Once again, Chris Hedges is disturbingly on point.

America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate.

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This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them.

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But our universities and mass media, entranced by power and naively believing that global capitalism was an unstoppable force of nature, rarely asked the right questions or gave a prominent voice to those who did. Our elites hid their incompetence and loss of control behind an arrogant facade of specialized jargon and obscure economic theories.

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The Obama administration, rather than chart a new course, is intent on re-inflating the bubble. The trillions of dollars of government funds being spent to sustain these corrupt corporations could have renovated our economy. We could have saved tens of millions of Americans from poverty. The government could have, as consumer activist Ralph Nader has pointed out, started 10 new banks with $35 billion each and a 10-to-1 leverage to open credit markets. Vast, unimaginable sums are being placed into these dirty corporate hands without oversight. And they will use this money as they always have—to enrich themselves at our expense.

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“These are signs of hyper decay,” Nader said from his office in Washington. “You spend this kind of money and do not know if it will work.”

“Bankrupt corporate capitalism is on its way to bankrupting the socialism that is trying to save it,” Nader added. “That is the end stage. If they no longer have socialism to save them then we are into feudalism. We are into private police, gated communities and serfs with a 21st century nomenclature.”

Obama best start to come clean with the full ramifications of what we are dealing with here or else we are going to be in for one hell of a serious sh*tshow. The call for “hope” and “change” will become more a plea for hope for even a little change in the pocket. This all can be turned around, but only through radical and fearless lucidity as to what we are facing and the efforts to be engaged in order to address it.

Read The Full Article

Chris Hedges’ analysis continue to take on a more and more radical tinge as the months and years go by. This piece is no exception. Unfortunately, such critiques are also more and more warranted as time goes by. The fundamental systemic problems persist, regardless of the changes of costume taking place in the theater of our Democracyland theme park. Some of the critiques regarding the state of higher education in our country today is also pretty provocative, regardless of it’s accuracy or veracity (anyone want to hazard a perspective on it?).

In decaying societies, politics become theater. The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation. They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled. Once the spotlights go on they read their lines with appropriate emotion. Once the lights go off, they make sure Goldman Sachs and a host of other large corporations have the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses they incurred playing casino capitalism repaid with taxpayer money.

We live in an age of moral nihilism. We have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding. The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered. Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself. We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty. The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.

Read this complete tour de force Here

Great to see our man Thomas Paine and his revolutionary legacy finding it’s way back into the forefront of political thought in this country, what with being so directly referenced by President Obama here in his inaugural address. There was a time, and a lengthy period of it, where this simply wasn’t done and wouldn’t be done thanks to the concerted effort to diminish Paine’s role and influence from the historical record by certain interests and ideologies within American politics. From what I understand there were even pictures of Paine on display at some of the inaugural events.

It’s also sadly telling, though not overly surprising, that even our vaunted literati of American history couldn’t even tag where these quotes came from.

“As for our common defence, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.”

That is as near as George W Bush has come to being impeached. It covers the legal black hole of Guantánamo Bay and its kangaroo courts, the overreaching powers of the Patriot Act, torture, warrantless wiretapping and all the other infractions of the civil liberties of Americans and foreigners alike that occurred under the outgoing administration. “We are ready to lead once more” is startlingly candid in its admission that, under Bush, the United States did not lead the world but attempted to bomb and bully it into submission.

The reference to “the rights of man” was salient. The title of Thomas Paine’s giant pamphlet prepared the way for Paine’s incognito appearance at the end of the speech, when Obama talked of Christmas night in 1776, when George Washingtonled his ragtag army across the ice-choked Delaware river to confront the British and Hessians who were encamped at Trenton, New Jersey. Obama spoke of “the timeless words” that “the father of our nation” ordered to be read to the American people: “Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].” The oddly bracketed “it” replaced the original end of the sentence, which was “came forth to meet and to repulse it.”

Every commentator I heard - including, surprisingly, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin - assumed that the quotation came from Washington himself, but it is from Paine’s The Crisis. “With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents,” Obama said, and, again, the commentators assumed, mistakenly I think, that he was speaking only of the recession as it deepens, with increasing speed, into depression. But Paine’s authorship of those words suggests otherwise. The “common danger”, requiring “hope” and, more pointedly, “virtue” in order to “meet [and to repulse] it”, is surely as much the spectre of a dictatorial administration, emboldened by Dick Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive”, and its dangerous freedom to abuse the rights of man, as it is the peconomic crisis….

I’ve read - or at least skimmed - every inaugural address since George Washington’s, and none comes close to so categorically rejecting the political philosophy and legislative record of the previous occupant of the White House. Obama did it by stealth - so much stealth that most of the red meat of the speech has so far passed largely unnoticed.

This is a really good review of the nature and substance of Obama’s address.

Read the complete article from The Guardian

Check out this historical educational piece (with a little modern update doctoring, I can see) gauging where a society stands on the ‘Democracy vs. Despotism” scale. My educated guess is that America doesn’t place quite so admirably on this measuring line these days.

Watch The Video

I have gone to the Salon.com website with Glenn Greenwald’s posting where I watched the most disturbing videos of the invasion of so-called “hippy homes” in a St. Paul neighborhood, by the Ramsey County sheriff’s office, early this morning. These police raids can only be described as brutal and unjustified home invasions. They handcuffed innocent young people, average age 20, and took their computers, laptops and personal papers. They carried search warrants so generic they could have barged in to the “Father Knows Best” household. Most unusual is the fact the warrants authorized confiscation of bomb-making materials, glass bottles, incendiary devices, plastic boxes, cardboard, twine– none of which were found…. Do you have any of these things at home? Most likely.

This is not a tiny event. This ought to be a huge national news story, and the Republican National Convention should be called to task for this unprecedented police action. McCain should answer for it! This is worse than the already terrible arrests of journalists covering protest marches.

I’m going to forward this message to as many media folks as I know. You should do the same, or write your own. McCain’s wife said, about Hurricane Gustav, “We need to take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.” How about we put on our “Safe in Our Homes and Free to peacebly assemble” hats!!!

Accessibly yours,
Paul Berg, Executive Director
Weston Community Media Center, Inc.
Weston, MA

Paul Berg asked “Did Amy have press credentials for the RNC?”

All the arrested Democracy Now crew had valid RNC press credentials, Amy is said to have had a convention floor pass - the most privileged and difficult to obtain. And yes - getting press credentials for these spectacles is a nearly impossible task - especially for someone like Amy who was booted from White house press corp access in the past for asking too many difficult questions.

But one has to wonder (OK - maybe not) where the mainstream press is during these conventions (though an AP photographer was also arrested yesterday). They’re certainly not in the streets with the ordinary people and the hundreds of protesting Iraqi vets. Obviously there is an approved script for the convention coverage and the mainstream press is staying well within the agreed upon boundaries. It’s much like the moment early in the Bush administration when the White House told the press corp that this administration was creating it’s own reality and they could either get on-board or be cut off. Virtually all drank the kool-aid and stayed on to ride the terror bus.

Sadly, the days of Murrow, Cronkite and even Rather are long past and irretrievable. The fourth estate under rule of a corporate state has two very demanding masters and neither are the public. Compliant anchors (who are no longer trained as journalists) are now manufactured in schools around the country can be replaced as easily as their dentures. The late Herb Schiller’s characterization of this as the consciousness industry is truer and more chilling today than when he wrote it some 30 years ago.

Mike and those at St. Paul Neighborhood Network - sorry to hear your windows got smashed. Hope you had a surveillance system. if so, there’s probably a 50/50 chance it was an uncover cop masked in black block garb (and yes - that would be rather impossible to ascertain). But this has been the pattern since the WTO protests of Seattle in 1999 and has been well documented (and unreported) in various globalization protests around the world. One of the flaws of anonymous affinity groups as an organizing tactic is that police provocateurs and saboteurs can easily pose as masked activists and provoke or engage in the requisite violence and property damage when it’s deemed necessary. Police have already admitted to infiltrating convention organizing groups prior to the conventions - this is relatively small step beyond that bit of intelligence gathering groundwork.

I know that sounds overly conspiratorial and you’re thinking “wow - Michael’s gone whack again”, but these abuses have been documented on video by independent media activists and the evidence and eyewitness accounts are quite compelling. That’s probably one of the reasons a group like iWitness Video who do counter-surveillance on the police were targeted early on in St Paul - and probably why their local NYC colleagues, The Glass Bead Collective, had all their gear seized in Denver. Fifteen years ago, showing up at a protest with a camera could be an effective deterrent against police misconduct, a form of self-defense - today it only makes you a potential target.

Four years later, the civil suits over the mass arrests in NYC during the RNC four years ago are still running their course through the courts. It’s very likely the courts will decide in the favor of those unlawfully arrested and award substantial damages (since nearly all the charges were thrown out as unwarranted - particular in light of the IMC and iWitness video documentation). This happened recently for nearly 60 who were illegally arrested in a legal protest outside the Carlye Group in 2003 (2 million dollars in damages were awarded). We have numerous instances of a security state and legal system that collude to willingly and systematically violate the law through illegal arrests and detentions to manage short-term ‘image and publicity crisis’ - knowing full well that large sums of money will have to paid later in civil suits. This is the new cost of managing dissent in this country. The problem is, it’s the taxpayers who are getting billed for being bound and gagged by their own government.

Hmm - the ‘world as we know it’ actually already ended, it just hasn’t been reported as reality yet.

- Posted by Michael Eisenmenger

I remember when I was sixteen years old. That was 1968. I remember the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, NOT dominated by the hapless nominee, Hubert Humphrey, but rather by two things: what went on in the streets of Chicago, and how the national network news covered it.

I remember “the most trusted man in America,” Walter Cronkite stumbling for words to express his surprise and dismay that heavily-armed, stick-wielding police were basically beating the shit out of (mostly young) protesters in the streets of Chicago. In his black Clark Kent glasses, his starched blue shirt and ever so properly tied tie, he harrumphed: “Let us go now to Garrett Utley who is on the streets of Chicago following what has become a riot in response to this convention.”

History has since deemed it a “police riot.” This term has become increasingly more prevalent as ill-trained and (worse) ill-instructed police officers approach public assemblies (guaranteed by the Constitution, incidentally) as simply “crime problems” which need to be subdued and suppressed.

Thank You, Mike Wassenar for sending the story and video of Amy Goodman being arrested in St. Paul, home of the RNC convention. Our hopes and prayers go out to her and her also-arrested crew members.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the presidential election of 1968, in case you forgot or are too young to remember…

The United States presidential election of 1968 was a wrenching national experience, and included the assassination of Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy, the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and subsequent race riots across the nation, the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and widespread demonstrations against the Vietnam War across American university and college campuses. The election also featured a strong third-party effort by former Alabama governor George Wallace; although Wallace’s campaign was frequently accused of promoting racism, he would prove to be a formidable candidate, and was the last third-party candidate to win an entire state’s electoral votes. In the end, Republican Richard M. Nixon narrowly won the election over Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey on a campaign promise to restore “law and order”. The election of 1968 was a realigning election that ended the Democratic realignment started by Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

I watched the video of Amy being arrested, and watched the faces of the cops “just doing their jobs.” I heard one cop say, “Step over this line and you are arrested.”

So much for probable cause! So much for freedom to assemble.

Questions. Did Amy have press credentials for the RNC, or did she and her crew risk their freedom in trying to shoot a video report without “the ticket.” If Amy did not have credentials, why not? Does one need to be a bloated corporate media pig to get press credentials to the RNC? Perhaps being a Republican helps. I suspect Amy is not.

The point of this rant is that the Alliance needs to pay close attention to the ruling of Judge Ponsor, in a Superior Court case in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, one of our sister access centers was the defendant. The case involved a local “video gadfly” who shot footage of a zoning commissioner up to unapproved building activities in his own back yard. The access corporation suddenly changed their rules to say that because the video gadfly did not have a talent releases from said zoning commissioner, the video could not be shown again. Judge Ponsor, after an eloquent definition of what “public access” is said this: A person “filming” segments for a public access show should enjoy the same First Amendment rights as those enjoyed by “bone fide news gatherers.”

I confess I am not a big fan of Amy Goodman. I just don’t like her unabashed liberal slant on the news. But at least she admits it! But these arrests in St. Paul MN are outrageous, and should be topics on the national network news. They were not tonight.

Local news at 11 added to my distress. They reported on high school marching bands, and where to find good pizza in the Twin Cities.

The national media has been mum about any disturbances or protests outside the RNC convention center. I only wish Walter Cronkite were still in the game, because in his journalistic world, flying police batons and tear gas and pepper spray would warrant coverage on his Edward R. Murrow-founded broadcast. Sadly, Katie Couric just flashes big teeth and says nothing.

Surely the end of the world as we know it is not far off!!! (just kidding, but still….. can you believe it!)

- Paul Berg, Arlington, MA

“Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” - Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786

Recommended read from Timothy Karr of Free Press on the simply unacceptable silence and acquiescence of so-called public officials in condoning and/or excusing through their silence the government repression of journalism in St. Paul.

Here we have every indication of an orchestrated assault by federal and local law enforcement agencies to stifle independent sources of information. As shocking as this conduct is, more disturbing is the fact that the mayor’s office and the local daily seem so unconcerned.

It’s not difficult to understand why. With local leaders making every effort to roll out the welcome mat for mainstream media and the GOP leadership during a nationally televised convention, they’d rather sweep beneath the carpet those pesky independents who are showing us a side of the event that is less scripted and unready for prime time.

As an elected representative, Mayor Coleman should take a stand on behalf of a free press, rein in aggressive and violent tactics by local law enforcement, stop the targeting of journalists and immediately drop all charges against them.

One telling quote included in this report is by police spokesman Don Walsh….

Police spokesman Don Walsh intervened only to say that “arrest have been made” and that all those arrested were involved in criminal activities and not “simply non-participants.”

By making such a statement he is implying that only the guilty are arrested, and the very fact that you have been arrested is evidence of your guilt. That’s a convenient little loop of logic in the service of unaccountable government power.

Read The Full Article

Here is an extremely insightful report by Glenn Greenwald detailing the federal government’s involvement in the ‘pre-emptive’ arrests in St. Paul and the detaining of hundreds of people, including journalists, without warrants and/or on the flimsiest and extreme of charges. One example of the absurd and capricious nature of these kinds of criminal charges include the ones being levied against two producers for “Democracy Now!” who were arrested on charges of “probable cause for riot”. Throw in the ‘pre-emptive’ detainment and confiscation of all the equipment from organizations such as I-Witness Video and you have the kind of absurd Orwellian thought-crime prosecution we are used to hearing about in China and Burma, not the United States. This is nothing short of the state being an instrument of political repression.

Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Today’s Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically “aided by informants planted in protest groups.”

COINTELPRO here we come.

We love to proclaim how much we cherish our “freedoms” in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic — but we’ve decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it’s therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

After all, if you don’t want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there’s a very simple solution: don’t protest the Government. Just sit quietly in your house and mind your own business. That way, the Government will have no reason to monitor what you say and feel the need to intimidate you by invading your home. Anyone who decides to protest — especially with something as unruly and disrespectful as an unauthorized street march — gets what they deserve.

———–

During the Olympics just weeks ago, there was endless hand-wringing over the efforts by the Chinese Government to squelch dissent and incarcerate protesters. On August 2, The Post gravely warned :

Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.

Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted .

Would The Washington Post ever use such dark and accusatory tones to describe what the U.S. Government does? Of course it wouldn’t. Yet how is our own Government’s behavior in Minnesota any different than what the Chinese did to its protesters during the Olympics (other than the fact that we actually have a Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? And where are all the self-righteous Freedom Crusaders in our nation’s establishment organs who were so flamboyantly criticizing the actions of a Government on the other side of the globe as our own Government engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with exactly the same motives?

Good question.

Read The Full Report (Includes Video)

A colleague of mine from the Alliance For Community Media recently commented on these goings ons as well, and posted some good informational websites regarding the situation.

The civil rights violations taking place in St Paul over the last 24 hours are quite shocking. Residences housing activists and independent media folks are being raided by Marshals with warrants that pretty much allow them to take everything in the place. You can read one of the warrants at the IMC site below (it’s hard to imagine that a court of law actually issued this - that’s how far this country has degenerated).

Updates at:
http://twincities.indymedia.org/

Fun video at:
http://twincities.indymedia.org/videos/2008/aug/rnc-emergency-dispatch

We live in the United States of America, not the so-called People’s Republic of China. Let’s start acting like it.

From Tom J’s letter to his friend and colleague James Madison, September 6, 1789. He seems to have been reading from another friend of his, Thomas Paine, as this reflects some points made by good ol Mr. Paine. Jefferson made repeated references throughout his life to the need for each generation to change the law according to their needs. He stated on more than one occassion that each generation should have its own constitutional convention. By this benchmark we are indeed LONG overdue.

From his Letter To Madison…

On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.

This principle that the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead is of very extensive application and consequences in every country, and most especially in France. It enters into the resolution of the questions Whether the nation may change the descent of lands holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation of lands given antiently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity? whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole catalogue ecclesiastical and feudal? it goes to hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions; to hereditary orders, distinctions and appellations; to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts or sciences; with a long train of et ceteras: and it renders the question of reimbursement a question of generosity and not of right. In all these cases the legislature of the day could authorize such appropriations and establishments for their own time, but no longer; and the present holders, even where they or their ancestors have purchased, are in the case of bona fide purchasers of what the seller had no right to convey.

Read a complete online copy of the note Here