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Banker Occupation and Europain
By Stephen Lendman
Bankers rule the world. A new Swiss Federal Institute of Technology study says so. Written by Stefania Vitali, James Glattfelder and Stefano Battiston, it's titled "The network of global corporate control," saying:
"We find that transnational corporations from a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic 'super-entity' that raises new important issues both for researches and policy makers."
The study says 147 powerful companies control an inordinate amount of economic activity - about 40%. Among the top 50, 45 are financial firms. They include Barclays PLC (called most influential), JPMorgan Chase, UBS, and other familiar and less known names.
Twenty-four companies are US-based, followed by eight in Britain, five in France, four in Japan, and Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands with two each. Canada has one.
Grim Holiday Season Tidings
by Stephen Lendman
New global data show grim results. China's real estate was especially bleak. It reported 70% of its 70 largest cities experiencing home price deflation, up from 47% in October. Rarely ever does this bode well for economic prospects or banking.
As a result, copper is down 0.7% and 25% in 2011. The base metals complex also dropped 1%.
In Japan, department store sales were down 1.9% year over year, the fifth consequence negative reading. In October, Spain's service sector declined 2.7% year over year.
In America, recent data reflect downtrends in restaurants, clothing, jewelry, department, grocery, and drug store sales, household appliances, clothing, chemical products, electrical and communication equipment, machinery, paper and wood products, semiconductors, and computers and accessories.
Political Washington Abolishes Due Process Protections
by Stephen Lendman
Main Street Europe and America face protracted Depression conditions. As a result, millions lost jobs, homes, incomes, and futures.
Human misery is growing. So is public anger. Rage across America and Europe reflect it. Gerald Celente explains the stakes, saying:
"When people lose everything and have nothing else to lose, they lose it."
Draconian police state provisions were enacted to contain them. Hundreds of secret Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) camps may hold them. Martial law may authorize it, claiming "catastrophic emergency" conditions. Senators blew their cover calling America a "battleground."
Tarek Mehanna: Victimized by Racist Injustice
by Stephen Lendman
Post-9/11, Mehanna is one of hundreds of Muslim Americans victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and at times charity.
On October 21, 2009, an FBI press release said:
"A Sudbury, Mass. man was charged today in federal court with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists."
Maliciously and spuriously, Mehanna was accused of "conspir(ing) with Ahmad Abousamra and others to provide material support and resources for use in carrying out a conspiracy to kill, kidnap, main or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country and extraterritorial homicide of a US national."
Frito-Lay sued for labeling its GMO-filled snacks as “All Natural”
By Rady Ananda
Less than a year after Frito-Lay announced plans to make half their products without “any artificial or synthetic ingredients,” the $13 billion company was sued last week in federal court for fraudulently marketing the snacks that contain genetically modified ingredients.
Somehow, “artificial” and “synthetic” doesn’t include “genetically modified” in Frito’s mind.
In its April 2011 “Seed-to-Shelf” disclosure campaign, Frito-Lay promised to inform consumers about each individual snack’s ingredients, even setting up an app for smartphone users to swipe the product’s barcode and read about it. Ann Mukherjee, Frito-Lay’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, gushed:
Destroying the American Dream
by Stephen Lendman
Corporate greed and profits over people priorities launched nationwide OWS protests in hundreds of US cities for change.
Mindless of growing public rage, political Washington keeps cutting vital social benefits needing increases during hard times.
With real unemployment approaching 23%, earlier cuts affected:
● Pell Grants help for college tuitions;
● federal wages;
● the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) to help impoverished families have heat in winter;
● the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP);
THE VELVET REVOLUTION
James Petras
Speaking of democratic revolutions... Play dedicated in memoriam of "Grovel" Havel for services to the Empire beyond the call of duty.
Act 1, Scene 1
(A cafe in upper west side of Manhattan not far from Columbia University. Grovel Havel sits with an editor of N.Y. Review of Books and a professor sympathetic to the New Left... drinking coffee... a cigarette hangs from his lip in the style of Jean Belmondo. He is wearing casual clothes.)
GH: Nothing works under Communism but everybody does his job. The workers pretend to work and the regime pretends to pay them. It is a form of resistance... Czech style.
NYRofB Editor: It must be terribly difficult to work under a Stalinist regime.
GH: They control everything: radio, television, book publishing; they have a small group of mediocrities who run the Writers’ Unions and the major journals. We survive, thanks to Western solidarity.
Prof: Doesn’t the financial speculator Soros fund many of the Czech dissidents?
Arab Spring Moves From Streets to Ballot Box - OWS Take Note
By Allen L Roland
The Arab spring has become a fall parliamentary election and yet another step toward a true Egyptian Democracy. There are still stumbling blocks ahead but they will most likely be turned into stepping stones by an empowered people who are more than willing to take to the streets in demanding true change ~ Occupy Wall Street take note: Allen L Roland
The Occupy Movement started in Egypt last spring but that wave of revolt has now become a tsunami of occupy movements throughout the world ~ for each success of the people asserting their power against the military or financial elite inspires countless others to flex their muscles and take action.
We Are All Palestinians
By Gilad Atzmon
Most solidarity activists in this country would agree that the PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) is potentially an invaluable institution. Yet, the National Office, under its current leadership, has made some serious mistakes.
The PSC’s task is not easy. We all operate in a Zionised environment and we’re subject to constant pressure and abuse. Moreover, it’s not always clear what we should do for Palestine. It is obvious that Palestinian resistance is more than just single political perception or a vision of conflict resolution. Palestine is basically a dynamic discourse of negation with Palestinians themselves divided on different issues to do with their struggle and their fate. Consequently, Palestinian solidarity is also far from being a rigid or monolithic discourse. Furthermore, the enemy also is far from being any obviously singular identity or monolithic political discourse. The Jewish national project is a varied discourse, driven by many conflicting thoughts such as Zionism, Israeli patriotism, Israeli escapism, Jewishness, Jewish messianic militancy, pseudo-peaceful propaganda, pre-traumatic stress and so on. So it makes sense that Palestinian solidarity must encompass many voices reflecting the immense complexity of the conflict and its possible resolution.
Spoiling for a Fight
By Stuart Littlewood
The gung-ho leadership of the British government, fresh from their heroic "liberation" of Libya (and never mind the mega-deaths and wholesale destruction), are now itching for a fight with Iran, it seems. Of course they won't be spilling any blood or guts of their own. They'll watch from a safe distance and make Churchillian speeches.
The temperature is rising nicely. After the storming of the British embassy in Tehran, foreign secretary William Hague declared: "These events are a grave violation of the Vienna Convention... This is a breach of international responsibilities of which any nation should be ashamed."
He added: "We have been foremost among those nations arguing for peaceful legitimate pressure to be intensified on Iran in the light of the IAEA’s 'deep and increasing concern' about the Iranian nuclear program, including its 'possible military dimensions'.”
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