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=By= Ellen Brown

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he bombshell publication of the “Panama Papers,” leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in shell companies, has triggered both outrage and skepticism. In an April 3 article titled “Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak,” UK blogger Craig Murray writes that the whistleblower no doubt had good intentions; but he made the mistake of leaking his 11.5 million documents to the corporate-controlled Western media, which released only those few documents incriminating opponents of Western financial interests. Murray writes:

Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland.

Iceland, of course, was the only country to refuse to bail out its banks, instead throwing its offending bankers in jail.

Pepe Escobar calls the released Panama Papers a “limited hangout.” The leak dovetails with the attempt of Transparency International to create a Global Public Beneficial Ownership Registry, which can collect ownership information from governments around the world; and with UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s global anti-corruption summit next month. According to The Economist, “The Panama papers give him just the platform he needs to persuade other governments, and his own, to turn their tough talk of recent years into action.”

The Daily Bell suspects a coordinated global effort linked to the push to go cashless. It’s all about knowing where the money is and who owns it, in order to tax it, regulate it, “sanction” it, or confiscate it:

Without privacy, authoritarianism flourishes because it is impossible to build and expand private networks that would act as a deterrent . . . . A worldwide transparency regime virtually guarantees abuses and corruption from those in power.

This is a reason why the “cashless society” idea is such a bad one. When no one is able to use cash, financial histories will be easily available via electronic bank records.

Michael Snyder of InvestmentWatchBlog.com also links the Panama Papers with the push to go cashless:

. . . [W]ith this Panama Paper leak and all its pre-conditioning against tax havens, people aren’t realizing yet that very soon, once Negative Interest Rates and Bail-Ins are being openly discussed and prepared for implementation, the whole tax haven or tax dodger discussion in the media will quickly switch from talking about corrupt billionaires and shell companies half way around the world, and instead will be talking about something much closer to home . . . .

In my strong opinion this whole thing is all part of the coming capital control war, which ties directly in with the coming transition to a biometric digital currency, the implementation of Negative Interest Rates, the rollout of large scale systemic bail-ins, and the demonization and eventual criminalization of physical assets that are outside of direct taxation control (which again would be done using the pre-conditioned guise of “tax havens”, with physical precious metals and physical cash being the main targets).

War on Corruption or War on Savers?

What we may be witnessing here is the 1% going after the 10% of people who, according to German researcher Margrit Kennedy, do not need to borrow but are “net savers.” Today the remaining 90% are “all borrowed up.” Either they are unwilling to borrow more or the banks are unwilling to lend to them, since they are poor credit risks. Who, then, is left to feed the debt machine that feeds the 1%, and more specifically the 0.001%? The power brokers at the top seem to want it all, and today that means going after those just below them on the financial food chain. The challenge is in squeezing money from people who don’t need to borrow. How to legally confiscate their savings?

Enter bail-ins, negative interest, all-digital currencies, and the elimination of “tax havens.”

Bail-ins allow the largest banks to gamble with impunity with their depositors’ money. If the banks make bad bets and become insolvent, they can legally confiscate the deposits to balance their books, through an “orderly resolution” scheme of the sort mandated in the Dodd-Frank Act.

Negative interest is a fee or private tax on holding funds in the bank.

Eliminating cash prevents the bank runs that these assaults on people’s savings would otherwise trigger. Money that exists only as digital entries cannot be withdrawn and stored under a mattress.

Exposing tax havens shows the predators where the money is and who has title to it, facilitating its confiscation and preventing the funding of massive rebellions against confiscation.

Orchestrated at Davos

That could help explain those coordinated developments we’ve been seeing across the central-bank-controlled world, proliferating particularly after the January summit of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the global elite gather to discuss the hot economic issues of the day.

According to one Morgan Stanley attendee, a notable topic this year was the need for “a rapid introduction of a cashless society so that even more negative deposit interest rates could be introduced in Europe to offset likely secular stagnation.” With the use of physical cash curtailed, J.P. Morgan estimates the European Central Bank could ultimately bring interest rates as low as negative 4.5%.

“Secular stagnation,” the official justification for negative interest, means a chronic shortfall in demand: not enough money chasing goods and services. Today virtually all money is created by banks when they make loans; and when old loans are paid off, new ones must be taken out to maintain the money supply. Central banks have traditionally dropped interest rates to stimulate this continual borrowing, but interest rates have now effectively been pushed to zero. The argument is that they can be pushed below zero – but only if cash withdrawals, and hence bank runs, are not an option.

That is the argument; but as Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, observes:

The notion is that the economy’s poor economic performance is not due to the failure of economic policy but to people hoarding their money. The Federal Reserve and its coterie of economists and presstitutes maintain the fiction of too much savings despite the publication of the Federal Reserve’s own report that 52% of Americans cannot raise $400 without selling personal possessions or borrowing the money.

In an article titled “Exposing the Hidden Agenda of Davos 2016”, Zerohedge reports on a flurry of activity during and after Davos related to the push to go cashless. But stimulating demand may just be the cover story for something darker behind this orchestrated effort.

Rescuing the Economy or the Banks?

Of greater concern at Davos than “secular stagnation” was the imminent insolvency of some major banks. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in January from Davos, quoted William White, former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, who warned:

The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up.

. . . European banks have already admitted to $1 trillion of non-performing loans: they are heavily exposed to emerging markets and are almost certainly rolling over further bad debts that have never been disclosed.

The European banking system may have to be recapitalized on a scale yet unimagined, and new “bail-in” rules mean that any deposit holder above the guarantee of €100,000 will have to help pay for it. [Emphasis added.]

It seems the War on Cash is being waged, not to stimulate the economy, but to save the lucrative private banking scheme at all costs. Quelling the riots likely to result from the mass confiscation of deposits could also underly the heightened push for a global “security state” and for those “anti-corruption” measures designed to determine where the money is and who owns it.

Postscript: Bail-ins under the new 2016 European Recovery and Resolution Directive began officially today, April 10, in Austria. Ominously, it was in Austria that a major bank bankruptcy triggered the Great Depression in 1931.

 

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Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.

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=By= RT-USA

 

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=By= Will Horner

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]wo phones sit on Anastasia Frantzeskaki’s desk as well as a mobile phone. Occasional confusion arises as to which is ringing at any one time and she switches quickly between one or the other and even at times holds both to her ears, pinned in place by hunched shoulders, as she types rapidly on the computer keyboard. Ms Frantzeskaki, a member of the Greek Federation for Port Employees and the Syriza government’s representative for maritime affairs, is currently a busy woman.

The workers at Athens’ Piraeus Port terminals 2 and 3, which since 2009 have been run privately by the Chinese state-owned company COSCO, have walked out over workplace safety. According to Frantzeskaki, COSCO is refusing to open the gates of the terminals to let in members of the striking trade union ΕΝΕΔΕΠ, which represents dock workers in the terminals it operates.

Frantzeskaki relates rushed messages between the striking workers and the Greek Ministry of Labour in order to persuade the Labour Minister to call COSCO and inform them that, legally, they are obliged to allow the striking workers access to the port. The messages are passed successfully and the gates to terminals 2 and 3 are opened, reluctantly.

COSCO has yet to recognise ΕΝΕΔΕΠ and Frantzeskaki says that its administration of the terminals has led to an increase in workplace accidents. There have been broken hands, severed fingers, one fatal accident and one near-fatal in which a young worker fell from an overcrowded crane cabin on to a cargo container several levels below.

‘They work 12 hours per day and they do not usually get their breaks,’ she adds. ‘They have to beg for their breaks and most of them avoid this because they will have a bad record later on.’

One year ago Frantzeskaki’s party Syriza won huge support amongst the Piraeus dock workers by pledging to halt the privatisation of the remaining port terminals, but she now has to deal with a new reality.

The Greek government’s decision in July to sign a third memorandum steam-rolled that election pledge. The creditors insisted on the privatisation of Greece’s largest port and last week COSCO was confirmed as the preferred investor to buy the Greek state’s remaining 67% share of the port for €368.5 million.

The dock workers feel betrayed by the government’s decision to renege on their promise and have held three strikes in one month. They fear job losses and poor working conditions if COSCO takes over the administration of the rest of the port.

Outside the Greek Ministry of Finance and above the chants of protesting dock workers, Christos Tzimovasilis, a worker from the port talks of the government’s decision with an anger that makes his voice shake as he speaks.

‘It’s the same things the old governments told us: Lies, lies, lies, lies! They don’t want to see us they don’t want to speak to us,’ he says. ‘Syriza told us that they will not sell the port. We had a lot of meetings with the minister and now after the third memorandum they have told us that “we can’t do anything.”‘

A downward slope

The situation is a far cry from the optimism that shot Syriza to power in January 2015. Then they were promising to end austerity, cancel the debt, and halt the selloff of the Greek state’s assets to foreign investors. But the dramatic clash with European creditors in July 2015 caused Syriza to abandon most of its programme in the face of the threat of expulsion from the Eurozone.

The party which once was the champion of Greece’s plentiful protesters now faces its own wave of strikes and demonstrations. Pensioners, dock workers, accountants, lawyers and notaries have all taken strike action and two general strikes have taken place in four months. After a brief hiatus, clouds of tear gas and smoking petrol bombs have returned to the streets of Athens.

In another on-going dispute, Greece’s farmers—another sector of Greek society which overwhelmingly backed Syriza in the elections—have been blocking motorways and border crossings with their tractors for over a month. Last month they heightened the pressure by arriving on mass in Athens, clashing with police and occupying the central Syntagma Square for the weekend.

Syriza’s inability to deliver on its promises is badly hurting its popularity. According to the latest opinion polls the party has dropped into second place with 23.2% support, three points behind the centre-right opposition.

The prospect of an early election, which would be the fifth general election in less than four years, has been put on the table by one cabinet minister, and the leader of the opposition has suggested that he would favour snap elections over a national unity government with Syriza.

But Prof. Michalis Spourdalakis, Dean of the University of Athens’s School of Economics and Political Science, and an executive of the Syriza affiliated Nicos Poulantzas Institute, dismisses the likelihood of early elections.

‘Syriza will be in a difficult position for the time being,’ he explains. ‘That’s the choice Syriza made and it will be difficult. But I do not predict that we are going to have elections. The government doesn’t want elections, just like the opposition doesn’t want elections.’

Instead Prof. Spourdalakis predicts the government will respond to the current challenges with a cabinet reshuffle: ‘They are going to bring some new people into the government to appease the right wing. There’s going to be a reshuffle as soon as we have the [IMF] evaluation.’

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Will Horner is a freelance journalist currently living in Greece. Follow him on twitter at @willhorner

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=By= Gary Brumback

A Ruination

Real America is not the window dressing of a nation posed by her government or by the corporate dominated mass media. Behind that pose is an endangering and endangered “ruination.”

If you follow unbiased accounts of current events and conditions you know I am not exaggerating. For decades I have been keeping tabs on Real America’s conditions and her actions at home and away and they are appalling. To summarize them I compiled and reported elsewhere a list of what I call “sadtistics.” [1] They amount to a pitiful portrait of every element of America that matters, whether domestic (e.g., high rates of homelessness and poverty), environmental (e.g. polluted rivers/reservoirs/drinking water) or international (e.g., ubiquitous military bases and destructive and deadly military and CIA operations around the globe).

According to Charles Derber, a distinguished sociologist, Real America is already a sociopathic society in which there is a predominance of antisocial and harmful behavior by individuals and institutions. [2] Real America is also a nation that always has been led by presidents with psychopathic personalities, if we can believe a host of experts, and I do. [3]

Real America is already a fascist state. It meets all 14 attributes (e.g., controlled mass media, obsession with national security) political scientist Lawrence Brit identified as characteristics of a fascist state [4]

Real America’s Abysmal Future

Rome’s militaristic imperialism lasted over 500 years. But times and conditions are not so forgiving and repairable today. If Real America continues her ruinous course she is unlikely to reach her tri-centennial. Real America could eventually become a failed state, could undergo civil war; could experience escalating blowbacks, and, could irreversibly suffer with the rest of humanity one or more global calamities.

Failed State

While it is not one of over 100 nations on the “failed state index” published by the non-governmental organization, Fund for Peace [5], there is ample evidence from the list of “sadtistics” that America is becoming a failed state or close to becoming one. Once an economic superpower, for instance, Real America is on the way to economic ruin according to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. [6]

Civil War

The conditions and discontent of the working class and the unemployed conceivably could explode into a civil war. The government undoubtedly has a contingency plan to combat armed revolution and is already training for the possibility of it happening. That may be why swarms of Black Hawk helicopters were flying over Minneapolis the summer of 2014. [7]

Any civil war would probably be followed by a dictatorship, which in turn would eventually deteriorate into a state of dystopia and ultimate collapse. That has happened to a few nation states in the history of civilization and there is no guarantee it won’t happen to Real America.

Escalating Blowbacks

Unless Real America’s endless warring and spying ends more blowbacks besides the monumental one in 2001 are inevitable and intuitively obvious. Some very authoritative people agree. Four-star Marine General James Cartwright, for example, a confidante of President Obama for years, warned that U.S. drone strikes “are begging for retaliation,” and Ralph Nader has warned that there must be “smarter foreign policies” or we risk “bigger blowbacks.” [8]

Global Calamities

The adage, “things will have to get worse before they get better” is a fallacious, self defeating and potentially fatal one. It awaits possible refutation by one or more of four global calamities that threaten our species; ecocide, genocide, manufactured plague, and nuclear Armageddon.

1. Ecocide. Mother Nature may have the last laugh, or blowback, if we don’t start placating her instead of plucking her. The planet, offering finite, not infinite resources for human use and having exceeded its carrying capacity for nearly seven billion humans and counting almost exponentially, could very well become unlivable eventually with air that is un-breathable, with soaring temperatures that are unbearable, with water that is undrinkable, with food that is toxic, and with no oil to lubricate and combust. Before those extreme conditions would happen there very likely would be an outbreak of “resource wars.” [9] And we can “depend” on our military being in the thick of it.

2. Genetic Engineering. The military has discovered that it could make its arsenal of biological weapons more effective by genetically altering them. [10] Since there are very few natural pathogens that lend themselves to biological warfare, the genetic engineering of unnatural pathogens is where the military is apparently staking its future in remaining a superpower and threat to uncooperative nations. The military’s secretive research arm, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency), has launched an expensive program called “Living Foundaries,” a misleadingly innocent name if there ever were one. “Think of it,” says journalist and editor Katie Drummond, “like an assembly line, but one that would churn out modified biological matter — man-made organisms — instead of cars or computer parts.” [11] Just think, too, of what might happen if a psychopathic warrior-in-chief, unrestrained military and political advisors, and mad scientists all came together to plot and unleash an explosion of unnatural pathogens on their adversaries. Can’t you just picture it sometime in the future; our one-eyed, two-headed, three-legged species walking down the street, if any streets are left?

3. Manufactured Plague. The recent scare of a spreading Ebola epidemic has heightened concerns about biological warfare and Ebola terrorism in particular.  A journalist writing in Scientific American reports that “National security and infectious disease experts agree the obstacles to a large-scale assault with Ebola are formidable.”  She concludes that “—the possibility of rogue organizations sowing this terror on a similar scale seems largely out of reach.” [12] But the journalist and the experts may be too sanguine. Several readers using their imagination in commenting on the article described some very plausible and easy ways for suicide carriers of Ebola to “carry” it to populated areas.

That journalist, moreover, apparently was not referring to any “rogue organizations” in America deliberately manufacturing a plague in various parts of the world. If the following news item is authentic there should never be any doubt about how fiendish an American regime can be. Dr. Cyril Broderick, a Liberian scientist and a former professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Liberia’s College of Agriculture and Forestry, claims that the US Department of Defense had been funding Ebola trials on humans in Guinea and Sierra Leone just weeks before the Ebola outbreaks there. [13]

4. Nuclear Armageddon. It may someday be a reality, not just a scriptural prophecy. Humanity has had the capacity for total self-destruction ever since Real America introduced nuclear bombs to the world. Armageddon could happen by accident rather than by intent, and there have indeed been several “near misses.” [14] Or it could easily happen if there were escalating blowbacks or confrontations among one or more warriors-in-chief and one of them had the mentality of the late General Curtis Lemay, who seriously proposed dropping “the entire stockpile of atomic bombs in a single massive attack” on the Soviet Union during the cold war. [15]

Nine countries thereabout currently possess nuclear weapons. [16] Not all of them have signed a treaty agreeing to discontinue expanding their nuclear weapon capability. The U.S. has the most adversarial relations with three of those nations, China, North Korean, and Russia. Sometimes the disputes become overheated and high-level warnings by one or both parties are issued. Whether these verbal exchanges would ever culminate in an exchange of nuclear bombs hurling back and forth remains to be seen. Some pundits argue that U.S. militarism is heading it toward WWIII, and an international group of world renowned scientists has moved their “doomsday clock” from five minutes to three minutes until midnight doom. [17]

An Alternative: Alter America

That clock can be stopped. None of the foregoing scenarios is inevitable. A very different “Alter America” without the corpocracy and without the sadtistics can be built. For several years now I have been making detailed proposals toward that end. [18]. Nothing has come of them. Neither though, has much happened of any significance nationwide to begin reversing the sadtistics. And nothing but continued deterioration toward an abysmal future will come out of the general election of 2016; the twin parties are the two sides of the same corrupted coin. Consequently, I will briefly sketch in the remainder of this article a revised initiative, one that I will call here the “Alter America” campaign.

For the campaign to be successful there must be a shared vision; leadership in the form of stewardship; an organized and strategically guided effort with follow through; and a mobilization of public support.

Shared Vision

To Einstein imagination was more important in life than knowledge. Knowledge is limited to an understanding of what already exists. Imagination is an envisioning of an Alter America with the following attributes:

• A democracy, not a corpocracy
• Peacemaking, not war making
• Domestically tranquil, not domestically violent
• Economic justice, not injustice
• Social justice, not injustice
• Environmentally responsible, not irresponsible
• Full employment, not outsourced jobs
• Adequate standard of living, not impoverishment
• Adequate health care coverage for all, not excluding anyone
• Fair, not rigged elections favoring the twin parties
• Viable political alternatives to the twin parties
• Public service politicians, not corporate pawns
• Public services for the public, not privatized services for profit
• Socially responsible, not irresponsible capitalism
• Localized economies, not globalized “free” trade

Stewardship

No more charismatic and domineering leaders. They invariably have led our nation astray. The campaign needs to be steered by a strategic plan and stewards who advise and responsibly manage, not misuse, resources.

Organization

Common goals cannot be achieved without organizing. Proposed here is a campaign “headquarters” and outposts or operating units in either the four geographical regions of the country or the 435 Congressional districts (Ralph Nader has proposed a “watchdog group” in each of those districts). [19]

The headquarters need not be in a physical office since on-line communication ought to be sufficient. The headquarters would consist of a stewardship/advisory council and several task forces. The number of council members should be large enough to have quorums on critical decisions and small enough to be manageable. The council members need to be prominent and influential citizens who are critical of the status quo, who may also have led reform initiatives of one kind or another, and, most importantly, have time to serve pro bono.

There must be scores of such people. The problem is identifying, contacting and persuading them to give pro-bono service. Several potential sources of volunteers are third party and independent candidates who win or lose the 2016 election; prominent investigative journalists, activists and bloggers; and editors of and contributors to the alternative media.  I am deliberately omitting here as a source non-governmental organizations. I have tried futilely in the past to engage them in concerted actions. They are basically indebted to the corpocracy rather than being an effective adversary of it. [20]

The council would set up several specialized task forces to educate and mobilize the public into action; target political, economic and environment obstacles and solutions; and to monitor progress. At the outset an inventory needs to be made of all incidents of opposition against the corpocracy to learn what has failed and why and what has succeeded and can be expanded. [21]

Strategic

A good strategy sets goals and their priorities and determines the way and means to reach those goals. The council would develop the strategic plan. For each goal there would be initiatives to meet it, the resources needed, and a list of criteria for knowing when the goal had been met. The reverse of the sadtistics or the characteristics of the shared vision could be turned into goals and their measureable criteria.

The goals need to be prioritized, putting the most doable and “small wins” first so as to provide encouragement, allow time for more resources (e.g., volunteers) to be added, and to keep the momentum going.

In developing the plan the current status of any initiative anywhere in the regions needs to be assessed. For example, a legislative victory in a state on an environmental issue needs to be known, factored into the plan and possibly modeled.

Progress toward each goal would be monitored by both headquarters and the outposts. The second part of the adage “plan to change and change the plan” needs to be heeded during the monitoring. There probably has never been a plan of any substance or scope that did not have to be changed because of unexpected setbacks or opportunities.

Mobilization

The late anthropologist, Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” [22] Well, I doubt it. I think it will take many millions of citizens to help the campaign turn Real America into Alter America.

There are indeed millions of Americans out there getting shafted, the working class and the unemployed most conspicuously among them. Nearly one-half of all Americans consider themselves to be working class people. [23] Nearly 8 million are unemployed. [24] Two-thirds of Americans reportedly can’t afford a $500 emergency. [25] Understandably, Real America is pockmarked with discontent and reportedly falls behind 14 other nations in a “happiness” index (26).

From time to time these pock marks erupt into issue-specific protest movements that the corpocracy can tolerate. Such movements and all discontented Americans need to be mobilized into a unified coalition that can provide through various means such as petitions, protests and the like intense, unrelenting and massive pressure by millions upon millions of people on the corpocracy’s leaders.

The solution to the lack of any unified coalition can be found in the very meaning of the term “coalition,” a union of separate elements that have some commonality. The commonality in this case is their grievances against America’s corpocracy on a variety of injustices and conditions of life and the environment.

In Closing

If there is any merit to the proposed Alter America campaign the most compelling question becomes how to jump-start it. I am at a loss for an answer. My previous answers and attempts have all failed. I may have some cache within a relatively small professional niche but none outside it. I am easily ignored. [27] I have never been able to coax luminaries into helping me implement my proposals. Now, at my age, I am going to leave the matter entirely up to others if any are interested.

 

Notes

 

1. See, Brumback, GB. America’s Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying, Create Space Independent Platform, 2015, Chapter 8.
2.  Derber, C. Sociopathic Society: A People’s Sociology of the United States. Paradigm Publishers, 2013.
3. See, e.g., Howard, J. Psychopathic Personality Traits Linked With U.S. Presidential Success, Psychologists Suggest. The Huffington Post, September 13, 2012; Frank, J. Bush on the Couch. Harper Perennial, 2005; and also, Frank, J. Obama on the Couch. Free Press, 2012.
4.  Brit, L. The 14 Characteristics of Fascism.  Free Inquiry Magazine, Spring, 2003.
5. Fund for Peace. The Failed State Index. http://www.ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2013-sortable.
6.  Roberts, P.C. Ruin Is Our Future. OpEdNews, January 16, 2015.
7.  Rupar, A. Downtown Minneapolis Invaded by Black Hawk Helicopters. The ]Minneapolis City Pages, August 28, 2012.
8.  Dreyfuss, B. General Cartwright Warns of Drone ‘Blowback. The Nation, March 22, 2013; Nader, R. Smarter Foreign Policies or Bigger Blowbacks? Dissident Voice, July 10, 2015.
9.  Klare, M. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. Holt Paperbacks, 2002.
10. Emerging Technologies: Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons: A Report by the Sunshine Project and Third World Network, 2004.
11. Drummond, K. DARPA, Venter Launch Assembly Line for Genetic Engineering. WIRED, May 22, 2012.
12. Maron, DF. Weaponized Ebola: Is It Really a Bioterror Threat? Scientific American, September 25, 2014.
13. Guzman, TA. U.S. is Responsible for the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa: Liberian Scientist Global Research, October 17, 2014. See also, Roberts, PC.  The Entry of Ebola into the US Has Hallmarks of a Planned Happening. OpEdNews, October 21, 2014.
14. Schlosser, E. Command and Control.  Penguin Press, 2013.
15. Lashmar, P. Stranger than “Strangelove:” A General’s Forays into the Nuclear Zone. Washington Post, July 3, 1994.
16. Kimball, D. Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance. Arms Control Association, June 23, 2014.
17. Boyle, FA. American Militarism Threatening To Set Off World War III.  OpEdNews, December, 12, 2012. See also: “Chossudovsky, M. Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War. E-Book Series No. 1.0, Global Research Publishers, 2011; Roberts, PC. Pushing Toward the Final War. OpEdNews, March 28, 2014; and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Timeline: It is 3 Minutes to Midnight.  www.thebulletin.org/timeline, January 25, 2015.
18. See, e.g., Brumback, GB. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy In the Lurch. Arthor House, 2011; also, Brumback, op. cit., 2015.
19. Nader, R. Enlist the Enlightened Super-Rich! HuffPostPolitics, March, 29, 2013.
20. See, e.g., my articles, Tyranny’s Hush Money. OpEdNews, September 28; The Greanville Post, September 29, 2013; and, Do Antiwar Organizations Depend on War? Dissident Voice, October 22, 2012.
21. An excellent source for compiling and categorizing daily news of opposition against the corpocracy is the PopularResistance.Org Daily Digest at www.popularresistance.org.
22. Lutkehaus, N.C., Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon, Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 261.
23. Newport, F. APRIL 28, 2015 Fewer Americans Identify as Middle Class in Recent Years,

Gallop Poll. http://www.gallup.com/poll/182918/fewer-americans-identify-middle-class-recent-years.aspx, April 28, 2015.

24. Bureau of Labor Statistics. www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf, March 4, 2016.
25. O’Connell, B. Two-Thirds Of Americans Can’t Afford A $500 Emergency. Popular Resistance Newsletter, January 23, 2016.
26. Newsday Staff. World’s Happiest Countries Ranked in Report. Newsday, December 23, 2015.

27. Here’s an example of my insignificance. I had dedicated one of my books [18, 2011] to Ralph Nader and sent a complimentary copy to him through his aid who promised to give it to Mr. Nader. Five years later and I have never heard from him. Rather than being peeved though, I empathize with him. He has encountered more than his share of apathy over the years.

 

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Gary Brumback is a retired organizational psychologist, pacifist, activist, and author.

 

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WITNESS TO HISTORY
CALEB MAUPIN

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The author or authors of the letter, who signed it simply as “Loyal Communist Party Members,” have so far remained anonymous. While very little information about the letter has been discovered, one thing is overwhelmingly clear: the western press loves it. After columnist Jia Jia was briefly detained and released, the western press speculated, without any evidence, that this was somehow related to this mysterious publication.

As of March 28th, the western press continues to talk about the letter and promote unsubstantiated claims about arrests related to it. Wen Yunchao, a professional anti-China dissident based in New York City, claims his family was arrested in retaliation for the letter. The US press is repeating Wen’s claim almost as if it is a known fact, despite the reality that neither Wen Yunchao nor his arrested relatives are members of the Communist Party.

This letter could represent as few as a single party cadre, assuming its author or authors are even part of the 86 million-strong Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As an organization following the “party of a new type” model pioneered by Lenin, the CCP presents a unified public face and keeps its arguments internal. Despite the Party’s reputation for iron-clad discipline, any organization with 86 million members can be expected to have, at least, a few internal disagreements.

Criticism of the Chinese government is coming from many different places. While China’s economy has rapidly grown in the last several decades and living standards are improving across the country, this prosperity has not been evenly distributed. While the wages of industrial workers have substantially increased in the last decade, a small number of Chinese people have become millionaires and billionaires. A large number of Chinese Communists feel that the market sector has too much power and has undermined the revolution. President Xi’s crackdown on corruption, which is highly popular among the Chinese people, is driven by widespread frustration with the rise of economic inequality.

While the millions of Chinese “hardliners” and “neo-Maoists” have been the subject of a few articles in “The Economist,” and portrayed as dangerous in the New York Times, their critiques of Chinese leadership for not being revolutionary or communist enough have never received anything near the amount of publicity given to this mysterious letter.

In addition to the anonymous letter, the western media has also magnified the grievances of employers and newly wealthy people. A number of Chinese capitalists think the government is far too friendly to the working class. The March 10th edition of the Wall Street Journal quoted a real-estate chairman as saying: “China, as a developing country, has adopted labor laws of a European welfare state… businesses have been hurt.”

What Has Xi Done?

[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]um Brands is a fast-food conglomerate based in the US state of Kentucky. The reality of China’s market reforms was shown to world when Yum subsidiaries Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Pizza Hut first set-up shop in Beijing during the 1980s. The owners of the Kentucky-based corporation are announcing that they now intend to sell off the Chinese wing of their business. Why? Reports cite “turbulence stemming from food safety scares.”

“Food Safety Scares” is an unmistakable reference to the crackdown on Yum’s Chinese meat supplier, OSI, which made global headlines. The Chicago-based meat corporation, which partners with Yum Brands in distributing meat to its restaurants across the Chinese mainland, was caught intentionally serving rotten meat in 2014. Leaders of OSI were dragged out of their offices in handcuffs, and some executive officers are now in prison for endangering the public.

The crackdown on OSI has become symbolic of Xi’s reorientation toward foreign capitalists. In the USA, officials who serve rotten meat might be forced settle a class action lawsuit, or perhaps pay a heavy punitive fine. But in Xi Jinping’s China, wealthy corporate executives and business owners are not insulated from the rule of law.

Immediately after taking office in 2013, one of Xi Jinping’s first moves was to arrest the wealthy mine owner Lui Han, who had been operating a mafia-like cartel, running casinos and illegal firearms while assassinating business rivals. When Lui Han and four of his collaborators were executed on February 9th, 2015, the world was reminded that in one country, even billionaires can be subject to the death penalty.

Xi’s “Mass Line” campaign has not only targeted corporate executives, but also CCP members who take bribes and enable corporate malfeasance. Government media has been essential in Xi’s campaign. Investigative journalists on state TV in Shanghai  were the ones who caught OSI serving rotten meat and exposed this scandal to the public. Party members who have been caught engaging in corruption are forced to apologize on national television, a revival of the “Jiantao Culture” that defined the Cultural Revolution.

The letter – so widely celebrated by in western media – is interpreted by the BBC as condemning Xi’s visits to Chinese media in February, in which he emphasized that “their primary duty was to obey the party.” He has also passed a new law restricting the activities of NGOs known to collaborate with the National Endowment for Democracy and the CIA.

Wall Street Fears ‘Cult of Personality’

[dropcap]X[/dropcap]i Jinping’s presidency has been a turning point in China, with the market sector facing far more regulation and discipline from the state. Much of the criticism of Xi Jinping invokes the phrase “cult of personality,” a term with loaded in history in the world communist movement.

In 1956, Khrushchev attacked Joseph Stalin, the recently deceased leader of the Soviet Union. The famous “secret speech” was applauded in the western press, as were his attempts to appease the United States and de-centralize the Soviet economy. It was in Khruschev’s 1956 denunciations of Stalin that the now widely used phrase “cult of personality” originated.

When Khruschev denounced Stalin’s “cult of personality,” he was denouncing what was an apparent source of Stalin’s political strength. From 1928 until 1954, Stalin was put forward as the public face of Soviet Communism. Representing the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Stalin was presented in Soviet media as a kind of the fatherly figure who carefully articulated the party’s goals and policies while charismatically inspiring people to carry them out.

In reality, Stalin was not a “dictator” in the way the term is commonly understood. The popular definition of the term is a misconception. At no point in history has one person ever had the time or ability to make every decision in running the affairs of any country. In no society, not even absolute monarchies, does any individual hold absolute power. Under all systems, leaders and ‘heads of state’ function as de facto representatives of a much larger faction or clique.

As a representative of the leadership of the Soviet state, Stalin excelled in tasks the party assigned him. The words he said on the radio and wrote in newspapers were vetted, trusted and obeyed. Pushed forward by Stalin’s “cult of personality” in the 1930s, the Soviet people raised their country to the status of an industrial world power. What was previously a primitive agrarian society became fully electrified, with running water and mechanized agriculture. In the 1940s, the Soviet people carried out world-renowned acts of bravery while defeating fascism. By the 1950s, the children of illiterate peasants had been educated in newly constructed universities, and grown up to become the scientists and engineers behind Sputnik.

Though Stalin’s “cult of personality’ was quite effective, it was something that many within the party bureaucracy disliked. It had the effect of establishing and enforcing almost a single, unified policy on the country. It removed the “wiggle room” and “gray area” in which gatekeepers, power-hungry bureaucrats, and cynically corrupt elements in any system can grow and thrive. Because of Stalin’s ability to mobilize the public, figures within the party bureaucracy were not free to exploit their privilege, or to flaunt the anti-capitalist goals of the revolution. The overwhelming majority of the individuals arrested and imprisoned during the so-called “Great Terror” of 1937 were not ordinary workers, but party bureaucrats.

While the Soviet Union was certainly much less “free” and “open” during the Stalin period, it was also far more impenetrable. The Soviet Union was brought down in 1991, after many decades of “de-Stalinization”; “openness” and “reform” had created a space for allies of western capitalism. As Xi tries to move China in a more anti-capitalist direction, the western press invokes Stalin and “Cult of Personality” rhetoric to attack him.

Much like the US right wing champions “state’s rights” as a way to weaken the federal civil rights legislation and protections for organized labor, the right wing of Chinese communism upholds “collective leadership” for the same reason. “Collective Leadership” is protecting the western capitalists and Chinese billionaires from feeling the brunt of a powerful state capable of controlling them and mobilizing the population.

Conspiracy Against ‘The Big Boss?’

[dropcap]X[/dropcap]i Jinping has begun to build a special relationship with the Chinese public. He is affectionately known as “The Big Boss”, and many see him as whipping the country back into shape and forcing private capitalists to obey the overall economic vision. A book of Xi’s speeches entitled “The Governance of China” has been published and widely circulated. Xi’s words are frequently quoted in the press, not just as the words of a political leader, but as ideological guidance. Not since Deng Xiaoping, Zhou En Lai or Mao Zedong has a living figure been treated with such reverence in China.

The anonymous letter, which is almost celebrated in the western press, may be completely irrelevant. The western press could be blowing it up into something far bigger than it is, hoping to discredit Xi and give the impression that he is unpopular.

However, the letter could also indicate something more sinister. It is highly possible that Wall Street and the state department are maneuvering within China to depose Xi, and perhaps have allies within the party. It would certainly be to the benefit of many rich people in both the United States and China to replace Xi with more market-oriented leadership.

The letter and its trumpeting in western media could be a kind of call to rally the rightist factions, setting the stage for an attempted coup d’etat or intense confrontation within the party structure.

Chinese Communism is now facing many challenges, both on the international stage and among the Chinese people. As Xi continues to fight and restrict capitalism, strengthening “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” – and becoming more popular for doing so – the reaction from the rich and powerful is likely to grow more intense. The media fixation with the mysterious letter, the recent confrontations in the South China Sea, both coinciding with anti-China tirades from US Presidential candidates, all point to sharp confrontations ahead.

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Cross-posted with New Eastern Outlook

Of Related Interest
Following on the heels of Mr. Maupin’s article is this piece at The Economist: Beware the Cult of Xi.

 

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Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience. 

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.

---

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