A study carried out by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, based in the United States, shows that the United States is the only nation of 21 “rich countries” where employers are not required to provide paid vacation leave for their employees. What may come as a shock to North Americans, of the countries studied, five require employers to pay a little extra to help with vacation related expenses.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/no-vacation-nation-2013
France and the United Kingdom top the list with 30 and 28 paid vacation days respectively.
The statistics reflect an attitude about the quality of life people expect in Europe vs. North America. Canada is far more advanced than the United States in this respect but well behind all the European nations surveyed. Canada has a minimum of 10 vacation days and 9 statutory holidays. All European nations require employers to provide 20 paid holidays per year.
This study hints at a much bigger and dangerous reality. It reflects an attitude of contempt of the working class that is most pronounced in the United States. This attitude of contempt is reflected in the policies of austerity that have been pushed by the IMF and the Federal Reserve and it runs through ruling circles across the globe (with a few exceptions). Even though austerity policies have been a colossal failure, they continue to push this cruel attack against the poor and the middle class. It is an attitude of contempt that runs so deep and it is so entrenched that they are biting off the hands that feed them.
Freedom and Security
The term 'freedom' is bandied about in the United States like a mantra. This is especially true of self described libertarians, the ideological force driving neo liberal economic policies. Their focus is entirely on freedom from the state; that is, freedom from taxes and its concomitant freedom from any type of social responsibility.
The problem with this peculiar and specific notion of freedom results in slavery and destitution for people that are on the lower end of the economic spectrum. With no or very little by way of a shrinking social safety net, employers are granted tremendous power. This reality is an open field for abuse of workers. If they don't behave the way the boss wants, they may be fired. The sheer horror of that reality when no other jobs exist and where very little in terms of public services exist results in a very real system of wage slavery.
On the other hand, they are not so eager to stop spending on the coercive state apparatus; the side of that apparatus that is related to 'national security'. This use of the term security is related only to security of the state and the corporate greedsters that control it. Food security, health care security, housing security is a whole other matter. Its all about the class that benefits, not the health of the whole nation/nations.
These Ayn Randists emphasize individualism and abhor social health or anything that enriches the commons. Their fear is that the expansion of the public sphere to the provision of services and goods to all citizens may curtail power for those on the top end to arbitrarily fire workers and compromise their freedom to not pay taxes. To the extent the public sphere is expanded, freedom and security for citizens is expanded.
This libertarian dream to privatize anything and everything has a malicious and selfish intent. The owners of wealth can control access to human needs and they may demand a price for whatever it is the individual needs. The logical extension of the neo liberal dream is not only enslavement but a return to a system of quasi-feudalism where the wealthy class not only own everything, they also control everything.
The United States has already traveled well down this barbaric and brutal road. Canada and Europe are not far behind.
In this climate of excessive wealth and power, the creeping private sphere is taking control of what certainly belong to the public domain. No human being should suffer and die due to lack of access to vital needs such as medicine, shelter, or food. This is a quiet and pernicious violence perpetrated against those most in need. A poor person in a nation with little by way of public services is certainly neither free nor secure. His counterpart on the other end of the spectrum is not only secure and free but has realized the dream of arbitrary power.
This notion of freedom is shoved down the throats of victims through media and through the quisling political whores that crave to meet at Bilderberg or, to even shake the hands of those that meet at Bilderberg. They emulate those that have the privilege of setting the agenda, legislation, and defining what is important and what is not.
On the other hand, many of those adversely affected by this so called freedom will fight and die for it as if its their own. But many of these folks have little choice; its either joining the army or working at McDonalds. As for those they are really fighting and dying for, the truly free; they are on vacation.
This blog is an archive of articles I've published in MWC News, Indymedia, and on Newsgroups.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
The Counterfeit Left
The fuzzy nebulous cloud widely known as 'liberals' may be more a threat to the well being of the working classes (aka: the middle class) and the poor than the screaming, manic right. Obama illustrates and verifies this point; not by his words, but by his actions. And it is right there we spot the enemy in our midst.
The manic right stand out like flames in the night. They stand for their own principles and will rarely concede some select issues to protect their own core neo liberal beliefs. They will fight to the death for every inch. They are precisely what they seem to be.
Herd Mentality
The line between right wing liberals and apparent leftists is blurry, especially in the USA since Obama was elected. The differences can be seen however where points of friction occur. There is undoubtedly a large percentage of bona fide leftists that identify themselves as liberals and there is also a large portion that are actually right wingers posing as liberals. This may be due to identification with liberals on social issues. These liberals may actually see capitalism as a great panacea and believe that profit taking has the potential to care for those that are unable to work for a living. Not even the most rabid right winger would suggest this but, among liberals, that naive attitude runs rampant.
The phenomena where liberals remain loyal to Obama may have much to do with a team sports mentality; us vs them. That hard mentality seems to render previous critical thinkers, stunned. There are many examples. Two that jump to mind are Michael Moore and Bill Maher.
There are opportunities to observe real beliefs beneath the public image. Within the great halls of liberalism, image is everything. A recent confrontation between Bill Maher and constitutional expert and political journalist, Glen Greenwald, betrayed Maher's carefully crafted image. Link here to view the debate:
Maher's language betrays him. Language like 'our side' in reference to the global atrocities committed by his political leader and his strident defense of all things Obama suggests the same inhuman view of Muslims as Tony Blair or Maher's professed nemesis, George W Bush.
Whatever political tradition Greenwald identifies with we can say with certainty that he is a substantial and thoughtful intellect and as such, loyal only to principles, not popular bandwagons. There are many others like him; Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Norman Solomon, and many others are steeped in integrity and secure in their views. However, these substantive intellectuals are included within the same blurry concept called liberalism whether they identify themselves that way or not.
Social Democrats
Social democrats have been painting lipstick on the capitalist pig even before John Maynard Keynes showed a way to trickle wealth down to lower classes. His efforts to stave off a threatening groundswell of anti-capitalist sentiment during the great depression worked and re-validated the so called free enterprise system. Now that Keynes is dead, seemingly, they will scramble to either spin war and unbridled capitalism in brave new ways or, they may come up with ways to soft-sell austerity, perhaps with hints of New Deal elements.
Their analysis will never penetrate deep enough to show that wealth that trickles down is created by workers in the first place. Neither will they probe the failings of Keynesian policies. Social democrats are weak on substance but strong on spin and the manufacture of plastic politicians.
Last month (April 2013) the Canadian social democratic NDP (New Democratic Party) voted to remove references to the term 'socialism' from the party's constitution. The NDP has been ratcheting their way rightward since the 60s and now believe they have secured the top of the pragmatic and unprincipled center. At that same convention, members were ordered to remove a banner critical of Obama's drone strikes in order not to offend Obama's national field director who was scheduled to speak.
In the 1990s Britain's Labour Party made a sharp move to the right, distancing itself from whatever ties remained to real egalitarian principles. In 1997 so called 'new labour' was to sweep in its champion, Tony Blair who, as Prime Minister, helped the party move past the center to the conservative right. It would be hard to imagine a more right wing politician than Tony Blair still posing as anything close to moderate. While Blair frequently hypes up the threat of extremism, an examination of his views can only lead one to conclude that his views differ little, if at all, from the extreme right. Former Conservative Prime Minister recently said, “I remember joking once that I had gone swimming in the River Thames and left my clothes on the bank and when I got back, Tony Blair was wearing them.” 1
The vulgar opportunist that is Tony Blair cannot be overstated. His support for weapons companies though hawkish war mongering have paid off large. “The £2m-plus annual fee from JP Morgan Chase... the $250,000 for a 45-minute speech on the US lecture circuit... the all-expenses paid jaunts to Jerusalem as the Quartet's (ineffectual) Middle East envoy... it all serves as a reminder to members of the western political elite of the enormous financial rewards that will come their way if they toe the line.” 2
In 2007 “BAE systems is (was) alleged, by British media, to have secretly paid Saudi Prince Bandar more than £1bn in connection with Britain's biggest ever weapons contract. There have been demands for an investigation. In response to this, Tony Blair decided to stop the Serious Fraud Office from investigating alleged bribery relating to the BAE contract with Saudi Arabia. It involves a £43 billion arms deal.” 3
He said he didn't want to sour relations with the Saudi dictators.
Tony Blair's habit of turning tricks on Downing street only show his pragmatic side. He is as John Major suggests, a right wing ideologue. He persists in urging the Labour Party to the right and he persists in his his thirst for blood in the Middle East.
The USA
Bill Clinton is as responsible for the financial meltdown that began in 2008 as the banks. Depending on how we look at it, we could say he was even more complicit than the banks. He was in cahoots with them as was his co-conspirator, Sen. Phil Gramm. The reason he is responsible is because he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a move the banks could not pull off without political stooges doing their bidding. That particular De-regulation paved the way for large banks to use, abuse, and ruin the lives of their customers and the economy as a whole. The result was a bonanza for the banks and they utilized a myriad of mesmerizing shell games to reap unprecedented profits.
And what does Clinton get? Like Tony Blair, he continues to reap benefits from his nefarious dealings. “ Clinton teamed up with Tony Blair at private equity and consulting group Teneo Capital, one of whose clients was MF Global, the bankrupt broker-dealer run by former New Jersey Sen. and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. After losing bets taken with client money, MF Global collapsed. And despite a swirl of controversy, no criminal charges will be filed against Corzine. There’s no evidence that the payoff to Clinton made a difference in the Department of Justice’s position, but then, it couldn’t have hurt.”
“He received $125,000 in cash apiece from Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse just two months after signing the bill deregulating derivatives. His speaking arrangements, a well-known conduit to funnel cash to retired politicians, has garnered him over $80 million since 2001, a substantial amount of which has come from the financial services industry he helped.”
“In 2010, Clinton received a six-figure cash payment from the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo, one of many payments he received from groups with significant policy interests before the State Department run by his spouse.”
In 2011 “Clinton received six-figure cash payments from Goldman Sachs ($200,000), HSBC Securities ($200,000), Fidelity Investments ($175,000), TD Bank ($260,000), Itau BBA USA Securities ($175,000), privatization specialist Highstar Capital ($175,000), Jefferies and Co. ($200,000), UBS Wealth Management ($165,000 and $150,000), American Express ($250,000), TD Ameritrade ($200,000), Highland Capital ($175,000), Wells Fargo ($200,000), the Association for Financial Professionals ($175,000) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch ($200,000).” 4
Aside from sleazy dealings and large kick-backs, the ethical profile of liberals in general is as bad as that of the extreme right. Considering the reality of their political maneuvering, their skill at hoodwinking not only the public but many journalists, especially those employed by large private interests, they are much worse.
The criminal performance of Barack Obama as President is hard to even fathom. This former professor of constitutional law openly boasts about murdering people. Prior to Obama, murders were carried out but they were not openly displayed for all to see. Obama's murdering rampage is its own sick and macabre reality television show. Aside from ongoing drone strikes on innocent people, where all that is apparently needed to murder somebody is 'intelligence' from a local yokel, let's consider one event.
Beyond the callous notion that the President can kill foreigners if somebody claims them to be a threat, Obama murdered 16 year old Abdulrahman Awlaki, the son of Anwar Awlaki as he was making his way to a barbecue in Yemen. His crime was that he was his father's son. Officials say that he was not the intended target. The vile bastards are not bragging about this 'hit'. His father, Anwar, was murdered by Obama two weeks prior. The drone strike also killed eight other people that happened to be nearby.
The President has a 'kill list'; a list that he personally oversees. "The president of the United States believes that he has the power to order people killed, assassinated, in total secrecy, without any due process, without transparency or oversight of any kind,". 5
Obama is also responsible for a massive security apparatus where spying on citizens has become normalized. As the security state continues to expand and impinge on citizens, unabated. The latest development is the expected support from the Administration to back up FBI proposed “sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws.” 6
Obama isn't only contemptuous of the American Constitution. He has regressed legal progress back to before the Magna Carta.
Obama is fully aware of the precedents he sets when he openly violates these legal basis. If we contemplate what that is about, we may feel a shudder; we should.
Although we live in interesting times, they promise to get far more 'interesting'. The Dow Jones Industrial Average passed 15,000 for the first time ever. This wealth is a mirage created by the Federal Reserve. Its basis rests in ether. It will collapse and it will crash hard. And while this dizzying expansion of capital occurs, folks on the ground are suffering. And as this fiasco is perpetrated against good people everywhere, conservatives and social democrats alike dance to the tune called by large finance capitalists.
At some point you will need to seriously ask yourself: What side am I on?
References
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/12/tony-blair-right-wing-says-john-major_n_1589295.html
2. http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/24457/tony-blairs-reward-following-right-foreign-policy#ixzz2SzubzAlX
3. http://leftlite.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00:00:00-04:00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00:00:00-04:00&max-results=6
4. http://www.salon.com/2012/09/14/clintons_no_liberal_hero/
5. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/30/glenn_greenwald_obamas_secret_kill_list
6. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/us/politics/obama-may-back-fbi-plan-to-wiretap-web-users.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The manic right stand out like flames in the night. They stand for their own principles and will rarely concede some select issues to protect their own core neo liberal beliefs. They will fight to the death for every inch. They are precisely what they seem to be.
Herd Mentality
The line between right wing liberals and apparent leftists is blurry, especially in the USA since Obama was elected. The differences can be seen however where points of friction occur. There is undoubtedly a large percentage of bona fide leftists that identify themselves as liberals and there is also a large portion that are actually right wingers posing as liberals. This may be due to identification with liberals on social issues. These liberals may actually see capitalism as a great panacea and believe that profit taking has the potential to care for those that are unable to work for a living. Not even the most rabid right winger would suggest this but, among liberals, that naive attitude runs rampant.
The phenomena where liberals remain loyal to Obama may have much to do with a team sports mentality; us vs them. That hard mentality seems to render previous critical thinkers, stunned. There are many examples. Two that jump to mind are Michael Moore and Bill Maher.
There are opportunities to observe real beliefs beneath the public image. Within the great halls of liberalism, image is everything. A recent confrontation between Bill Maher and constitutional expert and political journalist, Glen Greenwald, betrayed Maher's carefully crafted image. Link here to view the debate:
Maher's language betrays him. Language like 'our side' in reference to the global atrocities committed by his political leader and his strident defense of all things Obama suggests the same inhuman view of Muslims as Tony Blair or Maher's professed nemesis, George W Bush.
Whatever political tradition Greenwald identifies with we can say with certainty that he is a substantial and thoughtful intellect and as such, loyal only to principles, not popular bandwagons. There are many others like him; Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Norman Solomon, and many others are steeped in integrity and secure in their views. However, these substantive intellectuals are included within the same blurry concept called liberalism whether they identify themselves that way or not.
Social Democrats
Social democrats have been painting lipstick on the capitalist pig even before John Maynard Keynes showed a way to trickle wealth down to lower classes. His efforts to stave off a threatening groundswell of anti-capitalist sentiment during the great depression worked and re-validated the so called free enterprise system. Now that Keynes is dead, seemingly, they will scramble to either spin war and unbridled capitalism in brave new ways or, they may come up with ways to soft-sell austerity, perhaps with hints of New Deal elements.
Their analysis will never penetrate deep enough to show that wealth that trickles down is created by workers in the first place. Neither will they probe the failings of Keynesian policies. Social democrats are weak on substance but strong on spin and the manufacture of plastic politicians.
Last month (April 2013) the Canadian social democratic NDP (New Democratic Party) voted to remove references to the term 'socialism' from the party's constitution. The NDP has been ratcheting their way rightward since the 60s and now believe they have secured the top of the pragmatic and unprincipled center. At that same convention, members were ordered to remove a banner critical of Obama's drone strikes in order not to offend Obama's national field director who was scheduled to speak.
In the 1990s Britain's Labour Party made a sharp move to the right, distancing itself from whatever ties remained to real egalitarian principles. In 1997 so called 'new labour' was to sweep in its champion, Tony Blair who, as Prime Minister, helped the party move past the center to the conservative right. It would be hard to imagine a more right wing politician than Tony Blair still posing as anything close to moderate. While Blair frequently hypes up the threat of extremism, an examination of his views can only lead one to conclude that his views differ little, if at all, from the extreme right. Former Conservative Prime Minister recently said, “I remember joking once that I had gone swimming in the River Thames and left my clothes on the bank and when I got back, Tony Blair was wearing them.” 1
The vulgar opportunist that is Tony Blair cannot be overstated. His support for weapons companies though hawkish war mongering have paid off large. “The £2m-plus annual fee from JP Morgan Chase... the $250,000 for a 45-minute speech on the US lecture circuit... the all-expenses paid jaunts to Jerusalem as the Quartet's (ineffectual) Middle East envoy... it all serves as a reminder to members of the western political elite of the enormous financial rewards that will come their way if they toe the line.” 2
In 2007 “BAE systems is (was) alleged, by British media, to have secretly paid Saudi Prince Bandar more than £1bn in connection with Britain's biggest ever weapons contract. There have been demands for an investigation. In response to this, Tony Blair decided to stop the Serious Fraud Office from investigating alleged bribery relating to the BAE contract with Saudi Arabia. It involves a £43 billion arms deal.” 3
He said he didn't want to sour relations with the Saudi dictators.
Tony Blair's habit of turning tricks on Downing street only show his pragmatic side. He is as John Major suggests, a right wing ideologue. He persists in urging the Labour Party to the right and he persists in his his thirst for blood in the Middle East.
The USA
Bill Clinton is as responsible for the financial meltdown that began in 2008 as the banks. Depending on how we look at it, we could say he was even more complicit than the banks. He was in cahoots with them as was his co-conspirator, Sen. Phil Gramm. The reason he is responsible is because he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a move the banks could not pull off without political stooges doing their bidding. That particular De-regulation paved the way for large banks to use, abuse, and ruin the lives of their customers and the economy as a whole. The result was a bonanza for the banks and they utilized a myriad of mesmerizing shell games to reap unprecedented profits.
And what does Clinton get? Like Tony Blair, he continues to reap benefits from his nefarious dealings. “ Clinton teamed up with Tony Blair at private equity and consulting group Teneo Capital, one of whose clients was MF Global, the bankrupt broker-dealer run by former New Jersey Sen. and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. After losing bets taken with client money, MF Global collapsed. And despite a swirl of controversy, no criminal charges will be filed against Corzine. There’s no evidence that the payoff to Clinton made a difference in the Department of Justice’s position, but then, it couldn’t have hurt.”
“He received $125,000 in cash apiece from Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse just two months after signing the bill deregulating derivatives. His speaking arrangements, a well-known conduit to funnel cash to retired politicians, has garnered him over $80 million since 2001, a substantial amount of which has come from the financial services industry he helped.”
“In 2010, Clinton received a six-figure cash payment from the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo, one of many payments he received from groups with significant policy interests before the State Department run by his spouse.”
In 2011 “Clinton received six-figure cash payments from Goldman Sachs ($200,000), HSBC Securities ($200,000), Fidelity Investments ($175,000), TD Bank ($260,000), Itau BBA USA Securities ($175,000), privatization specialist Highstar Capital ($175,000), Jefferies and Co. ($200,000), UBS Wealth Management ($165,000 and $150,000), American Express ($250,000), TD Ameritrade ($200,000), Highland Capital ($175,000), Wells Fargo ($200,000), the Association for Financial Professionals ($175,000) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch ($200,000).” 4
Aside from sleazy dealings and large kick-backs, the ethical profile of liberals in general is as bad as that of the extreme right. Considering the reality of their political maneuvering, their skill at hoodwinking not only the public but many journalists, especially those employed by large private interests, they are much worse.
The criminal performance of Barack Obama as President is hard to even fathom. This former professor of constitutional law openly boasts about murdering people. Prior to Obama, murders were carried out but they were not openly displayed for all to see. Obama's murdering rampage is its own sick and macabre reality television show. Aside from ongoing drone strikes on innocent people, where all that is apparently needed to murder somebody is 'intelligence' from a local yokel, let's consider one event.
Beyond the callous notion that the President can kill foreigners if somebody claims them to be a threat, Obama murdered 16 year old Abdulrahman Awlaki, the son of Anwar Awlaki as he was making his way to a barbecue in Yemen. His crime was that he was his father's son. Officials say that he was not the intended target. The vile bastards are not bragging about this 'hit'. His father, Anwar, was murdered by Obama two weeks prior. The drone strike also killed eight other people that happened to be nearby.
The President has a 'kill list'; a list that he personally oversees. "The president of the United States believes that he has the power to order people killed, assassinated, in total secrecy, without any due process, without transparency or oversight of any kind,". 5
Obama is also responsible for a massive security apparatus where spying on citizens has become normalized. As the security state continues to expand and impinge on citizens, unabated. The latest development is the expected support from the Administration to back up FBI proposed “sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws.” 6
Obama isn't only contemptuous of the American Constitution. He has regressed legal progress back to before the Magna Carta.
Obama is fully aware of the precedents he sets when he openly violates these legal basis. If we contemplate what that is about, we may feel a shudder; we should.
Although we live in interesting times, they promise to get far more 'interesting'. The Dow Jones Industrial Average passed 15,000 for the first time ever. This wealth is a mirage created by the Federal Reserve. Its basis rests in ether. It will collapse and it will crash hard. And while this dizzying expansion of capital occurs, folks on the ground are suffering. And as this fiasco is perpetrated against good people everywhere, conservatives and social democrats alike dance to the tune called by large finance capitalists.
At some point you will need to seriously ask yourself: What side am I on?
References
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/12/tony-blair-right-wing-says-john-major_n_1589295.html
2. http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/24457/tony-blairs-reward-following-right-foreign-policy#ixzz2SzubzAlX
3. http://leftlite.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00:00:00-04:00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00:00:00-04:00&max-results=6
4. http://www.salon.com/2012/09/14/clintons_no_liberal_hero/
5. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/30/glenn_greenwald_obamas_secret_kill_list
6. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/us/politics/obama-may-back-fbi-plan-to-wiretap-web-users.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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