The American Dream In the 50’s and 60’s,  America began to see a glimmer of what it came to call the American dream. The dream seemed within grasp. Pioneering spirits, ingenuity, inventiveness, innovative ideas, hard work, self sacrifice, and true grit positioned America in the forefront in many industries including manufacturing, oil and gas, energy, railroads, automotive, aeronautics, construction, and technology.

American workers believed hard work, dedication, top performance, and loyalty meant job security, advancement, raises, and a good retirement plan. It was the American way–what we called “The Good Life.” America was up for the challenge. Companies and workers pulled together to build a stronger and better industrial America. Ethical and fair business practices rewarded loyal service, hard work, and dedication with job and financial security and a good retirement plan.

Building the Dream

In the mid 70’s and early 80’s Americans flourished, manufacturing, construction, commercial and residential, real-estate, and the savings and loan industry; all business revolved around the major oil and gas boom and the auto industry.

Prosperous oil companies purchased land in Houston Texas for the purpose of building their world headquarters that would house oil companies from around the world.

The oil and gas community sky rocketed and construction thrived as home building and real estate surpassed all expectations. Lending prospered. Life was good!

Cracks in the Veneer

By the mid 80’s, Middle Eastern oil barons had succeeded in educating two generations of their countrymen in petroleum engineering by schooling them in prominent American Universities. No longer dependent on other countries to run their oil companies and refineries, and now in complete control of global oil prices, these oil barons no longer needed the services of American business. A long and deep recession-depression followed.

End of an Era

The oil/gas crash had the predictable domino effect wiping out all petroleum related jobs and taking with them construction, commercial, residential real estate, and the savings and loans. All of this only added to the decline of auto manufacturing.

This recession-depression was the catalyst for big business to introduce a new business model and strategies that would skirt around labor and age discrimination laws; thrusting many age 50 workers into the down side of their career cycle. It would take Americans several years to fully understand the repercussions the shelf life business model would have on their lives.

In times of prosperity when jobs are plentiful and qualified people are not available, supply and demand provides a much more level and fair playing field. However, in economic down turns, severe recession, department restructuring, or new management; older workers are the first to loose jobs, suffer the most and many times get squeezed out of the job market all together.

American Workers Speak Out

These findings are based on interviews conducted over a 30 year span with American workers age 50 and over across the nation. Most of these interviews revealed critical insight into the dilemmas facing American workers experiencing the down side of their career cycles. Interviews revealed that many workers had experienced very similar situations and had few if any solutions.

Where Is the Dream?

Those who bought into the American dream were led to believe that education, credentials, Experience, hard work, top performance, and loyalty could lead to job security, a good income, benefits, and a nice retirement plan.

Initially, our career goals and expectations are attainable, and clearly our coworkers already seem to be living the dream. When an older worker received a pink slip, it is assumed that poor performance is the issue.

After all, laws, programs, and agencies are in place to protect America’s work place. However, realistically no EEOC law has been written that can not be bent or twisted. Management, attorneys, and human resource professionals are well versed in all aspects of the EEOC and age discrimination laws.

Documentation is easily manipulated; three bad reviews and you are out. Micro management, unrealistic demands, and unattainable goals add up to bad reviews. This is not to imply that all companies are unscrupulous, however, in desperate times, people do desperate things. It only makes sense that others would play the corporate game to protect their own positions.

About the Shelf Life Business Models

Shelf life business models have loomed in the shadows; however, the devastation that followed the mid 80’s recession opened the door to a new kind of downsizing that would erode away at pension plans, health benefits, and job security with little possibility of ever retiring from any company.

Companies currently use recession, slight economic down turns, new management, reorganization of departments, or eliminate jobs only to give the jobs new titles and refill them with younger workers.

Workers age 50 and over are many times targeted by ambitious executives or new management focused on advancement, increasing bottom line, and earning large bonuses. Common practice in lowering expenditures is reducing payroll costs, retirement contributions, and insurance costs that may increase pooling prices. Typically workers age 50 and over fit into all of these categories. You can do the math.

Sadly, once the cycle begins, it is almost irreversible, and pressure from the top inevitably perpetuates the cycle.

The success and future of American companies and its employees have become inconsequential to money driven executives that have little stake in the success or failure of either and take their money and run. Bottom line, it’s all about the money.

Corporate America systematically discards its valuable talent, experience, wisdom, knowledge, and expertise, and as a result, our country is loosing its leading edge. Other countries are taking our place as industrial leaders. No other country places such little importance on such valuable assets that come with aging.

Our American government understands the value and importance of experience. A person must be 40 years old before they can run for president. Surely that should tell us something! It is a physical impossibility to put 25 years of work experience into a 20 year old body.

Our only hope of regaining a foot hold in American industry, reviving the American Dream, and saving our middle class is to band together and fight for employment reform that protects the rights of workers of all ages.

The Handwriting Is on the Wall!

The message is loud and clear, and the clock is ticking. American workers can no longer sit back and wait until it is their turn to face the same ageism issues of their predecessors.

There is power in numbers! Boomers make up 28% of the American population, and together we have a formidable political voice for employment reform.

Read entire article here

by Hunter

The Atlantic:

After allegations surfaced that reporters working for The News of The World attempted to hack the phones of 9/11 victims, Attorney General Eric Holder said in Australia Friday that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Reuters reports:
“There have been members of Congress in the United States who have asked us to investigate those same allegations and we are progressing in that regard using the appropriate Federal law enforcement agencies,” Holder told reporters.

The “members of Congress” he’s referring to have come from both sides of the aisle. Attempting to hack 9/11 victims is too offensive to be ignored, no matter what party you’re from.

Read entire article here

Every Saturday – Anti-War – Progressive Truth Teach-in
Coming up at 9:00am Pacific * 12 noon Eastern * 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.



WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange & Philosopher Slavoj Žižek With Amy Goodman
In one of his first public events since being held under house arrest, WikiLeaks Editor-In-Chief Julian Assange appeared in London Saturday (July 2, 2011) for a conversation with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman. They discussed the impact of WikiLeaks on world politics, the release of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and Cablegate — the largest trove of classified U.S. government records in history.

The discussion was sponsored by the Frontline Club, founded in part to remember journalists killed on the front lines of war. From A Democracy Now Presentation

===== Transcript ===================================================
Please note that this program contains the words sh*t and bullsh*t and may NOT be suitable for broadcast.

VAUGHAN SMITH: Good afternoon. Good afternoon, my name’s Vaughan Smith. I’m a founder of the Frontline Club, co-founder actually, co-founder with my wife Pranvera who is hidden somewhere amongst you somewhere. We are very excited to be doing this today. This is the last event we’ve done in at the Frontline Club. I’d like to thank Will of the Trotsky club. I’d like to thank all of you for coming. I’d like to thank Dan, our branding man because I’m standing in front of a hundred logos, which are all new, so thanks Dan. Our new look. We’re not shy of our new look. I’d like to thank the Frontline Club staff who has worked extremely hard to put this on, particularly Flora and Milly. So, thank you all. I’m extremely proud of you all.

The Frontline Club exists to promote what is best in journalism and to put on debates and discussions like us. We’re a social enterprise and, if you wish to support us, come to Paddington if you haven’t already been where we can feed and entertain you. We do 200 events a year. As a social enterprise, any money you spend tonight and any money you spend at the Frontline Club helps us do this work, so we’re very grateful for it.

If you want to help Julian or Slavoj or Democracy Now! you can buy some books or make donations at the end, that facility will be there. Now, it’s Julian’s 40th birthday tomorrow, so if you want to help him with those exorbitant legal fees, give generously at the end.

So, all that remains is for me to welcome Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Amy is a multiple award-winning journalist and the main presenter for Democracy Now! and has flown all the way from America to be here, and she’s a pretty fine person. I’m extremely glad to hand over to her now. Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: It is a great honor to be with you this afternoon and a shout out to all of the people who are watching this broadcast all over the world. We are live streaming this at democracynow.org. By the way, how many of you watch, or listen to, or read Democracy Now!?

[loud applause]

AMY GOODMAN: We’ve given out about a thousand fliers of where we broadcast in Britain and also where you can watch, read and listen to the broadcast. We’re also live streaming, we’ve offered the embed for anyone to take to put on their website. The Nation is live streaming us, michaelmoore.com is live streaming us, Free Speech TV is broadcasting Democracy Now! across the United States and there are many others. I hope people Tweet in and Facebook and let us know what you are doing with this broadcast. It’s extremely important because information is power. Information is a matter of life and death.

We’ve learned that through these remarkable trove of documents that have been released in the last year. The Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs, and what’s been called Cablegate, the U.S. state department documents that are continuing to be released. Why does it matter so much? Well, we’ll talk about that this afternoon, but let’s just take one example, that came out in the Iraq War Logs, February of 2007.

The war logs show that two men were standing under an Apache helicopter, the men have their hands up, they clearly are attempting to surrender, the Apache helicopter can see this. So, they are not rogue. The soldiers call back to the base and they say what should we do? These men have their hands up. The lawyer on the base says you cannot surrender to a helicopter and they blow the men, attempting to surrender, away—that was February 2007.
Now, we will fast forward to July 12, 2007, a video that has been released by WikiLeaks. This devastating video of an area of Baghdad called “New Baghdad”, where a group of men were showing around two Reuters journalists.

Well, one was a videographer, a young up-and-coming videographer named Namir Noor-Eldeen and one was his driver, Saeed Chmagh; he was 40 years old, he was the father of 4 and they were showing them around the area. The same Apache helicopter unit is hovering above. They open fire. The video is chilling. I am sure many of you have seen it. If you watch or listen to Democracy Now! we played it repeatedly discussing it with various people from Julian Assange to soldiers who were there on the ground, over time we dissected this.

The soldiers opened fire, you have the video of the target and you have the audio of the sounds of the soldiers cursing laughing, but not rogue, always going up the chain of command asking for permission to open fire. In the first explosion Namir Noor-Eldeen and the other men on the ground are killed. Saeed Chmagh, you can see him attempting to crawl away. And then a van pulls up from the neighborhood and they are attempting to pick up the wounded, there are children in the van and the Apache helicopter opens fire again and Saeed Chmagh, others in the van are killed. Two little children are critically injured inside.

Now, I dare say that if we had seen what came out in the Iraq War Logs in February of 2007, if we had learned the story at the time after it happened, of the men with their hands up trying to surrender, there would have been an outcry. People are good, people care, people are compassionate, they would have called for an investigation. Perhaps one would have begun, but it might well have saved the lives of so many. Certainly, months later, perhaps that same Apache helicopter unit under investigation would not have done what it did. And maybe Namir Noor-Eldeen, the young Reuters videographer and his driver Saeed Chmagh, not to mention the other men who were killed and the kids critically injured, none of that would have happened to them. That’s why information matters. It is important we know what is done in our name. And today we are going to talk about this new age of information.

We’re joined by two people, many of you know well. Earlier I asked a young man, who would come to the gathering, why he traveled so far. He said, “are you kidding, to be with two of the most dangerous people?” The National Review calls Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, the most dangerous political philosopher in the West and The New York Times says he’s the Elvis of cultural theory. Slavoj Žižek has written over 50 books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. His latest book Living in the End Times—and we’ll talk about what he thinks and talks about around the world.

Now, we’re joined by another man who has published perhaps more than any one in the world. In fact he wrote a book on the underground computer information age called, “Underground: Tales of hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier.” But with the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs, and now the U.S. government cables that have yet to be fully released, I would say that perhaps Julian Assange is the most widely published person on earth.

Today we’re going to have a conversation about information and I’d like to ask Julian to begin by going back to that moment in 2007, as we talk about the Iraq War Logs. And talk about the significance of them for you and why you’ve chosen to release this information.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Amy, I suspect under that criteria perhaps Rupert Murdoch is the most widely published person on earth. Something people say Australia has given to the world Rupert Murdoch and me, big in publishing. Well, in some ways things are very easy for us and very easy for me in that we make a promise to sources that if they give us material that is of a certain type, that is a significant—of diplomatic, “cryptical”, ethical, or historical significance, not published and under some sort of threat, we will publish it. And that actually is enough. Of course, we have a goal with publishing in general.

It has been my long term belief that what advances us as a civilization is the entirety of our international record, the entirety of our understanding about what we are going through, what human institutions are actually like and how they behave. And if we are to make rational policy decisions in so far as any decision can be rational then we have to have information that is drawn from the real world, and a description of the real world. At the moment we are severely lacking in the information from the interior of big secretive organizations that have such a role in shaping how civilization evolves and how we all live.

Getting down in to Iraq, so that was 400 thousand documents. Each one written in military speak, on the other hand, each one having a geographic coordinate down often to 10 meters, a death count of civilians, U.S. military troops, Iraqi troops and suspected insurgents.

So, it was the first, rather the largest, because we also did the Afghan War Logs, the largest history of a war, the most detailed significant history of a war to have ever been published, probably at all, but definitely during the course of a war. And so it provided a picture of the every day squalor of war. From children being killed at road side blocks to over a thousand people being handed over to the Iraqi police for torture, to the reality of close air support and how modern military combat is done—linking up with other information such as this video that we discovered—men surrendering, being attacked.

So, as an archive of human history this is a beautiful and horrifying thing—both at the same time. It is the history of the nation of Iraq and most significant recording during its most significant development in the past 20 years. And while we always see newspaper stories reporting and revealing some individual, if we’re lucky, some individual event or some individual family dying. This provides the broad scope of the entire war and all the individual events. So, the details of over 104 thousand deaths.

And we worked together to statistically analyze this with various groups, around the world, such as Iraq Body Count, who became the specialists in these areas and lawyers here in the U.K. who represented Iraqi refugees—to pull out the stories of 15 thousand Iraqi civilians, labeled as civilians by the U.S. military, who were killed and were never before reported in the Iraqi press, never before reported in the U.S. press, world press even in aggregate—even saying today 1,000 people died. Not reported in any manner whatsoever. And, yeah just think about that—15 thousand people whose deaths were recorded by the U.S. military, but were completely unknown to the rest of the world—that’s a very significant thing.

I mean, compare that to 3,000 deaths on 9/11. Imagine the significance for Iraqis. That is something that we specialize in and that I like to do and that I always do is go from the small to the large, not just by abstraction or analogy, but actually by encompassing all of it together. And then trying to look at it and abstract, through mathematics or statistics. And so to try and sort of push both of these things at the same time, the individual relationship, plus the state relationship, plus the relationship that has to do with civilization as a whole.

AMY GOODMAN: Slavoj Žižek, the importance of WikiLeaks today in the world?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Wait a minute, to understand properly this question, this question is just, you can withdraw and just give me two hours. No, but we’ll try to condense it. First, let me say also how proud I am to be here and mention something, which maybe most of you don’t know—that, how difficult it was even to organize this event. Like, it had to be moved two times—out and more out from Central London and so on.

And so, what again, what I want to say is let me begin with the, uh, the significance of what you—Amy started with, this shots, I mean not shooting, but video shots of those Apache helicopters shooting on…You know why this is important? Because the way ideology functions today it’s not so much that—let’s not be naive, that people didn’t know about it. But I think the way those in power manipulate it. Yes, we all know dirty things are being done, but you are being informed about this obliquely in such a way that basically you are able to ignore it.

Can I make a terrible, maybe sexually offensive, but not that dirty don’t be afraid, remark? You know, like a husband, sorry for making male chauvinist, uh twist—a husband may know abstractly my wife is cheating on me and you can say, okay I’m modern, tolerant husband, but you know when you get the thought of your wife doing things it’s quite a different thing. And I would say with all respect, something similar, it’s very important because it, just say no, I’m not dreaming here.

The same thing happened about two years ago in Serbia. You know, people rationally accept that we did horrible things in Srebrenica and so on, but you know it was just abstract knowledge. Then by chance all the honor who served media, to publish this, they got hold of a video effectively showing a group of Serbs pushing to an X and shooting a couple of Bosnian prisoners. And the effect was a total shock, national shock, although again, strictly saying nobody learned anything new.

So here, so that I don’t get lost, if you allow me just a little bit more, here we should see the significance of WikiLeaks. Many of my friends who are skeptical about it are telling me. So, what did we really learn? Isn’t it clear that every power in order to function you have collateral damage—you have to have a certain discretion? What you say, what you don’t say, but to conclude I mean to propose a formula, what WikiLeaks is doing and it’s extremely important. Of course, I’m not a Utopian. Neither me nor Julian believes in this kind of pseudo-radical openness—everything should be clear and so on. But what are we dealing with here?

Another example from cinema, very short, Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka. You find there a wonderful joke where, I think towards the beginning of the film, the hero enters a cafeteria and says, “can I get some coffee with cream please?” And the waiter answers him, “sorry we run out of cream we only have milk. So, can I serve you coffee without milk?” That’s the trick here. When we learn something from the media, like, if I may repeat the metaphor, they behave as if they are serving coffee with cream.

That is to say of course we all know they are not telling the entire truth, but you know, that is the trick of ideology, even if they don’t lie directly the implication is the unsaid is a lie. And you bring this out. You are not so much putting them, catching them, as they put it, with their pants down and lying on behalf of what they explicitly say, but precisely on behalf of what they are implying. And I think this is an absolutely crucial mechanism in ideology. It doesn’t only matter what you say it matters what you implied to say.

So, just to make the last point, I think that—are we aware that what an important moment we are living today? On the one hand, as you said information is crucial and so on. We all know that it’s crucial economically. I claim that one of the main reasons capitalism will get in to crisis is intellectual property. In the long term it simply cannot deal with it. But what I’m saying is just take the phenomenon that media are trying to get us enthusiastic for clouds. Like you know, computers getting smaller and smaller and all is done for you up there in a cloud.

Okay, but the problems is that clouds are not up there in clouds—they are controlled and so on. For example, you rely on, maybe you have an iPhone, but you mentioned Murdoch. [His] name was mentioned here. Do you know, it’s good to know if you rely on your news through iPhone or whatever, that Apple signed an exclusive agreement with Murdoch. Murdoch’s corporation is again the exclusive provider of entire news and so on and so on. This is the danger today. It’s no longer this clear distinction, private space-public space. The public space itself gets, as it were, privatized in a whole series of invisible ways—like the model of it being clouds; which is why and again this involves new modes of censorship, repeat this.

That’s why you say, but what really did we learn new? Maybe we learned nothing new, but you know it’s the same as in that beautiful old innocent fairy-tale, the Emperor is Naked. The Emperor is Naked. We may all know that the emperor is naked, but the moment somebody publicly says, “the emperor is naked,” everything changes, but the moment somebody publicly says the emperor is naked everything changes. This is why even if we learned nothing new – but we did learn many new things – but even if nothing learned, the forum matters.

So, don’t confuse Julian and his gang – in a good sense not the way they accuse – don’t confuse them with this usual bourgeois heroism, fight for investigative journalism, free flow and so on. You are doing something much more radical. That’s why it aroused such an explosion of resentment. You are not only violating the rules, disclosing secrets and so on. Let me call it in the old Marxist way the bourgeois press today has its own way to be transgressive. Its ideology controls not only what you can say but also how you can violate what you are allowed to say. You are not only violating the rules, you are changing the very rules how we were allowed to violate the rules. This is maybe the most important thing you can do.

AMY GOODMAN: And, yet, Julian even as you were releasing information in all different ways, you then turn to the very gatekeepers who in some cases had kept back this information and you worked with the mainstream media throughout the world in releasing various documents. Talk about that experience and that level of cooperation and what has happened after that.

[Audience member interrupts – inaudible]

JULIAN ASSANGE: Volume for the balcony.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Now they will again accuse you that he’s the authoritarian leader who commands. I’m not saying this is not true. I think this is the only way to keep things going.

JULIAN ASSANGE: If you want to have an impact and you promise an impact and you’re an organization which is very small where actually you have to co-opt or leverage the rest of the mainstream press. So, under our model of how you make and impact and get people to do things that you wouldn’t have been otherwise be able to do, unless you have an army that can physically go someplace and divisions that can roll over.

The only way you can easily make an impact is push information about the world to many, many people. So, the mainstream press has developed expertise for how to do that. And it’s competition also for people’s attention. So, if we had several billion dollars to spend on advertising across the world, if we could get our ads placed, we wouldn’t easily be able to make the same impact as we did. And we don’t have that kind of money.

So, instead we entered into partnership with over 80 media organizations all over the world, including many good ones that I wouldn’t want to disparage. To increase the impact and push our material into over 50 different countries endemically. That has been, yes, subverting the filters of the mainstream press.

But an interesting phenomena has developed amongst the journalists who work in these very large organization that are close to power and negotiate with power at the highest levels, which is the journalists having read our material and having been forced to go through it to pull out stories have themselves become educated and radicalize. And that is an ideological penetration of the truth into all these mainstream media organizations. And, that to some degree, may be one of the lasting legacies over the past year. Even Fox News, which is much disparaged, is an organization that wants viewers. It cannot do anything else without viewers. So, it will try and push news content.

So, for example, with collateral murder, CNN showed only the first few minutes and blanked out all the bullets going to the street, completely blanked it out – and said they did it out of respect for the families of the people who were killed, well there was no blood, there was no gore. And then they cut out all the most politically salient points. And the families had come forward and said that it was very important for us to have seen it. Fox actually displayed the first killing scene in full. Quite interesting. So, Fox not perceiving itself to be amenable to the threat of it not acting in a moral way actually gave people more of the truth than CNN did. So, Fox also motivated to grab in a hungry way this greater audience share as possible took this content and gave it to more people.

Afterwards, of course, they put in their commentators to talk against it but I think that the truth that we got out of Fox was often stronger than the truth we got out of CNN and similarly for many institution in the media that we think of as liberal – and perhaps Slavoj would like to talk more about that.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: I cannot emphasize, like, first I treated you not as an idiot out of politeness but I am more and more forced to admit that you are not an idiot. What you said now is extremely important. For all the respect that I have for, and I don’t mean this ironically, for honest liberals who really that people should be informed and so. But there are limits in there only mode of how they function so we should ruthlessly, not in an unethical way – we should ruthlessly use, as you pointed out in this example of CNN and Fox, every window of opportunity here. Let me add another example from a totally different domain, but from fiction, cinema and TV series, which I think reproduces the same duality. We have the usually Hollywood left. All this to raise our spirits, left liberal pseudo-Hollywood Marxist thrillers: Pelican’s Brief, All the President’s Men, which may appear very critical “Oh my God, the president himself is corrupted, connected to certain corporations and so on”.

But, nonetheless this is all ideology. Why? Why do you exit the movie theater in such high spirits after seeing, I don’t know —? The message is look at what a great country we are, an ordinary guy can topple the mightiest men in the world and so on and so on. On the other hand, let me take an equivalent in TV programming of Fox News . . . please don’t take me for being crazy, 24. Yeah, yeah, Jack Bauer and all that. The last series of 24, I watched it with pleasure. For me, my God, again I approach it as you approached those shots. It’s, for me, much more consequential in criticism.

You get Jack Bauer who is in total despair. His whole worth crumbles down. He has to admit this way what he tried do in previous seasons this idea of someone has to do this dirty job, torture the prisoners, I will do it. He says, no I cannot live with it. It has to come public. His liberal counter-part, Allison Taylor, the president, steps down. You know what the true message is? The message is simply that within the existing ethical, political coordinates, you are just stuck in a deadlock and there is no way. It’s a very pessimistic message, much more honest than all that uplifting Hollywood Marxism, what a great country we are and so on and so on.

So, yes, at all levels, not only in journalism as such, I agree with you and I’d even say that all leftist tradition knows this. For example, already Marx said, I’m no fetishist of Marx, but nonetheless — he said we can often learn more from honest conservatives than liberals, because what honest conservatives do is that they don’t sell you at the end some uplifting bullshit, they’re willing to confront some deadlock and that’s what’s important today.

AMY GOODMAN: I don’t want to look distracted looking down, but I want to get these quotes accurate so I have them on my phone. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House in the United States, said: “Julian Assange is engaged in warfare . . . Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed is terrorism. And Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism . . . He should be treated as an enemy combatant and WikiLeaks should be closed down permanently and decisively.”

Bill Keller of the New York Times said “arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial”. Judith Miller who often wrote or co-wrote articles that appeared on the front page of New York Times alleging weapons of mass destruction without named sources said, “Julian Assange isn’t a good journalist . . . didn’t care at all about attempting to verify the information that he was putting out or determine whether or not it would hurt anyone.”

Joe Biden, vice-president of the United States, said: “Julian Assange is a high-tech terrorist”. Congress member Peter King of New York called for Assange to be charged under the Espionage Act and asked whether WikiLeaks can be designated a terrorist organization. Not to just focus on the U.S., Tom Flanagan, a former aide to the Canadian prime minister, has called for Assange’s assassination. And former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, called you, Julian, an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands”. Can you respond to these charges?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, after Bill Keller said that I was thin-skinned it doesn’t really leave much ground for reply does it? Sarah Palin also, once on Twitter, complained about my grammar, which is really the biggest insult for me. Calling for a drone attack is perfectly understandable, correcting my grammar from Sarah Palin, that’s a real insult.

That event in the United States was very interesting. Obviously, the calls are wrong and outrageous and so on, but the social and political event in which they occurred were fascinating. So, within a few months, we saw a new McCarthyist hysteria arise in December, January – December last year, January this year. That is quite worrying that a new McCarthyism can come up so quickly.

On the other hand, yes, there are a lot of opportunistic politicians playing to their base, playing to their pals in the military-industrial complex. But, on the other hand, power that is completely unaccountable is silent. So, when you walk past a group of ants on the street and you accidentally crush a few, you do not turn to the others and say “Stop complaining or I’ll put a drone strike on your head”. You completely ignore them. And that is what happens to power that’s in a very dominant position. It does not even bother to respond, does not flinch for even an instance.

Yet we saw all these figures coming out and speaking very aggressively. Bill Keller, in a recent talk, as a way of perhaps legitimizing why he was speaking with me, said “if you have a dealing with Julian Assange, you’re fated to sit on panels for the rest of your life explaining what you did.” No, actually that’s a choice made by Bill Keller, a choice to twist history and whitewash history, and adjust history on a constant basis. Why? Why expend energy doing that? Why not just knock off another pager of the New York Times? Because, actually, these people are frightened of the true part of history coming about and coming forth. So, I see this as a very positive sign.

And, I’ve stated before, we should always see censorship, actually, as a very positive sign, and attempts towards censorship as a sign that society is not yet completely sewn up, not yet completely fiscalized but still has some political dimension to it. I.E: What people think and believe and feel and the words that they listen to actually matters. Because, in some areas, it doesn’t matter. And, in the United States, most of the time, actually it doesn’t matter what you say We managed to speak and give information at such volume and of such intensity, people were actually forced to respond. It is rare that they are forced to respond.

So, I think this is one of the first positive symptoms I’ve seen from the United States for a while. If you speak at this level, the cage can be rattled and people can be forced to respond. In China, the censorship is much more aggressive, which, to me, is a much more hopeful sign that it is still a political society, even though it is fiscalizing, even though it is being sewn up in contractual relationships and banking relationships as time has gone by. At the moment, the Chinese government and public security bureau are actually scared of what people to think.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Again, I hate myself because I want that — what is that movie called? “There will be Blood”. But, unfortunately, there will not be a lot of blood between the two of us because, again, I agree. Speaking of China, let me tell you, maybe you know it – it is not an anecdote – it perfectly confirms your point. Did you know that about a 2 or 3 months ago, a Chinese government, I don’t know which agency, passed a law, which formally prohibits in public media – they mean press, books, comic, TV, movies – all stories that deal with time travel or alternative realities. Literally. I double-checked with my friends in China. The official justification was that history is a great matter and it shouldn’t be left to such trifling games and so on.

But, of course, it’s clear what they’re really afraid of: for people to even imagine alternate realities and so. Again, to repeat your point, I think this is a good sign. They, at least, need the prohibition. With us, we don’t even need the prohibition, most of the time. If somebody proposes a radical change, we simply accept this spontaneous everyday ideology but we all know what our economic realities are like. You propose to raise for 1% healthcare spending. No, it would mean lose of competition and so on and so on. So, again, I totally agree with you right here.

A final comment of the people who you, Amy, list. Newt Gingrich for me is — sorry to use this strong word – scum of the earth. I don’t have any great – no, no, no, I’ll be very precise. I don’t have any great sympathy for Bill Clinton, but I remember when there was this campaign, Monica Lewinsky campaign. Newt Gingrich was making all these moralistic attacks and then it was confirmed in media – I listened to interview with him where he confirmed it that when his wife was dying in cancer, Newt Gingrich visited her in hospital forcing her to sign – not even having the decency to let her die – forcing her to sign a divorce agreement, so that he could marry another woman. And he was, at the exact time of the Lewinsky affair, already cheating on her with the secretary there and so on and so on.

Listen, these are people who simply – my God, I become here a kind of moral conservative. There should be some kind of ethical committee that imply claims that people such as these are a threat to our youth and they should be prohibited from appearing in public, whatever. Now, I will make a more important point to this terrorism stuff. Let me make it clear — but I’m not crazy, I mean this in a positive sense – yes, in a sense, you are a terrorist. In which sense? In the sense that I like to repeat that Gandhi was a terrorist. What you are doing, let’s face the facts. It’s not just something that can be swallowed, oh look all the interesting news in the newspapers. Here this is happening, there Slavoj Zizek is dating Lady Gaga and here – totally not true. And here there’s Wikileaks. You effectively…

AMY GOODMAN: Do we have a denial – an official denial there on dating Lady Gaga?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Absolute denial on everything. I didn’t even listen to not one of her songs. My God, I listen to Schubert and Schumann songs. Sorry, I’m a conservative.

AMY GOODMAN: I don’t know her representatives were not that defiant. They just said no comment

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: My friends were telling me the same: “You stupid, you should have said ‘no comment’ then you will enjoy much more glory and so on”. Ok, let’s go on, No, no, no, I have a more serious point to make. What does this mean? In what sense was Gandhi a terrorist? He effectively tried to stop, interrupt the normal function of the British state in India. And, of course you are trying to disrupt the normal – which is very oppressive – of the information circulation and so on.

But the way that we should respond to this point is, I repeat myself here, I know. Endless paraphrase of that wonderful line from Brecht’s Beggar’s Opera: “What is robbing a bank compared to founding a new bank?” What is your, under quotation marks, “terrorism” compared to the terrorism, which we simply accept, which has to go on day by day so just things remain the way they are? That is where ideology helps us. When we think of violence, terrorism, we always think about acts, which interrupt the normal run of things, but what about violence that has to be here in order for things to function the way they are?

So, I think, if – I’m very skeptical about it – in my provocative spirit we should use the term “terrorism”, it’s strictly a reaction to a much stronger terrorism that is here. So, again, instead of engaging in this moralistic game “Oh, no, he’s a good guy”. Like Stalinists said of Lenin “You like small children, you play with cats, you wouldn’t . . .” – as Norman Bates says in Psycho – “you wouldn’t hurt even a fly”. No, you are, in this formal sense, a terrorist. But if you are a terrorist, but then, by God, what are they who accuse of you terrorism?

AMY GOODMAN: For that, we can be taken off the air. I wanted to ask you, Julian, about Bradley Manning. Mike Huckabee, who also was a presidential candidate, the governor of Arkansas, said that the person who leaked the information to Julian Assange should be tried for treason and executed. He said whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.

Bradley Manning is a young U.S. soldier who was in Iraq, um, has been held for more than a year, much of that time in solitary confinement in Quantico in Virginia. Um it was exposed that his treatment was tantamount to torture. P.J. Crowley, the White House State Department spokesperson, spoke to a group of bloggers at MIT and said his treatment is stupid. For that he was forced out of the State Department. Bradley Manning was then moved to Fort Leavenworth because of the outcry, but he remains, uh, in prison. He remains, um, not tried. What are your comments on him

JULIAN ASSANGE: First of all, Amy, thanks for answering this question‚ asking this question, but it is difficult for me to speak in detail about that case, and but i can speak about why it is difficult for me to speak about it. So Bradley Manning is an alleged source of WikiLeaks who was detained in Baghdad, and then although there was very little ‚no mainstream press at the time, shipped off to Kuwait, where he was, if you like, held in an extrajudicial circumstance in Kuwait in a similar manner to which detainees are held in Guantanamo Bay.

Eventually, through some legal, creative legal methods, he was brought back to the United States, and he’s been imprisoned now for over year. He was being kept in Quantico for eight months under extremely adverse conditions. Quantico is not meant for long-term prisoners. Other prisoners, the maximum duration over the past year has been three months, and people that have been visiting Bradley Manning say, and we have other sources who say, that they were applying those conditions to him because they wanted him to confess that he was involved in a conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States with me. That pressure on Manning appears to have backfired.

So by all reports, this is a young man of high moral character and when people of high moral character are pressured in a way that is illegitimate, they become stronger and not weaker. And that seems to have been the case with Bradley Manning and he has told U.S. authorities, as far as we know, nothing about his involvement.

Now there has concurrently been a secret grand jury taking place six kilometers from the center of Washington. That grand jury involves nineteen to twenty-three people selected from that area. Now why was it in Alexandria, Virginia six kilometers [from] the center of Washington, that that grand jury was placed? And those people drawn? Well, it has the highest density of government employees anywhere in the United States.

The U.S. government was free to select the place, and they selected this place in order to bias the jury from the very beginning. This, is in fact, wrong to call a jury. This is a type of medieval star chamber. There are these nineteen to twenty-three individuals from the population that are sworn to secrecy. They cannot consult with anyone else. There is no judge, there is no defense council, and there are four prosecutors. So that is why people that are familiar with the grand jury the United States say that a grand jury would not only indict a ham sandwich; it would indict the ham and the sandwich. And that’s a real threat to us.

A grand jury, which was removed from U.K. jurisprudence because of abuses, combines the executive and the judiciary. So this old common lore notion of the separation of these branches of power is removed in a grand jury. U.S. government argues that these captive nineteen to twenty-three individuals are the branch of the judiciary, if they perform a judicial function, where of course, actually, they’re just captive patsies for the Department of Justice, United States and the FBI.

So they have been going out and they have coercive powers. They can force people to testify, and they have been pulling in all sorts of people that are connected to WikiLeaks and people that are not.

They have recently a number of individuals that have been pulled to the grand jury understand what is going on and they have refused to testify and have pleaded the First Amendment, Third Amendment‚ Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination to‚ well I’m not sure the purpose, I don’t have direct communication, but from the outside it appears to nullify that political witch hunt in the United States against us.

Now, in response, the grand jury has been instructed to send out immunity certificates. So these are certificates that go to subpoenaed individuals that say that if you come to the grand jury to testify, your testimony cannot be used against you and therefore you have no right to plead the Fifth. What this means in practice is coerced, compulsive interrogation in secret with no defense council. There’s not‚ not even lawyers for, for the subpoenaed witnesses are permitted into the grand jury. It is just the prosecutors and these people from six kilometers away from the center of Washington. That’s something that should be opposed.

There is another grand jury that has sprung up here in the United States and is investigating anti-war activists, engaged in the same sort of witch-hunt. So these are a really a classical device that was looked at very critically in the UK four hundred years ago, and the result in the UK’s concept of, the, if justice is to be done, it must be done publicly. And, that is being a concept that is way late. It’s interesting why or how it has been way late.

So on the surface this device of, well you want the police to have an investigation, an executive says it wants to conduct and investigation into some group of people. Well, we get people from the community, nineteen to twenty-three people from the community, and they monitor the investigation. They make sure it’s not overstepping and so on. But actually this has been turned on its head and used as a way to completely subvert the judicial system in the United States.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: First, again, I’d like to say again crucial are the terms that you both mentioned. All this extralegal space, unlawful combatants, and so on and so on. The paradox is that I think we should read these terms as strictly connected to universal human rights. I have nothing against universal human rights, what I’m opposed to is how the reference to universal human rights is de facto used in today’s ideological struggles. That, in order to sustain, support within the space of ruling ideology, universal human rights, you have to construct a space that is no longer the space of the enemy – in this sense enemy in terms of who the rules apply, Geneva convention or so on – but you have to create what the great American thinker and politician Dick Cheney referred to as the “Grey Zone” once. We have to do something discretely so don’t ask us about it and so on and on.

Here, I would say that things are even more complex than they may appear. What I find really terrifying is that concepts of “unlawful combatants” are becoming legal categories. I’m not a utopian here. And, maybe I’ll shock some of you here. Let me be brutally open. I can well imagine a situation where I could not promise you in advance that I will not torture someone. Let’s imagine this ridiculous situation where a bad guy has my young daughter and I have in my hands a guy who knows where my daughter is. Well, maybe, out of despair I would have tortured her, him, whatever. What I absolutely opposed to is to legalize this.

I think, if out of despair I do something like this, it should remain something unacceptable, you know, that I did out of despair. What I’m afraid of is that this system that gets institutionalized as it were because we know what’s at the end of the road. I had a polemic exchange in the New York Times with Alan Dershowitz who wants legalization of tortures. And I read one of his proposals — it’s an obscenity. You would have doctors – let’s say, just a friendly example to scare you a little bit – Amy Amy and me are the torturers and you – someone has to play this role – will be tortured. Let’s say we call a doctor who…

AMY GOODMAN: Speak for yourself, Slavoj. You are the sole torturer.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Yeah, yeah, ok. You know what I’m saying. Who investigates and determines that you can torture him to that degree if, and so on and so on. For me what is horrible is, of course, torture at such. But it is even more obscene this normalization of torture, which is why even more than you — I mean this respectful — Manning is the hero. You had this certain moment of gory and so on and so, but that more guy who, for me, did something extraordinary. You know how difficult are these decisions when simple elementary morality prevails over legal considerations and so on.

I hope that I am not a utopian. Don’t you have any of these organs that propose candidates for Nobel Peace Prize? That would be a nice, crazy movement. If there is a person who deserves Nobel Peace prize today, it’s Manning and people like him. No, no, I’m not laughing, simple, ordinary people – and I’m not even idealizing him. There are many examples of people who I know who are not anything special, they are not saints. But, all of a sudden, they see something like probably – if he’s the one – he saw all these documents and something told him, “Sorry, I will not be pushed more, I have to do something here.”

This is so precious today because it also goes against a note, which is in a way true but exploited by our enemies, this idea today that ideology is cynical, people are totally duped and so on. No they are not, I prefer her to play a little bit of simple moralism. From time to time there are ethnical miracles. There are people that still care and so on and so on.

This is very important because, you know, let us not leave this domain of simple dignified, ethical acts to agencies such as Catholic church and so on. Who are they to talk about it? We, the left, should rehabilitate this – I don’t it doesn’t sound very post-modern or cynical — this idea that there are out there are quite ordinary guys who all of a sudden as if in a miracle do something wonderful. That’s almost, I would say, our only hope today.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Speaking on that, one of the difficulties for alleged sources – actually we have another one in prison, which has recognized very little attention. The case of Rudolph Elmer who is imprisoned in Switzerland for allegedly revealing banking information. There’s no trace to us, but that’s the allegation that’s being investigated. If they put up their hands and say, “yes, yes, it was me”, it makes it very easy to defend them in a moral way, and it makes it very easy to shower them with awards, but until they do it – there defense is that they didn’t do it, so it’s very hard for us to start praising people because inherent in that praise — we would be alleging they are guilty of the offense.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of banks, Julian, you mentioned a while ago that you had a good deal of information on the Bank of America. But they haven’t been released. Are you planning to release them

JULIAN ASSANGE: There’s a complication with those documents and another group of documents, so we are under a type of blackmail in relation to these document, which will be dealt with over time, but is quite difficult to deal with at this moment. I don’t want to specify what type of blackmail it is because it might make it harder to address the situation, but it is, perhaps, something like people might guess. You know, there’s a range of possibilities, and it’s probably the first or second possibility if you’re guessing at least..

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about the beginning of Wikileaks. Tell us how you founded it, named it, and what your hopes were at the time, and if – at this point—you’ve been disappointed by what you’ve been able to accomplish or amazed by it? Wikileaks, how it started.

JULIAN ASSANGE: I think I’m amazed by it, of course. Who couldn’t be. It’s an extraordinary time I’ve lived through, and to see many of your dreams and ideals come into practice. That said, we’re only a hundredth of the way there in there in terms of what we need to release, and discover, and put into people’s hands, and solidify a historical record.

We need a Cablebate for the CIA, we need a Cablegate of the SVR, a Cablegate of the New York Times, actually. All the stories that have been suppressed and how they’ve been managed. Once we’ve gotten that type of volume and concretize and protect the rights of everyone to communicate with each other, which – to me – is the basic agreement of civilized life. It is not the right to speak. What does it mean to have the right to speak if you’re on the moon and nobody is around. It doesn’t matter. Rather the right to speak comes from our right to know.

The two of us together, someone’s right to speak and someone’s right to know, produce a right to communicate, so that is the grounding structure for all that we treasure about civilized life, and by civilized I don’t mean industrialized. I mean people collaborating not to do the dumb thing. To, instead, learn from previous experiences and pool with each other together to get through the life that we live in a less adverse way.

So, that quest to protect the historical record and enable everyone to be a contributor to the historical record is something that I’ve been involved in for 20 years in one way or another. So, that means protecting the people who contribute to our shared public record, and it also means protecting publishers and encouraging distribution of the historical record to everyone who needs to know about it. After all, a historical record that has something interesting in it that you can’t find is no record at all.

So, that long-term vision is something that I developed in various ways. And I saw, around 2006, that there was a way of achieving justice through this process that could be realized using the intellectual and social capital that I had available. That was quite a complex plan. You should read, perhaps, there’s a number of essays on Wikileaks that go into this in more detail.

So, to pull all of this together was a difficult thing to do, and to plan it out and marshal the resources and build an ideology that people could not only support and were encouraged by – and sources were encouraged by – but that people would defend. It’s one of the, I think that it’s extremely interesting that, although, twice this venue – not this venue, sorry – the venue we had rented was cancelled at the institute for education from the University of London on the basis that it would be too controversial.

That’s why we ended up at the Trotsky, at this venue. Despite that, actually, Slavoj Zizek, myself, and Amy Goodman have managed to pack out nearly 2,000 people in London on a Saturday at 25 pounds a seat. So, I see that as extremely encouraging. On the one hand, we have the everyday tawdry institutional censorship of saying that something is too controversial therefore you can’t hold it in an institute of education.

On the other hand, all of you came, and I’m not sure if that would have happened five years ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened 5 years ago. Both of those things wouldn’t have happened 5 years ago. So, when I said before that censorship is always an opportunity, and censorship reveals something that is positive about a society, and a society with no censorship is in a very bad state. If you like, the censorship of not giving us this venue so easily is also related to why you are all here, it’s the other side of the coin. That people are worried that change is possible.

And you’re all here because you thing change is possible, and you’re probably right. So, that’s been a pretty interesting journey to see that. And I thought I was pretty cynical and worldly 5 years ago and, of course, I was simply a very young and naïve fool in retrospect. And learning how to — from being inside the center of the storm, I’ve learned not only about the structure of government, not just about how power flows inside many countries around the world that we’ve dealt with, but rather how history is shaped and distorted by the media.

And, I think the distortion by the media of history, of all the things we should know so we can collaborate together as a civilization, is the worse thing. It is our single greatest impediment to advancement, but it’s changing. We are routing around media that is close to power in all sorts of ways, but it’s not a forgone conclusion, which is what makes this time so interesting.

That we can wrest the Internet, we can wrest communication mechanisms that we have with each other into the values of the new generation that has been educated by the Internet. Has been educated outside of the mainstream media distortion, and all those young people are becoming important inside those institutions.

So, maybe this is something I’ll speak with you about later Amy, but I do want to talk about what it means when institution — the most powerful institutions from the CIA to news corporation are all organized using computer programmers, system organizers, technical young people. What does that mean when all those technical young people adopt a certain value system and they’re in an institution where they do not agree with the value system and yet actually their hands are on the machinery.

Because, there has been moments in the past like that. And it is those technical young people who are the most Internet educated and have the greatest ability to receive the new values that are being spread and the new information and facts about reality that are being spread outside mainstream media distortions.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: I feel now like that Stalinst commentator, you know, “The leader has spoken; I provide the deeper meaning and so on with pleasure”. No, first I would like to begin with what you said – it’s really extremely important I have philosophical term for it when you moved from right to speak, right to know, communication and so on.

I think that, as many of you know, in the history of modern thought, the first one to formulate this was Immanuel Kant in his wonderful distinction between private and public use of reason. This distinction is wonderful because private use of reason is not I gather with my friends in a kitchen of my apartment or in a pub.

No, private use of reason is for Kant theological faculty, legal faculty, political sciences where what you are thinking, debating, developing serves a goal set up in advance by a power structure or ideological structure and so on. For Kant, we here, at a distance from a hierarchal political establishment, we are the public use of reason.

Why is this so important? What I see Wikileaks as part of a global struggle that doesn’t concern in the narrow sense the right to know as the right to information and so, but even education. You know – by you, I mean UK citizens — what horrors are made in the UK university reform. New privatizations and so on and so on.

This is all one concerted attack on the public use of reason. It goes on all over Europe and the name is Bologna Higher Education reform and the goal is very clear. It’s to make universities more responsive to social life, to social problems. It sounds nice, but what it means is that we should all become experts.

As a French guy later minister explained to me in a debate in Paris. For example, cars are burning in Paris what we need is psychologists who will tell us how to control the crowds; urbanist who will tell us how to restructure the streets to break up the crowd; whatever. We should be here ideological or specialist servicemen to resolve problems formulated by others. I think this is the end of intellectual life as we know it.

And we should go here to the end, you know when all those right-wing anti-immigrant bull-shitters are talking – I’m sorry, I used the word, I know I shouldn’t. Do it in a Stalin’s way and put some music of some heroic working class song. Sorry, no, but more seriously. When we hear about “Oh, immigrants, Pakistanis, Muslims are a threat to Judeo-Christian civilization.”

No, sorry, the greatest asset of Judeo-Christian civilization, which you can even detect it in those notions of the holy spirit as a community of believers outside established structures, it’s precisely this independent space of public reason. So, I’m saying, that if there’s something to really defend of the so-called — I hate the word also — Judeo-Christian legacy this idea of democracy not only as this masturbatory right to caste a vote totally isolated, but also — as you said public space of communication and so on – then that should be our answer to all those populist, anti-immigrant politicians and so on.

Not this white liberal guilt: Oh, you are defending Judeo-Christian legacy; no, we feel guilty; how many bad things we did – all the bad things in the world are a result of European imperialism. Ok, maybe, but what we should say to them is “who are you to even speak of Judeo-Christian legacy?” This university reform today in the U.K., this is the greatest threat to Judeo-Christian legacy and so on. Anti-immigrants, they are the nightmare. Imagine Le Pein in power in France and so on. That’s the end of Europe for me in the sense of what is progressive in Europe. So, again, this is for me, part of a much larger problem, especially with the problems — ecological problems for example.

Let me give you an example, which I think is so beautifully clear. Recently – I would like to ask you, if I may, through you – you in China – not you, but Wikileaks in China because Chinese people will pay such a price for precisely the suppression of public space of reason there. My Chinese friends told me this. In China now, a month or two ago, even the government admitted the catastrophic, ecological consequences of those three gorges dam. You know, it’s the greatest artificial lake in the world 250 miles, 400 kilometers long.

Now, they, the government, admitted that the problem is this one: that lake is just above some subterranean faults, which they move when there is an earthquake. SO they admitted that three years or so ago that the big sichuan earthquake was not triggered, but definitely rendered much stronger because of this. And this is not like some proverb you know, “after the battle everyone can be the wiser general.” No, friends when I visited Beijing 4-5 years ago, my friends there told me the majority of geologists were already warning the government about these dangers.

Second thing, because of this collection of water there, the affect of drought are much stronger felt. Point two, you know because, you know, the Yellow River is the main transportation line venue in China. The traffick there is practically stopped and so on and so on. Just to conclude, one more thing. This is not a critical point against you, but a point to clarify what Wikileaks can do.

We should not fetishize Truth as such. We live in times of incredible ideological investments, time when ideology is very strong precisely because it is not even experienced as ideology. What can happen? Let me tell you a story from Israel that my friends told me there.

Some 5-6 years ago, one of their historians wrote a more truthful account of how also in the independence ’48, ’49 war the Israeli army did burn some Palestinian villages and so on and so on — a more balanced view. First, all the lefty critics had a sort of intellectual orgasm. Wonderful, and so on. Then, they got a shock of the lifetime when this guy said “No, no, no, but what I meant was that this was necessary, we should have done it even more.” The line of this guy was “We should have thrown all of the Palestinians from the West Bank and we wouldn’t have any problems today.”

So, what I’m trying to say that I disagree not with you but, for example, another person who I have respect: Noam Chomsky. A friend of mine told me recently that he had lunch with Noam Chomsky in New York and he said that all of the obscenities are so clear that we don’t need any critique of ideology, we just need to tell to the people the truth. No, truth must be contextualized in the sense of what does it say, what does it justify, what does it deny, so on and so on?

So, to really conclude, this would be my point about Wikileaks. That you are not just simply telling the truth. You are telling the truth in a very precise way of confronting explicit line of justification, rationalization or whatever — the public discourse with its implicit prepositions.

It’s not just about telling the truth, and this is very important. Why? Now I conclude, don’t be afraid. You know this wonderful Marx brothers joke, which I think serves perfectly as a model of today’s ideology. Why? Because, like, if you have listened to someone – you know that failed businessman who then ruined the American army as a defense minister — Donald Rumpsfeld, he’s called, no? I read a biography of him and they prove it conclusively that, my God, he was a bad, stupid manager. It’s a total myth he was a business genius.

Ok, now, to the point. Basically, his cynical line about Iraq when it was discovered that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction and so on was that “Ok, we were lying, but we were lying in a truthful way with a good intention. We manipulated you, but this was part of a larger strategy and so on.” This is maybe the most intelligent but a tricky and effective and cynical defense of a liar. “Ok, I’m lying, but so what? I openly confess that I’m lying so I’m truthful.”

Here we should repeat that Marx brothers claim – and it is what I claim that you are doing. You know that wonderful phrase from Groucho Marx when he’s playing a lawyer defending his client, and he’s saying: “This guy looks as an idiot and acts as an idiot. This shouldn’t deceive you, this guy is an idiot.” We should say to Donald Rumpsfeld, “Ok, you admit that act as a liar and you are a cheater and liar, but this will not deceive us. You are effectively a cheater and a liar.” We should not allow them this space of selling their lies themselves as a deeper truth. This is how ideology today functions.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, I want to ask you about the Arab Spring and what you see as Wikileaks role as what started in Tunisia, and Egypt, what we’re seeing in Bahrain and Yemen, Syria, Libya. What role did Wikileaks play

JULIAN ASSANGE: It’s hard to disentangle, but the story that we have back from people who are back in Egypt and from the newspaper al-Akbar, one of the great newspapers published in the Middle East out of Lebanon.

AMY GOODMAN: You lived in Egypt for a time

JULIAN ASSANGE: I lived in Egypt during 2007, so I’m familiar with the Mubarak regime and the tensions within the Egyptian environment. Actually, I was staying at that time, in a rather unusual circumstance, where I was staying in Ms. Egypt’s house.

And, Ms. Egypt’s house – other than having paintings of Ms. Egypt all throughout – was clustered right between the U.S. Embassy and the U.N. High Commission with a van outside fueled with 24 soldiers in front of my front door. So, for the sort of work we were doing, this seemed to be the ultimate cover, if you like, to be nested right amongst this. But, you know, Egypt’s a very interesting place. At that time, you didn’t feel in most areas of Cairo the presence of a dictatorship.

In fact, if you look out on the streets, men go to work, they go to cafes to have shisha in the afternoon. The pigeon boys come out onto the roof and there’s weddings on a Saturday and Sunday. In fact, the economic and the technological basis to Cairo seems pretty much the same as London if you compare it to Australian aboriginals.

To my mind, actually, if we say that it is democracy that rules and manages the United States, or it is electoral democracy that manages and rules London, this is completely ridiculous. Because when we look at countries that are dictatorships, or soft dictatorships as in the case of Egypt, the day to day life and the technological activities and the patterns of behavior for most people are exactly the same.

But its when you stray into those areas of Egypt and areas of Cairo where the Interior Ministry is, or the Foreign Ministry is, that the level of paranoia and fear and the number of people guarding with submachine guns and so on increases. At that time there was around 20,000 political prisoners of different types in Egypt. But remember Egypt has a population of around 18 million.

This is always something that I am aware of when you have an inteligencia that writes and writes about its problems. Because this is a mirror image of the problem we have with the mainstream press, which is writers always write to their own favor and their own considerations and their own self interest. So a country can go from a position of not treating writers well, to treating writers well and not treating everyone else well. By writers I mean people who have the ability to project their voice.

So for those 20,000 political prisoners in Egypt, they could gain no traction in the Western press, and yet others such as in Iran we hear about all the time. It’s very interesting that Egypt was perceived to be a strong ally of Israel and strong ally of the United States in that region, so all the political and human rights abuses that were occurring every day in Egypt simply did not get traction.

There was one moment where, rather actually unusual for Egypt, but perhaps a sign of the cleverness that came to be represented in the Arab Spring, where these 20,000 prisoners started a strike demanding conjugal rights–demanding that their wives be permitted to visit them in prison for sex. And then they got some prominent muftis to come out and say look, ’Its bad enough these people are political agitators, let alone homosexual political agitators. And that is then something that was picked up by the Western press because it had this extra salacious flavor. So that was some of my experiences with Egypt when I lived there.

Later on, when we worked on Cablegate, we selected a French partner, Le Monde, in order to get the cables into, into French, because we knew they would have an effect in Francophone Africa. Also, cables were published in early December by Al Akbar in Arabic from Lebanon, and also Al-Masry al-Youm, uh, in Egypt, although the material that was published in Egypt, back in December, under Mubarak, was pretty soft, uh, because of the threats that that newspaper was under. But, Al-Masry al-Youm pushed hard, and there was, a number of critical cables came out about the Tunisian regime, and about Ben Ali. Now, of course, the, the argument that has often been used, including, for example, in the electoral result that we were involved in in Kenya in 2007 is you just tell the people what’s going on, and then they’ll be angry about it and they’ll oppose it.

But actually the real situation is much more rich and interesting than that. Rather, yes, the demos knows, the population starts to know, and they start to know in a way that’s undeniable, and they also start to know that the United States knows, and the United States can’t deny what was going on inside Tunisia. And then, the elites within the country and without the country also know what is going on, and they can’t’ deny it, so, a situation developed where it was not possible for the United States to support the Ben Ali regime, and intervene in a revolution, in the way that it might have. Similarly, it was not possible for France to support Ben Ali or other partners in the same way that they might have been able to.

Also, in our strategy in dealing with this region, uh, and, uh, our survival strategy for Cablegate, was to overwhelm, that is, we have Saudi Arabia, for example, propping up a number of states in the Middle East, and in fact invading Bahrain, to do this.

But, when these states have problems of their own to deal with and political crises of their own to deal with, they turn inwards, and they can’t be involved in this proper. So, Cablegate as a whole caused these elites that prop each other up into region within the Arab speaking countries, and, within, between Europe and these countries and between the United States and these countries, to have to deal with their own political crises, and not spend time giving intelligence briefings on activists, or sending in, um, the SAS, or other support, and activists within Tunisia saw this, very quickly, I think they started to see an opportunity, and that information, uh, our site, a number of Wikileaks sites, were then immediately, um, banned by the Tunisian government, Al Akbar was banned by the Tunisian government, a hacker attack was launched on Al Akbar, many had been launched at us but we had come to defend against them.

Al Akbar was taken down, their whole newspaper was redirected to a Saudi sex site, believe it or not, there is such a thing as a Saudi sex site, and they rested it back through involvement to the foreign, the foreign ministry back in Lebanon, and then, what I believe to be state-based computer hackers, cause of the degree, the sophistication of the attack, came in and wiped out all of Al Akbar’s cable publishing efforts.

The cables about Tunisia were then spread around, um, online, um, in other forms, uh, translated by a little internet group called Tunis Leaks, and, so, present, presented, a number of different f-facets that everyone could see and no one could deny that the Ben Ali regime was fundamentally corrupt, um, it’s not that the people didn’t know it before, but it became undeniable to everyone, including the United States. And that the United States, or at least the state department, could be read, that if it came down to supporting the army or Ben Ali, they would probably support the army, the military class, rather than the political class. So that gave activists and the army, uh, a belief that they could possibly pull it off.

But this wasn’t enough. So all that was intellectual. And, was, was making a difference and was stirring things up in Tunisia. Uh, and then, you had this action by a twenty-six year old, uh, computer technician, who set, um, afire, who self immolated, uh, on, er, in December, um, sixteenth, um, last year. (mumbling) Yeah. And was hospitalized and died on January fourth. And that taking a sort of intellectual frustration and irritation and hunger for change and undeniably to an emotional, physical act on the street, is then what changed the equation. There’s other things that sort of, uh, more of a systemic issue that was gradually breeding up, which is, you had aging rulers in the middle east that, who’s regimes to that extent were becoming weaker, that the intellectual management of them was decreasing, um, you also had the rise of satellite tv, and, the decision of Al Jazeera staff to film and broadcast protest scenes on the street.

So most revolutions kick off in a crowd situation like this one, where everyone can, you know, all the time the regime is saying, this voice is an outcast voice, this a minority, this is not popular opinion.

And what the media does is censor those voices and prevents people from understanding that actually, that what the state is saying is in the minority is in the majority. And once people realize that their view is in the majority, then they understand they physically have the numbers, and there’s no better way to do that then in some kind of public square, which is why Tahrir square in, uh, Egypt was so important, because everyone could see that they had the numbers.

Um, and that’s, you know, I often perceive that there are moments like that, politically, um, yes the Middle East was one that we might be going through, you know, you saw just before the Berlin Wall fell, everyone thought that it was impossible. Why? I mean, if, if it’s not that people suddenly received a lot of new information, rather what the information that they received is that everyone, a large majority of people, had the same belief’s that they’d had, and people became sure of that, and uh, and then you have a sudden switch, a sudden state change, and then, then you have a revolution.

So I often feel that we, we’re on the edge of that, and, that, alternative ways of people becoming aware of what their beliefs are, what each other’s beliefs are, is something that introduces that truly democratic shift. I’ve, I’ve often lambasted bloggers as people who just want to demonstrate peer value conformity, and who don’t actually do any original news, who don’t actually do any original work, uh, when we release original documentation on many things, although the situation is, very interestingly, improving. Uh, often we find that all of these left wing bloggers do not descend on a fresh cable from Panama revealing, as it did, today, that the United States has declared the right to board one-third of all ships in the world without any justification.

They do not descend on that, rather, they read the front page of the New York Times and go “I disagree” or “I agree” or “I agree in my categories” and that is something that sort of, that hypocrisy of saying that you care about a situation, um, but not actually doing the work is something that has angered me.

But, it does serve an important function. The function that it serves is the function of the square. It is to show the number of voices that are lining up, on one side or another.

‘AMY GOODMAN:’ Before you respond, I just wanted to ask, since you talked about what you released today, you also have just sued MasterCard and Visa, can you explain this weekend why you did that?

‘AUDIENCE:’ (Applause)

‘JULIAN ASSANGE:’ You know, when Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, actually I spoke to Daniel Ellsberg last night, he told me an incredible story about that, but did you know the New York Times had a thousand pages of the Pentagon Papers one month before Daniel Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times? Fresh news. Amazing stuff. Uh, yeah. I’ll leave that aside.

‘AUDIENCE:’ (Laughter)

Um, sorry, what was the question? Oh yes, MasterCard. So, when Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, did they suddenly change things? Actually, Nixon was re-elected, after Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, the Vietnam War didn’t stop, the information was very important in all sorts of ways, and its importance over time was very important. The most important thing to come out of the Pentagon Papers was the reaction to the Pentagon Papers, because the Pentagon Papers described a situation in the past, what the past was like, but the reaction to the Pentagon Papers described what was going on right now, and, it showed a tremendous overage by the Nixon administration, various attempts to cover things up, and actually the New York Times actually probably really wouldn’t have published the Pentagon Papers unless they thought it was going to be published anyway, which they did, it was scheduled to be published, um, in four months time, in a book, very, very interesting.

So, on December sixth last year, these, uh, MasterCard, PayPal, The Bank of America, uh, Western Union, all ganged up together to engage in an economic blockade against Wikileaks, and that economic blockade has continued since that point.

So it’s over six months now, we have been suffering from an extrajudicial economic blockade that is occurred without any process whatsoever. In fact, the only two formal investigations into this, one was on January thirteen last year, by Timothy C. Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, who found that there was no lawful excuse to conduct an economic blockade against Wikileaks. And other, was by a Visa subsidiary, who was handling our European payments, Teller, who found that we were not in breach of any of Visa’s bylines or regulations.

Those are the only two formal inquiries. And yet, the blockade continues, it’s an extraordinary thing, that we have seen that Visa, MasterCard, Western Union, and so on, are, instruments of U.S. foreign policy, but, instruments of U.S., of not U.S., as in a state operating under laws foreign policy, but rather instruments of Washington’s patronage network policy. So there was no due process at all. And so, over the past few months, you know we have a number of cases on, so we’ve been a bit distracted, but over the past few months we have build up the case against Visa, and MasterCard, under European law.

And, Visa and MasterCard together own about ninety-five percent of the credit card, um, payment industry in Europe, and therefore they have a sort of market dominance, and that means, under European law, they cannot engage in certain actions to, uh, unfairly remove people from the market.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of other legal cases I just wanted to ask you about what you face next week, the extradition case on July 12th. The Nationmagazine has done two pieces- one is forthcoming. And they quote your new lawyer, Gareth Peirce who is very well known for representing prisoners at Guantanamo, a renowned human rights attorney. And Tom Hayden, who writes the piece, interviewed many people in Sweden and the United States and sort of talks about a feeling in Sweden of an attack very much represented by your past lawyers on the Swedish justice system-and on the integrity of the women in Sweden. And he quotes Gareth Peirce saying…

JULLIAN ASSANGE: lawyers never attacked any integrity of women

AMY GOODMAN: Well, he quotes Gareth Peirce saying, “the history of this case is as unfortunate as it is possible to image. Each of the human beings involves deserves respect and consideration. And I just wanted to ask if you are seeing this as a change of approach with your legal team in dealing with your possible extradition to Sweden?

JULLIAN ASSANGE:Possibly, I mean the situation…. What is happened to Europe and what is happened to Sweden is fascinating. It is something I have come to learn because I’ve been embroiled in it. But it is intellectually extraordinary- so we see for example that- the European Union introduced an arrest warrant system. And that arrest warrant system to extradite from one state of the EU to another state of the EU was put in place in response to 9/11 to extradite terrorists- to have fast extradition of terrorists.

And it introduced this concept, or rather recycled a European Union concept of mutual recognition. This is sort of a very feel good phrase- that one state in the EU mutually recognizes another state in the EU- and that sunk down into mutual recognition between one court in the EU to another court in the EU. But actually what it seems to be talking about it, if you think about it, given the reality that three people a day are extradited from this country to the rest of Europe- is a mutual recognition of the elite in each country in the EU. It is a method of, um, of being at peace.

So the elite in each country in the EU, has, if you like, made literally a treaty with each other, to recognize each other and to not complain about the behavior. Now you might say that, well ok we have justice systems in the EU and various countries. Some are better some are worse depending on your values system- but we have sunk so low that it’s not even like that anymore.

The European arrest warrant talks about the mutual recognition of judicial authority- so courts. But it has permitted each country to define what they call a judicial authority, and Sweden has chosen to call policeman and prosecutors judicial authorities. And the whole basis of this term being used in the original introduction of the European Arrest Warrant was that you would keep the executive separated from the judicial system. That it was meant to be a natural and neutral party who would request extradition- and it’s not.

So there are many things like this that are going on in that case. I haven’t been charged. Is it right to extradite to a state where they do not speak the language? Where they do not have family, they do not know the lawyers, they do not know the legal system. If you don’t even have enough evidence to charge them, you won’t even come over as we have offered many times to speak to the people concerned.

So previous complaints about these sort of problems have lead to some inquires in Sweden. For instance, the biggest Swedish law magazine that goes out to all the lawyer had a survey on this and one third of the lawyers responding said that yes, these complaints about the Swedish judiciary system, they truly are a problem.

On the other hand, it has entered a situation where the Swedish Prime Minister and the Swedish Justice Minister have personally attacked me. Um, and said, the Swedish Prime Minister said that I had been charged to the Swedish public, when I hadn’t been.

So it is a delicate situation, Sweden- the Sweden we have now is not the Sweden of Olof Palme in the 1970s. Sweden recently sent troops, recently passed a bill to send marines in Libya. It was the fifth country out to send fighter jets into Libya.

This is a different dynamic, we have to be carful at dealing with it. It’s one thing to sort of be considerate of differences in the way various justice systems are administered- but it’s another to tolerate any difference. And I don’t think any difference should be tolerated in the EU.

You know, what is it that prevents the justice systems of EU states from fundamentally collapsing and decaying? You say there is mutual recognition. There’s mutual recognition between the UK and Romania, and what if the Romanian justice system collapses more and more and more? Who’s going to account for that? Who’s going to scrutinize it? Is it going to be some bureaucrats in the EC that are going to scrutinize the Romanian justice system? No. The only sustainable approach to scrutinizing the justice systems of the EU is the extradition process.

So it is extradition lawyers and defendants who have the highest motivation to scrutinize the quality of justice in the state that they are being extradited to. And that’s a healthy system that permits outside scrutiny?and so it can stop European states from decaying. But the European Arrest Warrant System removes that possibility; it’s not open to us to look at any of the facts in the case in the exerdition at all- that is completely removed. All we’re arguing about is whether the two page request that was filled out which literally has a box ticked rape, is a valid document.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ll end with Žižek.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: , first I am so sad I don’t have time to go into it because I found this again, yet another this, I mean by this- strange mutual recognition and this absolutely- think about it what you’ve heard. This properly Kafkaesque paradox of being extradited without even being trapped. I mean, are we aware where we are? But let’s not take that path first. I cannot but restrain from making an obscene remark of how you said when you were staying with the ms. of Egypt, no- I hope there will be some American from the Middle East who will say “ah, now everything is clear. There you were seduced by that ms. who was really Al Qaeda agent and then you were turned into a terrorist agent through her to do your terrorist activity, now things are clear now. Let’s go on with more…

AMY GOODMAN: We have one minute to go.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK . Yeah, yeah- but one minute in this broader Christian sense where time is eternity and so on. Very briefly, first I’ll …we admit it- we are doing bad thing on the West Bank but you cannot negotiate if they bomb you like- let’s just. If you, of course, examine Gaza on the West Bank there was practically total peace the last five, six, even more years. The image you get form this papers is that there was an incredibly compromising spirit from the Palestinian side- offering entire Jerusalem and so on. And it was absolutely clear that it’s Israel which is not interested in peace.

Second point, just a couple of points. I think it is so important the exact words you use- which make my point. Which confirm my point- mainly how undeniable- they could no longer deny and so one- that’s important. You know again we are in that situation where I know you know- I know that you know. But we can still play the cynical game, let’s act as of we don’t know. The function of Wiki leaks, even more important, I claim, in complete ideological and political situations —then learning through Wiki leaks— to push us to this point where you cannot pretend not to know.

Let me give you another example, again, I am not a total fan of Obama, although I still have certain respect for him- but…this is cynicism at its purist, you remember this outcry in Zionist circles where Obama made the simple point that the basis of peace should be the sixty seven boarders. My god. The critical reaction was as if Obama said something, I don’t know, following orders from Al Qaeda or what. But this was the official U.S. policy expect that the obscenity of the situation was that although this was part of the official U.S. policy it was part of the unwritten deal not to talk about it- to ignore it. That’s our situation here. Step further, Egypt. I know, you know what’s for me, and you have here a lot. The truth about Egypt.

We Western Europeans have this normal spontaneous racist attitude. No. We would love to see a secular democratic movement in Arab countries, unfortunately all they can do is some stupid anti fundamentalist, nationalist, whatever, outburst. Now, officially we got what we wanted. A purely secular uprising and so on and you know how we behaved?

My last obscene example. Did you see Francois Telfo Day and Night, where a guy wants to sleep with a girl- tries to convince her for a long time -then finally they are alone because of an accident by a lake and again, he starts, “please let’s do it quickly, we are alone here” and the girl says “ok, let’s do it” and starts to unbutton her trousers. And the guy says “my god, just like that?” he is shocked.

We were a little bit like that. Officially we wanted secular democracy, the Egyptians said, “OK, I pull down my trousers you can have your stupid secular democracy. And uh uh – you can’t get it just like that. It was such a clear example of hypocrisy. Now really to finish, maybe the most important thing- what you already said Amy – I think this is one of the ways if we are approaching the end to conclude it.

Even if you ignore Wiki leaks, it’s changed the entire field. It’s again, even at the level of publishing and spreading information you pushed things in a very formal way- to a point of undeniably. Nobody can pretend that Wiki leaks didn’t happen. And it would be very interesting to classify all reactions to Wiki leaks.

You know, in different form of in Chekhovian terms, repression, denial, whatever- some people say formally “yeah yeah” but try to neutralize it “ohh, another chapter of freedom of the press” “investigative journalism” others says “direct terrorism” I wonder the approach I would have followed if I were to be on the other side.

It would have been something like, it’s basically a good thing, it’s just misused by some extremists you know. And then you kind of say- to save the good core of Wiki leaks. So, what I am sayings is, again, to conclude, don’t worry. This is the moment of truth. Wiki leaks is an event, not only because of what it is in itself- because nobody can ignore it- it changed the entire field. The point is not to allow to be renormalized. To be faithful to it.

AMY GOODMAN: A note: Slavoj and I will be out signing books on the left in the lobby right afterwards and would love to talk to you. Yes you do. Defiantly pick up a flyer. And I want to end on this question Julian. Tomorrow, July 3rd, you turn forty years old. What are you hopes for the future?

JULIAN ASSANGE: There’s the big future, there’s the deep future that one can long for. So that is a future where we are all able to freely communicate our hopes and dreams, factual information about the world with each other and the historical record is an item that is completely sacrosanct. That would never be changed, never be modified, never be deleted, and that we will steer a course away from Orwell’s dictum of ‘he who controls the present controls the past.’

That is something that is my life long quest to do. And from all- from that justice flows because each, most of us have an instinct for justice and most of us are reasonably intelligent and if we can communicate with each other, organize, not be oppressed, and know what’s going on then pretty much the rest fall out. So that is my big hope. In the short term, it is that my staff stop hassling to tell me to go.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK What I wish you, all the best, is another, even more beautiful mischief.

[loud applause]

The Anti-war Progressive Teach-in broaches upon some of the most highly charged subjects of our day—War & Peace, national healthcare, women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, torture, vets against the war, freedom, democracy, protest, demonstrations, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

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LIVE — “THE KEVIN BARRETT SHOW”

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Two-hour commercial-free special: Alan Sabrosky and Sen. Mike Gravel propose grassroots plans for 9/11 justice.

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Guest, Dr. Robert Abele. Dr. Abele (Ph.D. Marquette University) teaches philosophy at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of two excellent recent articles The Corporate Media Complex: Drawing Back the Veil on the U.S. Propaganda Machine and The US as a National Security State. He is also the author of three books: A User’s Guide to the USA Patriot Act; Democracy Gone: A Chronicle of the Last Chapters of the Great American Democratic Experiment; and The Anatomy of a Deception: A Reconstruction and Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq.

The Kevin Barrett Show is independently produced and hosted by Kevin Barrett and these shows are externally produced content. All externally produced content broadcast on No Lies Radio is the sole responsibility of the program-content producer and is not the responsibility of NoLiesRadio.org. Any questions or concerns should be directed to the content producer.

Coming up every Saturday at 1:00 pm Pacific * 04:00 pm Eastern * 20:00 GMT

Grande Dame — Helen Thomas
As a path finding journalist that covered every president since JFK, Helen Thomas ended every presidential press conference with her trademark: “Thank you, Mr. President,” (except for during the Bush years, when she was relegated to the back row). This Sunday, we say: “Thank you, Helen Thomas,” as I chat with her about her life that has been intertwined with our history for the last five decades. She is characteristically straightforward in this interview. This interview is from October 31, 2010.
Cindy’s website is here.

It’s big news that the Pentagon Papers have finally been released by the government.

But the statements from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about 9/11 have not been covered by the corporate media.

As Fire Dog Lake’s Jeff Kaye writes today:
The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions …
Similarly, Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski – who blew the whistle on the Bush administration’s efforts to concoct false intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – wrote (page 26):
I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.
Several months after 9/11, famed news anchor Dan Rather told the BBC that American reporters were practicing “a form of self-censorship”:
There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions…. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.What we are talking about here – whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not – is a form of self-censorship.
The head of CNN agreed:
There was ‘almost a patriotism police’ after 9/11 and when the network showed [things critical of the administration's policies] it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and “big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’
Keith Olbermann said:
You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble …. You cannot say: By the way, there’s something wrong with our …. system.
Former Washington Post – and now Huffington Post – columnist Dan Froomkin wrote in 2006:
Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . .

There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.

If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers.

I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter – whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way.
The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, Seymour Hersh, said:
“All of the institutions we thought would protect us — particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress — they have failed. The courts . . . the jury’s not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn’t. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that’s the most glaring….Q: What can be done to fix the (media) situation?

[Long pause] You’d have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You’d actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn’t think you could control. And they’re not going to do that.”
Veteran reporter Bill Moyers criticized the corporate media for parroting the obviously false link between 9/11 and Iraq (and the false claims that Iraq possessed WMDs) which the administration made in the run up to the Iraq war, and concluded that the false information was not challenged because:
“the [mainstream] media had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked.”
Of course, the corporate media is always pro-war. Since 9/11 provided a justification for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere, the mainstream media doesn’t want to question the government’s version of events.

As Tom Brokaw notes:
All wars are based on propaganda.
What Does Ellsberg Say?

Ellsberg says that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:
Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today’s American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take [former FBI translator and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations [which Ellsberg calls "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers"].As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who “sat on the NSA spying story for over a year” when they “could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome.”

“There will be phone calls going out to the media saying ‘don’t even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,’” he told us.

* * *

“I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to ‘How do we deal with Sibel?’” contends Ellsberg. “The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn’t get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told ‘don’t touch this . . . .’”
He supports a new 9/11 investigation.

He says that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. (Here’s some of what that whistleblower says.) He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11.

And he says that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of those in office, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see this and this).

Alternative Media Is Not Much Better

It is not just the corporate media.

I have had the owners of highly-regarded alternative media companies confide in me privately that they don’t believe the government’s version of 9/11, but that are scared of discussing it publicly because they don’t want to be tarred-and-feathered for discussing “conspiracy theories”.

Even writers like Glenn Greenwald – who are good on so many issues – won’t touch it.

Of course – as Ellsberg points out – “Secrets … can be kept reliably … for decades … even though they are known to thousands of insiders”. Indeed, the whole label “conspiracy theory” is just an attempt to diffuse criticism of the powerful.

People used to understand this. As the quintessential American writer Mark Twain said in a more rational age:
A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public.
Of course, as thousands of top American military officers, counter-terrorism officials, intelligence officers, congressmen, structural engineers, and others have publicly said, the government’s story about 9/11 makes absolutely no sense. See this, this, this and this. And family members of people who died on 9/11 – and many New Yorkers – want a new investigation.

But you’ll never hear that in the corporate media.
Global Research Articles by Washington’s Blog

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Coming up every Wednesday at 7:00 pm Pacific * 10:00 pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast.

Military Suicides and the Pentagon’s New Mass Psychological Experiment and Censorship In Africa.

“Propaganda Steers our Opinion Exactly where it is Intended to Go.”

By its own definition it is media’s job to tell us about ourselves and the world around us, to enable us to make informed decisions in a democratic society. That’s the theory.

Now, let’s look at reality:

Media has become a mirror of the disconnected state that humanity finds itself in. News, current affairs, even the dramas and reality TV shows that entertain us serve to exacerbate the religion of polarity being reflected back to us in all its forms – materialism, hatred, killing, idolization and separation. Almost all television, be it sagas and melodramas or daily news, is as addictive as any drug. This single dimensional ‘pulpit’ from which media preaches to us (often in the centre of our living rooms) actually seeds many of our negative behavior patterns in day-to-day life.

Dramas and melodramas aside, we have been led to believe that the news and current affairs programs we watch are true, unbiased, fair. Often this is anything but the case. News is provided, increasingly, by a select few. Those who have views outside what the owners of global media want us to hear and see have found themselves without a platform from which to present their knowledge and opinions.

Governments ensure that only the very powerful are able to access our living rooms by staking ownership and guardianship of the airwaves through licensing priced well outside the reach of ordinary people. As a result the news we see in all developed countries, particularly those of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, is exactly the same, word for word, picture for picture. There is purpose behind this; it ensures that the now global corporate empires of media become bigger and more powerful, gobbling up any small players along the way. A select few controlling interests effectively distort democracy by shaping public opinion through deception on a grand scale.

The news we watch steers our attention in the direction needed to affect the outcome desired by this greedy, inhumane elite. It perpetuates polarity and provides the momentum necessary for its growth. Our feelings of vengeance and self-righteousness, seeded by lack of balance and distortion of truth reported to us in our news, is the fuel needed for us to supply ‘boy-power’ for the wars we are about to wage (or are already waging). In the few years since television made its debut into society, people who would be dictators have found the perfect uninterrupted medium through which to shape opinion every night of the week – they do it from behind the scenes by filtering the news and programming we watch. It is interesting that the first ever public television broadcast was of Adolph Hitler opening the Olympic games in Munich – he understood the immense potential of this new communication medium. Media can be the most powerful tool of freedom for a people but it can also be the most powerful instrument of propaganda.

It is considered good reporting to present a news story that shows as much violence as can be tolerated by the average family during or shortly after dinner time. Almost always this violence is aimed at promoting law and order, or steering our opinion regarding some conflict abroad. If we were shown the degree of violence which our nations have unleashed on millions of people the world over, on our behalf, we would be horrified and would quickly rise up against those governing us. But, alas, we are not shown these revealing images. Propaganda steers our opinion exactly where it is intended to go. Disturbing, angry, fear-invoking images are the norm, always biased to keep us on side.

It is our spiritual starvation, our endless wanting, that has grown media into what it has become. For many of us the most exciting dreams we have are to possess whatever product we have seen that we most want. For some of us the most exciting event of the day is the color brochure that arrives in our mail, full of dreams in the form of things we can purchase. Whole programs are presented where we watch the best ads. Whole channels exist where all programming is advertising. Media is actually supplying the information that sells and is in demand. As ego-selves in denial of the common thread linking each of us through creator-self, we do not realize the true implications of this demand. We have not yet come to understand the impact it has upon our world. Media is much more than a vehicle for supplying us with information to make decisions – it gives us the very raw materials with which we create even more misery.

One of the most basic factors determining whether or not a story is newsworthy is the level of interest the story will generate. The more interesting the story, the more people tune in, the greater the advertising revenue for the television station. Because we are raised to believe almost exclusively in competition, excitement is generated by seeing the suffering of another individual – by taking a side and watching our side win. Stories of co-operation are rare and much less popular than those showing competition. When co-operation is shown it is usually in the form of one team against another, one army against another, etc. This is not co-operation in the true sense. True co-operation would mean one team, one humanity, one earth – why would any aspect of the whole wish to attack one of its parts?

Even our nature shows teach us that co-operation in the natural world is all but non-existent and that animals are just like we should be – in a perpetual state of war, heterosexual, and in many cases mating (‘married’) for life. We have imposed our subjective evaluation on them, turning a blind eye to the reality of the animal kingdom. When we see a nature program showing animals in the wild, we are led to believe that life is war – a perpetual state of hunting and being hunted. Those who have actually experienced the real natural world, now a minority of humans, know this is clearly a deception. Film crews spend months, sometimes years waiting patiently for these exciting scenes. While on the lookout for their safety, animals generally enjoy freedom and peace the likes of which we have forgotten to even dream about. Predators only hunt what they need, usually taking out the weak or the excess. Furthermore, sexuality and its expression in the animal kingdom is anything but what we have been led to believe. It is colorful, diverse and natural. While well meaning, those who interpret animal behavior for us are often biased by their societal belief systems, subjectivity seeded by religion – all too often Christianity and Judaism.

Most media outlets are commercial ventures designed primarily for the purposes of creating wealth. They need to sell program content (product) that is desirable, their commercial interests paramount at all times. Of the few media outlets that are not constrained in this way, most are government funded. These outlets, contrary to what we would like to believe, also have to satisfy their funders. This media sector tends to attract players of a particular political bent whose self-preservation (job, financial future and retirement benefits) rely on the illusion that we need more and more governing; more controls and restrictions placed on us.

We have a politically left-leaning bias in the publicly owned media and a right-leaning bias in the privately owned media. Polarity, once again. It is not the direction of leaning that matters but the leaning itself. This leaning results in people being pitted against one another. (Needless to say, the bias of religiously sponsored media speaks for itself and we need hardly waste our time re-iterating its methods.)

Media does report on the problems and challenges of our world, but in a way that is largely superficial. All too often media actually misinforms us by providing the illusion that we are being properly informed. We hear stories about terrorism, earthquakes, floods and famines. We hear of our frailty against an ever-increasing array of attacks commissioned by the invisible world of bacteria and viruses, frailty that can be counterattacked by mega-corporations behind the medical industry. With only ego, without spiritual grounding in and through ourselves, these reports succeed in invoking even more fear.

It is all about us and them, whether they are another tribe, another religion, another country, another animal, another ‘dumb’ piece of rock crumbling into the ocean, or a disease that we should all fear. All they have to do is tell us something is bad for us and we believe them. ‘They’ have become our father-figure who we trust and look to for guidance. This is a grave error on our behalf because many of these people are completely irresponsible and utterly selfish. We have allowed ourselves to become disempowered, cowering and fearful, ready to be herded through any gate and into any trap. Nothing is our enemy if and when we decide to believe in ourselves. Believing in ourselves awakens us to the reality that our earth is alive, intelligent. As with our bodies, earth ‘speaks’ to us, not in words but in feelings – feelings we should be listening to.

Our current paradigm is primitive, patriotic, and dangerous. Our respective countries’ national sport is a case in point. It all seems like a load of fun – beer swilling, flag waving, drunken crowds, rowdy cheering in grandstands and dingy bars, fights and riots after the game.  A national sport is designed to promote patriotism; it is an extended and continuous war game in which many of us are unwitting contributors. Through competitive spectator sport we have created an activity that is the domain of a minority of physically-suited individuals. For the majority of people who are either unable to achieve such high standards of performance or simply don’t desire the activity enough to partake, participation is reduced to that of mere spectator. We are entertained just like the ancient crowds watching gladiators in the Roman coliseum; the only thing that pulls a crowd to its feet faster than a goal is a fight. The result is that the overall fitness level of our media-orientated society continues to reach new lows.

It is during commercial breaks that we are targeted on an even more personal level. The best way to sell something to an unconscious self is to tap into one of the many fears associated with that disconnection. We are promised extended youth, greater beauty, power, success – all these can be ours for the right price. The only effort required is a little shopping.  The need for more stuff is never-ending. We experience a short term high when we bag the latest product on the shelf, but the unwritten guarantee is that, if we follow the rules of this game, we will come to the same end as everyone else. That is, we will eventually become old, diseased, and finally die. Why, advertisements even allow us to pre-pay for our own funeral!

If this is not a dark enough picture, there is another side to it – one that is almost completely hidden from us. Our ever-increasing need to consume more is the fuel that feeds the global engine churning greater material imbalance and misery by the day. You may already know this, but if you are able to afford power, television, even this book, you are part of a privileged minority of humanity at this time. Most inhabitants of the earth have no such luxury; many cannot even read (not because they are stupid, but because they did not have the opportunity of learning to read). The greater percentage of humans has only one concern and that is whether they are going to be able to eat today. For many this dire situation is directly related to our imperialism, our greed, our soullessness. Each of us in the richest nations is destined to consume 15 to 150 times what one of these people consumes in a lifetime! If we in the west have just two children, it is equivalent to giving birth to a small to medium sized village in many parts of the Third World!

Our cheap luxuries more often than not come from the places where this ‘other half’ lives. To produce our cheap products, not just Nike and The Gap, but almost all our products, many people work an entire month for a wage that is less than what the average Westerner earns in a day. This is the only way they can put food on their tables. The profits for our cheap products stay in the hands of greedy Westerners and oligarchs.

Maybe, instead of merely pointing our soiled fingers at pariah companies brought to our attention by sensational programs targeting just a handful, we should look at what we really need as individuals. Instead of feeling guilty about what we buy, maybe we should look after what we own instead of throwing it out when the look changes. Maybe we should learn to maintain and fix things with our own hands, or be prepared to pay others who have taken the time to learn these valuable skills fairly and proportionately for their time. We have lost respect for some of the most important people in society and it is at our peril because young people are not being encouraged to learn practical, hands-on vocations. A kitchen full of managers cannot cook a meal. A community full of government workers, councilors and inspectors, inventing and enforcing more and more regulations, cannot make for a functional, creative, productive or self-sustaining society. Practical skills will become invaluable in a real-world sustainable situation.

As individuals we certainly have enough challenges to deal with ourselves. Most of us feel that we have little or no control over what happens on the other side, in the so-called ‘Third World.’ By stepping one by one off the treadmill we actually provide the only real opportunity for these people to begin reassessing their needs. Because we cannot know anyone else’s plight we are wise indeed to allow them to proceed without hindrance. Social revolution is beginning to take place in many significant parts of the developing world, most notably South America. It is in our best interests to allow and observe these revolutions, not judge or interfere with them.

Although we are economically better off than many in the world today, we are not in any way more independent than the poverty-stricken masses in developing nations. Most of us do not even know where our food comes from or how it is grown. If we were to lose our infrastructure for more than a few days we would be in far worse shape than many people in the Third World. Our infrastructure, contrary to what we might like to believe, is weak and fragile. It needs constant maintenance and repair to keep it running. The day will come when we will once again need to face the reality that co-operation with the natural world is the only way to put food on our tables. Cell phones, high tech devices, flashy vehicles and silk suits are quite inedible.

Time and again we become convinced of the benefits of buying some product, only to find out later that the same product invokes disease. ‘Smoke these cigarettes for vitality,’ ‘Pay for that tanning session so that you may have a younger, healthier look’ – just a few short years ago these were our mantras. Now that statistics have been gathered to tell us that smoking is bad, that tanning chambers can damage our skin, the loop of disconnection is complete – we buy into what they say.

Lack of self-esteem, desire to conform; these are the true reasons we took up our habits in the first place. The addictions mask our fears. Our creator-self tries but ego wins. Tobacco, like sun, can be medicine. It is us that have turned dis-ease into disease. Knowing our guilt, governments are now free to tax us whatever they like; smokers are reminded every time they light up how bad they are. Others, piously confronting them for their bad habits, accusing smokers of affecting their health, fly to far away places, use the same environmentally harmful products (including a plethora of pharmaceutical drugs that end up in the water system), drive their cars and generate dangerous microwave fields with their cell-phones, not to mention wobbling around with tens, sometimes hundreds of pounds of extra fat. We dare not point out the oxymoron – they have the weight of current public phobia on their side. But this is just the beginning. A new doorway into judging and mistreating others has been opened and tested. A whole sector of society has been openly branded as inconsiderate, unhealthy, stupid – a burden. Who, we should ask, might be next?

Media at our collective behest is the tool that is used to spread so many false ideologies into our culture. We have been lulled into believing exactly what media wants us to believe. Allowing media into our homes and heads is a privilege, not for us, but for them. We, once fully conscious, will filter out the polarity being channeled to us. Self-empowered, we will observe and steer ourselves on our individual journey towards full awakening. Using the most powerful tool we have, our contemplative minds, we will once again have time to think for ourselves.

Media and its message can be our ally, confirming the insights that come from assimilation with our creator-selves. It need not serve as a torturous guide into the world of fear and loss, victims and martyrs, hatred and blame, servitude and slavery. From a newly empowered position outside the pendulum of polarity, media can provide stark evidence of the intensifying circle that has been cast, one from which there is no way out except recognition of the obvious. It cannot be squashed, fought to death, protested into oblivion – no action taken from within the circle will bring it down. Taking sides will always set into motion some form of opposition, thereby granting the quandary a life of its own. One last climactic time, this time involving all humanity, history seems destined to repeat. Afterwards, the survivors will have no choice but to address the fundamental question, using logic to proceed on a sustainable path of evolution with each other and all other life – with cooperation, compassion and honesty.
Global Research Articles by Steven J. M. Jones

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Every Saturday – Anti-War – Progressive Truth Teach-in
Coming up at 9:00am Pacific * 12 noon Eastern * 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Michael Parenti: THE BURNING OF BOOKS
The burning of books creates a powerful symbol, to this day people kill and die over such an action. Everybody has at least one example in their minds, be is a pastor in Gainesville, FL, or the burning piles of books in Nazi Germany. In this reading from Michael Parenti’s History as Mystery a book burning story is told that is deeper, and maintained for centuries longer than any of these efforts before or after. Parenti discloses who the biggest purveyor of book burnings of the last two millennia was and how the real perpetrators and academics tried to shift the blame.

When Parenti’s book History as Mystery was published by City Lights in San Francisco Daniel Ellsberg, who made history by disclosing the Pentagon papers and the real causes of the war on Vietnam, wrote: Michael Parenti unveils the falsified history, from the early Christian church to the present, a fascinating, darkly revelatory tale. Others wrote that Parenti’s reading of history demonstrates how past and present can inform each other and how history can be a truly exciting and engaging subject. History as Mystery contains many more intriguing chapters from the Inquisition and Joan of Arc to the way present day text books distort labor history. From A TUC Radio Presentation

The Anti-war Progressive Teach-in broaches upon some of the most highly charged subjects of our day—War & Peace, national healthcare, women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, torture, vets against the war, freedom, democracy, protest, demonstrations, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

According to our calculations we have been in an inflationary depression since February of 2009. Everyone looks back on the deflationary depression of the 1930s as a benchmark or a reference. As far as we are concerned the 1930’s depression only ended when the powers behind government arranged another war. Few talk about the recession of the early 1920s, which only lasted two years and was caused by the newly formed Fed, which financed US participation in World War I. They raised interest rates, which enticed citizens to save, which provided money for loans for research and expansion. The Fed, other than raising rates, stayed neutral, as did the Treasury. The result was the recession ended quickly. A bad story with a happy ending, which contributed to the roaring 20s, which the Fed eventually turned into a depression via their interference.

There was no deficit spending in the 1920s and funded debt fell by 1/3rd. That went on from 1945 to 1960. Today we have a different kettle of fish, which consists of perpetually kicking the can down the road, hoping some miracle will save the day, when those who caused these problems know full well the situation cannot now be saved without purging the system and allowing maleinvestment and speculation to die a normal death in bankruptcy. The Fed, Wall Street and speculators cannot bring about recovery, but they try anyway. Those who agree with these elitists are fools and they will pay a high price for not listening.

The Treasury is issuing $2.16 trillion in debt annually and if the Fed purchases 80% that works out to $1.7 trillion a year. As QE2 comes to end this month there will be few to buy that $1.7 trillion in treasuries and the system will collapse into deflationary depression. That means the Fed has to keep doing what it is doing. If the Fed stops we’ll have deflationary depression with a year. If they continue doing what they are doing we will have hyperinflation in 2 to 2-1/2 years.

Today’s worldwide crisis centered in the US, UK and Europe did not have to happen. It was not caused by incompetence and greed. It was designed to destroy the economic and financial system to a point where the inhabitants of these countries would beg for world government. It began, as we know it on August 15, 1971, when the US went off the gold standard. Since then the dollar has lost 98% of its value versus gold, silver and in some cases other currencies. As this became the monetary future, events were put in place to move almost all industry and some services out of the US, UK and Europe, better known as free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. In addition unsustainable debt was created to make sure the system collapsed. Of course, as far as the elitists are concerned, there is no problem – there is just a period of adjustment. Part of this adjustment is the extension of the short-term debt limit to $16.3 trillion from $14.3 trillion.

When, we ask, will Social Security and Medicare be cut? Trillions in taxes were paid for this old age and survivor’s pension. From its very inception the money was looted from the general fund and the bonds issued are not worth the paper they are written on. Mandated benefits can never be covered as the taxes are at this very moment being looted. This is a reflection of what is happening in the entire global system, a hallmark of socialism. As the debate rages, we can assure you the elderly will get screwed again with major cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

As we said earlier the longer the inevitable is delayed the worse the result will be. We do not know what untoward event will bring on the inevitable, but it is there lurking somewhere. When it happens it will be like a bolt out of the blue.

The Anglo American empire is in an ongoing state of collapse, which they deliberately caused themselves in order to subdue and enslave humanity. We saw the faux adulation afforded to the illegal alien who calls himself president. The Anglo American special relationship still is firm at the upper levels. This includes their joint role of guardians of civilization. Just more Illuminist sanctimonious crap. The key to globalist power is control of the world banking system and we plan to take that away from them. This is not 1348, and there will be no exile from Venice. There will only be long prison terms, a confiscation of all family wealth and execution for those who have betrayed our country. This time the Illuminists will suffer the unthinkable. Something they have not suffered in the last 1,000 years.

The Fed is now holding just under $2.8 trillion in bonds of which they say $1.6 trillion is in Treasury paper. The rest is in Agency securities and toxic bonds. By the end of June they should be over $3 trillion. Our question is what is the real figure? How much do they have or are they committed for with other nations that are not visible? Remember, it took two years and a trip to the Appeals Court to force the Fed to tell us what they were secretly hiding from us. As a result they have no credibility, so anything they say has to be taken with a grain of salt. From June to June, we expect that $1.6 trillion to grow to $3.3 trillion and the Fed may well have to disperse another $500 to $850 billion to keep the system afloat. That would bring to figures to $3.8 to $4.15 trillion. That should be enough to keep the system afloat, provide 50% hyperinflation and tend to the beginnings of WW III. The creation of war will be the distraction needed to force inflation, debt and monetary problems into a second position. Who worries about money and purchasing power when they may be dead shortly? This is the pattern the elitists have followed for centuries.

At the same time the amount of Treasuries purchased by foreign investors and other nations are falling and that we believe will continue. The question then arises how much additional paper will the Fed have to absorb – another $600 billion a year? We do not know that answer, but it doesn’t look good.

We believe after having seen Mr. Strauss-Kahn set up for extinction as head of the IMF and as the main challenger to Mr. Sarkozy, that there is a power struggle going on between the European and the Anglo American interests to above all make sure that the dollar remains the world reserve currency no matter what the circumstances. This is really the main battle that is going on. The Europeans want the SDR, the British and Americans the dollar. The latter’s thinking is that since WW II the US has again and again saved the world economy, being the engine that has driven all economies. In the recent case of China it is the same as well. If US markets had not approved and opened their markets to China’s exports and most favorite nation treatment, China would not be where it is today. The American elitists believe the dollar deserves its position no matter how much they have damaged it.

You can see Europe going all out to make sure French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde becomes head of the IMF. They want a European running the IMF in spite of the fact that Strauss-Kahn said in 2007 that the next leader of the IMF would not be a European. That is why the Mexican finance minister, Mr. Carstens, threw his hat in the ring. He is in reality the US designate. An additional reason that has brought Lagarde strong European support is that Sarkozy wants to get rid of her, because she is doing a good job. Another reason we see conflict within the inner sanctum is that Greece could bring down the ECB and the euro and it seems the elitists would like that. It switches focus away from a falling dollar and destroys its main competitor, the euro. This is a titanic struggle that most observers are missing. It makes Strauss-Kahn’s arrest and termination at the IMF and his fall from socialist party grace a diversion. The battles are for the continued supremacy of the US dollar and more control over the IMF via Carstens. US interests want a Greek default and a euro breakup. The US rating agencies continue to attack the ratings of all of the weak euro counterparts and at the same time short European country bonds. The UK is in this with the US up to their eyeballs. The US and UK have left Europe to swing in the wind. This is what is really going on in Europe. Remember, there is no honor among thieves.

Late developments from our contacts in Greece tell us the bankers, EU and IMF had best forget about collateralizing debt (Mnemonic). The entire country is now aware of what the bankers are up too. What put the frosting on the cake was that a publication in the Netherlands said as a result of the secret deal, the Turks would get a Greek Island and raise their flag over it. That has really enraged the Greeks. PM Papandreou told 30 of his party legislators (Voulefles) that if they didn’t vote for collateralization he will fire them and replace them with people off the street. He obviously thinks he is a dictator because that is beyond his legal authority. Each day 150,000 people are surrounding the Vouli, the Parliament and the members are growing. PM Papandreou now only moves by helicopter, obviously fearful of assassination. One thing is for certain he will have difficulty ever living in Greece again. A woman professor said on TV that a Patriotic resistance has already started in Crete and in many smaller cities; people are signing up in the new movement. The police cannot handle the massive crowds and the military is securely behind the people. The bankers had best give it up and walk away. They are going to lose this one and it means the end of the euro zone and the EU.

Switching back we must remind you again that the Fed is monetizing $900 billion, not $600 billion as you have been told. Without that number the Fed could not have accomplished all of its Treasury buying. Of the almost $2.8 trillion in bonds some $900 billion are toxic waste, that is about 33%. We do not know their value, but we would guess it to be close to $200 billion, which the American taxpayer will get to pay for – that is a $700 billion loss, if that is what it works out to be. By what has happened over the last few years we conclude the Fed is the main source of economic instability. There is very little savings and that is understandable with virtually zero deposit interest rates. The Fed can throw money and credit at the problems, but in the final analysis you have to have a large pool of savings to borrow from. For some time there was negative savings. Presently they are 4% to 5%, which is inadequate to launch a permanent recovery. Quantitative easing only temporally solves the problem. The Fed’s approach has driven what savings there are and funds from QE2 into speculation and that does not create recovery. Loose monetary policy diverts funding away from positive recovery activities to speculation and into bubbles. The Fed’s policies will bring about one or two conclusions: hyperinflation is obvious as an extension or present policies. The other is a cessation of creation of money and credit, which will bring about a falling economy and economic contraction. At least at this juncture the Fed continues on Plan A – expansion. At the same time we are told an increase in interest rates are a long way off. Toward this end the Fed’s balance sheet is quickly expanding and we do not see any slowdown ahead. An increase from 15% to 17% might not seem like much, but it is, especially when savings numbers are falling causing a loss in underlying momentum. This is negative for Treasuries because 80% of buying has to continue to come from the Fed via monetized money created out of thin air.

If anyone believes higher inflation is going to act as a governor on monetary growth they are mistaken. The Fed has little concern regarding inflation and price stability, if they did they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing. The government lies about the CPI figures and the Fed swears to it. The figures are far higher than stated and anyone who believes official figures is very remiss in professional evaluation.

Between the Fed and Congress $1.8 trillion has been spent to achieve 1.8% growth in the first quarter and all indications are that the economy is slowing again. We thought the carryover in the first quarter would have been 2-1/2% to 3-1/4%, but that didn’t happen. We expected a further slowing in the second quarter to 2% and then negative growth for the remainder of the year. We’ll stick to that projection, but the slippage will come from a lower level. Unless QE3 is already underway we should see minus 2% for the second half of the year. What professionals and investors have to understand is that what the Fed is doing doesn’t work and the Fed knows that. The longer they create money and credit the higher inflation will rise along with gold, silver and commodities and the lower the dollar will fall versus other currencies, but more importantly the lower the US dollar will fall versus silver and gold.

The same kind of condition exists in Europe with the same systemic corruption we see worldwide. The current Greek government is an excellent example. It is probably the most dishonest since WWII. And that includes the mid-80s communist government of George’s father, Andres of the Papandreou crime family. As we look back we wonder what EU countries were thinking of when they knew they were subsidizing a lifestyle Greeks could never afford? Government workers were retiring at 50. Living standards have been cut 30% to 40% and retirement is now 70 years. These are appropriate measures, but the changes should have been stretched over years. The shock has essentially crippled the economy. Even Draco was not that cruel. The very concept agreed to by the Greek administration to put $400 billion in assets into the hands of foreign experts is something that will harbor strife for years to come. It must be remembered that the banks and governments should have never made those loans in the first place. Who is to know whether these fellow EU socialists are going to do any better than the Greeks have done? The European and British banks want their money back, and it will be interesting to see if they are successful.

In the US a similar situation exists. Even if there is debt approval on August 2nd, the damage caused by the impasse will continue far into the future because printing of money and credit by the Fed is certainly not the answer and financial people worldwide are well aware of that. If legislation is not passed, real interest rates will rise from today’s ridiculously low levels very quickly. That means bonds would plunge along with the stock market, which in turn means all Treasury fiscal needs would have to be filled in a vacuum by the Fed. Hyperinflation and a dollar collapse would be the final outcome.

As a result of this predicament the only real asset the US has that is worth anything are the portfolios of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and FHA. Instead of nationalization their holdings would be sold off to collateralize outstanding US debt to the debtors. That would be $6 trillion worth. Or perhaps 401Ks and IRAs could be commandeered by Congress in behalf of the state and given to creditors. The Americans thus robbed of their lifetime assets would receive worthless government guaranteed annuities. Those assets would probably be exchanged for perhaps $0.50 on the dollar or $0.33 on the plunging dollar. Can you see what your government has been doing and continues to do to you in order to further enrich those in government, on Wall Street and in banking? This is what you have worked so hard for – betrayal. This is probably where this is all headed and you are the victims. You cannot do much about the situation, as the Greeks and others cannot, short of a military coup. This is where you stand and this is where this is all headed and you had best prepare for it, because if you do not you will be very sorry.

Bob Chapman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Bob Chapman

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Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific * 10:00 pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT

GUNS AND BUTTER with Bonnie Faulkner
Why America Cannot Win In Afghanistan _ Gen. Hamid Gul
Pakistani General Hamid Gul explains that the US war in Afghanistan was doomed from the start. As a military professional with a distinguished career, he identifies the key factors that determine success or failure in war, and shows that the US is failing in almost every area, including long and insecure lines of communication, an insurmountable intelligence failure due to the almost total lack of reliable human intelligence, the serious underestimation of the Taliban’s strength, use of corrupt elements in key operations, repeated changing of objectives, ineffectiveness of firepower, and the total inability to overcome the key advantages the Taliban hold in manpower, control of the countryside and time.

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The global economic crisis and the attack on immigrant rights are bound together in a web of 21st century fascism.

The TCC has unloaded billions of dollars into food, energy and other global commodities in bond markets worldwide [GALLO/GETTY]

The crisis of global capitalism is unprecedented, given its magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecological degradation and social deterioration, and the scale of the means of violence. We truly face a crisis of humanity. The stakes have never been higher; our very survival is at risk. We have entered into a period of great upheavals and uncertainties, of momentous changes, fraught with dangers – if also opportunities.

I want to discuss here the crisis of global capitalism and the notion of distinct political responses to the crisis, with a focus on the far-right response and the danger of what I refer to as 21st century fascism, particularly in the United States.

Facing the crisis calls for an analysis of the capitalist system, which has undergone restructuring and transformation in recent decades. The current moment involves a qualitatively new transnational or global phase of world capitalism that can be traced back to the 1970s, and is characterised by the rise of truly transnational capital and a transnational capitalist class, or TCC. Transnational capital has been able to break free of nation-state constraints to accumulation beyond the previous epoch, and with it, to shift the correlation of class and social forces worldwide sharply in its favour – and to undercut the strength of popular and working class movements around the world, in the wake of the global rebellions of the 1960s and the 1970s.

Emergent transnational capital underwent a major expansion in the 1980s and 1990s, involving hyper-accumulation through new technologies such as computers and informatics, through neo-liberal policies, and through new modalities of mobilising and exploiting the global labour force - including a massive new round of primitive accumulation, uprooting, and displacing hundreds of millions of people – especially in the third world countryside, who have become internal and transnational migrants.

We face a system that is now much more integrated, and dominant groups that have accumulated an extraordinary amount of transnational power and control over global resources and institutions.

Militarised accumulation, financial speculation – and the sacking of public budgets

By the late 1990s, the system entered into chronic crisis. Sharp social polarisation and escalating inequality helped generate a deep crisis of over-accumulation. The extreme concentration of the planet’s wealth in the hands of the few and the accelerated impoverishment, and dispossession of the majority, even forced participants in the 2011 World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos to acknowledge that the gap between the rich and the poor worldwide is “the most serious challenge in the world” and is “raising the spectre of worldwide instability and civil wars.”

Global inequalities and the impoverishment of broad majorities mean that transnational capitals cannot find productive outlets to unload the enormous amounts of surplus it has accumulated. By the 21st century, the TCC turned to several mechanisms to sustain global accumulation, or profit making, in the face of this crisis.

One is militarised accumulation; waging wars and interventions that unleash cycles of destruction and reconstruction and generate enormous profits for an ever-expanding military-prison-industrial-security-financial complex. We are now living in a global war economy that goes well beyond such “hot wars” in Iraq or Afghanistan.

For instance, the war on immigrants in the United States and elsewhere, and more generally, repression of social movements and vulnerable populations, is an accumulation strategy independent of any political objectives. This war on immigrants is extremely profitable for transnational corporations. In the United States, the private immigrant prison-industrial complex is a boom industry. Undocumented immigrants constitute the fastest growing sector of the US prison population and are detained in private detention centres and deported by private companies contracted out by the US state.

It is no surprise that William Andrews, the CEO of the Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA – the largest private US contractor for immigrant detention centres – declared in 2008 that: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts … or through decriminalisation [of immigrants].” Nor is it any surprise that CCA and other corporations have financed the spate of neo-fascist anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona and other US states.

The passing of the anti-illegal immigrants law in Arizona sparked national protests and outrage [GALLO/GETTY]

A second mechanism is the raiding and sacking of public budgets. Transnational capital uses its financial power to take control of state finances and to impose further austerity on the working majority, resulting in ever greater social inequality and hardship. The TCC has used its structural power to accelerate the dismantling of what remains of the social wage and welfare states.

And a third is frenzied worldwide financial speculation - turning the global economy into a giant casino. The TCC has unloaded billions of dollars into speculation in the housing market, the food, energy and other global commodities markets, in bond markets worldwide (that is, public budgets and state finances), and into every imaginable “derivative”, ranging from hedge funds to swaps, futures markets, collateralised debt obligations, asset pyramiding, and ponzi schemes. The 2008 collapse of the global financial system was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This is not a cyclical but a structural crisis - a restructuring crisis, such as we had in the 1970s, and before that, in the 1930s - that has the potential to become a systemic crisis, depending on how social agents respond to the crisis and on a host of unknown contingencies. A restructuring crisis means that the only way out of crisis is to restructure the system, whereas a systemic crisis is one in which only a change in the system itself will resolve the crisis. Times of crisis are times of rapid social change, when collective agency and contingency come into play more than in times of equilibrium in a system.

Responses to the crisis and Obama’s Weimar republic in the United States

In the face of crisis there appear to be distinct responses from states and social and political forces. Three stand out: global reformism; resurgent of popular and leftist struggles from below; far-right and 21st century fascism. There appears to be, above all, a political polarisation worldwide between the left and the right, both of which are insurgent forces.

A neo-fascist insurgency is quite apparent in the United States. This insurgency can be traced back several decades, to the far-right mobilisation that began in the wake of the crisis of hegemony brought about by the mass struggles of the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the Black and Chicano liberation struggles and other militant movements by third world people, counter-cultural currents, and militant working class struggles.

Neo-fascist forces re-organised during the years of the George W Bush government. But my story here starts with Obama’s election.

The Obama project from the start was an effort by dominant groups to re-establish hegemony in the wake of its deterioration during the Bush years (which also involved the rise of a mass immigrant rights movement). Obama’s election was a challenge to the system at the cultural and ideological level, and has shaken up the racial/ethnic foundations upon which the US republic has always rested. However, the Obama project was never intended to challenge the socio-economic order; to the contrary; it sought to preserve and strengthen that order by reconstituting hegemony, conducting a passive revolution against mass discontent and spreading popular resistance that began to percolate in the final years of the Bush presidency.

The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of passive revolution to refer to efforts by dominant groups to bring about mild change from above in order to undercut mobilisation from below for more far-reaching transformation. Integral to passive revolution is the co-option of leadership from below; its integration into the dominant project. Dominant forces in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the Middle East and North America are attempting to carry out such a passive revolution. With regard to the immigrant rights movement in the United States - one of the most vibrant social movements in that country -moderate/mainstream Latino establishment leaders were brought into the Obama and Democratic Party fold – a classic case of passive revolution - while the mass immigrant base suffers intensified state repression.

Obama’s campaign tapped into and helped expand mass mobilisation and popular aspirations for change not seen in many years in the United States. The Obama project co-opted that brewing storm from below, channelled it into the electoral campaign, and then betrayed those aspirations, as the Democratic Party effectively demobilised the insurgency from below with more passive revolution.

In this sense, the Obama project weakened the popular and left response from below to the crisis, which opened space for the right-wing response to the crisis - for a project of 21st century fascism - to become insurgent. Obama’s administration appears in this way as a Weimar republic. Although the social democrats were in power during the Weimar republic of Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, they did not pursue a leftist response to the crisis, but rather side-lined the militant trade unions, communists and socialists, and progressively pandered to capital and the right before turning over power to the Nazis in 1933.

21st century fascism in the United States

I don’t use the term fascism lightly. There are some key features of a 21st century fascism I identify here:

1. The fusion of transnational capital with reactionary political power
   This fusion had been developing  during the Bush years and would likely have deepened under a McCain-Palin White House. In the meantime, such neo-fascist movements as the Tea Party as well as neo-fascist legislation such as Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB1070, have been broadly financed by corporate capital. Three sectors of transnational capital in particular stand out as prone to seek fascist political arrangements to facilitate accumulation: speculative financial capital, the military-industrial-security complex, and the extractive and energy (particularly petroleum) sector.
2. Militarisation and extreme masculinisation
   As militarised accumulation has intensified the Pentagon budget, increasing 91 per cent in real terms in the past 12 years, the top military brass has become increasingly politicised and involved in policy making.
3. A scapegoat which serves to displace and redirect social tensions and contradictions
   In this case, immigrants and Muslims in particular. The Southern Poverty Law Centre recently reported that “three strands of the radical right - hate groups, nativist extremist groups, and patriot organisations – increased from 1,753 groups in 2009 to 2,145 in 2010, a 22 per cent rise, that followed a 2008-9 increase of 40 per cent.”

   A 2010 Department of Homeland Security report observed that “right wing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on the fears about several emergency issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for right wing radicalisation and recruitment.” The report concluded: “Over the past five years, various right wing extremists, including militia and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruitment tool.”

4. A mass social base
   In this case, such a social base is being organised among sectors of the white working class that historically enjoyed racial caste privilege and that have been experiencing displacement and experiencing rapid downward mobility as neo-liberalism comes to the US – while they are losing the security and stability they enjoyed in the previous Fordist-Keynesian epoch of national capitalism.
5. A fanatical millennial ideology involving race/culture supremacy embracing an idealised and mythical past, and a racist mobilisation against scapegoats
   The ideology of 21st century fascism often rests on irrationality - a promise to deliver security and restore stability is emotive, not rational.  21st century fascism is a project that does not - and need not - distinguish between the truth and the lie.
6. A charismatic leadership
   Such a leadership has so far been largely missing in the United States, although figures such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck appear as archetypes.

The mortal circuit of accumulation-exploitation-exclusion

One new structural dimension of 21st century global capitalism is the dramatic expansion of the global superfluous population - that portion marginalised and locked out of productive participation in the capitalist economy and constituting some 1/3rd of humanity. The need to assure the social control of this mass of humanity living in a planet of slums gives a powerful impetus to neo-fascist projects and facilitates the transition from social welfare to social control – otherwise known as “police states”. This system becomes ever more violent.

Theoretically stated - under the conditions of capitalist globalisation – the state’s contradictory functions of accumulation and legitimation cannot both be met. The economic crisis intensifies the problem of legitimation for dominant groups so that accumulation crises, such as the present one, generate social conflicts and appear as spiralling political crises. In essence, the state’s ability to function as a “factor of cohesion” within the social order breaks down to the extent that capitalist globalisation and the logic of accumulation or commodification penetrates every aspect of life, so that “cohesion” requires more and more social control.

Displacement and exclusion has accelerated since 2008. The system has abandoned broad sectors of humanity, who are caught in a deadly circuit of accumulation-exploitation-exclusion. The system does not even attempt to incorporate this surplus population, but rather tries to isolate and neutralise its real or potential rebellion, criminalising the poor and the dispossessed, with tendencies towards genocide in some cases.

As the state abandons efforts to secure legitimacy among broad swathes of the population that have been relegated to surplus - or super-exploited - labour, it resorts to a host of mechanisms of coercive exclusion: mass incarceration and prison-industrial complexes, pervasive policing, manipulation of space in new ways, highly repressive anti-immigrant legislation, and ideological campaigns aimed at seduction and passivity through petty consumption and fantasy.

Militarised ideology has intensified the Pentagon’s budget, and military officials are increasingly involved in policy-making [GALLO/GETTY]

A 21st fascism would not look like 20th century fascism. Among other things, the ability of dominant groups to control and manipulate space and to exercise an unprecedented control over the mass media, the means of communication and the production of symbolic images and messages, means that repression can be more selective (as we see in Mexico or Colombia, for example), and also organised juridically so that mass “legal” incarceration takes the place of concentration camps. Moreover, the ability of economic power to determine electoral outcomes allows for 21st century fascism to emerge without a necessary rupture in electoral cycles and a constitutional order.

The United States cannot be characterised at this time as fascist. Nonetheless, all of the conditions and the processes are present and percolating, and the social and political forces behind such a project are mobilising rapidly. More generally, images in recent years of what such a political project would involve spanned the Israeli invasion of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, to the scapegoating and criminalisation of immigrant workers and the Tea Party movement in the United States, genocide in the Congo, the US/United Nations occupation of Haiti, the spread of neo-Nazis and skinheads in Europe, and the intensified Indian repression in occupied Kashmir.
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William I. Robinson a professor of sociology and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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Live Video-Cast from San Francisco Bay Area – Gilad Atzmon in concert and he speaks on US Boat to Gaza

Live Video-Cast from San Francisco Bay Area —
Gilad Atzmon in concert and he speaks on US Boat to Gaza

in a benefit for the Bay Area’s flotilla passengers who will be onboard The Audacity of Hope. You’ll meet them as they get ready to go on the “Freedom Flotilla – Stay Human” to break Israel’s illegal naval blockade, an awesomely courageous revolutionary liberatory, even world-history-making action.