"Restricting the Sale of Violent Video Games Ruled Unconstitutional," by Alpha Unit

In 2005, the California legislature passed, and the Governor signed into law, Assembly Bill 1179. The new law prohibited selling or renting to minors any video games that depict killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting any image of a human being – particularly if the assault is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved. As in torture. Retailers who violated the law would have been liable in an amount up to $1,000 for each violation. On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California can’t regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The Act violates the First Amendment. According to the ruling, California sought to create a new category of content-based regulation permissible only for speech directed at children. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, stated:

This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence. And California’s claim that “interactive” video games present special problems, in that the player participates in the violent action on the screen and determines its outcome, is unpersuasive.

He went on to say that California would have had to demonstrate that the law passes strict scrutiny – that is, that the law is justified by a compelling government interest and is narrowly drawn to serve that interest. The court ruled that the law does not pass the test. According to Justice Scalia:

Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media. Since California has declined to restrict those other media, e.g., Saturday morning cartoons, its video game regulation is wildly underinclusive, raising serious doubts about whether the law is pursuing the interest it invokes or is instead disfavoring a particular speaker or viewpoint.

The court declared that the video-game industry’s voluntary rating system already meets the alleged substantial need of parents who wish to restrict access to violent videos. In addition to being underinclusive, the Act is overinclusive, since not all children who are prohibited from purchasing violent video games have parents who disapprove of their doing so. The law’s author, Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), lamented the ruling, saying that it put the interests of corporate America before the interests of California’s children.

“Restricting the Sale of Violent Video Games Ruled Unconstitutional,” by Alpha Unit

In 2005, the California legislature passed, and the Governor signed into law, Assembly Bill 1179. The new law prohibited selling or renting to minors any video games that depict killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting any image of a human being – particularly if the assault is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved. As in torture.

Retailers who violated the law would have been liable in an amount up to $1,000 for each violation.

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California can’t regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The Act violates the First Amendment.

According to the ruling, California sought to create a new category of content-based regulation permissible only for speech directed at children. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, stated:

This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence. And California’s claim that “interactive” video games present special problems, in that the player participates in the violent action on the screen and determines its outcome, is unpersuasive.

He went on to say that California would have had to demonstrate that the law passes strict scrutiny – that is, that the law is justified by a compelling government interest and is narrowly drawn to serve that interest. The court ruled that the law does not pass the test. According to Justice Scalia:

Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media. Since California has declined to restrict those other media, e.g., Saturday morning cartoons, its video game regulation is wildly underinclusive, raising serious doubts about whether the law is pursuing the interest it invokes or is instead disfavoring a particular speaker or viewpoint.

The court declared that the video-game industry’s voluntary rating system already meets the alleged substantial need of parents who wish to restrict access to violent videos.

In addition to being underinclusive, the Act is overinclusive, since not all children who are prohibited from purchasing violent video games have parents who disapprove of their doing so.

The law’s author, Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), lamented the ruling, saying that it put the interests of corporate America before the interests of California’s children.

Bear Hunter Interview Part 2: More Outrageous Bigfoot Allegations and Revelations

Here is the second part of my interview with a fellow I will call Bear Hunter. The widely read first part is here.

It deals with a wide range of subjects, including why we have a hard time getting good trailcam videos of Bigfoots, Bigfoots burying their dead in peat bogs, Bigfoot gravediggers who dug up a Bigfoot grave and found a skeleton of a Bigfoot hand, a trapper who is more or less living with a group of Bigfoots, an wilderness area with a huge number of disappearances that may be Bigfoot-related, and most outrageously of all, a man who claims that he was kidnapped by Bigfoots and  taken to their lair where they tried to force him to mate with a female Bigfoot a la the famous Albert Ostman story.

I think we ought to send someone up to Canada to try to find the guy who is reporting the Albert Ostman Redux story. At the very least, it deserves to be investigated.

RL: Do you think Bigfoots avoid trailcams? Some people say that they avoid those cameras.

BH: They do avoid them as a matter of fact. They can hear the cams. The cams give off a lot of noise. It’s at a low frequency that humans can’t hear, but the Bigfoots can hear it. Other animals can hear it too, but they are not as wary as Bigfoots. For instance, some of your great big trophy deer won’t go near one. Bigfoots can hear them for quite a ways away, and they just stay away from them. The manufacturers know that the cams give off a lot of noise, and they are working now to reduce the noise that they give off.

RL: What do you think Bigfoots do with their dead? I say they bury them.

BH: They do bury their dead. In Canada, they bury their dead in peat bogs. These bogs are funny places, sort of like swamps, but they are almost like quicksand. You can sink down and get trapped and die in them if you are not careful. I know some guys who dug up a bog and found some Bigfoot bones. They put all the bones together and ended up with a Bigfoot hand skeleton.

RL: Why don’t they go public with it?

BH: You have to understand the way these guys are. These types…they just don’t care. They don’t care about getting famous or going public or anything like that. They are outside of all of that. These guys who found the skeleton have a cabin way back in the woods that they use for recreation. The Bigfoot hand skeleton is there, mounted on a piece of wood. They have a few beers, get drunk, bring this thing out and laugh about it and make jokes. That’s all they want to do with it.

RL: Are you aware of any habituation stories we haven’t heard about yet?

BH: There is a guy in British Colombia, a trapper who lives way out in the woods. He’s supposedly totally habituated some Bigfoots. He’s more or less living with them in a sense. He sees them every single day.

RL: What do you think of the Albert Ostman story? Is it true?

BH: It’s a true story. What’s even more strange is that there is a fellow up in British Colombia, a trapper, who has a similar story. He was talking to a friend of mine, telling him about Bigfoots, and then the trapper mentions that he got kidnapped by Bigfoots once! My friend said that at that point, he stopped listening to the guy, forget it.

The guy said a Bigfoot kidnapped him and took him back to a cave where the Bigfoots were living and tried to force the guy to have sex with a female Bigfoot! Just like the Albert Ostman story, no? So it looks like maybe Bigfoots do kidnap humans sometimes for breeding purposes.

RL: Is this guy who got kidnapped by the Bigfoots for breeding the same as the guy who is living in a habituation situation with the Bigfoots?

BH: He may well be. They are both trappers in British Colombia living way out in the woods.

You know, we also have people in Canada who disappear on a regular basis. There is one area of British Colombia where 21 people have vanished without a trace over many years. It’s also an area with many Bigfoot sightings. A lot of people are scared to go in there. I know a lot of outdoorsmen who refuse to go anywhere near that area. It seems like there is something creepy going on there. I am wondering if the Bigfoots are behind the disappearances, and if any of this involves kidnapping humans for breeding purposes.

Check out Bigfoot Forums for the best Bigfoot discussion on the web.

Man Badly Beaten on Madrid Subway

Video here.

In this shocking video, people are on a subway in Madrid, Spain. A man walks down the aisle, then seems to recognize another young man sitting there. The man walking by puts down his backpack, then turns around suddenly kicks the sitting man in the head!

He repeatedly pummels him, often to the head, and lands another couple of hard kicks to the head before he calls it off. The people around clear out while the beating is going on. Then a couple of older men surround the attacker and keep away from the guy he was beating.

It turns out that the attacker was an anti antifascist. He recognized the man he attacked as a fascist who he had seen at a fascist rally a while earlier. The fascist got badly beaten up. He had a big black eye.

Cool! Bash the fash!

Man Savagely Beaten in an Akron, Ohio Pizza Joint

Video here.

People are waiting in line in Akron, Ohio to get a pizza. A woman in a camouflage outfit cuts into line ahead of everyone else. A man on a cellphone complains about her to the person on the other end of the line. She hears the man complaining about her and gets in his face very aggressively.

Then she goes out to the parking lot. She comes back in and gets in the cellphone guy’s face again. The manager tells her to take off. She spits in the manager’s face!

The manager rushes out to confront her, but then her huge 6’4, 300 lb. boyfriend shows up. The is an ex-con, a convicted drug dealer. The woman turns around and smacks the cellphone guy in the head. She hits him over and over. He throws down his cellphone in rage.

The boyfriend begins to pound on the guy. He pummels him badly, all the way to the ground. He hits him seven times. The last blow knocks him out cold. The other customers look on helplessly, afraid to intervene because the attacker is so huge.

Final result: cellphone guy got a broken eye socket, broken nose, concussion and a chipped tooth.

The attacker was eventually convicted in court for the assault and sentenced to four years in prison.

Girls Beat Up Transsexual in a Fast Food Joint

Video here.

A very shocking video.

A White transsexual tried to use the women’s restroom in a Baltimore McDonald’s. Two Black girls were in there, and they realized that the transsexual was not formally a female. They thought she was a male pervert perving on the women in the woman’s restroom. They chased her out of the restroom and thrashed her very badly.

The Black fast food employees refused to intervene. A Black customer or employee videotaped the beating on his cellphone. At the end of the video, the transsexual starts having a seizure from being beaten so badly.

India: What Is To Be Done?

A decent Indian Hindu asks me:

Lindsay, criticisms aside, what can be done to change the country?

I have given up on Indian institutions to make anything better at all. I have thrown my lot in with the Maoists as they seem to be the only people who have what it takes to really deal with the problems of India.

I think that Indian people are very selfish. They really don’t want to solve the problems of their country.

  1. 5
  2. Shit runs through the streets of the cities like open sewers when it rains.
  3. 600 million Indians shit outdoors every single day.
  4. The garbage and pollution is sickening. I hear about folks who travel between the US and India regularly, and every time they come back from India, they are sick. They go India, they get sick. India is literally making people sick.
  5. Indian slums are an outrage. Substandard housing, no clean or running water, no sewage. Ridiculous.
  6. The feudal culture of the countryside must be broken. All civilized nations have undergone a land reform. It never got done in India due to the power of the feudal lords. Land reform is mandatory.
  7. Education reform is necessary. There are too few schools and way too many kids drop out very young to go to work.
  8. Child labor and even slavery is rampant in India. It’s absolutely sickening.

This are the immediate problems that need to be addressed in India. Very basic things. First things first, ok? All the skyscrapers can’t mask this horror.

I do not think that privileged Indians want to fix these problems though. They figure it does not effect them.

We get Indian nationalists here every day screaming abuse and threats at me, but unlike them, I really do want what is best for the vast majority of Indian people. This desire means that I have a very deep love for the Indian people in terms of my hopes and desires for them.

I think most Indian nationalists do not want what is best for India. In that sense, I question how much they really love their land and their people, no?

Types of Libertarian Morons

All Libertarians are morons; there are just different types of stupid.

America is probably one of the only countries in the world where Libertarianism has any kind of sway at all, although I understand that for some reason, it is relatively popular in Costa Rica for some reason, possibly because the country is heavily White. Whites are the only race on Earth who will heavily go in for Libertarianism, because Whites are much more selfish and individualistic than any other race. European, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealander Whites are not prone to selfishness of individualism.

Selfish and individualistic politics is popular among White elites in Latin America, but only in places where Whites are a minority.

In Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, where Whites or near-Whites are more or less a majority, selfish and individualistic politics is far less popular, since your average White person there is just an ordinary working class person, not a member of an elite group.

Nevertheless, the Cone nations have been ruled by a particularly vicious White elite for a long time. This elite has spent much of the last 40 years slaughtering the working class Whites of the Cone countries in order to maintain their outrageous and feudal-style wealth. As a consequence, White politics in the Cone is polarized into Hard Left and Hard Right, in a way similar to some Mediterranean countries like Italy, Portugal and Spain.

Small government is popular with White elites, as this philosophy in general is only popular with elites around the world. The German Social Democrats used to have a saying, “Only the rich can afford a poor state.” Of course this is true, and this is why the rich the world over, especially in the 3rd World, tend to favor a minimal state. Hatred of taxation is also typical of elites the world over, particularly in the 3rd World.

In general, ordinary people the world over do not favor small government or hate taxation. In that sense, Americans, particularly White Americans, are very strange. The views of White Americasns are more typical of world elites than the ordinary working class people of the world. It’s as if your ordinary working class White person identifies more with his class enemies, the rich, than with his own class. Working class Whites also see themselves as elites, which is odd, since they are not elites, and in fact they are extremely oppressed by their own elites.

This strange philosophy probably has its roots in the Frontier Ethic, the break from colonialism, and the radical individualism that has long characterized White American culture.

As America becomes increasingly non-White, this view will decline. Asians are not radical individualists, and Asian nations are not characterized by small government and low taxation. Hispanics and Blacks are collectivist peoples who also have no interest in small government and low taxation. Black nations are like Asian nations in that there is no interest in Libertarian-style governance.

These trends show no sign of changing in the future. Even as Asians, Hispanics and Blacks make good money and move up in the world, they retain their collectivist roots.

The future does not look good for Libertarian types in the US in the long term, though they may make some gains in the short term.

The future looks bleak for Libertarianism in the world at large, as most nations have no interest in small government or low taxation.

Seen more properly, the vast majority of the world’s people, and the overwhelming majority of the working class, are collectivist people.

 

Caribbean Day Festival 2001 Riot Video

Video here.

Caribbean Day Festival 2001 in Washington DC was marred by a riot involving two Black gangs from the area (I assume that “crews” means gangs, correct?). These gangs have been warring for some time now. The riot took place at Howard University, but Howard University students did not take place. It appears that few, if any, Caribbeans took part in the riot. Instead, the riots seem to be African-Americans.

At first it’s just the usual fighting. A White boy gets mixed up in it about the 1 minute mark and the Blacks beat him up. The rest of the video is Blacks beating up on each other. Note the presence of many young Black females in the mix. They seem to be as excited as the males. Around the 3:25 mark things start to get really serious when one Black picks up a metal chair and hits another Black over the head with it.

Police were delayed in responding to the gang fight due to a shooting at the Caribbean Day Parade itself. In the shooting, one man was killed and three others were wounded. Three of the four shot were innocent bystanders.

Early Homo Sapiens Sapiens in Africa

From the study of skulls we can learn what early humans in Africa looked like. By early humans, I mean modern man, not earlier types.

Very early skulls from Africa resemble either Khoisans or no living type. Some Khoisan type skulls (broadly defined) can be found going back as far as 90,000 years. Boskopoid skulls from 35-50,000 YBP seem to look like Khoisan (Mirazón Lahr,p. 282). Early Kenyan skulls look also look Khoisan.

Negroes appear in the fossil record in Congo, Mali, Niger and Chad from 6,000-12,000 YBP. They develop in the course of agriculture as Khoisan and Pygmy types gathered into agricultural villages in the regions above. In hunter-gatherer societies, women need men and marry early, hence there is little competition for females and every man gets a woman. In African agricultural societies, there was plenty of food, and women no longer needed a man to provide for them.

Since women no longer needed men, women got picky. Extreme competition for women developed among men, and one man or a small group of men tended to monopolize the women. This is the “chief” syndrome also seen in primitive agricultural societies in New Guinea.

Extreme competition led to the largest, strongest and most aggressive males dominating the group and preferentially passing on their genes. Hence, Negroes developed into big, strong, good athletes with high testosterone which drove high aggression. This is one theory for high Black crime rates.

In contrast, Pygmies are not aggressive at all, and tend to be rather meek and shy. Khoisan have low testosterone and have low levels of overt aggression.

Nilotics appear in Kenya 8-12,000 YBP. Originally, when these Nilotic skulls were first found, they were mistaken for Europeans. These are the classic “Horner” types of the Horn of Africa. It is amazing that Nilotics would be mistaken for Europeans, but they do have a more Caucasian look to them.

Recent Sub Saharan Africans have skulls that are more gracile than Europeans (ibid. p. 283), so it is a lie to say that Blacks have primitive or robust skulls.

The only really robust or primitive skulls nowadays in the study were found in Australians (6

The most gracile skulls were 13 E Asians, 13 SS Africans, 11 SE Asians, 7 Europeans, 1 Inuit, 1 S Asian and 1 Australian. So we can see that the most modern and gracile skulls are found in Blacks and Asians. Europeans are also modern and gracile, but not so much as the others. We also see that while Australians generally have the most robust skulls on Earth, some Aborigines have very gracile skulls. Australians are best seen as an extreme mixture.

Why did man leave Africa, and which route did he take? The reason for leaving was apparently a terrible drought in East Africa. For instance, between 135,000 and 75,000 years ago, East African droughts shrunk the water volume of  Lake Malawi by at least 9

Which route did they take? Researchers say their study of the tribes of Andaman and Nicobar islands using complete mitochondrial DNA sequences and its comparison those of world populations has led to the theory of a “southern coastal route” of migration from East Africa through India. They took the Indian Ocean coastal route.

References

Mirazón Lahr, Marta. 1996. The Evolution of Modern Human Diversity: A Study of Cranial Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Propaganda About Cuba’s Medical Missions

Here.

According to the article, ordinary Cubans are suffering as the regime sends doctors abroad on medical missions, apparently mostly to make money for the state. I think it was a good idea to send the doctors abroad, as it’s making good money for the regime and helping a lot of people in the 3rd World.

I know that Cuba gets a good deal out of the doctors who they send to Venezuela, but I am not sure if they charge or not to send doctors to other countries besides Venezuela. I don’t think that the regime should send doctors to 3rd World countries for free, other than in a crisis situation.

Charity begins at home. The nation is short of cash in a lot of ways, and it shows. Downtown Havana needs renovation, and a lot of the buildings may simply need to be torn down. Quite a few are in danger of collapsing. The sewage system in Havana needs repairs. There is a chronic housing shortage. The nation is often short of electricity in a place where an air conditioner could really come in handy. The hospitals and clinics tend to be short of supplies. Given all of that, why not make money off the doctors? Why give them away for free?

The article says that ordinary Cubans are suffering, but there is nothing to that. Cuba has one of the best doctor-patient ratios on Earth. Before the medical missions, if anything, the island was overdoctored and doctors didn’t have enough to do. That’s not a good use of all of that skill and education.

Two New Caucasian Races Created

The Races of Man post is still being updated. Recently, I spit out the Hunza and Tajik from the West Asian race and created two new races based on them. The relevant paper is here.

The first grouping includes the Hunza of the Karokorams, the Bartangi of the Pamirs and the Roma or Gypsies of Europe. So we can see that the Roma have an origin in the Himalayas-Pamir region of far northern Pakistan and Tajikistan. The same paper points out a close relationship with the Jatt caste of India and Pakistan, which includes many Punjabis, and the Roma.

The second grouping is made of Tajiks, the Shugnan of the Pamirs, the Arabs of Bukhara, and three groups from India – the Kallar of Kerala, the Sourashtran of Tamil Nadu, and the Yadhava of various places.

This is all in the general Himalayan- Pamir – Karokoram – Kashmir region, an area of towering peaks and isolated valleys. A high degree of genetic differentiation is logical here.

From the paper:

The Sinte Romani, or Gypsies, group with the Hunza and Bartangi (from the Pamir region of Central Asia) populations in our tree. This finding is primarily due to the M124 haplotype, which is present at high frequency in all three populations. M124 is not found in Eastern Europe (17),

Cluster VI includes the Sinte Romani (Gypsies), Hunza (a northern Pakistani population speaking a divergent language, Burushaski), and Bartangi (Pamir region) populations. Cluster VII includes the Indian populations (Kallar, Sourashtran, and Yadhava), as well as those Central Asian populations closest to them geographically (Tajik/Dushanbe, Shugnan, Tajik/Samarkand, and Arab/Bukhara).

An international collaboration led by Manir Ali of the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, first identified the ‘Jatt’ mutation in one of four Pakistani families. Further study amongst Roma populations in Europe showed that the same mutation accounted for nearly half of all cases of PCG [Primary congenital glaucoma] in that community. Manir Ali’s research also confirms the widely accepted view that the Roma originated from the Jatt clan of Northern India and Pakistan and not from Eastern Europe as previously believed.

The new lineup looks like this:

General Caucasian Major Race***

European-Iranian Race (Most European – Caucasus – Armenian – Jewish – Turk – Kurd – Iranian – Jordanian – Iraqi – Assyrian – Druze – Lebanese – Georgian – Caspian – Palestinian)

Basque Race (Basque)

Norwegian-Swedish Saami Race*** (Norwegian Saami – Swedish Saami)

Finnish Saami Race** (Finnish Saami)

Sardinian Race** (Sardinian)

Kuwaiti Race* (Kuwaiti)

Arabian Race (Saudi – Yemeni – Bedouin)*

West Asian Race (Pashtun – Brahui – Balochi – Makrani – Sindhi )

Tajik Race (Tajik – Bukhara Arab – Shugnan – Kallar –  Sourashtran – Yadhava)

West Himalayan Race (Hunza – Bartangi – Roma)

Berber Race*** (Berber)

Egyptian Race (Egyptian)

North African Race (Moroccan – Libyan – Tunisian – Canarian)

Algerian Race (Algerian)

North Indian Race** (Punjabi – Central Indic – Punjabi Brahmin – Rajput – Vania Soni – Mumbai Brahmin – Jat – Kerala Brahmin – Koli)

Himalayan Race*** (Gurkha – Tharu – Ladakhi)

Karnet-Uttar Pradesh Brahmin Race*** (Karnet – Uttar Pradesh Brahmin)

South Indian Race** (Munda – Bhil – Maratha – Rajbanshi – Oraon – Parji – Kolami Naiki – Chenchu Reddi – Konda – Kolya – West Bengal Brahmin – Parsi – Gond)

Kerala Kadar Race*** (Kerala Kadar)

South Dravidian Race*** (Sinhalese – Lambada – Irula – Izhava – Kurumba – Nayar – Toda – Kota – Malayaraya – Tamil)

Americans Love Austerity, But No One Else Does

Let’s get one thing clear now: the policies of the rich and the upper middle class benefit the rich and the upper middle class and only those classes. As a good general rule, they help those classes and hurt everyone else.

Capitalism can be thought of a gigantic pie with all of the classes fighting over slices of the pie. The policies of the upper classes are always and everywhere designed to take money from the poor, the working class and the middle class and give that money to the upper classes. It’s called Class War, and it is continuous and ongoing in most capitalist countries.

In some social democratic states in Europe, a sort of a social peace has been reached via a Social Contract in which the upper classes have been relatively quiet about their demands. But as soon as the last crisis hit, the upper classes began demanding the dismantling of the social contract and the mass transfer of funds from the people to the wealthy, mostly from ordinary workers to the banks.

This is really a reinstatement of feudalism. Workers are being saddled with debt bondage into the forseeable future, their lives trashed to pay for their debts to their ultra-rich feudal banker lords and masters.

All over Europe, humans rose up against this shock therapy. Everywhere austerity has been tried, it has ruined economies and faciliatated mass transfer or money from workers to the ultra-rich, mostly bankers. Austerity has caused millions of deaths all over the 3rd World as the rich of the West raped and wrecked economies.

A major demand has been to open up the people’s properties to the Western rich. This way the Western rich bought the people’s property as pennies on the dollar. This was a transfer of 3rd World national wealth held by the people and the sovereign nation to the Western ultra-rich.

In some cases, there were demands to sell off national properties. There are demands for the Greeks to sell off their islands. This is really financial warfare perpetrated by the feudal ultra-rich on captive nations. It used to be that warfare was used to capture foreign lands. Now, foreign lands, businesses and markets are conquered and captured by the feudal banker elite via financial warfare. No troops are needed. All you need are banks, the new weapons of mass destruction.

It is normal the world over for humans to protest the nation-wrecking austerity measures that the feudal rich impose on them. The rich have demanded the dismantling of national health care and education, rises in taxes and fees on workers and huge cuts in workers wages, all so the captive nations can pay back the extortionate millionaire banker criminals.

It is proper that normal humans would protest this state of affairs. To my knowledge, it is only in America that austerity was met with huge cheers and demands for more. Parties pushing austerity usually go down to defeat in most of the world. Here, the parties that push the most state destruction, the worst feudal class warfare and the most austerity win by huge margins.

Apparently Americans are mentally ill. No where else on Earth do parties campaign on the ludicrous campaign of “small government.” Normal humans the world love big government. They love their social programs and fight to the death to save them. The hatred for “Big government” and desire for minimal or Libertarian style minimal government is relatively unique to the US. Elsewhere in the world, it is typical of the rich, but not of the masses. Only in the US do the masses subscribe to the policies of the rich.

James Petras, “US Working and Middle Class: Solidarity or Competition in the Face of Crisis?”

Another excellent article by Petras. He discusses the obvious, why working class and middle class Americans consistently support the policies of the rich.

US Working and Middle Class: Solidarity or Competition in the Face of Crisis?

James Petras

“I don’t think you realize how hard it is for the oppressed to become united. Their misery unites them (…) But otherwise their misery is liable to cut them off from one another, for they are forced to snatch the wretched crumbs from each other’s mouth”. – Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays Vol. 9 (Pantheon Books, New York, 1972) p. 379

Introduction

There are two incontestable facts about the United States: the economy and the working class are experiencing a prolonged economic crisis which has lasted over three years and shows no signs of ending; there has been no major revolt, mass national resistance or even large scale protests of any consequence. Few writers have attempted to address this seeming paradox and those who do, have provided partial answers which in fact raise more questions than they answer.

Lines of Inquiry

Essentially most writers emphasize one of the two sides of the “paradox”. The ‘crises’ analysts focus on the extent, duration and enduring nature of the economic breakdown, outlining its harsh impact on the working and middle class in terms of losses of employment, benefits, wages, mortgages etc. Others, mostly left progressive, emphasize the local protests, critical responses registered in opinion polls, occasional complaints of trade union bureaucrats and the hopes and intimations of academics and pundits that a ‘revolt’ is on its way some time in the near future.

Among the minority of less sanguine critical analysts, there is despair, or at least a more pessimist view of the ‘paradox’. They point to several deep-seated psychological, organizational and political obstacles which prevent any revolt or mass unrest from taking hold among the United States’ public.

On the whole these critics see the working and middle class as ‘victims’ of the system, acted upon by false leaders, media manipulation, corporate capitalism and the two party system which prevent them from pursuing their class interests.

In this essay, I will pursue an alternative line of analysis which will argue that the “external enemies” blocking working and middle class resistance are aided and abetted by the behavior and perceived interest within the classes. In pursuit of this line of inquiry, I will argue that both the nature and scope of ‘the crises’ has been misunderstood in its impact on the working and middle class and as a consequence the degree of internal contradictions within those classes has not been adequately understood.

Key Concepts: Clarifying ‘Crises’ and its Impact

Economic crises, even severe, prolonged ones, such as is affecting the US today, do not have a uniform impact on all sectors of the working and middle class. The uneven impact has segmented the working and middle class, between those who are adversely affected and those not, or who in certain circumstances have benefited. This segmentation is one key factor accounting for the lack of class solidarity and has resulted in ‘contradictions’ within and between the working and middle class.

Secondly the uneven development of social organization – especially trade unionization – between public and private sector workers, has led to the former securing and retaining greater social benefits and increases and wages, while the former has lost ground. The public sector workers draw on public financing to fund their ‘corporate interests’ while private sector workers are forced to pay increased taxes, because of regressive fiscal legislation.

The result is an apparent or real conflict of interest between well-organized public workers organized around a narrow set of (self) interests and the mass of unorganized private sector workers who, unable to increase their wages via class struggle, side with “fiscal conservatives” (funded by big business) to demand cutbacks from public sector workers.

Political partisanship, especially among middle and working class Democrats, undercuts class solidarity and weakens unified social resistance. This is evident in relation to issues of war and peace, the economic crises and cutbacks in social programs.

When the Democrats hold office, as they do today ad the wars and war spending multiply, the bulk of the peace movement has disappeared, labor protests against budget cutbacks focus on Republican governors, not Democrats, even as the working and middle class (including public sector employees) are adversely affected.

The millionaire top trade union officials (average annual salary over $300,000 plus perks) further the division by prioritizing the security of their position via million dollar contributions to the Democrats, thus buying insurance on income flows from dues payments. Security of officialdom via alignment with Party legislators and governors, mayors and executive leaders contributes to a further division within the working class between ‘secure functionaries’ and their followers on the one hand, and the rest of the middle and working class.

Operating with these key concepts we will now turn to describing the ‘objective conditions of crises’, a critical survey of some explanations for the ‘paradox’, and follow with a detailed examination of the ‘internal contradictions’ and conclude by outlining some points of departure for resolving the paradox.

Economic Crisis is Real, Deep and Sustained

The symptoms and structures of a deep economic crisis are readily visible to any but the most obtuse government apologist or prestigious economist: un- and under-employment has reached between 18 to 20 percent. One out of three US families are directly affected by loss of employment. One out of ten American family homeowners are either behind in the mortgage payments or face foreclosure. Over half of the current unemployed (9.1 percent) have been out of work at least six months.

Massive cutbacks in public expenditures and investments have led to the end of health, educational and welfare programs for tens of millions of low income families, children, the disabled, the elderly pensioners. Private firms have eliminated or reduced payments for health insurance, leaving over 50 million working Americans without health insurance and another 30 million with inadequate medical coverage. Tax exemptions, reduced and regressive taxation have increased tax payments by wage and salaried workers, reducing their net income.

Increases in pension and health payments forced on middle and working class employees have further reduced net income. Increased spending for at least four wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya) preparation for a fifth (Iran) and support for the world’s most militarist state (Israel) and a greatly expanded and costly domestic police state apparatus (Homeland Security alone costs $180 billion) has greatly deteriorated environmental, workplace and leisure space living standards.

Corporate political power and absolute tyrannical control over the workplace has increased fear, insecurity and virtual terror among employees facing increased speed-ups and arbitrary elimination of any say in health and workplace safety, work schedules, over and under time workloads. Low pay service jobs proliferate, high pay jobs are outsourced out of the country; manufacturing plants are relocated abroad; lower paid immigrant professionals and laborers are imported increasing pressure on US workers to compete for lower pay and lesser benefits.

The ‘economic crises’ is embedded in the deep structure of US capitalism and is not a ‘cyclical phenomenon’ subject to a dynamic recovery, restoring lost jobs, homes, living standards and working conditions.

Middle and Working Class Responses to the Economic Crises

The profound, deep seated and pervasive economic crises has not elicited any commensurate revolts, rebellion or even sustained national protest movement. At best local protests by specific segments of the working and middle class have sought to defend narrow organizational and economic interests. The public employees in Wisconsin’s protest movement were as exceptional in its militancy as it was isolated and limited in its overall national impact.

As California Republican and New York Democratic governors eliminate tens of billions of dollars in wages, pension and health benefits for hundreds of thousands of unionized public employees, union officials squawk impotently on the sidelines, incapable of mounting any serious protests let alone popular movements.

Though public opinion polls register high levels of individual concern about the economic crises and dissatisfaction with both political parties the response to the crises has not led to practical activity, nor has any mass ‘movement’’ emerged – it remains private inconsequential discontent.

As much as millions of middle and working classes are deeply preoccupied with the ongoing economic crises there are no significant social or political repercussions past, present or in the foreseeable future.

All the inflated hopes and ‘ominous prognostications’ by liberals and leftists, socialists and progressives, who wrote and predicted a coming ‘revolt of the masses’ have been flat wrong. The crisis continues and the highly dissatisfied middle and working class remain privately suffering, muttering their grievances in isolation, unwilling to engage in any mass collective action.

Even as the mass media, even as the internet, Facebook and Tweeter, present millions demonstrating and striking and even toppling oppressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa; even as news reports filter out of repeated general strikes and mass occupations of public plazas by employees and workers and unemployed in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and France, the United States workers stand numb, indifferent and impotent to ‘learn the lessons’ and ‘take collective action’ even where the issues of employment and cutbacks are similar.

Explanations for Social Immobility in the Face of the Economic Crises

There is no lack of ‘recognition’ that ‘something is wrong’ in these United States. There is no lack of pundits attempting to grapple with the paradox of economic crises and social immobility.

Several explanatory forays are floating through the media and the internet. Some writers resort to psychological explanations of social passivity pointing to widespread ‘fear’ of employer retaliation, state repression, or a sense of ‘futility’ in the face of political party indifference and hostility. The psychological arguments have some merit as they point to some of the immediate causes of non-involvement but fail to explain what causes ‘fear’ and futility.

In response many critical progressive cite the absence or weakness of social organizations in particular they point to the decline of trade union organizations, leaving 93 percent of the private sector unorganized and the state sector unionized workers with limited bargaining powers. While these critics are right to emphasize the unwillingness of millionaire trade union officials to break new political ground and initiate new organizing efforts, one needs to explain why the unorganized middle and working class have not themselves launched any new initiatives?

Union officials have a long history of “give backs” going back at least two decades and yet those who are directly adversely affected and those who have lost their jobs have not organized an alternative network of solidarity.

Political analysts emphasize the oligarchic and restrictive nature of the electoral system as pre-empting the emergence of new political initiatives. The multi-million dollar cost of running for office, the near monopoly dominance of the mass media by the corporate two-party elite and the legal obstacle to securing a place on the ballot, discourage disenchanted voters from supporting new political party initiatives.

But the deeper question is why mass movements, outside of the party-electoral framework, have not emerged that might eventually challenge the political oligarchy, the corporate monopoly of media and change the legal constraints on effective entry into the electoral arena. Why do mass movements emerge in other even more repressive countries, facing similar constraints on legal access and confronted by entrenched oligarchies?

If similar ‘external constraints’ as those found in the US led to divergent behavioral responses, it raises the question of whether the differences within the middle and working class can be the source of passivity and immobility?

A few writers, principally on the Left, cite the divorce or distance between intellectuals/academics and the downwardly mobile middle and working class. In the United States there are few intellectuals – politically engaged writers and political lecturers.

What passes for the educated classes, are full-time professional academics who differ little in their social and everyday life, regardless of their stated ideological philosophies. The vast majority of leftist academics conceive of their ‘activism’ as reading papers to each other at ‘left’ or ‘social forums’, which differ little in format and consequences from mainstream professional meetings.

Even those left academics who take a political role, it is mostly in relation with the multi-millionaire senior trade union officials and their loyalist apparatus. As a result the progressive academics have ended up with little entrée into the vast majority of workers who are outside of the trade unions and those dissident union factions challenging the trade union – Democratic Party – corporate nexus.

An Alternate Explanation for the ‘Paradox’

One of the key problems inhibiting an understanding of the paradox is the treatment of the key concept – “crises”. Many writers conceive of the ‘crises’ in a ‘holistic’ way, presuming what is ‘general’ or ‘systemic’ has a homogenous effect on the middle and working class. In fact the vast majority, say three-quarters have not been seriously impacted by the “crises”.

Assuming that the unemployed and under-employed comprise about twenty percent and adding those who have suffered serious downward mobility, we still have at least 70 percent whose main preoccupation is to retain their ‘privileged’ position and to disengage from those who have fallen out of their class-social orbit.

In the US, more than any other country, the sharp internal differences, between employed and un-underemployed, has led to ‘competition’ not solidarity. In most countries of the world ‘unemployed’ and underemployed workers can expect backing, active support from unionized workers; in the US once middle class employees and workers lose their job and cannot pay dues they are dropped.

Even in terms of social, family and neighborhood life, they are seen as a ‘cost’, a potential drain on the resources of those who are employed. The employed see the unemployed and poorly paid as a welfare cost , hence an added tax burden instead of as an ally in a struggle to make the corporate elite pay higher taxes and reduce war spending. Among employed workers higher taxes, means capital flight; lesser military expenditures mean few war industry jobs.

Segmentation within the middle and working class operates at many levels. The most striking is between the pay scale of top union officials which runs over $300,000 plus perks and the unemployed/underemployed living on less than $30,000. These economic differences are played out politically and socially. The trade union apparatus buys ‘job security’ by contributing tens of millions to mostly Democrats, to ensure that unions retain their formal legality and collective bargaining rights.

In other words the ‘organized’ unions, all of 1

Middle and working class are differentially, impacted by the crises: those with jobs and ties to the Democratic Party place their partisan loyalties above any notion of class solidarity. Job holders don’t support the jobless – they see them as competitors over a shrinking income pie.

If we examine these two groups in detail we find that the poorly paid and un and underemployed tend to be young people under 30 years, blacks, Hispanics and single parents; the better paid employed middle and working class tend to be older, white educated and of Anglo-Jewish background. The generational, racial, ethnic divisions play a far bigger role in the US than anywhere else, because of the obliteration of class identity and outlooks, which has diluted any notion of class solidarity.

The segmentation of the middle and working class is deepened in the US because those with stable employment in many cases benefit from the adverse consequences affecting downwardly mobile (unemployed) employees and workers.

Mortgage foreclosures affect over 10 million American families unable to meet their payments. Banks eager to recover some part of their loan, offer to sell houses at sharply reduced prices. Employed middle and working class home buyers are elated to purchase homes, even as their class members are evicted to the street or trailer camp. There is no movement to block or protest evictions from neighbors, workmates and/or relatives; instead discreet inquiries are made about the auction date.

Better paid workers look to secure cheaper consumer goods in super-stores that employ minimum wage workers. The ‘interests’ of workers are defined by immediate individual-consumer interests not in terms of the improvement of strategic interests resulting from the potential social and political power of an organized class.

Employed middle and working class homeowners see themselves as ‘tax payers’ allied with corporate and real estate moguls fighting to lower taxes by cutting welfare and social services for the low paid working class and unemployed. The growth of upper and middle/working class tax revolts against the welfare state is in effect a war of one segment of the class against another. Clearly one segment fights to grab the crumbs from the mouth of another segment.

Even among the organized working class, there is segmentation. Pockets of better paid unionized public sector workers secured pay raises and pension and health plans via collective struggle, ignoring the interests, demands and needs of the sea of non-unionized workers, who were in the process of downward mobility while paying higher taxes. Hence their socio-economic differences were politicized and exploited by the Right – and the public-private sectors of the middle and working class competed over the crumbs of a shrinking budget.

As public facilities for health and education declined, the middle and working class divided between those who turned to private clinics and schools and those who remained dependent on public facilities, based on state expenditures. Those segments tied to the ‘private’ rejected taxes to fund the ‘public’; undercutting any class solidarity to improve the financing and quality of public health and education.

Conclusion

It is clear that the crisis of capitalism has evoked contradictory responses among different segments of the middle and working class based on its differential impact. Pre-existing non-class identities, internal economic division between leaders and followers and generational divisions and party partisan loyalties have undermined class solidarity and led to inconsequential complaints and diffuse hostility.

Competition- not solidarity- within and among the middle and working class is the reason for the profound immobility of Americans in the face of a prolonged and deepening economic crises.

That is now and in the past. Are there any prospects for a different future? Is there any possibility for uniting middle and working class segments in any sustained struggle? Are there alternative roads to class solidarity and popular mobilizations?

The most promising direction is to start at the local and regional level and involve local community organizations and dissident rank and file trade unions and progressive professionals (lawyer, doctors, etc.) in struggles, which resonate with the most adversely affected groups facing unemployment, foreclosures, no health plans, etc.

All polls show a deep divergence between the vast majority of Americans and the political elite of both parties on issues of bank bailouts, tax exemptions for the rich, “reforms” (privatizations and cut backs), Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Divergences exist over the loss of life and expenditures in America’s multiple and longest wars (Afghanistan).

Referendums proposing (1) to end the cap on social security taxes for the rich would end the so-called “social security crises”. (2) A sales tax on financial transactions would fund the Medicare deficit. Public investments in our deteriorating infrastructure based on the transfer of war funds ($790 billion) would create jobs, increase demand in the domestic economy and augment the productivity and competitiveness of the US economy.

Support for public health is an issue that unites most segments of the middle and working class, unionized health workers and community organizations in a potential confrontation with Big Pharma and the private corporate health industries.

A higher minimum wage – starting at $12 an hour – could mobilize most middle and working class segments, and initiatives at the local level could bring in the immigrant and domestic low paid workers.

The interview data demonstrate that most Americans have apparently ‘contradictory’ attitudes: supporting progressive and regressive policies. For example many support Medicare and ‘small government’; federal job creation and deficit reduction; import tariffs and cheap consumer imports.

An comprehensive activist political educational program, that demonstrates that progressive social reforms are feasible and fundable, based on a sustained fiscal struggle against corporate and financial capital, can be converted into organization and direct action. We start with an objective reality, demonstrating that the sustained crisis of capitalism does not and cannot deliver the most elementary demands: jobs, housing, security, peace and growth.

That is a big advantage over the advocates of the system who argue for prolonged and deeper regressive measures for the foreseeable future.

Secondly, we start with the advantage of knowing that the country has the potential wealth, skills and resources to overcome the crises. Thirdly, we can argue from relatively successful popular programs which have vast support – social security, Medicare, Medicaid – as ‘examples’ to extend and deepen social coverage.

For most Americans, the fight today, to the extent that it exists is defensive – efforts to preserve the last vestiges of independent organization, to defend social security, health programs, affordable public education, pensions. The corporate offensive is increasingly ‘homogenizing’ the organized middle and working class with the lowest paid unorganized segments. There are fewer ‘privileged workers’ even as they are still in self-denial.

The near extinction of private sector unionism and the moribund millionaire leadership provides an opportunity to start anew with a horizontal leadership, accountable to the membership and integrated with community based co-op, ecologist, immigrant, consumer based organizations. What is absolutely clear is that ‘crises’ alone will not result in any mass upheaval; nor do ‘enlightened’ progressive academics holed up in their micro-world offer any leadership.

The road forward starts with local leaders emerging from local coalitions, building organizations on the bases of independent political and social initiatives which resonate with their neighbors, fellow workers and the organized and unorganized downwardly mobile Americans. I see no easy or quick solutions to the ‘paradox’ but I do see the objective conditions, for building a movement. I hear a multitude of angry and discordant voices. Above all, I hope the oppressed will stop “snatching the crumbs from each other.”

Capitalism Is Murder: Shock Doctrine in the East Bloc Killed 10 Million People

Here.

After the fall of Communism in the East Bloc in the early 1990’s, Westerners pushed something called shock therapy, or rapid privatization. A new study by the Lancet shows that shock therapy actually killed 10 million men and an unknown number of women in the East Bloc.

The study points out that it was not the transtion to capitalism per se that was at fault but how it was done. Rapid privatization or shock therapy was one way, but the other way is more gradual privatization. The study makes clear what we on the Left have been saying forever, that shock therapy kills.

The study also found that the more social connections a person had, the less likely they were to be killed by shock therapy. As radical capitalist neoliberalism has as its purpose the destruction of all bonds between men other than profit-seeking and the complete atomization of all humans, leading to mass insecurity and a Hobbesian war of all against all, it figures that neoliberal capitalism works strongly against social bonds. The more neoliberalism, the weaker the social bonds between humans.

Shock therapy had differential effects in different places. In Poland and the former Yugoslavia, there was little damage. The damage was severe in Russia.

In the US, the entire mass media and both conservative parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, vociferously pushed shock therapy. I read many articles about it at the time, always wondering why this was such a great thing. In the “free press” there was no dissent on the subject of shock therapy. You could not find a single opinion anywhere saying that this might be a bad idea. So much for “freedom of the press” in the USA. It was the way to go. Bill Clinton pushed it as strongly as Newt Gingrich.

Most of the Americans pushing shock therapy were connected with the Chicago School of Economics, and all of the most prominent ones were Jews. Many Jews in Israel also got in on the looting in Russia and the East Bloc. In addition, Russian Jews were very heavily involved in the mass looting and destruction of their great land.

Much of the looted funds was transferred to agents of International Jewry in the US and the UK, in particular Lord Rothschild. A lot of the money ended up in Israel. Richard Perle and other neocons on the right along with George Soros on the Left both gladly looted Slavic lands to benefit the tribe.

One wonders what the motivation for this mass rape of these mostly Slavic people was. Possibly it was revenge for anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and Russia, another chapter in the war of the Slavs and the Jews. The Jews were getting their revenge for the Holocaust and Russian anti-Semitism. All in all, it was shameful behavior on the part of the Jews. The Jews are supposed to be progressive people, but here they were, acting just like the feudal lords and masters who they worked with in Eastern Europe for centuries. Worse, they were raping the East just as the ultimate Amelekite, Hitler, had done.

Every Jew on Earth should hang his head in shame at this grotesque display, if they have any sense of decency at all.

To be fair, a lot of the riches just went to the Western rich, mostly bankers. And many Russian gentiles helped the Russian Jews rape Russia. The Jews couldn’t do it alone.

As one might logically predict, this Jewish-led mass looting led to a huge upsurge in anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe, even in places like Romania (5,000 Jews) and Poland where there were hardly any Jews left.

If Jews hate anti-Semitism so much, why do things to worsen it? I don’t get it. Or do Jews hate anti-Semitism? Maybe they like it?

New Erickson Project News: Bigfoot DNA Project Using Two Dead Bigfoot Bodies for Samples

Note: Long, runs to 24 pages.

I was recently put into touch with a hunter from Western North America who is quite well known in his field. You might even say that he is famous. He and others were the subject of a recent book, and he often gives talks at various forums. He was formerly employed at America’s foremost science museum but is no longer working there.

He is considered to be at the top of his field, which I will not reveal here. He is also a hunter and travels around North America hunting. He especially likes to hunt bears. This puts him in touch with many other hunters. He is also active on taxidermy boards. He has deep ties to the Erickson Project and the Olympic Project.

He will be known anonymously as Bear Hunter in this article, as he only talked to me on the grounds that his identity was kept secret.

Robert Lindsay: Hi, what made you decide to get in touch with me?

Bear Hunter: Well, I read your article where you interviewed Richard Stubstad, and I thought, “Wow! This guy is hot on the trial! He’s really close. He’s closing in. So I decided to fill in some blanks for you.”

RL: Is there a reason why you decided to spill the beans on this hot news to me just now?

BH: Yes, I am getting very impatient with the pace of this project. You know, it’s always coming out this year, then next year, then this year again, then next year again, then this spring. I’m getting tired of it. I want to jumpstart this project and tell them to get going and finish it up.

RL: You say you have some blockbuster news regarding the Erickson Project Bigfoot DNA study, right?

BH: Yes I do. This all started from a thread on Taxidermy.net, a website where I hang out. There are sometimes threads on Bigfoots, and in this one thread, in November 2010, a guy said that he had just shot two Bigfoots! The guy is a trapper, a taxidermist and a hunter. This was huge news of course, and pretty soon there were lots of followup posts. Somehow the guy’s name and number got out, and there were reports of people bothering him and harassing him. He asked the webmaster, George Ruff, to shut down the thread. George shut it down.

Well, afterward, I got in touch with the guy and talked to him for a while.  Adrian Erickson, Matt Moneymaker and Tyler Huggins all got involved. Moneymaker and Huggins are with the BFRO (Bigfoot Field Research Organization). Erickson had heard of Bigfoots getting shot; actually, he has lots a number of stories from Canada where they get shot pretty regularly. But, as he put it, “I’ve never been two weeks behind a shooting before.” Everybody was scrambling after this guy!

RL: How was it that the Bigfoots came to be shot, and were they killed?

BH: In November 2010, [name withheld] was hunting on the border between Nevada and California, inside California, near a game refuge. (RL: Based on my investigation, it took place in or near the Dixie Mountain Game Refuge west of Frenchman Lake on the Plumas National Forest in Plumas County. It borders Washoe County in Nevada. See a map here).

On one side of the game refuge, there was this single road in a canyon leading into and out of the refuge. Bigfoots were apparently using the game refuge, since they are safe from hunters there.

The guy was on this road when he came upon a large dirty-white (RL: supposedly female) Bigfoot standing in the road. Since the narrow road was the only route in and out of the place, the Bigfoots were forced to use this road whether they wanted to or not. The Bigfoot was standing there waving her arms at him. I thought maybe she was telling the hunter to back up so the Bigfoot could move through, since the Bigfoot was stuck on the road, no?

The guy stopped his truck and jumped out. He knew it was a Bigfoot, but he thought she was threatening him. The Bigfoot knew his intentions by now, and she started to run away. He shot her with a 25.06. He shot her through the side of her chest, piercing her lungs. The Bigfoot took off into the brush, but he heard her crash down soon afterward.

Next thing he knew, he heard barking sounds coming from the side of the road. There were two young Bigfoots there that popped up out of nowhere. They were brown-colored. The hunter shot one of the young Bigfoots dead! He’s an idiot, right?

It died in his arms. 4 feet tall, 80 pounds. He said it had a huge head, and then I knew it was a young Bigfoot, because the young ones have gigantic heads while they are still young. The head is more normal sized as they get older. Remember that “Pancake Video” from the Kentucky Project, where the young Bigfoot has a huge head that everyone was saying was a human with some birth defect? Well, that is what they look like when they are young.

Have you seen the Jacobs footage that they say is a mangy bear? The shooter told me the juvenile he shot looked just like the Jacobs creature.

RL: Yes, what is it? A bear?

BH: No way. It’s a juvenile Bigfoot. You can tell by the hips. And the neck. The thing has no neck. I know bears. I love bears. No way is that a bear.

RL: Why did he shoot the adult Bigfoot? He says he thought it was a bear.

BH: No. He knew what it was. Because of the color. Bears don’t come in off-white. Anyone knows that. He shot it because he thought it was threatening him.

RL: Why did he shoot the juvenile Bigfoot? He says it got up on an outcrop and was threatening him.

BH: No, that’s not true. Why did he shoot it? He’s that kind of guy. I know a lot of hunters. Most are good people, but some are not. There are a lot of guys like him out there hunting. People shoot things just because they can, just to kill them. That’s why he did it. He did it because that’s what kind of person he is.

RL: What did he do with the Bigfoots?

BH: He told us that he left them lying there. There was snow on the ground, so we figured that there might still be enough time to go in and get the bodies. Pretty soon, we decided that the guy was probably lying. We thought he probably took the bodies, because taxidermists are hoarders – they never leave anything they shoot in the field.

RL: The Olympic Project says they went back to the site over two weeks later and found a bit of flesh on the ground, left over from the shooting. They used this bit of flesh to slice up and submit to the DNA project.

BH: No, they told me they never went back there.

RL: What happened to the dead Bigfoots?

BH: Well, we put the hunter in contact with the Olympic Project that is working on Bigfoots in Washington State. We didn’t hear much for a while, only that the OP folks kept saying, “We are just trying to keep [name withheld] out of jail.” The hunter was convinced that if California figured out he shot these two Bigfoots, he was going to jail. He was really afraid of going to jail.

RL: Ok, then?

BH: Moneymaker and the BFRO were in on this too. It was a mad rush for those bodies!

We didn’t hear much more for a while until the Olympic Project starting sending samples to Melba Ketchum for her DNA project as part of the Erickson Project. Some of the samples that the EP was getting were of tissue, and they looked like they were carved off a dead body!

(RL: One sample appeared to be carved off of the thigh of a human or hominid cadaver. Dr. Ketchum was so freaked out by the sample that she called people up asking them to hold it for her in case the police came to her lab, because she was afraid of going to jail.)

The samples had two different colors of hair. Obviously, the Olympic Project was sending Ketchum samples carved from the bodies of the two dead Bigfoots? Isn’t that incredible?

RL: Who has the Bigfoots, the hunter or the Olympic Project?

BH: I think that the hunter still has the bodies or he has parts of the bodies. Maybe he cut parts off them before he left. If he has the bodies, he has probably cut them up, cut off the heads and has them on ice. They can last a long time like that. I don’t think the Olympic Project has the bodies.

We did a lot more digging, and we found that now the hunter is associated deeply with the OP. He’s part of their project. The OP is not admitting to anything. They deny it all, they say they have no dead Bigfoots, and they don’t have access to any. 

RL: Incredible news!

BH: Yes, there’s more too. Notice how the Olympic Project is all over the Internet boards talking about how they have enough Bigfoot samples to last for years? Guess why they say that? Probably because they have access to two dead Bigfoot bodies! Think about it.

RL: Too much…Do you know about any leaks from the Erickson Project DNA study?

BH: Yes, I do. They are very close to humans. Say if chimpanzees are 2 clicks away from humans, these things are maybe 3/4 of a click away.

RL: Ok, and they are in the Homo line?

BH: Yes, I am sure of that. Recall that say 50,000 YBP, there were maybe five different hominids on the planet. Homo sapiens sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo Floresiensis, Denisova, Homo heidelbergensis and Neandertal Man. All of these other hominids are gone. What happened to them?

RL: We killed them all.

BH: Yes, we killed them all. So the only thing that could survive was something that was huge, very stealthy and wary, hated humans, favored the most remote areas, had the use of bad smell to ward off enemies, used an intense EMF field to paralyze and disorient enemies, was very strong and had a very thick skin that was hard to penetrate. They’re the ultimate survivors of our genocidal wars.

RL: Do you think they are humans or apes?

BH: I don’t know. You know Bindernagel wrote that book, America’s Great Ape, but then after he saw the Bigfoots in Kentucky, he changed his mind. Now he thinks that they are hominids. But I know one fellow who saw one face to face on a trail. He said it’s ape-like; it’s an ape-man. So who knows?

RL: Do you have any info on the Kentucky Project?

BH: I do. Erickson bought that place, and he got a lot of great video out of there. He installed Dennis Pfohl and Leila Hadj-Chikh there, and they shot quite a bit of Bigfoot video. Erickson said he had so much good Bigfoot video that he was getting tired of taking pictures of them. At one point, he brought Bindernagel down there to see the Bigfoots. Bindernagel was able to see them. He also wanted to bring John Green down there, but he was very sick with prostate cancer and could not make it.

A friend of mine saw the famous video of the young female Bigfoot walking in the forest. She walks towards the camera, then sees the camerawoman, growls and turns away. He said there is no way that this could be a costume. They also shot video of a huge male at that site, but everyone is keeping very quiet about that.

RL: Do you believe that Erickson is in it for the money?

BH: I get tired of hearing this. Erickson has sunk $3 million of his own money into this thing. $3 million! He hasn’t made one nickel back.

RL: Do you have any information about Erickson’s movie about Bigfoot?

BH: Yes, it’s finished! 10

RL: Do you know if Dr. Ketchum has any TV or film interests in the works?

BH: Yes, she is involved with National Geographic. They want to do a special on Bigfoot, and she is involved in that.

RL: What’s the relationship between Bigfoots and trappers?

BH: Bigfoots hang out along traplines and raid them. I heard of one case where a Bigfoot got caught in a trap. The Bigfoot got himself out of the trap by bending the solid steel! Unbelievable!

RL: You say you hear a lot of stories of Bigfoots getting killed?

BH: Yes, I get a story about every 2 months. They range from recent to pretty far back in time. There are many stories coming out of Canada too. Erickson also has many stories. It’s the same story every time. People kill it, and it looks so much like a human being that they leave it in the field because they are afraid they are going to be prosecuted for murder.

RL: I say that if you believe in Bigfoot, you must also believe in a few things. 1) People are shooting at and killing these things fairly regularly. 2) There must be a government coverup. 3) We are photographing and videotaping Bigfoots on a fairly regular basis.

BH: I agree. As far as a government coverup, of course the government must know about these things. And I know that the timber industry knows about them. And people shoot them all the time.

There was a recent case in Alberta where the Fish and Wildlife people were poisoning wolves. They are supposed to tell trappers about this, but they didn’t in this case. A trapper found a dead wolf partly eaten and huge tracks leading away from it. The tracks were of a Bigfoot that had been poisoned by eating the wolf. The guy tracked it for a while but then lost the trail.

He reported it to the Game people, but they paid him $20,000 to shut him up. They kept saying, “So, you lost 5 cougar dogs tracking that thing. That’s worth about $20,000.” He hadn’t lost any cougar dogs. He finally figured out they were offering him money to shut him up, so he took the money.

RL: What’s the motivation for the coverup?

BH: In Canada, they are worried about resource lockup. They are afraid it will shut down logging. I know that up there, as soon as there is a Bigfoot sighting, the timber people get word of it and come in and clearcut the area. They do that to drive the Bigfoot off, because they don’t want the Bigfoot on their logging land. They’re afraid it will keep them from logging the land.

RL: Do you think Bigfoots are getting habituated to humans in any way?

BH: Yes, a friend of mine in Alberta told me about a Bigfoot that was living on the outskirts of the Nordegg dump, living off the garbage, foraging food out of the trash. People tracked the thing way back into a remote area and found its nest. All sorts of stuff from the dump had been hung in trees 8-10 feet up, bicycles, chairs, you name it. The Bigfoot was decorating its home with that stuff.

RL: Wow!

BH: Yes, I have so many stories. When I go to give my talks, I always say if you have any Bigfoot stories, come up and talk to me afterward. Every time, people come up to talk to me. All sorts of people. They haven’t told many others about their sightings, and every case, they have not reported it to any private or public agency.

One guy told me how he was hunting in a swamp in the Southeast US, and he passed out from the swamp gas. The stuff can overwhelm you and make you pass out.

He woke up, and he was next to a spring. There was a huge 8-foot Bigfoot crouched down next to him, offering a cup of water from the spring. The cup had been hanging from the spring. People sometimes hang metal cups from springs. He took a drink, passed out again, and then woke up again later on. The Bigfoot was still there, and it offered him another drink. He drank it and passed out again. He woke up the third time, and the Bigfoot was gone.

RL: Do you think that tracking dogs are good for tracking Bigfoots, say in order to capture one? Jeff Meldrum has been talking about that a lot lately.

BH: I think dogs are useless when it comes to tracking these things. You know, I am a hunter, and I use tracking dogs all the time. We take people out on guided hunts, and I hunt myself all the time using guides. Dogs will track anything, but they won’t track these things. The meanest dog on Earth will be left pissing, shivering and whimpering by his master’s legs.

I knew one guy who sent six dogs after a Bigfoot. Only five of them came back; the sixth was torn up. The other five dogs were so traumatized that they were useless as trackers. They would never track another animal again. And these were good tracking dogs.

RL: What do you think of Bigfoots’ use of infrasound?

BH: I am not sure that they use infrasound. You see, all animals have an EMF field that they give off, and these things do too. One of my theories is that these things have a very strong EMF field that they give off, and they may be able to manipulate it. One thing you notice is that when these things are around, everything goes quiet, and most of the animals around take off. That’s because of the strong EMF field that the Bigfoots give off. It scares the crap out of other animals.

I know that they use this field to disorient people. Erickson said he was being chased out of the forest in Canada by one once, and he was so disoriented and delirious that he had to keep looking at the moss on the trees, because you know, moss only grows on the north? That’s because the Bigfoot was disorienting him so much that he kept getting lost.

I am going to test this theory out by buying an outfit that they sell for $100. It neutralizes your own EMF field. Supposedly, you can wear it and walk right up to animals and touch them.

RL: Were you always a Bigfoot believer?

BH: Not at all. I was a skeptic until five years ago. Then I started looking into this thing, and all of these people started coming forward, including people I had known for years and trusted completely. I started getting swamped with these stories, even people I had known a long time had stories, but they had never told me! I dove into it, started doing a lot of research, and soon it became completely obvious that these things exist. People can ridicule me all they want to, and they do, believe me. But I don’t care; I know they are real.

RL: Have you met any skeptics who saw one?

BH: Many times. And a lot of them were hardcore skeptics. But then they saw a Bigfoot, and they all changed over to believers. They said that their lives were changed completely.

Check out Bigfoot Forums for the best Bigfoot discussion on the web.

The Venus Project

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRAHvtPkla0]

Or the Zietgeist Project, whichever you prefer.

Let me know what you think of this.

One problem I have with this project, though it is clearly in a Marxist, Communist, socialist and even technocratic vein, is that he attacks Communism and socialism the same as capitalism. But he repeats many things I have been saying on here for a long time, namely that a for-profit system will always result in massive corruption, grotesque abuse of consumers, workers and the environment, for what reason? Because that is the inherent nature of the system, that’s why!

Under a social democratic state, the state intervenes to protect consumers, workers and the environment from the massive and often deadly abuse that the capitalists will inflict on them in the name of profit-seeking.

However, under capitalism, it is normal for the capitalists to capture the state via their money power and money-based elections.

Further, the capitalists institute a Gramscian hegemony whereby they create millions of “little capitalists,” workers, consumers and environmentalists either bribed by money power or brainwashed into thinking that their capitalist enemies (and the workers, consumers, environment and society are always the necessary enemies of the capitalists under any normal working capitalist system) are actually their friends. These brainwashed fools work for their enemies and work against their own interests.

As such, it is difficult if not impossible to get a proper regulatory state under capitalism.

Instead, you end up with a Dictatorship of the Rich. The Rich and the corporations rule, and everyone else gets screwed. There are two or more wings of the single Rich-Corporate Party.

As Gore Vidal said, we have a single corporate party with two right wings. One of the right wings is called “left,” and the other is called “right.” It’s true that the Democrats are to the left of the Republicans, but both parties are on the right. The Democratic Party is a reactionary party. Barack Obama is a reactionary. Sure, he’s more “left” than the other reactionaries in the Republican Party, but he’s generally a reactionary nonetheless.

Sadly, this is because the American people themselves are fiercely reactionary. This opposes a historical trend in which the common working people are for progress, and it is the rich who are reactionaries in places where reform has taken place and conservatives in places where there has been no reform yet. There is never any reason for an ordinary working person to be a conservative or a reactionary. It is in direct opposition to their class interests, always and everywhere.

The Venus Project points out the obvious. Jacque Fresco notes that the company will always, always, do whatever is most profitable. It’s a law of capitalism. There is an interview with a corporate executive whose plant is pouring effluent into a river in New York. That river took centuries or millenia to create itself. Why do it? Because the most profitable thing to do for the company is to dump the effluent directly in the river.

A US company had a blood product that was contaminated with the AIDS virus. The US government, regulating in the interests of the people, stopped them from selling it to Americans. But the US state allowed them to sell it overseas because otherwise they would take a huge loss. Hundreds of maybe thousands of hemophliacs were infected with the product and many died. All so the company could make a profit.

The US government then intervened and tried to protect the company, negotiating a settlement with them so they would have to pay minimal fines. This is because the US state was a corporate controlled state. The corporations own the state.

The US is a corporate dictatorship. Corporations control both parties and hence control society itself.

"Dan Rottenberg Is a Very Bad Man," by Alpha Unit

Dan Rottenberg is the editor of the Broad Street Review, an online magazine launched out of Philadelphia. But he won’t be for long, if Change.org and the Women’s Media Center have their way. They are calling on the publisher and Board of Directors of the Broad Street Review to fire the guy. Dan Rottenberg committed the sin of insufficient outrage over what happened to Lara Logan, the CBS News correspondent who was viciously assaulted by a mob of male protesters while she was reporting on the revolution that took place in Egypt. The petition that demands his firing actually says that Rottenberg has no “sympathy” for Logan or “outrage” on her behalf. That is, Dan Rottenberg isn’t thinking the right kinds of thoughts about this awful occurrence. In an editorial published earlier this month on the website, Rottenberg has the temerity to say that women need to take sensible precautions to avoid being victimized the way Lara Logan was. In referring to other such incidents, he goes on to say:

Many of the tragedies mentioned above spring from what I see as a naive faith in the power of the modern sexual revolution. Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers, which is all well and good. But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal – especially the male animal – craves drama as much as food, shelter, and clothing. Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much drama as a man can find without shooting a gun – and of course, guns haven’t disappeared either.

Hold it. Did Dan Rottenberg say that some men might actually enjoy conquering an unwilling sex partner? That bastard. Does he mean that overcoming a woman’s resistance and even overpowering her might be a turn-on for some people – the kind of turn-on that creates an erection and culminates in an orgasm? This comes awfully close to saying that rape might actually be about sex. Rape is about power. Why doesn’t Dan Rottenberg know that? That’s bad enough. But Rottenberg also suggests that when women display their legs, thighs, and cleavage, they are advertising their sexual availability. They’re telling guys, “Come get some.” Unbelievable. The fact that a woman decides to leave the house with her breasts nearly naked, pushed up, and squeezed together has nothing to do with other people – and certainly nothing to do with the fact that men just love that kind of stuff. It makes no sense. For writing such things, Dan Rottenberg needs to go, some women insist. Has Rottenberg broken any laws? No. Has he violated any professional code of ethics, by chance? I would say not. He’s done something even worse. He told women to grow up and act like responsible adults. “Wait a minute, Alpha Unit,” someone might say. “What he’s actually doing is talking down to women, treating women like children who don’t have the freedom and the right to live, act, and dress the way they please.” No, believe it or not, he’s trying to do women a favor. He’s trying to clue them in on something many of them apparently never learned – that there are guys out there who are turned on by female vulnerability and defenselessness. More guys than they can imagine. The way I see it, the article also issues a challenge to the women who say they want and deserve to be seen as men’s equals. Is that what you really want? Okay. You know what men have been saying to other men forever when bad things happen? Suck it up.

“Dan Rottenberg Is a Very Bad Man,” by Alpha Unit

Dan Rottenberg is the editor of the Broad Street Review, an online magazine launched out of Philadelphia. But he won’t be for long, if Change.org and the Women’s Media Center have their way. They are calling on the publisher and Board of Directors of the Broad Street Review to fire the guy.

Dan Rottenberg committed the sin of insufficient outrage over what happened to Lara Logan, the CBS News correspondent who was viciously assaulted by a mob of male protesters while she was reporting on the revolution that took place in Egypt.

The petition that demands his firing actually says that Rottenberg has no “sympathy” for Logan or “outrage” on her behalf. That is, Dan Rottenberg isn’t thinking the right kinds of thoughts about this awful occurrence.

In an editorial published earlier this month on the website, Rottenberg has the temerity to say that women need to take sensible precautions to avoid being victimized the way Lara Logan was. In referring to other such incidents, he goes on to say:

Many of the tragedies mentioned above spring from what I see as a naive faith in the power of the modern sexual revolution. Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers, which is all well and good. But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal – especially the male animal – craves drama as much as food, shelter, and clothing.

Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much drama as a man can find without shooting a gun – and of course, guns haven’t disappeared either.

Hold it.

Did Dan Rottenberg say that some men might actually enjoy conquering an unwilling sex partner? That bastard. Does he mean that overcoming a woman’s resistance and even overpowering her might be a turn-on for some people – the kind of turn-on that creates an erection and culminates in an orgasm? This comes awfully close to saying that rape might actually be about sex.

Rape is about power. Why doesn’t Dan Rottenberg know that?

That’s bad enough. But Rottenberg also suggests that when women display their legs, thighs, and cleavage, they are advertising their sexual availability. They’re telling guys, “Come get some.”

Unbelievable.

The fact that a woman decides to leave the house with her breasts nearly naked, pushed up, and squeezed together has nothing to do with other people – and certainly nothing to do with the fact that men just love that kind of stuff. It makes no sense.

For writing such things, Dan Rottenberg needs to go, some women insist. Has Rottenberg broken any laws? No. Has he violated any professional code of ethics, by chance? I would say not. He’s done something even worse. He told women to grow up and act like responsible adults.

“Wait a minute, Alpha Unit,” someone might say. “What he’s actually doing is talking down to women, treating women like children who don’t have the freedom and the right to live, act, and dress the way they please.”

No, believe it or not, he’s trying to do women a favor. He’s trying to clue them in on something many of them apparently never learned – that there are guys out there who are turned on by female vulnerability and defenselessness. More guys than they can imagine.

The way I see it, the article also issues a challenge to the women who say they want and deserve to be seen as men’s equals. Is that what you really want? Okay. You know what men have been saying to other men forever when bad things happen? Suck it up.

What Do Americans Understand About the US Debt?

As it turns out, absolutely zero! Nothing, nada, zip, zilch!

Let’s check it out:

1. Will the US default on its debt unless Congress raises the debt ceiling? 5

2. Will Medicare go broke unless it is dramatically overhauled (ie, destroyed)? 6

3. Will Social Security go broke unless changes are made (SS is destroyed)? 6

4. Will interest on the national debt drag the US into a recession? 6

5. If you radically cut government spending in a recession, will you get a double-dip recession or depression? 6

Austerity causes huge transfers of wealth to the very rich from everyone else. The very rich apparently think it’s worth it to crash the economy as long as they win the latest battle in the Class War.

6. Will huge spending cuts and austerity cause increases in the unemployment rate? 5

Let’s think this one over. Government spending is a full 2

Deficit reduction and austerity always causes recessions and depressions,  like clockwork. Recessions and depressions are characterized by mass unemployment. Yes, mass cuts in government spending will lead to rapidly increasing unemployment. It’s an economic fact.

Moronicans get 0 for 6 on this Debt Test. That’s an F! I am not sure what it means. Maybe it means that most Moronicans are mentally retarded. But they could also be brainwashed. I cannot think of one single major media outlet, newspaper, newsmagazine, TV station or radio station, that is telling the truth about any of these questions with the exception of Question 1.

So the Moronican people are being lied to 24-7 by virtually the entire spectrum of US mass media, which, coincidentally, is all owned by the US elite plutocracy, the rich and the corporations. They’ve been lied to so much by rightwing media for over 30 years now that they are thoroughly confused about just about everything on this subject.

There are zero or nearly zero mass media outlets who are telling them the truth on these questions. If there’s no one out there to tell the truth to them, is it any wonder that they are hopelessly brainwashed and don’t have the slightest clue about the truth?

US Workers and Consumers and False Consciousness

One nasty thing about capitalism, especially the US variety, is how it destroys the loyalties of workers, consumers and citizens and turns them into corporate stooges. How many rightwing clowns have you met who chortle whenever you complain about how this or that corporation is reaming you?

In America, we have the bizarre spectacle of tens of millions of rightwing consumers who think that businesses royally shafting and ripping the consumer is tres cool! That means that they enjoy getting reamed as consumers by the Corporate Behemoth. That means that they are masochists, their identity as a consumer completely neutered and shot to Hell. That means that as consumers, they have false consciousness.

In America we have the even more bizarre spectacle of tens of millions of workers, usually but not always rightwingers, who think it is awesome that their boss is screwing them day and night year round. They’re getting the equivalent of employee AIDS, but they can’t dig it enough.

The truth is that the US White working class is gone, shot. Most White workers I meet anymore have no consciousness whatsoever. “I’m for the boss!” they pipe up, like someone just shoved a carrot up their rear. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt the boss-man!”

They remind me of terrified, bug-eyed Negro slaves sweating in the fields. “The boss-man is always right, sir! Yessir!”

Under capitalism, workers and owners are enemies, necessarily so. That’s one of the rules of capital.

A worker who identifies with the boss as his best buddy has lost his identity as a worker. He’s also a victim of false consciousness.

Latest Bankster Ripoff

Unfortunately, I have a couple of bank accounts with one of the nasty US banksters, in this case, Bankster of America.

I have two accounts. A checking account. And a business checking account. I went in to check on the business checking account the other day and automagically, it had been transformed into a “debit card account.” I don’t want a debit card and never did want one. Apparently, if you want a business account, you get a debit card account, whether you want one or not. Well, fair enough.

But there’s a new twist to the debit card game. All of a sudden, if I don’t use my debit card at least once a month to buy something at a store, the bank will ding me a $16 penalty for not using my debit card! Crazy or what? This is a new policy. I was never informed of it to my knowledge. The banks are ripping us off more and more all the time, with no end in sight. Every year, they come up with all sorts of funny new penalty fees for this and that. And the fees go up all the time.

Consumer rights organizations periodically call for the banksters to be reigned in, but every time, the banks scream that if they are forced to treat consumers properly, they will just raise their rates and screw us even more.

If you’re a Libertarian asshole, you would say to take your bank business elsewhere.  Problem is that banks are like credit cards. There’s no competition anymore.  There aren’t any banks or credit card companies that are competing with the others by treating the consumer better. It’s the same rotten, raw deal all around.

It would be nice if one could figure out a way to somehow get around these banks. Are credit unions any better? Are there any banks that are not out to fuck the consumer anymore?

Obama Set to Slash Medicare

The Republican crazies are doing what no one ever suspected they would be insane enough to do – playing chicken with the US economy and by contrast the world economy, by refusing to raise the US debt limit unless they get the massive cuts in government spending that they are demanding.

One of the main things they are demanding is serious cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Republicans have always seethed with hatred for Medicare since the days when they were installed. To Republicans, these programs are “socialism” and the Republicans Party is dedicated to wiping out every trace of “socialism” from the US.

The debt ceiling limit has already passed, but accounting tricks could keep it going for another three weeks or so. It’s hard to believe that the Republicans are so insane that they are threatening both the US and world economy to get their diabolical wishlist.

Tom Donahue, not my favorite person at all, a fierce ultra-reactionary and head of the US Chamber of Commerce, is furious at the Republicans for playing chicken with the economy like this. Why? He represents US business, US corporations. Whoever is behind this loony game of chicken, apparently it is not the US corporations. Wrecking the US economy will be bad for business. Donahue is demanding that the Republicans raise the debt limit and get it over with.

But it looks like the Republicans are really doubling down on this one.

It’s important to be aware of what is going on here. Just about every single year, we raise the US debt limit. It’s no big deal as long as the debt stays at a relatively fixed percentage of the US economy. Say we raise the debt limit every year for 30 years, but the US debt stays at 2

Voting to raise the debt limit raises a separation of powers question. Whose responsibility is it to raise the debt limit and borrow more money? It is the responsibility of the US Central Bank, the Federal Reserve. Does Congress have a right to tell the Federal Reserve what  to do? Of course not. So it seems that this whole charade of raising the debt limit is constitutionally suspect. Some say that Obama could invoke a certain Constitutional amendment (the 14th?) and just raise it anyway. I would say that that is what he should do.

Right now, Obama is negotiating with the psycho Republicans on this game of chicken. The Republicans are demanding serious cuts in Medicare, otherwise they will blow up the US and world economy. Last I heard, Obama is agreeing with cuts to Medicare. The American people love Medicare, so why do they keep voting Republican? How is Obama going to run on saving Medicare when he’s gutting it himself? Do you see how the game works? Force Obama to slash Medicare. Then Obama can’t run on saving Medicare anymore, see? Politics is diabolical.

What should Obama do instead? Should he call these whacko Republicans’ bluff? Let us know what you think.

US and Israel: Two Settler-Colonial States

The American people could turn on Israel anytime they want to, but they won’t do it. Why? Because they don’t want to.

I think it is because there is deep love of Americans for Israel because they are both settler-colonial states.

Despite all of the browbeating about anti-White PC studies coming out of our schools and universities, Americans have never really apologized or felt bad about our settler-colonial past, and we should feel bad about it. Instead, we are still in denial about it, and most White Americans apparently still think our settler-colonial past was a great thing. This is one reason why we identify with Israel.

Jewmerica Threatens Flotilla Participants

The United States of Jewmerica, or, more properly, “USreal,” which is the US and Israel combined into a single nation for all intents and purposes, is threatening USreali citizens with long imprisonment terms if they deliver aid to Gaza via a flotilla. The charges would include proving material aid to a terrorist group, Hamas, which violates a new USraeli law. Alice Walker is on that boat. I dare this punk Obama to throw her in prison, I really do.

The flag of Usrael. Usrael is not yet recognized by the UN, because USrael itself, as an international scofflaw and outlaw state, does not recognize UN sovereignty. USrael does what it wants, always has and always will, the Hell with the rest of the world.

Honestly, USraeli citizens ought to be free to provide material aid, or any other aid, or even to go fight for, any armed group on Earth that is not engaged in hostilities against the US. If some USraeli ally then wants to extradite the USraeli citizen for working for the group, then Usrael has a right to extradite them. But why is it against USraeli law to give money or other aid to, or to train or go fight for, some guerrilla group that has nothing whatsoever to do with USrael in any way, shape or form?

When I was a student at USC in 1983, a professor I knew pointed out one of the other professors in the Education Department. He was a young Hispanic guy. The professor told me that the prof periodically took time off his job to go down to El Salvador, where he actually took up arms and fought alongside the FMLN rebels. And what was wrong with that? It was his life, right? It was between him and the Salvadoran government.

But a recent fascist law would have sentenced this guy to 10 years in prison for fighting for his conscience. What of the US fighters for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against Franco’s fascists? The present fascist USraeli government would obviously call the Republicans (the only Republicans I’ve ever supported besides the IRA) a terrorist group. Obviously, all of the anti-Nazi guerrillas of WW2 were terrorists too. Anyone who takes up arms against any state, except, whoops! Enemies of the US, is automatically a terrorist.

However, for some reason, the KLA, the Syrian rebels, the Libyan rebels, and the Ahwaz, Kurdish and Baloch rebels in Iran are automagically not terrorists, because if they were, the whole US government would have to go down on the fascist law about support for terrorism, because USrael is supporting all of those groups to the hilt.

The truth is that in general, the whole “terrorist group” designation is complete shit. If you’re a guerrilla group fighting a US enemy, you’re a freedom fighter. If you’re a guerrilla group fighting a US ally, you’re a terrorist. The designation is garbage, and it’s pitiful that the vast majority of Moronicans have fallen for this sick lie.

Onto the Gaza flotilla. All of these flotillas have been repeatedly inspected, and I suspect it’s no different with this one. So the idea that the flotilla members are providing material aid to a terrorist group is nothing but a twisted lie.

This shows once again who controls America, and it’s not ordinary Americans.

If we are looking for someone to blame here, let’s not blame the elites. The fault is Americans themselves. Truth is that the vast majority of Americans are perfectly content to turn America into Jewmerica, such is their overwhelming and idiotic Judeophilia. The majority of Americans are overjoyed at the joining of two nations at the hip to form the USrael entity, such is their passionate and fanatical Zionism.

In that case, then USrael surely must reap what it sows then, from endless wars to burning and collapsing towers. Cause and effect is still a law of the natural world, and men are part of that world.

Is this America or Jewmerica? Which will it be?

Is this the US or is Usrael? Which will it be?

Owen the Hippo and Tortoise Mr. Mom

Repost from the old site.

I bet you did not know that the horrible Tsunami that hit South and Southeast Asia a while back, killing 275,000 humans, also hit Kenya. It did. There are lots of critters still running around in Africa that the increasingly advanced Africans have not yet killed off.

There are hippopotamuses and giant tortoises. These tortoises are really giant, not like our desert tortoises here in California that are about as big as a football.

During the tsunami, the baby hippo, Owen, 350 pounds, and its hippo Mommy (name and weight unknown) got swept down the Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean. Though hippos can swim ok, they don’t like floods and tend to die in them. Owen’s Mom got killed, and Owen landed in the Indian Ocean. Then the tsunami waves swept him ashore with lots of other critters.

Somewhere in all this mess, Owen landed on top of a giant tortoise, male, age 100, name unknown. He probably landed on his shell and they both rode the tsunami waves onto the beach where they both kicked back and caught some rays of exhaustion until they were rescued.

Even though the tortoise is a dude, Owen either could not figure that out or didn’t care. He decided that Tortoise was his new Mom. They bonded well, and Tortoise, though being a guy and all, does not mind being Mr. Mom. They eat, swim and sleep together.

Owen follows Tortoise just like he followed his Mom, and he growls at anyone who tries to approach Tortoise. Hippos stay with Mom for four years, so Owen will probably live at home for another few years before moving out.

I thought it was interesting that Owen showed so many advanced emotions in these photos. He shows tenderness, love and kindness, and appears to be trying to kiss Tortoise, though I can’t see how any animal could kiss a tortoise. Tortoise either also has advanced emotions, or has undecipherable reptilian emotions, or I’m hallucinating. But some tortoises do mate for life, which is awfully advanced behavior for a mere reptile.

Photos at the link.

Wikipedia Jews Attack James Petras

Repost from the old site.

James Petras is a fine man of the Left who has long been interested in Latin America and especially revolutionary movements down there. He has long supported the FARC revolutionaries in Colombia (as does this blog) and lately he has been supporting the Movement of the Landless in Brazil.

He’s a great labor organizer who goes down to Latin America and works with the people, getting his hands dirty with the workers and peasants themselves. He’s a towering intellect, and has often criticized Left movements from a Far Left perspectives, accusing them of being sellouts. For instance, he has gone after the FMLN in El Salvador lately for pursuing a half-hearted effort at reform.

I believe he was going after Evo Morales in Bolivia lately. He’s great for tearing the masks off these Latin American Leftists who the US press is screaming Commie Bloody Murder about, showing us that many of them are not even very far to the Left and the proposals they are offering are quite moderate and unlikely to seriously shake up socioeconomic relations in these places.

It’s always great to read him on anything having to do with the Latin American Left.

Lately he has sort of gone off on a bender against US Jews and particularly the Israeli Lobby and Israel. He has received some criticism for this from the Left, especially the anarchist Left (see Three Way Fight) and Maoists. Maoists and anarchists (Three Way Fight critique here) are among those on the Left who are particularly sensitive to charges of anti-Semitism and go to great lengths to avoid such.

This despite the recent rightwing Jewish – Zionist rewriting of history that shows the entire 20th Century Left as being anti-Semitic. See Why the Jews? The Reasons for Contemporary Anti-Semitism by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin for more on that – it’s actually an excellent read and I recommend it.

The ADL has recently weighed in against Petras, accusing him of fomenting some kind of “New Anti-Semitism” (this means an anti-Semitism focused mostly on Israel). All of this crap is a rather minor sideshow to Petras’ excellent corpus and career, but as you can see in his Wikipedia entry, most of the entry is given over his tussle with the Jews.

On the discussion page, the Wikipedia Jews have gone nuts, accusing him of being an “anti-Jewish racist” and other bullshit. There’s the usual crap about Israel Shamir on there, straight from the UK Spotlight Trotskyite antifa loonie-tunes accusations – Shamir as a Swedish neo-Nazi living in Norway.

In fact, Israel Shamir, whatever one thinks of him (and he surely has his anti-Semitic moments) is a Russian Jew, son of a famous rabbi, who immigrated to Israel, fought in the Israeli military, wrote for some Israeli papers, moved to Japan where he translated Japanese haiku books, moved back to Russia where he got involved in some dubious anti-Semitic far right Russian publications, moved back to Israel, where he currently resides in Jaffa (in fact, you can probably even visit him there – lots of folks do).

It’s really sad that this “Swedish neo-Nazi” bullshit has been allowed to gain as much traction as it has. Yes, his Wikipedia page says that too. I know what you were thinking. Chip Berlet is one of the leaders of the Israel Shamir Lynch Mob. Berlet, the strange “Marxist” who is in deep with the radical right libertarians that rule Wikipedia.

Looks like the Wikipedia Jews got pretty much thwarted on this one. Maybe someone is finally starting to reign them in over there. Note that “Humus Sapiens” is one of the most notorious Wikipedia Jews, active for years now. Still at it, I guess.

Check out the article history. Real food fight.

Links to some Wikipedia nasties.

Wikipedia Jews: Jayjg, one of the worst Jewish POV-pushers on Wikipedia. Humus Sapiens, a Russian Jewish immigrant to the US. Izak, one of their sidekicks.

Slim Virgin , one of the worst ones of all. I understand that SV is not even Jewish (!); she’s just some Gentile philosemite. She’s obsessed with 1. The Jews, 2. 9-11. SV is one of the most horrible and abusive administrators on Wikipedia. She was so abusive that the Wikipedia Review undertook an investigation of her.

She was very hard to track down as she covers her tracks very well, but they eventually determined that she is a former Cambridge University graduate student named Linda Mack who was hired by investigative reporter Pierre Salinger and John K. Cooley to investigate the Lockerbie bombing.

Two Libyans were eventually convicted of the bombing, and Ghaddafi was ordered to pay a huge fine, but there is good evidence that Libya had nothing to do with the bombing. There is also evidence that UK law enforcement knew this but went after Ghaddafi anyway because they hated him and wanted to wrap up the case.

It is still not known who was behind the bombing, but the Iranian regime was probably the author of the attack. The attack was probably a payback for the US shooting down of an Iranian airliner during the Iran-Iraq War, an act that the US said was accidental. Iran refused to accept the accidental shootdown theory.

Linda Mack was instrumental in steering Salinger and Cooley towards the Libyans. Salinger and Cooley eventually decided that Mack was a spy with the UK’s notorious MI5 intelligence agency (the British CIA). Linda Mack is now reportedly living in Alberta, Canada under the name Sarah McEwan.

Antifascist, who uses the same handle and has the same obsessions as a notorious Jewish Zionist who used to stalk anti-Zionists on Indymedia, often issuing them horrible death threats. He’s obsessed with Wendy Campbell and Gilad Atzmon.

His name is Ketlan Ossowski ( blog here) and he is described as an obsessive Jew who uses Leftism and anti-fascism as a cover to promote Zionism. I strongly suspect that he is the same guy who stalked and threatened Wendy Campbell. Zeq, long-notorious, the lone Wikipedia Jew busted in the CAMERA fiasco, now banned.

Others: Roland Rance, a Jewish Marxist (Jewish first, Marxist far distant second) from London, famous from the wars over Gilad Atzmon and Mary Rizzo’s Peace Palestine blog, apparently active in the Socialist Workers Party and in with the Lenin’s Tomb crowd. I’m not going to comment on this guy much as he’s written me civilly via email.

Just another frothing Trot about sums it up though.

The Paradox of Capitalist Regulation

Repost from the old site.

James Schipper writes in the comments section:

The historical record shows that wage increases eventually follow productivity growth. For instance, in 1960 South Korea was dirt-poor, and naturally wages were extremely low. By 1990, SK had become a prosperous country, due to massive productivity growth, and wages were also much higher.

As workers become much more productive on average, they become more valuable to employers, who are therefore willing to pay them higher wages, for the same reason that a dairy farmer is willing to pay a higher price for a cow which gives 10,000 liters of milk per year than for a cow which gives 5,000 liters per year.

It seems to be true that wage increases in the US have not kept pace with productivity growth in the last 3 decades. I have no explanation for it.

It can’t be doubted that the transition to a market economy in Russia was handled very badly. Such major changes should be introduced gradually. Just compare China’s performance with Russia’s in the 1990’s.

The problem with Chile between 1973 and 1983 was that the country was completely opened to foreign economic influences almost overnight while the exchange rate was kept fixed. They liberalized the entire foreign sector, except the exchange rate. If they had also brought in flexible exchange rates, the results would have been less catastrophic.

I hate neoliberalism as much as you, but I’m a moderate economic liberal. I believe that durable prosperity is not possible without considerable private ownership of the means of production and free markets. The motto should be: the market when possible and the state when necessary.

The Chicago boys are like a doctor who always prescribes the same medicine and then argues that the medicine wasn’t taken properly when some patients get worse.

Inflation is not bad for all capitalists. As a rule, inflation, or at least unexpected inflation, is bad for lenders and good for borrowers. Most companies are borrowers. Inflation tends to reduce the real wealth of lenders and increase the real wealth of borrowers.

Suppose that I lend you 10,000 for a year at

It is a libertarian myth that big government equals oppressive government. In what way do I become less free because in Canada the state provides most health care for free? I can’t just demand any treatment that I like, but I wouldn’t be able to that either if I were privately insured.

There is something fraudulent about neoliberalism. They constantly talk about freedom, but what they really mean is that they are opposed to economic egalitarianism. The freedom that they are most interested in is the freedom to make lots of money. Still, hostility to neoliberalism should not blind us toward the virtues of free enterprise, which are considerable.

I respond:

I really dislike capitalism, but I am the first to admit that pure socialism has some very serious problems. Socialism has done great at building economies for a while, but after a few decades, it starts bogging down into bureaucracy. Furthermore, while alleviating poverty, we have only been able to provide a low standard of living for the people. Social capital only goes so far – people want stuff too.

My attitude is that some capitalism may be necessary, like death and disease, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing by any means. Lots of nasty stuff is necessary.

Class war is continuous under capitalism.

Owners are continuously waging war against workers to take more of the profits generated by their enterprises. If there is X amount of profits from an enterprise, owners must decide how much to take out for themselves and how much to give to workers. Clearly they wish to give as little as possible to workers. So there is a battle between workers and owners to divvy up the profits from the enterprise.

Owners oppose increased

During the period you mention, the South Korean labor movement emerged and became extremely combative. This is probably the reason for the wage increases you mention. Capitalists will never give a wage increase just to be nice. Their whole project, in part, is to screw the worker to the greatest extent possible and even kill him if they can get away with it.

Indeed, capitalists kill millions of workers every year in the world, which is exactly what their project is designed to do. Workers and management are de facto enemies in capitalism, and if workers do not organize, they don’t get much of anything.

I’m sure there were productivity increases in housing construction from 1975 to today and the prices of houses have certainly gone through the roof. At the same time, wages for construction workers have probably collapsed by anywhere from 50-8

Builders reaped massive benefits from declining wages and from increased prices for their homes. Many industries have seen declining wages in the US since 1980 due in part to the busting of unions and their replacement typically with illegal immigrant or H-1B guest worker labor.

During a 15-year period in Guatemala from 1948-1963, the economy grew by

This is how capitalism is supposed to work.

Every capitalist on Earth wants to live in a country like that – where owners, the rich and the upper middle class reap all or almost all of the benefits from economic growth and the workers get little, nothing, or even lose money. To avoid this, workers must organize into unions, since workers usually never get anything from capitalists without a fight. In the the 3rd World where murders of trade unionists are par for the course, it’s often a deadly fight.

I repeat, capitalism is evil, but pure socialism doesn’t seem to work very well.

I don’t have much issues with small businesses, who often seem to really care about their employees and consumers (customers) and even in some cases, the environment and the society they live in. But Organized Small Business is always profoundly reactionary.

But big business is just bad. Whatever benefits it gives us in terms of jobs and decent products, good service or reduced prices is typically vastly outweighed by the havoc it wreaks on society, the environment, the workers and consumers.

It’s true that regulation and organized workers and consumers can ameliorate a lot of this downside, but in capitalist nations, the capitalist classes buy all the media and institute a Gramscian cultural hegemony over society with their media and cultural control. At the same time, they use their money and media and cultural power to buy the state itself which ideally ought to be regulating them in the interests of workers, consumers, the environment and society itself.

So you have a state that will do nothing in the face of the bulldozer of capital. The result is a flattened social society, a wrecked public sector, slums, homelessness, disease, early death, environmental devastation, harmed consumers and crippled workers and nothing in government to stop any of this.

The housing crisis is a case in point. Contra your assertion that the New Deal failed (which is actually rightwing revisionism against the New Deal), in fact, the New Deal, in particular the financial reforms – the FDIC which restored confidence in the banks, the SEC that regulated the stock market and Fannie Mae to bring back the mortgage market – is what finally got the economy going again.

This was one of the greatest accomplishments the US government ever did, it was wholly socialist in nature, and it was opposed ferociously by the Republican Party and the entire US business sector at the time. After Roosevelt rammed it through anyway, the business class vowed to wage struggle, for decades if they had to, to overturn these things.

Finally, by the 1990’s, much of this regulatory structure had been whittled away.

Whittling away this structure had been a project of Capital since this regulatory apparatus had been put in place. Now that the regulation is a shadow of its former self, we have another Depression-like phenomena with the housing crisis, all the way to failed banks, bank runs, loss of deposits, etc. As one might expect.

This is the problem. The only way to keep capitalism from being completely nightmarish is to regulate it, and the capitalist sector reflexively fights to the death any attempts to regulate it.

Furthermore, they grab the media and culture itself to brainwash gullible workers and consumers to support their elitist agenda and to get the workers, consumers and society itself to oppose their own interests and support the contrary interests of Capital. Then they grab the state itself and prevent it from enacting those very regulations necessary for a civilized capitalism.

This is one of my primary problems with capitalism. Regulation is mandatory to keep capitalism halfway civilized, but the nature of the capitalist system, as described above, works in such a way as to make such regulation often extremely difficult or impossible.

The Cutting Edge: New Internet Publication

Repost from the old site.

This is a new online magazine on the Net. I just noticed it; they’ve only been online for 4 months and they already have high readership of around 45,000 readers a day. Actually, this magazine is pretty scary, and it definitely has big money behind it. A very large number of the authors are extremely hard rightwing Zionist Jews, and some of them have CIA and probably Mossad connections.

Lets take a look at the authors:

Gal Luft is an Israeli or possibly Jewish “American” author who consorts with former CIA director James Woolsey and seems to have deep connections to the Israeli state.

Anne Korin, (photo) Jewish “American” author and pundit, is a hard-Right Zionist. A mysterious woman, she is a co-director with Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS). IAGS seems to have deep ties US and Israeli intelligence. She is also an agent of the weird ultra-rightwing seminal neoconservative group the Committee on the Present Danger.

Part of their agenda (Korin is the director of the weird, neoconservative and far rightwing Set America Free Coalition and editor of Energy Security) is the demonization of Arabs and Iran and concomitantly, urging the US and Israel to get off of oil in order to bankrupt the Arabs and probably also to sever the alliance between the US and Gulf Arab big money.

Cindy Hurst is a US naval commander who has deep ties to International Zionism and the CIA via IAGS. She works for the Foreign Military Studies Office, which is just a research office for US imperialism, armed branch. Quite a few high-ranking naval officers, often Gentiles, have deep connections to International Zionism.

Edwin Black, though the name does not seem to be Jewish, is a hard-rightwing Jewish “American” writer for the New York Times with deep connections to Israel.

Howard Kohr, the Jewish “American” director of the spearhead of the treasonous Jewish Lobby in the US, AIPAC, authors many pieces.

Walid Phares, is a Lebanese “American” scholar. He is a reactionary Lebanese Maronite Phalangist exiled from Lebanon because he is too reactionary for the current political situation there. The remaining Maronites in Lebanon are for the most part the saner ones – the real nutjobs have long left the place.

He is deep with USCFL, the neoconservative Phalangist arm in the US that has deep connections with far right Zionism in Israel and the US. In particular, he is in deep with Daniel Pipes.

Sam Orez is a little known “American” author, but the name is Jewish and he writes for the Israeli press and on AIPAC and American Jewish Committee issues.

Jewish “American” David Harris, another contributor, is the director of the American Jewish Committee.

Benedict Rogers is deeply involved with the Tory Party of the UK. His purpose is to attack the admittedly horrible Burmese regime, not because it is awful, but because US and apparently British imperialism is waging war on the place because the economy is largely state-owned and the regime has not fully opened itself up to multinational corporations yet.

Joe Eskenazi is a hardline Zionist Jew and a reporter for j, a Jewish weekly. He profiles Jewish “American” gazillionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle (probably one of the world’s most arrogant and unpleasant humans) on his trip to Sderot to commiserate with Jews living under largely ineffective rocket fire. Ellison is probably a big bucks money guy in the Jewish Lobby in the US, and it might be useful to investigate this.

Micah Halpern is an extreme rightwing Jew, the usual dual-loyalty type, born in the US and moved to Israel, probably treacherously holding dual citizenship. He frequently writes for far Right Israeli papers.

Ronald Kessler is a big editor at the far rightwing Newsmax website.

Gary Rosenblatt is the Editor in Chief of New York Jewish Week.

Aaron Klein is an “American” Jewish journalist who spends his time working out of the extreme rightwing Worldnetdaily‘s Jerusalem Bureau, often reported wild, insane and ridiculous Israeli propaganda. He did go out and interview the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade though, but he seems to have turned that into a book-length hit piece on armed Palestinians.

Klein is behind the “Obama is a 1960’s Weatherman terrorist radical bomber” bullshit. He’s currently waging jihad against Obama, apparently on the grounds of being soft on Israel and supportive of Palestinian terrorism, which is dubious. Syria and Jordan both refused him entry to their countries, supposedly for being a Jew, but I think it was mostly for being a Zionist agent and an asshole to boot. Good call.

David Brog is the insane Protestant fundamentalist Zionist connection. He’s the Executive Director of Christians United for Israel, chaired by ultra-nutcase Pastor John Hagee.

Armstrong Williams is an ultra-rightwing Black Oreo talk show host and token House Negro serving tea for massa. He was thought to have fallen to infamy recently, but I guess he’s resurfacing on this weird website and his radio station is either back on the air or never left the air. Armstrong peddled himself as an ultra-rightwing Black Christian ranting and raving about liberals and liberal values destroying America.

Truth is that Williams is fucking gay, and he’s been known to have sexually harassed over 100 men to try to get them to fuck him in the ass or let him suck their dicks or whatever. The media properly buried this story, since it involves a far rightwinger, but it’s all true. I don’t mind gay men, but I really hate hypocrites.

He’s still totally closeted and a liar, and if you look on his website, you have to admit he looks awfully queer. Armstrong loves Israel too, by the way, but probably not as much as a big White cock.

James Quinn is a economist and a professor and Senior Director of Strategic Planning, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He certainly doesn’t serve imperialism or the US ruling class. He’s some kind of far rightwing “buy gold and silver” sky is falling nutcase economist type of whom we’ve always had plenty in the US.

Nonie Darwish is some kind of a crazy person, a Palestinian raised in Gaza who moved to the US and decided to shill for Israel! What the Hell? Who’s signing her checks anyway?

Joseph Griebowski is an odd fellow. He’s head of a very strange organization called Institute on Religion and Public Policy.

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