Thursday 22 January 2015

VOTER REGISTER IS CREDIBLE


Dr Afari Gyan, Electoral Commissioner

Ghana’s voters register is neither bloated nor over bloated, it is statistically very credible and reliable for the conduct of any national and local elections, the Electoral Commission (EC) has said.

The Commission also said it is very transparent when it comes to voter verifiability due to the use of the biometric machine.

It explained that the demographic structure of each country differs, and there is no need for individuals or groups to make any comparisons of segments of population in relation to the voters register.

Deputy Chairman of the Commission, Mr Amadu Sule, told journalists at a capacity building workshop for the media in election reportage in Accra over the weekend, that the term “bloated” and “over voting” are not defined in the electoral laws.

There is no clearly stated definition of “over voting,” he said, adding that, instances where ballots cast are more than the number of registered voters at an electoral area and counting ballots that are more than the number of ballots issued at a particular electoral area are obvious cases of over voting.

He said that the terminologies are only defined in administrative language, noting that “bloated” means when persons who are 18 years and above are more than the registered voters.

Given the classical definition of the term, bloated, and the statistics furnished the EC by  Ghana Statistical Service, Mr Sule said the voter register could not therefore be said to be bloated.

“The voted register is not bloated, it is a credible register, people have concerns and they have written to the EC and it has responded to them appropriately,” Mrs Georgina Opoku Amankwaah, EC Chairperson responsible for Finance and Administration added.

She said the EC has established platforms for people or groups to challenge the status of minors or foreigners, and therefore encouraged stakeholders to do so when such opportunities are created.

Journalists were urged to abreast themselves of the operations of the EC and its laws in order to appropriately inform the electorate to understand electoral terms such as irregularities, rigging, observer, ballot swapping and ballot stuffing.

The EC cautioned the media to refrain from misinterpreting electoral languages to the electorates because such acts have the potential of misleading and misinforming the public and consequently resulting in chaos.

It said the Commission faces serious challenges in organising local elections, adding it often records very low turnouts invariably less than 40 per cent, and pressed on the media to whip public interest to attract the right calibre of people to contest the District Assembly Elections.

About 6156 plates need to be printed for 6,156 electoral areas as well as the Unit Committee levels which demand a high volume of input by the EC, all these make organising elections at the district levels more challenging to the commission than in the general election.

Mr George Sarpong, Executive Secretary, National Media Commission asked the media to be very cautious about how they frame and contextualise political issues and use of certain terminologies.

“This is because; how the electorate perceive operations of political parties or political candidates, and commitment of electorates to particular political association is determined by the projections of the media.

“Therefore, the media must rededicate themselves to their work, reflect on what they want to do, and allow themselves to be guided by the ethics of the profession as well as their conscience,” he added.

Mr Steven Edminster, Director, Office of Democracy, Rights and Governance of USAID - Ghana said the United States deemed it relevant to support the EC in organising series of educational workshops for the media on electoral operations and laws,  since it would be very productive for the nation.
GNA

Editorial
Where is the Bank of Ghana
Over the last three days we have published internal documents of the First Capital Plus Bank which shows the bank is in distress.

If the Bank of Ghana fails to take actions there could be very grim consequences for the bank itself and its customers.                 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 The Insights wonders why the Bank of Ghana has not taken any firm action to restore sanity in the First Capital Plus Bank.

We call on the Governor of the Bank of Ghana to take immediate action to restore sanity in the first capital plus bank.

UDS graduates third batch of trained doctors
Naana Opoku Agyemang, Education Minister
A total of 33 newly trained doctors from University for Development Studies (UDS)  have graduated with a call on them to respect the cultural values of  clients, who would patronise their services.

The doctors are the third batch to be trained by the UDS, which brings the total number to 186.

Professor Haruna Yakubu, Vice Chancellor said at the weekend that admission into the UDS School of Medicine and Health Sciences continue to be highly competitive.

He said out of a total of 1,582 qualified applications the university was able to admit only 122 representing eight per cent of the figure.

Prof Yakubu explained that the university is constrained by lack of infrastructure facilities teaching staff.

He appealed to the government to allow UDS to recruit its own staff to enhance academic work and also improve the development of the university to serve the purpose for which it was established.

He announced that UDS would soon enter into research collaboration with the Groningen University in the Netherlands to study and document some of Ghana’s indigenous knowledge and cultures to enhance the country’s development agenda.

He said the proposed research would focus on “Society and Change in Northern Ghana” and  the purpose is to develop and augment the academic knowledge about the history of Northern Ghana in the context of long term processes of change and socio-economic and political inclusion and exclusion.

Prof Yakubu said UDS is also adopting innovative ways of helping to train more medical doctors for the country and as such the university had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Galilee International Management Institute in Israel, under, which the two institutions launched a programme for offering joint medical programme designed for both local and international students.

He said the training of these doctors would be done at the UDS Medical School and other medical schools outside Ghana to serve the needs of the country, Africa and the international community.

Prizes were given to the doctors for their outstanding performance during the seven- year programme with Edwin Sangwie emerging as the overall best student who swept four out of the six awards.
GNA

“We can Change 2015 Budget”-Govt
Mr Seth Tekper, Finance Minister
Mr Seth Terkper, Minister of Finance,  has said his ministry was mindful of the falling crude oil prices on the global market and and was putting together a report on the impact of the reductions to cabinet.

The report, he said, would also contain the necessary adjustments that would have to be made in order to ensure the achievement of Ghana’s fiscal consolidation objectives, adding that they would go back to parliament if necessary.

“If it requires that we make immediate changes, government will not hesitate,” he said at a press briefing on the state of the economy.

Mr Terkper said the reduction in the prize of crude oil would have mixed impact on the economy.

He said his ministry had used a methodology prescribed by the petroleum revenue management act, 2011 (act 815) to estimate the petroleum benchmark revenue for the 2015 budget in order to determine crude oil price and quantity; using price per barrel as $99.376.

However, as at January 15, Brent crude price had fallen by more than 50 percent to $48.80 per barrel.

This, he said, meant that the estimated petroleum benchmark revenue price of $99.376 per barrel might not be achieved, with negative implications for the budget and as well as potential negative implications for the current account and reserves.

He said in analyzing the impact of the reductions, care should be taken not to base the analysis on just one indicator, thus making hasty conclusions.

“A certain balance will help not to overstate the impact on the economy,” he said.

Mr. Terkper said the ongoing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were on track and had not been derailed in any way, as speculated by some sections of the media.

He said three rounds of negotiations had so far been held with the Fund since Ghana formally requested for policy and credit support from the IMF in August 2014, two in Ghana and one in Washington.

“Government does have its own policies. There are strong domestic policy underpinnings in the negotiations” he stressed, adding that meeting would be held in the coming weeks to finalise a draft Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) for submission to the IMF Executive board for approval.

Speaking on ongoing negotiations on the 2015 minimum wage and base pay, Mr Terkper said ideally negotiations on this should have been concluded before the reading of the annual budget but added that organized labour, employers and government were working to conclude the negotiations as soon as possible.

He said government, in order to prevent fiscal slippages from the wage bill, had since 2013 been implementing measures aimed at controlling the wage bill and improving payroll management including the introduction of the electronic salary payment voucher (ESPV) system to reduce the incidence of ghost workers on government payroll as well as periodic audits to streamline the payroll.

He said incidence of ghost workers and other payroll problems were not always accounting issues but human resources management problems, thus a human resource management system (HRMS) is being developed to address such issues in the public service and related payroll issues.

A cabinet subcommittee has been set up to oversee the implementation of these measures to improve payroll management.
GNA

Employment Ministry Starts negotiations
Haruna Iddrisu
Mr Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Employment and Labour Relations has announced the commencement of earnest negotiation of the base pay and the daily minimum wage for 2015 in Accra.
He said the negotiations commenced on the 13th of January at the public services joint standing negotiating committee chaired by the Fair Wages and Salaries Committee.

He said representatives from organized labour, Secretary General of the TUC, leadership of the Public Services Worker Unions among others, were present to participate in the negotiations.
Mr Iddrisu indicated that it was necessary to keep the public informed about new projects and developments that were put in place after every discussion and consultation as part of the public accountability process.

He said it was the expectation of government to conclude negotiations much earlier than had happened in previous years in order to get the Controller and Accountant General to facilitate payment of the determined base pay and daily minimum wage.

“I believe it is important for both partners, government and labour, to appreciate legitimate concerns and needs of organized labour and their demands against constraints and capacity of the budget to contain whatever they may be demanding”, he stated.
Mr Iddrisu said that was why globally, the ability to pay was always a function of the negotiation process.

He indicated that it was necessary to recognise the contribution of labour to enhance productivity, significant contribution into gross domestic product, and mindful of inflationary trends in the country.

“It is the determination of government to work with labour to contain the wage bill. As a Ministry, our determination remains on the fact that improved and better economic fortunes will be better shared by both government and labour”, he added.

No job losses at ECG - MiDA assures
Mr Kofi Buah, Minister of Energy
The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), which is spearheading the execution of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Second Compact that is meant to restructure the power sector, has said there will be no job- losses at the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

"We do not anticipate any job losses. We are talking about partial privatisation; ECC is not being sold. We are only inviting the private sector to come in to participate and share with government in managing ECG," Mawunyo Robson, a Power Consultant at MiDA, told the B&FT.

The second compact of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), which comes into force this June, could see Ghana draw up to US$498.2million to transform, mainly, the power distribution sector and make it more viable.

The ECG is supposed to be the largest beneficiary of the funds, on condition that it partners "an internationally reputable power distribution utility", which has led to fears that privatising the company will lead to massive job losses.

A total of US$339.6million will be committed to what has been christened the ECG Financial and Operational Turnaround Project".
According to Mawunyo Robson, due to the premium MiDA places on the welfare of ECG's workers, it will prioritise preventing job losses; but in the event such losses become inevitable, affected workers will be very well compensated.

"The well-being and welfare of employees are very key to the whole business of ECG, so whoever is coming on board will ensure as far as possible preventing losses - but should there be any, whoever is affected will be duly compensated," he added.

The Power Consultant said implementation of the MCA Compact II is very crucial to businesses, particularly at a time instability in power supply has led to companies having to cut down on production or incur additional operational costs by running on fuel plants.

The focus on power distribution rather than generation, Mr. Robson said, is to ensure that losses (commercial and technical) within the sector are reduced, making ECG a viable organisation.
"The idea is that they are the final off-takers of power from the producers. At this point in time, we are talking about more independent power producers (IPPs) coming on board in order to increase generation; but if they are not assured of their revenue streams, if ECG is not a credible off-taker, then we have a problem and we are never going to get them on board. That is why it is critical to focus on the distribution sector and make it healthy enough, financially viable so that IPP's can feel comfortable to come on board," he explained.

MCA Compact II
The five-year compact is divided into two: the first tranche will see the Millennium Challenge Corporation commit US$149.6million to the ECG Financial and Operational
Turnaround Project, whereas other projects will receive combined resources of US$158.6million under the first tranche.

If certain conditions are met within two years of the Compact coming into force, a further US$190million will be provided for the ECG Financial and Operational Turnaround Project under Tranche Two.

In creating a sustainable power sector, the Compact will pursue a two-pronged approach - changing the governance and management of ECG by bringing in a private sector operator coupled with infrastructure and foundational investment designed largely to reduce loss and improve service quality.

The Compact is aiming achieve this objective, which v benefit at least 4.8 million people in the short-term and 7.8 mill people in the long-run, encouraging reforms such Private Sector Participation (I and modernising EC operations.

The Compact is targetting a reductior commercial losses and incr revenue collection, which w done mainly thro improvement in meti systems and the installati more prepaid meters in accustomed to the po system.

Further interventio focus on reducing tec losses through the lowe thermal losses in distr systems. Overall, all improvements should see stability in power sup; homes and factories.
To reduce outa; Compact will over introduction of improvi protection and sectit devices in the power dii system, which currently close to 2,000MW du periods of demand.

President Mahama advocates sychronization
President John Mahama
President John Dramani Mahama, Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), on Friday suggested the synchronization of strategies in African States, to fight against terrorism and other human molestations.

He said, while Nigeria and Cameroon were plagued with Boko Haram, Somalia and others were also battling against Al-Shabab, a situation he said, called for collective efforts to fight against, to restore peace and order to the continent.

President Mahama who was addressing a press conference at the sidelines of a two-day high level coordination meeting of ECOWAS partners on the fight against the Ebola virus disease in Accra,  said terrorism was assuming different dimensions in different regions,  and therefore needed concerted efforts to eliminate it.

The Press conference was to throw light on the efforts ECOWAS was making to stem its incidence in the West African sub-region and beyond.

President Mahama said while Cameroon and Nigeria were considering the option of using the military to meet the terrorists head-on, there was the need to draw other strategies that could expedite their movements against the inhuman practices that had engulfed the region.

He said as the leader of the ECOWAS, he would organise a special session on terrorism in the forthcoming African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to strategize against the menace.

At the summit, President Mahama, hinted that members would re-define protocols to pave way for more effective measures of combating Boko Haram and other inhuman practices that had over the years disturbed peace in the region.

He said re-training of personnel against terrorism was another measure to be considered in the special AU session, but cautioned member-states to be cautious in dealing with such sensitive issues in their various countries.

President Mahama, however, gave the assurance that in spite of the disturbances of the terrorists, governments of various states would continue to play their roles meaningfully, to ward off all negative measures that undermined the orderly progress of the region.

On the impact of Boko Haram on the Nigerian elections, President Mahama gave the assurance that ECOWAS would offer all the necessary safety measures that would enable Nigeria to organise peaceful and successful elections.

He said his outfit would also continue to work in collaboration with other international development partners, to fight the menace and make Africa a better continent for investment and habitation.
GNA 

Where is the replacement of Luther King
Martin Luther King
By Paul Craig Roberts
January 19 was Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday.
King was an American civil rights leader who was assassinated 47 years ago on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39.  James Earl Ray was blamed for the murder. Initially, Ray admitted the murder, apparently under advice from his attorney in order to avoid the death penalty, but Ray soon withdrew his confession and unsuccessfully sought a jury trail. Documents of the official investigation remain secret until the year 2027.

As Wikipedia reports, "The King family does not believe Ray had anything to do with the murder of Martin Luther King. . . . The King family and others believe that the assassination was carried out by a conspiracy involving the U.S. government, and that James Earl Ray was a scapegoat. This conclusion was affirmed by a jury in a 1999 civil trial against Loyd Jowers and unnamed co-conspirators." 

The US Department of Justice concluded that Jowers' evidence, which swayed the jury in the civil trail, was not credible.  On the other hand, there is no satisfactory explanation why documents pertaining to the investigation of Ray were put under lock and key for 59 years.

There are many problems with the official story of King's assassination, just as there are with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.  No amount of suspicion or information will change the official stories. Facts don't count enough to change official stories. 

Many Americans will continue to believe that having failed to tar King as a communist and womanizer, the establishment decided to remove an inconvenient rising leader by assassination.  Many black Americans will continue to believe that a national holiday was the government's way of covering up its crime and blaming racism for King's murder.

Certainly, the government should not have fomented suspicion by settling such a high profile murder with a plea bargain. Ray was an escapee from a state penitentiary and was apprehended at London's Heathrow Airport on his way to disappear in Africa.  It seems farfetched that he would imperil his escape by taking a racist-motivated shot at King.

We should keep in mind the many loose ends of the Martin Luther King assassination as we are being bombarded by media with what Finian Cunningham correctly terms "high-octane emotional politics that stupefies the public from asking some very necessary hard questions" about the Charlie Hebdo murders, or for that matter the Boston Marathon Bombing case and all other outrages that prove to be so convenient for governments.

Those gullible citizens who believe that "our government would never kill its own people" have much understanding to gain from knowledge of Operation Gladio and Northwoods Project, about which much information is available on the Internet and in parliamentary investigations and officially released secret documents.  

The Northwoods Project was presented to President John F. Kennedy by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.  It called for shooting down people on the streets of Washington and Miami, shooting down US airliners ("real or simulated"), and attacking refugee boats from Cuba in order to create an atrocity case against Castro that would secure public support for a full-fledged invasion to bring regime change to Cuba.  President Kennedy refused the plot and removed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, an action that some researchers conclude led to his assassination.

Operation Gladio was revealed by the prime minister of Italy in 1990. It was a secret operation coordinated by NATO and operated by European military secret services in cooperation with the CIA and British intelligence.

Parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium and testimony by secret service operatives have established that Gladio, originally established as a "stay-behind" secret army to resist Soviet invasion, was used to commit bombing attacks on Europeans, especially women and children, in order to blame communists and keep them from gaining political power in Europe during the Cold War era.  

In answer to questioning by judges about the 1980 bombing of the central train station in Bologna resulting in the deaths of 85 people, Vincenzo Vinciguerra said: "There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men . . . a super-organization with a network of communications, arms and explosives [which] took up the task, on NATO's behalf, or preventing a slip to the left in the political balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces."

Vinciguerra told the UK newspaper The Guardian that "every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single, organized matrix . . . mobilized into the battle as part of an anti-communist strategy originating not with organizations deviant from the institutions of power, but from within the state itself, and specifically from within the ambit of the state's relations within the Atlantic Alliance."

There is no doubt about Gladio's existence.  The BBC did a 2.5 hour documentary on the secret terrorist NATO organization in 1992. There are a number of books, articles and reports in addition to the parliamentary investigations and testimonies from participants.There are reasons to believe that, although exposed, Gladio is still in operation and is behind terrorist attacks, such as Charlie Hebdo, in Europe today. Of course, today Washington has such control over Europe that no parliamentary investigations comparable to those that exposed Operation Gladio are possible.

With the documented and officially admitted existence of many official government conspiracies against their own peoples resulting in numerous deaths, only witting or unwitting agents of government conspiracies respond to valid questions about alleged terrorist events by trying to shout down truth-seekers.  

The function of shutting down suspicion of official stories has been well performed by the "mainstream" print and TV media in the Western world.  This presstitute function has been joined by many tabloid internet sites, such as Salon, and other such sites that originate in money or desire for profit.  

Money flows to those who serve the establishment.  The way to riches is to cover for the powerful private interest groups that comprise the One Percent and control the government.  

Many websites unwittingly contribute to the power of the One Percent to control explanations and to discredit truth-seekers.  This is the main function of comment sections on Internet sites where paid trolls operate.  

Studies have concluded that the largest percentage of a population is too insecure to take a position different from peers.  Most Americans simply do not know enough to have confidence in making independent decisions.  They go with the flow and rely ontheir peers to tell them what is safe to think.  

Trolls are hired for the purpose of making disparaging and ad hominem attacks on those who diverge from accepted opinion.  For example, I am constantly attacked in personal terms in comment sections by people hiding behind first names and aliases.  Others employ left-wing and progressive hatred of Ronald Reagan to discredit me on the grounds that anyone so wicked and evil as to serve in the Reagan administration cannot be trusted.  Many of my denigrators worship the ground that Hillary Clinton walks on. 

Today in the so-called "western democracies," it is permissible to be politically incorrect against Muslims and to invoke denigration and hatred against them.  However, it is not permissible to criticize the government of Israel for indiscriminate and murderous attacks on Palestinian citizens.  The position of the Israel Lobby and its obedient and well-intimidated presstitutes is that any criticism whatsoever of Israel is anti-semitism and an indication that the critic desires a new holocaust. In other words, the Israel Lobby defines any critic of any Israeli government policy as an incipient mass murderer.

This effort to silence all critics of Israeli policies applies also to Israelis and Jews themselves.  Israelis and Jews who legitimately criticize Israeli policies in hopes of steering the Zionist State away from self-destruction are branded "self-hating Jews" by the Israel Lobby. The Lobby  has demonstrated its power to destroy academic freedom and to reach into private Catholic universities and public state universities and both block and withdraw tenure appointments of candidates, both Jews and non-Jews, who have incurred the Lobby's disapproval.  

I see Martin Luther King as an American hero.  Whatever his personal failings, if any, he stood for justice and for the safety of every race and gender under law.  King actually believed in the American dream and wanted to achieve it for everyone.  I am confident that had I confronted King with criticism, he would have considered my case and responded honestly regardless of any power he might have held over me. 

I cannot expect the same consideration from any western government or from the trolls that operate in comment sections provided by Internet sites in hopes of boosting their readership.  
Gullible and credulous people are incapable of defending their liberty.  Unfortunately these traits are the principal traits of western peoples.  Western liberty is collapsing in front of our eyes, and this makes absurd the desire by Vladimir Putin's Russian opponents to integrate with the collapsing western states.
Source: www.globalresearch.ca

“Je Suis CIA”
John Brennan CIA Boss
Since 9/11, the imperial playbook has consisted of a favorite and time-tested tactic: the false flag operation.

Carry out or facilitate a spectacular atrocity. Blame it on the enemy of choice. Issue a lie-infested official narrative, and have the corporate media repeat the lie. Rile up ignorant militant crowds, stoke the hatred, and war-mongering imperial policy planners and their criminal functionaries get what they want: war with the public stamp of approval.
Here we are again.

The Charlie Hebdo incident is being sold as “the French 9/11”. It certainly is, in all of the most tragic ways: France, like the United States on 9/11, has been used. The masses of the world have been deceived, and march in lockstep to NATO’s drumbeat again.

All signs lead from French intelligence back to Washington—and Langley, Virginia—directly and indirectly. Red herrings and deceptions comprise the official narrative.

The Al-Qaeda narrative, the classic CIA deception, gets fresh facelift. The fact that Al-Qaeda is CIA-created Anglo-American military-intelligence is ignored. The agenda behind the ISIS war—a massive and elaborate regional CIA false flag operation—registers even less.

The Charlie Hebdo terrorists have ties to Anglo-American intelligence and the Pentagon that the masses do not bother to think about. They are also tied to the (conveniently dead) 9/11-connected Al-Qaeda mastermind/CIA military-intelligence asset Anwar Al-Awlaki. These and other obvious connections to Washington and the CIA do not raise alarm bells among the ardent ones waving Je Suis Charlie signs (which “magically” appeared, and seem to have been mass-produced in advance).

Signs of an inside job and a still unfolding cover-up are significant, from pristine, undamaged passports found on scene to the convenient suicide of Helric Fredou, the Paris police commissioner in charge of the Hebdo investigation.

The Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly were not only well known by French authorities, French intelligence and the CIA. The Kouachis were tracked and monitored—guided—over the course of many years, arrested many times, yet were allowed to continue training and plotting with fellow Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc. These are telltale signs of a guided military-intelligence operation. A blatantly obvious terror cell, known to authorities, “drops out of sight”, and then set loose at an appropriate moment. And then executed.

None of these things, which alarm seasoned observers, registers among the emotional masses; the lemmings who willfully refuse to address its real source: the architects of Anglo-American war policy.

Only the NATO war agenda benefits from any of this.
“France’s 9/11” is more accurately France’s latest Operation Gladio. As noted by Paul Craig Roberts, there is a reason why the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place when it did:
France is suffering from the Washington-imposed sanctions against Russia. Shipyards are impacted from being unable to deliver Russian orders due to France’s vassalage status to Washington, and other aspects of the French economy are being adversely impacted by sanctions that Washington forced its NATO puppet states to apply to Russia.

This week the French president said that the sanctions against Russia should end (so did the German vice-chancellor).

This is too much foreign policy independence on France’s part for Washington. Has Washington resurrected “Operation Gladio,” which consisted of CIA bombing attacks against Europeans during the post-WW II era that Washington blamed on communists and used to destroy communist influence in European elections? Just as the world was led to believe that communists were behind Operation Gladio’s terrorist attacks, Muslims are blamed for the attacks on the French satirical magazine.

Now France is militarized, just as the US was in the wake of 9/11. And the French right-wing has newfound cache.

The hostile takeover of the public mind
Notice that the last two false flag operations in recent months—the false flagging of North Korea over Sony and the film The Interview, and the Charlie Hebdo deception—both revolve around the ideas of “free speech” and “free expression”.

This is a phantom battle, choreographed by those who could not care less for “freedoms”. In fact, the masses are being manipulated towards supporting war and mass murder, and police state agendas that specifically curtail freedoms.

What more creative way to take away freedoms than to make people give them up voluntarily?

The hordes of American citizens that supported the “war on terrorism” to “defend freedom” got the Patriot Act, which gutted what liberties they had; the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will not be restored. This process continues all over the world. Ask the average uninformed French citizen today suffering from post-traumatic stress, and they will gladly give up their rights, anything so that “terrorists” are stopped.

Note how the powers that be have taken to inserting their pro-war messages even more forcefully where the ignorant public spends the majority of its time: in popular entertainment. In Hollywood products, in their cartoons, in their magazines, in their celebrities.

Let George Clooney, Seth Rogen and James Franco transmit the messages of war for the CIA and the Pentagon.

Weaponize stupid movies like The Interview and crude magazines like Charlie Hebdo, and watch people become bloodthirsty, vengeful, unthinking and war-loving.
It is the CIA’s ongoing mission to plant its assets and its propaganda into the media and the arts, controlling the perception of culture as well as framing all debate. It is making a huge push at the moment, relishing the speed and effectiveness of technology and social media.
Hundreds and thousands of innocent lives have been lost in this endless, brutal and criminal war. Yet its architects and functionaries remain untouched.

Je Suis Langley
No Anglo-American war of conquest, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

No CIA, no Militant Islam, no Al-Qaeda, no ISIS, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

No 9/11, no “war on terrorism”, no ISIS deception, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

No war against Russia, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Je Suis Charlie? No.
To the naïve ones who believe the lies and march on the streets carrying the signs, you are the victims, the gullible, the dupes, the pawns.

Tu es CIA.

Tu es NATO.
Source:www.globalresearch.ca

Zionist murder Iranian general And American filmmaker
By Kevin Barrett
In Syria, an Israeli helicopter strike murdered General Mohammad Allahdadi and five other members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Meanwhile, in the American Midwest, professional killers slaughtered anti-New World Order filmmaker David Crowley, his wife, Komel, and their 5-year-old daughter – employing the same modus operandi used in the killing of 9/11 truth author Philip Marshall two years ago.

The lesson of the twin killings was painfully clear: American and Iranian patriots face a common enemy.

The murder of General Allahdadi and his colleagues was the most recent of many Israeli attacks on Syria aimed at helping ISIL. Why don't Americans  understand that ISIL and Israel are close allies? Because their media won't tell them.

The US mainstream media is owned by Zionists dedicated to achieving a New World Order. At the June, 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden, Germany, David Rockefeller, whose family has fronted for the Rothschilds for generations, said:

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."

New World Order Zionism aims to blast the Middle East into balkanized bits in accord with the Oded Yinon plan, and establish a Greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates with Occupied Jerusalem as its capital. That is why the Zionists created ISIL and sent it to fight Muslims and Christians in Syria and Iraq. And that is why the Zionists are attacking Syria in support of ISIL.

New World Order Zionism is also targeting the USA for destruction. The Zionist bankster elite staged a coup d'état on September 11th, 2001 aimed at turning the USA into a police state – and sending American military forces to the Middle East to smash Israel's enemies into pieces.

David Crowley was one of the New World Order's most effective enemies. His movie project Gray State had the potential to mobilize millions of people.

Infowars described Gray State as "a highly-anticipated independent film envisioning a brutal police state, martial law crackdown, complete with biometric identification, a ubiquitous surveillance state and FEMA stormtroopers rounding dissidents up into camps." Now it appears the New World Order police state Crowley warned against is pre-emptively murdering those who might succeed in rallying the American people against the coming dystopia.

The Zionists murder or otherwise disable people they deem an actionable threat. Anyone they believe may seriously threaten Zionist New World Order interests in the future is a potential target for elimination.

General Mohammad Allahdadi posed a serious threat to the Zionists. A competent, capable, patriotic military man, General Allahdadi was a key figure in the Axis of Resistance that has stymied Zionist New World Order plans for the complete destruction of Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

David Crowley was also an actionable threat to the Zionist New World Order. Crowley's film project Gray State generated tremendous buzz among anti-New World Order Americans, and was poised to become the movement's definitive statement.

The professional killing of Crowley and his family exemplifies how Zionist pre-emptive murderers excel at "killing the future." Other examples include the 22 July 2011 assassinations in Oslo, Norway of the entire youth wing leadership of the Norwegian Labor Party. A team of Zionist-liked professional killers executed a total of 77 people, while Zionist-freemasonic assets in the Norwegian police and military stood by.

The Labor Party's youth wing was about to succeed in making Norway the first European country to boycott Israel. By killing the leaders of the Norwegian BDS movement, the Zionists not only stopped that movement in its tracks, but also eliminated dozens of likely future Norwegian government leaders who would have posed a long-term threat to Israel and its aspirations for New World Order global tyranny.

Another example of "killing the future" was the likely murder of Malcolm Shabazz, Malcolm X's grandson, on May 9th, 2013. In a May 11th 2013 Press TV article I wrote that the assassination seemed designed to pre-empt "Malcolm's impending rise to superstar-dissident status. Make no mistake: Malcolm Shabazz, like his grandfather, posed a serious, 'actionable' long-term threat to the powers-that-be. Malcolm had converted to Shi'a Islam and become a spokesman for the 'axis of resistance' - not just anti-Zionist forces in the Middle East, but anti-empire forces around the world."

The New World Order covert operators learned long ago that killing the charismatic messenger is an effective way to stop the message from spreading. They killed Huey Long on September 10th, 1935 to stop an anti-bankster revolution during America's Great Depression. They poisoned Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 to stop FDR's Economic Bill of Rights and instead fund a Cold War against the Soviet Union. They shot John and Robert Kennedy to save the Federal Reserve, the military-industrial-intelligence complex, and Israel's nuclear weapons program. They shot Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. to prevent black and non-elite white Americans from joining a world anti-imperialist alliance. They murdered Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife and daughter to cover up 9/11 and remove an obstacle to the US invasion of Iraq.

The same people – Zionist-freemasonic forces funded by the world’s biggest bankers – are killing patriotic Americans and patriotic Iranians. The outrageous killings of General Allahdadi in Syria, and David Crowley and his family in Minnesota, on the same weekend, should mobilize the people, and the militaries, of both countries to do battle against their common enemy.
Source: www.presstv.com

Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

By Hans Vogel
According to US National Security Agency (NSA), "Islamic terrorists" under orders from the Islamic State are about to carry out a series of attacks in Europe. At least this is what the NSA reportedly told the German newspaper BILD. With almost 40,000 personnel, the NSA, is responsible for the "global monitoring, collection, decoding, translation and analysis of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes," Incidentally, the NSA is only one of 16 US intelligence services, together employing perhaps some 200,000 spies.

Could you name one reason for believing anything that a spy agency says? Why haven't NSA spies nor those of any other US spy service been able to prevent the recent attack on Charlie Hebdo? These folks and their colleagues in all NATO countries have been monitoring all telephone conversations in North America, Europe and the Near East, haven't they? They are reading all our emails, and are monitoring all facebook pages, all twitter accounts, and all linkedin pages, aren't they? They have taken away our privacy, haven't they? Their data bases contain our finger prints, facial scans and the iris scans of many of us, don't they? NATO's spy services are receiving billions upon billions of euros and dollars each and every year, are they not? And yet they cannot even prevent an attack! They even claim they did not see it coming! 
Do you know why?

Because the perpetrators of the attack on Charlie Hebdo were hired by those very same spy services. The "Islamic State" is being supported, co-funded and armed by the US, its NATO vassals and Israel. The Islamic State may be a Big Bad Wolf, but it is an artificial Big Bad Wolf. Like one of those from the Disney Studios, but a bit more dangerous. A real Bad Wolf. But it is our Bad Wolf. It is a Bad Wolf that has been created especially to make us afraid. Because, the more we are afraid, the easier it is for the terrorists that govern us, to control us and meanwhile to stuff their pockets.

The recent Paris attack is not the only act of terror that the "Western" spy agencies purportedly protecting us with their hundreds of thousands of overpaid impostors have not warned us against. Nor could they have done so, since many of the most widely reported acts of terror have been organized, staged or perpetrated by these very same spy agencies:

-      The bomb attack on a bank at Piazza Fontana, Milan, Italy in 1969 (12 December): 17 dead. By the Italian intelligence service in cooperation with the CIA.

-      The kidnapping and murder of Italian politician Aldo Moro in 1978 (16 March-9 May), by the Red Brigades, acting upon orders from Italian intelligence and the CIA.

-      The bomb attack on Bologna Central Station in 1980 (2 August), 85 dead. By the Red Brigades acting upon orders from Italian intelligence and the CIA.
-      The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 (21 December), 243 killed. Blamed on the Libyan government, it was in fact done by the CIA. Used as a pretext for stricter passenger controls.

-      The series of attacks on supermarkets in and near Brussels by the "Brabant Killers" in 1985, 16 dead. By Belgian members of NATO's Gladio "stay behind network", directed by the CIA
-      The bomb attack in Oklahoma City in 1995 (19 April) by Timothy McVeigh, who was being manipulated by the FBI, 168 dead.

-      The "attack" on New York's Twin Towers in 2001 ("9/11"). Allegedly by Osama Bin Laden who would have directed the operation from his cave in Afghanistan. He did not do it, but who did is a matter of debate: was it a faction within the US government led by VP Dick Cheney, was it Mossad, or were they acting in collusion?

-      Failed "attack" by the "shoe bomber" Richard Colvin Reid, 2001 (22 December). Allegedly a "member" of "Al-Qaeda", Reid is supposed to have tried to bring down an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoes. The event was used to impose rigid security checks on passengers checking in on airports all over the world.

-      The attack on Madrid's Atocha Railway Station in 2004 (11 March), 191 dead. Allegedly by ETA and or muslims. In reality by Spanish intelligence together with US intelligence.
-      The London Underground and bus attacks of 2005 ("7/7"). Blamed on Muslim extremists, but perpetrated by British intelligence.

-      "Transatlantic Aircraft Plot" of 2006 (summer). British police claimed to have uncovered a wide ranging conspiracy to bring down airliners by having the conspirators put together bombs on board inside the planes' toilets during the flight, with the aid of improvised laboratory sets and with smuggled liquids. This non-event was used as a pretext for imposing draconian security on airline passengers all over the world.

-      Failed "attack" by the "underwear bomber", 2009 (25 December). Allegedly, young Nigerian engineer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to bring down Northwestern Airlines flight 253 (289 people on board) with a "weapon of mass destruction" hidden in his underpants. Before boarding the flight at Amsterdam, he was guided past security controls by US embassy personnel. The event was used as a pretext for stricter controls on passengers.

-      The attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway in 2011 (22 July), 77 dead. Strong indications that it was mounted by Mossad to punish the Norwegian social democrats for having voted to recognize the Palestinian state. Most of those killed were youth members of the Social Democratic Party.

-      The Sandy Hook massacre in the US in 2012: allegedly deranged Adam Lanza shoots 20 people in a school (14 December). It soon turned out it was a staged event. Pure theatre, with third rate actors, paid and directed by US intelligence.

-      Mohammed Merah goes on a rampage in Toulouse in 2013 (March). Merah was working for French intelligence.

-      The attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013 (15 April), three dead. Mediocre quality street theatre with a high degree of reality because there were real dead. Staged by US intelligence.

-      British soldier Lee Rigby is butchered near his barracks in London by a "fanatical muslim" in 2013. (22 May). Staged event.

-      Crash of flight MH17 over the Eastern Ukraine by a Ukrainian missile. Staged by the US so as to bring about an armed conflict with Russia.

None of these events has been predicted or prevented by the double crossing spies who claim to protect us. None, except the 2006 Transatlantic Airline Plot. This hoaxed, trumped up pseudo-event was "discovered" by normal British police.

The louder public and government officials lament an event, the more frequently they appear on TV as a result of it, the more time TV channels devote to such events, the surer you can be these are staged or managed events. Pure hoaxes, though with real victims, these ought actually to be considered a modern version of ancient Roman gladiator games. These are thrilling events and the public gets all excited. 

Quite significantly, each of the events cited above is almost immediately followed by an official narrative of how and why it happened, often with details about the perpetrators. This narrative may subsequently be amended and refined, without being altered fundamentally. Nevertheless, it will be ever more inconsistent and eventually untenable, because of mounting evidence supporting entirely contrary narratives. Invariably, the official narratives are official conspiracy theories that serve to silence any critics with the argument that they would be "conspiracy theorists." 

Invariably, events like those mentioned above are used as pretexts to push through special rules, regulations and legislation prepared long in advance, but always limiting civil liberties.

A Big Bad Wolf may be on the loose, but meanwhile, the true Bad Wolves are to be found in US, NATO and Israeli intelligence services, in cabinet rooms, government ministries in Washington DC, Brussels, Paris, London, the various other NATO capitals as well as Jerusalem. The real Bad Wolves have familiar names: Obomba, Juncker, Barroso, Bush, Blair, Hollande, Merkel, Netanyahu, well you can complete the list....
Source: www.english.pravda.ru

The Environmental Movement and Capitalism: When History Knocks
Review of Noami Klein's Book
Dr Kwesi Botchwey
To raise the environmental crisis in Canada is to simultaneously highlight the notorious Alberta Tar Sands, the fastest growing polluter in Canada. But the Tar Sands are more than an environmental issue. This crisis-in-motion is inseparable
from other fundamental issues at the core of Canadian society: indigenous land claims, Canada’s integration to the American empire and its oil-hungry military leviathan, a focus on resource extraction as a core of Canada’s economic development and a set of contested values about ‘the good life.’ Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything, incorporates the contradictions exposed by the Tar Sands and extends such contradictions far beyond Canada and far beyond the Tar Sands, identifying them with the larger contradiction between the environment and capitalism. It ‘changes everything’ not so much because of it’s emphasis on the urgency of the environmental crisis – this itself is now commonly accepted within the movement – but because Klein locates the barriers to easing and overcoming this crisis in the larger ecology of social life. It is these links between the environment, the economy, our vision of an alternative society and especially the discussions this leads to about how to organize ourselves to actually ‘change everything’ that make this such an important book


Naomi Klein is a longtime movement and media icon, a gifted synthesizer and popularizer who, over the past two decades, has been a leading chronicler of anti-corporate, anti-globalization, and anti-capitalist social movements (a series of ‘anti’s that undeniably needs some unpacking).

Who else on the Left gets a sympathetic interview on the evening news of Canada’s publicly owned television broadcaster before the release of her latest book? And who else, as a preview of that book, is immediately given a chance to explain to a national audience why, from the perspective of the environment, capitalism is “the main enemy?”

Klein’s writings and talks have provided ‘the movement’ with needed context and coherence, and served as a conduit and catalyst for discussions, contributing to its recruitment and growth. Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate is the climax of her highly influential trilogy and also registers how much her perspective has changed over the last fifteen years.

The Main Enemy
This shift centers on both her assessment of the movement – more than ever before, Klein expresses frustrations with the movement she is part of and still sees as fundamental to social change – and her deeper appreciation of capitalism “as the main enemy.” On this latter point, her earlier criticisms of particular aspects of capitalism have now expanded into suggesting – or at least coming very close to suggesting – that capitalism has become the central barrier to human survival and progress.

Klein’s trilogy began with No Logo, which came out in 1999 and exposed the manipulative and exploitative underbelly of consumer culture. Fortuitously published amid the Battle of Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization and later branded the “bible of the anti-globalization movement,” No Logo built on the moral crusade across university campuses against the corporate use of sweatshop labour for that culture. But it mistakenly separated supposedly “good” and “bad” corporations, obscuring the larger social system in which these companies lived and acted.

Klein’s second major book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism also arrived at a propitious moment: in 2007, just before the financial implosion and the most dramatic economic crisis since the Great Depression. This time Klein chronicled how corporations and capitalist states pounce on the opportunities provided by man-made or natural crises to “ram through policies that enrich a small elite.” In this case, though, the focus on crises underplayed what capitalism does between crises.

Again displaying a penchant for well-timed releases, Klein’s This Changes Everything reached bookstores two days before October’s massive Climate March in New York City. Here it is no longer capitalism’s bad apples that are the focus, nor capitalism’s ability to use crises against us, but the organizing principles of the system itself – and the environmental consequences that follow. “[O]ur economic system and our planetary system are now at war,” Klein writes, “and it’s not the laws of nature that can be changed.”

In characteristically accessible language, Klein summarizes the alarming scientific consensus on climate change. But the significance of This Changes Everything doesn’t lie in Klein’s detailed and passionate description of the urgency of the environmental crisis. Rather, its importance lies in Klein’s determination to demonstrate that changing our relationship to nature is inseparable from changing our relationship to each other – by “transforming our economic system” (I’ll return later to ambiguities in how this is interpreted).

The immediate threat to the earth “changes everything” in the sense that just adding “the environment” to our list of concerns is not good enough.

The sheer scale of the problem necessitates a politics that can take on capitalism. We must do away with any notions, Klein asserts, that the environmental crisis can be contained and eventually rolled back through policy tinkering (though addressing symptoms is necessary); technical fixes (though sensible technological advances should be vigorously pursued); or market-based solutions (no qualification necessary – it’s silly to expect the market to solve problems it was instrumental in creating). Something far more comprehensive is required.

Asking Ourselves the Hard Questions
To emphasize this, however, is not just to expose the painfully inadequate solutions of the Right, but also to ask the hard questions of the environmental movement. As important as the movement has been to placing the issue on the agenda and bringing young people in particular into the struggle, its organizational forms simply do not match what we are up against. After decades of engagement, the environmental movement remains relatively marginal, capable of slowing down this or that trend but not of reversing and correcting capitalism’s reckless trajectory.

Klein is especially critical of those sections of the movement that jumped on the “green capitalism” bandwagon in the 1970s. In a pattern eerily reminiscent of the bureaucratization of unions that environmentalists once held up as the antithesis of their own politics, their environmentalism “stopped being about organizing protests and teach-ins and became about drafting laws, then suing corporations for violating them, as well as challenging governments for failing to enforce them. In rapid fashion, what had been a rabble of hippies became a movement of lawyers, lobbyists, and UN summit hoppers. As a result many of the newly professionalized environmentalists came to pride themselves on being the ultimate insiders, able to wheel and deal across the political spectrum.”

Klein goes on to point out that “so long as the victories kept coming, their insider strategy seemed to be working… Then came the 1980s.” Again paralleling the labour movement, capitalism’s turn to neoliberalism exposed the extent to which the environmental movement had become a paper tiger, able to maneuver somewhat within the system, but without the capacity for independent, sustained mass mobilization. Yet beyond exposing this orientation, we also need to ask what, beyond the opportunism of access to resources and entry into the inner circles, accounts for the eventual betrayals of these former idealists.

How much of a factor in looking for easy fixes was the mix of extreme urgency honestly felt and an awareness of the limited impact of sporadic demonstrations? To what extent was the movement’s vulnerability to co-optation on the one hand, and exhaustion and retreat on the other, linked to having no broader vision beyond the environment and little or no strategic plan for truly challenging power?

These are, of course, not just questions of history but have immediate relevance. And they also challenge that part of the movement that didn’t sell out but remained loyal to their original principles. As much as Klein puts her hope in this latter group, she also – to her credit – admits to frustrations with key aspects of its strategic orientation. She makes two overlapping points here, one organizational, the other strategic.

First, there is the tendency of many in the movement to mistakenly identify structures themselves as part of the problem. There is no going forward, however, without the most serious development of institutions that can deal on a mass scale with resources, coordination, generational continuity, leadership development, outreach, popular education, and, especially, the accountability structures to make complex and difficult collective choices and to keep wayward leaders in check.

As Klein writes:
“The fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion against any kind of institutionalization, is not a luxury today’s transformational movements can afford… Despite endless griping, tweeting, flash mobbing, and occupying, we collectively lack many of the tools that built and sustained the transformative movements of the past.”

This reluctance to do deep organizing and institution building, again similar to the labour movement, has contributed to series of defeats since the early 1980s. And those defeats have engendered a failure of imagination, inseparable from the fading of worldviews and structures that bring confidence to and sustain collective work.

Second, Klein insists that the struggle against climate change cannot be won by fear alone. “Fear is a survival response. It makes us run, it makes us leap, it can make us act superhuman. But we need somewhere to run to. Without that, the fear is only paralyzing.” (It might also be added that fear can produce support for the immediate nostrums offered by green capitalism.)
Similarly, though the issue of consumerism must be taken on, simply calling for a more austere lifestyle only reinforces the austerity pushed by capitalist states. The issue is not just living with ‘less’ but living differently – which can also mean better.

It is about an alternative society. And to the extent that some sacrifices are indeed necessary, these must involve both a radical equality of sacrifice and one that sees such sacrifices as ‘investments’ in transforming society, rather than concessions to preserve capitalism.

To the uncomfortable question of “how can we persuade the human race to put the future ahead of the present,” Klein borrows from Miya Yoshitama and answers “you don’t.” Instead you act on the presumption that “if there has ever been a moment to advance a plan to heal the planet that also heals our broken economies and shattered communities, this is it.”

And so you point to a long series of issues directly linked to the environment – housing, transportation, infrastructure, meaningful jobs, collective services, public spaces, greater equality, and a more substantive democracy – and work to convince people that “climate action is their best hope for a better present, and a future far more exciting than anything else currently on offer.”

In contrast, the mainstream environmental movement, Klein laments, “generally stands apart from these expressions of mass frustration, choosing to define climate activism narrowly – demanding a carbon tax, say, or even trying to stop a pipeline.”

Building a non-parochial, mass movement against climate change isn’t about de-emphasizing the central importance of the environmental crisis but of thinking about it politically and in the context of wider values. Such a mass movement needs to forge its own common sense, structures independent of capital, and the energy and staying power that comes with a realizable, if distant, vision.

Once we appreciate that the scale of the climate change issue references not just how much needs to be done in environmental terms, but what needs to be done to transform society, we are at a new, even more intimidating, stage. We’ve added the need to take on capitalism and must be clear about what this means.

Taking On Capitalism
Klein deserves enormous credit for putting capitalism in the dock. Yet she leaves too much wiggle room for capitalism to escape a definitive condemnation. There is already great confusion and division among social activists over what ‘anti-capitalism’ means. For many if not most, it is not the capitalist system that is at issue but particular sub-categories of villains: big business, banks, foreign companies, multinationals.

Klein is contradictory on this score. She seems clear enough in the analysis that pervades the book that it is capitalism, yet she repeatedly qualifies this position by decrying “the kind of capitalism we now have,” “neoliberal” capitalism, “deregulated” capitalism, “unfettered” capitalism, “predatory” capitalism, “extractive” capitalism, and so on. These adjectives undermine the powerful logic of Klein’s more convincing arguments elsewhere that the issue isn’t creating a better capitalism but confronting capitalism as a social system.

Seth Tekper, Ghana Finance Minister
This ambivalence is compounded by Klein’s overemphasis on ideology as a driver of social change. The dispute here is not over the relevance of ideology, but the unmooring of ideology from its context. That Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman were largely ignored in the postwar years then idolized in the 1980s was not because the strength of their arguments won converts but because contradictions in capitalism and shifts in the balance of class forces placed a more aggressive capitalism on the agenda, which opened the door to these waiting ideologies.

It is one thing to stress popular education and our own ideologies and common sense as part of taking on structural power in our societies; it is another to think ideology is all and underestimating what needs to be done (or at the extreme, naively converting the struggle from below into winning elites over to our ideology).

Capitalism does of course vary across time and place, and some of the differences are far from trivial. But in terms of substantive change, we should not overstate the importance of these disparate forms. Moreover, such differences have not increased but contracted over time, leaving us with a more or less monolithic capitalism across the globe.

It is not just that any capitalism is inseparable from the compulsion to indiscriminate growth, but that capitalism’s commodification of labour power and nature drives an individualized consumerism inimical to collective values (consumption is the compensation for what we lose in being commodified and is the incentive to work) and insensitive to the environment (nature is an input, and the full costs of how it is exploited by any corporation are for someone else to worry about).

A social system based on private ownership of production can’t support the kind of planning that could avert environmental catastrophe. The owners of capital are fragmented and compelled by competition to look after their own interests first, and any serious planning would have to override property rights – an action that would be aggressively resisted.

As Klein notes, even countries that have spoken out against extractivism – in response to pressure from indigenous environmentalists – have found themselves compelled by the options capitalism offers to mine and sell as much of whatever their soils offer.

As for the Global North using its technology and wealth to expand the options in the Global South, this kind of solidarity would imply both a cultural transformation in the North and direct control over technology and social wealth so global redistribution is possible – each of which can only be imagined in a post-capitalist society.

There are some who, seeing the limits of capitalism in our time, turn to examples from the romanticized postwar era. But it was during the Keynesian welfare state period that freer trade made its great leap forward, multinational companies (MNCs) began their global expansion, finance – benefitting from the growth of mortgages and pensions and following MNCs abroad – saw its first wave of explosive expansion, radicals and their ideas were marginalized, and consumerism spread to the working-class.
“It is capitalism – not a qualified capitalism, but really existing capitalism and the only capitalism on offer – that “is the main enemy.””

Furthermore, it is hard to miss the fact that capitalists and capitalist states have long lost interest in that earlier era which, for all its limits, still imposed too many barriers on the drive for profits. It is capitalism – not a qualified capitalism, but really existing capitalism and the only capitalism on offer – that “is the main enemy.” It is crucial to be clear on this point, because if we conclude that the environment can’t be regenerated under capitalism, then it is this that becomes the great game-changer. It is one thing to ask how we can organize ourselves better to register our dissatisfaction and to pressure or lobby corporations and states to modify some of their ways within capitalism. It is quite another to conclude that we must organize ourselves for the far more ambitious task of replacing this powerful system.

We need to fight as hard as possible for reforms that limit environmental damage, but such a battle for reforms must be used to build a movement that can eventually take us beyond capitalism. With the task of transforming capitalism so daunting and the environmental crisis so urgent, some might suggest we rethink our argument and retreat into a broader environmental alliance that includes sympathetic elites, even if it means sacrificing other goals such as equality and even democracy. This, it should by now be abundantly clear, is no option at all; it can only mean a return to a discredited green capitalism. Such a concessionary strategy would undermine our base while doing little to ward off climate change. ‘Enlightened’ elites won’t take kindly to undermining capitalism’s institutions, so currying their favor is foolhardy. Pre-emptive disarmament will only ensure that elites try to save themselves at our expense. We have no choice but to get on with it, no matter how overwhelming the undertaking.

Klein doesn’t supply us with an alternate strategic blueprint, but it’s hard to fault her for the omission – visionary ‘recipes’ for “cook-shops of the future” have long been in short supply on the Left. This Changes Everything is still Klein’s best and most important book. It is a contribution to getting us going in the right direction. It doesn’t shy away from soberly reflecting on the state of the movement, presents some crucial insights for moving ahead, and invites – even if sometimes ambiguously – the broadest discussion on what needs to be done and the necessity of rethinking how to do it.

At the end of her book, Klein is about to interview the youthful head of Syriza, the radical Greek party now on the brink of taking power. She asks a Greek comrade what she should ask him, and the person answers: “Ask him: When history knocked on your door, did you answer?” As Klein concludes, “That’s a good question for all of us.”

Sam Gindin was Research Director of the Canadian Auto Workers from 1974-2000 and is now an adjunct professor at York University in Toronto. Gindin is the co-author, along with Leo Panitch, of The Making of Global Capitalism. This article first published on the JacobinMag.com website.
Source: www.globalresearch.ca






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