Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1234
November 18, 2016
President Trump: To Jumpstart the U.S. Economy, Fulfill Your Promise to Break Up the Big Banks!
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Time to hold Trump’s and the Republicans’ feet to the fire over their campaign promises.
Donald Trump and the Republican Platform Called for Restoring Glass-Steagall and Breaking Up the Too Big to Fails
The Republican platform under Donald Trump called for restoring the Glass-Steagall separation between traditional depository banking and speculative investment banking. Trump himself has called for it.
This would lead to the break up of the giant banks.
The New York Times explains:
The Republican Party platform calls for breaking up the large banks by restoring the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, which required a separation of investment from commercial banking.
The People Want Them Broken Up
As Minneapolis Fed President Kaskari points out, a lot of the populist anger which got Donald Trump elected is based on allowing the too big to fail banks to survive:
Mr. Kashkari said he traced some of the nation?s current political anger and polarization to how the government responded to the financial crisis ?…
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November 17, 2016
Trump looks at reforming the #NAFTA trade as Vietnam Announces Withdrawal from TPP
#AceNewsReport – Nov.17: Donald Trump wants to reform NAFTA on day one leaked memo suggests The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) could be on the chopping block on President-elect Donald Trump’s first day in office, according to a new report. Vietnam walks away from American-backed trade deal TPP Vietnam has decided not to join […]
CALIFORNIA: County votes to ban #Fracking
#AceNewsReport – Nov.17: Monterey county in California bans fracking, even though big oil spent big money to stop it. In a rare bit of good environmental news, voters in California’s fourth-largest oil-producing county passed a measure to ban fracking and other fossil fuel extraction techniques. Proponents won even though #oil companies outspent them 30 to one. “David […]
The End of Capitalism
The End of Capitalism
David Harvey (2016)
In The End of Capitalism, geography and anthropology professor Anthropology David Harvey makes the case that economic crises and inequality are part and parcel of capitalism and can only be ended by dismantling the capitalist economic system.
He begins by examining the cumulative “perception control” by the corporate media that has made it virtually impossible (except perhaps in Iceland) to look at any alternative economic systems despite the deplorable performance of capitalism since the 2007 global economic crash.
Quoting from Volume 2 of Marx’s Capital, he goes to demonstrate that growth and debt are structural components of capitalism – how the amount of debt created always equals the amount of capital growth created. In fact, repaying all government debt (as many conservatives advocate) would end capitalism faster than a workers revolution.
He also quotes Reagan advisor David Stockman and former vice president Dick Cheney to demonstrate how the Reagan and both Bush administrations deliberately ramped up the deficit (on unfunded wars) as a strategy to force future administrations to cut social spending.
For me, the most interesting part of his talk is his discussion of the Chinese economy, specifically how their willingness to employ Keynesian tactics (of government deliberately spending money into the economy) to generate 10% economic growth and save the global economy from total collapse.
In elucidating a viable alternative to capitalism, Harvey quotes from volume 3 of Capital, where Marx defines capitalism as a “class relation between owner and worker such that the owner extracts surplus value (profit) from the worker’s labor.” Thus in his (and Marx’s) view, the only viable alternative is a system of worker self-management of our own productive process (ie worker cooperatives). He believes such a system would coordinate production via a Just in Time networking strategy similar to those used by Wall Street corporations.
The video has an extremely long introduction and Harvey starts speaking at 8.00.
November 16, 2016
Australia Snubs Obama, Dumps TPP, Opts for China-Sponsored Trade Deals
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Australia is throwing its weight behind China’s efforts to pursue new trade deals in the Asia-Pacific region amid a growing acknowledgement the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is dead in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory.
President Obama made a foolish decision to not welcome China in the formation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
It was ludicrous for Obama to leave China out of things. China is the second biggest economy in the world, third if you treat the EU as a block.
Had China been in the deal all along, we may not have seen the ludicrous provision that allowed companies to sue governments. That provision was one of the key reasons the deal failed.
With the election of Trump, TPP is officially dead, and China, not the US will be at the center of a new Asian trade pact.
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Native American Council Offers Amnesty to 220 Million “Undocumented Whites” Living in the U.S.
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Native American nations offer amnesty to 220 undocumented whites (all white Americans in other words).
TABU; Towards A Better Understanding
Ignorant American White: “So, now we get those immigrants out once and for all”
White guy Me: So when do we leave?
Native American Council Offers Amnesty to 220 Million “Undocumented Whites” Living in the U.S.
A council of Native American leaders has offered partial amnesty to the estimated 220 million illegal white immigrants living in the United States.
The “white” problem has been a topic of much debate in the Native American community for centuries, and community leaders have decided the time has come to properly address it.*
Daily Currant reports, “At a meeting of the Native Peoples Council (NPC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico yesterday, Native American leaders considered several proposals on the future of this continent’s large, unauthorized European population.
The elders ultimately decided to extend a pathway to citizenship for those without criminal backgrounds.”
“We are prepared to offer White people the option of staying on this…
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British Medical Journal Calls for the Legalization of ALL Drugs
Source: RT
Doctors have an “ethical responsibility” to back the legalization of drugs, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has advised for the first time. An editorial in the BMJ, the UK’s most widely-read medical journal, argues that laws against drug use have harmed people across the world, while stressing that drug addiction should be viewed as a health problem and police involvement must end. The BMJ says the “war on drugs” has failed and “too often plays out as a war on the millions of people who use drugs.”
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The call for reform reflects a shift in medical opinion. In June, Britain’s two leading health bodies, the Royal Society for Public Health and the Faculty of Public Health, called for the personal use of drugs to be decriminalized. The group said criminalizing users deters them from seeking medical help and leads to long-term harm, such as exposure to hard drugs in prison, the breakup of families, and loss of employment.
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Drug deaths in Britain are presently at an all-time high. The BMJ says that the number of heroin fatalities has doubled in the past three years because of government policies. Official figures show that 579 people died from using heroin in 2012, compared with 1,201 in 2015.
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The journal’s editor in chief, Fiona Godlee, says: “There is an imperative to investigate more effective alternatives to criminalisation of drug use and supply.” She added that the government should “move cautiously towards regulated drug markets where possible” and doctors should “use their authority to lead calls for a pragmatic reform informed by science and ethics.”
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Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg writes in the BMJ that the government could consider introducing a version of the Portuguese movement, where drug users are referred to treatment rather than being punished. Drug deaths have fallen in Portugal by 80 percent.
photo credit: dog97209 Bayer Makes Heroin via photopin (license)
November 15, 2016
Worker Co-op Loomio Draws on Occupy Movement to Offer New Model of Democracy
New Zealand
Article by Rebecca Harvey
1 November 2016
On 17 September 2011, a protest began in Zuccotti Park, in New York’s Wall Street financial district. Over a thousand people came to occupy the space, armed with tents and a collective anger against global social and economic inequality – inspired by, among other things, the Arab Spring, worldwide anti-austerity protests and a call to action from Canadian anti-consumerist collective Adbusters.
The protesters were forced out of the park two months later, but Occupy Wall Street – and its slogan “We are the 99%” – received global attention. A movement was born.
The Occupy movement is still active, with its primary goal to campaign for new forms of democracy to usher in social and economic justice. One of these new democratic forms has emerged in the shape of Loomio, a worker co-operative that has created an online space for groups to make decisions together in a non-hierarchical way.
Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Loomio is one of the “golden children” of the Occupy movement, providing an online decision-making space to “make democracy easier”, says co-founder Rich Bartlett.
The idea developed after Rich, Jon Lemmon and Ben Knight – who were participating in Occupy Wellington in October 2011 – began talking about the idea of general assemblies online. A month later they met with Enspiral, a network of social enterprise ventures and social entrepreneurs, to discuss potential collaboration.
“As activists, our experience of non-hierarchical decision-making had been both inspirational and frustrating,” says Rich.
“We met with a shared language and a shared problem – how to work with no boss, and how to do that without spending your life in meetings. So we thought, ‘we’ll occupy that niche and create a way to help any group wanting to make decisions democratically’.”
Enspiral gave the group an office, connections and entrepreneurial skill. Then, after a year of being “hopeful volunteers” funded by “enthusiasm and optimism”, Loomio formalised into a legal structure.
It set up crowdfunding campaigns and last year issued redeemable investment shares (with no governance associated); it is now on track with a sustainable revenue stream.
“It was obvious that the co-operative model was the one that resonated with us and what we wanted to do,” says Rich. “Loomio is a worker co-operative at the moment, but in the future we want to be a multi-stakeholder co-op with user representation on the board.”
On a practical level, Loomio is an open-source web application that enables people to set up a digital space where people can gather together, share information and discuss ideas.
These discussions can lead onto a proposal built through a shared understanding of a topic, which can be voted on. The end result is a clear outcome and course of action, decided democratically. . .
Read more here Co-op News
Donald Trump’s America – ‘The Corruption Begins As VP Elect Mike Pence Goes To Court To Hide His Emails’
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The administration is fighting to conceal the contents of an email sent to Gov. Mike Pence by a political ally. That email is being sought by a prominent Democratic labor lawyer who says he wants to expose waste in the Republican administration”
Donald Trump’s America – ‘The Corruption Begins As VP Elect Mike Pence Goes To Court To Hide His Emails’
‘According to the Indianapolis Star, Mike Pence is going to court to argue that all of his emails should not be made public’:
“Now that the presidential campaign and most of the furor over Hillary Clinton’s email scandal are behind us, the Pence administration is going to court to argue for its own brand of email secrecy”.
“The administration is fighting to conceal the contents of an email sent to Gov. Mike Pence by a political ally. That email is being sought by a prominent Democratic labor lawyer who says he wants to expose waste in the Republican administration”.
‘The Mike Pence who is going to court to argue that his emails should remain a secret is the same guy who just spent months on the presidential campaign trail campaigning against…
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