Corporatism

Why Has Classical Capitalism Devolved To Crony-Capitalism?

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CharlesHughSmithHere is the quote that perfectly captures our era: “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” (John Kenneth Galbraith) The trick, of course, is to mask the unspoken second half of of that statement: everybody else gets destroyed along with the Elites when the system implodes.

Union pension funds: toast. Government employees’ pension funds: toast. 401Ks: toast. IRAs: toast. The echo-bubble in housing: toast. The Fed’s favorite PR cover to cloak the enrichment of their financier cronies, the wealth effect:toast.

The primary tool the Elites use to mask the risk of complete destruction is magical thinking–specifically, that “given enough time, the system will heal itself.”

That’s rich, considering that the Elites’ primary tool of avoiding destruction is crippling the market’s self-healing immune system: price discovery. Thanks to ceaseless interventions by central banks, the price discovery mechanism has been shattered: want to know the price of risk? It’s near-zero. Yield on sovereign bonds? Near-zero. And so on. Continue reading →

How Fluoride Affects Consciousness And The Will To Act

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“. . . it is not only that fluoride consumption has adverse health effects and reputedly makes people easier to control (as the Nazi’s believed), but the very spiritual essence of who we are, our consciousness, can be hindered from manifesting in our lives.” J Resnick

WaterFluorideRecent research has brought the controversial practice of water fluoridation back into the spotlight, revealing links between water fluoridation and brain disorders, particularly in regard to its effect on children.

Troublingly, the report found that side-effects do not only come from direct ingestion by children, but also from higher levels of chemicals such as fluoride in expectant mothers’ blood and urine, which was linked to brain disorders and lower IQs in their children. In many cases, the changes triggered can be permanent. This evidence flies right in the face of spurious claims by skeptics that ingestion of fluoride in low concentrations has no harmful effects on our health.

Is it any wonder then that only seven countries in the world actually fluoridate more than 50 percent of their water supply? Although it is often portrayed in America as if every country does it, this is very far from the truth. In fact, the United States accounts for more than 50 percent of all the fluoridated water drinkers in the world, while the vast majority of European countries for example avoid this practice altogether. Continue reading →

Jon Rappoport ~ Children At The US Border: The Big Picture

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“These major players don’t think in terms of separate nations. They’re carving up the world according to their own dictates. Borders? Meaningless. They’re putting together rich islands in a sea of desolation.” J Rappoport

Zbigniew Brzezinski
“The nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.” ~Zbigniew Brzezinski

On the far side of the border, in Central America, where the bulk of the children are coming from, we have another story—and a far-reaching plan for the future.

Let’s start with a recent statement uttered by Obama’s court jester, Joe Biden.

CBS/DC August 7, 2014: “Border Patrol Agent: Federal Government Releasing Murderers Into US”:

“Biden said the key to stemming the surge is to address the root causes in violence-plagued Central American nations that are prompting parents to hand their children over to ‘unscrupulous’ individuals to smuggle them over the border. Yet he lamented that [Central America’s] domestic political concerns were preventing the leaders of those nations…from taking the types of steps that Colombia has taken to curb narcotics and corruption under a U.S. assistance program known as Plan Colombia.

“’Central American governments aren’t even close to being prepared to make some of the decisions the Colombians made, because they’re hard,’ Biden said. ‘But the president and I are prepared.’”

Really, Joe?

Plan Colombia. A 20-year multi-billion-dollar aid program from the US to the government of Colombia.

Aside from the aerial spraying of Monsanto’s Roundup-Ultra on vast acreage, destroying human health, decimating the land, and displacing large numbers of peasants, the Plan is all about strengthening the Colombian government and military.

The result? The troops have won major victories over the FARC rebels, taken back territory—and shifted more of the narcotics business into government hands. Continue reading →

James Hall ~ Corporatism Stifles Innovation

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“When examining the way corporate transnational businesses operate in the real world, their lack of internal in-house innovation is notorious. These gigantic corporatist carnivores excel at mergers and accusations in the quest of monopolization of markets. In these endeavors, their best friend is government cronyism and favoritism.”  J Hall

CorporatismIsNotCapitalism

For an economy to grow and create actual wealth, innovation is a bedrock component in the development of enhanced prosperity. Prosperity is an intriguing concept. Simply making and accumulating money falls short of establishing a successful economic model. This recent report illustrates a prime example. Facebook stock soars, as company briefly passes IBM in market value. “By most measures, Facebook is dwarfed by IBM: With about 7,000 employees, ten-year-old Facebook is on track to garner $12 billion in sales this year. The 103-year-old IBM has more than 400,000 workers and sold almost $100 billion of computer hardware and software in 2013.”

Is Facebook a shining star of innovation? Or is it the product of a society, which has given up on working towards a successful economy, whereby a prosperous middle class partakes in the engine of continued and shared affluence? Conversely, is IBM an innovated inventor, or is it a dinosaur of a previous era? Continue reading →

Our Invisible Revolution

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TruthDig  October 29 2013

“Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?” the anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote in his essay “The Idea Is the Thing.” “If you did, then your answer must have been that it is because the people support those institutions, and that they support them because they believe in them.”

Berkman was right. As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.

It appears that political ferment is dormant in the United States. This is incorrect. The ideas that sustain the corporate state are swiftly losing their efficacy across the political spectrum. The ideas that are rising to take their place, however, are inchoate. The right has retreated into Christian fascism and a celebration of the gun culture. The left, knocked off balance by decades of fierce state repression in the name of anti-communism, is struggling to rebuild and define itself. Popular revulsion for the ruling elite, however, is nearly universal. It is a question of which ideas will capture the public’s imagination.

Continue reading →