Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1213

How the Super-Rich Will Destroy Themselves

*

*

There are a number of ways that the super-rich, because of their greed and lack of empathy for others, may be hastening their own demise, while taking the rest of us with them.

Desultory Heroics

By Paul Buchheit

Source: Nation of Change

Perhaps they believe that their underground survival bunkers with bullet-resistant doors and geothermal power and anti-chemical air filters and infrared surveillance devices and pepper spray detonators will sustain them for two or three generations.

Perhaps they feel immune from the killings in the streets, for they rarely venture into the streets anymore. They don’t care about the great masses of ordinary people, nor do they think they need us.

Or do they? There are a number of ways that the super-rich, because of their greed and lack of empathy for others, may be hastening their own demise, while taking the rest of us with them.

1. Pandemic (Because of Their Disdain for Global Health)

“A year ago the world was in a panic over Ebola. Now it’s Zika at the gate. When will it end?” –Public health expert Dr. Ali Khan

View original post 814 more words

San Francisco First U.S. City to Make Community College Free*

*

*

In an age of rising higher education costs, San Francisco has become the first city to make community college free. The announcement comes amid Senate hearings for the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, a nominee who opponents believe could threaten the U.S. public education system.

Hwaairfan's Blog

San Francisco First U.S. City to Make Community College Free*

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee made the announcement Monday, saying the new policy would be for all students, regardless of their income

In an age of rising higher education costs, San Francisco has become the first city to make community college free. The announcement comes amid Senate hearings for the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, a nominee who opponents believe could threaten the U.S. public education system.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee made the announcement Monday, saying the new policy would be for all students, regardless of their income. Only those that sell their homes at an upward value of US $5 million and more will have to pay some fees.

“To California residents who are living in San Francisco, your community college is now free,” Lee said, as reported by ABC 7 News.

The city will set aside US $5.4…

View original post 232 more words

The Mass Psychology of Fascism

[image error]

The Mass Psychology of Fascism

By Wilhelm Reich (1933)

Free PDF:  Mass Psychology of Fascism

Book Review

In the the recent US election, Donald Trump successfully used false right wing populism to lure working people to vote against their own economic interests – as did Adolf Hitler during the 1930s. Writing in 1933, Reich foreshadows the present failure of the left to engage the working class. He also predicts the steady creep of western democracy towards greater authoritarianism and the recent rise of the populist New Right (via the Tea Party, Patriot and Alt-Right movement).

Why the Working Class Votes Against Their Own Economic Interest

Reich is the first major sociologist to offer a convincing analysis of the allure of fascism and reactionary politics for low income workers. Ever since the Reagan era, progressives have struggled to understand why blue collar workers are so easily persuaded to vote for politicians who go on to worsen the basic conditions of their lives. Reich pins the blame on authoritarian family structures most working people grow up in.

According to Reich, the strong allure of reactionary politics – and overt fascism – is based in mankind’s 6,000 year history of rigid patriarchal, authoritarian and hierarchical social organization.

He devotes a large portion of his book to the concept of sexual repression and the political, religious and economic institutions that deny women and adolescents full expression of their sexuality. These institutions support authoritarian family structures that enforce sexual repression. For millennia, this authoritarian control was exerted through political and religious mandates under which women literally became the property of men.

He contrasts modern society with early matriarchal societies in which children were free to “play doctor” with each other and both men and women were free to have sex with any other willing adults. These societies dealt with the potential for sexual excess or exploitation via self-regulation and group pressure. As Reich and many anthropologists have noted, murder, war, rape, prostitution and slavery were extremely rare in these societies.

Although women are no longer regarded as property in industrialized society, both women and adolescents continue to be denied full enjoyment of their sexuality under male-controlled political, economic and religious institutions.

Why the Working Class Craves Authority

As Reich convincingly argues, it’s not just women who suffer the adverse psychological effects of these structures. Being raised in excessively authoritarian family, educational and religious structures denies both men and women any experience of the natural capacity of self-regulation. Deeply fearful, anxious, guilty and confused about their perplexing inner drives, they have no confidence in their ability to conduct their lives without an external authority to guide and compel them.

The reactionary right knows exactly how to appeal to these unconscious fears and anxieties. First by creating even more rigid and authoritarian structures (eg outright bans on sex education, premarital sex, abortion, birth control and gay rights). These provide immediate (though temporary) relief by limiting choice. Secondly by promoting racist ideology that projects unhappiness and perceived loss of freedom away from ourselves onto an external “enemy) – Jews, Muslims, socialists, immigrants, terrorists, Hispanics, blacks, feminists, liberals, intellectuals and, increasingly, baby boomers.

Why Americans Don’t Vote

In the US only half of eligible adults register and a little over fifty percent of registered voters actually vote. Reich argues that it’s typical in highly authoritarian “democracies” for the passive, non-voting population to constitute the majority. He’s highly critical of the left for attempting to engage this demographic by addressing their appalling economic conditions – a strategy he insists is doomed to failure.

What the left needs to grasp, in his view, is that this politically inactive majority are too caught up in their own internal struggles to think in terms of their economic needs. To put it crudely, status-related needs, such as getting laid, fast cars and flat screen TVs will always be a much higher priority than wages or working conditions.

Instead of educating low income workers about economic and political injustice, Reich argues that leftists should directly address the emotional baggage the working poor carry from authoritarian family and school experiences. He proposes the best way to do this is through politically enlightened social reform activities, particularly directed towards youth and women.

Oliver Stone Calls on President Trump To “Declassify” All Secret Documents on Ukraine Conflict

The Duran 6 February 2017









Region: Russia and FSU
Theme: Intelligence, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT

The Obama Administration, with the help of the CIA and main stream media, cleverly diluted the fact they they violently overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine, and encouraged the illegal, putsch government to attack its own citizens in the east of the country.

Oliver Stone was never fooled by Obama’s Ukraine game, which resulted in the former POTUS getting outplayed in Crimea by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Oliver Stone is now urging US President Donald Trump to make public any secret documents he has in his possession on the origins of Obama’s conflict in Ukraine.

We are certain that Trump now knows the full truth of the Obama Administration’s action in Ukraine, and will use this truth as leverage to hold over Obama, Kerry, Nuland, Clinton, McCain, Brennan and the rest of the neo-liberal/neocon warmonger elite.

In an interview with Russia’s Channel One, the Academy Award winning director said that unfortunately, most Americans do not know the origins to the crisis in Ukraine.

“If I were President Trump, I would declassify all this information on Ukraine, as well as Syria, but above all Ukraine, because it’s the focal point of where this [new] Cold War has come about.”

Stone went further in his characterized of the current government in Kiev, calling it a government that is…

–‘unelected, extremely-right wing, heavily corrupted and controlled from abroad.’

Stone said that the Kiev regime’s survival solely depends on financial support from the US, EU, and the CIA.

“Ukraine was one of the main objectives of the CIA”, Stone noted…saying that since the start of the Cold War, the United States provided covert aid to militia and dissident groups looking to dislodge the country from its Russian heritage and history.

Exposing Ukraine’s restrictions against the work of journalists, and attacks against anyone who speaks out against the putsch government, Stone said, “I don’t see any real democracy in Ukraine.”  

Sputnik News notes that Oliver Stone called the current resurgence of hostilities in eastern Ukraine “disgusting,”saying that Kiev was obviously trying to get Trump to provide financial and other assistance.

The mainstream US media, he noted, has been nearly unanimous in blaming Russia for the fighting.

The director noted that the US establishment has stuck to the same false narrative about Russia ‘seizing’ Crimea, about Russian involvement in the Ukrainian civil war, its posing a ‘threat’ to Ukraine, etc. There are important facts left unsaid about the origins of the Ukrainian crisis, Stone said, including the ‘color revolutionary’ techniques employed in the lead-up to the Maidan coup, who provided the funding, and who the mysterious snipers were that fired on police and protesters alike at the height of the crisis.

*****

In 2016, Stone co-produced the documentary ‘Ukraine on Fire’, a film which discussed the historical origins of the crisis in Ukraine, the lead-up to the Maidan coup, US and European involvement, and the danger the ongoing crisis poses to Europe and to the world. The film, a response to the 2015 pro-Maidan film ‘Winter on Fire’, featured an interview with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by the coup, as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This year, Stone plans to release a new documentary about Vladimir Putin. The director told Sunday Vremya that the film was just as important as his film about Ukraine.

The “military-industrial security state needs enemies,” Stone said.

Source: Oliver Stone Calls on President Trump To “Declassify” All Secret Documents on Ukraine Conflict

Bernie Sanders: Trump ‘Is a Fraud’ Sending Nation in ‘Authoritarian Direction’

*

*

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont appeared on CNN Sunday and called President Donald Trump a “fraud”—one who is simultaneously leading the nation in an “authoritarian direction” while also actively betraying many of the working- and middle-class Americans who believed his promises that he would take on powerful interests on their behalf.

Journal of People

by Jon Queally, staff writer




Common Dreams | 05 February, 2017

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont appeared on CNN Sunday and called President Donald Trump a “fraud”—one who is simultaneously leading the nation in an “authoritarian direction” while also actively betraying many of the working- and middle-class Americans who believed his promises that he would take on powerful interests on their behalf. (Photo: Screenshot/CNN/YouTube)

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told CNN‘s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning, “but this guy’s a fraud.”

The immediate reference was to a meeting President Donald Trump held with Wall Street executives on Friday in which he vowed—in what Common Dreamsreported as a “spectacular betrayal”—to repeal key elements of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

View original post 639 more words

Northern Hemisphere Potentially In Great Danger As Fukushima Radiation Spikes To ‘Unimaginable’ Levels

*

*

Because so much nuclear material from Fukushima escaped into the Pacific Ocean, there are many scientists that believe that it was the worst environmental disaster in human history, but most people in the general population seem to think that since the mainstream media really doesn’t talk about it anymore that everything must be under control.

Mountain Republic

Worst environmental disaster in human history


Radiation inside one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power facility has reached an “unimaginable” level according to experts.

Because so much nuclear material from Fukushima escaped into the Pacific Ocean, there are many scientists that believe that it was the worst environmental disaster in human history, but most people in the general population seem to think that since the mainstream media really doesn’t talk about it anymore that everything must be under control. Unfortunately, that is not true at all. In fact, PBS reported just last year that “it is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks“. And now we have just learned that the radiation level inside reactor 2 is so high that no human could possibly survive being exposed to it.

According to the…

View original post 1,405 more words

How do we know that recent COsub2/sub increases are due to human activities?

[image error]

 

Note:This is an update to an earlier post, which many found to be too technical. The original, and a series of comments on it, can be found here. See also a more recent post here for an even less technical discussion.

Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm). The fact that this is due virtually entirely to human activities is so well established that one rarely sees it questioned. Yet it is quite reasonable to ask how we know this. . .

Another, quite independent way that we know that fossil fuel burning and land clearing specifically are responsible for the increase in CO2 in the last 150 years is through the measurement of carbon isotopes. Isotopes are simply different atoms with the same chemical behavior (isotope means “same type”) but with different masses. Carbon is composed of three different isotopes, 14C, 13C and 12C. 12C is the most common. 13C is about 1% of the total. 14C accounts for only about 1 in 1 trillion carbon atoms.

CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases.

Isotope geochemists have developed time series of variations in the 14C and 13C concentrations of atmospheric CO2. One of the methods used is to measure the 13C/12C in tree rings, and use this to infer those same ratios in atmospheric CO2. This works because during photosynthesis, trees take up carbon from the atmosphere and lay this carbon down as plant organic material in the form of rings, providing a snapshot of the atmospheric composition of that time. If the ratio of 13C/12C in atmospheric CO2 goes up or down, so does the 13C/12C of the tree rings. This isn’t to say that the tree rings have the same isotopic composition as the atmosphere – as noted above, plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes, but as long as that preference doesn’t change much, the tree-ring changes wiil track the atmospheric changes.

Sequences of annual tree rings going back thousands of years have now been analyzed for their 13C/12C ratios. Because the age of each ring is precisely known** we can make a graph of the atmospheric 13C/12C ratio vs. time. What is found is at no time in the last 10,000 years are the 13C/12C ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are today. Furthermore, the 13C/12C ratios begin to decline dramatically just as the CO2 starts to increase — around 1850 AD. This is exactly what we expect if the increased CO2 is in fact due to fossil fuel burning. . .

Source: How do we know that recent COsub2/sub increases are due to human activities?

photo credit: The Library of Congress Smoke stacks (LOC) via photopin (license)

US Businesses vs Trump

 

[image error]

 

Donald Trump may be starting to find out that what may seem simple clampdowns on travel for ‘security’ reasons can have wide ranging effects that the new White House strategists may not have foreseen. Trump now has more than a few judges opposing his travel restrictions, he now has many large US businesses challenging him legally.

The companies include Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook,Twitter, Intel, eBay, Netflix, Uber, Amazon and Expedia.

RNZ: Apple, Google, Facebook among 100 firms opposing Trump’s travel ban

Apple, Google and Microsoft have joined a legal brief opposing US President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban, arguing it “inflicts significant harm on American business.”

The brief was signed by nearly 100 companies including Facebook, Twitter, Intel , eBay, Netflix and Uber, as well as non-tech companies such as Levi Strauss and Chobani.

The document is an amicus brief, which allows parties not directly involved in a case but who feel they are affected by it, to give their view.

Mr Trump’s executive order, the most contentious policy move of his first two weeks in office, faces crucial legal hurdles. It had temporarily barred entry to the United States by people from seven mostly Muslim countries, as well as suspending the US refugee programme.

A federal judge in Seattle on Friday blocked the move, and the Trump administration has a deadline on Monday (6pm Tuesday NZT) to justify the action.

“The order represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years,” the brief from the companies stated.

“The order inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result,” it added.

“Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list.”

Immigrants and especially the next generation are often cited as a major terrorism risk, with scant evidence beyond a few isolated examples.

On the other hand, in reality land, immigrants and their families have been a huge part of American success for a long time.

US tech companies, which employ many foreign-born nationals, have been among the most vocal groups in speaking out against Mr Trump’s travel order.

Amazon.com and Expedia, both based in Washington state, supported the Seattle lawsuit, asserting that the travel restrictions harmed their businesses.

It’s not just those who are directly restricted that cause problems. The uncertainties about entry to the US and about immigration is likely to cause many more people to reconsider the US as a destination.

Unforeseen effects and unintended consequences may end up becoming big issues for a very inexperienced White House.

And Trump’s habit of shooting from the hip at anyone who criticises him or opposes what he is trying to do may lead to mayhem, including a significant loss of business confidence in the US

[…]

via US businesses versus Trump — Your NZ

Who Are the Anarchists?: Why Resistance Is Coming from Below

*

*

The grassroots resistance that has rocked the US since Trump’s election isn’t the work of paid or professional protesters. Resistance to Trump has come from ordinary people taking action on their own terms without waiting for leadership.

The Free

via   IT’S GOING DOWN  … Anarchist Movement 

America is in the throes of crisis. Polling as the least popular starting President in history, Donald Trump has taken the reins and intends to force his agenda on the world by brute force. Alongside him, outright white supremacists are coming out of the woodwork, convinced that their time has arrived.

Who are the Anarchists? from subMedia.tv on Vimeo.

 Millions who once counted on the Democratic Party are losing faith in the entire political system. Can anything be done to halt the rise of tyranny?

View original post 744 more words

The World Bank’s Ongoing Battle to Drive Africans Off Their Land

The Honey at the Top

Directed by Dean Puckett (2016)

Film Review

The Honey at the top is about the 30-year battle the indigenous Sengwer are waging against the World Bank and the corrupt Kenya Forest Service (KFS). The latter are trying to evict the Sengwer from their ancestral Embobut Forest. The Kenyan government seeks to use the forest in a lucrative carbon trading scheme.

Although the Kenyan courts have ordered the KFS to desist from harassing Sengwer families, the former continues to launch periodic raids in which they beat up women and the elderly, set fire to their homes and arrest entire families – demanding bribes for their release. The World Bank funds these KFS activities.

Both the World Bank and the KFS declined to be interviewed for this documentary.

Click the cc tab for English subtitles.

 

* Carbon trading is the scandal ridden scheme of buying and selling permits and credits to emit carbon dioxide. Despite being a central pillar of the EU’s efforts to slow climate change, there is no real evidence it has successfully reduced carbon emissions .