Union Free-market capitalism was supposed to save us from the tyranny of faceless apparatchiks. But that's not what happened.

The great power struggle of the 20th century was the competition between Soviet-style communism and "free-market" corporatism for domination of the world's resources. In America, it's taken for granted that Soviet communism lost (though China's more capitalist variant seems to be doing well), and the superiority of neo-liberal economics -- as epitomized by the great multinational corporations -- was thus affirmed for all time and eternity.

There's a small problem with this, though. An old bit of wisdom says: choose your enemies carefully, because over time, you will tend to become the very thing you most strongly resist. One of the most striking things about our victorious corporations now is the degree to which they've taken on some of the most noxious and Kafkaesque attributes of the Soviet system -- too often leaving their employees, customers, and other stakeholders just as powerless over their own fates as the unhappy citizens of those old centrally planned economies of the USSR were back in the day.

It's not just that the corporations have taken control over our government (though that's awful enough). It's also that they've taken control over -- and put serious limits on -- our choices regarding what we buy, where we work, how we live, and what rights we have. Our futures are increasingly no longer our own: more and more decisions, large and small, that determine the quality of our lives are being made by Politburo apparatchiks at a Supreme Corporate Soviet somewhere far distant from us. Only now, those apparatchiks are PR and marketing executives, titans of corporate finance, lobbyists for multinationals, and bean-counting managers trying to increase profits at the expense of our freedom.

With tongue only somewhat in cheek, here are a few ways in which Americans are now becoming a new lumpenproletariat, subject to the whims and diktats of our new Soviet-style corporate overlords.

Port-au-Prince - The deadly earthquake that leveled Haiti's capital more than two years ago brought a thread of hope: a promise of renewal. With the United States taking the lead, international donors pledged billions of dollars to help the country "build back better," breaking its cycle of dependency.

But after the rubble was cleared and the dead buried, what the quake laid bare was the depth of Haiti's dysfunction. Today, the fruits of an ambitious, $1.8 billion U.S. reconstruction promise are hard to find. Immediate, basic needs for bottled water, temporary shelter and medicine were the obvious priorities. But projects fundamental to Haiti's transformation out of poverty, such as permanent housing and electric plants in the heavily hit capital of Port-au-Prince have not taken off.

Critics say the U.S. effort to reconstruct Haiti was flawed from the start. While "build back better" was a comforting notion, there wasn't much of a foundation to build upon. Haiti's chronic political instability and lack of coordinated leadership between Haiti and the U.S. meant crucial decisions about construction projects were slow to be approved. Red tape stalled those that were.

The international community's $10 billion effort was also hindered by its pledge to get approval for projects from the Haitian government. For more than a year then-President Rene Preval was, as he later described it, "paralyzed," while his government was mostly obliterated, with 16,000 civil servants killed and most ministries in ruins. It wasn't until earlier this year that a fully operational government was in place to sign paperwork, adopt codes and write regulations. Other delays included challenges to contracts, underestimates of what needed to be done, and land disputes.

Defense Minister says military prepared for operation should Syrian gov't hands missiles, chemical weapons to Hezbollah.

Israel is preparing for a possible military intervention in Syria in case the Syrian government hands missiles or chemical weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.

"I have instructed the military to increase its intelligence preparations and prepare what is needed so that ... (if necessary) ... we will be able to consider carrying out an operation," Barak said in an interview on Channel 10 television.

Claiming 70 victims, 12 confirmed dead and 58 injured, the mass shooting Friday at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, about 10 miles from Denver, is the worst mass shooting in US history. Cinema goers were 30 minutes into a sold-out midnight screening of the newly-released third installment of the Dark Knight Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, when someone described by witnesses as dressed "entirely in black" in full SWAT/riot gear - including gas mask, ballistic helmet, bullet-proof vest, bullet-proof leggings, throat and groin protection, and black tactical gloves - entered an emergency side exit of the theater.

After releasing cannisters of tear gas into the packed movie theater, he proceeded to calmly shoot members of the audience, picking off anyone who tried to escape along the aisles. Most of the movie-goers were between 15 and 25 years of age. When the gunman decided he was done, he exited the way he came, downed his weapon and gave himself up to police. A law enforcement source told CBS News the suspect was well-equipped, with one rifle, two handguns and a knife. There were also unidentified explosives found in his vehicle. He also informed them about "possible" explosives in his apartment. When Aurora police showed up at the University of Colorado medical campus address, they found his apartment rigged with trip wires, thousands of rounds of ammunition, jars full of highly flammable liquid that would explode on mixing and 30 improvised grenades. Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said "I personally have never seen anything like what the pictures show us is in there."

The chief suspect is 24-year-old James Holmes, a graduate medical student pursuing a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Colorado. He had no previous history of trouble with the law.

Colleagues and friends have been coming forward to express shock that Holmes could be responsible for the shootout. Billy Kromka worked with Holmes for three months last summer and told the New York Times, "It was just shocking, because there was no way I thought he could have the capacity to commit an atrocity like this." A former high school classmate, Keith Goodwin, called Holmes a "generally pleasant guy," and stated that "James was certainly not someone I would have ever imagined shooting somebody." Dan Kim, a 23-year-old student at University of California San Diego, called Holmes a "super-nice kid," "kinda quiet" and "really smart."

Professors have also spoken favorably of Holmes, who was an honor student and "academically, he was at the top of the top." Kelly Huffman, an assistant professor of psychology at University of California Riverside described him as "a smart and quiet guy."

How many times before have we come across this glaring inconsistency between the cold hard facts of a shooting and the real character of the chief suspect? The 'crazed lone shooter' has no history of violence, let alone psychopathic tendencies, is evidently very intelligent and has great character references from friends and colleagues. It's always possible that he was hiding a dark side, but a medical student planning such an attack with tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons, armor and sophisticated explosives, on his own and of his own volition, takes us into the realm of the bizarre.

A man who was at the Colorado movie theater where a dozen people were killed this morning, says he saw the gunman.

He says he thinks someone deliberately let the gunman inside once the movie started.

Here's what he told TV station KCNC this morning live on their newscast.

"As I was sitting down to get my seat, I noticed that a person came up to the front row, the front right, sat down, and as credits were going, it looked like he got a phone call. He went out toward the emergency exit doorway, which I thought was unusual to take a phone call. And it seemed like he probably pried it open, or probably did not let it latch all the way. As soon as the movie started, somebody came in, all black, gas mask, armor, and threw a gas can into the audience, and it went off, and then there were gunshots that took place."

Police arrested 24-year-old James Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, for the shootings.

At least 12 people were killed and 38 others wounded when the gunman opened fire during the midnight screening of the newest Batman film, "The Dark Knight Rises."

More than 50,000 U.N. officials, scientists, environmental advocates and a few heads of state will gather this coming week in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on sustainable development. They're assembling 20 years after the first Earth Summit was held in the same city, and the goal now, as it was then, is to figure out how to cut dangerous greenhouse gases and help the 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty. Or, to put it more starkly, how we can live ethically without threatening the ability of future generations to live at all.


That's what's on the agenda.

But what we want to know is: What's on the menu? Specifically, will this large gathering on climate change be serving meat - whose production and consumption are major contributors to climate change?

We tried to find out.

The first answer to our e-mail inquiries ignored the question and pointed with pride to the event's effort to be green. A U.N. spokesperson responded: "There have been quite a few actions taken by both the Brazilian Government and the UN secretariat to 'green' the Rio conference. For one thing, the conference will be 'papersmart,' with no hard documentation issued unless a special request is made for print on demand. I also know that the Brazilian Government has been addressing plastics issues."

Former Games commissioner says 25 officers took performers away in handcuffs at demonstration against sponsorship

The former London 2012 "ethics tsar" Meredith Alexander has accused police of an "Olympic-sized overreaction", saying they broke up a theatre performance designed to highlight the problems of corporate sponsorship of the Games and arrested six people on suspicion of criminal damage for spilling custard.

Alexander, who was behind the event in Trafalgar Square in central London on Friday, quit her role as a commissioner of the Olympic sustainability watchdog earlier this year over the awarding of a £7m Olympic sponsorship deal to Dow Chemical. Dow owns Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), responsible for the 1984 gas disaster in Bhopal, India, which killed 25,000 people.

Alexander described how 25 police officers moved in after the 15-minute piece of theatre, which was performed to explain objections to sponsorship of the Olympics by companies such as Dow, BP and Rio Tinto.

Stocks fell Friday after a Spanish region asked Madrid for financial aid, rekindling fears about Europe's debt crisis and prompting traders to cash in three days of gains.

The news that Valencia would seek a bailout interrupted a period of relative calm for Wall Street and raised the specter that the euro zone's fourth-largest economy would itself eventually need to be rescued.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 121 points. Bank shares, sensitive to signs of trouble in Europe, were among the biggest losers.

The euro slid broadly, setting a two-year low against the dollar. The single currency fell as low as $1.2143, its weakest level since mid-June 2010. Spanish benchmark bond yields hit euro-era highs. The yield on the 10-year bond reached 7.3 percent.

"Any time the euro lets go so does the market come under pressure," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont. "This morning the headlines and the news hit and boom, everybody is selling everything."

Apparently, according to some pundits, Mitt and Ann Romney went ballistic when an Obama aide pointed out that if Mitt was not the CEO, President and sole stockholder of Bain Capital from 1999-2002, then he lied on the Security and Exchange Commission form, which could be a felony.

Being even associated with the word felony sent the Romneys into high dudgeon, since they consider that they have double impunity: they are Mormons chosen by God and also endowed with the divine anointment of being extravagantly wealthy.

As I predicted, the Israelis have successfully transformed Wednesday's attack at Burgas airport in Bulgaria into a 'suicide bomber' attack. It's a rather transparent attempt to provide 'proof' that the bombing was the work of the Iranians or Hizb'allah in the absence of any actual evidence that Iran or Hizb'allah were involved. After all, everyone 'knows' that Muslims and 'suicide bombers' are one and the same, and everyone 'knows that' Iran and Hizb'allah are evil and want to destroy the Jews, so what more 'proof' is needed?

As I noted in my previous article, initial reports stated that the bomb was in the luggage compartment of the bus, and surely forensic examination of the bus could verify this. The only problem is that the Israelis have more or less taken over the investigation (as they always do), which in turn has resulted (as it always does) in statements of 'fact' without proof by the Israeli investigators.

In this case, it seems the Israelis have used the unidentified eyewitness report (from yesterday, probably made by an Israeli agent) that the bomb exploded after someone got on the bus, to affirm that it was a 'suicide bomber'. Apparently no one in the mainstream media finds it utterly preposterous to assume that just because the bomb exploded after someone got on the bus, that person must be the 'suicide bomber'. By that logic, all the other people already on the bus could also be suicide bombers. Unless of course all suicide bombers are required to blow themselves up immediately after they arrive at their target.