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Just when you thought Obama might be the best ever rope-a-dope President this country has ever had, he still has the knack of making cabinet selections that irk the Democratic base to no end. Although comparisons to the Energizer Bunny might be more appropriate — given his ability to keep on ticking, Obama’s latest flirtation – and now fatal, prospective pick of Larry Summers as the next Federal Reserve Chairman is only the latest heresy. Here’s the rap sheet on Larry:

1. Summers rubs a lot of people the wrong way (and Bernanke doesn’t/didn’t). People want dependable and …

Op-Edge RT — It is rich, stunningly beautiful, and it has the highest UN Human Development Index of the entire continent of Africa.
Its streets and roads are perfectly paved, and its gardens are blooming with local and imported flowers; its primary and secondary education (10 years of schooling) is compulsory and free, and so is the medical care, including all treatments and medicine.And Seychelles is what could be described as a welfare state, with a guaranteed survival minimum wage, much higher than the average wage in most of the “star capitalist countries” (if one adopts the terminology of the Western …

After reviewing Julian Assange’s 2012 book, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet for h+ Magazine, I feel compelled to swim against the tide by illustrating an optimistic alternative to the techno-dystopia identified by Assange. The idea of the death of “modern states” may elicit dread in some, and delight in others. For some thinkers, it is a necessity of history, to be neither embraced nor protested. For me, it is a sign of social progress like the end of de jure racial segregation.

The dire prediction of Julian Assange is the emergence of a totalitarian surveillance regime or regimes with global scope. …

In recent  decades, there has been a strongly asserted argument on African countries which are struggling economically and politically. The argument is that their way out of the vicious circle of poverty, debt and dependency is in the ‘market’ way. It is also important for their way out of political instability. ‘Privatize your state’s assets,’ they say, and make your state agencies and budgets smaller and your private sector bigger; the market will meet your development needs if you allow it to grow and take over the economy; etc. This argument is generally supported, in word and deed, by most …

Countries’ economies are driven by an obsession, continuous growth in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  The absurdity of this becomes clear with a little bit of thought.  Never-ending growth that relies on extracting resources from a finite planet is, of course, a mathematical impossibility, but well before we reach that point, this obsession will render our planet uninhabitable.

If our concern is the well-being of our citizens, is GDP the appropriate indicator of that?  GDP is defined as the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time.” …

During the September 23, 2013 meeting of the Bennington Select Board an order was given to pull the plug. Given the order, the CatamountAccess-TV cameraman immediately obeyed. Video and audio of the live broadcast suddenly disappeared from thousands of television screens. This occurred during an enthusiastic discussion between a citizen and a member of the Select Board.

That there was a blackout in one small Vermont town is not really important. If the blackout had been caused by a power outage, no one would care.

The important point is that government — at all levels, local, state, and federal — is out of control. Another important point …

California leads the way to a fossil fuel-less world.

PRESS RELEASE: NIPTON, Calif. – Sept. 24, 2013 – “Today it was announced that the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System produced its first output of energy when unit 1 station was synchronized to the power grid for the first time (Brightsource Energy, Inc.)”

Voilà! Thinking ‘outside of the box’ turns energetic as the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), owned by NRG Energy, Google, and BrightSource Energy, brightens up more than 140,000 homes in California, and momentously, shows the world how to make dry, barren desert “work for humanity.”

ISEGS is located …

Vermont city to consider protecting neighbors from Air Force F-35 attack

With Vermont’s highest elected officials still deep in Defense Dept. denial over the disaster that is the Air Force’s F-35 strike fighter, a local city council threatens to bring some military sanity to Vermont (but nowhere else) by exercising its landlord right to reject as a tenant a weapon of mass destruction that will wreak havoc on the local neighborhood.

This initiative comes from four members of Vermont’s Progressive Party on the Burlington City Council, who plan to introduce a resolution on October 7 effectively barring the F-35 from being …

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
— George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950)

Since the US-UK project on Syria is back, invoking Syria’s President as Hitler – as previously, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Colonel Gaddafi in earlier “Crusades” – it is instructive to note how the ludicrous claims mirror the strategy of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s  Reich Minister of Propaganda.

Goebbel’s was a master of Hitler’s instruction in Mein Kampf.

If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one and if you tell if often enough, people will begin to …

(Full article …)

First thoughts on the electoral victory of the ruling oligarchy.

Appalling victory

From a social revolutionary point of view, Merkel’s sweeping electoral success is abominable. It follows, however, a political-cultural pattern of the German middle classes whose culture dominates the broad masses and therefore also the electorate. It was all about to continue the alleged German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) contrasting with the catastrophe the south is suffering of. The middle classes seek stability and want to avoid taking risk for the weaker eurozone states. But ultimately they do accept measures to prevent the euro crisis from erupting again. Further haircuts for Greece …

We support the UN veto, except when used against something we want. That seems to be Ottawa’s position towards the ability of the five permanent members of the Security Council to veto resolutions.

Recently Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Minister John Baird criticized the possibility of Russia vetoing a UN resolution authorizing military action in Syria. In an article titled “Putin shouldn’t have veto on world security” the National Post quoted Harper saying, “we are simply not prepared to accept the idea that there is a Russian veto over all of our actions.” For his part, Baird mocked the idea …

Why do disaster movies always show the culminating disastrous event happening in slow motion? Two reasons, I would say: first because otherwise the fictional cataclysm happens too quickly for cognitive processing, so there’s no real impact on the audience’s psyche. If a conventional disaster movie fails to generate rank emotion, then it has failed in its narrative function. (And that’s important chiefly because it makes its basic function – making a buck – a lot more difficult to accomplish.)

But there’s also a less opportunistic process at work: This is how life-threatening disasters can actually feel to those who experience them: …

How many people can look back on their lives and say they have done something significant for the betterment of society? Oftentimes selfless and noble actions of individuals go unrecognized. There are always those who act quietly behind the scenes at crucial turning points in history. Such a person is Sarah Harrison.

After Edward Snowden came forward as the source behind the release of the NSA classified documents and the Obama Administration’s aggressive international manhunt began, Harrison, a 31 year old British native emerged on the world stage as the mysterious woman who accompanied this high profile whistleblower in his quest …

It’s an old joke, but it bears repeating: An Oxford professor meets a former student on the street. He asks what he’s been up to lately. The student tells him he’s working on a doctoral thesis about the survival of the class system in the United States. The professor expresses surprise. “I didn’t think there was a class system in the United States,” he says. “Nobody does,” the student replies. “That’s how it survives.”

The widening chasm between the middle-class and the rich, coupled with the on-going, systematic assault on organized labor, isn’t simply the result of bad luck. …

Once again Conservative ideology has trumped what’s right.

Prominent Toronto filmmaker/professor John Greyson and London, Ontario, physician/professor Tarek Loubani have been locked up in an Egyptian jail for nearly 40 days. After a prosecutor recently extended their detention by 15 days, these two courageous individuals launched a hunger strike demanding their release or to at least be allowed two hours a day in the fenced-in prison yard.

Some 140,000 people, including filmmakers Ben Affleck, Danny Glover, and Atom Egoyan, have called on Egypt’s military rulers to release the two men. Despite this outpouring of support, the Conservatives have done as little to …