Possible Ebola Vaccine Withheld as Unprofitable

I AM WORKING on a detailed and somewhat intricate report that documents class warfare in and around Tacoma, Washington, where I am living the final years of my life. (It has nothing to do with the headlined Ebola story, which is immediately below.)  I had intended my piece, on which I started working last Friday, to be ready for posting Sunday evening. But at about 3 p.m. Sunday, while researching some government documents, I made a startling discovery that substantially broadens my focus and also demands comment from certain local officials. (Once again, writing for OAN comes ever closer to being a full-time job.) I can't say for sure when the report will be finished, but my hope is to publish it next Sunday, 2 November.

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Meanwhile here is some outside agitation via other websites:

Reader Supported News republished a New York Times report that researchers developed a promising Ebola vaccine nearly a decade ago, but the prescription drug lords would not test it because it was not profitable enough.  Hence “Ebola Vaccine, Ready for Test, Sat on the Shelf”; hence too my contribution to the RSN comment thread:

Once again we see the innately murderous moral imbecility of capitalism.

Under its Ayn Rand coda of infinite greed as maximum virtue – the deliberate rejection of every humanitarian precept our species ever set forth – if we can't be exploited for profit, we're abandoned and left to die.

That explains not just the Ebola epidemic, but outsourcing, downsizing and the malicious re-impoverishment of elderly, disabled and minority peoples here in the imperial homeland.

And many times we're not merely abandoned. If the Ruling Class thinks we might be dangerous, we're gunned down, as in Ferguson.

Wake up, people; all these (deliberate) atrocities are the quintessence of capitalism in action. And as capitalism fulfills its tyrannical potential by maturing into unabashed fascism, its murderousness will only intensify...

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Most appropriately given the above vaccine report and other comparable events, Thom Hartmann raised the question “Who Should an Economy Serve?”  I responded via the comment thread:

As we have learned from their methodical destruction of the New Deal, it is suicidal to allow any vestige of capitalism – or any capitalists – to survive. This harsh truth will be increasingly obvious in the apocalyptic world of ever-worsening shortages that is now our unavoidable doom.  Because of what capitalism is – infinite greed elevated to maximum virtue (and thus the morally imbecilic rejection of every humanitarian precept our species ever set forth)  – it will always arise and in its quest for unlimited profits seek to destroy not just the common good but the environment itself. Capitalism – especially in its logical extensions as fascism and Nazism – is therefore the darkest most deadly evil ever spawned by our species.

 

The question, then, is what to replace it with. The purpose of government is to enable us to do collectively that which we cannot do individually. Anarchy, though emotionally attractive to the ignorant, is therefore doomed. It is destined, as in Somalia or Libya, to be self-destroyed by the same might-makes-right penchant for evil that produced capitalism, fascism and Nazism.  Any form of socialism – at least in the United States – is likewise doomed. This is because the conditioning of the entire USian population in the selfish, indeed self-obsessed principles of Ayn Rand individualism has created a population utterly incapable of collective thinking.  As a result, the politicians and bureaucrats universally operate from the everything-for-me-and-fuck-you values of the Ruling Class.  USian officials – men and women whom under socialism would presumably represent the people's interest – are thus as viciously self-serving as any megacorporation's chief executive.  We have literally been reduced to a nation of moral imbeciles – which means, because relentless selfishness now invariably trumps all other considerations – we have been rendered utterly incapable of any genuine sort of self-government. 

  

No doubt a strict Marxian educational program could, at least in the younger generations, reverse the inculcated selfishness that fuels capitalism and capitalist governance. Of all the forms of socialism, only Marxism offers the requisite ideological and intellectual discipline. But who would be the educators? Are there any USians who have not been irremediably tainted by capitalist greed? A very few, to be sure. But they are so few they will never be able to acquire the requisite power -- especially in a nation of people so morally depraved they willingly choose slavery rather than give up the modern "conveniences" that are destroying our planet and dooming our species to extinction.

 

I will of course continue working on behalf the cause of socialism because, even in old age,  that is who and what I am. But I will never again inflict heartache on myself by allowing myself to be seduced by the self-indulgence of hope. 

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Plus I heartily recommend you read this Consortium News critique of how The New York Times functions as the de facto propaganda agency http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/25/treating-putin-like-a-lunatic/ for the U.S. Ruling Class and its puppet government in Washington D.C. A world-class newsman, Robert Parry's most telling paragraph is also his lead: “When reading the New York Times on many foreign policy issues, it doesn’t take a savant to figure out what the newspaper’s bias is. Anything, for instance, relating to Russian President Vladimir Putin drips of contempt and hostility.”

We owe Parry a huge debt of gratitude. Without him, without other men and women like him, the Fourth Reich's privatized version of Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Truth would have long ago reduced us all to abject ignorance.

LB/19-26 October 2014

 

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Kerry's Contradictions – Peace-Candidate Big Lie versus Warhawk Reality – Exemplify How the Two Parties Collaborate to Dupe Voters, Sustain Sham 'Democracy'

(Note: TypePad, the primary publisher of Outside Agitator's Notebook, has been shut down by an ongoing denial of service attack and has been offline since Friday 18 April. Thus until further notice this will be OAN's only edition.)

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(Updated 14:56 Monday 21 April with a new Robert Parry dispatch on the Ukrainian Crisis, for which see "Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Imperative," below.)

 

MOST OF US have already noted the apparent paradox of how U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the former antiwar-activist and Democratic presidential (peace) candidate, has become a frighteningly aggressive, propaganda-spouting war-monger. 

But even the most Leftward-leaning of the big-time pundits has not dared point out the bitter lesson – another irrefutable proof USian “democracy” is a naught but a cunning charade – implicit in Kerry's (apparent) transformation.

Stupefied as we are by the so-called “mainstream media” and its dire fulfillment of Josef Goebbels' plan to create the most hypnotically effective propaganda machine in human history, the majority of us have not heard of Kerry's murderous record in Vietnam.  We do not know his riverine operations reveal a penchant for inflicting death on civilians that would have earned him a hearty, Zieg Heil welcome into the most kill-hardened units of the Schutzstaffel, the Nazis' dread SS. 

Jeffrey St. Clair, the author of the above-linked Counterpunch report, says the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. revealed that Kerry's murderousness created a great many problems for Vietnam commanders. Zumwalt, himself a warrior of international renown, is quoted in the 2013 exposé as saying, “we had virtually to straitjacket (Kerry) to keep him under control.”

Thus in the context provided by St. Clair's disclosures last year and Kerry's conduct today, the 2004 election becomes a perfect, textbook example of how the One Percent defrauds the USian public with the Big Lie of “free elections.” The Democrats ran “peace candidate” Kerry as the antithesis of “war-criminal” George Bush, but also emphasized Kerry's Vietnam combat record, thereby appealing to Democratic warhawks. The Republicans then reinforced Kerry's “peace candidate” image  by attacking him for his anti-Vietnam War activities, by questioning the validity of his medals – three Purple Hearts for wounds plus the Bronze Star and Silver Star for bravery under fire – finally labeling him “unfit for command” and implicitly suggesting he was a coward.

It's a classic example of how the two halves of the One Party of Two Names perfectly fulfill the functions assigned them by the One Percent.

The same pattern, obvious once we have learned to recognize it, is apparent in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. In the former, the One Percent allowed the Democrats a victory to preserve the deception of a functional representative democracy. Obama raised the electorates' hopes by promising “change we can believe in,” and the Republicans ensured the outcome, first by selecting a terrifyingly ignorant candidate for vice president, then by rabidly denouncing the proposed “change” as “socialist” conspiracy, thereby convincing desperate voters Obama's promises were surely more than rhetoric. In 2012, after Obama the Orator was clearly revealed as Barack the Betrayer, the Republicans again served the Democrats with the “accidental” revelation of Romney's contempt for 47 percent of the U.S. population. 
 
Meanwhile Warmaster Kerry, whose belligerence on behalf the violently greedy One Percent may well trigger World War III, is merely fulfilling the role for which he, like Obama himself, was obviously trained and scripted long ago.
 

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In Case You Missed It (and apropos the fulfillment of assigned roles), “The Plot to Overthrow FDR: How the New Deal Sent Conservatives Into a Rage,” implicitly defines the imposition of fascism on the United States  as a multi-generational project. But as I said on the comment thread, Moyers and Company narrator Joshua Holland tells the story wrong – or very differently from how I heard it as a child and a young man.

Firstly, the coup was known as "the Bankers' Plot," under which search-engine entry you will find the most complete information.

Secondly, it was organized by Hitler and Mussolini. Its goal was to make the American Legion an SS equivalent; the objective was to make the U.S. part of the Axis. (The U.S. One Percent was already the prime financier of world fascism; now the U.S. would also be the primary source of food, natural resources and materiel for global conquest.)

Thirdly, the plot was exposed by Soviet agents. Despite Gen. Butler's efforts, it first became public knowledge only via the Communist and Communist-influenced alternative press.

What indicates these assertions are probably true is how they solve at least three riddles of history. They explain why FDR trusted Stalin (his agents literally saved FDR's presidency and USian democracy too); why the postwar U.S. harbored Nazi war criminals (back-door fulfillment of the plotters' intent); and why the postwar U.S. so savagely purged Communists, socialists and intellectuals (fear these elements would obstruct further efforts to impose fascism).

Obviously the plotters and their descendants have won. The results – the death of the “American Dream,” the imposition of capitalist governance (absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us) – are obvious.

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In Case You Missed It, Robert Parry of Consortium News is continuing to slay the Big Lies spewed by the USian propaganda machine and courageously filter out the truth about the Ukraine Crisis. I did not comment on “The Dangerous Neocon Role in Ukraine,” linked here. But I said a few words about its sequel, “Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Imperative,” where I pointed out U.S. aggression is forcing the Russians to see themselves as the modern-day equivalent of the Spartans at Thermopylae or their own grandfathers at Fortress Brest. I also had a bit to say about the media issues raised by “Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass,” in which Parry describes the current coverage of the crisis as “utterly Orwellian...including accusing others of 'propaganda' when their accounts – though surely not perfect – are much more honest and more accurate than what the U.S. press corps has been producing.”

Parry reiterates the warning that – had we USians not been numbed by lies and disinformation – should rightfully terrify us all: “There’s also the added risk that this latest failure by the U.S. press corps is occurring on the border of Russia, a nuclear-armed state that – along with the United States – could exterminate all life on the planet. The biased U.S. news coverage is now feeding into political demands to send U.S. military aid to Ukraine’s coup regime.”

As another poster on this thread said in very different words, our submissive response does indeed demonstrate the terrifying reality of Moron Nation – we the people imprisoned in ignorance by decades of deliberate moronation, so dumbed-down we like the most abjectly broken slaves instantly believe everything our masters tell us – even when it is filled with obvious contradictions.

But what to me as a long-ago-blacklisted professional journalist is far worse is the relentless, never-challenged deluge of false information that proves how the One Percent – by subsuming the nation's formerly independent media into a half-dozen monopolies – have created a one-voice propaganda machine far more formidable than the ground-breaking model for all such apparatuses Joseph Goebbels built for Nazi Germany.

As a result the USian Empire has the most hypnotically effective propaganda in our species' history. And because the machine that produces it is disguised as a civilian business rather than a government bureaucracy, its tyranny and the diabolical cleverness by which we are brainwashed into submission remains forever unrecognized.

Once again we see capitalist governance in action: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us. Thus does capitalism fulfill its moral imbecility: not just as fascism, but as fascism sustained by modern technology and therefore more inescapably evil than anything our species has ever before encountered.

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In Case You Missed It, Thom Hartmann has decided “American Democracy No Longer Works,” in support of which he cites a newly released study  that shows We the People are We the Powerless when it comes to influencing public policy. (Unfortunately, Hartmann does not provide us a link to a more detailed summary of the study's findings, an omission I correct here.) 
 
Meanwhile the fact it took a formal academic project and its 20-year collection of data to prove what our ancestors recognized at least a century ago – that the United States is an oligarchy in which the rich are omnipotent and the rest of us are impotent – prompts me to lapse into parody on the Hartmann comment thread: 

Five axioms concerning capitalist governance:
   
Definitions: The One Percent is the hereditary capitalist aristocracy that owns the nation's wealth. The Ruling Class consists of the politicians, bureaucrats, police commanders, military officers and business executives who serve the One Percent. The purpose of capitalist governance is absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for everyone else.

Hence: 
    
(1)-The non-responsiveness of the Ruling Class to the popular will is directly proportionate to the extent the Ruling Class is indebted to – and therefore effectively owned by – the One Percent.
   
(2)-The probability of revolution is directly proportionate to the non-responsiveness of the Ruling Class.

(3)-The probability of successful revolution is based on the presence of four historically proven prerequisites. These are (A)-a unifying ideology; (B)-effective leadership and disciplined organization; (C)-mastery of extant technologies; (D)-support by one or more foreign powers.

(4)-The probability of violent revolution is directly proportionate to the Ruling Class capability of violently suppressing non-violent revolution.

(5)-The negative consequences of violent revolution – death, famine, disease, destruction – are directly proportionate to the refusal of the One Percent and its Ruling Class to yield to the popular will.

(In other words, no matter who wins, life in a post-revolutionary United States would be no more or less wretched than life in a land that combines the violent anarchy of Somalia, the toxicity of Fukushima and the poverty of post-earthquake Haiti. Which is why I am so very glad I'm old – so old I probably won't be alive when the revolution happens.)

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My next entry on the thread, in response to another poster, dropped the academic affectations: 

The unified ideology described by axiom (3)-(A) is already taking shape amidst the grassroots. It is beyond the domain of the two Ruling Class parties (actually one Ruling Class party with two names), and even beyond the Tea Party and its various overtly fascist subsets, (i.e., the American Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan, the other such groups whose banners are part of the international fascist solidarity demonstrations now taking place in Kiev). It is also beyond the domain of any specific organization of the Left, which is why this new unified ideology has yet to acquire a name and formal structure.

Nevertheless it is a hybrid of democratic socialism (cooperative and/or public ownership of vital services and the means of production); Marxism (recognition of the historical truth of class struggle and the necessity of disciplined Working Class solidarity); traditional anarchism (healthy distrust of hierarchal organizations) and classical Jeffersonian populist democracy (one person/one vote, fostered by the Internet). 

It has already made itself apparent in innumerable small ways, particularly as the (failed) Occupy movement and its  more localized successes, including the relief efforts of Occupy Sandy in and around New York City, the rapidly growing popularity of the Socialist Alternative Party in Seattle and Minneapolis, and the brushfire-fast nationwide spread of SA's $15 Now! campaign to raise the minimum wage to livable-income levels.
 
When and if this incipient movement coalesces and comes to power, it would be absolutely compatible with the U.S. Constitution and would in fact be its fulfillment. 

The vital questions are therefore how and when its self-recognition will progress to the point of formalization, and whether it will have the solidarity (strength) and courage to withstand the inconceivably violent reaction by which the One Percent and the Ruling Class will try to suppress it, the forces for which are already in place. 

Apropos a civil war, I too see that, but probably not as you do. Assuming a successful revolution – note again its four prerequisites – a situation would probably evolve similar to what obtained in the old Russian Empire after 1917, with the One Percent trying (with the support of various overseas allies) to regain power, and the revolutionaries equally determined to hang on to the "liberated" parts of the U.S. 

The One Percent, in keeping with the lavish funding it is pouring into establishment of theocratic governance, would no doubt declare its territories ruled by Biblical Law, thereby ensuring the fealty of the South and the Midwestern interior, but both coasts and no doubt Alaska too would side with the revolution. The nation as we know it would cease to exist (as it nearly has anyway), and the land would be sundered in such ways that, combined with terminal climate change, would probably take at least a thousand years for recovery. Hence my vision of "the violent anarchy of Somalia, the toxicity of Fukushima (as the One Percent would not hesitate to nuke rebellious cities), the poverty of post-earthquake Haiti."
 
As a result, the global power center would of course shift far eastward: China unquestionably, Russia more than likely. As to what remained of the former United States, part of it would be absorbed by expansions of Mexico and Canada and probable Russian reclamation of its former Pacific Northwest possessions; the remainder would either be uninhabitable due to the lingering toxicity inflicted by CBR (chemical, biological, radiological) warfare or so impoverished by isolation its habitable lands would be realms of famine and disease. 

Were the One Percent to win – and I believe the odds are 50-50 – most if not all of the same conditions would apply save that the residents of lands under One Percent control would have it far worse: they would be de facto slaves...which is of course what the One Percent already intends for all of us in the Working Class anyway.

As I said, I'm damn glad I'm old.

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Then when another poster seemed to romanticize revolution, I added this:

Make no mistake: there is nothing desirable about violent revolution – which would leave the lands wherein it is fought looking, at best, like Europe in 1945 and, at worst, like Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the Bomb. 

Yet given how quickly the One Percent now resorts to violence – note again the example of the brutal suppression of Occupy, also the Gestapo-like disregard of neighborhood civil rights that characterized the search for the Boston Marathon bomber –   I fear an eventual violent reaction by the citizenry is inevitable. 

(Indeed, provoking a rebellion may be the clandestine purpose behind such tactics – the creation of an incident that will give the Ruling Class an excuse for exterminating large segments of the U.S. population, the Final Solution to the problems of unemployment,  poverty and homelessness.) 

And the mercilessness of the Ruling Class response has already been made clear: it was demonstrated in Vietnam: “we had to destroy the village to save it.” 

Remember too that morally there is not one scintilla of difference between the USian policy of exterminating an entire village for harboring alleged "terrorists" and the Nazi German policy of imposing exactly the same reprisals for harboring partisans. That the USian (Fourth) Reich does the extermination from afar with drones, while the German (Third) Reich did it up-close-and-personal with machine guns, rifles, bayonets and pistols, does not alter the moral depravity or karmic malignancy of the event itself.  In fact it is at least arguable the drone-exterminations are more reprehensible merely by how they protect the drone operators from being splattered with blood and gore – and how that bloodlessness is then diabolically used to assure the drone operators they are without sin.
  
As to your notion of a coordinated revolutionary effort by socialist countries – Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam etc. – that capability perished with the Soviet Union, and it is already clear the USian Empire will do anything it can to prevent its resurrection.  China, meanwhile, has been totally co-opted (and totally corrupted) by capitalism; the USian Empire has achieved with money precisely what its British Empire antecedent sought in the 19th Century to accomplish with opium. The one remaining wild-card is Russia, where the Communist Party remains the second largest (and by far the best organized) political party in the nation – so much so it is at least arguable it was only by Putin's New Deal-like repeal of the most viciously capitalist Ayn Rand “reforms” imposed under Yeltsin the country was steered away from another Communist revolution.

(This is no doubt one of the reasons why the USian Imperial One Percent – the oberfuehrers of fascism's Global New Order – are now trying to provoke a war with Russia: they are terrified by what might happen should that vast nation again go Communist.)

LB/20 April 2014

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Kshama Sawant Personifies Our Most Vital Yearnings

FOLLOWING KSHAMA SAWANT from the distance of 37 miles I find myself repeatedly moved, sometimes literally to tears, by her breathtaking courage and eloquence.

I desperately wish I could be there to see her and hear her and applaud her in person. I wish too I were able to contribute my knowledge and skill to her causes, not just the fight for a $15-per-hour minimum wage but the struggle for world socialism we must win if our species is to survive.

But I am old, I live in a realm of vindictively downsized public transport, and – as will be true for the remainder of this lifetime – I am denied an automobile by the inescapable poverty that has afflicted me since 2009.

Thus Councilwoman Sawant's Seattle is, for me, as impossibly distant from Tacoma as Paris or Mumbai.

Even so, her words are more elating than I can describe. I never imagined I would live long enough to hear any candidate for office anywhere in the USian Empire – much less any elected official – declare herself a Marxist and urge displaced workers to take over the abandoned factories.

But that is what she does:  She says we need to “organize a revolt,” that “the laws of the rich are unenforceable if the Working Class refuses to obey.” (The linked tape, new material here in OAN, is from 2012, after she was defeated in a battle for a seat in the Legislature – which makes her defiance all the more energizing.)

Thus human beings like us – we proletarians and peasants who are being flung onto the socioeconomic garbage heap or herded into slave pens by the capitalists – are at last (again) blessed by a leader who truly speaks for us alone.

(See also the link to Sawant's inaugural address, “I Wear the Badge of Socialist with Honor,” below.)

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Outside Agitation Elsewhere: Relevant Remarks on Other Threads

“What Congress Does When We're Not Watching” Thom Hartmann, the perennial defender of President Obama, disingenuously tries to blame Congress for fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, never mind it's one of Barack the Betrayer's pet schemes for further enslaving the USian Empire's already subjugated proletariat. I contribute my usual anti-capitalist skepticism to the resultant discussion thread and also post vital links to the fast-track legislation itself. But the occasional Outside Agitator award for a truly exceptional comment goes to the poster screen-named Aliceinwonderland: “Thom, maybe I oughta try calling you sometime while you're on the air.  I would love to ask why you're still so Obama-friendly, knowing he's behind the TPP... even to the point of wanting to fast-track it!  Between that and his hit lists with murder-by-drone, I've had my fill of President Obama.  I am ashamed of myself for having squandered my vote on this smooth-talking fascist.  'Change we can believe in' has turned out to be little more than a clever sales pitch...” As is often the case on this excellent blog, the associated thread is still running, and – depending on time and energy (mostly the latter) – I may post additional commentary before it closes. Meanwhile, kudos to Alice for speaking out. 

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“I Wear the Badge of Socialist with Honor” Newly elected Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant again dares name our true enemy: “Shamefully, in this, the richest country in human history, fifty million of our people - one in six - live in poverty. Around the world, billions do not have access to clean water and basic sanitation and children die every day from malnutrition. This is the reality of international capitalism.” I salute her by noting the subtle changes in Obamanoid rhetoric that indicate her victory is already terrifying the Ruling Class. Later I applaud another poster's definition of capitalism as “slavery or serfdom for the 99 Percent” and (again) point out the moral imbecility at capitalism's core: infinite greed elevated to maximum virtue, the deliberate rejection of every humanitarian principle – therefore the closest our species has yet come to embracing Absolute Evil.

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“A New Low in Health Care Rhetoric” Matt Taibbi of the thoroughly mainstreamed Rolling Stone predictably criticizes a publicly malevolent disciple of Ayn Rand for her expressed belief health care for poor people is a waste of money – that they should be denied health care and abandoned to die. I chide Taibbi for his (obedient?) bourgeois blindness to the obvious fact inadequate and/or prohibitively expensive health care is part of the elaborately euphemistic program of genocide imposed on us by the USian Imperial Ruling Class – its final solution to the “problem” of surplus workers. “The only difference between the Nazi German One Percent and the Capitalist USian One Percent is the latter is troubled by the public relations problems arising from death camps,” I say. “Thus in their infinitely evil cunning, the USian One Percenters now hide mass murder behind Ayn Rand ideology and thereby shift the blame onto the victims.”

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“Capitalism in Crisis: Who Are the Real Takers?” Ruling Class Propagandist Bernard Weiner uses the classic ploy of an obvious truth (“Capitalism is in crisis around the globe”) to pontificate a Big Lie, claiming the Democratic Party is the only rational hope of the USian Working Class. I respond that we who are socialists should be heartened by the escalating efforts of our opponents: “the One Percent aristocracy Mr. Weiner so obediently serves is clearly frightened. The pivotal question is whether its legions of soldiers and federalized cops will follow orders or stand down in 99 Percent solidarity, as their Petrograd counterparts did at the Neva River bridges on 8 March 1917.”  (Disclosure: I knew Weiner in Bellingham c. 1970-1972, where we were not friends. Weiner organized and led the clique of anarchists and useful idiots who pablumized, neutralized and eventually destroyed Northwest Passage, which had begun life as a fearless, credible, generally well-written alternative journal with a keen but uniquely accessible focus on local environmental issues. At the time there were rumors Weiner was a spook, though these were never substantiated.)

LB/12 January 2014

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