Chris Hedges: Colonized by Corporations!

In Robert E. Gamer's book "The Developing Nations" is a chapter called "Why Men Do Not Revolt." In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced: They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the "patron-client" networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed. The government merely does the minimum necessary to prevent those few who are prone toward political action from organizing into politically effective groups," he writes. Gamer and many others who study the nature of colonial rule, offer the best insights into the functioning of our corporate state. We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive, and enrich themselves at our expense. The mechanisms of control are familiar to those whom the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon called "the wretched of the earth," including African-Americans. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to a subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education.   

Chris Hedges: Is Our Demented Capitalist System Insane?

When civilizations start to die, they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life . Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes though exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki's pregnancy, Hulk Hogan's sex tape and Kim Kardashian's denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags, and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. At times when the page is turning," Louis-Ferdinant Celine wrote in "Castle to Castle," "when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!" The Quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of the empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society's version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of the infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who want to entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression, which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum!    

Bill Boyarsky: High School All Over Again!

Washington journalism is like high school. It has the same cool kids, mean girls, social rankings and the big prom, the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner. Butunlike what happens in high school, the insular behavior of the Washington media affects the whole nation. The voive of the cool kids is Mike Allen's Playbook column on the Politico website, emailed early morning to addicted readers such as me. The column, interestingly, is titled "POLITOCO Playbook, presented by the American Petroleum Institute." It is a mixture of breaking news, plugs for books by Washington A-list writers and a detailed recitation of weddings, births, job changes, dinner dates, vacations and birthdays of those hot enough to attract Mike's notice. Halfway through the column is a word from the apparent sponsor. On Monday, it was: "A message from the American Petroleum Institute: Americans from all walks of life are becoming energy voters. They know America needs more energy from all sources, including domestic oil and natural gas, to create jobs and get our economy moving." For those who missed it, the message was repeated at the end. As someone who labored through the social maze of high school, I can only pity those whose wedding or birthday don't make Mike's column. But it gets worse. The mean girls weigh in at Fishbowl DC, a column at the Media-bistro website. Fishbowl sarcastically names those who have fallen from grace, or never made it. Then it hounds them, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. Then there is the annual White House Correspondent's Association Dinner, where the journalists mingle with their guests, many of them Hollywood celebrities. The guest list becomes more famous every year. On Monday, I scrolled through The Washington Post website's coverage of the parties held after dinner. This is how The Post led off its display of images: "At the 2012 MSNBC and Bloomberg/Vanity Fair after-parties, Hollywood celebrities and Capitol power brokers keep mingling into the night." 

Richard Fidler: Defiant Quebec Students Reject Government Offer

Quebec college and university students are now in the 13th week of their militant province-wide strike while voting by overwhelming majorities to reject a government offer that met none of their key demands. After a 22-hour bargaining session involving ministers of the Charest government, university and college heads, and leaders of the major trade-union centrals, the student leaders agreed on May 6 to put the offer to a vote of their respective membership without recommending acceptance. If the offer were accepted: The 75 per cent hike in tuition fees, now spread over seven years, but indexed, would remain, albeit with slightly liberalized access to scholarships and loans, and provision for repayment of loans geared to future income. A provisional committee would examine university budgets and propose possible cuts. Each dollar cut would go to reducing incidental fees not related directly to tuition, admission, registration, sports services, technology, etc. The committee would include four students, but also fourteen other members: 6 university rectors, 4 trade union representatives as well as 2 representatives of business, 1 from the ministry of education, and a chair with a tie-breaking vote, the latter four all designated by the minister of education. The committee would table its recommendations by December although if necessary its mandate could be extended by one more year. It might then be replaced by a permanent committee appointed by law, its composition undetermined at this point. Pending the provisional committee's conclusions, the students incidental fees would be deferred. However, these fees would apply retroactively to the students in any amount the committee is unable to cut from current expenses.   

Azadeh Ansari: Israel Nothing More than a Mosquito to Iran!

While seeming to tone down the rhetoric, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nonetheless spoke of "crimes" of the "Zionist regimes." Ahead of upcoming nuclear talks, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad downplayed the threat Israel poses to Iran, comparing it to an annoying bug. "Israel is nothing more than a mosquito which cannot see the broad horizon of the Iranian nation," he said Saturday in northeastern Iran's Khorassan province, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. Ahmadinejad said "regional states" were being duped into buying billions in arms from "arrogant and imperial powers," driven in part by all the talk surrounding a potential war involving Iran and Israel, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Such military purchases, he said, are unnecessary because there is no war on the horizon between those two nations. The Iranian president alluded to "rulers" who sold "their oil" for $60 billion worth in arms, though he did not mention by name either the purchasing or selling country. Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a 20-year, $60 billion arms deal with the United States, including nearly $30 billion for F-15 fighter jets announced late last year. Ahmadinejad has long questioned the existence of the "Holocaust" and, months after taking office in October 2005, he participated in a lengthy protest called "World Without Zionism" and has repeatedly derided Israel. "With the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism," he said then, according to another IRNA report!

PRESSTV: Malaysian Tribunal Finds Bush Guilty of War Crimes!

A symbolic War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia has found former US President George W. Bush and several other members of his administration guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The second "Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal", part of an initiative by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, in a unanimous vote on Saturday found Bush and seven of his associates, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld guilty of torture and war crimes. The court also heard evidence from former detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, of torture methods used by US soldiers during their captivity in prisons run by American forces. A former inmate, Abbas Abid appeared in a scarf fearing reprisals. He enacted how US troops subjected him to electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse over a number of months. High ranking former UN officials present in the courtroom expressed frustration over the evidence. "The UN is a weak body, and it is corrupted by member states, who use the Security Council for their own interests. They don't respect the charter. They don't respect the international law. They don't respect the Geneva Conventions," former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday told Press TV. "As long as they continue to use the UN, it's going to be somehow redundant, possibly a dangerous and certainly corrupted organization," Halliday went on to say. Meanwhile, Mahatir remains determined to bring Bush and his cohorts to justice.   

Susan Aarde: EPA Grossly Misrepresents Toxicity Of CorexitIi

Quite incredibly, the EPA issued a positive report on May 1, 2012 regarding the safety and toxicity of various dispersants used in the BP Gulf Oil Spill. Included in this assessment was the use of Corexit. This report "indicated that all eight dispersants had roughly the same toxicity, and all fell into the "practically non-toxic" or "slightly toxic" category. Scientists found that none of the eight dispersants displayed endoctrine-disrupting activity of "biological significance." The same report went on to say that "dispertant-oil mixtures were generally no more toxic to the aquatic test species than oil alone." The first question that jumps out for those who have researched this subject with any degree of thoroughness is how this recent report fails to reconcile with previous studies performed by the EPA. Here is some test data retrieved from the EPA website that was posted previously to the BP Gulf Oil Spill. "The dispersant (Corexit 9500) and dispersed oil have demonstrated the following levels of toxicity per the EPA website link that follows: (1) 10.72 parts per million (ppm) of oil alone will kill 50% of the fish test species in a normal aquatic environment within 96 hours. (2) 25.20 parts per million of dispersant (Corexit 9500) alone will kill 50% of the fish test species in a normal aquatic environment within 96 hours. (3) 2.61 parts per million of dispersed oil (Corexit-laden) alone will kill 50% of the fish test species in a normal aquatic environment within 96 hours. This data diverges from the recent report to such a significant degree that the results which were just posted at the EPA GOV website under the title of "The BP Oil Spill: Responsive Science Supports Emergency Response" must be seriously scrutinized. What is the buying public to make of such conflicting data?