WHITHER THE ORANGE ORDER ? SCOTLAND ? ENGLAND ?

Could north of England really break away from the rest of Britain and become part of 'New Scotland'?

Nicola Sturgeon criticised the Conservatives' plan to replace the Human Rights Act

BY JON STONE – 15 MAY 2015

A petition calling for the North to secede from England and become part of Scotland has got over 28,000 signatures. How practical would this be?


Where would become part of Scotland?


The authors of the original petition have drawn a line south of Sheffield, Liverpool, and Hull.


The new border would run between the River Dee and the mouth of The Humber, with the three UK regions of the North West, the North East, and Yorkshire and the Humber included.


Stoke, Nottingham, and Derby would narrowly miss out on being part of New Scotland.
Why do people want it to happen?


The petitioners feel that the Government of the UK is “becoming increasingly irrelevant to the north of England”.


The only cabinet minister with a seat in the North of England is George Osborne himself, who represents Tatton and Cheshire.


“The needs and challenges of the north cannot be understood by the endless parade of old Etonions lining the frontbenches of the House of Commons. The north of England should join the newly independent Scotland and regain control over its own destiny,” they say.


“We, the people of the north, demand that in the event that Scotland becomes independent the border between England and the New Scotland be.


The petition comes after an election in which Scotland was swept by an SNP positioning itself to the left of the Labour party, a stance apparently appealing to many northern cities. A poll before the election found that millions of people in England and Wales would vote SNP if given the opption.
How could the North join Scotland?


Northern secession to Scotland would face number of significant hurdles. At the very least, there is a precedent that a referendum would have to be held and won.


After a referendum, the results would have to be accepted by both the UK government and the Scottish government.


But even getting to the point at which a referendum was held would be difficult. The north as a whole has no regional assembly or parliament like Scotland in which such a debate could be conducted and separatist politicians elected to.


Realistically, individual local councils would either have to hold referenda, or a vote would have to be organised independently of the state using civil society organisations.


It would be nigh-on impossible to get all the 70+ northern local authorities to agree to the former, while the latter would probably be ignored by central government.


If a referendum was secured it would be a huge turnaround from the one held under the last Labour government where the North East rejected even having a regional assembly.


Border towns could in theory hold local referendums and secede in a piecemeal manner. Other possibilities like unilateral annexation of the North by the Scottish Parliament or armed insurrection are even more remote possibilities.
Has this ever happened anywhere before?


The good news for secessionists is that transfers of territory between states have historically been fairly common. The bad news is that annexations have unfortunately have historically usually involved violence.


The most recent examples tend to involve Russia. South Ossetia, a disputed territory in the caucasus, is being absorbed into Russia after a brief war in 2008. A 1992 referendum held in the region was not recognised as valid by most countries.


The Crimea has also been annexed from Ukraine by Russia, though again under circumstances of conflict. A referendum was held in the territory in 2014, though again, it was not widely recognised.


It could be argued that conversely, many former constituent republics of the USSR were transferred to the European Union after gaining national independence.


Further reading


Sturgeon pumped up for showdown with Cameron as SNP demand 'priority devolution' of powers over welfare, business taxes, employment and minimum wage and welfare


PM open to devolution powers debate


Draft Scotland Bill 'falls short'

Historical Whitewash: Great Britain 

Must be Held Accountable for its Role in the Nakba

By Nu'man Abd al-Wahid

May 16, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Mondoweiss" - Nothing more exemplifies the historical whitewash of British rule in Palestine between 1917 and 1948 than the response (or lack of) to David Cameron’s speech in the Israeli Kneeset in March 2014. Therein he briefly propounded the much overlooked fact that Britain was the main western supporter of the Zionist colonial experiment in Palestine from the very beginning.

“From the early pioneers,” boasted Cameron, “the men and women of the Palestine Exploration Fund, who saw the Jewish history in this land and the possibilities for the future to the Balfour Declaration – the moment when the State of Israel went from a dream to a plan Britain has played a proud and vital role in helping to secure Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

Cameron clearly defined the Balfour declaration as the moment Israel went from “a dream to a plan.” This plan was then ‘secured’ which strongly seems to be euphuism for implemented. More so, he then, somewhat self-incriminatory, said that British imperialism “played a proud and vital role in helping to secure Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

Not one commentator in the UK, critical or otherwise, latched on to this crucial point. Presumably, it’s far less taxing on one’s moral conscience to emulate American, Arab and even Israeli commentators on the current Palestinian situation than face up to your own government’s historical criminal culpability – a culpability which Cameron drew attention to at the Knesset of all places?

Obviously, Cameron naturally never outlined how Britain ‘secured’ the homeland for the Jewish people.

However, it was in these years, i.e. 1917-1948, that the “only democracy in the Middle East” as Zionist propagandists lovingly refer to their colonial project was secured by Britain by first, denying Palestinians representative democracy which would have inevitably limited colonial immigration to their country. Secondly, when the first Palestinian uprising finally exploded in 1936 it was the British that led the repression against the Palestinian resistance and in doing so, also educated the nascent Zionist-settler forces on how to military crush and oppress the indigenous population.[1]

By the time the state of Israel was declared on 14th May 1948, 400,000 Palestinians and 250 villages and towns had already been ethnically cleansed by the Zionist forces under Britain’s secured watch.[2] Further ethnic cleansing took place after the Zionists declared their state. Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian revolutionary, was to argue that the Zionists in the late 1940’s were plucking “the fruits of the defeat of the 1936 revolt which the outbreak of the war had prevented it from doing sooner.”[3]

Progressive British activists, writers and politicians rarely acknowledge, if ever, the central role played by their Empire in laying the foundations and facilitating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Cameron’s and Great Britain’s national hero, Winston Churchill on the other hand, specifically justified the “proud and vital role” of the Empire at the Peel Commission on Palestine in 1937 on this basis:


“I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, ‘The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here’. They had not the right, nor had they the power.”[4]

As Churchill strongly implies the Zionist project with its attendant occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, i.e. the Nakba, had nothing to do with Jewish history as discovered by the so-called ‘Palestine Exploration Fund’ and everything to do with racist colonialism backed by the power of the foreign policy of an Empire that has escaped accountability for its role in this ongoing tragedy.

Nu'man Abd al-Wahid is a UK based freelance Yemeni-English writer specialising in the political relationship between the British state and the Arab World. My focus is on how the United Kingdom has historically maintained its interests in the the Middle East. A collection of articles are posted at www.yamyam-yemeni.net .

Notes

[1] Laleh Khalili, “The Location of Palestine in Global Counterinsurgencies”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 42, Issue 3, pg. 413-433 and Matthew Hughes, The Banality of Brutality: British Armed Forces and the Repression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939, English Historical Review, 124 (2009).

[2] Rosemarie M. Esber, “Under the Cover of War”, Aribicus Books and Media, Alexandria (V.A), 2009. This book deals with the ethnic cleansing in final six months

[3] Ghassan Kanafani, ‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine’, Tricontinental Society, London, 1980, pg. 30.

[4]Quoted in Angela Clifford, ‘Serfdom Or Ethnic Cleansing? – Churchill’s Evidence to the Peel Commission (1937)’, Athol Books, Belfast and London, 2003, pg.34

© 2015 Mondoweis

WHO'S PUMPING SUNSHINE UP YOUR ASS ?

How to Fight Western Propaganda By Andre Vltchek May 15, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - First they manufacture monstrous lies, and then they tell us that we should be objective! Is love objective; is passion? Are dreams defendable, logically and philosophically? When a house is attacked by brigands, when a village is overran by gangsters, when smoke, fire and cries for help are coming from every corner, should we award ourselves with the luxury of time to calculate, analyze and aim at complete logical, ethical, holistic and objective solutions? I strongly believe no! We are obliged to fight those who are burning our dwellings, to hit with full force those who are attempting to rape our women, and to confront fire with fire when innocent beings are slaughtered. When the most powerful and the most destructive force on earth employs all its persuasive might, utilizing everything from the mainstream media to educational facilities, in order to justify its crimes, when it spreads its poisonous propaganda and lies in order to oppress the world and suppress hope, do we step back and begin endless and detailed work on precise and objective narratives? Or do we confront lies and propaganda with our own narrative, supported by our intuition, passion and dreams for a better world? *** The Empire lies continuously. It lies in the morning, during the day, in the evening, even at night, when most of the people are sound asleep. It has been doing it for decades and centuries. For grand deceits it relies on countless numbers of propagandists who pose as academics, teaches, journalists and “public intellectuals”. Perfection in the art of disinformation has been reached. Western advertising (so much admired and used by the German Nazis) has some common roots with propaganda, although propaganda is much older and “complete”. It appears that even some leaders of the Empire now believe in most of their fabrications, and most of the citizens certainly do. Otherwise, how could they sleep at night? The western propaganda apparatus is enormously efficient and effective. It is also brilliant in how it ensures that its inventions get channeled, distributed, and accepted in all corners of the world. The system through which disinformation spreads, is incredibly complex. Servile local media and academia on all continents work hard to guarantee that only one narrative is allowed to penetrate the brains of billions. The results are: intellectual cowardice and ignorance, all over the world, but especially in the West and in its client states. *** What are we, who oppose the regime, supposed to do? First of all, things are not as hopeless as they used to be. This is not the morbid unipolar world that we experienced in the early 90’s. Now Venezuela, Russia, China, and Iran support large media outlets that are opposed to the Empire. Powerful television stations emerged: RT, Press TV, TeleSUR and CCTV. Huge English language Internet-based magazines and sites in the United States, Canada and Russia are also exposing the lies of the official Western propagandists: Counterpunch, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Veterans News, Strategic Culture, New Eastern Outlook quickly come to mind. And there are hundreds of important sites doing the same in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and French languages. The fight is on: the fight for an intellectually multi-polar world. It is a tough, mortal fight! It is a crucial battle, simply because the metastases of the Western propaganda cancer have spread everywhere, contaminated all continents, and even some of the most courageous countries and brains that are earnestly fighting against the Western imperialism and fascism! No one is immune. To be frank, all of us are contaminated. Unless we win this battle, by first clearly identifying and proving “their narrative” as fraudulent, and later by offering humanist and compassionate perceptions, we cannot even dream about the revolution, or about any significant changes in arrangement of the world. *** How do we achieve victory? How do we convince the masses, those billions of people? How do we open their eyes and make them see that the Western regime is dishonest, toxic, poisonous and destructive? Most of humanity is hooked on the Empire’s propaganda; that propaganda which is not only spread by mainstream media outlets, but also by pop music, soap operas, social media, advertisement, consumerism, ‘fashion trends’ and by many other covert means; cultural, religious and media junk that leads to total emotional and intellectual stupor and is administered like some highly addictive narcotic, regularly and persistently. Do we counter the tactics and strategy of the destructive and ruthless Empire with our honesty, with research, with telling and writing meticulously investigated facts? The Empire perverts facts. It repeats lies through its loudspeakers and tubes. It shouts them thousands and thousands of times, until they sink into the sub conscious of people, penetrate the skin, spread all through their brains. Good will, naive honesty, “speaking truth to power”, could this change the world and the power itself? I highly doubt it. The Empire and its power are illegitimate, and they are criminal. Is there any point of speaking truth to a gangster? Hardly! Truth should be spoken to people, to masses, not to those who are terrorizing the world. By talking to villains, by begging them to stop torturing others, we are legitimizing their crimes, and we are acknowledging their power. By trying to appease gangsters, people are putting themselves at their mercy. I absolutely refuse to be in such position! *** To win over billions of people, we have to inspire them, to fire them up. We have to outrage them, embrace them, shame them, make them laugh and make them cry. We have to make sure that they get goose bumps when they see our films, read our books and essays, listen to our speeches. We have to detox them, make them feel again, wake up natural instincts in them. Simple truth as a detox agent will not work. The poison of our adversaries has sunk too deeply. Most of the people are too lethargic and too immune to simple, quietly stated truths! We have tried, and others have tried as well. My acquaintance (but definitely not my comrade) John Perkins, former US apparatchik educated by the State Department, wrote a detailed account of his horrid deeds in Ecuador, Indonesia and elsewhere – “Confession of An Economic Hitman”. It is a meticulous, detailed account of how the West destabilizes poor countries, using corruption, money, alcohol, and sex. The book sold millions of copies, worldwide. And yet, nothing changed! It did not trigger a popular revolution in the United States. There were no protests, no demands for regime change in Washington. In the recent past, I wrote and published two academic, or at least semi-academic books, packed with great details, quotes and tons of footnotes: one on Indonesia, a country used by the West as a model horror scenario for the rest of the world, after the 1965-US-sponsored military coup. The coup killed 2-3 million people, murdered all intellectualism, and lobotomized the 4th most populous country on earth. The book is called “Indonesia – Archipelago of Fear”. The second book, unique because it covers an enormous part of the world – Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia (“Oceania – Neocolonialism, Nukes and Bones”), showed how the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and France, literally divided and destroyed the great South Pacific island cultures and the people. Now classes are being taught using my books, but only a very limited number of people are influenced by the facts exposed in them. The elites in both Indonesia and Oceania made sure that the books are not widely read by the people. I have spent years and years compiling facts, researching, investigating. The revolutionary effectiveness of my academic work is – I have to admit – nearly zero. It is easy to see the contrast: when I write an essay, a powerfully crafted, emotional essay, demanding justice, accusing the Empire of murder and theft, I get millions of readers on all continents, as well as translations to dozens of languages! Why do I write this; why do I share this with my readers? Because we should all be realistic. We have to see, to understand, what people want – what they demand. The people are unhappy and scared. Most of them don’t know why. They hate the system, they are lonely, frustrated, they know that they are lied to and exploited. But they cannot define those lies. And academic books, exposing the lies are too complex for them to read since the masses have no time to read thousands of indigestible pages or the necessary education to allow them to understand what they are reading. It is our duty to address those people, the majority, otherwise what kind of revolutionaries are we? After all, we are supposed to create for our brothers and sisters, not for a few researchers at the universities, especially when we realize that most of the universities are serving the Empire by regurgitating official nomenclature and supporting demagogues. *** The Empire speaks, writes and then repeats some outrageous lies, about its benevolence, and exceptionality of its rule, or about the “evils” of the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea or Cuba. This is done daily. In fact it is designed so that almost every human being gets his or her dose of the toxin at least several times a day. We feel we have to react – we begin spending years of our lives, meticulously proving, step by step, that the Empire’s propaganda is either one big fat lie, or exaggeration, or both. After we compile our arguments, we publish the results in some small publishing house, most likely in the form of a slender book, but almost nobody reads it because of its tiny circulation, and because the findings are usually too complex, too hard to digest, and simply because the facts do not shock anybody, anymore. One million more innocent people were murdered somewhere in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia; what else is new? Researching and trying to tell the truth, fully and honestly, we feel that we are doing great, professional, scientific work. All the while the propagandists of the Empire are dying of laughter watching us! We are representing little danger to them. They are winning effortlessly! Why is that? Doesn’t the detailed truth matter? It does – from the point of higher principles it matters. Ethically it matters. Morally it matters. Philosophically it matters. But strategically, when one is engaged in an ideological war, it does not matter that much! The truth yes, always; the truth matters! But simplified, digestible truth, presented powerfully and emotionally! When immorality is ravishing the world, when it is charging mercilessly, when innocent millions are dying, what matters is to stop the slaughter, first by identifying the murderous force, then by containing it. Language has to be strong, emotions raw. When facing murderous hordes, poetry, emotionally charged songs, and patriotic odes have always been more effective than deep academic studies. And so were political novels and films, passionate documentaries, even explicit cartoons and posters. Some would ask: “Just because they are lying, should we lie as well?” No! We should try to be as truthful as we can. But our message should be often “abridged”, so the billions, not just those selected few, could understand it. It does not mean that the quality of our work should suffer. Simplicity is often more difficult to achieve than encyclopedic works with thousands of footnotes. Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” is short, just a pamphlet, straight to the point. And so is the “Communist Manifesto”, and ‘J’accuse!” Our revolutionary work does not have to be necessarily brief, but it has to be presented in a way that could be understood by many. I am constantly experimenting with the form, while never compromising on substance. My recent book, “Exposing Lies of the Empire” has more than 800 pages, but I made sure that it is packed with fascinating stories, with testimonies of people from all corners of the globe, with colorful description of both victims and tyrants. I don’t want my books to collect dust in university libraries. I want them to mobilize people. *** I truly believe that there is not much time for “objectivity” in any battle, including those ideological ones, especially when these are battles for the survival of humanity! The lies of the enemy have to be confronted. They are toxic, monstrous lies! Once the destruction stops, millions of innocent men, women and children will cease being sacrificed, and we can return to our complex philosophical concepts, to details and to nuances. But before we win our final battles against imperialism, nihilism, fascism, exceptionalism, selfishness and greed, we have to fully and effectively utilize our most powerful weapons: our visions of a better world, our love for humanity, our passion for justice. Our determination and our beliefs have to be presented in a loud, potent, even “dogmatic” manner, our voice should be creative, artistic, powerful! The house is on fire, comrades! The entire town is turning to ashes. The entire planet is plundered, devastated, lobotomized. We cannot confront bigots with nukes and battleships. But our talents, our muses, and our hearts are here, with us, ready to join the battle. Let us outsmart our enemies; let us make sure that the world begins laughing at them! Have you seen them, those pathetic losers, the buffoons – the CEO’s? Have you listened to those Prime Ministers and Presidents, those servants of the “market”? Let us convince the masses that their tyrants –the imperialists, the neo-colonialists and all their dogmatic preachers – are nothing more than pitiful, greedy, poisonous fools! Let us discredit them! Let us ridicule them. They are robbing and murdering millions. Let us begin by at least pissing on them! Let us fight Western propaganda by first exposing those who are really behind it. Let’s get personal. Let’s turn this revolution into something creative, hilarious, truly fun! Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter. Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.

RECOVERY FROM THE BRIT PROVO SWASTIKA

From experience, I have learned, that no one has a monopoly on the truth, including myself, that is why I detest censorship, along with political internment, which has been used so much, by the Blueshirts, up to the present day revisionist provos, to enforce the Bad Friday Agreement, for the British. In ancient Athens, they might spend days, discussing among themselves, some moot point, in order to ascertain the truth of the matter. Today the time factor of contemporary life, is often used to censor ongoing debate. It is coming up to the anniversary of Ray McCreesh, another particular hunger striker, with whom I feel a particular affinity, because of local history. 

After the death of Bobby and Francis, there were elements of the stickies, who were strong in Newry, still going around the housing estates of the people of no property in Newry, pulling young lads, who supported the hunger strike, into vans such as the above, (photo connected with Dublin, sent to me by a friend). Don't get me wrong, there were many good people with positive contributions, from the Officials but they certainly had elements like todays provos, that remind me of recent events in Belfast. 

They would go around the estates in their van, and pull young lads, who supported the Hunger Strikers, into the back of the van and give them a beating. They would justify it on spurious grounds, like some sort of anti-social behavior. They were simply spirited young lads, who were rebels, who simply needed to have a chat about a  better ways to rebel and needed to be listened to, who often had a drop too much of the Buckfast, supplemented with valium. 

This is what the present day provies in collaboration with the RUC/psni seem to be doing today. This started to change after the death of Raymond McCreesh. I honestly believe, some form of dialogue, needs to be initiated with these youth and they need to be patiently listened to. They have much to offer but are being manipulated for political reasons by British Intellegence and their collaborators. Perhaps if they were invited to some voluntary meetings of the 12 fucked steps on the right of this post, organized by some genuine Irish people, as opposed to British collaborators, it might be a start. I qualify this by saying, that communities may be forced, to give a clear warning to heroin dealers before any action is taken, to leave and go somewhere else, to get treatment, that the present Stormont Junta, does not provide. It requires a lot of patience, listening to talking heads, to hear the essence of the Spirit of Freedom.

The Perfection of Truth

by Gil Fronsdal

Without a commitment to truth there is no Buddhist path. Dharma is a synonym for truth and Dharma practice is synonymous with living a life of truth. In Buddhist mythology, it is said that, in his many lifetimes of training, the Buddha-to-be never lied. While there are stories in which he transgressed other ethical precepts, his dedication to truthfulness was unwavering.

One of the primary characteristics of psychologically or spiritually mature people is that they never lie to themselves. Being honest with oneself is a prerequisite to personal growth and a genuine liberation of the heart. This is so important that we can safely say, as an absolute truth in Buddhist practice, that deceiving oneself is never acceptable. Serious practitioners strive to be impeccably honest with themselves.

Truth brings inner peace by overcoming the conflicts and turmoil we carry within our own minds. Truth can bring an inner security that frees us from neurotically defending, apologizing for, hating, or hiding ourselves from ourselves. Truth can also help overcome conflict between people, as we have seen with the profound work done by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Truth is not the same as facts. Facts alone carry no power whereas truth does. Mahatma Gandhi expressed this in coining the term “satyagraha” or “the power of truth.” (Inspired by Gandhi, Martin Luther King translated truth as “soul,” and satyagraha became “Soul Power” in the American civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s.)

A variety of forces come together to give truth its power. One is the force of inner purity and calm that can only be found in truth and honesty. Another is the confidence that comes with knowing what is true. Yet another is the strength of the good intentions that stand behind speaking the truth. Still another is the way that truth makes reconciliation and forgiveness possible. And finally there is the impact of the many beautiful qualities of heart released when truth helps liberate us from fear, hatred, or greed.

One place we see the power of truth is in AA and other twelve-step meetings. AA may have saved more lives than any other spiritual tradition in our modern times. It insists that alcoholics tell the truth. By admitting their powerlessness over the addiction and making a careful moral inventory, alcoholics learn how to use the truth to release themselves from their compulsions.

Buddhism also uses truth as a way to find release from clinging and the suffering that ensues. The Four Noble Truths are not meant to be truths in the sense of a creed that a Buddhist must believe. They are pragmatic truths, much like how it is true that if you cut yourself deeply with a knife, you will hurt and if you keep the wound clean, you promote its healing. The Four Noble Truths is the Buddha’s way of saying that, if you cling or grasp to anything, you will suffer; if you let go of that clinging, that suffering will end. The Four Noble Truths have no value in the abstract. They are verified through direct experience, by discovering how to be directly honest about our suffering and its causes.

The need for personal honesty is the reason that Buddhist practice depends on mindfulness. Mindfulness is sometimes defined as the practice of being honest about what is happening in the present moment. The awesome freedom and profound peace toward which the Buddhist path moves has nothing to do with how much we know, whom we know, how rich, smart, or beautiful we are, or who admires or even loves us. Rather, this path has everything to do with telling ourselves the truth and, in doing so, becoming a true person.

Through mindfulness we discover a truth that is deeper than beliefs. These truths will transform our character, our deepest sense of being. What we say and do comes to be in harmony with who we are. If we donít become someone who is true, we have no peace nor freedom. When our life is firmly based on truth, peace is not something we have-it is who we are.

IRELAND IN BELLY OF THE BEAST

Since the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, it’s time for the American living beings (aka, the real people) to recognize the toxic impact of granting what amounts to sociopathic monsters in the human realm control over the government.

Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make a profit, to put their economic and profit interests first above all else. Clearly, civilization and democracies are not built on the premise that money takes precedent over all else.

In the movie “The Corporation” they use the personality diagnostic checklist DSM-IV to test corporations for pathological symptoms:


Callous disregard for the feelings of others. Check.

Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships. Check.

Reckless disregard for the safety of others. Check.

Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conniving others for profit. Check.

Incapacity to experience guilt. Check.

Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors. Check.

Result? Corporations are Psychopaths.

Watch the trailer here:

Watch the first chapter of the film, “What is a corporation?” here:

This brings up Colbert’s joke that if corporations are people, than Mitt Romney is a serial killer. It’s funny, but it’s not. Because in reality, modern day corporations are monsters killing human beings in the name of profit.

The “conservatives” who advance the corporate agenda will straw man their way out of having a real discussion about the inevitable result of granting legislative power to entities whose sole purpose is to make a profit by taking refuge in faux capitalism, America-is-great cheers.

But capitalism is an economic system, and does not equate to fascism (and I do not use this word lightly or hyperbolically, but rather literally) or giving corporations the right to govern the people, influence elections, and buy access to legislators in order to advance their agenda.

Capitalism can exist and has existed within the framework of a democratic republic; it’s just not happening right now. Capitalism and corporatism are not the same systems, contrary to the convenient leap made by those desperate to sell corporatism as patriotism.

In America, we have an entire party devoted to turning the government over to corporations, and another party barely able to maintain even the smallest of struggles against this push. In a system where money can buy elections and the people aren’t awake enough to look past the corporate memes being sold under the auspices of religion and entertainment “news”, a politician has to play along to some degree or be rendered impotent.

But here’s where it gets interesting. The Occupy movement is the one movement that really took hold and gave the people some power. In order to distract from the Occupy movement, and with the luck of a cold winter dimming the Occupy voice, corporations have had their puppets assail the American people with shock and awe courtesy of a mountain of legislation meant to attack assumed rights.

Political fascism is defined as “a nationalistic, authoritarian, anti-communist movement founded by Benito Mussolini in Italy in 1919. Fascism was a response to the economic hardship and social disorder that ensued after the end of World War I. The main elements of fascism were pride in the nation, anti-Marxism, the complete rejection of parliamentary democracy, the cultivation of military virtues, strong government, and loyalty to a strong leader.”

It’s important to distinguish that just because the Nazis were a form of Fascism by no means suggests that I am calling Republicans Nazis. That’s quite a stretch, but I guarantee that readers who aren’t paying attention will scream Godwin’s Law in order to avoid having a necessary discussion about the direction of this country under Republican rule.

I am not accusing Republicans of genocide. I am accusing them of ruthlessly promoting social Darwinism via policies of inequality (the view that natural selection applies as much to human society as it does to biological organisms) and corporatism, traits that indicate their push for economic Fascism.

We are discussing the political and economic systems advanced by the party, not the tragic, unthinkable results of Fascism as employed by the Nazis. Although it can hardly go unsaid that fostering psychopathy as nationalism won’t likely end well, and we already see the results in less dramatic fashion as quietly, the poor and disabled are cut off from resources, the elderly left to die while waiting for services, public education for all being privatized for the few, and of course, using corporations as paid for profit military police accountable to no one with billions of taxpayer dollars overseas.

The economics of Fascism reveal how closely Republicans defending corporatist plutocracy as “free market capitalism” are simulating Fascism in this respect. According to Alexander J. De Grand in his book Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, (pp. 47-51), Fascism operated from a Social Darwinist view of human relations. Their aim was to promote superior individuals and weed out the weak. As applied to economics, this meant killing trade unions and other voices for the working class while promoting the interests of the businessman.


Fascism socializes business losses while privatizing profit (bail outs that aren’t paid back, federal subsidizes for oil companies that are making record profits, etc.). Private enterprise is valued more than the people. In this vein, it could be argued that tax rules set up to benefit the wealthy and corporations at the expense of the middle class and poor as pushed by Republicans is just another form of socializing losses, funding corporations on the backs of the working class.

Fascism is highly militaristic and we see that Republicans are sounwilling to cut military funding that they gave up on the DebtSuper Committee after trying to run an end game around the automatic kick in of military cuts, which came as a result of their pushing our country into a lowered credit rating over the deficit. Republicans want to cut everything for the people, while increasing military contracts and spending.

A straw man would now insert an argument about how we are under attack, and insert nationalism here spiced up with requisite fear. But as a fiscal conservative, allow me to point out that the military wastes money just like any government agency, and it wastes even more money when it privatizes services to known abusers like Academi (formerly infamous as Blackwater and formerly also known as XE), DynCorp, and others. On top of wasting money, when we privatize, we lose accountability and oversight, which naturally result in the loss of even more money for the payor (the government; i.e., the taxpayers).

If nothing else, government contractors like Halliburton et al demonstrate exactly what kind of monsters corporations are and why some services were designed to be kept out of the profit industry. A true fiscal conservative would never argue that unregulated, for profit corporations should be given unlimited access to government money with no accountability under the guise of “small government”. That is, in essence, economic Fascism. It socializes losses and privatizes profits, and it also gives corporations the power to police citizens in other countries, with immunity and zero oversight, with their singular purpose being to make a profit.

If that isn’t psychopathic, what is?

Citizens United opened the door for the Republican vision of America as social Darwinism grants ungodly profits to corporations and public money props the corporations up for the good of the Republican Party. That is one way Republicans differ from economic Fascism; the Fascists demanded that the economic activities of the corporations served the public interest, as defined of course by the party/leaders in charge.

Economic Fascists often don’t even have an ideology, and Republicans often appear as if they no longer subscribe to their own ideology of limited government, but rather to political expediency. Their agenda is purely driven by the endless needs and hunger of the Corporation.

They can change the dogma to fit the situation, easily adapting and redefining the party line to fit the latest agenda of the Corporation. In order to achieve this, they sell the narrative with emotional and often religious dogma, which serves to distort how the fundamental values are being betrayed or don’t even exist.

Thus, it’s disingenuous to point out how Republican economic “theory” or “values” differ from other infamous Fascist regimes. The objective is promoting social Darwinism for the purpose of those in power; however this is achieved, disguised or justified is not the point. In fact, the relative “ideas” of the movement are often only pushed for the real agenda, and as such, are irrelevant to the larger issue.

This isn’t conservatism, it’s not Republicanism, and it’s not small government. It is economic Fascism, or corporatism.

If corporations are people, then they are serial killing psychopaths who should never be granted the right to govern the people. Corporations are predators plundering the people and Republicans want to give them full control over our government. Corporatism is not patriotic and it’s not a necessary part of Capitalism or free market ideology.

In a bitter twist of irony, corporatism is the monster Republicans keep telling their base about. Our freedom is at stake. But it’s not Marxists who are hiding under the bed.

Under the collective beds of Americans, greedy corporate monsters without a conscience lie in wait while Republicans sell social Darwinism as the path to economic success, as if the profits of the few were all that this proud country represents.

This pathological pursuit of political power at the expense of the people must stop. This is not capitalism, it’s corporatism.


Follow Sarah Reese Jones on Twitter.

POPE & GAA VETO ADDAMS FAMILY MAFIA

Gerard 'Jock' Davison: GAA and church step back from 'tribute' to murdered ex-PROVO IRA leader

BY SARA NEILL – 13 MAY 2015
The GAA has distanced itself from a message of support for former IRA commander Gerard 'Jock' Davison, who was gunned down last week.

A Catholic church also sought to disassociate itself from a youth club based on its premises that also signed up to the tribute.

A full page tribute to the 47-year-old appeared in Saturday's edition of The Irish News. Signed by 63 groups, it paid tribute to the "highly esteemed" father-of-three.

Mr Davison was shot dead while walking in the Markets area of Belfast last Tuesday morning. Police are still hunting the killer. Davison was a leading republican and was linked to the murder of Robert McCartney outside Magennis's bar 10 years ago - claims he always denied. It is claimed he was ousted from the IRA following the brutal killing, and he became well-known as a community worker in the area.

The advert in the paper claimed it had been written to do "justice to the memory" of Jock Davison.

The statement said: "They say that the hardest thing for a man to do is change with the times. Jock not only managed and adapted but managed to thrive in difficult circumstances, without compromising an iota of his deeply held principles."

St Malachy's GAC joined other organisations, including residents' associations, women's groups and youth projects in putting their name below the message.

Mr Davison was a senior figure at the club, and a spokesman for the GAA said it was "not uncommon" for clubs to take out death notices for members.

He said: "This decision was entirely up to the discretion of the committee of the club. The tribute is community-orientated. I think this individual was involved in the club and he's being remembered in his capacity at the club."

He added that the page-long tribute was in "recognition of the deceased".


"The club has nothing to do with anything [Mr Davison] does away from it. When people cross the door of a GAA club they leave their past outside."

When asked if he agreed with St Malachy's decision to lend its support to the page, the GAA spokesman said: "St Malachy's hasn't breached any GAA rule."

A Catholic church also declined to put its full weight behind the tribute while Clonard Monastery Youth Centre also appears on the list supporting Mr Davison.

A spokesman for Clonard Monastery said: "The signatory was acting in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the management of the youth centre. The Clonard Monastery Youth Centre is a voluntary youth centre governed by a management committee."

TOUT & RECONCILIATION PROCESS

A Nation of Snitches

By Chris Hedges
 

A Transportation Security Administration sign at Los Angeles’ main rail terminal, Union Station, urges that suspicious activities be reported to authorities. It declares, “If You See Something Say Something.” (AP / Damian Dovarganes)

May 11, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Truthdig" - A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in stores, on highways and in public and private buildings. They track us through our electronic devices. They infiltrate our organizations. They entice and facilitate “acts of terrorism” by Muslims, radical environmentalists, activists and Black Bloc anarchists, framing these hapless dissidents and sending them off to prison for years. They have amassed detailed profiles of our habits, our tastes, our peculiar proclivities, our medical and financial records, our sexual orientations, our employment histories, our shopping habits and our criminal records. They store this information in government computers. It sits there, waiting like a time bomb, for the moment when the state decides to criminalize us.
Totalitarian states record even the most banal of our activities so that when it comes time to lock us up they can invest these activities with subversive or criminal intent. And citizens who know, because of the courage of Edward Snowden, that they are being watched but naively believe they “have done nothing wrong” do not grasp this dark and terrifying logic.
Tyranny is always welded together by subterranean networks of informants. These informants keep a populace in a state of fear. They perpetuate constant anxiety and enforce isolation through distrust. The state uses wholesale surveillance and spying to break down trust and deny us the privacy to think and speak freely.
A state security and surveillance apparatus, at the same time, conditions all citizens to become informants. In airports and train, subway and bus stations the recruitment campaign is relentless. We are fed lurid government videos and other messages warning us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. The videos, on endless loops broadcast through mounted television screens, have the prerequisite ominous music, the shady-looking criminal types, the alert citizen calling the authorities and in some cases the apprehended evildoer being led away in handcuffs. The message to be hypervigilant and help the state ferret out dangerous internal enemies is at the same time disseminated throughout government agencies, the mass media, the press and the entertainment industry. 
“If you see something say something,” goes the chorus.
In any Amtrak station, waiting passengers are told to tell authorities—some of whom often can be found walking among us with dogs—about anyone who “looks like they are in an unauthorized area,” who is “loitering, staring or watching employees and customers,” who is “expressing an unusual level of interest in operations, equipment, and personnel,” who is “dressed inappropriately for the weather conditions, such as a bulky coat in summer,” who “is acting extremely nervous or anxious,” who is “restricting an individual’s freedom of movement” or who is “being coached on what to say to law enforcement or immigration officials.”
What is especially disturbing about this constant call to become a citizen informant is that it directs our eyes away from what we should see—the death of our democracy, the growing presence and omnipotence of the police state, and the evisceration, in the name of our security, of our most basic civil liberties.
Manufactured fear engenders self-doubt. It makes us, often unconsciously, conform in our outward and inward behavior. It conditions us to relate to those around us with suspicion. It destroys the possibility of organizing, community and dissent. We have built what Robert Gellately calls a “culture of denunciation.”
Snitches in prisons, the quintessential totalitarian system, are the glue that allows prison authorities to maintain control and keep prisoners divided and weak. Snitches also populate the courts, where the police make secret deals to drop or mitigate charges against them in exchange for their selling out individuals targeted by the state. Our prisons are filled with people serving long sentences based on false statements that informants provided in exchange for leniency.
There are no rules in this dirty game. Police, like prison officials, can offer snitches deals that lack judicial oversight or control. (Deals sometimes involve something as trivial as allowing a prisoner access to food like cheeseburgers.) Snitches allow the state to skirt what is left of our legal protections. Snitches can obtain information for the authorities and do not have to give their targets a Miranda warning. And because of the desperation of most who are recruited to snitch, informants will do almost anything asked of them by authorities.
Just as infected as the prisons and the courts are poor neighborhoods, which abound with snitches, many of them low-level drug dealers allowed to sell on the streets in exchange for information. And from there our culture of snitches spirals upward into the headquarters of the National Security Agency, Homeland Security and the FBI.
Systems of police and military authority are ruthless when their own, such as Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, become informants on behalf of the common good. The power structure imposes walls of silence and harsh forms of retribution within its ranks in an effort to make sure no one speaks. Power understands that once it is divided, once those inside its walls become snitches, it becomes as weak and vulnerable as those it subjugates.
We will not be able to reclaim our democracy and free ourselves from tyranny until the informants and the vast networks that sustain them are banished. As long as we are watched 24 hours a day we cannot use the word “liberty.” This is the relationship of a master and a slave. Any prisoner understands this.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece “The Gulag Archipelago,” which chronicles his time in Josef Stalin’s gulags and is a brilliant reflection of the nature of oppression and tyranny, describes a moment when an influx of western Ukrainians who had been soldiers during World War II arrived at his camp, at Ekibastuz. The Ukrainians, he wrote, “were horrified by the apathy and slavery they saw, and reached for their knives.” They began to murder the informants.
Solzhenitsyn continued:

“Kill the stoolie!” That was it, the vital link! A knife in the heart of the stoolie! Make knives and cut the stoolie’s throats—that was it!
Now as I write this chapter, rows of humane books frown down at me from the walls, the tarnished gilt on their well-worn spines glinting reproachfully like stars through the cloud. Nothing in the world should be sought through violence! By taking up the sword, the knife, the rifle, we quickly put ourselves on the level of tormentors and persecutors. And there will be no end to it. …
There will be no end. … Here, at my desk, in a warm place, I agree completely.
If you ever get twenty-five years for nothing, if you find yourself wearing four number patches on your clothes, holding your hands permanently behind your back, submitting to searches morning and evening, working until you are utterly exhausted, dragged into the cooler whenever someone denounces you, trodden deeper and deeper into the ground—from the hole you’re in, the fine words of the great humanists will sound like the chatter of the well-fed and free.
There will be no end of it! ... But will there be a beginning? Will there be a ray of hope in our lives or not?
The oppressed at least concluded that evil cannot be cast out by good.

The eradication of some snitches and intimidation of others transformed the camp. It was, Solzhenitsyn admits, an imperfect justice since there was no “documentary confirmation that a man was an informer.” But, he noted, even this “improperly constituted, illegal, and invisible court was much more acute in its judgments, much less often mistaken, than any of the tribunals, panels of three, courts-martial, or Special Boards with which we are familiar.”
“Of the five thousand men about a dozen were killed, but with every stroke of the knife more and more of the clinging, twining tentacles fell away,” he wrote. “A remarkable fresh breeze was blowing! On the surface we were prisoners living in a camp just as before, but in reality we had become free—free because for the very first time in our lives we had started saying openly and aloud all that we thought! No one who has not experienced this transition can imagine what it is like!
And the informers … stopped informing.”
The camp bosses, he wrote “were suddenly blind and deaf. To all appearances, the tubby major, his equally tubby second in command, Captain Prokofiev, and all the wardens walked freely about the camp, where nothing threatened them; moved among us, watched us—and yet saw nothing! Because a man in uniform sees and hears nothing without stoolies.”
The system of internal control in the camp broke down. Prisoners no longer would serve as foremen on work details. Prisoners organized their own self-governing council. Guards began to move about the camp in fear and no longer treated prisoners like cattle. Pilfering and theft among prisoners stopped. “The old camp mentality—you die first, I’ll wait a bit; there is no justice so forget it; that’s the way it was, and that’s the way it will be—also began to disappear.”
Solzhenitsyn concluded this chapter, “Behind the Wire the Ground Is Burning,” in Volume 3 of his book, with this reflection.

Purged of human filth, delivered from spies and eavesdroppers we looked about and saw, wide-eyed that … we were thousands! That we were … politicals!That we could resist!
We had chosen well; the chain would snap if we tugged at this link—the stoolies, the talebearers and traitors! Our own kind had made our lives impossible. As on some ancient sacrificial altar, their blood had been shed that we might be freed from the curse that hung over us.
The revolution was gathering strength. The wind that seemed to have subsided had sprung up again in a hurricane to fill our eager lungs.

Later in the book Solzhenitsyn would write, “Our little island had experienced an earthquake—and ceased to belong to the Archipelago.” 
Freedom demands the destruction of the security and surveillance organs and the disempowering of the millions of informants who work for the state. This is not a call to murder our own stoolies—although some of the 2.3 million prisoners in cages in America’s own gulags would perhaps rightly accuse me of writing this from a position of privilege and comfort and not understanding the brutal dynamics of oppression – but instead to accept that unless these informants on the streets, in the prisons and manning our massive, government data-collection centers are disarmed we will never achieve liberty. I do not have quick and simple suggestions for how this is to be accomplished. But I know it must.

SIX MILLION IRISH GENOCIDE A TRENDY COOL IRISH JOKE?

Currently in Britain, macabre, black humor, concerning holocausts, reflects the consuderable shift to the right in politcs. Irish jokes have always been used, as an expression of racism and prejudice, often used with politcal intent. This has taken a new turn recently, with the commisioning of a comedy series by British Television, on the Irish holocaust and another for American audiences, about an Irish American, alcoholic in the US.

The Irish Holocaust, which cost more than 6 million lives, has always been censored from Irish history books and the media, while revising it, simply to a famine, because of the failure of the potato crop. It was in fact a socially engineered genocide, by the British Government, to get rid of the native Irish from Ireland, as part of their colonization of Ireland. Alcoholism is rife and a serious issue, with all colonized indigenous peoples, after the the destruction of their society, such as the aborigines in Australia, native Indians in both north and south America and the many native tribes of Africa.

The British used a combination of censorship and mentored historians, who they often put through third level education, for credibility purposes, to then rewrite the history of their colonies, in the same way, they mentor the rise of politicians, to rule their colonies for them. As the old saying goes, history is written by the victors. I would strongly recomend all people of Irish ancestry, to check the following website, for the truth about the Irish holocaust and to share it with ffriends, as like this blog, it is partially censored, by agents of the British Crown.

Psychosis is a condition of the mind, and is a state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality". I often quote Brendan Behan's statement,"Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis." - Brendan Behan. Growing up in Ireland and having several Jewish firends, I believe there is considerable evidence, to support Mr Behan's prognosis, and it's is not surpising is it, when you have lost more than half of your ancestors from genocide, something any person aware of their history, would not find particulary funny, I assure you dear reader and is particulary provocative. for anyself respecting Irish or Jewish person. The song below, tells one story of one Irish immigrant about it.
http://www.irishholocaust.org/