Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 21 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Bad Guys

Crony Capitalism, Repression, and the Police State

Eric L. Green
Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:12 UTC
Image

Police violence at Occupy Oakland
The current crony capitalist system in place since the Reagan Revolution dismantled the New Deal consensus that capitalism had to serve both labor and capital is requiring ever-increasing levels of repression to milk additional increments of wealth out of labor for the benefit of capital. Currently almost 5% of the U.S. population is either in jail, on probation, or otherwise involved in the correctional system. We have more people in prison both as a percentage and as a sum total than Stalin had in his gulags.

It was amazing to see the amount of police state brute force used against the Occupy movement. We're talking about a movement that, if it had been ignored, would have simply faded away within a few weeks because people would have gotten bored and moved on. Instead it was in the headlines for weeks because of the level of brutality used to suppress it. Why in the world were the oligarchs so panicked? It's because they have just about reached the end of the amount of force they can apply to eke out tiny increments of wealth out of the labor of the 99%. When you're already applying as much force as Stalin applied, you're reaching the point where it costs more to apply additional force than you'll get as a return on that additional force.
      Read More...
Arrow Down

Japan's Economy Contracts as Exports Plunge

John Watanabe
World Socialist Web Site
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:52 UTC
Image

Japanese Autoworkers
Japan's economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2011 by an annualised 2.3 percent, resulting in an overall yearly contraction of 0.9 percent. The country also recorded its first trade deficit in 31 years, reflecting sharply falling demand in its key exports markets in China, Europe and North America.

Significantly, the trade deficit continued in January. Japan's exports to China took a 20 percent dive compared to last year, recording the fourth straight month of decline on a year-on-year basis. China accounted for 40 percent of January's trade deficit. These results point both to the slowdown in China and its implications for the Japanese and global economy.

Japan's current account remained in surplus, but suffered its biggest yearly loss in history, threatening to undermine the government's ability to service the public debt, which stands at about 230 percent of gross domestic product.

Japanese manufacturing is being hit particularly hard. Falling sales in Europe and North America, the high value of the yen and increasing competition, especially from East Asian rivals, are threatening the very viability of basic industry.
      Read More...
War Whore

US, Britain Gear Up For War on Iran

Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:46 UTC
Image
The military commands in both the US and Britain have sought increased funding and stepped up deployments of arms and personnel to the Persian Gulf in preparation for an anticipated war against Iran.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon, acting on the request of the Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the region, has requested the re-allocation of some $100 million in military spending to ratchet up war preparations.

The Journal cast these preparations as defensive measures aimed at countering an Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which some 20 percent of the world's exported oil flows. Iran's threat came in response to trade sanctions and embargoes imposed by the US and Western Europe that amount to a blockade, an act of war, as well as open Israeli threats to bomb the country.

"The US military has notified Congress of plans to preposition new mine-detection and clearing equipment and expand surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, according to defense officials briefed on the requests," the Journal reports. "The military also wants to quickly modify weapons systems on ships so they could be used against Iranian fast-attack boats, as well as shore-launched cruise missiles, the defense officials said."
      Read More...
Arrow Down

Mass Layoffs Expose Myth of US Economic "Recovery"

Andre Damon
World Socialist Web Site
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:39 UTC
Image
The recent announcements of mass layoffs by the US Postal Service, Procter & Gamble, and Archer Daniels Midland, together with the bankruptcies of Fuller Brush and American Airlines, have upended claims that the United States is in the midst of an "economic recovery."

In fact, the US economy remains mired in mass unemployment, with falling real wages and growing poverty a fact of life for millions of people. Small and medium businesses, facing immense pressures to cut costs, are collapsing by the tens of thousands.

The worst of the recent job cuts was conducted by the government itself: the US Postal Service announced last week that it would wipe out 35,000 jobs by the end of September, part of a longer-term plan to eliminate 150,000 jobs.

One well-known corporate name after another has joined the procession of bankruptcies and layoffs, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs combined: Sears, Procter & Gamble, American Airlines, Kodak, Fuller Brush Company (which filed bankruptcy last week), Archer Daniels Midland, IBM.
      Read More...
Attention

US Snubs Out Legal Cigar Transaction

Peter Stanners
The Copenhagen Post
Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:51 UTC
Cuban Cigars
© Colourbox
Due to the trade embargo, the trade in Cuban cigars is illegal in the USA.

Foreign minister intervenes after Danish man loses appeal to have 137,000 kroner returned to him by the Americans

Authorities in the US have refused to return 137,000 kroner that was confiscated from a Danish policeman who attempted to legally purchase Cuban cigars from Germany.

Torben Nødskouv intended to resell the cigars through his small business Cigarhuset and made the transaction in dollars with a Hamburg-based distributor. But the transaction, which was automatically routed through the US, was picked up by American authorities who froze the money, arguing that the transaction violated the American trade embargo with Cuba.

Nødskouv appealed after the $20,000 transaction was frozen last autumn, but the money may be permanently lost after he was recently informed that it would not be returned to him.
      Read More...
MIB

2012 Election Rigged

Freedom3777
YouTube
Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:08 UTC
      Read More...
Nuke

Report: Japan's Government "Collapsed" During Fukushima Nuke Crisis

Lucy Craft
CBS News
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:17 UTC
Members of Japan Self-Defense Force
© AP
Members of Japan Self-Defense Force practice during a decontamination exercise at the Yokota Air Base in Tokyo.
The one year anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan is less than two weeks away, but details about the nuclear meltdown that happened that tragic day are just beginning to emerge.

On Feb. 27, a news helicopter was allowed close enough to get a good glimpse of the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. Today, a report revealed the chaos between Japan's leaders during the crisis.

"The normal lines of authority completely collapsed," Tetsuro Fukuyama, the prime minister's adviser, told investigators.

CBS News correspondent Lucy Craft reported that in the hours after the tsunami struck the nuclear plant, Japanese officials huddled in an emergency bunker struggled to grasp the size of the catastrophe.

"As we listened to our top nuclear experts, we politicians had no idea what they were talking about. Was anyone going to suffer radiation contamination? Would this be another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island? No one could give us a straight answer," Fukuyama recalled in the report.
      Read More...
Heart

Asma Al-Assad, Diana of the Middle East: Syria's First Lady on Gaza


CNN
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:52 UTC
Wife of Syrian President, Asma Al-Assad, speaks out about the despicable Israeli abuses against Palestinians in this interview with CNN, recorded three years ago. Are we beginning to see why the Al Assads have been targeted for elimination? Conscientious leaders of just societies must be removed to make way for barbaric 'democrazi' and total world domination of, by and for psychopaths.

      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Syrian Activists: 64 Bodies Found Near Homs in One of the Worst Mass Killings

Liz Sly
The Washington Post
Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:59 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Rodrigo Abd
A boy stands in front of a shop destroyed by Syrian army shelling in the center of Idlib on Monday.
Beirut - The bodies of dozens of men were found dumped on wasteland on the outskirts of the stricken city of Homs on Monday in what appeared to be one of the worst instances of mass killing since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began last March.

The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group, said that the bodies of 64 men were taken to the National Hospital in Homs and that an unknown number of women and children who had been with them are missing. Activists said they thought that the men had been trying to flee the violence with their families when they were stopped and gunned down by security forces.

The details available were murky, however, and the bodies had not been identified, making it difficult to establish exactly how or why the men died.

The discovery came as Syria's state media announced that a big majority of Syrians had voted to approve a new constitution that would allow Assad to remain in power until 2028. U.S. and European leaders have condemned the exercise as meaningless, since it seemed designed primarily to ensure Assad's survival rather than to implement genuine reforms.

The apparent mass killing in Homs spoke to the rising ferocity of the violence engulfing many parts of Syria as the government seeks to quell the revolt and the once-peaceful protest movement increasingly resorts to arms to resist the onslaught, stirring fears of a civil war that could ignite a wider regional conflict.

Comment: To get a better picture of what's really going on in Syria, please read the Sott Focus "Syria's Bloody CIA Revolution - A Distraction?"

      Read More...
Star of David

Warmongers: Israelis Reportedly Don't Plan to Notify US if Decision Made to Strike Iran


Fox News
Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters
March, 30, 2009: Israeli air force A-4 jets are seen in the background as personnel prepare an F-16 fighter jet at Hatzerim air base, southern Israel.
Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions told the Associated Press. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.

Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack. The U.S. has been working with the Israelis for months to persuade them that an attack would be only a temporary setback to Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak delivered the message to a series of top-level U.S. visitors to the country, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House national security adviser and the director of national intelligence, and top U.S. lawmakers, all trying to close the trust gap between Israel and the U.S. over how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Netanyahu delivered the same message to all the Americans who have traveled to Israel for talks, the U.S. official said.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts