired movement designed to topple a legitimate Arab leader. Incredible. As if Assad is some liberal Arab leader.....

BBC says : "Foreign journalists have been largely prevented from reporting from the country, making it difficult to confirm events on the ground."

Rivero doesn't care. Surprised?

When a US Congressman expressed a desire to aid Syrian revolt, Rivero responded thus:

Ah, of course, no (Hawaiian) Americans need concern themselves with Israel....errr...I mean Syria. Dude's a total joke. Why doesn't anyone notice?

Back in June Rivero reported a story which was headlined as "Russia, China Shield Syria from Possible UN Sanctions". Rather than get outraged at repressive nations protecting Syria, Rivero's comment was : "The leadership of both Russia and China are correct on this"

Nevermind that Rivero was originally agitating for support for Libyan uprising, and still supports "the Arab Spring" in principle. But clearly, what Rivero supports is uprising and revolt in western-friendly nations, whilst he totally opposes similar revolt in nations hostile to the West (and Israel, of course.)

Rivero seeks to protect regimes hostile to America (and Israel) no matter how repressive or authoritarian they might be or how popular the revolt might be. At the same time, he supports revolt in nations which are 'friendly' to American interest and influence. That's how he determines his view - the actual conditions of the people and the regime matter not in the least.

Rivero's radio on "Freedom" and "Freespeech" - With Paul Fromm

Here's Rivero introducing Mark Lemire and Paul Fromm as guests on his radio show:

Rivero says: "If you go and look at the issue of freespeech in Canada, there are two names that consistently show up as champions of freespeech and freedoms and human rights....and those would, of course, be Mark Lemire and Paul Fromm."

Here's a picture of 'champion of freedom', Paul Fromm, with some of his 'friends' - white power - world wide:

The radio show is about how Lemire and Fromm want to abolish the Canadian Human Rights legislation because it protects minorities from the filth that people like Fromm spew. Rivero makes out this is is a freespeech issue, of course, eliding the rights of minorities to be free of Fromm's hate which is designed to limit the freedom of minorities, if not annihilate them all together.

Frederick Paul Fromm (born January 3, 1949), known as Paul Fromm, is a Canadian White Nationalist, based in Port Credit, Ontario, with a radio show on the Stormfront web site and ties to former KKK members David Duke and Don Black (white nationalist) through Stormfront. He has been described by national media as "one of Canada's most notorious white supremacists".

Yet Rivero calls him a 'champion of freedom'.

And Lemire?

Marc Lemire is a figure in the Canadian white supremacist movement. He works closely with leader Paul Fromm, and is the webmaster of the Hamilton, Ontario-based Freedom-Site which he began in 1996. Lemire was the last president of the often violent Heritage Front organization from January 1, 2001 until the organization folded around 2005. Lemire's involvement with Wolfgang Droege and the neo-Nazi Heritage Front group began while he was a teenager in the early 1990s. Droege was found shot to death on April 13, 2005.

Champions of freedom! Rivero's radio show is described thus: "Mike's September 1st 2007 broadcast discusses the ADL's Marxist censorship tactics being employed in Canada and Free Speech patriot Marc Lemire's Constitutional Challenge response."

Freespeech patriot. AKA Nazi.

Here's a good one - Rivero, Ron Paul, OWS and Taxes

Here's Ron Paul speaking of taxes in his "Restore America" manifesto:

Lowers the corporate tax rate to 15%, making America competitive in the global market. Allow American companies to repatriate capital without additional taxation, spurring trillions in new investment.

And here's Mike Rivero, supporter of Ron Paul, writing about the repatriation of corporate taxes:

In an iconic example of how Congress puts big-money interests above others, bipartisan momentum is growing on Capitol Hill for a repatriation tax holiday — a huge, temporary reduction in the tax rate on money brought back to the U.S. from offshore tax havens. Critics say the repatriation tax holiday is a multi-billion-dollar tax giveaway to the world’s biggest multinational companies, with nothing in it for domestic businesses or ordinary Americans.
SOURCE

Hmmm. Hypocrite.

Advocates of spending cuts now lament spending cuts

Previously Rivero et al had criticised the lack of spending cuts. Now they want a General Strike because of.....spending cuts.

Rivero supports Ron Paul, whose recent plan to "restore America" plans for $1 trillion cuts immediately.

Moreover, for years Rivero and co have been touting abolition of income tax and also claiming it is unconstitutional. They've promoted "Freedom to Fascism" and such junk....but now they protest cuts in spending.

Where's the sense to this? It's complete opportunism. Anything goes, so long as it's critical of government.

Here's another example of the confusion/hypocrisy: this was posted at WRH -
Rivero's response?

I don't think this really came from OWS. It's another "They are all socialists" propaganda hoax.

Ah, it's a hoax. Rivero knows these things.

Criticism of "structureless groups"

Found this at a socialist website, writing specifically about OWS:

This is the "ideology of structurelessness" analysed by the American feminist, Jo Freeman, in 1970 in her essay on The Tyranny of Structurelessness.

At that time in the womens movement the same emphasis was placed "on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main focus of the movement" as Occupy Wall St does today.

Freeman showed that there was in fact no such thing as a structureless group, only formally and informally structured groups:

"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion...the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others.

This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of structurelessness does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones...Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power...For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit...

An unstructured group always has an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites...

When informal elites are combined with a myth of structurelessness, there can be no attempt to put limits on the use of power. It becomes capricious..."
SOURCE

The full essay can be read here. Very good it is too.

You have been blocked by the owner of this video

http://youtu.be/wdAywGX_Nb0

David Duke - Occupy (Zionist) Wall Street

Odd. But it makes perfect sense, of course. Maybe nothing (except opposition to Iraq war, and 911 Troof) shows the growing seduction of the ignorant left by the (far) right so much as OWS.

How many times does he say "zionist"? Yes, we get the point, Duke.

Certainly the (national) socialism of fools. He criticises Ron Paul, whilst Ron Paul supporters also support OWS - even at lewrockwell.com

What a mess of nothing: everyone supports it, apparently, because it means all things to all people. Can't please all the people all the time? OWS almost manages it? Doesn't do a thing for me....

Ron Paul supporters at OWS - cut taxes

According to the IRS, the top 1% of income earners for 2008 paid 38% of income tax revenue, while earning 20% of the income reported.

The top 5% of income earners paid 59% of the total income tax revenue, while earning 35% of the income reported.

The top 10% paid 70%, earning 46% and the top 25% paid 86%, earning 67%.

The top 50% paid 97%, earning 87% and leaving the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes collected and earning 13% of the income reported.

The Tax Foundation stated that for 2007, the top 1% of earners paid more than the bottom 95% combined
===========

And Ron Paul supporters want to cut taxes! And they seem to support OWS movement. Crazy.


The 1% (as OWS likes to call them) are paying 38% of taxes. Ron Paul's solution? Cut taxes. Yet the bottom 50% are paying just 3% of tax revenue, apparently. Hardly makes sense, does it?


Figues for calendar year 2009 here.

From their summary:

The amount of individual income tax paid steeply declined by $166 billion, twice the decline from 2007 to 2008. Nationally, average effective income tax rates were at their lowest levels since the IRS began tracking them in 1986. The average tax rate for returns with a positive liability went from 12.24 percent in 2008 to 11.06 percent in 2009.

As the data below show, incomes reported by tax returns at the high end of the income spectrum fell from 2008 to 2009, as did their share of the nation's income and income taxes paid. In 2009, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 36.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 16.9 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI), compared to 2008 when those figures were 38.0 percent and 20.0 percent, respectively. Both of those figures-share of income and share of taxes paid-were their lowest since 2003 when the top 1 percent earned 16.7 percent of adjusted gross income and paid 34.3 percent of federal individual income taxes.

Each year from 2005 to 2007, the top 1 percent's constantly growing share of income earned and taxes paid set a record. The 2008 reversal of this trend continued in 2009. In fact, the income share for the top 1 percent of tax returns was lower in 2009 than in 2000, largely due to differences in capital gains.

Another indicator of this reversal in the income and tax shares of the top 1 percent is that, as in 2008, the top 1 percent no longer pays a larger percentage of total income tax than the bottom 95 percent. This trend was exacerbated by the aforementioned precipitous drop in AGI in 2009. During 2009, the bottom 95 percent (AGI under $154,643) paid 41.3 percent of the total collected, a larger share than the 36.7 percent paid by the top 1 percent (AGI over $343,947).

The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI equal to or greater than $154,643), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 31.7 percent of the nation's adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.

======================

I think that goes some way to supporting the idea that OWS is not a reaction to a realisation that the system is unjust and becoming more so (the figures say different), but rather a reaction to the fact cheap credit for the middle and working classes has been switched off, and their own security and self-interest has taken a hit. They didn't care previously, when the top 1% were doing even better than they are now. After all, who takes the real hit when the stock market crashes? Do the poor own shares? Of course not - not even by proxy via pensions and suchlike. Imagine how much some of the wealthiest have lost these last years? The evidence is there in the tax returns......capital gains returns are way down....so much so that it has caused the top percentile's tax returns to decrease as a share of the national return.

Interesting comments on OWS

Guardian

Ron Paul's Restore America Rubbish

Here's his plan:

SPENDING:
Cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year
of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet
departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and
Education), abolishing the Transportation Security
Administration and returning responsibility for security
to private property owners, abolishing corporate
subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and
returning most other spending to 2006 level

Wow. Eliminate 5 departments, just like that! Including the department of education!? lol

a 10% reduction in the federal workforce

More unemployed. Fewer people spending money. Great.

Lowers the corporate tax rate to 15%, making America competitive in the global market. Allows
American companies to repatriate capital without
additional taxation, spurring trillions in new
investment. Extends all Bush tax cuts. Abolishes the
Death Tax. Ends taxes on personal savings

The 1% will be gutted, I bet. Are you listening Mr Rivero? And how about you OWS folks? Crikey.

Bill Mitchell - a Modern Money Theory guy - on Ron Paul's "Plan to Restore America"

The full, and loooong blogpost is here.


When an Excel spreadsheet runs wild

US Presidential candidate Ron Paul released his – Plan to Restore America – yesterday, saying that it will deliver a balanced budget within three years – cutting public spending by $1 trillion in year one, slash “regulations” and “reign in the Federal Reserve and get inflation under control”.

The 11 -page document has lots of tables and graphs and says that “America is the greatest nation in human history” (plaudits) but if you search for some theoretical framework or some evidential-basis for the numbers presented you will be very disappointed.

You will read that Americans have a “respect for individual liberty, free markets, and limited constitutional government” and that returning (public) spending (mostly) to 2006 (nominal) levels is somehow good. Cutting federal employment by 10 per cent is also good. Cutting all regulations is also good.

But that is about as far as the textual rendition goes before you hit the tables and graphs. When I read the document I couldn’t help thinking that someone had run wild with an Excel spreadsheet.

The Bloomberg Editorial yesterday (October 19, 2011) – Hidden Utility of Ron Paul’s Balanced-Budget Plan – saw some benefit in Ron Paul’s plan.

They said that “American voters … enthusiastically embrace the need to cut, cut, cut. But they baulk when asked to name specific programs to downsize or lop off” and so Paul’s proposal:

… performed a valuable public service this week when he unveiled a budget plan that shows exactly what balancing the $3.8 trillion budget through spending cuts would look like.

The fact is that the proposal doesn’t show “exactly” anything other than that someone can manage a spreadsheet with some formulas. The Plan to Restore America is devoid of economics which renders it a useless piece of rhetoric – strong on ideology but weak (tragically so) on analytical clout.

The Bloomberg Editorial says that:

In broad terms, Paul … [would be] … slicing $1 trillion from the budget in his first year in office … He would pare back most other programs to 2006 spending levels … would also starve the revenue side of the ledger. Corporations would see tax rates drop to 15 percent from 35 percent. He would extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, abolish taxes on estates and investment income. He wouldn’t end Social Security, but he would let young people opt out of the retirement program. As for that $1 trillion sitting in the overseas bank accounts of U.S. corporations, Paul would allow the money to come home tax-free …

True to his libertarian principles, Paul takes care of that problem by trimming the federal workforce by 10 percent …

And, it goes on.

The Bloomberg Editorial provides some local knowledge to tease out some of the practical implications – for example, “there would be no agency to oversee national parks, federal lands and offshore drilling. Land would have to be auctioned off to the highest bidders, most likely oil-and-gas, coal and timber companies”.

Further, “(e)ach state would have to become the regulator of its financial, manufacturing and health-care industries. A patchwork of rules would result. States might soon engage in a dangerous game of regulatory competition” and some “25 million elderly households … [who] … now depend entirely on Social Security for income … [would be left] … unable to buy food or pay heating bills”.

They also say that “(l)ow-income families would be hit the hardest” by the changes to Medicaid and food stamp programs – effectively culling them of all value.

Even on its own terms (that is, if the spreadsheet doodling was a reasonable representation of what can be achieved) the plan is drastic and likely to be chaotic and damaging to the ordinary citizen. The irony of US politics at present is that the grass roots support for the conservative austerity push is coming from working class Tea Partiers who will be the most damaged by the very policies they in their moments of frenzy seem to be supporting.

But, of-course, the Ron Paul exercise stands in denial of the underlying macroeconomics. It is one thing to make up some numbers and relate them to specific government departments that would have to close to get those numbers etc. But if you do not understand how these aggregates relate over time then the exercise become futile and a gross misrepresentation of what is possible and what is likely.
....
The Proposal reads as if Ron Paul thinks the net government outlays do nothing. Even if we agreed that a lot of government spending was not desirable in terms of the way in which the real resources were deployed (so we might say wasteful with better uses indicated) from a macroeconomic perspective the spending still creates income which multiplies throughout the rest of the economy. There is no getting away from that.

What do the 10 per cent of federal employees do each day with the incomes they earn? They go into shops and spend it which creates output and further employment. What does all these other outlays do? They create economic activity (however desirable in substance) throughout the US economy.

The overwhelming evidence is that private spending is subdued because households are in fear of unemployment and business firms already have enough productive capacity to meet the current level of spending and have no incentive to invest in further productive capacity.

Rising unemployment and falling demand (from the near $US1 trillion cuts in 2013) would further undermine private confidence.

The Plan to Restore America considers that the spending cuts will be replaced by the private sector. But that hope is not supported by any credible evidence. The evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion.

It is all very well to preach to the Americans about how great their nation is and to swathe your narrative in terms of patriotism but the market system doesn’t respond to that level or type of discussion. If people are losing their jobs they won’t increase their consumption. Firms will not invest if sales are falling.

And if the private sector further contracts, it is also unlikely that the government’s budget will be able to achieve the sort of outcomes that Ron Paul has in the later columns of his spreadsheet (2014 and on).

Clearly, Ron Paul thinks that by scrapping a swathe of regulations this will create growth.

I recently considered that view this blog – Some further thoughts on the OWS movement. I examined the evidential validity of the claim that growth is being stifled in the US at present by government regulations and intervention. This is the constant Republican (and Ron Paul) narrative and stands in total denial of the lack of spending explanation for the stagnant growth and persistently high unemployment.

The evidence provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics – their Extended Mass Layoffs data – overwhelmingly supports the claim that American firms have been sacking workers because there is a shortage of demand (spending). The firms that volunteered “government regulations/intervention” as the reason for laying off their workers constituted a minuscule proportion of the total.

No-one who was familiar with this data would conclude that business regulation is choking the American labour market or was in any way responsible for the substantial drop in labour demand and the rise in unemployment.

The tax debate is similarly compromised. Why would a firm employ more workers if they cannot sell the product even if they can lower the price somewhat if costs fall? I will consider that topic in another blog.

Ron Paul’s plan is in denial of these macroeconomic linkages and will fail before year one is over.

Conclusion

The Bloomberg editorial says that the Plan to Restore America is not a sound approach. They claim their is an “egalitarian way for Americans to share in the burden of achieving fiscal responsibility, but there’s no reason for entire Cabinet departments, the social safety net and the economy to be crushed in the process”.

It is interesting that they hold their “egalitarian” austerity plan out as being reasonable. In fact it also involves drastic and likely to be damaging cuts in net public spending. That they present this as the “reasonable” approach tells you how extreme the public debate in the US about fiscal policy has swung to the conservative (and uninformed) right.

Confused much?

OWS.....Peter Schiff. Crikey.

So now it's a lack of capitalism that OWS are protesting about? Right, I see.....

Schiff was Ron Paul's 'economic advisor' in 2008. He's an extreme free-marketeer - a Miseian Austrian twit. So he thinks Wall St is over-regulated. Sure.

Is he one of the 99%? Emphatically no! Wiki says

Peter David Schiff is an American businessman, author and financial commentator. Schiff is CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a broker-dealer based in Westport, Connecticut and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.

If Rivero or anyone else imagines Schiff is part of the 99%, well, they already had their say:

In the Republican primary, held on August 10, 2010, Schiff lost the nomination to Linda McMahon.

The results were:
49% Linda McMahon
28% Rob Simmons
23% Peter Schiff

Ultimately, the election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.

So, he couldn't win amongst the Republicans, and the Republicans couldn't win against the Democrats. Some 99%.

From Schiff's blog:

Ah, ok then. At least Schiff knows the score.

Wow - ain't that some propaganda?

Fairplay, that's a pretty inclusive bit of propaganda: Libya, the Federal Reserve, conspiracy, NY Cops, OWS and assassination. Laughable. But Rivero considers it worth promoting and commenting upon.

Interesting to compare his attitude to this obvious rubbish with his attitude to the supposed Iranian-backed assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador, in Washington. He dismissed that immediately, as propaganda. But this nonsense is just "unconfirmed". Funny sort of critical faculty he has.

And where does this rubbish originate? Rivero sources it to www.Presscore.ca - a Canadian registered site which appears to have the shortest registration information on record - Sibernet domain services. Ho hum. Very reliable source, I'm sure. Article begins:

The Federal Reserve bankers have offered $billions to the CIA mercenaries in Libya to come to the United States and start a bloody rebellion. The Federal Reserve bankers sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make their offer and terms. According to high ranking U.S. military officials the plot by the Federal Reserve bankers calls for Libyan mercenaries to enter the United States as guest of the Federal Reserve banks.

Ehm.....it's a joke? It should be, but I don't think the writer is kidding anyone but their self.

Why would the Federal Reserve bankers finance protests that call for their being abolished? The European controlled Federal Reserve bankers have been trying to destroy the United States as we know it. First by financing the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. That assassination started WWI. Then they orchestrated the Great Depression. Then they financed a little known Austrian named Adolf Hitler who they ordered to start WWII. Then the Korean War and the Vietnam War. When all those attempts failed to destroy the United States – through war, they tried through debt. They illegally took the gold and silver backed U.S. dollar out of circulation and began issuing their own worthless interest bearing counterfeit Federal Reserve Notes. Their intent was to cause the United States to be destroyed through debt.
Now that the United States is bankrupt the Federal Reserve bankers want another major war – WWIII. They need a war in order to bring about the Vatican’s Fourth Reich – aka New World Order.

Oh Lordy. It makes for a pretty amusing parody of Rivero and co. What a joke.

Presscore.ca's ABOUT page says

This past year alone over 38 million people have visited PRESS Core.ca. Why? PRESS Core is your source for in depth investigative reporting on news that affects us all. PRESS Core publishes what others refuse to publish – the truth. PRESS Core presents the FACTS, not FICTION.

PRESS Core was originally called nbGazette.com, created in 2001 by Paul W Kincaid, formerly of Upper Dorchester, New Brunswick Canada.

HAHA. 38 million people have visited the site? Sure. This Kincaid dude is a well-known "nut" which makes him highly suitable to be amongst Rivero's sources.

Rivero WRONG, Again

Here's Rivero just a week ago, claiming that what Gadaffi did wrong was refuse to buy into usury and central banking (his usual stupid complaint):

And here's Rivero making the same point more clearly, back in August earlier this year:

Yet today, we have the News Agencies reporting that the new Libya will have

"....an Islamist tint, Islamic Sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation in the country and existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified.

......new banks would be set up to follow the Islamic banking system, which bans charging interest. For the time being, he said interest would be canceled from any personal loans already taken out less than 10,000 Libyan dinars (about $7,500).
SOURCE

So, Rivero is DEAD WRONG AGAIN. The new Libya is going to be Islamist, with Sharia Law and opposed to usury - which completely contradicts Rivero's analysis and predictions. AGAIN.

Moreover, the Libyan transitional leader was said to have "wished anti-government protesters in Syria and Yemen "victory". Again showing Rivero's analysis to be DEAD WRONG.

See here, here and here, for Rivero's earlier shameful and hypocritical volte-face over Libya.

He's been wrong again and again - even changing position totally, only to be proven wrong again. What a klutz.

Avira Free Anti-virus screws with Fruity Loops

Avira Free Anti-virus screws with Fruity Loops

Performance in Fruity Loops 9 was awful after installing the Oct 2011 update (new version) of Free Avira AV.

Uninstall it, back to normal. Thanks Avira. Get lost.

David Icke on OWS - He's Discovered Fractional Reserve Banking (lol)

He makes out that it takes 'research' to discover fractional reserve banking (FRB). He also seems to blame recession on it, rather than the business cycle.

He says if OWS is to mean anything it must end the ability of private banks to lend money by FRB. [Errr.....you *want* a credit crunch, Dave?]

He repeats the fallacy of there being insufficient money to pay off the debt.

Clearly he's a financial neophyte.

Boom and bust are "manufactured" he says. 'They flood credit, then find an "excuse" to remove the credit from circulation."

Hmmm. Very sophisticated.

He says in a recession the banks take back land and houses, taking "the real wealth"....because they weren't paid back the money they "made from fresh air" and which "never existed, and never will exist".

Funny, how can people buy "real wealth" with "money that doesn't exist"? If people borrow 'phony cash' from the bank for a property mortgage, then how phony is the money? He doesn't mind people borrowing phony money to exchange for "real wealth", he only complains when the bank exercises its contractual right to reclaim the security - suddenly it's "phony money" and a scam. Rubbish.

Don't like it? Don't do it. Stop blaming the banks. If one can buy "real wealth" with this "phony money" then this "phony money" is real wealth too. Duh.

Then he says "some group" are behind banks, government and industry. A handful of people. And they want total control over humanity.......it's called globalisation he says.....yawn. World government that will dictate all major laws. A world bank. A world army.....(apparently he means NATO). Libya he says. Rah rah rah.

"The Euro wasn't supposed to work....." - supposedly evidence of a move to a one-world currency. Eh?

"The EU is a fascist dictatorship......or a communist dictatorship.....whatever you want to call it...."

hahaha. Yeah, call it whatever you like, words don't mean a thing, right?

I can't take anymore.

Dancing Israelis? Bullshit

Bullshit.

There's absolutely no evidence for it. But don't let that get in the way. Rivero's link goes to here, his "5 dancing Israelis page".

See this for a little more consideration.

Iraq - Imperial Dominion, or Not?

We'll see what happens, but if this is correct it undermines the arguments of those of us who claimed the entire thing was an imperial project, that America would never leave, blah blah blah.

Good for the Iraqis.

But maybe it only says American policy didn't come to fruition, even though the intent was always to subjugate Iraq? Nevertheless, if this happens it does seriously undermine notions about Iraq being an American outpost and part of a grand Imperial strategy. Yes, they might have intended otherwise, but if so, the fact they fail is even more important.

If America really does leave, and Iraq builds a relatively successful and democratic society then.....maybe in 20 years it will be impossible to conclude other than "it was worth it"? I never thought I'd say it....and I haven't yet.....but.....

Occupy.....St Paul's Cathedral

....and cost it £15,000 a day in donations.

Great.

I am getting sick of seeing OWS described as "anti-capitalist". Look at their demands, they are not anti-capitalist in the least. Their demands even include assertions that stock-markets should be run "properly".

Their most progressive lines are those which appeal to inequality, and the implied need for redistribution. But there's not a jot about how to do so. Ho hum.

Russian Revolutionary Architecture

In the courtyard of London's Royal Academy of Arts stands the 20th century's most avant-garde strand of architectural genetics. The veering red spiral, intersected by a girder jutting through it like a rocket launcher, is a copy of the original model of the Monument to the Third International, designed by Vladimir Tatlin in 1920. Had it been built to its intended scale as the headquarters of the Communist party, it would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower. In a world awash with "iconic" architecture, nothing comes even close to radiating the raw potency of this truly revolutionary form.

That is why the Royal Academy's new show, Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-35, deserves to be stampeded. The word "revolution" has become discredited, and this show thoroughly re-energises its meaning in art and architecture. The key fragments of Russian revolutionary creativity still glow like radium, living on in its remaining art and buildings, and hard-wired into the imaginations of some of the 20th and 21st century's most influential architects.
SOURCE

Rivero blames Greek Government

Oh, so it's the Greek government's fault, now, is it?

What happened to the Joooos? And Central Banking? And Globalist Cabal? And blah blah blah.....?

BBC - Lawyers (Still) Debate Whether Declaration of Independence Is Illegal

What a coincidence, considering recent comments here. BBC article is here:

In Philadelphia, American and British lawyers have debated the legality of America's founding documents.

On Tuesday night, while Republican candidates in Nevada were debating such American issues as nuclear waste disposal and the immigration status of Mitt Romney's gardener, American and British lawyers in Philadelphia were taking on a far more fundamental topic.

Namely, just what did Thomas Jefferson think he was doing?

Called the Declaration of Independence, it was a blow for freedom, a call to war, and the founding of a new empire.

It was also totally illegitimate and illegal.

At least, that was what lawyers from the UK argued during a debate at Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Hall.

American experiment
The event, presented by the Temple American Inn of Court in conjunction with Gray's Inn, London, pitted British barristers against American lawyers to determine whether or not the American colonists had legal grounds to declare secession.

For American lawyers, the answer is simple: "The English had used their own Declaration of Rights to depose James II and these acts were deemed completely lawful and justified," they say in their summary.

To the British, however, secession isn't the legal or proper tool by which to settle internal disputes. "What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union? Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right," they argue in their brief.
=======

They still disagree. :)

Let's end the myths of Britain's imperial past

www.guardian.co.uk

Let's end the myths of Britain's imperial past

The rebellions and resistance of the subject peoples of empire were so extensive that we may eventually come to consider that Britain's imperial experience bears comparison with the exploits of Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun rather than with those of Alexander the Great. The rulers of the empire may one day be perceived to rank with the dictators of the 20th century as the authors of crimes against humanity.

MMT

http://hir.harvard.edu/debt-deficits-and-modern-monetary-theory

governments don’t have to tax or borrow in advance of spending

Anyone thinking OWS is 'socialist' is kidding themselves

Here's a list of proposed OWS demands:

Posted Sept. 28, 2011

TACTICS FOR "DEMANDS FOR CONGRESS"

We should make the demands below very publicly at a press conference a few days after arriving in DC. When doing so, we should give a clear deadline of 3 days for a firm written commitment with signatures from at least 60% of members of House and 60% of the members of the Senate to pass these bills by the end of the year. If this commitment on the full slate of demands is not met by midnight on the 3rd day (which it won't be) we should be prepared to non-violently block access to all or part of the Capitol complex the next morning by traditional proven non-violent tactics. The purpose is to bring the leaders of the House and Senate to the negotiating table.

LIST OF PROPOSED "DEMANDS FOR CONGRESS"

CONGRESS PASS HR 1489 ("RETURN TO PRUDENT BANKING ACT"

THIS REINSTATES MANY PROVISIONS OF THE GLASS-STEAGALL ACT.
The repeal of provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act in 1999 effectively removed the separation that previously existed between investment banking which issued securities and commercial banks which accepted deposits.

Radical huh? lol

USE CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY AND OVERSIGHT TO ENSURE APPROPRIATE FEDERAL AGENCIES FULLY INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE THE WALL STREET CRIMINALS who clearly broke the law and helped cause the 2008 financial crisis in the following notable cases

Radical, huh? lol

CONGRESS ENACT LEGISLATION TO PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY BY REVERSING THE EFFECTS OF THE CITIZENS UNITED SUPREME COURT DECISION which essentially said corporations can spend as much as they want on elections.

Wow?

CONGRESS PASS THE BUFFETT RULE ON FAIR TAXATION SO THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE & CLOSE CORPORATE TAX LOOP HOLES AND ENACT A PROHIBITION ON HIDING FUNDS OFF SHORE.

Big deal.

CONGRESS COMPLETELY REVAMP THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION and staff it at all levels with proven professionals who get the job done protecting the integrity of the marketplace so citizens and investors are both protected.

Errr yeah....really socialist.

CONGRESS PASS SPECIFIC AND EFFECTIVE LAWS LIMITING THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS AND ELIMINATING THE PRACTICE OF LOBBYISTS WRITING LEGISLATION THAT ENDS UP ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS.

Says the OWS lobby group, which seeks the above demands.....lol

CONGRESS PASSING "Revolving Door Legislation" LEGISLATION ELIMINATING THE ABILITY OF FORMER GOVERNMENT REGULATORS GOING TO WORK FOR CORPORATIONS THAT THEY ONCE REGULATED.

Oh wow. Pathetic.

ELIMINATE "PERSONHOOD" LEGAL STATUS FOR CORPORATIONS. The film "The Corporation" has a great section on how corporations won "personhood status".

Errr....yeah...whatever.

Real radical socialism, right? Come off it.

New York Elections - September 13 2011

Election results for New York Special Election, 9th Congressional District, 13th September 2011

Republican: 37,342
Democrat : 33,656
Socialist : 143

SOURCE

Says it all.

Try occupying the voting booth, not Wall Street?

Some more on OWS, and populism

I went looking for some socialist criticism of OWS. I found an interesting article which mentions some theorist arguing for a left populism. It seems to echo my ill-formed thoughts on the matter:

The unity between the various identity groups, according to Laclau, must come by way of their organization around an antagonism with some ‘nemesis’ or enemy. It is by way of their unified opposition to this subjective enemy that political alliances are formed between the various political-cultural groups. Certainly this nemesis can be something like global capital or the financial class. However, Slavoj Žižek warns that this kind of populism has the potential to degenerate into some form of neo-Fascism.
SOURCE

That's part of my concern with OWS, for sure.

Populism, according to Žižek, obfuscates the objective violence of the system of capitalist exploitation by displacing it onto some external, subjective, enemy/intruder who disrupted the stability of the system. A populist perspective, in other words, sees nothing wrong with the system itself, internally, but instead perceives the intrusion of some external factor as that which caused the disruption. Nazi anti-Semitism is the clearest example of Fascist populism, which, rather than locating the cause of the crisis of the 1930s in something internal to capitalism, displaced the class struggle onto the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew.

Indeed. This can be seen in Rivero and the 911/Truth Movement's criticism of (degenerate) capitalism, rather than capitalism itself. For example, the support for extreme free-marketeering approach of Mises, supported by the Truth Movement's candidate of choice, RonPaul.

Unlike the Rightist Tea Party movement, which lays blame for the current crisis using racist, sexist, and homophobic rhetoric, OWS does not appear to be organized around some kind of populist politics, at least not in the sense used by Laclau or Žižek. The movement, though, is popular in the Gramscian sense, as evinced by the language of the ‘99%,’ which seems to be articulating popular frustration precisely in terms of ‘class warfare.’

I think the key words there are "seems to be".....in terms of class warfare. Only it isn't. One could claim fascism made calls which "seemed to be" in terms of class warfare, enough to persuade Roehm et al at least.

Undoubtedly there's some worth to OWS, for example the somewhat anti-capitalist and egalitarian rhetoric which might make new space for a more proper and newly viable leftwing alternative. But it isn't all good.

For one thing, the use of leftwing/socialist rhetoric by a movement which is self-consciously absent a socialist agenda is deeply problematic imo. Won't socialism be tarred with whatever failings the OWS eventually succumbs to? And if OWS is absent class-based politics, and absent socialism, isn't it essentially an endorsement of capitalism from a populist position....aren't they merely criticising "degenerate capitalism"....principally the same idea criticism fascism proposed. True, OWS is seemingly essentially absent of anti-semitism, but then what is its explanation for the 1%, absent class analysis and socialism? What exactly do they hold as "degenerate" about the capitalism they criticise and supposedly oppose, and what are the reasons for it?

I find OWS quite troubling in many ways. I do see the potential for a fascism within it, especially when reading the American-centric rhetoric of its (non) leaders. It's a national movement.....imbued with a lot of American rightwing populist ideas that have long been bubbling along in American working-class dialogue.

Hopefully my concern is misplaced......time will tell?

Occupy XYZ "Movement"

It's a "movement"?

A movement with no leaders? And no demands? Is that really a movement?

There's no mention of socialism.....but of "social justice"...."wealth inequality"..."the 99%"...etc. And lots of mentions of "End the Fed"....whatever that's supposed to mean.

Strikes me this is too vague and idealistic to be a "real" social political movement. I'm very cynical about it all.

It's great that people feel motivated to complain.....that they want change.....but what change? These people think socialism was just invented? Oh, but they don't actually want socialism, do they, so....who knows....

They keep saying "we". Who is this "we"? What do this "we" want? "An end to the neo-liberal global banking blah blah blah". Oh, right, very good......what does that MEAN??? And what is it FOR? IF it's FOR an alternative - socialism - then say so? Otherwise, what is it FOR? All the "End the Fed" stuff smacks of the usual ignorant, vague, (far) right-wing American dross.

They say about themselves: "the protesters are fed up with both mainstream parties". AND SO WHAT??? Being "fed-up" is easy. What are you going to do instead? WHAT???

As a decentralized leaderless movement, in our opinion, there is no one group, organization, website or individual who can speak for the movement as a whole.

....and that's going to last how long? And err.....WHAT DO YOU WANT???

We will not be co-opted by hierarchical organizations. No matter how wonderful their cause may be.

WE won't? A decentralised leaderless movement speaks as "we"....? I don't see how it can.

I think they're making all the usual mistakes and forgetting much in the process.

We Are Winning

Every once in a while, in the course of some enormous struggle, those driven, tired, frazzled fighters have a moment or two to stop and think, to pick our heads up and look ahead. I had a moment like that a few days ago, and that’s when it hit me – like a blow to the head: We are winning. We are winning.

Sure, we haven’t captured government institutions, haven’t smashed the banks and the classes that control them, haven’t even won concrete reforms or come up with solid institutions to protect our gains. We aren’t even close to finishing the fight or creating the world we wish to live in. But – alongside revolutionaries around the world – we have helped to unlock the hidden and slumbering potential of millions of people, ready to believe again that there is an alternative.

Yes, people need to believe in the possibility of an alternative.

BUT WHAT IS IT?

Nobody knows.....oh, how reassuring!!

What Do We Want?

The media and politicians call us muddle-headed, and confused. They claim we have no demands or purpose. Well, let’s set the record straight. It’s not that we don’t have demands; it’s that we speak them in a different language. We speak them with our struggle. Our movement is made up of people fighting for jobs, for schools, for debt relief, equitable housing, and healthcare. We are resisting ecological destruction, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and crony-capitalism. We are doing it all in a way that is participatory, democratic, fierce, and unwavering. There is nothing very vague about that.

But we do not stop there. That, perhaps, is what sets us apart from those who wish to use our tremendous and growing power for small gains or modest reforms. We want more. We want it all. We want a political and economic system that we all actually control together, one that is equitable and humane, one that allows for people to self-manage but act in solidarity, one that is participatory and democratic to its core. We want a world where people have the right to their own identities, communities, and cultures, and the freedom from oppression and constraint. We want a world with institutions that take care of our youth, our elderly, and our families in ways that are nurturing, liberating, and consensual. We want a world in which community is not a hamper on individual freedom, but rather an expression of its fullest potential.

If that’s not a clear enough statement of demands for you, CNN, I don’t know what to tell you. And you know what? We’re only getting warmed up.

As we keep fighting, we will continue to ask ourselves difficult questions. What world do we envision? What values do we want to live by? What institutions do we need in order to live those values? What structures will we build to protect what we’ve won and create a platform for continued struggle? What will we win for ourselves, and what will we win for generations to come? How will we fight these enormous battles in a way that is both effective and reflective of the new world we are ushering in?

Hmmmm. You (whoops, I am supposed to say "we", right?) want all that.......but don't ever mention socialism. You're kidding yourselves if you think you are going to get any further than making a big noise. The moment it comes to making the first decision the entire thing will fall apart into factions of left and right. End of.

It's just a lot of pissed-off people. Big deal.

Not that it's worthless, not by any stretch. But it might be even worse than that.

A look at their "economic" manifesto or whatever is like looking at a student publication, or somesuch. And no socialism. Who do they think they are kidding?

Look at the agenda, and consider no mention of "socialism"....and apparently "no demands", "no manifesto" etc.....:

--Mass Unemployment

--Working More for Less

--The Rise of the Economic Elite

--Costs of Living

Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won

It’s time for 99% of Americans to mobilize and aggressively move on common sense political reforms.

We will obviously have many differences on how our country should be run, but we can all come together to dismantle the Economic Elite by making several pivotal political reforms. As long as the game is rigged in favor of the Economic Elite, we will all lose. So let’s find common ground and focus on several obvious battles that we need to win, and can win:

Election Reform

Governmental Policy Formation

Information Platforms

Healthcare

* Medical Costs: We have disagreements on how to best provide healthcare, but we all agree that whatever the method, the result needs to be lower costs.

Real Economic Competition

* Most Americans Believe in Competition

* Redistribution of Wealth: Due to the rigging of our economic and political system, vast sums of wealth have been hoarded by the Economic Elite over the past 40 years. This money must be redistributed to the 99% of Americans who have been robbed and exploited. There will be much heated debate over how this money should be distributed, but we all need to agree that we must first hold the Economic Elite accountable and our wealth must be seized from them.
SOURCE

Oh Lordy, I can't go on with this.....it's a lot of vague populist rot. Astonishing they can get people off their arses, especially for that vague populist rubbish they're touting. Though that's probably why they can manage to motivate people to protest....it's all so vague and obviously hollow that there's no room for disagreement....just vaguely shared sentiment and dis-satisfaction.

No wonder they're so fearful and concerned about being co-opted. What's the alternative? Continue just mouthing complaints?

The empty, populist tone is worrying.

Semi Final of the World Cup: Come on Boyos

Consciousness

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.

With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.

No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.

Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois modes of production as so many progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.

This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.

Preface to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy' (1859) Marx

Rivero's phony anti-fascism

Here's Rivero, laughably defining Capitalism, Socialism, Commmunism and Fascism:

Okay, one more time, and please take notes; there may be a quiz on this material next class!

A Capitalist system is one in which if you make a lot of money you get to keep it, and if you lose a lot of money you have to pay off that debt all by yourself. That is what the United States started out to be.

Socialism, or communism, is a system where if you make money, it is taxed from you and spent on society and if you lose money, society's taxes are used to cover the loss. That is what they used to do in the USSR and still do in many European nations with high living standards.

Fascism is where if you make money you get to keep it, but if you lose money all of society is forced to cover the losses. And after $27 trillion in bailouts taken from the American people to pay for Wall Street's criminal mortgage-backed securities fraud (the biggest financial swindle in history), it is obvious to any unbiased observer that the United States, for all its pretensions to the contrary, has failed as a capitalist system and has devolved to a fascist economic state.

So, what OccupyINSERTYOURTOWNHERE is protesting against is not Capitalism, but Fascism. And the next question is, unless you abuse yourself to pictures of Benito Mussolini late at night, why aren't you out there standing shoulder to shoulder with them?

Since when was fascism about crony capitalism and corporate welfare? When did this become the definition of fascism? Rather, fascism made this type of criticism against capitalism.

Why doesn't Rivero say this to his friends and fellow-travellers, such as Willis Carto, The American Free Press, The IHR, the Adelaide Institute, John De Nugent, etc? If loving Mussolini is so bad, why do so many of his favoured sources do it?

Setting up a false definition of fascism means one can attack a strawman whilst avoiding being identified one's self as the real thing.

Fascism is ultra-nationalism if it is anything, a characteristic entirely absent from Rivero's phony definition. Fascism was also anti-socialist and sought not the abolition of class (as communism does), but rather a means to bind the classes in subservience to a greater idea - that of the nation - blood and soil. Crony capitalism would be a betrayal of fascism, of sorts, exploiting the people for the sake of 'the few'. Similarly, 'globalisation' is antagonistic to fascism, as it is an internationalisation of capital which pits pursuit of capital interests against those of nationalism (eg offshoring of production, loss of jobs overseas, capital flight.)

Fascism's anti-capitalism was really anti-degenerate-capitalism ie anti-Jewish capitalism: the Jews were blamed for the degeneracy, much as Rivero blames them (and their supposed lack of commitment to national interest). The classic idea is of the stateless Jew, interested in greedy pursuit of capital at the expense of the 'host' nation's interest and those of it's "real" citizens - the essence of Rivero's complaint.

In an earlier post by Rivero about the OccupyWallSt protests, and Glen Beck's response to it, Rivero says that

"this movement isn't about left or right; the old paradigms have ceased to work"

Well, actually that's an historic claim of fascism which fashioned itself as "the third way". Rivero also says:

what I have seen happening over the last decade is this country pursuing immoral wars without end, which are not making Americans any safer; a deliberate destruction of the middle class, through offshoring; the impoverishment of people who now cannot make their house payments, getting pushed into abject poverty, and sleeping in homeless camps through no fault of their own.

Remember, Rivero is no socialist. So what is he really saying there? Rivero adds:

I see a government which is so co-opted by corporate influence that this country now has a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

Oh, suddenly it's corporate influence that controls America.....not Tel Aviv....as it was last week. However, if we read "corporate influence" as meaning the influence of "degenerate Jewish capitalism" then we have essentially the same meaning as blaming Tel Aviv. Rivero again:

I see a parasitical Federal Reserve....

In a previous comment the same day Rivero claims:

Israel wants #OccupyAMERICA destroyed.

Hmmmm. And this:

Rush Limbaugh is an idiot serving his Israel masters by trying to discredit OccupyAMERICA

Israel has issued their orders to all the servants in the US Government and media to derail Occupy AMERICA by any means necessary

Is that the "corporate influence" Rivero says is running and ruining America? Just a few days ago Rivero was complaining that:

These Congressional Committees have demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, in this move to whom they report; and it is not to We the People of the United States, but those in the bowels of power in Tel Aviv.

So, corporate influence.....or Tel Aviv? Or are they actually the same thing for Rivero?

John Birch Paranoid Blues

Rivero's hypocrisy.....yes more of it

I saw this at WRH today:

It reminded me that just a few days ago Rivero quoted himself saying:

Funny. He must imagine nobody is actually reading anything he writes, or they're too dumb to notice or care about his constant hypocrisy.

Rivero's Sedition

Rivero's been openly engaging in sedition. It's certainly a crime in most states (whether it's a crime or not in the USA, I do not know*). Here's an example:

Here's what seems to be the relevant USA Law, as it stands today:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 115 > § 2385

§ 2385. ADVOCATING OVERTHROW OF GOVERNMENT

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons.
-------------

What an idiot.

More of Rivero's sedition:

Egypt and Iceland taught us all that revolution is indeed possible. It can succeed. An angry populace, tired of living looted lives, can throw out the criminal bankers and the criminal government.

And....

It is simple.

Revolution equals a better life.

And.....

"We're gonna start building gallows!"

And he says he supports "non-violence"? Oh, sure.

You don't try to bring a cancer under tighter political control.

You kill it.

Well, seems pretty clearly seditious. Contrary to Rivero's idea that he's living in a police-state with total information control, he's apparently quite allowed to engage in sedition without penalty. If he thinks that's the same thing going on in Egypt, and the Arab Spring/Summer, he's crazy. Here's Wiki's definition of sedition:

Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Sedition is encouraging one's fellow citizens to rebel against their state, whereas treason is actually betraying one's country by aiding and abetting another state. Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws.

Arguing to change policy or government - or even the Constitution is allowed, so long as it is pursued through democratic methods. Gallows and revolution are not democratic and clearly not constitutional.

Prediction

The Independent is reporting that the USA is threatening to cut aid of $200m to Palestine if they pursue statehood at UN.

Back in March, Rivero said : "the US should be using foreign aid as a "stick" as well as a carrot".

Let's see what Rivero says about the USA using foreign aid as a stick against Palestine. There's no news at WRH for October 1st as of yet (it's still AM here in UK).

Somehow we know he won't be applauding.
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UPDATE. Rivero/WRH's response is in. Are they applauding the use of foreign aid as "a stick"? No. Big shock. There are several articles about the story linked at WRH. Here's Rivero's own responses:

These Congressional Committees have demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, in this move to whom they report; and it is not to We the People of the United States, but those in the bowels of power in Tel Aviv.

And:

Report: US blocks $200 million in aid to PA

Which the Saudis immediately cover! So, I guess Israel will throw another tantrum that it cannot have its way and torment the Palestinians without interference, and order the US Government to attack Saudi Arabia, spilling lots more American blood into the dust of the oil fields.