Day: April 15, 2014

Four Eras Of Slavery, For The Benefit Of Corporations

~ admin ~ 1 Comment

NationOfChange  April 14 2014

Paul Buchheit
Paul Buchheit

David Horowitz, founder of an organization called the “Freedom Center,” argued that blacks should not be paid reparations for the enslavement of their ancestors. Among his reasons are that:

  • There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery
  • Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery
  • Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid

But slavery, in its various forms of physical and mental torment, has been a part of U.S. history from the beginnings of our country to the present day. There are numerous modern-day corporations who profited immensely – themselves or their predecessors – from slave labor. Only token amounts have been paid back, along with a few scattered apologies.

Four eras of abuse can clearly be identified.

First Era: Before Emancipation

Prior to the Civil War, King Cotton was the rallying cry for the South. With cotton accounting for 60 percent of all U.S. exports, and 75 percent of all the cotton purchased by Great Britain, slaves were needed more than ever. African-Americans in tens of thousands were herded to the deep south, chained neck to neck as they became the hapless tools of industry.

Continue reading →

The U.S. Is Not a Democracy, It Is an Oligarchy

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

Eric Zuesse – A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, “Who governs? Who really rules?” in this country, is:

“Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, …” and then they go on to say, it’s not true, and that, “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened” by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead “the nearly total failure of ‘median voter’ and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy.

Continue reading →

Japan’s Radioactive Potemkin Village: The Government’s Double-Dealing Data

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

Activist Post April 13 2014

The plane to Lisbon, you would like to be on it.
Why, what’s in Lisbon?
To get back to America. I’ve often speculated why you don’t return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with the Senator’s wife? I like to think that you killed a man, it’s the romantic in me.
It’s a combination of all three.
And what in Heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?
My health, I came to Casablanca for the waters.
The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
I was misinformed. – Reins & Bogart, Casablanca (1942)

I stand to be corrected but what I recently witnessed first hand and face to face in the city of Nihonmatsu can be interpreted as nothing other than scientific fraud and blatant misrepresentation of the facts on the part of the Japanese government regarding gamma radiation levels, leading to the early deaths of tens of thousands of residents (1). I visited a large nuclear refugee camp in a beautiful location near Nihonmatsu, a modest sized city just outside the evacuation zone of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant No. 1 (FNPP#1) disaster site (2).

Mild mannered, kind and brave Mr. Honda: “People are angry because the government has lied to them and is not resolving the situation in an honest and forthright manner.”
Mild mannered, kind and brave Mr. Honda: “People are angry because the government has lied to them and is not resolving the situation in an honest and forthright manner.”

Nihonmatsu is a typical mid-sized city in the near region of the FNPP#1 that was heavily doused with radiation from the triple meltdowns that occurred in March of 2011. Due to wind direction, the southern side of the plant did not receive nearly as much as in the northwest (3). Last summer I traveled within just a few kilometers of the FNPP#1 from the south, but readings never exceeded 0.5 microsieverts per hour (mcr sv pr hr). (Consider that 0.1 mcr sv pr hr is roughly an average dose received by a person in a normal environment).

Continue reading →