Peter Eyre

I have always had so much respect for the BBC until the day that they censored me during their programme called “Question time” when it came to the City of Derby.

I was selected to be in the audience and placed myself on the front row in full view of the cameras so that I could get my point across concerning massive fraud that was being carried out within the UK.

Included in this show was discussion on Libya and so I was well and truly fired up to launch my comments on this topic. But sadly it was not to be!

David Dimbleby the compare of the show gave everyone a pre show brief and explained that after the initial warm up everything that was discussed would be televised but that was far from the truth.

The first question of the evening was in relation to the economic downturn and so David selected me to respond to the first question of the evening. Sitting on the panel was a local MP Margaret Beckett to whom I had approached many times on the question of massive fraud involving senior company executives, banking executives and many Tory Party MP´s.

I stated to the panel if they were aware of the current massive fraud that was taking place in this country involving the above and in particular politicians. David Dimbleby was clearly taken back by my comment and put his fingers up to his ear piece, it was obvious he was receiving some instruction from the TV control room.

The show was then basically stopped for a short duration whilst they moved onto the second question of the evening which was in relation to Libya. Again, throughout this time I held my hand up to participate in the debate but to no avail.

I later viewed the programme only to find that not only had the entire first segment been cut from the programme but also that it had been doctored to start at the second question of the evening regarding the current situation in Libya. David Dimbleby announced the start of the show with the first question being about Libya, which was a total lie and cover-up!

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Stephen Lendman

From inception, Eurozone monetary union was an idea doomed to fail. Nonetheless, it was engineered fraudulently to look workable.

In 1979, Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) was introduced as part of the European Monetary System (EMS) to propel the continent to one European currency unit (ECU).

ERM never worked. ECU is failing. At issue is duplicity, conflicts of interest, and uniting 17 dissimilar countries under rigid euro straightjacket rules. Doing so usurps their monetary and fiscal autonomy disastrously.

Nonetheless, banking giants partnered with EU, ECB and IMF Troika power decide everything. Policies require lowering living standards, sacking public workers, and selling off state assets lock, stock and barrel at fire sale prices.

Today, the euro corpse only awaits its obituary to be written. Successive bailouts and fixes haven't worked. Troubled Eurozone economies are drowning in debt. Adding more makes bad conditions worse.

So do forced austerity measures, layoffs, and higher working household taxes. Lost purchasing power means less spending, fewer jobs, and greater public anger than today's high levels.

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Andrea Peters

Activists of Pro-Kremlin youth movements take part
in a demonstration, as a response to the protest rally
against the results of the parliamentary elections and
the policies conducted by Russian authorities, in Mos-
cow December 6, 2011. (Reuters/Anton Golubev)

Thousands of people joined protests on Saturday in cities across Russia in the largest antigovernment demonstrations in nearly two decades.

In Moscow, a crowd estimated at around 50,000 descended on Bolotnaia Square, expressing outrage over widespread allegations of electoral fraud in parliamentary elections held December 4. Another 10,000 demonstrated in Russia’s second major city, St. Petersburg. Protests were also held in Sochi, Murmansk, Chita, Vladivostok, Kazan, Nizhni Novgorod, Omsk and dozens of other cities across seven time zones.

Saturday’s events followed a number of smaller demonstrations over the past week, during which hundreds of people were arrested. Despite the presence of upwards of 50,000 police and paramilitary forces at Bolotnaia Square this weekend, no one was detained. The Kremlin reportedly instructed the police not to crack down on the demonstrators lest they provoke an even broader outpouring of popular anger. In St. Petersburg, a handful of people were arrested.

The government of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is facing a deep crisis, with the demonstrations and recent elections exposing the fragility of a regime long touted as stable and backed by a docile populace.

Support for the ruling United Russia (UR) party fell dramatically in the December 4 elections. Its candidates won only 238 out of 450 parliamentary seats, compared to 315 in 2007. Even with vote rigging—in the city of Rostov, for example, 140 percent of the registered electorate cast ballots—United Russia saw its support drop by over 14 percentage points to 49.5 percent.

Protests mounted in the immediate aftermath of the election, sparked by widespread reports of electoral fraud. The liberal opposition has predominantly led the demonstrations, with the Communist Party, the Just Russia party and various other forces lending their support once the scope of popular anger became clear. Garry Kasparov’s Solidarnost party, which embraces a pro-US and pro-market agenda, played a central role in organizing the event in Moscow over the weekend.

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Sybille Fuchs

The building used by CIA as a secret prison used by
the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
agents to torture "suspects" in Bucharest, Romania.

Journalists from the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German television magazine “Panorama” have uncovered the location of one of the chain of notorious secret torture prisons run by US Central Intelligence Agency in Europe. The prison is situated in a residential area of the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

The prison in Bucharest began operations following the closure in 2003 of a similar torture centre in Poland. The prison was located in a building housing the Romanian National Registry Office for Classified Information (Official Registrului National al Informatiilor Secrete de Stat) authority. The transport of prisoners to the prison from Bucharest’s airport was carried out in inconspicuous minibuses.

The cells were located in the basement of the ORNISS building. The cells were mounted on springs in order to disorientate the prisoners, who were also subjected to sleep deprivation, water boarding, beatings or being forced to adopt excruciating positions for long periods of time. Former employees of the CIA told journalists that after the initial round of “interviews” the prisoners were given medical and dental examinations.

Some of the prisoners were held there temporarily prior to being switched and tortured in other locations or transferred to Guantánamo. The CIA’s code-name for the secret prison in Bucharest was “Bright light”. The centre was located at Mures Street 4. The prisoners held at the facility included Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of carrying out the attack on the US warship Cole in Yemen and now sits in Guantánamo where he faces trial by a military commission.

Al Nashiri was brutally tortured in 2002 and 2003. According to CIA documents, he was allegedly threatened with execution by a gun and a drill. He was also stripped naked, beaten and subjected to water boarding. Some of the abuse is alleged to have taken place in Poland. It is likely that he was transferred from Poland to Bucharest and then to Guantánamo. He apparently made confessions under torture, which he has now revoked. His case was the subject of an investigation by the EU parliamentary commission, which urged the US not to execute him.

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Stephen Lendman

Palestinian children sit on a pile of dirt at the war-battered
refugee camp of Nahr Al-Bared.

December 11 marks the 63rd anniversary of UN Resolution 194(III)[Paragraph 11], mandating that:

"the (Palestinian) refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible."

International law enshrines this right, including:

• Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• Article 5(d)(ii) of the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination;
• Article 12(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and
• the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (the Apartheid Convention).

Denying this right constitutes apartheid. Nonetheless, Israel refuses to let diaspora Palestinians return home. It calls doing so an "act of suicide," disruptive of its tenuous majority.

It cites UN Resolutions 242 and 338. They mandate political solutions for Palestine's refugee problem, exclusive of international law, human rights, equity and justice. As a result, durable solutions are blocked.

Israel calls right of return issues a privilege, not a right. Palestinian self-determination is thus severely compromised. Millions are left unprotected.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

In a cheap effort to procure Jewish votes and money, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has claimed that the Palestinian people is "an invented people".

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of reasons we have sustained them against Israel now since the 1940s. It is tragic."

Asked whether he considered himself a Zionist, the highly opportunistic and morally duplicitous republican leader said "I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a state…Remember, there was no Palestinian state. It was part of the Ottoman empire until the early 20th century."

There is no doubt that Gingrich's claims are an obscene gallimaufry of errors, half-truths and outright lies.

Let us begin with the issue of an "invented people." Well, if we discuss the matter academically, e.g. honestly and objectively, we will reach the ineluctable conclusion that the American people themselves are an invented people. After all, the only true and "un-invented" people are the native Americans, most of whom were exterminated by White immigrants, presumably including Gingrich's forefathers, who called the genocide "manifest destiny."

In comparison, the Palestinian people have stronger claims to originality and authenticity.

In fact, Palestinians predated the Israelites by thousands of years. Remember, even Abraham, the patriarch, had to purchase a burial place for his wife Sara from a local Palestinian. The story is mentioned in the Bible.

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Gilad Atzmon

Newt Gingrich is no doubt a revolutionary political thinker.

He has managed to offer an adequate solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. In an interview with Steven Weiss of The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an ‘invented people’:

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go to many places.”

Such an approach to world affairs is consistent with both Walt Disney’s phantasmic vision of reality and Zionist Golda Meir who back in 1969 announced that there was “no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."[1]

No doubt, Gingrich’s/Meir’s ‘genius’ visionary idea should be applied to every American war and conflict. I guess that it is just a question of time before Gingrich announces that the Iraqi people are also ‘invented’, like the Palestinians they were also part of the Arab community. They may also have to schlep around and leave their beloved country to America and its Zionist rulers.

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Adnan Al-Daini

Could one do the right thing for the wrong reasons? Yes. Does it matter that it is for the wrong reasons? It does, if it shows a mindset from which other actions may follow that are wrong, uninformed and damaging.

Britain's eurosceptic press hail Cameron's decision
to veto a new EU treaty to tackle the eurozone debt
crisis, although a few commentators warn London
is now dangerously isolated. Photo: AFP

David Cameron sought, but did not get, a “legally-binding protocol to protect the City of London from more EU financial regulation”. Consequently he vetoed the EU- wide treaty change to save the Euro.  Accepting the change would have involved Britain “signing up for a deal conferring intrusive rights on European institutions to enforce budgetary policy in countries breaking the Euro’s debt and deficit rules, as well as quasi-automatic penalties for delinquents” (The Guardian). The democratic deficit implied in this is clear and I am glad he rejected the deal.

What I find puzzling is that Mr Cameron appeared content to cede sovereignty on tax, spend and borrowing policies provided the “City of London” was exempted from further EU regulations. He used the veto to protect the moneyed and powerful financial sector (the City of London) from regulations, and from the Tobin tax that is supported by 66% of the British public. It is the “light touch” regulation that brought the world economy to the edge of the abyss, and reforms are essential to prevent another collapse down the line. I suspect this is the reason for his isolation, and had he made the “straightjacket” of the Euro proposed by Germany as his core objection, he might have had more support in the discussions.

The government fixation with the city and financial services shows a delusional tendency in believing that financial services will forever be the main contributor to the British economy.  The realisation has not yet dawned on politicians, and particularly those on the right of politics, that the era of financial engineering is over and the future belongs to real engineering: the application of science to the manufacturing of efficient quality products.   To compete internationally they must be engineered to require the minimum amount of energy in their production, and must use the minimum amount of energy in performing the task they do. The enormous value added to hi-tech manufactured goods is the only sure way for Britain to employ its people, giving them a reasonable standard of living.

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Another World Is Possible

On December 8 in Mexico City, Stephen Lendman received the prestigious Journalists Club of Mexico's (Club de Periodistas) annual International Journalism Award at an elaborate internationally broadcast ceremony on television and radio.

Distinguished guests attended, including Mexican and foreign journalists, media representatives, and others. A representative of Mexican President Filipe Calderon was present to deliver his prepared remarks, congratulating recipients. The event was extraordinary in all respects. Someone called it the truth-telling journalistic equivalent of Hollywood's Oscars. All recipients got a certificate and medal draped over our heads like an Olympiad winner. Mostly Mexican and other Latin American journalists were honored. Two North Americans only were invited - Stephen Lendman from America and Mahdi Nazemroaya from Canada. They both got a chance to speak briefly on international television to all Latin America. Their remarks were translated. Stephen's opening comment was:

Today, this gringo from north of the border is proud to call himself a periodista.

Translated it means journalist. But for the Mexican Journalist Club it's much more. They hold annual events. Next year will be their 60th anniversary. Each year they honor journalists for their contribution to truth. Stephen says he is truly overwhelmed, deeply honored, and extremely humbled to have been invited to participate. He'll treasure what happened forever, won't ever forget its meaning, and will try always to live up to it. [URL]

Stephen Lendman

There are a myriad of overwhelming problems and
ailments inflicting the health of Gaza residents,
especially children as a result of the ever-growing
lakes of sewage like that of the "great lake" or the
"Majari". [Click on image to enlarge.]

Since locked down and isolated by Israel, Gaza's experienced systemic crisis. Its health system especially was gravely harmed.

Many services and life-saving treatments aren't available. Accessing it elsewhere is uncertain and tenuous. Treating chronic illnesses is jeopardized by inadequate medicines and proper equipment.

Regular Israel incursions and air attacks exacerbate bad conditions. So do deficient fuel and electricity supplies, as well as unsafe drinking water and other health hazards.

Conditions are getting worse, not better. In September Physicians for Human Rights/Israel (PHR/I) said:

"Israel glaringly violate(s) the rights of Palestinians to health, each time in a different manner." It said the right to health "extends to (its) underlying determinants, (including) food and nutrition, housing, access to safe and potable water and adequate sanitation, safe and healthy working conditions, and a healthy environment."

By imposing draconian impediments, Palestinians, especially Gazans, lack proper health services. As a result, lives are lost and human suffering aggravated.

"As these lines are being written, we are witnessing a grave crisis in the Gaza health system." Its Ministry of Health reports dozens of medications in short supply or exhausted. Moreover, 123 types of medical equipment are unavailable. Dozens of others need replacing.

Israel's Gaza policy is "humanitarian minimum." Often it's non-existent. Gaza lurches from one crisis to another. Duct tape solutions won't solve it.

Absent change, "it is difficult to anticipate an end to the daily suffering of the sick and infirm individuals residing in these territories," especially besieged Gazans.

As an occupying power, Israel bears full responsibility. Nonetheless, it willfully and systematically breaches its international law obligations. As a result, Gazans suffer horrifically, especially on accessing healthcare when it's most needed.

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Stephen Lendman

A commonly accepted definition calls human rights basic freedoms

"to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law."

The UN said "(o)n Human Rights Day 2011, we pay tribute to all human rights defenders and ask you to get involved in the global human rights movement."

On December 9, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay will host a live online Facebook/Twitter/Weibo (Chinese) global conversation from 9:30AM - 10:30AM EST to answer questions participants ask. They're your rights, she says. "Know them, demand them, defend them."

December 10 commemorates the day General Assembly members adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948.

World leaders pledged to "complement the UN Charter with a road map to guarantee the rights of every individual everywhere."

As a result, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was discussed at the General Assembly's first session in 1946. It submitted the UNHR to the Economic and Social Council "for reference to the Commission on Human Rights for consideration....in its preparation of an international bill of rights."

Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the UDHR drafting committee. Seventeen other political, cultural and religious figures joined her. She perhaps was its driving force.

In September 1948, its first draft was completed. Over 50 member states participated in its final drafting. On December 10, 1948, UN Resolution 217 A (III) was adopted by the UNHR. No members dissented. Eight abstained. Despite emerging Cold War tensions, common ground was found.

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Justin Raimondo

Former VP Cheney coming to sign his book.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case brought by Steven Howards, a Colorado man arrested by Secret Service agents when he confronted then-Vice President Dick Cheney at a shopping mall and told him he thought the Iraq war was “disgusting.” Howards happened to be in the mall when he noticed Cheney was there, signing books and posing for photographs with mall-goers: he phoned a friend and told him he was going to wait on line for a chance to pose with the Vice President and then tell him what he thought of the war: “I’m going to ask him [Cheney] how many kids he’s killed today.”

A Secret Service agent overheard him and put out an alert to watch for the man in the green t-shirt. Howards got in line, waited for his turn to pose with Cheney, and when it was his turn he delivered his message, to which Cheney replied, rather stupidly: “Thank you.”

What happened next is in dispute: the Secret Service claims he “pushed off” and even “slapped” the VP: Howards says he was merely patting the war criminal on the shoulder. In any case, Howards at first denied touching Cheney at all, later admitting he might have had a brief contact – and this was the pretext for his arrest.

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Laura Stuart

It came as no surprise today that Paul Flynn M.P. apologised for doubting the British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould's loyalty to Britain. It was also nothing new that Zionist blog comments stated that the apology was "forced and not genuine" or "not enough" or "not sincere", no one can ever satisfy the total submission to Israel demanded by Zionists.

This sudden change of heart is the most recent in a long line of people who have done a U turn under extreme Zionist bullying and harassment, the most noteworthy example being Richard Goldstone and his report into operation Cast Lead. In reality Paul Flynn's statement would indicate not that he has an issue with Matthew Gould being a Jew but his self professed Zionism and that his role in the Fox/Werrity pro attack Iran agenda is a cause for concern. The main issue for the Foreign Office appears to be that they might find themselves in contravention of equal opportunity employment laws.

It is interesting that here in the U.K. the Zionist bullying cells are still so effective, at least in extracting apologetic statements from Paul Flynn or the P.S.C. whilst over in the United States Zionist intimidation has so far not worked as Obama has refused to sack the American Ambassador to Belgium over his remarks about Israel's inability to make peace with Palestine was a cause of Muslim Anti Semitism. It is easily provable that Israeli attacks such as Cast Lead and on the Mavi Marmara were a cause of more attacks on Jews. However, for once Obama is standing firm, but as we know it is a question of how long before he falls.

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Charles E. Carlson

Anders Breivik and Mossad agent Pamela Geller

Everyone has heard the legal explanation of when free speech becomes a crime. “You must not cry 'fire' in a crowded theater." According to the findings of the Norway court-appointed psychiatrists who examined Anders Breivik, he believes there is an immigration fire in his native country, so he killed or wounded some 80 Norwegian youths whose parents belong to the political party he blames for the migration of Muslims into Norway.

Note that Breivik, as far as we know, did not gain a single krone for his violent, well-planned deed. And he risked his own life to do it, for had the police shown up before he ran out of bullets [1], or if anyone on Utøya Island had had a gun, Breivik would likely have been shot down. As it stands, Breivik may be in a mental institution for a few years, or for the rest of his life.

Some good may come from the unfamiliar and seemingly overgenerous Norwegian law, because it will now bring focus on those who Breivik heard shouting “fire” and who influenced him to kill 74 youths. Unlike Breivik, many of them are well paid and rewarded for promoting war.

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Julie Hyland

The first comprehensive investigation into the riots that swept London and other parts of England in August has confirmed that police brutality, poverty and social inequality were the primary motivating factors in their eruption.

The “Reading the Riots” study was undertaken by the Guardian newspaper and the London School of Economics (LSE) following the government’s refusal to establish an independent inquiry into the inner-city disturbances. It is the only report based on evidence gathered from those who were directly involved in the events.

The study involved a team of 60 academics, journalists and researchers. They conducted interviews with 270 people who took part in the riots in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Manchester. A separate analysis of a database of more than 2 million riot-related “tweets” was undertaken by Manchester University.

Those interviewed were between 13 and 57 years of age, with most aged 16 to 24. They were drawn from all ethnic backgrounds and most had not been arrested for their involvement in the disturbances.

The accounts of those interviewed, who reside in some of the most socially deprived areas in England, refute the claims made by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government, with the support of the Labour Party and the media, that the upheavals were the product of the “criminality” of a “feral underclass.”

This libel was used to justify wholesale police and judicial repression against working class youth. Over 4,000 people were arrested. Specially convened kangaroo-style courts were set up in several areas, sitting for 24 hours in some instances, to dispense summary justice. Hundreds have been imprisoned, mostly for petty offences, and three young men have been jailed for four years for Facebook postings supportive of rioting.

Time and again, those interviewed identified police harassment, poverty and social injustice as the main causes of the riots. Many described the disturbances as “anti-police” riots, citing the police killing of 29-year-old Mark Duggan in Tottenham on August 4 as the major factor that precipitated the eruptions.

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Matthew Nasuti

Hillary Clinton with Jon Corzine, the Chairman & CEO
of MF Global Holdings. Mr. Corzine is currently under
Congressional investigation for “losing” $1.2 billion in
investor funds.

Bland “condolence” press statement appears drafted by junior clerk

The December 6, 2011, press statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is an insult to the Afghan people and to the estimated 60 Hazara Shia who were massacred in dual bombing attacks in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif. Posted on the Internet web-site of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the statement “strongly condemns” the attacks, finds them “deplorable” and vaguely extends “condolences” but then goes on to praise “the progress of the last 10 years” and ends with standard talking points about America’s vision for Afghanistan. This bland announcement contains the same stock phrases that have been used in dozens of previous press releasese. In addition it is inappropriate to use the massacres as a vehicle to restate U.S. policy and tout “progress” (which appears sorely lacking at this point in time).

The press statement also borders on being racist. In reviewing prior Embassy announcements regarding other incidents in Afghanistan, the State Department takes a different tone when Westerners are killed or Western interests attacked.

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Ellen Brown

We have been distracted here and in Europe by a sudden panic over our “sovereign debt” crises, when the real crisis is that our debt is NOT sovereign.

On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Federal Reserve to reveal the lending details of its 2008-09 bank bailout. Bloomberg reported that by March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached.

The Fed insisted that the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, but the Bloomberg report said the banks reaped a $13 billion windfall in profits; and “details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.”

The revelations provoked shock and outrage among commentators. But in a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Committees focused on the financial services industry, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke responded on December 6th that the figures were greatly exaggerated. He said the loans were being double-counted: short-term loans rolled over from day to day were counted as separate cumulative loans rather than as a single extended loan.

The Fed, it seems, was doing only what banks and the money market do for each other every day: making “liquidity” available at very low interest rates. In 2008, bank liquidity dried up after Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the banks could not get the cheap, ready credit on which their lending scheme depends. The Fed then stepped in as “lender of last resort,” doing what it had to do to keep the banking scheme going.

Keeping the banking system afloat is all well and good. What is wrong with the existing scheme is that it allows the Fed to play favorites.

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Adnan Al-Daini

“It doesn’t really matter if it’s Labour or Conservative because the people behind the scenes are always the same...” said a 23 year-old man from Liverpool, who took part in the UK (August 2011) riots. The quote is from a report “Reading the Riots” commissioned by the Guardian and the London School of Economics.

It tells us something that has now become common knowledge, namely that people have lost faith in the democratic process.  Politicians and society, all of us, the 99% and the 1% must take heed.  People do not like this government, but they do not have much faith in Labour either.  This explains why the Labour party is not benefiting from the dire economic situation we find ourselves in.   Labour is not trusted. Their so called “light touch regulation” was an abdication of their responsibility to control the explosion of a debt fuelled economy, and the voracious greed of the “moneymen” that brought the country into this sorry state. 

Some commentators blame Labour’s difficulties on choosing the wrong leader, Ed Miliband.  I think it is the lack of credible policies that lie at the heart of the problem for Labour.   It has no vision.  It has articulated no alternative policies that are up to the job of tackling the immense problems faced by capitalism today.  

Do they have a policy on bringing a fairer distribution of wealth in a rich country like Britain? A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), referenced in the Guardian, concludes that “income inequality among working-age people has risen faster in Britain than in any other rich nation since the mid-1970s.” What are their policies on reducing unemployment, particularly among the young, that has now topped one million?  What are their policies on reforming the banks and financial institutions? What are their policies to bring a more equitable balance between capital and labour? What are their policies to address the democratic deficit by wresting control from the “moneymen”?

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Kenny's Sideshow

Everyone has heard a similar story. A small business, a working class entrepreneur trying to keep some semblance of a middle class existence continues to lose business through no fault of his own until there is no business. The recession turns into a depression for the little man who only wants to work for himself and not be a cog in some sort of corporate machine. Being your own boss means make or break.

For almost six years I've worked right alongside my son-in-law. He's been in business for about 15 years doing what he likes to do. Until 2008 there was never a time without a job waiting in the wings. So successful it seemed like it would never end except on his own terms. Pride in workmanship was never lacking. A bulldozer, a tractor trailer to haul it with and a four wheel drive dually with tools and fuel tank, all paid for, combined with independence, desire and drive should be a very practical situation but as the old say goes, "nothing lasts forever." Tomorrow the dozer is being sold.

The business is not ending because of competition. All the small time full time competition in the area went out over two years ago. Being essentially the local last man standing didn't make any difference. It wasn't because of shoddy work. The work done was equal or better than anyone else. It wasn't because of excessive rates or dishonesty. It was an honest business charging less than most. No, it was an economic collapse that all along was designed to strip the middle class individual of not only the chance to work but to eventually take everything he had worked for.

These kinds of businesses don't show up in the statistics. There's no unemployment to be paid. It won't even be counted as one of the many small businesses to fall because those that do the counting won't even know. It will be as if it never existed except in the memory of a few.

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PressTV

An exclusive PressTV interview with James Fetzer, philosopher of science.

Q: I'd like to have your reaction to what has been happening especially in Oakland. Of course we know that the police are getting involved in trying to crackdown on these protesters throughout the United States. But in Oakland, we are seeing extreme action now and it looks like the protesters are trying to stay on despite the police action.

Fetzer: We are seeing the increase in militarization of the police forces throughout the United States and that is a very bad tendency that has been taking place since 9/11. We see the rich getting richer and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has been widening since the administration of Ronald Reagan.

What they are doing, the politicians are ignoring the needs of the average American and the working families. We have had increasing foreclosures, and unemployment is seen as the tip of an iceberg resistance to the corruption of politics in America. We are finding the police are even asking to use active denial systems, a form of microwave radiation that is only going to serve to radicalize the youth of America.

I believe this movement is not going to go away, and that what we are seeing is the real face of the police state of America has become.

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