The presidential election exposed the liberal class as a corpse. It fights for nothing. It stands for nothing. It is a useless appendage to the corporate state. It exists not to make possible incremental or piecemeal reform, as it originally did in a functional capitalist democracy; instead it has devolved …
The decision by the European Court of Human Rights last week to refuse to block the extradition of the radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and four others to the United States on terrorism charges removes one of the last external checks on our emerging gulag state. Masri and the four others, …
We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but …
A couple of decades ago, upon returning to Atlanta, Georgia, after spending a year abroad, I would frequent an independent bookshop that contained a small coffee shop/cafe, where I would sip tea, read books and periodicals, and engage in the nearly extinct art of long form face-to-face verbal discourse …
Here’s a mandala to meditate on to prepare for The Smart Show today, 6/14 (at 5pm Eastern / 2 Pacific) which will feature a major expose on The Bilderberg Group from investigative reporter Daniel Estulin, live from Madrid, Spain. It shows how many tentacles the secretive group has in the most …
My parents modest, single-level, brick home stands on property that was once part of a sprawling estate owned by the Candler family, Atlanta’s Coca-Cola patricians. Built during the post-war, 1950s building boom, the small house is situated in a deep ravine that once served as the grounds of the Candler’s …
I gave a talk last week at Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Many in the audience had pinned small red squares of felt to their clothing. The carre rouge, or red square, has become the Canadian symbol of revolt. It comes from the French …
In 1999, Scott McNealy, the former head of Sun MicroSystems, reportedly declared, “You have zero privacy anyway….Get over it.” He unintentionally let the proverbial cat out of the bag of the digital age. In 2009, McNealy’s assessment was confirmed by Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. In an interview with NBC’s Mario …
In Robert E. Gamer’s book “The Developing Nations” is a chapter called “Why Men Do Not Revolt.” In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or …
By Chris Hedges In Robert E. Gamer’s book “The Developing Nations”is a chapter called “Why Men Do Not Revolt.” In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a …
Due to the consolidation of wealth and privilege into fewer and fewer hands, thus requiring escalating amounts of officially mandated surveillance and brutality to maintain social order, the natural trajectory of unregulated capitalism tends towards hyper-authoritarian excess, even towards fascism. Moreover, by the standards of capitalist ideology, and exacerbated by …
This essay is Part X of Prof John McMurtry’s ”The Undeclared World War, Human Rights versus Corporate Rights” Corporate-system drivers of “deregulation”, “privatization” and “lower taxes” lead reversals of civil commons evolution. When 70% of France supports the strikes against …