Americans Lost Faith In Democratic Institutions Traced To The Kennedy Assassination

One of thousands of 'Wanted for Treason' posters retrieved from Dallas streets on the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Our civic decline and mistrust in government commenced almost from the instant of Kennedy's killing.

More and more articles, op-eds have been shedding light on the retreat of American voters from embracing democracy and democratic institutions and many even distrusting the voting process entirely. For reference, a Pew Research Center Poll barely a month ago showed the "trust in government" at 19 percent, compared to 89 percent in 1959.  Meanwhile, Gallup's research  has: Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low.

One article kept from The International New York Times, from when we traveled eastern Europe last September, stated that not only have citizens liked democracy less than they once did but also "the democratic game itself"  has been eroded. The level of discourse citizen to citizen has coarsened as well as the discourse within and between branches of the government itself.  We now see, for example, procedures like the filibuster - once reserved for extraordinary circumstances -  employed with regularity.

Most astounding to me was the observation (ibid.)

"When asked by the World Values Survey to rate how democratically their country is being governed on a 10 point scale, a third of Americans responded at the low end - 'not at all democratic"

Even more astounding and veering into the appalling - a recent public opinion poll showed that 43 percent of Republicans, 20 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of independents would support a military coup against the United States government under certain circumstances.

What has happened between 1959 and the present to degrade civility and political civic space to this extent? Writing as one who has lived those years and observed carefully the nation's political arc, I can put the down slide almost from the time of the Kennedy assassination, on Nov. 22, 1963. 

Most savvy and politically aware people, paying any attention at all, knew from the instant LBJ was sworn in (later on the 22nd) that he had had a hand in at least accepting a plan for the kill.  When he set up the phony Warren Commission,, everyone with  politically savvy eyes and ears could smell a rat, a ruse to cover up the bastard's tracks. With the  cover up's assistance of Operation Mockingbird, the metastasizing cancer of government distrust had begun its long and sordid track. As Steve Kornacki reported in his ‘UP’ journal on MSNBC, the morning of Nov. 23, 2013, the "fix" was in even before JFK arrived in Big D. Using tapes and media documents, Kornacki showed that Johnson was about to be exposed as an influence peddler in conjunction with the Bobby Baker scandal by LIFE magazine in its upcoming issue. Johnson knew this months in advance and also he had no choice other than to place his future fortunes with the several interests that wanted Kennedy dead, especially the CIA.

A paper trail of bank statements and payments was to have been included in the LIFE expose, and as Kornacki pointed out a Senate investigation would have ensured LBJ being dumped from Kennedy’s 1964 ticket.  In other words, LBJ had by far the most to gain from JFK’s assassination, since he’d then be next in line as President, and not have to face justice in the Baker scandal. What most don't say is that many of us were already aware of Johnson's nefarious background at the time and we didn't trust him.   Philip Nelson, whose book ‘LBJ – The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination’ – was even cited by former British intelligent agent and author John Hughes-Wilson,  observed (Chapter 6: The Conspirators, p. 317):

“The crime could only have been accomplished with at least the acquiescence and foreknowledge of the only man capable of choreographing the massive cover-up which was immediately launched. It is axiomatic that since the cover-up started before the shots were fired, the order for JFK’s assassination could only have come from his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.”

By 1984, LBJ's propensity to remove obstacles by murder was finally uncovered in a Dallas Morning News headline article, e.g.

Billie Sol Estes reported that Johnson had Henry Harvey Marshall, a USDA official in charge of the federal cotton allotment detail,  killed because he had attempted to link Estes’ nefarious dealings to the then Vice-President.  While Estes ended up doing prison time, he did have his say before a grand jury (which subpoenaed him)  In the follow-up grand jury investigation, Johnson, his one-time aide Cliff Carter, and ‘Mac’ Wallace were all deemed “co-conspirators in the murder” of Marshall.

But Johnson was only one sordid piece - or cog-   in the whole undermining tapestry that has ultimately led to the massive citizen distrust in government and the democratic process we behold today. It is part of the cancer I refer to as erosion of the nation's civility and civic space.  The fact is that enormous external forces were already afoot and wary of Kennedy's policies and genuinely liberal stances on multifold issues.  Stances which, if continued, would very well threaten those interests.

For example, we now understand today that much of the rancor and sense of rebellion has been initiated with global trade pacts like NAFTA.   We now also know that the hype used by the elites to pump up support has been more a matter of manipulation of citizen consent, e.g.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-johnson/69588/tpp-partner-jails-human-rights-blogger

But this incentive to spread a misshapen plan for global trade didn't just commence in the past 25 years. Nor did the aspiration for a genuinely fair trade system originate recently. In fact, the original importance of preserving a global trade network without sacrifice to private monopoly or multi-national power was first recognized by  John F. Kennedy in late 1962 and 1963. He made enormous efforts to stave off incipient private control of the globalization process. As Donald Gibson observes in his must-read monograph(‘Battling Wall Street – The Kennedy Presidency’, Sheridan Square Press, 1994, p. 113):

"John Kennedy declared the 1960s the decade of development. The Alliance for Progress, development aid, low interest loans, nation-to-nation cooperation, and some measure of government planning were some of the ingredients of that policy. Within a few years of Kennedy's death most of this had been abandoned. By the early 1970s, this type of effort and the optimism associated with it had vanished altogether."

The effect was that the task of implementing and governing economic adjustment was assumed by private markets. Power which has grown exponentially since the extirpation of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1973. The causal undercurrents and ideology of corporate-state global domination have been well articulated by Gibson, even from before its emergence within ten years of the Kennedy assassination (which many astute observers tie in with financial elite interests) (op. cit. P. 75):

"Kennedy's ideas.. .his view of foreign aid and foreign policy, and his recommendations and actions in a variety of specific areas disrupted or threatened to disrupt an established order. In that established order, in place for most of the century, major government decisions were to serve or at least not disrupt the privately organized hierarchy."

Gibson goes on to point out that the vested interests within this hierarchy were similar to, "if not direct imitations of those of that older British elite rooted in inherited wealth and titles, and organized in the modern world around control of finance and raw materials." (ibid.)

It seems very plausible then, that the slaying of John F. Kennedy set the stage for a global Corporatocracy in which these same elite imperatives would be allowed to subordinate and dominate the interests and welfare of the masses. Imaginary? Take a gander at columnist Jay Bookman's view from his article "New World Disorder - Evident Here and Abroad", in The Baltimore Sun, 1998):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative. In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences. "

Let's be reminded here that Hitler's ascension, in particular, was spurred on by increasing dissatisfaction of Germans with the democratic processes of the Weimar Republic. A lot of insights have been gleaned by talks with my German sister-in-law, Krimhilde, e.g.

When I saw her earlier this year in Barbados we again talked about conditions before Hitler came to power.  Mostly, people were fed up. Fed up with the scarcity of key food items and also with the inflation.

"When a loaf of bread cost more than a week's wages it is serious" she said.

Hitler was viewed with suspicion, as Trump is now, but offered a plan, a way out, "Lebensraum"  - and Germans jumped at the chance to improve their lot. But it would mean trashing the Versailles Treaty which had been a millstone around Germans' necks.

With Hitler's invasion of the Sudetenland, in 1938, the incineration of Versailles was finalized and Hitler and the Third Reich were well on the way to their ideal of expanded living space and resources.

After this diversion let's return to the global trade issue, and again, Kennedy's will to insist it be equitable. Gibson notes that the elite banking and financial interests at the time  (ibid.) "would have little tolerance for a president who interfered with their decisions or made their interests secondary to the needs of nations or of people in general."

One could say that by the time of JFK's assassination, the global tableaux had been set for eventual market domination of the world. With no other fearless national leaders to stand in the way (the last ones assassinated) the goal of worldwide subjugation of national interests to speculative capital, trans-national corporate control and personal debt could proceed apace. One merely had to await the right constellation of pro-market interests,  military consolidation and interjection, e.g.

www.tinyurl.com/CSI-Censor-1

and this was incepted in the Reagan years - reaching its culmination in the early 1990s via bi-partisan support of "Neoliberalism". 

The global trade plan was long range to be sure, but the elites had always been patient. Now they would exercise that patience and sense of noblesse oblige. Again, the payoff being a world of serfs delivered to them by their own governments. These governments themselves hamstrung by the unequal power of differing accords (i.e. GATT, NAFTA) over which they had little option other than to 'sign on'. Accords which could disembowel labor, its pensions and benefits, and lay waste to all social safety nets to protect the more vulnerable citizens. At the same time reckoning hard-won environmental laws as 'trade impediments' to be challenged in a world trade court (WTO).

Perhaps no more eloquent condemnation of this travesty arrived than from an op-ed by Ian McDonald, appearing in The Barbados NATION (Aug. 14, 1998):

Do we really believe for one moment that those who preach free trade and the inevitable triumph of market forces have anything other than their own increased wealth and aggrandizement in mind? Do we honestly believe they think the system they espouse is fundamentally a good one for all concerned? Are we so naïve as to think if, by any chance, the system were to operate against their interests, that they would not make sure it was changed or abridged to suit them? Are we so innocent and trusting that we cannot recognize bullying and crude self-interest when our noses are being rubbed in it constantly?"

Adding:

"We should cease making speech after speech accepting that our fate and the fate of the world, will inevitably be decided by impersonal, market controlled forces and the sooner we accept this the better off we will be. Instead we should be denying most strongly, in every forum available to us, that such a fate is inevitable... That instead the world deserves a better future than the one on offer from the ruthless money men and sleaze-ridden free trade marketeers, who are making this terrible bid to dominate the world."

 McDonald's writing flair exactly channeled the building rage against governments themselves for siding with elite interests to render them pawns. It prefigures today's rage and massive distrust in democratic institutions.  William Greider, in his masterful work One World Ready Or Not - The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, is blunt that the overall imperative is  ultimate abolition of all governmental, national social insurance systems - whether these be Medicare or Social Security in the United States, or the analogous systems in Germany or Barbados. In each case, the particular system to be replaced by a privatized entity able to generate individual debt, corporate profit and further income inequality.

Were there significant citizen efforts to thwart the march toward global corporate fiefdom?  Yes, and the most recent were by the young (mainly) protestors behind Occupy Wall Street.  However, once the Neoliberal security state had them in their sights, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/12/national-security-state-spied-on-occupy.html

The movement basically was neutralized.  Factored into this was how OWS protestors - exercising their first amendment rights- were targeted by rifles in Houston, in 2013, e.g.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the document obtained from the Houston FBI, said as received by David Lindorff (see also: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1494 )

"An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles."

By now, with the justified citizen efforts pummeled, rage began to mount, and malignant distrust of all government institutions as well as the Constitution itself began to take hold. They only needed a spark, and that was delivered by Edward Snowden in 2013 when the first NSA files disclosing massive overreach were released. Among the findings:

" The following information was deemed  fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards."

There existed a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, were considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database in question could identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources note the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

The tragedy of the 20th (and now 21st ) century is the tragedy of the civic commons. The gradual erosion of civil society is largely fueled by the removal of civic space (as well as civic protest)  and hence the reality that citizen interests are eclipsed by corporate and market interests, either in pursuit of state (or corporate) power, profits or both. Thus, political influence is purchased via the power of the purse, for example in lobbying, or in the current cycle via Koch brothers infusion of money to defeat policies, candidates they don't want. These vermin then write the laws subsequently enacted to favor their special interests, whether bloated defense contracts, or absurd prescription drug bills that are really corporate welfare.

Again, this isn't occurring just in the U.S. (though it has been most rapid here) but all over the world, as the Globalists clear out public space to make room for their corporate power enclaves.

If you don't know why there's such anti-government (anti-establishment) rage as well as loss of faith in the democratic process then you haven't been paying enough attention. Thus, no surprise we've seen the dominance of corporate space over civic space, paving the way for citizens to emerge as corporate serfs and pawns.

The latest blow to citizen trust in the process and in government didn't arrive by way of the TPP, NAFTA or any other global trade pact but by FBI Director James Comey's announcement yesterday to revisit Hillary Clinton's emails, this now barely ten days from the general election. As Jennifer Granholm put it last night on Chris Hayes' show:

"You can't put something out eleven days before a presidential election that has an impact on the election...I'm a former federal prosecutor and the rules related to how a prosecutor or investigator is to act in the face of an election are really quite clear. You are to limit the impact on the election. But in this case there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on her part."

Indeed, the case was only re-opened because files were found on sex pervert Anthony Weiner's computer which was shared by Huma Abedin, a Hillary aide while at State.   In an interview on 'Smerconish' (CNN) this morning, Matt Miller - another former prosecutor - agreed that  yes, Comey was probably worried about the Rs using it to criticize him if he waited until post-election, but added "You know, that's too bad, but you suck it up!"

On Chris Hayes 'All In' Mr. Miller also noted:

"When the FBI conducts investigations like this they're not supposed to comment on them anyway and especially not so close to an election. There's a long standing practice at DOJ that they go out of their way not to say anything close to election day, usually defined within 60 days."

Alas, the damage may already have been done, we just don't know how much. What we do know is this latest episode isn't likely to elevate citizen trust in the democratic process - even as it fuels the furor of Trumpies now convinced he was right all along in his wild accusations about election "rigging". They would be well advised to worry more about how his election would spur this country further into the global corporatocracy and render them - and the rest of us - even more abject serfs.


See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/69590/that-was-one-fucked-up-fbi-announcement

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-american-decline-2-globalization.html

Neoliberal Policies Led to the Blight and Riots in West Baltimore

Me, in the Baltimore Inner Harbor, May, 1994 - before delivering a paper for a joint AAS-AGU conference at the Baltimore Convention Center.

"At the heart of neoliberal narratives are ideologies, modes of governance, and policies that embrace a pathological individualism, a distorted notion of freedom, and a willingness both to employ state violence to suppress dissent and abandon those suffering from a collection of social problems ranging from dire poverty and joblessness to homelessness" - Henry Giroux, 'The Politics of Cruelty - America's Descent Into Madness'

First, let me get it straight with assorted nabobs and nattering bloggers - especially those in the FOX News universe - that Baltimore is a beautiful and thoroughly delightful city. I should know, I lived in one of its suburbs for nine years and wifey and I often went into the city proper to attend concerts at the Baltimore Symphony. All the hysterical babble that the city is "crime-ridden, derelict, full of apes and gorillas' is total  unsupported nonsense - and most of those talking-writing this trash have never set foot in Baltimore.

What is being seen on televisions across the nation in the form of rioting, is happening in a place that has been predated upon and abandoned for dozens of years: West Baltimore. As Michael Eric Dyson pointed out two nights ago (on Chris Hayes 'All In') what we are seeing is a reaction to systemic violence of the Neoliberal capitalist state against the most vulnerable citizens of a place that has been literally drained of what little investment capital it had and left to fend for itself.

Start with the loss of decent manufacturing jobs after the hideous NAFTA, GATT trade agreements went into effect. Then consider how capital was mainly funneled into select, upscale areas like the Inner Harbor (with its trendy galleries, cafes and boutiques) and into building massive sports stadiums - such as Camden Yards for the Orioles baseball team and M&T Bank stadium for the Ravens. THAT is where the tax money and investment went while West Baltimore was left to suck sand.

You see those young kids being  called "apes" by many of the clueless? You know how they got to that extreme of rioting? Consider how the state abandoned it's Head Start program as well as after school development programs and gang counseling - giving the millions instead to build new prisons. New prisons!  Those kids were then left largely to fend for themselves, usually with just a single mother to try to act as parent - often while holding two or more jobs.

Dyson, to his credit, quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in reference to the riots in Watts back in '65 and noted he said:

"A riot is the language of the unheard"

See e.g.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/martin-luther-king-riot_n_7160380.html

Dyson pointed out the systemic brutalization of the West Baltimore community, including youth especially as well as ordinary people by the police state for decades. And let's bear in mind, lest some conveniently forget, the City of Baltimore has had to shell out nearly $5.8m over the past three years for damage settlements as a result of 100 or more unruly attacks on citizens by out of control cops. (The Freddie Gray incident was by no means the first, as people gathered in a West Baltimore Church recounted yesterday evening - each telling a tale of woe of how cops brutalized, neighbors, friends, acquaitnances.)

Dyson likened the reaction in West Baltimore to an NBA foul called by a ref. The ref sees the reaction of the guy who was clipped on the jaw say - by his guard opponent - but he doesn't see the mugging that incited that reaction. In the same way, millions of stupefied TV viewers behold the reaction of the youths in the streets - but they never saw the decades long institutionalized abuse, violence and poverty that came before.

It was perhaps this inequity that inspired Salon.com contributor Benji Hart to write:

"We see ghettos and crime and absent parents where we should see communities actively struggling against mental health crises and premeditated economic exploitation. And when we see police cars being smashed and corporate property being destroyed, we should see reasonable responses to generations of extreme state violence, and logical decisions about what kind of actions yield the desired political results.

I’m overwhelmed by the pervasive slandering of protesters in Baltimore this weekend for not remaining peaceful. The bad-apple rhetoric would have us believe that most Baltimore protesters are demonstrating the right way—as is their constitutional right—and only a few are disrupting the peace, giving the movement a bad name."

Adding:

"I do not advocate non-violence—particularly in a moment like the one we currently face. In the spirit and words of militant Black and Brown feminist movements from around the globe, I believe it is crucial that we see non-violence as a tactic, not a philosophy.

Non-violence is a type of political performance designed to raise awareness and win over sympathy of those with privilege. When those on the outside of struggle—the white, the wealthy, the straight, the able-bodied, the masculine—have demonstrated repeatedly that they do not care, are not invested, are not going to step in the line of fire to defend the oppressed, this is a futile political strategy. It not only fails to meet the needs of the community, but actually puts oppressed people in further danger of violence."


While the above may cause brain hemorrhages in some of the more brainwashed (FOX gobbling) folks out there, it should not distract the rest of us from the mass violence spawned by the Neoliberal state - which I have written about before as it applied to trying to kill "Occupy Wall Street" protesters, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-did-feds-look-other-way-as-ows.html

Also, let us note that once the fiery reaction had been expurgated from their system, West Baltimoreans came together the next day to set things aright, cleaning up the streets and removing debris. They demonstrated collective action in the interest of their own welfare, and that the people can't be so brutally dismissed as "apes and gorillas".

Those who dispute Neoliberal fascism is a threat need to read that previous blog post carefully. Let us again bear in mind that Neoliberalism treats ALL humans not blessed with silver spoons at birth as basic chattel.   This is why none other than the elitist Bank of International Settlements, less than a month ago, proposed severe cuts to social "entitlements" globally and much more weight of economies devoted to investments - especially outside trade capital. Why do you think Obama is pushing the TPP so recklessly?

The problem with the Neoliberal, pro -free market idiom is that it denies the most basic security for the majority of citizens. In this way it feeds economic inequality while it rewards the speculator and banker class. It also helps to corrupt the political class via unregulated campaign contributions.

Jay Bookman aptly noted('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad', in The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1997):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative. In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences."

Those who fail to see the perverse hand of Neoliberal state violence as the source of what's  happening in Baltimore are not paying attention. Those who lay blame on "the black Democratic leadership"  of the city and "social welfare" for the troubles, are simply idiots. They could as well be blind, deaf and dumb for all the good those senses are doing them.

Now, recall I said earlier how money - millions- was withdrawn from youth programs, counseling and Head Start programs to build prisons. Joan Walsh in her own Salon.com  piece is very specific about this connection:


"Freddie Gray’s death in the custody of Baltimore police has drawn our attention not only to the terrible history of that police department, but of Gray’s blighted neighborhood, Sandtown-Winchester. Those 72 blocks in West Baltimore are home to more state prison inmates than any other Maryland census tract. The poverty and unemployment rate are double the city average. One out of four juveniles were arrested between 2005 and 2009. The mortality rate for 25-44 year olds — Freddie Gray was 25 — is 44 percent higher there than for the same demographic elsewhere in the city, according to the Baltimore Sun.

She goes on to write:

Sandtown-Winchester sounds like so many other neglected inner-city landscapes of despair, though it’s just a few miles from the city’s gleaming and redeveloped harbor district, and 50 miles from our nation’s capital."

And let's bear in mind the D.C. area - the capital- is the 4th highest income area in the U.S. Let us also recall how I already mentioned the Inner Harbor as sucking up most investment money!

Joan goes on to point out:

"Except Sandtown-Winchester hasn’t been neglected, exactly. In the mid-1990s, it was home to an ambitious community building initiative driven by Maryland megadeveloper James Rouse and the city’s new and ambitious mayor Kurt Schmoke. The work was supposed to help make sure none of this nightmare – Freddie Gray’s awful death at the hands of police; the terrible rioting that’s ensued — ever happened. But obviously it didn’t. In about eight years, $130 million in public and private funding went into the neighborhood, $60 million from the Rouse Foundation alone. Impressive aspects of the “neighborhood transformation initiative” were featured in Lisbeth Schorr’s influential book “Common Purpose.” George Will praised its work on healthy parenthood as an example of “Jeffersonian democracy” in action. Its success in spotlighting West Baltimore’s problems, but also its capacity for self-renewal, helped the city win designation as a federal Empowerment Zone in 2000.


Ultimately, it didn’t. And I didn’t call out the two issues that would doom it: lack of attention to the underlying problem of inner city job flight, and the enduring scourge of police brutality, over-incarceration and the “war on drugs.”

So in other words, the re-investment was basically "dead in the water" - though Joan does note that  "at least 1 ,000 new housing units were built, and another thousand renovated."

But let's be clear,  given the population and the volume of dilapidated homes, that's a drop in the bucket. (Rouse, btw , also developed Columbia - where we lived- one of the first ever planned cities in the U.S. For those into trivia, actor Edward Norton is Rouse's grandson.)

"Then Rouse died and Schmoke moved on, and the effort sputtered. The recession hit, and much of the infrastructure of the change initiative crumbled. "


She then cites Doni Glover, an activist, radio host and publisher of BmoreNews, who grew up there, charted the course in the local business journal on Monday:

When the Sandtown-Winchester Transformation Project, known as Community Building in Partnership Inc., finally closed down, this community — of which I call home — began to lose all of the very resources that were changing things around for many people. Not only did we lose CBP, we lost our community newspaper, a senior center, an AmeriCorps Program, a job placement office, a high blood pressure program sponsored by Johns Hopkins well as a couple community development corporations. We also lost a program that addressed vacant properties. All of these programs are gone with the wind.

Losses, losses and more losses - but in Michael Eric Dyson's lexicon - still a form of habituated economic violence practiced against an indigent populace. But this is typical of Neoliberalism. Indeed, Naomi Klein in her book,  'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007), compellingly described the number the Neoliberal imperialists did on Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In her chapter on the Russian capitalist "experiment" (pp. 282-87) she documents how a cabal of gangster capitalists under the IMF and the "Chicago gang of Milton Friedman" attempted to brutally re-make the existing Russian centrally- planned economy into a Neoliberal free market outpost of  the West. The process was long and painful, entailing first getting rid of Mikhail Gorbachev -then installing puppet Boris Yeltsin.

Yeltsin, meanwhile, made reckless promises that things would "only be hard for six months"  and "very soon" Russia would be an economic titan. Never happened! As Klein notes (ibid.):

"The logic of so-called creative destruction resulted in scarce creation and spiraling destruction"

Newspapers, magazines from the period (which I still have and can peruse anytime) depict horrific suffering by ordinary Russians as they had to beg, borrow or steal to survive - thanks to the Neoliberal market barbarians.  The sad facts?  After only a year of Neoliberal thuggery and "market therapy" millions of Russians had lost their life savings, their jobs and pensions as well as support systems. They were at the mercy of the Neoliberals for even a slice of bread and some cold soup.

Not a hell of a lot different from the depredation the Neolibs exacted on West Baltimore - much closer to home!


See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-quigley/62003/the-shocking-statistics-of-racial-disparity-in-Baltimore

And:

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/28/baltimores_violent_protesters_are_right_smashing_police_cars_is_a_legitimate_political_strategy/

Let's Not Get Punked By The Neoliberals Again - With the "Trans-Pacific Partnership"

Someone asked maybe a month ago, in an unpublished comment, why I always depict the Neoliberals like a mutant bat-rat type creature with feral eyes, grasping a pile of money. Well, because that is how I image these types: money-grubbing, feral ratty bats that could give a damn about the rest of us, so long as they get the corner on their mythical "free market". (Which is in fact a coercive market for the 99%)

And, of course, one must always keep one eye open for these rats - say like the 'Fix the Debt' bunch, and any new initiative they try to slink by us. Since they're rats, they will try anything ....from bamboozling bollocks about "benefits" to over the top PR (such as applies to fracking). They never miss a beat.

Now, thanks to  Wikileaks (why not our precious mainstream media? ) we have learned about the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership, another way to screw with us like the earlier GATT and NAFTA.

According to the Guardian, WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations. The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties.

Negotiations for the TPP have included representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei, but have been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision. Peter Bradwell, policy director of the London-based Open Rights Group says:

"We're really worried about a process which is so difficult for those who take an interest in these agreements to deal with. We rely on leaks like these to know what people are talking about,"

He adds:


"Lots of people in civil society have stressed that being more transparent, and talking about the text on the table, is crucial to give treaties like this any legitimacy. We shouldn't have to rely on leaks to start a debate about what's in then."

Indeed.

The 30,000 word intellectual property chapter contains proposals to increase the term of patents, including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability. It also pushes for aggressive measures to prevent hackers breaking copyright protection, although that comes with some exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorized activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes".


WikiLeaks claims that the text shows America attempting to enforce its highly restrictive vision of intellectual property on the world – and on itself. "The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly," says Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, who is living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London

Is this Assange torqued because he has to hole up in an embassy in London? Is he just venting because of the extent to which his operation has been downsized?  Not so fast.

Thomas Hartmann, writing on the smirkingchimp.com blog today observes:

" This week, Americans got a peek behind the curtain of the Trans Pacific Partnership, and what we found is frightening. On Thursday, Wikileaks published a complete draft of the “intellectual property rights” chapter of the TPP, and it poses a serious risk to free speech and information access. The document contains proposals that would change copyright and patent laws, so-called fair use practices, and the liabilities for alleged violations.

The provisions would stifle innovation, creativity, and information sharing, all under the guise of protecting intellectual property. And, many of the proposed changes are being suggested by US negotiators. Opposition to these restrictive policies is coming from other nations, like Canada, Chile, Malaysia, and New Zealand."

If an informed citizenry is the basis for democracy, why are we being kept in the dark? Perhaps because we no longer have a democracy  but a corporatocracy! If we really are a democracy then we need to heed Hartmann's words:

"Unions, civil rights advocates, environmental activists, and many other groups are demanding that the details of the TPP are made public. Before this massive trade deal is signed, Americans have the right to know what it contains, and the right to demand that our elected leaders say “No” to the TPP. -"

Democracy, Civic Space and the Reach of History

Democracy in the genuine sense calls not only for votes, but sound reasons why votes are cast, predicated on understanding the competing interests of commercial society, government (more and more tied to the former – via gutted regulatory functions, legalized corporate bribery and payoffs) and civil society.

The last – or ‘civic space’ – occupies the mid ground between government and the rapacious private sector. In terms of set theoretics, imagine circles for ‘government’ and ‘private sector’ respectively – with large intersection of commonality between them. Civic space or the ‘set of civic society’ lies apart from the influence of these two.

It is neither where we vote (more and more influenced by ad-ism and PR, soundbites) or where we buy and sell. It is rather where neighbors, say in New England, converge for public meetings to decide on the location of a homeless shelter, or neighbors pool resources to care for children of low-income workers. Without any government ‘benediction’ or expectation of commercial sector ‘return on investment’.

The tragedy of the 20th (and now 21st ) century is the tragedy of the civic commons. The gradual erosion of civil society is largely eclipsed by corporate and market interests. Either in pursuit of state (or corporate) power, profits or both. Thus, political influence is purchased via the power of the purse (for example in lobbying) and laws enacted to favor these special interests.

Now the confluence of government –market interests has forced those wishing to live within non-coercive spheres of influence to make a Hobson’s choice: Either to side with state power and ‘commandeering of individual rights’ or private power, and its extirpation of what remains of government and its advocacy for the non-elite segment of the populace (i.e. those unable to purchase political influence).

Choose to be passively serviced (and servile) by a massive bureaucratic state wherein the word citizen has little or no resonance (until it’s election time) or submit to the selfishness and barbaric, radical individualism of the private sector – which extols the Social Darwinist refrain of ‘survival of the fittest’.

But what is needed here is to recognize and appreciate that the erosions of civil society didn’t just suddenly begin in the last few years, or even the last decade. No, the seeds were sown long ago.

As George Santayan once noted: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it".

If we don't understand the past and its influence on our present, it'll make little difference what happens if and when the current 'Neandertals' and reprobates are given the heave-ho. Another set, with perhaps more sophisticated strategies, will just replace them. The people remaining as clueless as ever, since they remain unable to tie current events (i.e. the rise of the global corporate state) to the past.

Thus, the original importance of preserving a global trade network without sacrifice to private monopoly or multi-national power was first recognized by President John F. Kennedy in late 1962 and 1963. He made enormous efforts to stave off incipient private control of the globalization process. As Donald Gibson observes in his must-read monograph(‘Battling Wall Street – The Kennedy Presidency’, Sheridan Square Press, 1994, p. 113):

"John Kennedy declared the 1960s the decade of development. The Alliance for Progress, development aid, low interest loans, nation-to-nation cooperation, and some measure of government planning were some of the ingredients of that policy. Within a few years of Kennedy's death most of this had been abandoned. By the early 1970s, this type of effort and the optimism associated with it had vanished altogether."

The effect was that the task of implementing and governing economic adjustment was assumed by private markets. Power which has grown exponentially since the extripation of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1973. The causal undercurrents and ideology of corporate-state global domination have been well articulated by Gibson, even from before its emergence within ten years of the Kennedy assassination (which many astute observers tie in with financial elite interests) (op. cit. P. 75):

"Kennedy's ideas.. .his view of foreign aid and foreign policy, and his recommendations and actions in a variety of specific areas disrupted or threatened to disrupt an established order. In that established order, in place for most of the century, major government decisions were to serve or at least not disrupt the privately organized hierarchy."

Gibson goes on to point out that the vested interests within this hierarchy were similar to, "if not direct imitations of those of that older British elite rooted in inherited wealth and titles, and organized in the modern world around control of finance and raw materials." (ibid.)

It seems very plausible then, that the slaying of John F. Kennedy set the stage for a global Corporatocracy in which these same elite imperatives would be allowed to subordinate and dominate the interests and welfare of the masses. Imaginary? Take a gander at columnist Jay Bookman's view from his article "New World Disorder - Evident Here and Abroad", in The Baltimore Sun, 1998):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative. In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences. "

It is also plausible that JFK's death was crucial to the eventual success of the overall plan. Indeed, Gibson notes that these elite banking and financial interests (ibid.) "would have little tolerance for a president who interfered with their decisions or made their interests secondary to the needs of nations or of people in general."

So, one could say that by the time of JFK's assassination, the global tableaux had been set for eventual market domination of the world. With no other fearless national leaders to stand in the way (the last ones assassinated) the goal of worldwide subjugation of national interests to speculative capital, trans-national corporate control and personal debt could proceed apace. One merely had to await the right constellation of pro-market interests, and this was incepted in the Reagan years - reaching its culmination in the early 1990s via bi-partisan support of "neo-liberalism". A philosophy that Jay Bookman's earlier quotation embodies succinctly.

The plan was long range to be sure, but the elites had always been patient. Now they would exercise that patience and sense of noblesse oblige. Again, the payoff being a world of serfs delivered to them by their own governments. These governments themselves hamstrung by the unequal power of differing accords (i.e. GATT, NAFTA) over which they had little option other than to 'sign on'. Accords which could disembowel labor, its pensions and benefits, and lay waste to all social safety nets to protect the more vulnerable citizens. At the same time reckoning hard-won environmental laws as 'trade impediments' to be challenged in a world trade court (WTO).

How many of our currently voting electorate are aware of even a small subset of the above when they cast ballots? Not one in one hundred I'd wager. And if they aren't, if they're so devoid of historical perspective - all the practical appeals in the world won't make a dime's worth of difference. People will still be electing as venal a bunch (who give themselves automatic $4900/yr. wage increases in the dead of night while millions are jobless) as they already have.

Egotistical, Overclass hypocrites who engage in word play for the benefit of the people who elected them, then turn around and cop to corporate money. While pandering and assisting the same market -fascist imperative that JFK fought, and which probably cost him his life.

The overall imperative of the market being the ultimate abolition of all governmental, national social insurance systems - whether these be Medicare or Social Security in the United States, or the analogous systems in Germany or Barbados. In each case, the particular system to be replaced by a privatized entity able to generate individual debt, corporate profit and further income inequality. (It is very interesting in this regard that the "Bankruptcy Reform Act" was passed by a majority in 2005, while a legal loophole that permitted creation of CDOs and their diffusion through multiple financial products (e.g. SIVs or "structured investment vehicles") was passed the next year. As we know the last has led directly to the current sub-prime meltdown)

The point is that unless people perceive the historical pattern of consolidating corporate power, tied to events 45 years ago, they will be unable to map a future course that preserves any semblance of civil society. Rather, they'll more than likely be swayed and mentally manipulated into conferring ever more power on the commercial-corporate-government nexus. As this mandate becomes ever more entrenched it is inevitable that those without will challenge the ‘haves’ at some point and demand a rightful piece of the pie.

It will by then become intolerable to do without critical health insurance (because it is either denied or too costly) while some rich dilettante (who inherited his millions) tries to decide whether to drive his Rolls, Lexus or Lamborghini to the Country Club.

To go where we want to go, we need to know where we have been. This includes the inherent lessons in political assassinations such as JFK's. If we don't - then like the proverbial Israelites wandering in the desert- we shall never get to the civic 'promised land'.

You can make book on it.