privatization

I was prompted to write this article when a twitter contact of mine wondered whether some of my writings about the corpocracy amounted to a conspiracy theory.  Having been a behavioral scientist most of my adult life I know a thing or two about what’s theory and what’s not.  I don’t know how anyone, scientist or lay person, could mistake the corpocracy for a theory. I doubt if any readers of articles published in the alternative news media would confuse the two. Nevertheless, I want to tell you what I have learned over the years.

This week we look at the current turmoil in South America, where the so-called “pink tide” is beginning to recede in Venezuela and Brazil as the United Snakes seeks to exploit political and economic crises for its geopolitical gain.
For the musical break, we’ve got Calle 13, with La Bala.
Next up, we pay homage to the Oaxaca Commune, ten years later…. and finally we wrap things up with an interview with Cesar Chavez, a teacher from Oaxaca from Section 22 of the CNTE.

The economy, the people, the heart and soul of Greece have been demolished by a lower order of bureaucratic seizure that plagues the world. It is scorched-earth economic warfare, ordinarily referred to as neoliberalism.
The newest twist/manipulation in negotiations with Troika for Greece survival (demise) in order to provide the country with €86 billion of which 90% pays off debt, 10% to the state, demands Greece cut pensions (again), raise taxes (again), privatize state assets (for a song), and deregulate (squelch) labor. Inspirational?

Christine Lagarde, the Queen of Troika and the Head Honcho of the IMF, on May 6th, threatened to pull the IMF out of the Greek rescue plan, with a straight face, calling it a “rescue plan.” Oh, please!
Yet, it is extremely doubtful the IMF would ever entirely pull out since the plan really bails out its own constituency of banks at an unfathomable expense to the Greek people.
Meantime in Greece, transportation and civic services throughout the country grind to a screeching halt, full stop, as the people hit the streets.

Nina Kouprianova is an independent analyst of geopolitics and culture. She earned her PhD (History) from the University of Toronto, focusing on modern and contemporary Russia, culture, and U.S. foreign policy. In this interview we discuss her translations and articles found at Espionage History Archive, Soul of the East and on her own blog, NinaByzantina. Critical of the leftist tyranny in modern academia, Nina tells us about her experiences in the West, as well as her upbringing in Russia.

The government could do most of this for you for free, then let you fill out the rest online.

Big capital has constantly decreased its contribution to the state – creating a gap in the state’s coffers which is then filled by more and varied taxes on ordinary people – ultimately shrinking the very market big capital needs to sell its increased production of goods.
Tariffs and Taxes

Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.
— Alan Keyes

The soul of Greece has flown away, zipping past Mount Olympus, gone.
The negotiating position of Greece à la Troika has gone from bad to worse to much worse, as suffocation of the body politic is well underway. The politicians of Greece have become pliable pawns in the hands of the all-powerful European Troika.
It’s all about saving the Banks, saving the Creditors. The people, well, they don’t count for much “they’re nothing more than numbers,” maybe worse. Plastic bureaucrats see it that way.

118 years after U.S. troops landed at Guánica, Puerto Rico, the liberal political site the New Republic asks, “Why Are We Colonizing Puerto Rico?” The occasion for this comically tardy acknowledgment of Puerto Rico’s colonial status is a Republican proposal to deal with the island’s $72 billion debt problem by allowing a cabal of unelected technocrats to carry out austerity measures against the will of the Puerto Rican people.

The real crisis is not the influx of refugees to Europe, per se, but a toxic combination of destabilising foreign policy agendas, economic austerity and the rise of right-wing nationalism, which is likely to push the world further into social and political chaos in the months ahead.