We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Why would any young person support capitalism?

Click here to access article by Gary Engler from New Commune-ist Manifesto

The author, as a grandfather, while trying to answer the question posed in the headline, offers some observations and advice to the young generation of today.
...what’s with a generation that accepts punch after punch and then insults on top of the beating, barely raising a peep in protest? How could anyone under 40 support capitalism? Why aren’t they organizing, striking, picketing and marching?

The China Fixation: Old Game, New Obsession, New Enemy

Click here to access article by John Pilger from CounterPunch

This Australian distinguished journalist reports on what is happening in the African section of the Empire--and it ain't good. I doubt that any government shutdown will affect their operations.
With minimal media interest, the US African Command (Africom) has deployed troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games, a “soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer.

The Fed Could Simply CANCEL $2 Trillion of Government Debt

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog. (10/13/2013 & 10/16, please note: I've made a number of improvements to my commentary.)

This post contains a lot of valuable factual information, but there is also much hidden information if one is willing to look. The factual part includes the graphic of government debt supplied by NPR, and then there is the appealing idea of cancelling the debt to the Federal Reserve. However, the latter reveals a rather naive idea about the Fed. It is a heavily disguised and obscured consortium of major banks designed by the ruling financial class around 1913 to graft onto US society a permanent method of sucking the blood-money of working people for their class benefit. People in the Fed constitute a major part of our ruling class. (See a brief summary of US reserve banks in my commentary for an August post.)

The creation of money has been so thoroughly hidden throughout the centuries--deliberately so by banking people who are the core of capitalist ruling classes--that few people today understand this process. The fact that Fed critics such as liberals like Alan Grayson and old-fashioned conservatives like Ron Paul are tolerated at all by the ruling class is because they otherwise support the system of capitalism. I'm not well versed on Grayson's support, but Ron Paul would like to cut all social services. He would like to return to the 19th century when it was literally every man for himself.  

Remember, it was during the latter half of the 19th century that we saw the rise of the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, etc.; and also the brutal attacks on working people such as the Ludlow Massacre, the Lattimer Massacre, the Columbine Mine massacre, and the Homestead Strike (you probably didn't learn much about these incidents in your education). The 19th century industrial and financial titans' rise to power created the ruling class as we know it today (see also this). The latter are the beneficiaries of these 19th century capitalists (also known as "robber-barons") who created the foundation for the construction of the wealthy and extremely powerful 1% of the One Percent who now rule the US and much of the world. So, no, we can't turn back the historical clock, and we shouldn't want to! And, the financial ruling class of today certainly doesn't want to, and won't permit such ideas of canceling government debts owed to them. Those who control the creation of money are top dogs in the capitalist system because they not only earn interest from money "created out of thin air", but control how that money is spent.

To shift subjects a bit, notice the debt owed to Social Security on NPR's graphic. This fund consists of money contributed by workers and their employers equally since the 1930s. Social Security has always been portrayed as a trust fund, but it is unlike any trust fund that we know about. This fund has not been set aside to benefit us so much as it has been to fund the government--and you know what the latter does with the money (think wars and military-industrial complex). Yes, the government of, by, and for the ruling capitalist class has been pilfering money from our Social Security Trust Fund to pay for their wars so that they can receive tax breaks. Read material by Professor Allen W. Smith to learn about this theft (here, here, and here).

Towards a World Without 'Veterans'

Click here to access article by Mickey Z. from World News Trust.

Kudos to Mickey Z. for recovering a part of the real people's history, a part that has been purged from history books allowed in schools across the US. We have so much to unlearn about the history brought to us by our benevolent ruling class (sarcasm). Reading this piece, as well as other non-ruling class historical sources, can be a powerful antidote to the poisonous indoctrination of Empire schooling. Their self-serving infiltration of ideas and myths into the minds of young innocent children is the most powerful method of all that ruling class directors use to condition us to serve them.

The author also cuts through the hypocritical romanticizing of veterans that places them on some kind of pedestal when we should be honoring activists, whether veterans or non-veterans, who work and sacrifice so much for our benefit--not the benefit of our oppressors. We can do this, and a good way to start is by following his concluding suggestion:
Let’s reinvent this upcoming Veteran’s Day as a way to honor all the activists who fought before us and blazed a path.

We, The People

Click here if you wish to access the most recent posting on Raging Bull-Shit of this poem by Juli:

We, The People

We, the People, we are the Nation,

The Soul of the Land in manifestation.

We are the stewards of all she bestows,

We are the yesterday, glued to tomorrow.

We are the Temple, the priests and the flock.

We are the method; the vehicles; the stock.

We are the warriors, artists and scribes,

The teachers, the healers, protectors and guides.

We are the source of the outcome we seek:

The Light and the Strength and the Hope that we need.

We are the draughtsmen and builders of Will.

We are the answer; the cure for our ills.

For we are the Soul and the hand of our fate

And we are the banners and trumpets of State.

Albion’s creatures in Sovereignty’s land:

We are the People – we are the Command. 

Secret Lives of the Super Rich

Click here to access posting on CNBC

This posting about a new TV program probably belongs in a "believe it, or not" category. What are the TV executives thinking?! I haven't seen it, but judging from the material at this website I'm quite shocked. Do they think that they can rub our noses in the lives of rich people and we'll love it? Well, maybe so. Surely, they do all kinds of market testing before they launch a program like this. I recall that during the 1930's Depression, Hollywood made a number of films that featured the lives of the rich.

Friday, October 11, 2013

The crisis of representation and the liberation of the self

Click here to access article by Nozomi Hayase from Reflections on a Revolution. (Note: there is an obvious error in the third paragraph: "APA" should be "AP", Associated Press.)

In this piece the author provides a psychological explanation for the widespread apathy and conformity that are preventing most Americans from protesting the ongoing attacks on their welfare and constitutional rights.

It all has to do with "representation" which is the inclination to look outside ourselves to products or persons who can fulfill our needs. This inclination has been driven by the public relations and advertising industries since the 1930s. My understanding of her thesis is this: having firmly established this psychological reaction in us, our ruling class authorities are now able to manipulate the representations to whatever effect they desire whether selling products or candidates. We have become passive and content with choosing among alternatives, carefully crafted and packaged, that authorities make available to us.

However much this phenomenon has taken hold, she sees hopeful signs that things might change.
Around the world, the message is loud and clear. People are saying we are no longer to be mere consumers, passively accepting the commercialized visions of a future handed down to us, with corporate values and political candidates sold to us like many brands of toothpaste. This is a voice resonating in all these movements around the world and calling for deep systemic change.
It seems to me that the "voice" is much quieter here in the US than in the rest of the world--and that worries me.

NSA wants even greater powers … to defend Wall Street

Click here to access article by Natasha Lennard from Salon
Feel this blow as a coup de grâce: The NSA not only, we now know, hoards data on our every communication, but, we now learn, wants to have broader surveillance dragnets and deeper spycraft capabilities in place to defend that other great villain of the past decade — Wall Street. The nexus of power and control linking Washington, Silicon Valley and Wall Street was made almost cinematically complete in comments from NSA Chief Keith Alexander to lawmakers this week.
The general knows who really runs this country and pays for his services, however he needs to take a course in public relations to become as skilled as Obama.

US Supports Terrorists When They Fight its Adversaries: James Petras

Click here to access the interview with Prof. James Petras from Iran Review.
To discuss the ongoing crisis in Syria, the reasons why the United States abandoned its plans for attacking Syria and the future of civil war in the embattled Arab country, Iran Review conducted an exclusive interview with prominent political scientist Prof. James Petras.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

“September 11 – The New Pearl Harbor” – Truth Movement vs Debunkers

Click here to access article featuring an interview with filmmaker Massimo Mazzucco from reopen911.info (a French website) via Global Research (Canada).

In the interview Mazzucco talks about his recent film and provides some very interesting observations about dealing with mainstream media executives and how they function to discredit 9/11 doubters. However, he exhibits some signs of political naïveté with this statement:
Mainstream media is called mainstream media for a good reason. This is because they reflect the position of mainstream thinking at a precise moment in time, i.e. a majority of the population at a specific point in history. In reality, they reflect the majority of the population as much as they influence it. To one extent, the media know very well just how far they can go without without generating a negative reaction from viewers; to another extent, they try to push the limit further and further because they also know that this is the best way of increasing their ratings.
Mazzucco seems to suggest that mainstream media is only concerned about ratings, otherwise it is a neutral player in presenting news, information, and opinions. If my interpretation is correct, he totally misses the vital function of mainstream media in capitalist society which is to shape all news and views to reflect ruling class interests. They are a critical part of the ruling One Percent. If it weren't for them, the ruling class would be forced to operate an expensive police state apparatus, which, of course, they have now constructed anyway just in case their propaganda organs fail to sufficiently dumb down their citizens.

The five hour film, “September 11 – The New Pearl Harbor”, can be viewed on YouTube for free or purchased online. 

What National Debt? US Taxpayer Dollars Continue to Flow to the World’s Despots, Torturers & Human Target Practice Fields …

Click here to access article by Sibel Edmonds from Boiling Frogs.

This is a rant, but a rant born of frustration from an informed person who has put so much of her life into exposing the truth about our deceptive and thoroughly corrupted government. She could be enjoying a life of blissful leisure, instead like Sisyphus she keeps on toiling up the proverbial mountain desperately trying to move the boulder of complacency and ignorance up to the summit of light. 

In this piece she points to where our ruling class lawmakers should be looking to cut back on expenditures: expenditures that kill, maim, and torture people, ordinary people like ourselves except that most of them happen to live in foreign lands. But, of course, the lawmakers are employed to watch out for their One Percent employers' interests--not our interests such as maintaining a decent lifestyle, educating our kids, supporting ourselves in retirement, securing adequate health care, etc. All of our interests are now under attack. The directors of the One Percent are using the scare tactic of a government shutdown to get us to accept these attacks. 

Meanwhile, far too many of us refuse to ask important questions and look for alternative sources of information; and instead, insist on maintaining the comfort of conformity to the views of the authorities. Too many of us are such good little Germans.

I can identify with her frustration because I deal with it myself nearly everyday.

CBS’s ‘Mom’: Whitewashing And Mocking The Poor

Click here to access article by Jeffrey Cavanaugh from MintPress News

The author provides a dissection of a TV comedy program as a form of social control and indoctrination so we that continue to accept declining living standards, homelessness, poor health care, dysfunctional families, destitute retirement, etc. Thus, it is clear that our ruling class TV directors are not only interested in entertaining us, but also use their programs to shape our consciousness about what is happening to our lives. 
That “Mom” is in fact a sitcom that expects us to amusingly mainline the normative message of the show – that pathological, intergenerational dysfunction among the underclass is normal and amusing.... The show suggests that we should make a quip and carry on....

The Coming Plague

Click here to access article by Stephen Leahy from Inter Press Service
A climate plague affecting every living thing will likely start in 2020 in southern Indonesia, scientists warned Wednesday in the journal Nature. A few years later the plague will have spread throughout the world’s tropical regions.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Tea Party’s shutdown lunacy

Click here to access the interview with Doug Henwood posted on Salon.

This left business observer argues that Tea Party Republicans are out of the control of the financial ruling class who are now starting to take notice especially when foreign financial authorities are starting to issue warnings. The status of the US dollar as a safe-haven is at stake for the Empire--without that the Empire couldn't exist. Empire directors sell US government paper to some extent like the Mafia use disguised threats to get protection money. As long as the Empire can use the threat of violence against any adversary, the world's capitalists will buy this paper in order to safely store their ill-gotten wealth. Because he sees the Tea Party actions undermining the credibility of this safe-haven, he also views the crisis as much more serious than I do.

I still tend to see that this crisis has largely been engineered by the ruling class in an effort to move public opinion in the direction of accepting cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Taking advantage of crises or creating crises is one of the prime methods that ruling class directors have been using in recent decades to shape public opinion to serve their interests. If I am correct, I think we should see a settlement made, at least to keep the government open, in the next few days, but much later if Henwood is correct.
Look at what Obama would like to do: Obama would like to keep the government funded and keep us paying interest on our Treasury debt. But he would also like the old Bowles-Simpson “Grand Bargain” of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He came into office talking about that, and he hasn’t really lost his drive to do it. So he’s got what is essentially an orthodox austerity agenda, which would please most of the mainstream parts of Wall Street and the Fortune 500. 
See also this article from World Socialist Web Site entitled " Amid government shutdown, Obama signals cuts to Social Security, Medicare".

The Anti-Empire Report #121

Click here to access article by William Blum from his blog.

In this report Blum writes about three subjects:
1) The War on Terrorism … or whatever
Pity the poor American who wants to be a good citizen, wants to understand the world and his country’s role in it, wants to believe in the War on Terrorism, wants to believe that his government seeks to do good … What is he to make of all this?
2) “Omission is the most powerful form of lie.” – George Orwell  [Blum fills in an event missing from US history books that happened in Greece after WWII.]
3) The latest step in the evolution of America’s Police State  [Here he reports on an incident in which a German was too critical of US government spying and the Empire's response. Only one newspaper in the US reported the incident.]

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

American style justice: a tale of two justice systems

Two reports surfaced today to reveal in stark contrast the way a primarily class-based justice (and secondarily racist) system  works in the US. The first one reports on a capitalist functionary, Maurice (Hank) Greenberg, accused of committing and lying about accounting fraud, activities that directly contributed to the recent global economic collapse. The second reports on African-Americans who were members of the Black Panthers who have spent most of their lives in a hellish Southern prison. One was recently acquitted of all charges shortly before his death.

Click here to access article entitled "Ryan Chittum Has Had It With Hank Greenberg and Maria Bartiromo" by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

Click here to access article entitled "Choose Activism: It’s Our Last, Best Chance" by Mickey Z. from World News Trust.

The Shutdown, the Showdown, and the Urgent Need To Repolarize... For Revolution

Click here to access article from Revolution.

I think the article provides a very sound class analysis and insights on the current capitalist political dispute over the Affordable Care Act. However, I think that the author(s) make too much of this dispute and use it to launch into a lengthy exposition of Bob Avakian's views on revolution. Therefore, I recommend the material  from the introduction through section I only.
Different political representatives of the capitalist-imperialist class have different ideas on what should be done politically. They differ over how the masses should be led to think and act, what reforms should or should not be made, and overall what should be the “acceptable limits” and governing assumptions of political discourse and ideological principle. They struggle this out through elections, the media, and in other forms. (This function also includes allowing the masses to undertake action for some reforms to deal with their conditions, to make the state seem legitimate in their eyes, and to confine their thinking to how to keep a fundamentally exploitative, oppressive, and unjust system running, rather than overthrowing it.)
As I see it, the two capitalist groups differ as to how to manage the increasing government debt. The dominant segment wants to continue with business as usual: creating more money, provide some token medical coverage to ordinary Americans to keep the hoi polloi pacified, and to continue their military dominance of the world. The rebel group led by the Tea Party understandably want to stop borrowing money from foreign governments, and to a lesser extent from The Fed. And, they don't want money spent on ordinary Americans in any form. Otherwise, they have few problems with spending money on domestic surveillance, militarizing local police forces, military weapons, and incursions throughout the world.

Shootout at the APEC free-trade corral

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online.

Escobar reports on the developing Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) free trade agreement pushed by China's ruling class which directly competes with Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) promoted by the US ruling class which excludes China. It appears that Obama's cancelled trip to Asia that would include this summit is seen as a snub to APEC by many of Asia's capitalists. 

While our corporate media have reported very little on TPP, we have heard even less from them about APEC's free trade goals. Apparently the directors in our ruling class feel that these agreements are none of our business. It seems that once the Supreme Court made its "Citizens United" decision in 2010, which essentially recognised corporations as citizens, our ruling class directors now view us as unworthy or even non-citizens (sarcasm).

Anyway, there is much evidence to indicate that if the US ruling class can't dominate in a free trade agreement, they won't participate at all.
Xi stressed over and over again that China favors one FTA to cover all of the Asia-Pacific. And as far as Beijing is concerned, that won't be TPP - which is essentially a major US corporate racket that will lower tariffs across the spectrum to the sole benefit of US multinationals and not small and medium-sized firms in developing countries, all this under the cover of a dodgy "highest free trade standard". 
In any case, all these free trade agreements favor the profit-making interests of corporations and capitalists who participate in the agreements versus the health and welfare of workers across the world. They provide an end run around national laws which still include some protections against exploitative and hazardous corporate practices.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Empire Under Obama, Part 1: Political Language and the 'Mafia Principles' of International Relations

Click here to access article by Andrew Gavin Marshall from The Hampton Institute.
In the first part of this essay series on 'Empire Under Obama,' I will aim to establish some fundamental premises of modern imperialism, or what is often referred to as 'international relations,' 'geopolitics', or 'foreign policy.' Specifically, I will refer to George Orwell's writing on 'political language' in order to provide a context in which the discourse of imperialism may take place out in the open with very little comprehension on the part of the public which consumes the information; and further, to draw upon Noam Chomsky's suggestion of understanding international relations as the application of 'Mafia Principles' to foreign policy. This part provides some background on these issues, and future parts to this essay series will be examining the manifestation of empire in recent years. 
There are two basic ways that humans can relate to each other and to nature: one, on the basis of equality, respect for each other and all life forms, compassion for those who suffer or are disadvantaged; or two, on the basis of dominance and submission where a few people contend for dominance over others and nature, and the others submit for fear of consequences or sometimes out of sheer ignorance due to the concealed nature of the activities of the dominant ones. 

The latter way is referred to aptly in the article as operating according to "Mafia Principles" because we are all familiar with the way such criminal organizations operate. Capitalism which is based on extreme individualism fosters this latter form of human relations (sociopathy), however any class system features this. The sad fact is, due to the long recent history of class-structured societies (although only 2% of human existence), many people now believe that this form of human relations reflects human nature.

In contemporary class-structured capitalist societies whose rulers like to refer to them as "democratic", we find a highly refined form of governance which relies heavily on the management of thought of its citizens. One of the earliest and most famous people to dissect this form of control was George Orwell whom Marshall quotes extensively. However, one must never forget that violence stands immediately behind this mask of "democracy", rule of law, etc. Whenever capitalist ruling classes are threatened, the ugly fist of fascism  is always employed as we have seen throughout the history of capitalist rule.

Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse?

Click here to access article by Ellen Brown  from her blog Web of Debt

In the article she provides evidence that suggests that the answer to the title question is "yes". However, I don't think that it is motivated by a response to an imminent breakdown in the banking system. All the evidence indicates that the construction of a police state has been gradually developing since our ruling capitalist class went into high gear (around the year 2000) with their globalized expansion plans by offshoring most of the American economy (except the weapons industry) to reduce labor costs. However, to find the origins of this militarization of American society, we need to need to go back to the Vietnam War years during which ruling class war policies were directly threatened by the population. After this war ruling class directors began the construction of a police state which they concealed in the "War on Drugs" (for the latest assessment see this), and more recently, continued it construction in the "War on Terrorism".

They understandably felt that sooner or later American workers would wake up and rebel.

Intel union: Spy agency heads won’t roll with US and UK allied

Click here to access article by Annie Machon from RT

She points out some differences in the way US and their Empire counterparts in Britain are handling the Snowden spy scandal. Whereas in the US, Empire directors are going through the motions of investigation and discussion, their British counterparts seem to be imposing police state measures of censorship and intimidation to handle the controversy. Cultural differences? 

US- Venezuela Relations: A Case Study of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

Click here to access article by James Petras from his blog.

The retired sociology professor and geo-political analyst extraordinaire provides essentially an outline of a handbook on how Empire imperialists destabilize countries in order to integrate them within their Empire. Here it is:
...when attempting to weaken or overthrow a nationalist-populist regime, the empire will resort to multiple forms of attack including (1) corruption (buying off government backers) (2) funding and organizing opposition media, parties, business and trade union organizations, (3) organizing and backing disloyal military officials to violently overthrow the elected government (4) support employers’ lockouts to paralyze strategic sectors of the economy (oil)(5) financing referendums and other ‘legal mechanisms’ to revoke democratic mandates, (6) promoting paramilitary groups to destabilize civil society and sow public insecurity and undermine agrarian reforms; (7) finance electoral parties and non-governmental organizations to compete in and delegitimize elections; (8) engage in diplomatic warfare and efforts to prejudice regional relations; (9) establish military bases in neighboring countries, as a platform for joint military invasions.
He then finds a perfect illustration of the application of these methods in the historical relations between the US and Venezuela over the past 30 years.

Let me add that following the integration of a client state into the US Empire, we see Empire directors actively promoting ties with client states' military command through training and social junkets, abundant military aid, and advice on how to control their populations. Egypt, Columbia, Honduras, Guatamala, and El Salvador provide excellent illustrations of this.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

What Happened to Egypt’s Liberals After the Coup?

Click here to access article by Sharif Abdel Kouddous from The Nation. (A late posting because I thought it went very well with the post following this.)

He provides an interesting description of what happened to people on the left--not merely liberals-- in Egypt after Al-Sisi's army took back direct control of the nation. Some embraced the army, some did so temporarily, and some have remained in opposition from the beginning.
The opposition to Morsi began to coalesce in early May, when a group of young organizers launched Tamarod (Arabic for “rebel”), a grassroots initiative founded on a simple yet powerful idea: a petition declaring a vote of no confidence in the president and a call for early presidential elections.
....
“The story of Tamarod is the story of the co-optation of a popular movement,” says Mona El-Ghobashy, an Egyptian professor of political science at Barnard College. “It was this grassroots, fragmented, atomized initiative by definition, and the military saw an excellent opportunity and piggybacked on it....

A voice of dissent joins the nationalist chorus

Click here to access article by Ursula Lindsey from Mada Masr.

I'm posting this article because it is a good illustration of the effect on a significant number of Egyptians of the Empire's strategy of chaos that has influenced recent events in Egypt. This article reports on the author's interview with Sonallah Ibrahim, an Egyptian intellectual and writer, whom she has admired in the past, but is now shocked to learn that he supports the current Al-Sisi regime.
Given Ibrahim's tendency to question official narratives, and what struck me as his kind-heartedness, I was surprised this summer when I read an interview in an Egyptian newspaper in which he seemed to wholeheartedly support the crackdown on supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi — hundreds of whom were killed by army and police over the summer — and to unquestioningly accept the military leadership's presentation of itself as at the service of the people.
Ibrahim is an example of many of those Egyptians who currently support the Al-Sisi regime because they understandably want order restored--a welcome change from the violence ridden society of the past year. (Also, I see hints of the allure of identifying with powerful people in some of Ibrahim's statements.)

I think that Empire directors have understood this kind of psychological reaction. Thus, they have promoted the chaos while coaching the Al-Sisi regime on how to frame their actions in terms of controlling terrorism. That is, while promoting state terrorism against the Morsi government and its Muslim Brotherhood followers, Al-Sisi under Empire coaching has actually created the conditions of terrorism that he is now using to repress all popular opposition. I explained this strategy in my July 28th post:
There have been numerous reports surfacing which allege sitings of snipers being used against Muslim Brotherhood protestors (see this, this, and this).  

Over the past several years I've been noticing reports of unknown snipers being spotted in many other troubled areas of the world. I recall Mahdi Nazemroaya, a Canadian journalist, who reported about snipers while trapped in a hotel in Libya in August 2011.  (See first video regarding a video phone interview with Nazemroaya in article that I posted on August 22nd at segments 0:55 - 1:18 and 4:55 - 6:55m.) See also this and this.

It seems that this is a standard destabilization tactic used against targeted countries by agents of the Empire. In Egypt I think it is likely being used to terrorize the Muslim Brotherhood into submission or to incite a civil war, and to cause the rest of the population to turn to the Army to secure peace regardless of the policies of the latter. This Empire terrorist strategy is known as the Salvador Option.

Seeds of discontent documentary unveils how foreign investors fuel land grabs

Click here to access article from Climate Connections.
A powerful new documentary film “Seeds of discontent” was launched this week  to draw attention to the role of a Swedish investment firm, Dutch pension fund and Norwegian church endowment firm in land grabbing in Mozambique.
Here is the trailer for Seeds of Discontent that you can view now or after reading the article posted on Climate Connections about the film.
“Cases like this one are happening every day, all over the globe” argues Philip Seufert of FIAN International, member of the Hands off the Land Alliance. “Communities are confronted with investors who arrive and promise a lot to them: jobs, ‘development’, money, a bright future. But what really happens then is that communities find their valuable land no longer available for farming, people have to work under bad conditions for the investors, communities get divided against each other and all the nice promises turn out to be empty.
Of course, capitalists always promise "jobs" when they try to sell you on some project requiring a community's approval. Here in the US this lie seems to almost always work. But the reality under capitalism is that the last thing they want to promote are jobs. They, and their system, are all about profits. Jobs are cost items on their financial statements, and the way to create more profits is to eliminate as many jobs as possible.