Saturday, June 9, 2012

The policy behind the minimum wage, first enacted in 1938 under President Franklin Roosevelt, was to provide a minimally livable wage. This implied at least keeping up with inflation, if not with new living expenses not envisioned seventy-five years ago. While businesses like Walmart and McDonalds have been raising their prices and executive compensation since 1968, these companies have received a windfall from a diminishing real minimum wage paid to their workers.

Don’t 30 Million Workers Deserve 1968 Wages?

 
Thirty million American workers arise, you have nothing to lose but some of your debt!

Wednesday morning, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) introduced the “Catching Up to 1968 Act of 2012” (H.R. 5901) – legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour. The present minimum wage is $7.25, way below the unrealistically low federal poverty definition of $18,123 per year for a family of three. Adjusted for inflation, the 1968 minimum wage today would be a little above $10 per hour.

Together with Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, I was pleased to be with Rep. Jackson at a news conference to explain this long-overdue necessity for millions of hard-pressed, working Americans of all political persuasions.

The policy behind the minimum wage, first enacted in 1938 under President Franklin Roosevelt, was to provide a minimally livable wage. This implied at least keeping up with inflation, if not with new living expenses not envisioned seventy-five years ago. While businesses like Walmart and McDonalds have been raising their prices and executive compensation since 1968, these companies have received a windfall from a diminishing real minimum wage paid to their workers.

The economics behind the Jackson bill are strongly supportive of moral and equitable arguments. Most economists agree that what our ailing economy needs is more consumer demand for goods and services which will create jobs. Tens of billions of dollars flowing from a $10 minimum wage will be spent by poor families and workers almost immediately.

A debate over the minimum wage throws a more acute spotlight on the gigantic pay of the big corporate bosses who make $11,000 to $20,000 per hour! Their average pay was up another 6 percent in 2011 along with record profits for their companies.

Historically, polls have registered around 70 percent of Americans favoring a minimum wage keeping up with inflation. That number includes many Republican workers who can be consoled by learning that both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, during their political careers, have supported adjusting the minimum wage.

Were the Democrats in Congress to make this a banner issue for election year 2012, their adversaries, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senator Mitch O’Connell (R-Ky.), would not be able to hold 100 percent of their Republicans on this popular issue. That means the bill’s backers could override these two rigid ideologues – so-called public servants – who make nearly $200 per hour plus luscious pension, health insurance, life insurance and other benefits.

President Obama, who has turned his back on many worker issues, can champion his promise in 2008 to press for a minimum wage of $9.50 by 2011 as well as benefit his campaign by helping people who have lost trust in government and their enthusiasm over Obama’s “hope and change.” Getting the attention of 30 million potential voters can change the dynamics of a tediously repetitive Obama-Romney campaign.

A debate over the minimum wage throws a more acute spotlight on the gigantic pay of the big corporate bosses who make $11,000 to $20,000 per hour! Their average pay was up another 6 percent in 2011 along with record profits for their companies.

If the Democrats want intellectual heft to rebut the carping, craven objections of the corporatist think tanks and trade associations, headed by bosses making big time pay themselves, they cannot do better than to refer to Alan Krueger, the former Princeton professor and now chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers to President Obama, who is the leading scholar behind inflation-adjusted minimum wages producing net job growth.

Moreover, there is no need to offset an inflation-adjusted minimum wage with lower taxes on smaller business. Since Obama took office there have been 17 tax cuts enacted for small businesses.

Many organizations with millions of members around the country are on the record, if not on the ramparts, as favoring an inflation-adjusted increase in the federal minimum wage. They include the AFL-CIO and member unions, especially the nurses union, the NAACP and La Raza, and the leading social service and social justice nonprofits.

In 2007 at the “Take Back America” conference, then Senator Obama delivered a ringing oration making “the minimum wage a living wage (tied) to the cost of living so we don’t have to wait another 10 years to see it rise.” Even Ontario, Canada’s minimum wage is $10.25 per hour.

So why aren’t all these supporters of the minimum wage inside and outside of Congress making something happen? Because they’re either out of gas and need to be replaced, or they are waiting on each other to make the first move.

The nonprofits and the labor unions are waiting on a signal from senior legislator, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic Caucus are also waiting for Miller, who has not introduced a bill increasing the minimum wage since Obama took office (the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was the last, with increases to $7.25 ending in July 2009). Of course, in turn, Obama is waiting on the Democratic leadership in Congress who, though firmly behind the increase, is waiting on Obama and, of course, Miller, who hails not from Dallas, Texas, but from the progressive San Francisco Bay area of California. Go figure.

So maybe this cycle of insensitive lethargy by the Democratic Party can be broken by the congressional stalwarts who have joined with Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. in supporting his proposal (H.R. 5901) for a modest increase in the minimum wage to help tens of millions of downtrodden workers catch up with 1968!

For more information on efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, see: 

TimeForARaise.org.

Thirty years ago, Mustafa was being tortured by an Israeli interrogator. "You must be getting a double salary," Mustafa told the oversized interrogator, who was stepping on his back and squeezing his arms. "How come?" The Israeli was surprised. "Because of your weight," said Mustafa, as he was struggling with the pain. According to this thin and shy man, the interrogator burst out laughing, was unable to continue his chore and left the room. Did Mustafa want to mellow his own memory of the torture when he shared that story with me, or did his humour indeed reach home with his tormentor?

Segregating Gazans Has Made Them Easier to Demonize

Separating Israelis and Palestinians has broken the bonds between us, making Gazans easier to target in the Israeli press

 
A stout sense of humour and self-irony is the least most Israelis expect of Gazans. It is certainly true today, when they are spoken of almost solely through the hyperbole of military commentators who jump frantically from discussing the Iranian threat to the danger that the tiny, overcrowded, impoverished and besieged enclave poses to the state of Israel, a global military power.

A Palestinian woman looks at the Israeli 'security fence' in the West bank village of Masha. (Photograph: Jamal Aruri/AFP)

But that sense of humour is also lost in the victim-oriented Palestinian media reports or the militant statements of anonymous veiled speakers and lower-tier Hamas politicians of which the meagre Israeli media diet ordinarily consists.

Now we would struggle to understand stories such as the following anecdote, relayed to me by the Fatah activist Abu Mustafa. Thirty years ago, Mustafa was being tortured by an Israeli interrogator. "You must be getting a double salary," Mustafa told the oversized interrogator, who was stepping on his back and squeezing his arms. "How come?" The Israeli was surprised. "Because of your weight," said Mustafa, as he was struggling with the pain. According to this thin and shy man, the interrogator burst out laughing, was unable to continue his chore and left the room. Did Mustafa want to mellow his own memory of the torture when he shared that story with me, or did his humour indeed reach home with his tormentor?

Even 25 years ago, the relationship between Gazans and Israelis was very different. Back then, Gazans were a reservoir of cheap labour and still flocked to the streets of Israeli towns – to be found in every restaurant, clothing factory, garage and construction site. How were they seen then by the ordinary Israeli? Were they mere functional shadows who disappeared in their dorm shanties? Dispensable ghosts? Savages? An Uncle Tom?

Then in 1991, Israel imposed the closure – an under-discussed policy of movement restrictions on Palestinians, especially in Gaza, which was gradually streamlined into the reality of a separate, cut-off entity that exists today.

It was in 1990 I started my professional "romance" with Gaza. I realised how poorly and inaccurately it was being portrayed. My late father, never a typical Israeli, concluded when he heard my reports: "Of course! A people who rebel are a beautiful people." A pinch of self-conscious romanticism on his part, but also a counter reaction to the general attitude. This was still the first popular uprising. The Gazans, until now a faceless group, started acquiring the generic title of "terrorists" among Israelis.

Yet even before 1991, notwithstanding the widespread exploitation of Gazan workers, the daily interaction between them and Israeli employers was rarely represented in the media.

Tragically, it was during and after the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in the winter of 2008/9 that I got another reminder of such past ties. A blacksmith who hurried to move his shop's equipment to a safe place was hit by an Israeli missile. Eight people, his sons among them, who were loading a truck with the equipment, had been targeted by military officers who deciphered the inspection drone footage and misinterpreted the elongated objects as "grad missiles" and not the oxygen jars that they were (a common, deadly mistake, by the way, during that attack). I had the impossible task of interviewing this broken man over the phone a day or two after. He quickly switched to Hebrew, telling me about the Israeli business partner he'd worked with for years. "Talk to him, he'll confirm that I am not a terrorist." He also told me that this ex-business partner wired him money following the attack. But when I called the Israeli man he refused to talk to me, because "he does not speak with traitors".

When I entered Gaza, a few days after the onslaught ended, I heard it over and over again, from people old enough to have worked in Israel and whose fields, houses and factories were just destroyed: they spoke warmly of their ex-employers and Israeli business partners who had just called them, worried about their plight.

The welcome astonishment with which such stories were received by my young editors told me yet again of how the strict policy of separation was bearing its fruits. Without any trace of ordinary human encounters left (since 2006 even Israeli journalists are barred from entering the Gaza Strip), Gazans have become abstract, almost extra-terrestrial, creatures. As such it is so much easier for officials, and some media mouthpieces, to stereotype and demonise. It is based on brusque and tawdry TV scenes, and makes Israeli video war-games, but with real fire, much easier.

Contrary to Tea Party belief, most of the growth in government programs has come not because President Obama has boldly expanded benefits. Rather, amid a historic economic downturn, more people have needed these supports. Just when the safety net is doing precisely what it should, conservative leaders denounce a system run amok. In doing so, they encourage a misplacement of resentment. Business has taken the American denial of mutual support straight to the bank. As economist Dean Baker points out, the failure of working people to gain from productivity increases is a far greater financial burden than anything government levies in taxes. Productivity has grown more than 80 per cent since 1979, with nothing close to a commensurate increase in wages.

Keep Your Government Hands Off My Welfare State

 

During the Tea Party’s heyday, you could find variations of the ‘Keep Your Government Hands Off My Welfare State’ sign at rallies around the US. My favorite was a handmade version by a woman who had written out her slogan in black marker and then added, in red, a hammer and sickle to symbolize the peril of socialized medicine. The placard read: ‘Government Keep Your Hands Off My Medicare.’

Ideology and reality had been set on a collision course, and this absurd mash-up was the result.

Struggle as it might, the reality that Medicare – America’s government-run health insurance – is one of the nation’s largest (and most popular) public programs could not overcome the right-wing imperative to hate the state. Sometimes, it seems, keeping hate alive means making tough sacrifices in the realm of logic.

The Tea Party’s visibility has diminished significantly since 2009. However, the disconnect between popular perceptions of US government and its actual function endures.

In February, the New York Times published an article entitled ‘Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It’. Several accompanying maps showed that some areas which rely heavily on public programs – for example, Owsley County, Kentucky, where per capita payments for food stamps are the highest in the country – vote overwhelmingly for conservative Republicans who vow to slash social spending. Other studies show that deeply conservative Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee are among the places where residents, on average, get the highest percentage of their income from government supports.

Of course, there is a fine tradition of allowing one’s behavior and professed beliefs to go their separate ways: Bible-belt states whose residents claim to promote chastity and ‘family values’ have higher rates of divorce – not to mention higher numbers of online porn subscriptions – than supposed Gomorrahs like New York and California.
But why would healthcare-loving conservatives risk self-injury by embracing anti-government animus?

For one, when people talk about making cuts, they do not picture themselves in their mental community of deadbeats. In his response to the safety net report, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman cited Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University, whose research shows that ‘44 per cent of Social Security recipients, 43 per cent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 per cent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program”.’

These people are thinking of cutting services for others – like immigrants, who in fact account for only a small portion of government spending.

Yet, as The Economist notes, in other countries appeals from anti-immigrant populists (think Le Pen’s National Front in France) include a strong defence of state entitlement programs. The commitment to the ideal – if not the practice – of determined self-sufficiency is distinctly American. And it’s intensifying at an odd moment.

Contrary to Tea Party belief, most of the growth in government programs has come not because President Obama has boldly expanded benefits. Rather, amid a historic economic downturn, more people have needed these supports. Just when the safety net is doing precisely what it should, conservative leaders denounce a system run amok.

In doing so, they encourage a misplacement of resentment. Business has taken the American denial of mutual support straight to the bank. As economist Dean Baker points out, the failure of working people to gain from productivity increases is a far greater financial burden than anything government levies in taxes. Productivity has grown more than 80 per cent since 1979, with nothing close to a commensurate increase in wages.

Early in the economic recovery, the distribution of benefits has been even worse. In 2010, America’s top 1 per cent claimed 93 per cent of all income gains. Income for the great bulk of citizens actually decreased.

Engrossing people in the tail-chasing fight to keep government out of government is a brilliant means of distracting from this situation. Sadly for those who join the battle, winning could mean destroying the very social programs they depend upon for survival.

We had to endure the travesty of Bush versus Gore, one of the most egregious tramplings of democratic practice imaginable, then watch the sickening product of that judicial rape: the swaggering wars based on lies, the torture, the doubling of the national debt, the environmental depredations, the economic melt-down, and the raison-d’etre for it all: the radical shifting of wealth from the 300 million of us to the one-tenth of one percent who own everything in sight.

Broken Shards of My Heart: The US in Decline

 
 
I could tell you that my heart was broken by what happened in Wisconsin this week, but in truth that’s not quite accurate.

I grew into political awareness and maturity in the middle of the 1970s. For people my age, then, our entire adult lives have been one long witness to the dismantling of that which we grew up taking for granted as a foundation for any further progress that might come. We lived in the relatively egalitarian country of the New Deal and the Great Society, with its robust middle class and a measure of earnest compassion for the poor. Today, that seems like a foreign country, if not a remote planet.

Over the course of our adult lives:

We watched in shock and horror as the country turned to a Hollywood washout, who was literally a national joke candidate five years earlier, and made him president, following him down every path of joyful self-destruction and absurd deceit.

Our jaws dropped in the 1990s at the visage of New Gingrich, the most overtly petulant and destructive piece of self-loathing to ever occupy a human body, as he was elevated to the highest position in the United States Congress, and pioneered the basest politics and the shattering of our government that remains our inheritance today. As if that weren’t shameful enough, at the same time Gingrich’s buddy down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue was destroying the meaning of the Democratic Party, aping the Republican sell-out to corporate thieves and the abandonment of the public interest – especially the poor, the first to be thrown under the bus.

And, despite the fact Bill Clinton deserves to rot in hell for the damage he did in exchange for his personal joyride in the White House, we were nevertheless forced to watch in horror the relentless and destructive lunacy of the president’s impeachment for the high crime of lying about a blow-job.

We had to endure the travesty of Bush versus Gore, one of the most egregious tramplings of democratic practice imaginable, then watch the sickening product of that judicial rape: the swaggering wars based on lies, the torture, the doubling of the national debt, the environmental depredations, the economic melt-down, and the raison-d’etre for it all: the radical shifting of wealth from the 300 million of us to the one-tenth of one percent who own everything in sight.

Perhaps most emotionally devastating of all – Et tu, Brute? – we’ve suffered the betrayal these last years of another Democratic sell-out, a supposedly liberal-if-not-socialist president actually so conservative and so sold-out that he couldn’t even bear to pursue his own personal interest sufficiently to produce a successful presidency, but has rather continued and amplified the worst characteristics of the open sore that was the Bush presidency, even in the midst of crisis opportunities not seen since the 1930s.

So, no, by this time, my heart was not really broken when my former home-state, Wisconsin, voted emphatically to commit suicide this week. But only because there’s so little of that heart left to break. Shards here and there were crushed and extinguished, to be sure, but I am becoming rapidly beyond caring about the country I live in, a place and a people so determined to get it wrong at every juncture imaginable. At some point, don’t you just have to stop trying and let the substance-abuser finish the job on their own?

This country is dying, let’s be clear. It may live yet. It may survive for decades in slow decline. It may find a way in utter crisis to throw off, before it is too late, the fat slimy boa which is squeezing every last cent of value out of it. Its political class may invent a devastating foreign crisis with massively grim consequences in order to deflect public attention from its manifest failings. Maybe it will even be some combination of all of the above.

We just killed the goose ourselves, through a toxic mix of greed, laziness and stupidity.

Who knows? What we can be sure of, however, is that what was once a great and promising idea as much as a nation is now decrepit to the core, and rapidly rotting away, and that these wounds are entirely self-inflicted. That, for me, is the kicker. The Soviets didn’t invade and take us over. We didn’t succumb to some raging virus like the Black Plague. A meteor didn’t blast a hole in the middle of North America.

We just killed the goose ourselves, through a toxic mix of greed, laziness and stupidity.

Though Wisconsin managed to only break the few shards of my unbroken heart still remaining, it’s worth considering the details of the episode to get a sense of how truly wrecked we are as a people. Much like George W. Caligula, who campaigned as the compassionate conservative but governed as a Cheneybot monster, Scott Walker came to office without mentioning in the campaign any of the scorched earth policies he was actually hired by the Koch Brothers and their ilk to foist upon his hapless state. So the first thing he does after his inauguration is give away hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthy. Then, lo and behold, there appears a shortfall in the state’s budget of precisely that amount – almost as if that whole math thing actually works, after all – and so he declares a crisis which can, of course, only be solved by draconian burdens being imposed upon non-one percenters.

That means that the public employee unions are called upon to bear the burden of massive givebacks of their salary and benefits. But then – this being America and the 21st century and all – the unions agree to one hundred percent of these demands. But Walker and his fellow Koch-class acolytes are not satisfied with having to take yes for an answer, because their real project is to crush the unions into political insignificance, if not to terminate them altogether. So the real issue was never the fiscal crisis, which was entirely fabricated, nor even finding a solution to it, which the already pathetic unions had readily agreed to. The real issue was to destroy the labor movement, and the political party it has (stupidly, in recent decades) supported for so long.

But when labor and some Democrats and a lot of courageous and determined ordinary Badgers decided that enough was finally enough, the question was ultimately presented to the public in the form of a recall election. Massive amounts of money (Walker outspent the other side by a ratio of about eight to one) paid for massive amounts of televised lies about how the brave governor was only fighting special interests on behalf of the people, and it worked. (Though, let’s be honest here – lots of Wisconsin voters knew exactly the score, and stupidly and self-destructively decided to tear down teachers and nurses and park rangers and the like from their decent middle class living, instead of drawing a line in the sand demanding that everyone to rise up to that modest standard.)

They are relentless, they are rich, and they are talented in ways that would awe and possibly even repulse Machiavelli himself. Oh, and by the way, they are winning, too. Big time.

That’s the America of today, and it’s a glimpse of the very near-term future. The formula is pretty simple, really. Wealthy elites who have spent the better part of a century chafing under the unbearable burdens of the New Deal and Great Society (where they are rendered mere billionaires instead of zillionaires) have finally found a way to steal back ‘their’ money. Buy whole political parties, buy the media, buy – therefore – the entire mindset of the country, buy the Supreme Court, dumb down education, especially the study of history, make college prohibitively expensive, repress dissent, create distracting enemies abroad (towel heads) and at home (fags), replace jobs with machines and cheap overseas workers, squeeze the economy so that money is scarce, and divide and conquer the 99 percent, so that those who miraculously still maintain a vestige of decent wages and benefits from an ancient civilization called 20th century America will be resented and torn-down by those already drowning.

You gotta hand it to them, it works pretty well. (Being a sociopath evidently does not correlate at all with poor planning skills. But who knew there were so many amongst us?) As a measure of the sheer success of this project, consider how – even in a moment of crisis – there is nowhere on the horizon a politically viable alternative narrative about what ails the country and how to solve the problem. Sure, there is the odd Paul Krugman around, or Dennis Kucinich (whoops, never mind), but ask yourself this question: Can you name even a single prominent politician across the entire political landscape who is remotely telling the truth about the economic holocaust of American kleptocracy? Indeed, it is truly a measure of the stunning proportions of the overclass’s victory that even a water-carrier as devoted as Barack Obama is labeled a socialist, and both he and the ideas he doesn’t even remotely represent are thoroughly discredited. Even if the answers to the question of what would fix America weren’t manifestly obvious (as in, just do what we used to do before the right came along and dismantled everything), this is a stunning achievement of truly Orwellian proportions: For vast numbers of Americans, real understanding of the problem and real consideration of the solution cannot even be thought of.

It will get far worse before it gets better, if it does. The Wisconsin election was widely and correctly seen as a dry run for November, but in fact November is already as over as is May or April. The hapless Obama people may not have gotten the word, but they are as dead as the unions in Wisconsin that they didn’t bother to support. And Obama will go down in near-term, right-wing renderings of history as another Jimmy Carter. Meanwhile, stupid liberals, who slavishly admired a decidedly right-wing, militarist, ultra-statist, corporate-serving Democratic president, will sit holding their heads in surprise at the damage wrought to the president himself, to his party, and to their cherished liberal principles. Um, sorry, but have y’all been snoozing through Afghanistan and Pakistan? Did you miss the whole presidential-ordered assassinations program? Have you not heard what has happened to whistleblowers? Did you forget the tax cuts and the offer to dismantle Medicare? Have you been watching Fox and not heard about the growth of military spending? Did you not know that the health care bill was co-authored by, and for the benefit of, insurance and pharmaceutical companies? Have you not heard that our ultra-progressive president has done nothing whatsoever about the planetary ĂĽber-crisis of global warming, other than to open vast new oil drilling fields? Did you not see in action the joy and wonder of Obamaism in 2010, the most devastating election for a political party in half a century, and coming only two years after the total meltdown of the GOP under Bush? Sorry, but this is the SOB you adored and went to the mat for?
This country’s future looks grim in so many ways. You can just feel the doors and windows shutting, one by one. Are we really so far off, given the displays we’ve already seen, from being a corporate-owned polity, in which oceans of Citizens United sponsored propaganda limits the cognitive landscape of an entire country, sham elections and a steady stream of brain-numbing high-def television gruel satisfies most of the (obese) public enough to keep them stuck on their sofas, while a massive police state armed with domestic drone aircraft and angry cops deal swiftly with the few remaining malcontents stupid enough to demand a return to the better country we once knew? You know, more or less a carbon copy of Putin’s Russia, here in North America.

I have no interest whatsoever in being a prophet of doom, but I ask you, is that really so far-fetched? If you look around you honestly today, is it not fair to say that we are pretty much already there? With the partial exception of social policy issues, do you really have any choice at the ballot box? Can anyone say that Democrats in Washington, including the sitting president and the astonishingly narcissistic whore that was Bill Clinton, represent corporate interests any less than Republicans, whatever their pathetic rhetoric? Has US foreign policy gotten even slightly more enlightened since Obama took over from the smirking troglodytes? Do Americans have any idea of what is truly happening to them, as opposed to being fixated on gays, immigrants, foreign bogeymen and spoon-fed celebrity drivel? And were not Occupy activists subjected to pepper spray, mass arrests and wholesale street clearings, even by supposedly liberal mayors and college presidents?

It’s possible, of course, that the end is not nigh after all. Indeed, I see something of a great historical race transpiring in America. On the one hand, the powers of greed are rapidly filling in all the puzzle pieces of their sociopathic conspiracy to own everything, including – yes, really, I’m not kidding – food, water and our very genes. They are relentless, they are rich, and they are talented in ways that would awe and possibly even repulse Machiavelli himself. Oh, and by the way, they are winning, too. Big time. Even when they lose, they win.

On the other hand, demographics are not so favorable to the destruction of the nation. Young people are far more progressive than their scary-stupid and mega-mean grandparents. The good news is that the latter are dying, and the former are taking their place. Moreover, demographic trends are also shifting the racial composition of the electorate. For whatever reason, whites tend to have horrible politics, so the browning of America is also a very good thing. (If we could pull off the same stunt with gender, that would be great news, too, since it indeed turns out that, that’s right, the women are smarter. Better politics through bioengineering, maybe? Soon to come to your local supermarket. Or at least obstetrician.)

We have also seen displays across the globe of Basta!-ism which raise hope. From Russia to Egypt to Israel to Greece to Canada to Wall Street and Santa Monica College, people are standing up and saying Enough! And it works. These schoolyard bullies crushing us are like ... well, schoolyard bullies. Call them out on their blustery braggadocio and watch them fold in the face of real power. True, it doesn’t always happen (see “Wisconsin, State of”), but it does often enough. And there is also the hope that as the plutocrats continue their insatiable campaign to impoverish the rest of us they will go a bridge too far, pushing by their own actions a squawking wholesale resistence out the proverbial birth canal and into being.

Indeed, if there is one bit of transcendent hope left it is that people in this country still seem non-comatose (or perhaps just self-interested) enough so as to make regressives their own worst enemy. Their shit sells well to dummies in campaigns, but it turns out that while you can lie about everything imaginable – right up to nice bearded people in the sky who control everything from war and peace to NFL touchdowns but somehow never seem to appear on Earth – the lies cannot ultimately withstand the laws of political physics. Those lovely pieties and viciously divisive tactics that are so successful at separating idiots from their votes on election day are rather less capable of doing magic tricks thereafter. Regressives may want very badly for Iraqis to lay down and accept American imperialism, but that doesn’t make it happen, and no amount of arrogant bring-it-on blustery by Vietnam-avoiding chickenhawks can change that. They may want voodoo economics to balance the budget, but those pesky mathematical equations keep getting in the damn way. They may tell you that global warming is a hoax, but nevertheless every day the planet gets relentlessly hotter.

In short, time after time there is no better antidote for regressive government than regressive government itself. That’s why the right always and endlessly pays homage to a ridiculously distorted version of Saint Ronald of Reagan, a guy so long departed from the White House that he might as well be James Buchanan as far as most contemporary Americans are concerned. Hmmm. Why not talk about the joys and wonders of George W. Bush, instead, who after all, was far more Reagan than Reagan, and who happened only just yesterday? Perhaps for the same reason that governments pursuing austerity in Europe are falling like dominoes. And also for the same reason that the sweep of regressive state governors brought in by the Obama debacle of Election 2010 are proving so unpopular, including even Scott Walker, who, despite surviving the vote, is only the third governor in all of American history to be subjected to a recall.

Thus, as much as it sickens me to say it, perhaps the best thing that could happen to us could be the election of a Mitt Romney, especially one, as this one is, so completely straight jacketed by the insane elements (that is to say, all of them) of his party. Unless Romney turns out to be very, very lucky, his policies will not only not turn the economy around, but they will saddle the country with vastly more debt than the right has managed to do so far already. It’s possible this could be the tipping point, once and for all, in the race between good demographics and bad demographics, between sanity and insanity. Maybe people will finally get what they’re buying, and start looking for a refund.

On the other hand – and be honest here – wasn’t that just what you were thinking after eight years of Bush and Cheney, the entire last four of which spent with the president’s job approval ratings in the toilet?

I sure as hell was, only to see Republicans (with a lot of help from Obama) win a crushing victory only a mere two years later.

In the end, there may be no bottom to the depths of self-destructive stupidity of which Homo Americanus is capable of stooping.

I’m pretty sure we’re gonna be finding out here, real soon.

I have no animosity towards people who supported and voted for President Obama. Well maybe a little, but only because I know your energy could have been put to better use. But if you vote, then given the options available, which is insanity or maybe slightly less insanity, then you could argue that it was perfectly reasonable for you to vote for what you perceived to be slightly less insanity.


An Interview with Tariq Ali
The Obama Syndrome
by COLLIN HARRIS

I have no animosity towards people who supported and voted for President Obama. Well maybe a little, but only because I know your energy could have been put to better use. But if you vote, then given the options available, which is insanity or maybe slightly less insanity, then you could argue that it was perfectly reasonable for you to vote for what you perceived to be slightly less insanity. Maybe there was a time when there was some truth to this logic, and many would argue that there still is. This prevailing logic of supporting the lesser-than-two-evils, fitting for an era of diminished expectations, is the most important political resource of the Democratic Party and the typical cop-out for its “progressive” supporters.
It’s a useful cop-out. After all, how can we say a McCain Presidency, or now a Romney Presidency, wouldn’t be worse? How can you disprove such a statement? How can you compare Obama’s policies to the non-existent policies of some hypothetical Republican Presidency? Obviously, you can’t. Sadly, progressives have been reduced to comparing Obama’s record, atrocious by any measure, with what one of those crazy, rightwing nutjobs might have done, or might do in the future. That’s right, they’re using the counterfactual to explain away the cognitive dissonance induced by the reality of supporting a pro-corporate imperialist Democrat. This is the state of the mainstream American Left today. After all, we do have a rightwing lunatic to compare Obama to: George W. Bush, whom progressives proudly held in contempt as he plundered and blundered his way into the history books. What do we find when comparing Obama’s record to Bush’s? Nearly perfect continuity, even on policies that many people assumed were peculiar byproducts of a uniquely criminal Bush regime. It was clear from the beginning Obama didn’t intend to rock the boat, leading even Karl Rove, boogeyman to Obama’s progressive base, to praise the President for his reassuring commitment to the status quo. What is it that will finally deliver a deathblow to the logic of lesser evil-ism? What’s the tipping point for disillusioned progressives?  If giving trillions to Wall Street or assassinating American citizens 
without due process isn’t extreme enough then what is? Maybe we’ll find out in Obama’s second term. For those who don’t want to wait that long, a brief conversation with one-man political think tank Tariq Ali should do the trick.  Ali is a prolific author, journalist, novelist, historian, veteran activist, and world-renowned public intellectual. His most recent book is The Obama Syndrome.

Can you describe what you mean by the Obama Syndrome? 
A political disease. An ailment that afflicts even the most intelligent politicians—those desperate to enter the White house whatever the financial and political price they have to pay… in the US and we know only too well that there are not too many of them. Politics these days is little more than concentrated economics. No alternative to the neo-liberal system are permitted except the State is encouraged to bail-out the very rich and the rich. The Obama syndrome is a sensational demonstration of this fact: a mixed-race President and his black family enter the White House. The symbolism is important, but symbols often disappear rapidly as the rigours of everyday life and politics intervene. Then people see that politicians whatever theier race or gender must be judged on the basis of what they do…
What’s the role of mainstream progressives in perpetuating the messianic delusion of President Obama? 
They’re desperate. They like to think anyone but Bush and when the anyone, give or take a few token measures, essentially carries on like his predecessor many mainstream progressives go into denial mode. They blind themselves to the reality. When Jeffrey Sachs criticises Obama’s new budget from the left then the self-style progressives look very stupid stuck in coital lock with the President.
What’s your take on the logic of lesser evil-ism, the default, kneejerk response for defending one’s allegiance to Obama and the Democrats in general? What does this say about Americans’ political imagination? 
The traditional politicians of the United States are bereft of imagination or vision, with the marginal exception of Ron Paul on foreign policy. He wants the Empire dismantled and he speaks out against the craziness of even considering an attack on Iran.
An alternative political approach is desperately needed in the United States and, I must add in Europe and other parts of the world. Living  in a hollowed-out democracy where the form is preserved and much else is becoming rotten is depressing. We live under  the dictatorship of capital. At times it is necessary to vote against the incumbent of whatever party simply to register anger, but America needs a new political movement/organisation, call it what you will, to challenge the logic of capital and its wars. 
What has been its effect on the chances for serious social change in the U.S.?
Bad. Very bad. To get trapped in  the dilemma as to whether Obama will fight better wars and torture people more ‘humanely’ than Romney or some other Republican is foolish. When you accept the battleground of the centre you get lost.
Some would argue Obama can actually get away with more than a Republican president because of his savvy PR skills and the middle-class liberal propensity for hypocrisy and self-deception. It seems inconceivable that Bush and Cheney could have passed NDAA or claimed the right to assassinate American citizens without massive popular outcry. What do you think? 
This is certainly the case.  One can even imagine Senator Obama jumping up and down in manufactured rage denouncing these assaults on the Constitution.
How does Occupy fit into this picture? Do you agree that Obama and the Democrats are the biggest threat to the movement in terms of being co-opted and channeling that energy back into electoral politics? 
The Occupy movement is important precisely because it grew out of disenchantment with Obama. I’ve been arguing that a vital next step must be a Charter for Democratic and Social Rights that can be used to build strong bases against mainstream politics in every city. This means an agreed, minimum political program whose aim is to include rather than exclude people.
It seems that a massive, coordinated departure from the arena of partisan electoral politics and into the arena of movement politics is the most obvious course of action for dismantling America’s two-party duopoly. What do you think about this?
I agree totally, but movement politics on its own can disappear like a whirlwind does. A foundation for something lasts must be laid now.
What’s the cure for the Obama Syndrome? Is it much different from what’s needed to restore meaning to the American political system itself? 
No. The two objectives are, in fact, the same.

Collin Harris is a freelance writer and activist based in Portland, OR. He is launching MOSS Media in 2012, a grassroots media project using movements, music, and media to expand the boundaries of cultural possibility in the 21st century. 

Foie gras is a food “delicacy” that requires geese or ducks to be force fed until their liver becomes fatty. Video from foie gras operations shows animals with bloody throats, struggling to hold their heads up and breathe. Yet, like shark fin soup, there’s money in foie gras.


California Chefs Fight Foie Gras Ban

There’s Money in Cruelty

by MARTHA ROSENBERG
Chicago.
Foie gras is a food “delicacy” that requires geese or ducks to be force fed until their liver becomes fatty. Video from foie gras operations shows animals with bloody throats, struggling to hold their heads up and breathe. Yet, like shark fin soup, there’s money in foie gras. Odes to its “butter-soft texture and rich, subtle taste” appear regularly in the New York Times including its Style magazine which extolled the “home of Foie Gras” where “pleasures abound” in May, replete with photos of penned birds.
Now, as the deadline for California’s first-in-the nation ban on foie gras, chefs  contemplate defying the ban (and facing fines of up to $1,000) as they serve foie gras going away parties or “wakes.”
The same backlash happened when a short-lived foie gras ban passed the Chicago City Council in 2006. Top Chicago chefs created a group called Chicago Chefs for Choice and held Foie Gras Fest fundraisers with all-foie gras menus. One restaurant, Sweets & Savories, featured a Kobe beef burger topped with foie gras patĂ© and seared foie gras accompanied by pumpkin flan to push the envelope. Graham Elliot Bowles, chef at Avenues in the Peninsula Hotel, offered a foie gras tasting menu with a foie gras 
custard, mousse, brioche, vinaigrette, lollipop, and milk shake for $238 per diner. A fourth course was a terrine of foie gras, snow frozen and whirred into a powder and served with kangaroo, lime, eucalyptus, and  melon.

Chicago Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel saw humor in the idea that cruelty to birds matters and wrote, “Has City Council finally quacked?” Will undercover “quack-easies” spring up? Former Chicago mayor Richard Daley also ridiculed the ban.
It was a question of rights, charged Chicago chefs. “Why should someone tell us what we can or can’t serve, buy or produce that the FDA puts its stamp on daily?” asked chef Michael Tsonton of Copperblue restaurant. “We live in a free-market society and if people are truly offended they won’t buy it,” agreed Sweets & Savories owner David Richards, in a vote for market-determined cruelty.
And why single out foie gras, asked the chefs. “Look how much veal this country goes through with all the Italian restaurants and the scallopinis [sic],” said chef Rick Tramonto of Tru restaurant when rival chef Charlie Trotter renounced foie gras on his menu, in advance of the ban. “It’s killing those babies, right?”
Paul Kahan, chef at Chicago’s Blackbird restaurant, joined in to the “you think that’s bad” argumentation . “There are so many things people eat every day that are raised in an inhumane way,” he said. “The way chickens are raised, if people saw it . . . commodity pork, I could just go on.” What about rabbit and squab? added celebrity chef Grant Achatz.
Even the American Veterinary Medical Association employed the “you think that’s bad” argument to keep foie gras legal. Walter K. McCarthy, DVM, an AVMA delegate at 2005 hearings, cautioned that banning foie gras could lead to resolutions against veal calves and other “production agriculture.” The death rate of ducks and geese in foie gras production “is much less than at most agricultural facilities,” said the veterinarian. (Then why isn’t the AVMA regulating agricultural facilities?) “We cannot condemn an accepted agricultural practice on . . . emotion,” said McCarthy.
It is the same thing that’s said about the “accepted” practices of water-boarding and genital mutilation, charge foie gras opponents.
Martha Rosenberg’s is an investigative health reporter. Her first book,  Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, has just been released by Prometheus books.

[E]xpelling Syrian diplomats, who no one is even suggesting had anything to do with the massacre at Houla, constitutes a politically cheap feel good knee jerk reaction to the horrific images from the slaughter at Houla.


A Cheap Political Trick
Expelling Diplomats: the Downside
by FRANKLIN LAMB

Beirut.
The recent massacre has whipped up a new wave of outrage at the claimed brutality of Syria’s government. Syrian envoys were kicked out of some western capitals, more financial sanctions slapped on the regime in Damascus, and more furious demands are being made for a regime change toppling Bashar al-Assad and more calls for military intervention issued.

The civilized world kicking out Syrian diplomats was to be the thin reed of straw that would certainly break the camel’s back in Damascus’ Presidential Palace.

However, expelling Syrian diplomats, who no one is even suggesting had anything to do with the massacre at Houla, constitutes a politically cheap feel good knee jerk reaction to the horrific images from the slaughter at Houla.  Certainly the images of chopped bodies and that of a precious baby with a pacifier in its mouth and a bullet hole in its temple  reminded many of us of the My Lai, Sabra-Shatila, Srebrenica, and Rwanda massacres to note just a few. Encouraging a global reaction, some in Washington vowed that the Obama doctrine and the right to protect (R2P) could not allow the Syrian regime to remain in power and Houla was to be the game changer.

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 signed by 186 countries constructed a frame for diplomatic relations between independent countries. It specifies the privileges of a diplomatic mission that enables diplomats to perform their function without fear of coercion, harassment or politically motivated expulsions by the host country. Its articles are a cornerstone of modern international relations.

While Article 9 does grant the host nation the right to declare a particular member of the diplomatic staff to be persona non grata, the understanding of the drafters of the Vienna Convention and the trauvaux preparatoire make plain that the provision is to be used solely for high crimes and under no circumstances to embarrass or trivialize the sending government or its diplomatic mission.  The US action with respect to expelling Syrian diplomats does both.

As diplomacy is the practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements, it is difficult to take seriously White House and NATO claims of a preference for diplomacy rather than war with Syria, while they lead the campaign to expel the very Syrian diplomats necessary for dialogue and negotiations.

The premises of the US diplomatic mission in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi, came under attack during the night of 6/5/12.  The US embassy is Damascus had been closed earlier in the crisis, and the US Embassy in Beirut is on near lock down status with plans to close and evacuate staff on one hours’ notice if deemed prudent.  These events highlight the importance of respecting the 1961 Vienna Convention and not expelling diplomats as political gamesmanship because the rash expulsions may not only generate unintended consequences, but inevitably invite retaliatory expulsions. Hence the Syrian government declared 17 US and Western diplomats, persona non grata earlier this week. Syria’s much respected Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal Makdad told the media in Damascus that, “We waited for so long for the other side to correct their policies and offer the needed support to Annan’s plan and the observers’ mission. But we regret that we had to take this measure because they do not want this mission to succeed.”


The gratuitous chest thumping political theatre led by Washington also undermines international treaty law while eroding respect for the nearly universally agreed to protections of diplomats, envoys, embassies and consulates.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be contacted c/o fplamb@gmail.com

The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 120 to 140 guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are people of influence.[1][2] About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education and communications. Meetings are closed to the public.


Origin

The original conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg, near Arnhem in theNetherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954. It was initiated by several people, including Polishpoliticians JĂłzef Retinger and Andrew Nielsen, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, who proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting Atlanticism – better understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe to foster cooperation on political, economic, and defense issues.[3] Retinger approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who agreed to promote the idea, together with former Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland, and the head ofUnilever at that time, Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, then head of the CIA, who asked Eisenhower adviser Charles Douglas Jackson to deal with the suggestion.[4] The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view.[3] Fifty delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe attended the first conference, along with 11 Americans.[5]
The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity.[citation needed]Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first US conference was held on St. Simons Island, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.[4]

[edit]
The role of the Bilderberg meetings in the flow of events since its founding in 1954 is a matter of debate among scholars and journalists, such as G. William Domhoff and Caroline Moorehead. In his 1980 essay The Bilderberg and the West, researcher Peter Thompson argues that the Bilderberg group is a meeting ground for top executives from the world’s leading multinational corporations and top national political figures to consider jointly the immediate and long-term problems facing the West. According to Thompson, Bilderberg itself is not an executive agency. However, when Bilderberg participants reach a form ofconsensus about what is to be done, they have at their disposal powerful transnational and national instruments for bringing about what it is they want to come to pass. That their consensus design is not always achieved is a reflection of the strength of competing resisting forces outside the capitalist ruling class and within it.[6]

[edit]
Organizational structure

Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of approximately 18 nations.[7] Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary General.[8] There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee".[9] In addition to the committee, there also exists a separate advisory group, though membership overlaps.[10]
Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugelbecame permanent secretary in 1960, upon Retinger's death. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General has been held successively by Joseph E. Johnson of the Carnegie Endowment,William Bundy of PrincetonTheodore L. Eliot, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Casimir A. Yost of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.[11]
A 2008 press release from the 'American Friends of Bilderberg' stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press.[12] The Bilderberg group's unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.[13]
According to the 'American Friends of Bilderberg', the 2008 agenda dealt "mainly with anuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations,Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran".[12]

[edit]
Chairmen of the Steering Committee

[edit]
Participants

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernankeleaving the 2008 Bilderberg Conference
Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards bankers, politicians, and directors of large businesses.[16]
Heads of state, including Juan Carlos I of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, have attended meetings.[8][17] Prominent politicians from North America and Europe are past attendees. In past years, board members from many large publicly traded corporations have attended, includingIBMXeroxRoyal Dutch ShellNokia andDaimler.[8]
The 2009 meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister Kostas Karamanlis;Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen;[18] Sweden foreign minister Carl Bildt; United StatesDeputy Secretary of State James Steinberg; U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner;World Bank president Robert ZoellickEuropean Commission head JosĂ© Manuel Barroso;Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.[19]
In 2009 the group hosted a dinner meeting at Castle of the Valley of the Duchess in Brussels on 12 November to promote the candidacy of Herman Van Rompuy for President of the European Council.[20]
The membership of the Bilderberg group is drawn largely from West European and North American countries.[21] Writing in 1980, policy analyst Holly Sklar noted that, from the 1950s, elites in the West became concerned that the United Nations was no longer controlled by Western powers, and that this concern was expressed in the participant selection process of the Bilderberg group.[21] Sklar also quoted observations from human rights journalist Caroline Moorehead in a 1977 article critical of the Bilderberg group's membership, who in turn quoted an unnamed member of the group: "No invitations go out to representatives of the developing countries. 'Otherwise you simply turn us into a mini-United-Nations,' said one person. And, 'we are looking for like-thinking people and compatible people. It would be worse to have a club of dopes.'"[21][16] In her article, Moorehead characterized the group as "heavily biased towards politics of moderate conservatism and big business" and claims that the "farthest left is represented by a scattering of central social democrats".[16]

[edit]
Recent meetings

Recent meetings:

[edit]
Privacy

The meeting hotels are inaccessible for any other guest for the full period of the conferences and sentineled by private security staffs as well as by local police authorities. During the Bilderberg Meeting at Vouliagmeni (Greece) in 2009, for instance, the BritishGuardian reporter Charlie Skelton was arrested twice after having taken pictures of vehicles.[29]

[edit]
Conspiratorial interpretations of 

Bilderberg Group activities

According to chairman Ă‰tienne Davignon, a major attraction of Bilderberg group meetings is that they provide an opportunity for participants to speak and debate candidly and to find out what major figures really think, without the risk of off-the-cuff comments becoming fodder for controversy in the media.[30] However, partly because of its working methods to ensure strict privacy, the Bilderberg group is accused of conspiracies.[31][30][32][33][34] This outlook has been popular on both extremes of the political spectrum, even if they disagree on what the group wants to do. Some on the left accuse the Bilderberg group of conspiring to impose capitalist domination,[35] while some on the right have accused the group of conspiring to impose a world government and planned economy.[36]
In 2001, Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, said: "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing."[37] In 2005 Davignon discussed these accusations with the BBC: "It is unavoidable and it doesn't matter. There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion... When people say this is a secret government of the world I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves."[34]
In a 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by the Political Research Associates, investigative journalist Chip Berlet argued that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg group date back as early as 1964 and can be found in Schlafly's self-published book A Choice, Not an Echo,[38] which promoted a conspiracy theory in which theRepublican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose internationalist policies would pave the way for world communism.[39] Also, in August 2010 former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote an article for the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma in which he cited Daniel Estulin’s 2006 book The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club[40], which, as quoted by Castro, describes "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self."[35]
G. William Domhoff, a research professor in psychology and sociology who studies theories of power,[41] sees the role of international relations forums and social clubs such as the Bilderberg group as a place to share ideas, reach consensus, and create social cohesion within a power elite.[42] He adds that this understanding of forums and clubs such as the Bilderberg group fits with the perceptions of the members of the elite. Domhoff warnsprogressives against getting distracted by conspiracy theories which demonize andscapegoat such forums and clubs.[42] He argues that the opponents of progressivism in the United States are conservatives within the corporate elite and the Republican Party.[42] It is more or less the same people who belong to forums and clubs such as the Bilderberg group, but it puts them in their most important roles, as capitalists and political leaders, which are visible and therefore easier to fight.[42]
Politico journalist Kenneth P. Vogel reports that it is the "exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists," who for decades have seen the Bilderberg meetings as a "corporate-globalist scheme", and are convinced powerful elites are moving the planet toward an oligarchic “new world order”.[43] He goes on to state that these conspiracist's "populist paranoid worldview", characterized by a suspicion of the ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and numerous Internet websites.[43]
Author James McConnachie comments that conspiracy theorists have a point, but that they fail to communicate it effectively.[44] He argues that the Bilderberg group acts in a manner consistent with a global conspiracy, but does so without the same "degree of nefariousness", a difference not appreciated by conspiracy theorists, who "tend to see this cabal as outright evil."[1] McConnachie concludes: "Occasionally you have to give credit to conspiracy theorists who raise issues that the mainstream press has ignored. It's only recently that the media has picked up on the Bilderbergers. Would the media be running stories if there weren't these wild allegations flying around?"[1]
Proponents of Bilderberg conspiracy theories in the United States include individuals and groups such as the John Birch Society,[36][45]political activist Phyllis Schlafly,[45] writer Jim Tucker,[46] political activist Lyndon LaRouche,[47] radio host Alex Jones,[1] and politicianJesse Ventura, who made the Bilderberg group a topic of a 2009 episode of his TruTVseriesConspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.[48][original research?] Non-American proponents include Russian-Canadian writer Daniel Estulin.[49]

[edit]
See also

[edit]
References

  1. a b c d BBC News (7 June 2011). Bilderberg mystery: Why do people believe in cabals?. Retrieved 14 June 2011.
  2. ^ "Japan–U.S. Relations—Past, Present and Future". The Daily Yomiuri. 8 December 1991. "Rockefeller: The idea (of creating the Trilateral Commission) was incorporated in a speech that I made in the spring of 1972 for the benefit of some industrial forums that the Chase held in different cities around Europe,... Then Zbig (Zbig Brzezinski) and I both attended a meeting of the Bilderberg Group ... and was shot down in flames. There was very little enthusiasm for the idea. I think they felt that they had a very congenial group, and they didn't want to have it interfered with by another element that would—I don't know what they thought, but in any case, they were not in favor."
  3. a b Hatch, Alden (1962). "The HĂ´tel de Bilderberg". H.R.H.Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An authorized biography. London: Harrap. ISBN B0000CLLN4. "The idea was to get two people from each country who would give the conservative and liberal slant"
  4. a b Valerie Aubourg (June 2003). Organizing Atlanticism: the Bilderberg Group and the Atlantic Institute 1952–63.
  5. a b c Rockefeller, David (2002). Memoirs. Random House. p. 412. ISBN 0-679-40588-7.
  6. ^ Thompson, Peter (1980). "Bilderberg and the West". In Sklar, HollyTrilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World ManagementSouth End Press. p. 158.ISBN 0-89608-103-6.
  7. a b "Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group"BBC News. 29 September 2005. Retrieved 5 August 2008.
  8. a b c "Bilderberg Meeting of 1997 Assembles"PR Newswire. 13 June 1997.
  9. ^ "Parliamentary questions: Answer given by Mr Prodi on behalf of the Commission".European Parliament. 15 May 2003.
  10. ^ Entry for Conrad BlackThe International Who's Who. Europa Publications. 2000.
  11. ^ "Bilderberg: List of Invitees". United States Department of Defense. 31 January 1996. Retrieved 6 June 2009.
  12. a b c "Bilderberg Announces 2008 Conference"businesswire.com. BusinessWire. 2008. Retrieved 7 June 2008.
  13. ^ Marcus Klöckner (17 May 2009). "Bilderberg meetings remain a mystery"Stars and Stripes.
  14. a b "Twenty-fifth Bilderberg meeting held in St joseph MO". Facts on File World News Digest. 14 May 1977.
  15. ^ Who's Who. 1999.
  16. a b c Caroline Moorehead (18 April 1977). "An exclusive club, perhaps without power, but certainly with influence: The Bilderberg group". The Times.
  17. ^ Mark Oliver (4 June 2004). "The Bilderberg group"The Guardian (London).
  18. ^ "Prime Minister Vanhanen and Minister of Finance Katainen to attend Bilderberg Conference". Finnish Government. 13 May 2009.
  19. ^ "Bilderberg Group Meets In Athens Amid Tight Security". NASDAQ.
  20. ^ Bruno Waterfield (16 Nov 2009). "EU Presidency candidate Herman Van Rompuy calls for new taxes"The Daily Telegraph (London). "during a secret dinner to promote his candidacy hosted by the elite Bilderberg Group."
  21. a b c Thompson, Peter (1980). "Bilderberg and the West". In Sklar, HollyTrilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World ManagementSouth End Press. pp. 172, 178–180, 182. ISBN 0-89608-103-6.
  22. ^ "Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.". Retrieved 22 August 2007.
  23. ^ Panetta, Alexander (2006). "Secretive Bilderbergers meet"Toronto Star (Toronto Star Newspapers Limited). Retrieved 12 June 2006.
  24. ^ What was discussed at Bilderberg?Turkish Daily News, 5 June 2007. Retrieved 18 August 2007.
  25. ^ "Balkenende to Meet Bush in Washington"nisnews.nl. NIS News Bulletin. 2008. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
  26. ^ "The most powerful elite will meet in Athens"GRReporter. 23 March 2009. "the club will organize its meeting in Athens between 14 and 16 May"
  27. ^ "Charlie Skelton's Bilderberg files"The Guardian (London). 15 May 2009. Retrieved 15 May 2009.
  28. ^ Skelton, Charlie (2 June 2010). "Bilderberg 2010: Plutocracy with palm trees"The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2 June 2010.
  29. ^ Skelton, Skelton (18 May 2009). "Our man at Bilderberg: Six days to lost innocence".The Guardian (London).
  30. a b "A special report on global leaders"The Economist: pp. 12–14. 22 January 2011.
  31. ^ Wilford, Hugh (September 2003). "CIA plot, socialist conspiracy, or new world order? the origins of the Bilderberg group, 1952–55"Diplomacy & Statecraft 14 (3): 70–82. Retrieved 28 March 2011.
  32. ^ Madeleine Bunting (25 May 2001). "Weekend break for the global elite"The Guardian(London).
  33. ^ Duffy, Jonathan (3 June 2004). "Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory". BBC News.
  34. a b Bill Hayton (29 September 2005). "Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group". BBC News. Retrieved 19 March 2011.
  35. a b Weissert, Will (10 August 2010). Fidel Castro fascinated by Bilderberg Club conspiracy theory. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
  36. a b Wallechinsky, DavidWallace, Irving (1975). The People's Almanac. Doubleday.ISBN 0-385-04060-1.[1]
  37. ^ Ronson, Jon (10 March 2001). "Who pulls the strings? (part 3)"The Guardian(London). Retrieved 14 May 2009.
  38. ^ Phyllis Schlafly, A Choice Not An Echo: The Inside Story of How American Presidents Are Chosen (Pere Marquette Press, 1964) ISBN 0-686-11486-8
  39. ^ Chip Berlet (1994). "The New Right & The Secular Humanism Conspiracy Theory".
  40. ^ Daniel Estulin, Los secretos del club Bilderberg (Ediciones del Bronce, 2006).
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  43. a b Vogel, Kenneth P. (15 March 2009). Bilderbergers excite conspiracists. Retrieved 3 November 2010.
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Further reading

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External links