Capitalism vs. Democracy

 Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” described by one French newspaper as a “a political and theoretical bulldozer,” defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism.

Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, does not stop there. He contends that capitalism’s inherent dynamic propels powerful forces that threaten democratic societies.

Rest of article here, from the New York Times.

Demystifying Nuclear Power What the Japanese Government Isn’t Saying About Fukushima

http://vimeo.com/82044516

MAY THE ODDS EVER BE IN YOUR FAVOR – HOPE & DEFIANCE

President Snow and his chief propagandist, Seneca Crane, have a discussion that could be taking place between president Obama and chairman Bernanke today. Hope is a funny thing. If the ruling class removes all hope, then the masses begin to feel they have nothing to lose and revolution becomes a foregone conclusion. For the elites of Panem, hope is used as a method of control. President Snow understood the danger of allowing the downtrodden multitudes too much hope. The Hunger Games allows one child to survive out of 24. The districts are forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol every year, while rooting for an unlikely hollow victory of one child surviving. 

The parents of children in the districts hope their children aren’t chosen. They hope they’ll scrounge up enough food to survive another day. They hope they don’t get killed in a mine explosion. They hope the peacekeepers don’t break down their doors and imprison them for illegal hunting. They hope they can endure another week. Snow knows that as long as they have only a faint hope to maintain their subsistence level lifestyle, they are unlikely to rebel. Seeing a sixteen year old girl openly defying the Capitol and awakening a spirit of humanity and courage in the subjugated masses is a huge threat to the ruling class.

Reflections on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 50 Years Later

Excerpt below. Full article here:

Unfortunately, we now live in a country where to say that Oswald is innocent is tantamount to committing a “thoughtcrime”. Americans increasingly practice what Orwell terms “crimestop,” the faculty of stopping short at the threshold of any dangerous thought. But given the facts of the matter, believing the Oswald-did-it-alone official truth is like saying 2 + 2 = 5.
We who are alive today may not live to see the truth on the Kennedy assassination finally win out. But it will, sooner or later. For truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. It has taken more than 500 years for the truth to be realized that Richard III did not kill his nephews. One hopes that it doesn’t take that long with the JFK assassination.

One man has come up with a solution: the Finlander Pentii Linkola. Excerpt here.

Humanflood

By Pentti Linkola
Translated by Harri Heinonen and Michael Moynihan
Introduction by Michael Moynihan.
Is Pentti Linkola posing the most dangerous thoughts mankind has ever considered? Or is he this planet's only remaining voice of sanity? Living an ascetic existence as a fisherman in a remote rural region of his frigid homeland, the Finnish philosopher has pondered mankind's position vis-?-vis the earth it inhabits and dares to utter the unspeakable. In order for the planet to continue living, man - or homo destructivus, as Linkola names him - must be violently thinned to a mere fraction of his current global population. Linkola's metaphor for the predicament is as follows:
What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and only one lifeboat, with room for only ten people, has been launched? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides of the boat.
As time creaks onward, Linkola's predictions and indictments grow more dire. He has come to realise that extreme situations demand extreme solutions:
"We still have a chance to be cruel. But if we are not cruel today, all is lost." The sworn enemy of Christians and Humanists both, Linkola knows that the fate of the earth will never be rescued by those who exalt "tenderness, love and dandelion garlands." Neither the developed nor under-developed populations of the planet deserve to survive at the expense of the biosphere as a whole. Linkola has urged that millions will starve to death or be promptly slaughtered in genocidal civil wars. Mandatory abortions should be carried out for any female who has more than two offspring. The only countries capable of initiating such draconian measures are those of the West, yet ironically they are the ones most hamstrung by debilitating notions of liberal humanism. As Linkola explains, "The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom." The realistic solution will be found in the implementation of an eco-fascist regime where brutal battalions of "green police," having freed their consciences from the "syrup ethics," are capable of doing whatever is necessary.

Full article here.

The Twilight of Capitalism

‘Worst’ is the product of twilight capitalism. Managers expect nothing of us but our worst behavior … they rely upon it; our position within the marketplace is ‘fools’. We are never asked what we can do for our country or anyone or anything other than ourselves. It is, ‘What’s in it for me right now?’. The Invisible Hand runs amok: we are children. To satisfy ‘now’ we have become purposefully ignorant, greedy, corrupt and ruthless: these most ‘efficiently’ exhibiting these characters are rewarded, everything outside is excluded. We are encouraged to be as complacent as possible, to ignore risk, to accept falsehoods at face value, become judgmental, impatient, irrational and filled with fear and self-loathing as if all these are virtues; to believe violence and waste represent ‘freedom’.

Arctic Death Spiral and the Methane Time Bomb (+playlist)