Murray Dobbin - October 22, 2008

Was the federal election just a bad dream? After five weeks of fear and loathing, disappointment and disbelief, Canadians woke up to election results that were hardly different than when the election started. Most of the commentary since has been about numbers and pro-Harper media spin. The man who is claiming a new “enhanced” mandate actually received 168,737 fewer votes than last time but garnered an additional 19 seats. The turnout, at 59 per cent, was the lowest in our history, which means that the Harper Conservatives will govern the country with the support of fewer than 23 per cent of the eligible voters. Democracy in Canada has seldom seemed so corrupted or so unrepresentative.

For many of the 62 per cent who voted against Harper and his unhidden agenda, there has been an outpouring of demands for a coalition government of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc to form a minority government as soon as they can conceivably bring down the Harper government.

The movement for proportional representation suddenly has thousands of new recruits and supporters as Fair Vote Canada’s website is being flooded with visitors and its petition has been sent out through hundreds of individual e-mail lists.

Those of us on the left can be enraged by Harper’s win, but we should not be surprised. The political right has been working for this result for some 20 years with a campaign deliberately aimed at lowering Canadians’ expectations of what is possible from government, and hence elections. The campaign to give democracy a cold shower actually started with the 1975 publication of a book called The Crisis of Democracy. Put out by the Trilateral Commission, the most powerful elite group in the world at the time, it concluded that there was an “excess of democracy.” The authors lamented that the public now questioned “the legitimacy of hierarchy, coercion, discipline, secrecy, and deception — all of which are in some measure inescapable attributes of the process of government.” A governable democracy, the American co-author Samuel P. Huntington wrote, requires a large degree of “apathy and non-involvement.” That they now have it is no accident.

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Irwin Stelzer - October 19, 2008

Politics may make strange bedfellows, but economic crises make even stranger ones. Gordon Brown, a free trader, now finds that Nicolas Sarkozy, an arch-protectionist, has virtues he had not previously noticed. It seems that they are united by three things. First, they believe, or at least are pretending that they believe, that the current ills originated in the United States. You might remember: these are the same United States whose entrepreneurship Chancellor Brown lauded to all who would listen, before becoming prime minister and slipping easily into the anti-American mode that now dominates his public and private discourse.

Second, Brown and Sarkozy, along with their EU partners, believe that now is the time to put the former hegemon in its place. America, they believe, is paralysed by the lame-duck status of its president. It will, they reason, be forced to go along with any European proposals for what is variously called a “new financial architecture” and a “new world order”. The joy on the faces of EU leaders as they gather for their conferences can be seen in news photos. Never mind that the banking systems of their countries are on the verge of collapse, or that they are headed for a recession deeper and longer than the one the United States will suffer. Now is their chance to do things that the Americans might not like, but can’t stop.

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Becky Akers - October 21, 2008
After the orgy of nationalizing the economy, freedom’s foes ought to be snoring it off somewhere, glutted and stupefied. But there’s no rest for the wicked, so they’re corporatizing airports instead. They don’t call it that, of course, lest we imagine little grey bureaucrats filling der Führer’s orders for more poison gas and barbed wire. No, they’re “privatizing” airports. Chicago Midway is their first conquest. Others will follow.

Far from selling property government has no business owning to entrepreneurs who then do with it as they judge best, privatizing is just another gimmick to boost the State’s power. It tries to harness the trust, friendliness and efficiency of the free market for Leviathan’s benefit by leasing, not selling, airports and other assets. The beast retains its stranglehold, decreeing that the property must remain what it was (an airport cannot become a housing development or amusement park, for example), regulating its operations, and subsidizing it with bonds, taxes, and other thieveries. Tragically, businessmen who owe their fortunes to the market cooperate with this fraud, while snakes in the grass – excuse me, think-tanks ballyhoo it as “free market.”

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Philip Jones - 10-20-8

Corporatists of left, right and centre show a marked hostility to allegations that the European Union is fundamentally fascist. This is perhaps not surprising since they combine in their belief in supranational government, collective solutions, corporatist economics, State intervention and what Tony Blair often termed the “Third Way” most of the characteristics of fascism.

They must therefore seek to distance themselves from that discredited ideology. This is made easier if they can find an enemy to whom they can ascribe the values of “fascism” ­ they choose nationalists and those they term “the extreme right”.

A fine example is the article by Professor Richard Overy in the London Evening Standard of 15th May 2002 who described “fascism” as an exclusively “right wing” movement. This false analysis was supported by pictures of the Frenchman Le Pen and the late Austrian politician Jorg Haider who are in principal nationalists, not fascists. The defining aspect of fascism is that it is neither right nor left nor centrist it is left and right and centrist as the support for fascism in the 1930s from Liberals like Lloyd George, Conservatives like Samuel Hoare and Socialists like Ramsay Macdonald, Lord Allen of Hurtwood and Arnold Toynbee clearly demonstrate.

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The Midnight Sun - October 21st, 2008

“The American crash is a delight to behold, and it’s far from over.”

Karl Marx to Frederick Engels, 1857

Reports that Marx’s Das Kapital are literally ‘flying off the shelves’ in a bookshop in once Communist controlled Berlin have delighted and fired up journalists all over the world. Check out the links here.

Karl Marx, now a pile of bones in a hole in the ground, or a tortured spirit in an afterlife somewhere, is entirely unaware that his failed ideology is enjoying a renaissance of sorts amongst a generation that only knows that ideology from the romanticized writings of those who never had to live under it. The most unashamed leftist doctrinaire media sources, the Times, BBC and ABC are gloating. For these are the corridors where closet and not-so-closet Marxists have lurked since their big heyday in the mid twentieth century.

Is Germany, gloating over the distress of America, so quick to rush out and embrace the ideology of her arch enemy?

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J.D. Seagraves - Oct 20, 2008

On October 13, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a new-world financial order. “We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age,” Brown said. “We must have a new Bretton Woods.”

Brown’s statement echoed the sentiments of French and EU president Nicolas Sarkozy, who on September 26 said, “We must rethink the financial system from scratch, as at Bretton Woods.”

So is a new “Bretton Woods” a good idea? Before we can answer that question, we need to take a look at the original Bretton Woods System, which was the world’s first fully negotiated international monetary order. What inspired global leaders to create it, and what ultimately led to its demise?

The Monetary Role of Gold

By 1900, most Western European nations had evolved from centrally planned monarchies to pseudo-capitalist republics. This resulted in the heyday of the International Gold Standard, in which market economies of the West engaged in relatively free trade, facilitated by the ultimate global currency of gold.

Gold, according to Austrian economist Carl Menger, emerged as money millennia ago. In fact, gold’s monetary nature predates the existence of the nation-state. It is “real money” in the sense that no one has to be forced to accept it: they do so willingly. And thus, gold presents a problem for nation-state governments—they can’t manipulate it as easily as paper money.

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Steve Watson - Oct 20, 2008

Global security authorities are to push for a huge biometric facial scan database of international travelers so they can cross-check everyone against a database of terror suspects, international criminals and fugitives.

Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, is planning to expand its role into the mass screening of passengers moving around the world by creating a face recognition database to catch wanted suspects, reports the London Guardian.

The database will hold the records of every citizen who has ever traveled in and out of the virtually every country in the world, representing intelligence agency style bulk interception of information and sounding alarm bells for civil liberties groups.

Two months ago we reported on the moves underway to phase out passport control officers at airports and replace them with biometric face scanning cameras. The automated face recognition gates match passengers to a digital image stored on a microchip in the new e-passports.

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Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. - October 20, 2008

[NOTE: Charlie Rose on his September 16, 2008 PBS program interviewed Bob Woodward regarding his new book THE WAR WITHIN. In researching for the book, Woodward interviewed President Bush and was surprised Bush deliberately avoided words like “victory” or “win” regarding the Iraq war, but rather said we need to “succeed.” Woodward was also surprised that when asking about the decision to change strategies in Iraq, Bush said “there’s no hurry.” Can you imagine a general in World War II deciding to change a failed strategy saying “there’s no hurry”? What Woodward apparently doesn’t realize is that the goal in attacking Iraq was to establish a permanent military presence in the region. With that in mind, saying “succeed” rather than “victory” or “win,” and saying “there’s no hurry” actually makes perfect sense. Shortly after the war began, many Iraqis became suspicious of our motives since we could fire a long-range cruise missile with great precision, but for some reason we couldn’t seem to provide the Iraqis with basic services like electricity. Many people around the world also have a negative attitude toward Americans. We say ours is a government of and by the people, and then we elect leaders who have supported dictators who violently oppress their own people. Why should the oppressed people in those nations like us?

Our “success” in Iraq in large part is due to the Sunni “Awakening,” which is actually our paying (bribing) Sunni militia about $300 a month per man to act as police rather than kill American soldiers. Do you think such an “Awakening” in Afghanistan might reduce opium production? After all, haven’t we paid American farmers billions of dollars not to plant certain crops. Relevant to media bias in the presidential campaign, it was clear from ABC’s George Stephanopoulos (Rhodes scholar) who at the end of the October 7 debate proclaimed Obama as exhibiting Commander-in-Chief qualities, when Obama obviously didn’t understand the need to distinguish between how one deals with adversaries (Obama mentioned Iraq, North Korea and Iran) and a nation one still hopes will be an ally (the question involved uninvited military action in Pakistan). Also regarding the media in the last presidential debate on October 15, moderator Bob Schieffer sat silent as Obama said “all” of McCain’s ads were negative. This was another clear lie that was not identified as such at the time by Schieffer or even McCain himself. If Obama wins the election in early November, don’t be surprised if Israel attacks Iran between then and the date Obama takes office, because Israel may believe it would receive more support for its actions from Bush than from Obama.]

Most people seem confused about the current global economic crisis. How did it happen? Who is to blame? Actually there are people who know exactly what’s going on as well as why and how it happened.

At the front of my book SECRET RECORDS REVEALED (1998), I wrote that on June 28, 1998 THE WASHINGTON POST published an article about the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) titled “At Secret Meetings in Switzerland, 13 People Shape the World’s Economy,” which described these individuals as “this economic cabal… this secretive group… the financial barons who control the world’s supply of money.”

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Jonathan Cook - 2008 10 14

No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list – and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo.

Dr. Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation – whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel – is a myth invented little more than a century ago.

An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Sand drew on extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this claim but several more – all equally controversial.

In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.

The success of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? looks likely to be repeated around the world. A French edition, launched last month, is selling so fast that it has already had three print runs.

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SECRET SUN - October 19, 2008

Bruce Springsteen was stumping for Obama on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the heart of Philadelphia when a fan caught what looks like a triangular (and -please forgive me - perhaps partially cloaked) UFO hovering overhead in broad daylight.

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Infowars - October 19, 2008

Robert Marion LaFollette (1855-1925) delivered the following speech in the Senate on March 17, 1908, in response to Senate bill 3023 to amend the national banking laws.

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Carl Teichrib - October 2008

Watching the markets and thinking through the possibilities, two interlocking phrases immediately come to mind: Ordo ab Chaos, and Crisis Equals Opportunity. Ordo ab Chao is a Latin phrase and the motto of the Thirty-Third Degree of Freemasonry.  It means, “Order out of Chaos.”

This expression portrays a simple message. Out of the chaos of extreme crisis comes a time when everything is re-made, and order is restored. But you must understand; just because order has been established, it doesn’t mean that the world is the same as it was before the catastrophe. It won’t be; it can’t be.

For those who have lost a home to fire, you know that eventually organization returns to your life. However, you also know that your world has been changed forever; it’s not as it was before that fateful day. Likewise, as our smoldering, global financial house catches flame (in my estimation it’s only in the beginning stages), a new edifice will be introduced after the conflagration is over. But it won’t be the same structure.

Something else must be considered: the house doesn’t have to be utterly razed. At some point during the fire, the house could be closed-up for a short time. Then, while the world waits with abated breath, a new building would be unveiled from behind the smoke. In our desire for safety the world would abandon the old house and flee to the new, safer looking structure.

Is this possible? Remember, Crisis Equals Opportunity, and Order will arise after Chaos.

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Jonathan Tirone - Oct. 19

European Central Bank council member Ewald Nowotny said a “tri-polar” global currency system is developing between Asia, Europe and the U.S. and that he’s skeptical the U.S. dollar’s centrality can be revived.

“What I see is a system where we have more centers of gravity” Nowotny said today in an interview with Austrian state broadcaster ORF-TV. “I see for the future a tri-polar development, and I don’t think that there will be fixed exchange rates between these poles.”

The leaders of the U.S., France and the European Commission will ask other world leaders to join in a series of summits on the global financial crisis beginning in the U.S. soon after the Nov. 4 presidential election, President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Barroso said in a joint statement yesterday.

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Joel Connelly - October 16, 2008

THE MEN ARE shown with sex toys around their necks, doing skits in blackface, dressed in wigs and women’s clothing and consuming copious quantities of alcoholic beverages.

Are these the boys-will-be-boys antics of the wildest frat house on some college campus?

Nope, it’s the American power elite at play, as photographed by Alejandro Tomas over 26 years of attending an annual horse ride called Rancheros Visitadores in the Santa Ynez Valley near Santa Barbara, Calif.

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Jay Dyer - October 19, 2008

As Zeitgeist creator Peter Joseph and Alex Jones were debating on air last week, all I could think was, “Man, this sounds just like everything I learned in my ‘Marxism and Critical Theory’ class two years ago.”  That course was taught by a fellow who studied under intellectuals from the Frankfurt School, which claimed Marxist-olic Succession (lol). The school, originally called The Institute for Social Research, was founded by an extremely wealthy fellow, Felix Weil who, just like Engles, oddly supported Marxism (Engles was a rich stock owner).  Those decently read in the conspiracy genre know that communism is itself a creation of wealthy capitalists by design.  And, contrary to common assumptions, Marx didn’t think capitalism was even ‘wrong’: in fact, he saw it as a progressive step of Western culture out of feudalism which would be succeded by statism and dictatorship, which would then likely culminate in the no-state utopia where every man could awaken every day to fish, paint and re-connect with “nature.”

What was most interesting in Peter Joseph’s attempted defense was although he continually qualified his arguments, he stressed that he wasn’t a Marxist, socialist or a communist.  Now, I know that communitarianism is somewhat of an outgrowth of both capitalism and communism, but it certainly swings more in the direction of communism.  However, the gospel I heard from Joseph didn’t sound different from Marx at all.

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