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A Rightwing Insurrection Is Usurping Our Democracy |
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Tuesday, 02 October 2012 09:01 |
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Intro: "For 30 years big business, neoliberal thinktanks and the media have colluded to capture our political system. They're winning."
After contemplating a military coup Sir James Goldsmith went on to form the Referendum party, slogan: Let the People Decide. (photo: Jacqueline Arzt/AP)
A Rightwing Insurrection Is Usurping Our Democracy
By George Monbiot, Guardian UK
02 October 12
For 30 years big business, neoliberal thinktanks and the media have colluded to capture our political system. They're winning
 o subvert means to turn from below. We need a new word, which means to turn from above. The primary threat to the democratic state and its functions comes not from mob rule or leftwing insurrection, but from the very rich and the corporations they run.
These forces have refined their assault on democratic governance. There is no need - as Sir James Goldsmith, John Aspinall, Lord Lucan and others did in the 1970s - to discuss the possibility of launching a military coup against the British government: the plutocrats have other means of turning it.
Over the last few years I have been trying better to understand how the demands of big business and the very rich are projected into policymaking, and I have come to see the neoliberal thinktanks as central to this process. These are the groups which claim to champion the free market but whose proposals often look like a prescription for corporate power.
David Frum, formerly a fellow of one of these thinktanks - the American Enterprise Institute - argues that they "increasingly function as public relations agencies". But in this case, we don't know who the clients are. As the corporate lobbyist Jeff Judson enthuses, they are "virtually immune to retribution … the identity of donors to thinktanks is protected from involuntary disclosure". A consultant who worked for the billionaire Koch brothers claims that they see the funding of thinktanks "as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves".
This much I knew, but over recent days I've learned a lot more. In Think Tank: the story of the Adam Smith Institute, the institute's founder, Madsen Pirie, provides an unintentional but invaluable guide to how power in Britain really works.
Soon after it was founded (in 1977), the institute approached "all the top companies". About 20 of them responded by sending cheques. Its most enthusiastic supporter was the coup plotter James Goldsmith, one of the most unscrupulous asset strippers of that time. Before making one of his donations, Pirie writes, "he listened carefully as we outlined the project, his eyes twinkling at the audacity and scale of it. Then he had his secretary hand us a cheque for £12,000 as we left".
From the beginning, senior journalists on the Telegraph, the Times and the Daily Mail volunteered their services. Every Saturday, in a wine bar called the Cork and Bottle, Margaret Thatcher's researchers and leader writers and columnists from the Times and Telegraph met staff from the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs. Over lunch, they "planned strategy for the week ahead". These meetings would "co-ordinate our activities to make us more effective collectively". The journalists would then turn the institute's proposals into leader columns while the researchers buttonholed shadow ministers.
Soon, Pirie says, the Mail began running a supportive article on the leader page every time the Adam Smith Institute published something. The paper's then editor, David English, oversaw these articles himself, and helped the institute to refine its arguments.
As Pirie's history progresses, all references to funding cease. Apart from tickets donated by British Airways, no sponsors are named beyond the early 1980s. While the institute claims to campaign on behalf of "the open society", it is secretive and unaccountable. Today it flatly refuses to say who funds it.
Pirie describes how his group devised and refined many of the headline policies implemented by Thatcher and John Major. He claims (and produces plenty of evidence to support it) either full or partial credit for the privatisation of the railways and other industries, for the contracting-out of public services to private companies, for the poll tax, the sale of council houses, the internal markets in education and health, the establishment of private prisons, GP fundholding and commissioning and, later, for George Osborne's tax policies.
Pirie also wrote the manifesto of the neoliberal wing of Thatcher's government, No Turning Back. Officially, the authors of the document - which was published by the party - were MPs such as Michael Forsyth, Peter Lilley and Michael Portillo. "Nowhere was there any mention of, or connection to, myself or the Adam Smith Institute. They paid me my £1,000 and we were all happy." Pirie's report became the central charter of the doctrine we now call Thatcherism, whose praetorian guard called itself the No Turning Back group.
Today's parliamentary equivalent is the Free Enterprise Group. Five of its members have just published a similar manifesto, Britannia Unchained. Echoing the narrative developed by the neoliberal thinktanks, they blame welfare payments and the mindset of the poor for the UK's appalling record on social mobility, suggest the need for much greater cuts and hint that the answer is the comprehensive demolition of the welfare system. It is subtler than No Turning Back. There are fewer of the direct demands and terrifying plans: these movements have learned something in the past 30 years.
It is hard to think how their manifesto could have been better tailored to corporate interests. As if to reinforce the point, the cover carries a quote from Sir Terry Leahy, until recently the chief executive of Tesco: "The path is clear. We have to be brave enough to take it."
Once more the press has taken up the call. In the approach to publication, the Telegraph commissioned a series of articles called Britain Unleashed, promoting the same dreary agenda of less tax for the rich, less help for the poor and less regulation for business. Another article in the same paper, published a fortnight ago by its head of personal finance Ian Cowie, proposes that there be no representation without taxation. People who don't pay enough income tax shouldn't be allowed to vote.
I see these people as rightwing vanguardists, mobilising first to break and then to capture a political system that is meant to belong to all of us. Like Marxist insurrectionaries, they often talk about smashing things, about "creative destruction", about the breaking of chains and the slipping of leashes. But in this case they appear to be trying to free the rich from the constraints of democracy. And at the moment they are winning.
George Monbiot is the author of the bestselling books "The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order" and "Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain," as well as the investigative travel books "Poisoned Arrows," "Amazon Watershed" and "No Man's Land." His latest books are "Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning" and "Bring on the Apocalypse."
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Noam Chomsky On How Progressives Should Approach Election 2012 |
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Monday, 01 October 2012 14:59 |
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Filipowicz writes: "Professor Chomsky said he will probably vote for Jill Stein for president in effort to push a genuine electoral alternative."
Noam Chomsky has been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. (photo: Ben Rusk/flickr)
Noam Chomsky On How Progressives Should Approach Election 2012
By Matthew Filipowicz, AlterNet
01 October 12
 ecently, on the Matthew Filipowicz Show, I had the privilege of speaking to Professor Noam Chomsky at his MIT office. We discussed many aspects of activism including how he felt activists and progressives should approach two party politics and specifically the 2012 election.
Chomsky stated "I think they should spend five or ten minutes on it. Seeing if there's a point in taking part in the carefully orchestrated electoral extravaganza. And my own judgment, for what it's worth, is, yes, there's a point to taking a part."
Professor Chomsky said he will probably vote for Jill Stein for president in effort to push a genuine electoral alternative, but that if he lived in a swing state he would vote "against Romney-Ryan, which means voting for Obama."
We also discussed the relationship between tactics and action. Speaking about Occupy Wall Street's public encampments, Professor Chomsky, who supported OWS and authored a book on the subject, said such tactics have a half-life and that when one tactic stops working, activists have a responsibility to try something else.
You can listen to the audio of the complete interview below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OL8_8NWeM0
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Ronald Reagan, Republicans, and Nuclear Weapons |
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Monday, 01 October 2012 14:41 |
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Granoff writes: "The current Republicans running for offices, both high and low, have forgotten this legacy of success in making America and the world safer."
Ronald Reagan once said that nuclear weapons were 'totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.' (photo: Bettmann/Corbis)
Ronald Reagan, Republicans, and Nuclear Weapons
By Jonathan Granoff, Reader Supported News
01 October 12
 istening to today's candidates --at any level -- one would not know that, historically, Republicans have been instrumental in advancing arms control, nonproliferation, and nuclear disarmament. That is, until the recent Bush administration. In fact, active Republican leadership was essential in obtaining the Biological Weapons Convention, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and the Chemical Weapons Convention, to name but a few. However, the current Republicans running for offices, both high and low, have forgotten this legacy of success in making America and the world safer based on the US value of the rule of law.
Of serious concern is that the men who brought us the eight-year anomaly of consistent failure now comprise Romney's foreign policy team. Out of 24 advisers, 17 played significant roles in the Bush administration and contributed to an unmatched history of unprecedented catastrophes. These guys include Max Boot, John Bolton, Elliot Cohen, and Cofer Black. They constructed an era defined by lies to justify a war in Iraq, a distortion of American values that rationalized torture, the execution of an aggressive war of choice rather than necessity, degradation of the international legal order which the United States had spent decades to establish, and the execution of costly military ventures based on money borrowed from China.
Perhaps the most audacious whopper is that of many Republican candidates who claim the legacy of President Ronald Reagan and do not espouse his policies. In order to set the record straight, and in the hopes that some Republicans will indeed take up the Reagan mantle, or that some "mainstream" media will challenge candidates who claim Reagan as their model, I have gathered some quotes of his on the abolition of nuclear weapons. It should be clear that he was not just concerned that bad people or countries should have the weapon, but that the weapon itself is bad.
"We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth." -- Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, 1985
"Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war." -- Ronald Reagan, from "Reagan's Secret War" by Martin and Annelise Anderson
"A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?" -- Ronald Reagan, 1984 State of the Union
"I know that there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war... To those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say, 'I'm with you.'" Lettow also quotes Reagan as stating, "My dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth." -- Ronald Reagan, from "Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Weapons," by Paul Lettow
"I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation and on down to succeeding generations with this kind of weapon on both sides poised at each other without someday, some fool, or some maniac, or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us. And I just think of what a sigh of relief would go up from everyone on this Earth if someday-- and this is what I have-- my hope, way in the back of my head-- is that if we start down the road to reduction, maybe one day in doing that, somebody will say, 'Why not all the way? Let's get rid of all these things'." -- Ronald Reagan, May 16, 1983
"My central arms control objective has been to reduce substantially and ultimately to eliminate nuclear weapons and rid the world of the nuclear threat. The prevention of the spread of nuclear explosives is to additional countries is an indispensable part of our efforts to meet this objective. I intend to continue my pursuit of this goal with untiring determination and a profound sense of personal commitment." -- Ronald Reagan, March 25, 1988, Message to Congress on the NPT
"It is my fervent goal and hope... that we will someday no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth." -- Ronald Reagan, Oct. 20, 1986
Ronald Reagan once said that nuclear weapons were "totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization." -- Ronald Reagan as quoted by "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," By George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn
"Most of the people have been hearing in political dialog from one side, since we've been here in the three-and-a-half years, that I somehow have an itchy finger and am going to blow up the world. And that has all been duly reported by so many of you that that is the tone that the people have been getting. And it doesn't do me any good to tell you that, having seen four wars in my lifetime, I don't know of anyone, in or out of government, that is more determinedly seeking peace than I am. And my goal is the total elimination of nuclear weapons. If we can get those fellows back to the table and get them to start down that road of mutual reduction, then they might find out what common sense it would mean to eliminate them." -- Ronald Reagan, Press Conference, May 22, 1984
"As I have indicated in previous statements to the Congress, my central arms control objective has been to reduce substantially and ultimately to eliminate nuclear weapons and rid the world of the nuclear threat. The prevention of the spread of nuclear explosives to additional countries is an indispensable part of our efforts to meet this objective. I intend to continue my pursuit of this goal with untiring determination and a profound sense of personal commitment." -- Ronald Reagan, March 25, 1988
"For the eight years I was president I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my mind." -- Ronald Reagan's memoirs, "An American Life"
As these quotations make abundantly clear, President Ronald Reagan was for the total global elimination of nuclear weapons and not for their improvement and indefinite retention by any country. He saw this as a moral imperative and a U.S. and international security necessity. Those who claim otherwise are misrepresenting him and what he passionately advocated.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Manifesto For the Entitled |
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Monday, 01 October 2012 14:36 |
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Pearlstein writes: "I am the misunderstood superhero of American capitalism, single-handedly creating wealth and prosperity."
File photo, the American flag with corporate logos. (photo: Adbusters)
Manifesto For the Entitled
By Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post
01 October 12
 am a corporate chief executive.
I am a business owner.
I am a private-equity fund manager.
I am the misunderstood superhero of American capitalism, single-handedly creating wealth and prosperity despite all the obstacles put in my way by employees, government and the media.
I am a job creator and I am entitled.
I am entitled to complain about the economy even when my stock price, my portfolio and my profits are at record levels.
I am entitled to a healthy and well-educated workforce, a modern and efficient transportation system and protection for my person and property, just as I am entitled to demonize the government workers who provide them.
I am entitled to complain bitterly about taxes that are always too high, even when they are at record lows.
I am entitled to a judicial system that efficiently enforces contracts and legal obligations on customers, suppliers and employees but does not afford them the same right in return.
I am entitled to complain about the poor quality of service provided by government agencies even as I leave my own customers on hold for 35 minutes while repeatedly telling them how important their call is.
I am entitled to a compensation package that is above average for my company's size and industry, reflecting the company's aspirations if not its performance.
I am entitled to have the company pay for breakfasts and lunches, a luxury car and private jet travel, my country club dues and home security systems, box seats to all major sporting events, a pension equal to my current salary and a full package of insurance - life, health, dental, disability and long-term care - through retirement.
I am entitled to have my earned income taxed as capital gains and my investment income taxed at the lowest rate anywhere in the world - or not at all.
I am entitled to inside information and favorable investment opportunities not available to ordinary investors. I am entitled to brag about my investment returns.
I am entitled to pass on my accumulated wealth tax-free to heirs, who in turn, are entitled to claim that they earned everything they have.
I am entitled to use unlimited amounts of my own or company funds to buy elections without disclosing such expenditures to shareholders or the public.
I am entitled to use company funds to burnish my own charitable reputation.
I am entitled to provide political support to radical, uncompromising politicians and then complain about how dysfunctional Washington has become.
Although I have no clue how government works, I am entitled to be consulted on public policy by politicians and bureaucrats who have no clue about how business works.
I am entitled to publicly criticize the president and members of Congress, who are not entitled to criticize me.
I am entitled to fire any worker who tries to organize a union. I am entitled to break any existing union by moving, or threatening to move, operations to a union-hostile environment.
I am entitled to a duty of care and loyalty from employees and investors who are owed no such duty in return.
I am entitled to operate my business free of all government regulations other than those written or approved by my industry.
I am entitled to load companies up with debt in order to pay myself and investors big dividends - and then blame any bankruptcy on over-compensated workers.
I am entitled to contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, loans and even bailouts from government, even as I complain about job-killing government budget deficits.
I am entitled to federal entitlement reform.
I am entitled to take credit for all the jobs I create while ignoring any jobs I destroy.
I am entitled to claim credit for all the profits made during a booming economy while blaming losses or setbacks on adverse market or economic conditions.
I am entitled to deny knowledge or responsibility for any controversial decisions made after my departure from the company, even while profiting from such decisions if they enhance shareholder value.
I am entitled to all the rights and privileges of running an American company, but owe no loyalty to American workers or taxpayers.
I am entitled to confidential information about my employees and customers while refusing even to list the company's phone number on its Web site.
I am entitled to be treated with deference and respect by investors I mislead, customers I bamboozle, directors I manipulate and employees I view as expendable.
I am entitled to be lionized in the media without answering any questions from reporters.
I am entitled to the VIP entrance.
I am entitled to everything I have and more that I still deserve.
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othing makes the 1% angrier than any suggestion that anyone else helped them acquire their beautiful, beautiful cash.
