Monday, May 10, 2010

The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Ever wonder why Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research in Canada never writes anything about Global Law, the Global System or the Global Religion? Do a keyword search at his website and see exactly how many articles he's written using the word "communitarian." Like revolutionary Tea Party founder Ron Paul, he never mentions it to his readers as part of his explanations or objections to globalization. Like Paul over on the extreme right, Global Researchers on the left write collaborative books on "the complex causes" of the economic crisis without ever once explaining the political theory behind the emerging economic system.

What continues to amaze me is how many "patriot" Americans still advertise these fakes. I used to refer to them as a source and many of their links are on my web pages. Like the Jones cartel, many of the disinformation experts have legitimate information at their sites.
"The complex causes as well as the devastating consequences of the economic crisis are carefully scrutinized with contributions from Ellen Brown, Tom Burghardt, Michel Chossudovsky, Richard C. Cook, Shamus Cooke, John Bellamy Foster, Michael Hudson, Tanya Cariina Hsu, Fred Magdoff, Andrew Gavin Marshall, James Petras, Peter Phillips, Peter Dale Scott, Bill Van Auken, Claudia von Werlhof and Mike Whitney." By Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19025
I began a search for the contributing authors, starting with LA attorney Ellen Brown (who coincidentally is the topic of a Peter Myer's email forward today) . The first return was to a familiar source, one whose contributions to anti communitarian studies is well established. I especially appreciate the way this article explains how easily the sly communitarian solution is introduced in all these brilliant "exposes." (There were also many people who thought I would link favorably to this propaganda film.)

Zeitgeist Addendum: Toward a Technocratic, Communitarian, Cybernated Society

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Blog/?p=685

Next I looked up Tom Burghardt. Can't find him writing about it either, but his search led me to a recent Prison Planet.tv review of Jones' new documentary Invisible Empire: "The most contemporary branch of the agenda to enforce neo-feudalism and top-down communitarianism, in total hostility to the notion of true freedom and individuality – the phony environmentalist movement – which is driven by the global warming fraud, is also blown wide open." It appears the writers at Alex Jones' media cartel are slipping it in now the same way Clinton does! heh. http://stevenjohnhibbs.wordpress.com/category/clinton-regime/

Next I looked up Michel Chossudovsky and it led me back to this article, Bolivia: National Revolution and "Communitarian Socialism" by Federico Fuentes, a "frequent contributor" at globalresearch.ca: "The goal of the "historic project" of the indigenous peoples and popular movements is "a social formation where large private property of the means of production will given way to communitarian social property; the political power of the `colonial-imperialist oligarchic bloc' will be substituted by the revolutionary construction of a new power by the 'indigenous nations, revolutionary classes and urban sector bloc'."http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13339

Next I looked up Richard C. Cook, a former federal analyst who worked for 21 years for the U.S. Treasury. He writes zero about communitarian economics.

Then I found this looking for Shamus Cooke:

At the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, the consistent message is ecological, indigenous, communitarian and anti-corporate. The great majority of speakers sound radical and have the support of the thousands of attendees. The message is welcome at the top, in the person of Evo Morales, the indigenous Aymara former farmer and union organizer who is Bolivia’s president

The World At 4 Degrees Celsius:
Last Call On Climate (PDF)
By Andrew Glikson

www.countercurrents.org/glikson210410.pdf

and this too:

The Military's War On The Earth: By Linda Greene

Use as many low-energy lightbulbs as you like, turn down the thermostat and drive a hybrid car, but whatever you do as an individual -- indeed, the sum of what we all do for the environment -- does almost nothing to alleviate the U.S. military's destruction of the earth. --- --- In ‘The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism’, Barry Sanders writes that like other capitalist institutions, "each military branch ... must grow larger and fatter each year; expansion is the life blood of imperialism." --- Further, Sanders asserts, "The military can brook limits of no kind whatsoever. ... The Pentagon conducts its business behind very thick and very closed doors. It writes its own rules and either follows them or violates them, depending on the situation." --- Almost all "military numbers remain off of official reports, secret and out of sight." Sanders obtained the information he cites in the book by gleaning what he could from "arcane reports" and obscure Web sites belonging to the Department of Defense and Government Accounting Office, plus books and articles. --- Sanders describes, in horrifying detail, how the military is "the largest single source of pollution in this country and in the world: the United States military -- in particular the military in its most ferocious and stepped-up mode -- namely, the military at war." --- He goes on to say, "When we declare war on a foreign nation, we now also declare war on the Earth, on the soil and plants and animals, the water and wind and people in the most far-reaching and deeply infecting ways." --- --- --- "Sanders has a solution to the environmental devastation the military causes: Banning War." --- This goal, Sanders says, can be achieved if "our efforts ... expand exponentially, in a communitarian movement around the globe the likes of which no one has ever witnessed, one that refuses to make compromises about a basic respect for life." - "In the 21st century the military is the most sacrosanct institution in our country." - So far, almost no one has dared to criticize its policies and practices, let alone its budget. --- That silence, Sanders insists, must end.
John Bellamy Foster is a Marxist professor of Sociology at UO, Eugene. (You'd think this guy would know what communitarianism is.) http://sociology.uoregon.edu/faculty/foster.php

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street analyst who writes nothing about communitarianism.

Tanya Cariina Hsu is a British political analyst who apparently has no idea what political communitarianism is.

Fred Magdoff is a professor of plant and soil science who has no idea what it is either. He did lead me to this article at Monthly Review (where the above mentioned Foster is editor) http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/douzinas290509.html:
The individualism of universal principles forgets that every person is a world and comes into existence in common with others, that we are all in community. Being in common is an integral part of being self: self is exposed to the other, it is posed in exteriority, the other is part of the intimacy of self. Before me comes the (m)other. I am I because the other and language has called me 'you', 'Costas'. My face is always exposed to others, always turned toward an other and faced by him or her never facing myself. On the other hand, being in community with others is the opposite of the communitarian common being or belonging to an essential community. Most communitarians define community through the commonality of tradition, history and culture, the various past crystallisations whose inescapable weight determines present possibilities. The essence of the communitarian community is often to compel or 'allow' people to find their 'essence', common 'humanity' now defined as the spirit of tradition, or the nation, religion, the people, the leader. We have to follow traditional values and exclude what is alien and other. Community as communion accepts human rights only to the extent that they help submerge the I into the We, all the way till death, the point of 'absolute communion' with dead tradition.6
Andrew Gavin Marshall published an article last month called Global Oppression: Transnational Security State, and he never mentions it once. http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=67&contentid=6833

James Petras is very familiar with the word communitarianism; in fact he openly discussed the Chilean transition to a communitarian society in a book he wrote in 1969: http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1758

Not sure is this is the same Peter Phillips, but this one teaches economics at UToronto and studies communitarian integration procedures and methodology

Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat and professor at Berekley who writes books about communitarians, but apparently he doesn't know that's what they're called yet. http://www.peterdalescott.net/q.html

Bill Van Auken has an article at the World Socialist Website that I linked to from the ACL's Community Policing page http://nord.twu.net/acl/commpolicing.html

Claudia von Werlhof is a German sociologist who wrote The Interconnectedness of All Being: A New Spirituality for A New Civilization. A student of Gramsci?, she understands the "new paradigm shift" but doesn't use the word that describes it, instead she tells us:
In this context, Renate Genth (2002) says that we need a new “politics of civilization”, since we are experiencing a “civilization crisis”. This new politics of civilization has to focus on a new relationship to nature, a new relationship between the sexes, a new relationship between the generations, and a new relationship to “the transcendent”. The transcendent generally means religious needs and our relationship to death. I would say that the relationship to the transcendent is the relationship to earth spirituality.
Mike Whitney is a writer at counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney10162008.html, here's a blog that republished one of Whitney's articles where the owner links to Amitai Etzioni under the heading of an "Independent Thinker" (hahhahah!)
http://thecommons4change.blogspot.com/2005/03/mike-whitney-scalia-and-opus-dei.html

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's impossible to get people to see that those like Alex Jones are disinformation agents.

Anonymous said...

Ron Paul digs into the economic and political roots of our current predicaments but he stops short of pinning blame on any person or group probably because of his ties. He is a 32nd Degree Freemason. His father was as well. His wife is a member of the Eastern Star.

Paul makes valid arguments for Austrian Economics and refutations against Keynesianism. He even writes in his recent book that he doesn't believe there is a conspiracy behind the Federal Reserve even though he's calling for more transparency. It's an obvious disconnect or a huge leap he wants his supporters to make.

overtheedge said...

The reports spent an inordinate time on cause, but few mention probable effects on the average Joe.

I would liken this to driving down the road by watching in the rear view mirror. We will be able to see the curve we missed.

I see the value of a strong military for defense and detterence. However, the military is a massive consumer of national wealth and leaves behind a wasteland. No Madam, it doesn't produce security. We have the most powerful military in the world and the people are more insecure and fearful than ever before.

All the reports and studies cost money. Does anyone think smoke and mirrors are free? Welcome to the Fun House, let us entertain you.

We, the People, in order to form a more perfect Union, have purchased distractions.

Anonymous said...

Chossudovsky, Berghardt, and Marshall are dis-information agents? Maybe you just have problems digesting words with more syllables than "communitarian," or maybe you've fallen prey to the horrible disease of myopia. Pet causes are great when they lead you to new and interesting insights that no one has been able to unearth previously, but when they lead you to bashing people who are brilliant at exposing important issues in their own chosen field, it just makes you look ignorant.

Niki Raapana said...

Dis-information comes in many forms, and it's impossible that these brilliant people do not understand communitarianism. To call it a "pet cause" shows your ignorance and explains your purpose for making a comment here. To assume I have problems digesting the words of the most brilliant in their fields is another way of saying I should trust them only because they are the "experts," which is what communitarians always say.