You are like most americans who love poverty, pain and suffering. Capitalism makes people poorer not richer. I do want to get out of economic limitations, boredom, poverty and hopelessness. And socialism is the only solution for that.

Face it, you will never get out of poverty and pain within this system. You could read 100 books like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, invest in Mcdonalds stocks, have 2 jobs and you will be even more poorer, more exhausted, sicker and just literally dead

Face it, socialism is the only way to get richer and feel better

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Umm…. I know the arguments for socialism, and there’s some validity there. And what Hugo Chavez has done for his people is admirable and he’s made great strides of progress for the poor in his country. I’m a fan of the guy.

But, uh, I don’t really want to live under socialism.

So what can I as one person, one voice do about the colossal Trillion dollar problems in Washington? How does my one voice make any difference?

Do you have any everyday solutions or can we expect more and more complaints, theories and hindsight?

Mark
Skype IM ‘digitalcurrency’

It’s getting closer and closer to torches and nooses time. And it’s long overdue.

Thanks.

The simple measure of making it illegal for private money to finance election campaigns (and requiring the state to do it instead) would go a long way to providing real people-power in government.

Free Democracy is a solution. http://www.freedemocrats.co.uk.

Remember folks that all US citizens care about is food, sex, drugs and pleasures.

People in this country think that politics is irrelevant. However when capitalism finally collapses, american citizens will experience a painful wake up call, and will necesarily out of need, be driven to support a socialist party arising as an option for the capitalist mess of Democrats and Republicans.

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http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/jan99/beggar.htm

In 1728 John Gay wrote The Beggar’s Opera for the London stage. It was an attack on the corruption of Robert Walpole’s government of private men and on the self-interested motivations that were now to drive society. It featured a central character called Mr. Peachum, a turn-key (gaoler), who aided, organised and fenced for the criminal fraternity of London (representing the cut-throat selfishness of Walpole’s ministers) and then turned them in to the authorities when they were no longer profitable to him.

It is not surprising that such a play should appear with the arrival of capitalism within society, with its emphasis on mercenary personal gain replacing any notion of loyalty or community. It is also not surprising that a prison was the chosen setting, nor that the law was seen as a corrupt tool in the hands of a selfish few. What is surprising, is how durable this image from the dawn of Modernity has turned out to be.

The prison was a common feature of 18th century writing, because it was emerging as a new and devastating weapon in the class war. Under feudalism the population could be controlled by fear, by selected spectacular public executions, to keep the whole thing running. Emergent industrial capitalism, however, needed a disciplined workforce, ready to clock on and work like machines, and obey. For industrial capitalism, gory punishments and executions were wasteful, and did not create sufficient internal discipline. Other methods were required.

Thus, with the advance of capitalism, we see less and less reliance on execution as a means of social control, and more and more on the rise of the prison. It is telling that the prominent liberal philosopher Jeremy Bentham advanced, for his idea of a Utilitarian Utopia, the Panopticon, a prison/workhouse/school, wherein from a central tower an observer could see into all the individual cells, without being seen themself. The idea was that the uncertainty of not being detected would prevent the inhabitants from stepping out of line, and thus there would be no offences. This was a fantasy of the factory, perfectly compliant workers, in their place, and knowing their own duty and work. It is also an image from which capitalism has never been able to escape, because it is precisely that discipline that it needs to function. This applies not just in the workplace, but in the whole of society.

Surplus population

The big problem for capitalism is that it contains the seeds for its own discord, so whenever social discipline breaks down prison is deployed to try and patch things up. The prison remains as a solid reminder of the anti-social nature of capitalism.

Capitalism creates such social breakdown because its creates a “surplus population”. Capitalism can, to keep up the compulsion on the workers to work, only fully maintain those workers who succeed in selling their labour power. Some of the rest are maintained at a lower level as an “industrial reserve army” to be used in the event of production expanding. Beyond them is a stagnant pool of the permanently unemployed who are regarded as “unemployable”. In recent years, as economic growth has slowed and the introduction of labour-saving methods continued, the size of this pool has grown. As far as the capitalist is concerned these workers, since they are on no use to them, can go hang (quite literally in the past).

Thus Noam Chomsky has spoken of “a kind of superfluous population there’s no point in educating because there’s nothing to do with them. You put them in prison because we’re a civilized people and you don’t send death squads out to murder them” (interview with David Barsamian, 1971).

The facts for America bear this out. In California education budgets have been slashed, and prison officers earn 30 percent more than lecturers, with a massive increase in the use of prisons. In that state alone over 130,000 people were held in prison in 1995, and it was still rising then. California has allocated $3.2 billion extra to its prison budget since 1992. Nor is California alone, and nor is it the worst. In 1993 California had 607 prisoners per 100,000 population, Texas had 700, and Georgia had 730. The combined totals of the three most populated European states (France, UK, Germany) only reached 84 per 100,000 head of population in the same year. In 1997 in the USA the figure was 645.

In 1995 5.4 million Americans were within the prison system (that includes remand, on parole, in prison, etc.), which works out as about 5 percent of the adult male population. The prison system has been deployed, to great effect, both to ameliorate the unemployment statistics (all those prisoners don’t show up) and to control the “socially excluded”. Within the vast network of controls, the US poor are being restrained and disciplined. This is on top of the increasing number of restraints being imposed by the American “welfare” system.

In recent years in Britain, both under the Tories and Labour, the prison population has began to shoot up as our masters, realising the bankrupt nature of their policies, and the stagnant nature of modern capitalism, decided to copy the US model. According to Home Office Statistics for 1997, there were 61,114 people in prison in the UK, 5,833 more than the previous year, and increase of 11 percent. The prison population has increased by 37 percent since 1993 (when it was 44,570), and it is clear that it is the greater use of custodial sentences that has caused that increase. The number of prisoners per 100,000 head of population has also increased to 111 (120 in England and Wales, 119, in Scotland and 95 in Northern Ireland), second only to Portugal in Europe.

What’s more is the increasing use of private prisons, selling them to a whole bunch of Peachums, to make a profit from locking up the poor (Gay is still with us). The massive amount of spending on prisons is going to create a demand to keep the prisons full (which will be complemented by police arrest quotas), to justify the payments and swell the security firms’ profits. As the system gets more and more expanded, more firms are being allowed a slice of the prison cake. In August this year, two months after the 1000th convict was tagged for home detention (a cheap and easy modern equivalent of the Panopticon, to enable the government to extend prison control even further), the government announced the winning firms that had tendered to administer these schemes.

The Curfew Orders which necessitate tagging are a way of subtly increasing the effect of prison, and controlling the numerous “petty offenders” for whom prison is too expensive and wasteful and option

More discipline

In April, the government announced that it was going to extend its “Welfare to Work” scheme to some lucky young prisoners, to help them find work (and thus buck the 76 percent recidivism rate for young offenders). This linking (apart from being a naked attempt to try and use their “captive audience” to increase the success figure for the New Deal) demonstrates the intrinsic values of the New Con, that it is a device by which the government is trying to control the surplus population, and allocate them to work, whenever they can find it for them. Already they are embarking on making it mandatory for single mothers to attend their initial New Deal interviews. Increasingly more and more strings are attached to “welfare”. Inspectors can call round at recipients homes and look round for signs of co-habitation, with a de-facto search warrant, under threat of extra-judicial punishment (removal of benefits).

Prison is also a device by which to promote and re-enforce racial division in society (as if creating a “criminal class” isn’t divisive enough). In Britain 1.5 percent of the British male population are Caribbean, however a staggering 10.4 percent of the British male prison population are likewise Caribbean. Of the female prison population, 12.9 percent were Caribbean, while only 1.8 percent of the general female population are.

The racism aspect is worsened when one considers that some 2,720 immigrants are held in “Detention Centres” as what the Home Office euphemistically calls “non-Criminal Prisoners”, part of the government’s attempts to prevent immigrants entering the country.

Also prison was used extensively for fine defaulters, of whom some 6,300 found their way to gaol, helping victimise the poor of society even more.

It is worth remembering, that throughout the Thatcher Years, police pay awards were significantly above other public sector pay awards (such as nurses and teachers), as the government fought to secure the loyalty of the police force. The result of this can be seen in the difference between the police involvement in the Miners’ Strike (with an illegal national police force being established, and the miners’ freedom of movement restricted) and recent events in Australia, where the police refused to intervene in the dockers’ dispute telling the government straight that they should fight their own battles. Also, increasingly, local councils are reliant on Close Circuit Television Cameras (with ever increasing sophistication) to keep an eye on us and ensure we are behaving (that damned panoptic eye again). We are not judged to be responsible enough to go about our own lives.

Other attacks on basic liberties abound, police stop and search powers are increased, the right to silence is removed, the right to trial by jury is decreased, freedom of movement is restricted. The change of government has made no difference. Increasingly the state is trying to shape and control our lives through bureaucracy or through the police.

The only solution open to capitalism now, faced with social decay and chaos, is to criminalise the “surplus population”, to lock them up, to take control of them and increase discipline throughout society. Capitalism’s only solutions are brutal and barbaric, and in 1997 70 inmates of prisons killed themselves.

Socialism offers to end the social conditions that cause that breakdown and necessitate enforced discipline, offering instead self-worth, and freedom of association in production, a strong inclusive social identity. The prison is not a symbol of capitalism. Capitalism is a prison, and it is imperative for us to try and break out of it.

Hello rg,

It doesn’t take from your point but Native Americans were used by Europeans as slaves for hundreds of years and in large numbers too. They were shipped to different parts of the Americas, to Africa, Europe and any island that produced anything. Local Americans didn’t work so well because they knew the lay of the land and it made more sense to inport Africans and export them. This is just organized slavery and doesn’t touch on using the locals til they died–whether it was in 1500 or in 1849

Indeed, but you must state that what we need is to turn US govenrment into a socialist-government. To topple the whole capitalist-government and reform it into a socialist-government. That’s the only way to save USA.

http://www.infowars.com/al-qaeda-chief-in-iraq-captured-killed-never-actually-existed-now-captured-again/

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, April 23, 2009

You couldn’t make it up if you tried. AFP today reports that Al-Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, has been captured and arrested. The problem with this is that al-Baghdadi has already been reported captured, previously reported killed and even said to have never actually existed by the U.S. military.

“Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was arrested today in Baghdad,” Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qasim Atta told AFP.

“It was Iraqi forces who arrested him based on an intelligence tipoff from someone,” he added.

Also known as Abu Hamza al-Baghdadi and Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi, many questions have surrounded the so called leader of al Qaeda’s political front organization the “Islamic State of Iraq”.

He was thought to have been one of the figures to succeed the equally shadowy Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a leader of insurgent forces in Iraq in 2006, after al Zarqawi, who was also previously reported captured and killed on several occasions, was laid to rest for good by the PR arm of the Pentagon.

The announcement of al-Baghdadi’s capture today jars with multiple previous reports from up to two years ago, detailing his arrest, his death and even questioning his existence altogether.

In March 2007, the Interior Ministry of Iraq claimed that al-Baghdadi had been captured in Baghdad. This was reported by AP and picked up by the likes of CNN, whose report stated that another insurgent had positively confirmed al-Baghdadi’s identity.

The U.S. military denied that al-Baghdadi was in their custody, however, and one day later Iraqi officials retracted their statements regarding his arrest.

Indeed this back and forth announcement of capture and later retraction occurred three times in the space of one week.

Then one month later, on May 3, 2007, the Iraqi Interior Ministry announced that al-Baghdadi had been killed by American and Iraqi forces north of Baghdad.

However, in July 2007, the U.S. military reported that al-Baghdadi had never actually existed and was, for all intents and purposes, a myth.

A reportedly high ranking “Al Qaeda in Iraq” detainee identified as Khaled al-Mashhadani, then claimed that al-Baghdadi was a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-run terror group, and that the “Islamic State of Iraq” was a “virtual organisation in cyberspace” created by al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayub al Masri.

The person claiming to be Baghdadi continued to release video and audiotapes attacking U.S. occupation of Iraq, but refused to show his face.

The U.S. military’s claim that Baghdadi is a fictitious character was then challenged in May 2008 after a police chief in Haditha said Baghdadi’s real identity is Hamed Dawood Mohammed Khalil al Zawi. “He was an officer in the security services and was dismissed from the army because of his extremism,” the police chief told al Arabiya television.

Now Baghdadi has been reported captured again!

This saga is another example of how a manufactured smoke and mirrors propaganda veils reality. The “war on terror” mantra continues to be propagated as justification to wage permanent occupation and control over the middle east by the global elite.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, al Zarqawi, al Baghdadi and the legions of other al qaeda operatives who have been reportedly captured and killed over and over are used as interchangeable PR tools.

Are or were any of them ever real? Possibly. However that matters little now.

Once again 99% of the corporate media will no doubt enthusiastically champion this latest arrest as a key victory in the continuing war on terror, and the majority of Americans who even notice will not take a second glance at the ludicrous back story.

as my solution to the current issue is the same as yours ..massive riots that puts the entire country into a halt..an immidiate series of amendments need to take place:
* trial of the crimninals at the white house and wall street
* form a new government from scratch
*adopt a new foreign policy by letting poor nations to choose their fate and their leaders , that is true democracy that will reinstate the american people’s image.
*regulate our car industry …buy american propaganda…impose higher taxes on car imports, set higher manufacturing standards such as those of Germany.
*finally and the most important one : take the media off the hands of the people that own the banks. and create other sources of media easily accessible and more transparent to educate the masses.

Who are these people who keep writing about their surprise and bewilderment at Obama’s wicked ways??? Doug Page, you’re a lawyer so you must have some smarts go get through law school and pass the bar. As a lifelong observer of govt, unions, and business you’ve been around the block enough times to detect a bullshit artist when you see and hear one. Since you’ve posted on this website, you must be aware of indy media and have read some of it.

With the above credentials and aptitude, you ought to know full well that Obama is doing exactly what he was elected to do – to keep the military/corporate complex gravy train rolling. The man ain’t no dummy. He graduated Harvard. Supposedly came up “the hard way,” complete with single mom/welfare storyline (cue violins, please), Mr. Community Organizer of the Chicago ghetto, yada, yada. With all this background, he knows what needs to be done but has no intentions of doing anything not straight outta the Wall Street/Pentagon playbook.

I am so tired of left leaning pundits and pontificators expressing their puzzlement and despair at Obama shitting all over every issue on the left/progressive agenda. Throughout the campaign, Obama’s empty rhetoric and sleaze bag, neoliberal team provided little doubt which way he was swinging on the political playground. It’s beyond weak now to feign shock and dismay when the writing was on the wall long ago. Sadder still, is what little criticism of Obama from the Left is tepid at best. These people are so lobotomized and p.c. paralyzed they are going to awake four years from now to discover Obama has screwed them over as much as Bush did.

First of all: what people need in this country is to create a united-front composed of all the small socialist, leftist parties of this country (The Green Party, The Socialist Equality Party, The Democratic Socialists of USA, The Socialist Party of USA, The Revolutionary Communist Party of USA, The Workers World Party of USA, The Marxist-Leninist Party of USA, and other alternative socialist parties) which would be a real vehicle in which the masses, the majority of americans who are pissed off with the capitalist-system, would have an answer out of this mess. to caste their votes every 4 years.

However there is a catch-22 with a creation of a United-Socialist-Front composed of small socialist parties.

The catch-22 problem is that the USA corporate fascist system thru the media and its other evil things it has, will not let that united-front succeeding, The media apparatus would denounce it as a cult or an evil organization, and would spread dirty propaganda against it, just like it did and it has done many times against Ron Paul, Howard Dean and even against Obama.

Second: An educational-propaganda campaign

In order to create a united socialist party we would also need an educational campaign in order to spread socialism and marxism propaganda, information and knowledge to the masses about the evils of capitalism, fascism and imperialism and that the only solution for American citizens is socialism and marxism as the only real alternative which is participative democratic socialism. An educational program to debunk the taboos and myths created by right-wing libertarians and conspiracy theorists such as Jeff Rense, Alex Jones and other conspiracy free market libertarian lunatics against Marxism, and communism ideology.

I read the biography of Hugo Chavez and that’s how he started his political program in order to change Venezuela. He first tried to wake up Venezuelan poors about the evils of neoliberalism, he talked about the importance of teaching the masses about capitalism vs. socialism. And then when Venezuelan’s poors digested the ideology of socialism, Hugo Chavez and his political movement began a campaign in Venezuela as an electoral option in 1998.

And here in USA we gotta do the same thing that Chavez did, teach the US poor for some months or years what is capitalism and what is socialism before trying to do form any political party.

Almost nobody in USA have taught the masses the evils of neoliberalism, not even Kucinich, Ron Paul or any other candidate.

Ron Paul was one of the few candidates who talked about the US constitution and nobody listened to him, however his major flaw is that Ron Paul is not socialist or marxist. I don’t know why if he is good intentioned as people say, he chosed the Libertarian free market ideology. If he is real smart, he should be a socialist and leftist, not a libertarian.

Because we all know that in history and present, countries with real bad economic problems and where its population is real poor, adopt state-capitalist policies or social-democrat leftist policies, but not libertarian free markets at all. In fact, when libertarianism free market is applied it increases poverty and destroys whole economies (Examples: Argentina)

So Ron Paul didn’t teach the US population about the evils of capitalism, because of the fact that Ron Paul was a capitalist, not a real alternative for poor people.

Only socialist parties can be a real alternative for victims of the Bush-Obama 1.5 trillion dollars bailouts, but socialist parties don’t have access to TV and the press in the USA and that’s why most americans don’t know the ideology of socialism,ge in TV.

So before marketing a United Socialist Front in USA as a third party alternative we need to spend some months or years trying to teach the poor people of America about the evils of capitalism and the wonders of a participative democratic socialist system, a people’s system.

socialism is so good, that it is the only ideology in this country that proposes a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour.

No other ideology proposes 15 dollars for minimum wage: http://socialistparty-usa.org/platform/economics.html 3. We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living. 5. We call for all financial and insurance institutions to be socially owned and operated by a democratically-controlled national banking authority, which should include credit unions, mutual insurance cooperatives, and cooperative state banks. In the meantime, we call for re-regulation of the banking and insurance industries

Yes they sure do. Do we need a permit?

Get real … O’Bama did NOT betray us. We believed the rhetoric! O’Bama is a politician … and that means when his lips are moving he is lying. I am reminded of Goebbels … the bigger the lie …

For years we have created what some call a ‘hologram’ … a world made up of gazillions of false images about who we are, where we came from, etc. These false images, in the pretechno dreamscape of the 21st century included text books that we believed because we couldn’t believe our teachers were lying to us. They were … and whether or not they knew it, the fact remains they had a strong bias to attempt to make us complacent for our masters.

They succeeded well … we suckered for Bush, and we suckered for O’Bama … and the reality is that the sucker-punch was built on all of the falsehoods of the greatest, most effective, entirely successful brain-washing campaign ever! We committed a grotesque genocide of the Native American (Indian?) and we pretend it was for ‘progress.’

But ‘progress’ in USan terms means ‘profitability’ for the oligarchs … and corporations (the bigger, the less our alleged leaders will allow them to fail). We saw human beings as ‘property’ and the only reason we didn’t enslave the Indians (and consequently enslaved the blacks) was that the Indians were too tough to daunt. The result was annihilation.

I could go on, but why bother. The whole myth of the ‘American’ story has been going on for so long that nobody realizes what a lie it is.

Ward had it right when he said Chickens Came Home to Roost on 9/11.

I can NOT believe that you actually thought O’Bama was really any different.

Skeptically Cynical,

RG the LG