Corporate Media and Sources of Deception

Just what did John King do that got him into so much trouble? Was it any different from what most of his contemporaries in television, print and electronic media do in virtually every report they make? The answer to the first question is simple: He was getting a story poured into his ear by a couple of government officials. This story just happened to be officially declared “wrong” a short time later. The answer to the second question is just as easy: No. What King did was no different from what any of his colleagues do every day. He was acting as a stenographer, or town crier, for the powers that be. In this case, for some reason, he got hung out to dry by his insider buddies. As media critic Robert McChesney has pointed out in numerous venues, the rise of supposedly objective “professional journalism” after 1900 meant three things in actual practice: “One, government officials and powerful individuals are regarded as the primary legitimate sources for news; two, to avoid the controversy associated with providing context, there has to be a news hook or news peg to justify a news story, which further tilts the news toward established institutional actors; and three, journalists internalize how to ‘dig here, not there.” http://blogs.providencejournal.com/ri-talks/this-new-england/2013/04/john-kirby-corporate-media-and-sources-of-deception.html#.UYEcNFUIt58.email

Why Krugman and the Keynesians Are Lackeys for the Neo-Feudal Debtocracy

Like all cargo cults, Keynesians maintain a magical-thinking belief in the power of wanting more stuff. But in so doing, they embrace and support the mystification that protects the power structure that is dooming the nation and its economy to stagnation and eventual collapse (call it “reset” if you prefer). By focusing on increasing demand and consumption by any means, the Keynesian Cultists miss the key dynamics of sustainable growth and fail utterly and completely to acknowledge the corrupt and exploitive nature of our cartel-state crony-capitalism economy. Has their naivete blinded them to the power structure of the neofeudal-neocolonial debtocracy? It seems unlikely, and so that leaves a less savory motivation: co-option.They’re raking in big bucks as apologists for cartel-state crony-capitalism, and as a result they don’t dare question the power structure, much less hazard a critique of the hands that feed them. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-24/guest-post-why-krugman-and-keynesians-are-lackeys-neofeudal-debtocracy

Why Do People Hate Their Jobs?

Note, not everyone hates their jobs. There are some “entre-ployees” out there that love their jobs. But for the other 98% of the population: Jobs are modern-day slavery. We are paid just enough to live and not more. You are punished if you ask for more. http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2013/04/why-do-people-hate-their-jobs/

Boston Massacre Media Diversion

Only a media masochist can stand watching network and cable TV news. The extent of self-immolation coming out of their broadcasts have seldom been more vivid, with their bizarre reports on the Boston Marathon bombing. If one did not know better the comparison with the Marx Brothers antics would have you believe that you have a ringside seat At the Circus. Silly behavior is the mainstay of the mainstream media. Real news investigation has long ago been relegated to the archives of a half century ago, when there was at least a small measure of a healthy distrust of government sources. Today the clowns that act as ventriloquist dummies have more in common with Karl Marx than Groucho. http://batr.org/view/042113.html

Propaganda

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”—Edward Bernays. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26193.htm#.UV1t372dnoM.email

Failed by the Fourth Estate

The current drumbeat in the media about Iran sounds suspiciously like what we once heard about Iraq. Iraq was depicted wrongly by nearly all the mainstream media as a threat to the United States and as complicit in 9/11, with hardly anyone challenging the assumptions that were being made to justify the war. We now know that much of the bogus information that was being fed to the Bush White House was produced in the Pentagon at Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans. So what is Feith doing these days? Is he in jail because he lied to get the United States involved in a war, possibly to benefit Israel? No, he is a Senior Fellow at the Center for National Security Strategies at the Hudson Institute and he has just popped up as a co-author of a featured op-ed in the Washington Post called “Obama’s ‘nuclear zero’ rhetoric is dangerous.” The piece is co-authored by interesting bed fellows, even for Feith: Frank Gaffney, noted Islamophobe, and James Woolsey, former CIA Director who should be best known for his appearance on television within hours of 9/11 to claim that Saddam Hussein was behind the attack. Woolsey, Gaffney and Feith are all associated with the usual neocon “think tanks” (was there ever a more misleading expression?) and all check under their beds every night to make sure that Sharia Law has not crept into the room uninvited. So you might well ask why this collection of clowns and false prophets should be turned loose to opine on a featured page of a leading newspaper so long after they have been wrong about everything? One would have to ask the editorial page editor Fred Hiatt for the answer to that one, but scaremongering about Muslims and Islamic radicalism is par for the course at the Washington Post, all part of the “Iran/Radical Islam threat” which as we all know is soon coming to a city near you. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2013/04/03/failed-by-the-fourth-estate/

Private Prisons and the Enslavement Society

What more time-honored practice in the long history of state sponsored servitude than the institutionalization of prisoners? Incarceration for offenses against government laws is a cornerstone for power and survivability of any regime. Prisons may have been hellholes over the centuries, but seldom has the internment of convicted lawbreakers been a growth industry for private profit. It almost makes one wonder exactly who are the crooks. While most hard-pressed citizens want a safe and secure society, few ever give even a passing thought to the insatiable corporatist criminalization of the criminal justice system. http://www.batr.org/totalitariancollectivism/033113.html

Regime Change Begins at Home

Charles Derber’s book by that title says it’s the only way to free America from corporate rule. It transformed America from “we the people” to what CEOs say goes. It put monied interests in charge. Presidents, legislators, and high level bureaucrats serve them. Whatever they want they get. Institutionalized injustice follows. It’s longstanding. Vital change more than ever is needed. America had previous corporate regimes. None match today’s extremism. Bold, creative strategies are needed to change things. Commitment creates possibilities. Nothing worth struggling for is easy. Failure to try assures disaster. America’s on a fast track to full-blown tyranny. It’s a hair’s breath away. Preventing it is top priority. It begins with knowledge. It involves knowing what’s at stake. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34472.htm#.UVl64zSGDyo.email

An Orwellian America

Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew: Unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-15/orwellian-america

No Free Speech At Work

According to a recent AFL-CIO study, 80 percent of American workers believe they retain the right of free speech in the workplace. The plain fact is that they are wrong. The first amendment was intended to shield the right of free speech from the actions of the government, not from the actions of private employers. The article at the link below is an interview with Bruce Barry, a management and sociology professor at Vanderbilt and the author of Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace. He criticizes the political consequences of the American tradition of “employment at will” which, he says, is “a legal and economic system under which employers don’t just buy a person’s labor, they also reserve the right to rent an employer’s conscience, ideology and social identity.” In contrast to the United States, “most western-style industrial democracies have built into their system of employment law some sort of just-cause protection and due process reights. There is a convention of the International Labor Organization on discrimination in employment that has, in addition to protection against employment discrimination for race, religion, sex, and national origin, [protection of] political opinion. 160 countries have ratified that convention. The United States is not one of them.” http://whicra.blogspot.com/2007/07/no-free-speech-at-work.html

Hollywood’s Propaganda

Hollywood helps Americans feel good about being part of an empire that kills other peoples at will. “Movies have become a happy arm of the United States government as they advocate for violence and war crimes.” Tales of torture and wanton killing are blockbusters in the USA. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34123.htm#.UTDTJt_OlBw.email

The Age of Neo-Feudalism: A Government of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Corporations

We now live in a two-tiered system of justice and governance. There are two sets of laws: one set for the government and the corporations, and another set for you and me. The laws which apply to the majority of the population allow the government to do things like rectally probe you during a roadside stop, or listen in on your phone calls and read all of your email messages, or indefinitely detain you in a military holding cell. These are the laws which are executed every single day against a population which has up until now been blissfully ignorant of the radical shift taking place in American government. Then there are the laws constructed for the elite, which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow police officers to avoid prosecution when they strip search non-violent criminals, or taser pregnant women on the side of the road, or pepper spray peaceful protestors. These are the laws of the new age we are entering, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state rulers dominate the rest of us, where the elite create the laws which can result in a person being jailed for possessing marijuana while bankers that launder money for drug cartels walk free. Unfortunately, this two-tiered system of justice has been a long time coming. The march toward an imperial presidency, to congressional intransigence and impotence, to a corporate takeover of the mechanisms of government, and the division of America into haves and have nots has been building for years. http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead69.1.html

Nature’s Capital is the Limiting Resource

by Paul Craig Roberts. Only in science fiction can humans escape the consequences of destroying their own habitat. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour. Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets, “human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/01/24/natures-capital-is-the-limiting-resource-paul-craig-roberts/

Time Warner Bans Gun Ads, Continues to Produce Movies Full of Gun Violence

Despite the fact that its subsidiary Warner Bros. routinely distributes blockbuster movies that are replete with gratuitous gun violence, Time Warner Cable has issued a company-wide ban on television ads that show “guns pointed at people,” another illustration of how firearms ownership is being made taboo to coincide with the Obama administration’s gun control agenda. “We no longer accept ads showing semiautomatic weapons and guns pointed at people,” Time Warner Cable said in a statement. “We stand by this policy. If it’s essential to a business owner to show this kind of imagery in their commercials, there are other advertising options in the marketplace.” However, this new found conscience on reducing violent gun imagery will not be embraced by movie productions funded by Time Warner itself and distributed by Warner Bros., such as the upcoming Sylvester Stallone film Bullet to the Head, the trailer for which features a plethora of gun violence, with the poster for the movie being riddled with illustrative bullet holes. http://www.infowars.com/time-warner-bans-gun-ads-continues-to-produce-movies-full-of-gun-violence/

Spooks Incorporated: Does Every Company Need Its Own CIA?

This article from Foreign Policy essentially proves what many of us have already suspected. The ultimate in neo-feudalism is when the corporate sector and the government sector converge, and sadly in these United States this totalitarian marriage is what now dominates the landscape. This is a very worrying trend. From Foreign Policy: Since 9/11, a quiet intelligence revolution has been brewing inside many of America’s leading companies. Hotel chains, cruise lines, airlines, theme parks, banks, chemical companies, consumer products manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and even tech giants have been developing in-house intelligence units that look and act a lot like the CIA. These offices are staffed with former CIA, FBI, and military professionals who have close ties to the U.S. government and conduct global threat reporting by working through formal channels and informal networks around the globe. This is the privatization of American intelligence that you’ve never heard of. And it’s part of the innovative and growing business of political risk management. http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2012/12/11/spooks-incorporated-does-every-company-need-its-own-cia/

Journalism in the Obama Age Shows the Real Media Bias

Ample ink is spilled over debating whether the U.S. media is biased in favor of Republicans or Democrats. It is neither. The overwhelming, driving bias of the U.S. media is subservience to power, whoever happens to be wielding it. That is what explains why the U.S. media has been so obsequious first with George Bush and now with his Democratic successor … The central function, the religion, of the U.S. establishment media is adulation of those who wield power, especially military power. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/26/journalism-vanity-fair-obama

Counterproductive Minimum Wage Mandates

Working for wages has never been the path for significant wealth. Most people are not equipped nor do they have the inclination to be engaged in business endeavors that will earn them a viable living. The reluctance that most workers bring to their occupation stems from their inability or unwillingness of properly understanding the related components that are essential in creating wealth. While many view work as a curse, the indispensable reconciliation for a practical and tolerable acceptance of universal plight is that no one is owed a living. In a world of Totalitarian Collectivism, the powers that control international economies, seek to pacify the laboring hordes with crumbs from substandard minimum wage mandates. The foolishness that guarantees minimal scale for hourly toil can and will never produce a prosperous society. The entire economic interdependent scheme to destroy the last vestiges of a bona fide “free market” economy is at the heart of minimum wage mandates. http://www.batr.org/negotium/101012.html

American Middle Class Being Compressed Out of Existence

The end of this road, which is not far off — barring a very dramatic change in political sentiment — will be bankruptcy and social collapse, as has happened in every nation and empire from the beginning of human history that has tried to borrow itself into prosperity. But before the final day of reckoning, the American middle class — the chief source of productivity and vitality in America for centuries — will likely be compressed out of existence, a state of affairs in which every American will come to know what serfs of every age have experienced: life lived as little more than sources of revenue to appease the state’s limitless appetite for power and pelf. http://thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary/item/12651-american-middle-class-being-compressed-out-of-existence

Goodbye, Liberty! 10 Ways Americans Are No Longer Free

Digital corporations are assaulting our privacy, while banks trap us in indebtedness that approaches indentured servitude. The shrunken ranks of working Americans are being robbed of their essential liberties – including the right to use the bathroom. http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/goodbye-liberty-10-ways-americans-are-no-longer-free

Corporations With Biggest Profits Parked Offshore

Conducting commerce internationally is not a crime. However, the lack of reinvesting domestically provides an inevitable drag on a viable internal economy. Publically traded companies operate under a set of rules that confuse the average investor. Most privately owned businesses are well aware that paying taxes on profits is the price paid to transact trade. Transnational corporations park extraordinary sums of money offshore to avoid a tax rate that most ordinary businesses pay routinely. Such discrepancies act as negative incentives that plague a feeble employment record. http://www.batr.org/negotium/072512.html

Global Crisis — The Convergence of Marx, Orwell and Kafka

While Marx understood the predatory, parasitic nature of Monopoly Capitalism, he did not anticipate the State’s partnering with Cartel/Crony Capitalism; in effect, the State has appropriated the appropriators, stripmining the citizenry to protect the financial sector from the consequences of their “business model” (leverage, fraud, embezzlement and the misrepresentation of risk). But the State doesn’t merely enable (“regulate”) the predation of financiers; it also stripmines the citizenry to fund its own expansion into every nook and cranny of civil society. This is where Orwell enters the convergence, for the State masks its stripmining and power grab with deliciously Orwellian misdirections such as “the People’s Party,” “democratic socialism,” and so on. Orwell understood the State’s ontological imperative is expansion, to the point where it controls every level of community, markets and society. Once the State escapes the control of the citizenry, it is free to exploit them in a parasitic predation that is the mirror-image of Monopoly capital. For what is the State but a monopoly of force, coercion, data manipulation and the regulation of private monopolies? What is the EU bureaucracy in Brussels but the perfection of a stateless State? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-global-crisis-convergence-marx-orwell-and-kafka

7 Ultra-Rich Companies Rake in Profits While Paying Workers Peanuts

Most low-wage jobs are at giant, profitable corporations. Here are some of the worst offenders. http://www.alternet.org/labor/156390

The Careerists

The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. They collect and read the personal data gathered on tens of millions of us by the security and surveillance state. They keep the accounts of ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They build or pilot aerial drones. They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps to some and unemployment benefits or medical coverage to others. They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions. Good. Evil. These words do not mean anything to them. They are beyond morality. They are there to make corporate systems function. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_careerists_20120723//

The Elites Are Unanimous: Lower Everyone’s Wages and Standard of Living — Except They Don’t Say it Out Loud

America’s 1% are in harmony on the matter that concerns them most — who gets the biggest slice of the pie. http://www.alternet.org/economy/156219

The New Totalitarianism: How American Corporations Have Made America Like the Soviet Union

The great power struggle of the 20th century was the competition between Soviet-style communism and “free-market” corporatism for domination of the world’s resources. In America, it’s taken for granted that Soviet communism lost (though China’s more capitalist variant seems to be doing well), and the superiority of neo-liberal economics — as epitomized by the great multinational corporations — was thus affirmed for all time and eternity. There’s a small problem with this, though. An old bit of wisdom says: choose your enemies carefully, because over time, you will tend to become the very thing you most strongly resist. One of the most striking things about our victorious corporations now is the degree to which they’ve taken on some of the most noxious and Kafkaesque attributes of the Soviet system — too often leaving their employees, customers, and other stakeholders just as powerless over their own fates as the unhappy citizens of those old centrally planned economies of the USSR were back in the day. http://www.alternet.org/visions/156311

Fifty Shades of Capitalism: Pain and Bondage in the American Workplace

The symbol of capitalism was lately a vampire. Enter the CEO with nipple clamps. http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/156291

20 Facts About Wal-Mart That Will Absolutely Shock You

All over the country, independent retailers are going out of business because they cannot compete with Wal-Mart and their super cheap Chinese products. Often communities will give Wal-Mart huge tax breaks just to move in to their areas. But what many communities don’t take into account is that the introduction of a Wal-Mart is often absolutely devastating to small businesses. http://www.blacklistednews.com/Is_Wal-Mart_Destroying_America%3F_20_Facts_About_Wal-Mart_That_Will_Absolutely_Shock_You/20386/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Trans Pacific Partnership: Corporate Escape From Accountability

Information has been leaked about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is being negotiated in secret by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Six hundred corporate “advisors” are in on the know, but not Congress or the media. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate trade subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the TPP, has not been permitted to see the text or to know the content. The TPP has been called a “one-percenter” power tool. The agreement essentially abolishes the accountability of foreign corporations to governments of countries with which they trade. Indeed, the agreement makes governments accountable to corporations for costs imposed by regulations, including health, safety and environmental regulations. The agreement gives corporations the right to make governments pay them for the cost of complying with the regulations of government. One wonders how long environmental, labor, and financial regulation can survive when the costs of compliance are imposed on the taxpayers of countries and not on the economic activity that results in spillover effects such as pollution. Many will interpret the TPP as another big step toward the establishment of global government in the New World Order. However, what the TPP actually does is to remove corporations or the spillover effects of their activities from the reach of government. As the TPP does not transfer to corporations the power to govern countries, it is difficult to see how it leads to global government. The real result is global privilege of the corporate class as a class immune to government regulation. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/07/02/trans-pacific-partnership-corporate-escape-from-accountability/

Corporate Profits at All-Time High; Wages at All-Time Low

The middle class is being hollowed out; increasingly, there are the super-super-rich, and there are the rest of us. http://www.alternet.org/news/156042

The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class

They had good, stable jobs — until the “recession” hit. Now they’re living out of their cars in parking lots. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-sharp-sudden-decline-of-americas-middle-class-20120622

Immigration Hurts American Employment

With a minimum of 15 million illegal aliens in our country, these figures are the tip of the iceberg. You can count on your corporations devouring cheap labor as they send you to the unemployment lines. Additionally, they pay PAC groups to keep senators and congressmen in their back pocket. How do I know? Virtually zero companies in 2011 were taken to court for hiring illegal aliens. None went to jail. However, it’s a $10,000.00 fine per illegal alien hired and up to five years in prison. You would think that would deter corporations. Not when they’ve bought off enforcement. http://www.batr.org/negotium/062012.html

Extremism Watch: Secret Obama Trade Agreement Would Allow Foreign Corporations to Avoid U.S. Laws

In order to secure a new international trade agreement with Pacific nations, the Obama administration appears willing to grant foreign corporations the power to avoid U.S. laws. This revelation came in the form of a leaked document posted online by Citizens Trade Campaign. The material came from negotiations to establish a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact and its authenticity verified by Public Citizen. According to the Huffington Post, which also reviewed the document, foreign corporations operating within the U.S. could disregard certain domestic requirements and regulations by appealing to an international tribunal—that would have the power to overrule American law. http://www.blacklistednews.com/Globalization%3A_Secret_Obama_Trade_Agreement_Would_Allow_Foreign_Corporations_to_Avoid_U.S._Laws/20032/0/38/38/Y/M.html

SEC: Taking on Big Firms is ‘Tempting,’ But We Prefer Picking on Little Guys

If you want to see a perfect example of how completely broken our regulatory system is, look no further than a speech that Daniel Gallagher, one of the S.E.C.’s commissioners, recently gave in Denver, Colorado. It’s a speech whose full lunacy is hard to grasp without some background. It’s by now been well-established that the S.E.C.’s performance in policing Wall Street before, after, and during the crash has been comically inept. It would be putting it generously to say that the top cop on the financial services beat has demonstrated particular incompetence with regard to investigations of high-profile targets at powerhouse banks and financial companies. A less generous interpretation would be that the agency is simply too afraid, too unwilling, or too corrupt to take on the really dangerous animals in this particular jungle. The S.E.C.’s failure to make even one case against a high-ranking executive involved in the mass frauds leading to the 2008 crash – compare this to the comparatively much smaller and less serious S&L crisis twenty years earlier, when the government made 1,100 criminal cases and sent 800 bank officials to jail – became so conspicuous that by the end of last year, the “No prosecutions of top figures” idea became an accepted meme in mainstream news media coverage of the economic crisis. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/sec-taking-on-big-firms-is-tempting-but-we-prefer-whaling-on-little-guys-20120530#ixzz1wPlczJdY

The Politics of Language and the Language of Political Regression

The problem is that this ‘capitalism of the past’ is gone and a new more virulent and intransigent capitalism has emerged forging a new worldwide framework and a powerful entrenched state apparatus immune to all calls for ‘reform’ and reorientation. The confusion, frustration and misdirection of mass popular opposition is, in part, due to the adoption by leftist writers, journalists and academics of the concepts and language espoused by its capitalist adversaries: language designed to obfuscate the true social relations of brutal exploitation, the central role of the ruling classes in reversing social gains and the profound links between the capitalist class and the state. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31373.htm

Big vs. Small Bank Loans

If your Main Street business needs capital and seeks a loan, your prospects are slim to none. It is evident that the real economy has never recovered from the collapse of the financial system. TARP was a temporary rescue of the large money center banks. For the local community banks, the massive give away has strings attached and penalties to be paid. Not much consolation for a small business endeavor that is desperate for cash and an improved business environment. http://www.batr.org/negotium/050212.html

The Illusion of Choice

Just a few mega-corporations make almost all of the choices Americans have at the grocery store. http://www.uniquescoop.com/2012/04/illusion-of-choice.html

Six Kinds of Pills Big Pharma Tries to Get You Hooked on for Life

Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in the late 1990s, the number of people on prescription drugs — especially prescription drugs for life — has ballooned. Between 2001 to 2007 the percentage of adults and children on one or more prescriptions for chronic conditions rose by more than 12 million, reports the Associated Press and 25 percent of U.S. children now take a medication for a chronic condition. Seven percent of kids take two or more daily drugs. Who says advertising doesn’t work? http://www.alternet.org/health/155170

Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency

News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government. Dozens of televisions display a political advertisement with the image of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Companies that own the biggest journalistic outlets in the country are fighting a measure to post political ad data online.  But now many of the country’s biggest media companies — which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations — are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending. The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism — NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and dozens of local TV news outlets — are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure to require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/04/20-8

Obama Stimulus Dollars Funded Soros Empire

Newly recently released tax documents reveal how billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros expanded his U.S.-based empire by using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the Obama stimulus. Soros and Obama worked hand-in-glove through the stimulus, which has been called the largest single partisan wealth transfer in American history. http://sorosfiles.com/soros/2012/04/obama-stimulus-dollars-funded-soros-empire.html

U.S. Standard of Living Has Fallen More Than 50%

In writing about the relentless collapse of Western economies, I frequently point to “40 years of plummeting wages” for Western workers, in real dollars. However, where I have been remiss is in quantifying the magnitude of this collapse in Western wages. On several occasions, I have glibly referred to how it now takes two spouses working to equal the wages of a one-income family of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, that is now an understatement. In fact, Western wages have plummeted so low that a two-income family is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago. http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of-living-has-fallen-more-than-50-opinion.html?cm_ven=emailfriend

Is the Internet Becoming the Bot Net?

On the Internet, we’ve reached a tipping point where more than 50% of all Internet traffic is no longer generated by humans – instead, it’s generated by a motley mix of search engine spiders, bots, scrapers, scammers, hackers and, yes, spies. We are no longer talking about the Internet, we are talking about the Bot Net – a “bot-mediated reality” where algorithms and bots influence where we go, how long we spend there and with whom we communicate. This has enormous consequences not just for our day-to-day Web experience (“Does the Internet feel a little bit slow today?”) but also for the way we manage our social identities online and the way that we respond to the development of an underground Bot Economy. http://bigthink.com/ideas/is-the-internet-becoming-the-bot-net?page=all

U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Consequences

Now that Japan lowered its own taxes, the U.S. stands on top with the dubious distinction of having the highest corporate tax rates. Claims that, when you consider all the tax loopholes, subsidies, deductions and tricks, the effective rate is not really the 35% level seem less reassuring. However, if you view any tax policy that focuses upon revenue collection, you miss the entire significance of the dynamics in trade. The slogan “Free Trade” applied in real terms, means capitulation of domestic production and prosperity for the sake of maximum international return on equity. In essence, the global corporatist supersedes the home domicile country for the joy of worldwide plunder. http://www.batr.org/negotium/040412.html

This Occupation is Brought to You by Corporate America

During a recent demonstration in Hebron (Al Khalil) demanding the opening of Shuhada street, protesters were subjected to something that could only have been thought up in the United States – a weapon which comes with its own commercial. Amid the sound of concussion grenades exploding, an automated voice announces: “This is a test of the long range acoustic device, LRAD, from American Technologies Corporation.” The strange automated message serves as a reminder that the Israeli occupation is not just a local or regional issue but one with important international dimensions. http://uruknet.com/?p=m86745&hd=&size=1&l=e

Global Activism is Taking Down the Toxic Corporate Food Industry

The foundation of the international food industry, monopolized by large corporations that hold zero regard for your health, is cracking. As more and more individuals begin to realize that they are eating their way to disease through the consumption of these products, they become outraged at the companies peddling their latest toxic food product. The result? Companies are now being forced to either answer to the consumer demands (removing the toxic substances from the food supply and adapting legitimate environmental manufacturing practices), or lose their customers. http://naturalsociety.com/global-activism-is-taking-down-the-toxic-corporate-food-industry/

Inverted Totalitarianism and the Corporate State

Stricken with a terminal disease, the decline of traditional society is unavoidable. For decades, the political institutions that fostered a Republic based upon individual liberty and responsibility fade into fond memory. Defenders of all that made America a shining example of human freedom are attacked and ridiculed for holding onto a moral and ethical system that is based upon the dignity of every individual. Most will blame the failure of this decay on the politicians that willfully pander to the masses with the next generation of social welfare programs. While defining a politician as a scoundrel, deserving damnation, seems obvious; the underlying source of the decay that eats away the culture comes from various directions. http://www.batr.org/totalitariancollectivism/022612.html

Regulations Harm Small Business and Protects Corporations

Government regulations are meant to stifle competition. The legislative process graces those who are well connected, financially heeled and schooled in the art of writing the regulations. Few small businesses have a legal department or experienced lobbyists. http://www.batr.org/negotium/022212.html

Corporations Have No Use for Borders

The decay of Canada illustrates two things. Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington. This, I suspect, is why the tactics to crush the Occupy movement around the globe have an eerie similarity—infiltrations, surveillance, the denial of public assembly, physical attempts to eradicate encampments, the use of propaganda and the press to demonize the movement, new draconian laws stripping citizens of basic rights, and increasingly harsh terms of incarceration. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30390.htm

Life Belongs to the Living and Not to the Corporate State

As I watched the TV bobble-heads trying to analyze the outcome of Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses, it became evident that those whose job it is to translate the agenda of the establishment to the rest of us could not explain the Ron Paul phenomenon. I doubt that any of these people are so intellectually dense as to miss the significance of what is occurring. I am inclined more to the opinion that the voices of the lockstep-media do understand that Ron Paul’s campaign is underlain by a fundamental questioning of the assumptions and policies that have long defined politics. But these same voices understand that they dare not allow such questions to be raised on their watch. For them to do otherwise would be to risk the well-paid jobs they have hawking the corporate-state interests, forcing them into a marketplace that might not provide them equivalent incomes or perks. http://lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer247.html

Americans’ Net Worth Plummets as Corporations Stockpile Cash

Americans’ wealth last summer suffered its biggest quarterly loss in more than two years as stocks, pension funds and home values lost value. At the same time, corporations raised their cash stockpiles to record levels. http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19497443

The Boob Tube Does Surveillance Porn

Author Aldous Huxley once wrote, “Government-through-terror works, on the whole, less well than government through nonviolent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women, and children.” Writing this in 1958, Huxley hadn’t seen nothin’ yet. But the eerily perceptive futurist, who in 1932 published the ultimate government-through-nonviolent manipulation nightmare, Brave New World, nonetheless pegged television as the medium through which his dystopian vision would be realized in the Western world. He was right: Television for decades has been the velvet whip with which powerful social, political, and commercial forces — the so-called establishment — have relentlessly endeavored to keep us all in a conformist stupor. Well, he would have been really ratified by this pair of new dramas debuting on television this fall. Showtime’s Homeland and CBS’s Person of Interest are nothing less than post-9/11 government propaganda wrapped in slick, modern cinematography, fronted by pretty people and delivered with supposedly “complicated” plots and characters. Think 24 3.0 — except that now, we don’t cheer the government breaking every law of war and man to bag foreign terrorists. Instead, we countenance the suspension of the Constitution as it applies to us, the American citizen, in the interest of national security (Homeland) and law & order (Person of Interest). http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2011/10/10/hollywood-loves-surveillance-porn/

Corporate Dictatorship Watch: Bank of America Holds Patent on ‘Changing Your Emotions’ During Customer Service Call

Patent Abstract–Systems and methods for inducing a change in a human physiological characteristic. The physiological characteristic may correspond to an emotional state of a dialogue participant. The dialogue participant may be an individual participating in a conversation. The outcome of the conversation may be related to a business objective, such as providing high quality call center services. A sensor may monitor the physiologic characteristic. A processor may relate the physiologic characteristic to an emotional state. The processor may provide feedback to the individual based on the emotional state. The feedback may be formulated to change the individual’s emotional state. http://dailybail.com/home/wtf-no-seriously-wtf-bank-of-america-holds-patent-on-changin.html

Men Workers Now Make Less Than 43 Years Ago

While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point, what should surprise many is that according to Table P-5 of the Census report of (Lack of) Income, the median man is now worse on a gross, inflation adjusted basis, than he was in 1968! http://www.zerohedge.com/news/median-male-worker-makes-less-now-43-years-ago

CEOs Earned More Than Companies’ Tax Bills

Twenty-five of the best-paid chief executive officers in the U.S. earned more in salary and other compensation in 2010 than their companies’ federal income tax expenses as disclosed in public filings, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies. The Washington-based nonprofit group’s report, released today, examined 100 publicly traded U.S. corporations with the highest-paid CEOs. It found that companies whose CEOs’ compensation exceeded reported tax expense in 2010 had average global profits of $1.9 billion. Companies in this group, according to the report, included Cablevision Systems Corp., EBay Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Boeing Co. and Dow Chemical Co. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/ceos-earned-more-than-their-companies-tax-bills-study-finds.html

Verizon: From Wireless to Shameless

It was only a matter of time before the “pull down” NAFTA and WTO trade agreements on U.S. wages and jobs would be followed by “pull down” contract demands by U.S. corporations on their unionized workers toward levels of non-unionized laborers. The most recent illustration of this three-decade reversal of nearly a century of American economic advances for employees is the numerous demands by Verizon. Here are just a few of the concessions the new Verizon CEO, Lowell McAdam, is insisting upon: –More power to contract out and offshore jobs to add to the 25,000 already in that category; thereby undermining job security. –a freeze on pensions; –elimination of the sickness and death benefit program; –reduction in sick days; and –a major increase in employee contributions to and deductibles under their health insurance coverage. http://www.counterpunch.org/nader08232011.html

GE Moves $14 Billion X-Ray Business to China, and Still Don’t Pay Any U.S. Taxes

Jack is ticked off at CEO Jeff Immelt and rightfully so, as GE announced plans yesterday to offshore its massive radiology manufacturing business to China. http://dailybail.com/home/cnns-jack-cafferty-ge-moves-14-billion-per-year-x-ray-busine.html

95 Percent of Americans Are Getting Poorer Every Year

Here’s the Great Game: mask the nation’s rising wealth inequality with Central State spending that keeps the debt-serfs passive–all funded by debt, of course. http://www.businessinsider.com/made-in-usa-wealth-inequality-2011-7

Induced Fraud

As the value of the dollar declines, conventional economists assure us that U.S. exports will rise, putting Americans back to work. For that prescription to succeed, Americans would need to work for wages and benefits roughly on par with China. Americans are correct in their widely shared sense that something is fundamentally wrong. At some point soon, the harsh reality must be faced: Today’s widely prevalent “consensus economics” not only does not work, it never could have worked — except to create the results we now see. In hindsight, it’s clear that Americans were induced to embrace financial freedom as a stand-in for personal freedom. Meanwhile, the unbridled pursuit of financial returns emerged as a proxy for the personal pursuit of happiness. http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article465176.ece?service=print

Midget Minds and Lost Cojones

Americans are a hollow shell of their proud history. Their financial controllers have enslaved the few remaining hard working producers of actual wealth. Those who still cling to a feeble dream of getting ahead rationalize their captivity as the price needed to pay for success. It seems that only government parasites, leeching off the system, remain sheltered from the imminent outlook of a total melt down. The elites have implemented their master plan. All that is left is to gather up the remaining assets of the indebted public through a proscribed national bankruptcy. Commonly understood in another era were historic facts that this type of tyranny was called fascism. The list of lost liberties is endless. The level of compliance and acquiescence to repression has never been higher. Social behavior requires homage to a “PC’ culture in order to be part of the post-industrial world of global regimentation. The common error that most people make is to conclude that fascism is a right wing ideology. The reality is that left-right distinctions are meaningless, when the key components of a totalitarian society share the same universal traits. http://batr.org/autonomy/051511.html

Corporate Stash Soars to $1.9 Trillion, But Nowhere to Invest

Two and a half years have passed since Lehman Brothers collapsed and US consumers are still digging out. Last Thursday, the Fed released its “flow of funds” report which showed that households had trimmed their debt to $13.3 trillion in the forth quarter (4Q). But the crucial debt-to-income ratio remains significantly above trend at 120.9%. That means that consumers will have to cut their spending even more. During the boom years, (2000 to 2007) households more than doubled their debt by taking advantage of cheap, easily-available credit for purchasing mortgages, refinancing homes and maintaining their standard of living. Homeowners were able to drain (roughly) $500 billion per year from their rising home equity to spend as they pleased. The credit-binge stimulated demand, increased employment, and created a virtuous circle of profitability and growth. But now the process has slammed into reverse triggering a wave of foreclosures, bankruptcies and defaults. Consumers have been retrenching for 11 straight quarters trying to patch their balance sheets after sustaining heavy losses during the crisis. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27688.htm

Sony Uses Copyright Law to Chill Speech, Intimidate Researchers

For years, EFF has been warning that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be used to chill speech, particularly security research, because legitimate researchers will be afraid to publish their results lest they be accused of circumventing a technological protection measure. We’ve also been concerned that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be abused to try to make alleged contract violations into crimes.

We’ve never been sorrier to be right. These two things are precisely what’s happening in Sony v. Hotz. If you have missed this one, Sony has sued several security researchers for publishing information about security holes in Sony’s PlayStation 3.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message

2011: A Brave New Dystopia

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second. We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22581

FCC Poised to Clear Comcast-NBC Merger

Comcast appears poised to win the blessing of one regulatory body reviewing its proposed $30 billion takeover of NBC Universal, as officials at the Federal Communications Commission have indicated that the agency could approve the merger as early as next month.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has circulated an order among the commissioners that would grant conditional approval to the merger, imposing public-interest safeguards to protect the distribution of competing video content, both online and on Comcast’s cable platform.

Announced more than a year ago, the merger of the nation’s biggest Internet service and cable provider with an entertainment giant has come under heavy fire from advocacy groups, who have warned that the pairing of media distribution and content will inevitably lead to higher prices for consumers and limited access to rival programming.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article.php/3918461/FCC-Poised-to-Clear-Comcast-NBC-Merger.htm

Veterans Group Files FEC Complaint Against The Chamber: Foreign Funds Pose ‘Clear And Present Danger’ To U.S. Democracy

Nonprofits, now emboldened to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on with no disclosure this election cycle, are beginning to face complaints at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC). While most of these complaints have come from campaign finance reform groups, a veterans organization is jumping into the fray.

On Monday, the Veterans’ Alliance for Security and Democracy (VetPAC) filed an FEC complaint against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the FEC, alleging that the organization’s potential use of foreign funds for political purposes represents a “clear and present danger to our democracy.” From the letter to the FEC, obtained by The Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/18/veterans-pac-fec-complaint-chamber-commerce-danger_n_766892.html

Soros Launches Frontal Assault on Tea Party

George Soros

Teapartytracker.org will be sponsored by the NAACP, Think Progress, New Left Media and Media Matters for America. Think Progress is a George Soros operation connected to John Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Podesta is Clinton’s former chief of staff. Media Matters for America is the brainchild of a MoveOn consultant and Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Soros is a major supporter of MoveOn.

http://www.infowars.com/globalist-soros-launches-frontal-assault-against-tea-party/

The Economy is in Big Trouble

Policymakers at the Fed, the Treasury, the White House and the Congress now look on as the foundations of the so-called recovery crack before their very eyes. Many of their careers will undoubtedly follow the economy down the drain. As the stimulus runs out, unemployment will rise, deleveraging and debt liquidation will gain momentum, and the economy will succumb to a second vicious contraction. http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08192010.html

Crisis, What Crisis? Profits Soar!

What the current unequal and uneven impact of the capitalist system tells us is that capitalists can overcome crises only by heightening exploitation and rolling back decades of “social gains”. The current process of profit recovery, however, is highly precarious because it is based on exploiting current inventories, low interest rates and cutting labor costs. It is not based on dynamic new private investments and increased productive capacity. http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/13690-crisis-what-crisis-profits-soar.html

Jobless Millions Signal Death of American Dream for Many

Richard Gaines is one of the best-known faces on Camden’s Haddon Avenue. It is a rough-and-tumble street, lined with cheap businesses and boarded-up houses, and is prey to drug gangs. Gaines, 50, runs a barbershop, a hair salon and a fitness business. He works hard and is committed to his community. But Haddon Avenue is not an easy place to make a living in the best of times. And these are far from the best of times.

Just how badly the great recession has struck this fragile New Jersey city, which is currently the poorest in America, was recently spelled out to Gaines. In happier times – whatever that might mean for a city as destitute as Camden – local businesses on Haddon Avenue could at least rely on a bit of trade from those who made their money on the street.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/15/jobless-millions-death-american-dream

The Big Things That Matter And The Little Things That Annoy

In America today there is no longer a connection between profits and the welfare of the people. Unregulated greed has destroyed the capitalist system, which now distributes excessive rewards to the few at the expense of the many. If Marx and Lenin were alive today, the extraordinary greed with which Wall Street has infected capitalism would provide Marx and Lenin with a better case than they had in the 19th and early 20th centuries. http://vdare.com/roberts/100811_big_things.htm

What is Apple’s Agenda?

Apple’s new IPhone 4 “Face time” commercial is an example of a hidden political agenda among the world’s corporations, the promotion of “diversity” and in particular, racial intermarriage and miscegenation. This is restricted to North America and Europe. They couldn’t get away with it in Japan, China, India or Israel. http://etherzone.com/2010/mako081210.shtml

New Ruling Class Line — At Least Five Years Before ‘Human Consumer Units’ Begin Spending Again

Paul Polman, Unilever’s chief executive, says anyone counting on consumers to spend those markets out of their torpor will have a long wait – it could be five years before any significant growth returns. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7929136/Western-shoppers-stay-on-the-shelf.html

Are the American People Obsolete?

Have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich minority in the United States? A number of trends suggest that the answer may be yes.

In every industrial democracy since the end of World War II, there has been a social contract between the few and the many. In return for receiving a disproportionate amount of the gains from economic growth in a capitalist economy, the rich paid a disproportionate percentage of the taxes needed for public goods and a safety net for the majority.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/27/american_people_obsolete/index.html

It’s Illegal to Sell Home-Baked Goods in Florida

Largo – Many chefs get started right in their own kitchen.

However, in Florida, it is illegal to cook something at home and then try to sell it.

It is a law that has been really frustrating for Barbara Schmal, so she is trying to do something about it.

Schmal loves creating gorgeous cakes in her own kitchen.

“I just love doing the cake decorating part of it and trying out new recipes and new techniques,” Schmal said.

http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_north_pinellas/largo/woman-hopes-state-will-enact-cottage-food-act-to-help-floridians-that-want-to-bake-and-sell-items.

Walmart CEO Pay…More in an Hour Than Workers Get All Year

By Ed Smith’s math, the CEO of Walmart earns more in an hour than his employees will earn in a year. Alderman: Walmart CEO earns more in 1 hour than workers earn in a year. Smith, an alderman in Chicago, presented posters at a city council meeting showing that Walmart CEO Michael Duke’s $35 million salary, when converted to an hourly wage, worked out to $16,826.92. By comparison, at a Walmart store planned for the Windy City’s Pullman neighborhood, new employees to be paid $8.75 an hour would gross $13,650 a year. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/walmart-ceo-pay-hour-workers-year/story?id=11067470

PayPal Targets Conservative Blog as “Hate” Site

Pam Gellar

On her popular Web site, Atlas Shrugs, Geller posted the text of an e-mail notice she received Saturday morning from PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy Department.

“[A]fter a recent review of your account, it has been determined that you are currently in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy,” the PayPal e-mail said. “Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.”

http://spectator.org/blog/2010/06/12/paypalcom-targets-conservative

Kosher Meatpacking CEO Acquitted of Child Labor Violations

Sholom Rubashkin

On its second day of deliberations, the state court found Rubaskin not guilty on the 67 counts of violations regarding 26 South American teenagers who had been employed at the kosher meatpacking giant.

In addition to the child labor accusations, Rubashkin was charged last November on 86 counts of federal fraud for which he will be sentenced later this month.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/kosher-meatpacking-giant-acquitted-of-child-labor-violations-1.294875

BP and the Audacity of Greed

Even as BP’s blown well a mile beneath the surface in the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush forth an estimated 70,000 barrels of oil a day into the sea, and the fragile wetlands along the Gulf begin to get coated with crude, which is also headed into the Gulf Stream for a trip past the Everglades and on up the East Coast, the company is demanding that Canada lift its tight rules for drilling in the icy Beaufort Sea portion of the Arctic Ocean. In an incredible display of corporate arrogance, BP is claiming that a current safety requirement that undersea wells drilled during the newly ice-free summer must also include a side relief well, so as to have a preventive measure in place that could shut down a blown well, is “too expensive” and should be eliminated. Yet clearly, if the U.S. had had such a provision in place, the Deepwater Horizon blowout could have been shut down right almost immediately after it blew out, just by turning of a valve or two, and then sealing off the blown wellhead. http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05242010.html

Coporate Giants’ Latest Attempt to Control the Web

Two years ago, cosmonaut and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth challenged open sourcers to turn the Linux desktop into a piece of art.

They should “out Apple” Apple, he said. They should fashion beautiful software and online services that reach a wider audience of consumer users.

Shuttleworth’s Canonical has now launched Ubuntu 10.04, which goes a long way towards that Mactastic vision, offering new tools for music and video and all sorts of online services, all swaddled in a cool (and purple) UI.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/03/free_video_music_on_the_web/

7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sell Their Souls to Online Game Retailer

A computer game retailer revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of online shoppers, thanks to a clause in the terms and conditions agreed to by online shoppers. The retailer, British firm GameStation, added the “immortal soul clause” to the contract signed before making any online purchases earlier this month. It states that customers grant the company the right to claim their soul.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/15/online-shoppers-unknowingly-sold-souls/

We the People versus a Government of, by and for The United Corporations of America

If we continue lethargic and pacified, the corporate Leviathan will swallow us whole, making of us one more morsel of a gluttonous appetite that is destroying Earth and imprisoning billions of human beings. This enemy, already killing millions of individuals on a yearly basis, all clandestinely buried six feet under, all in the name of profit and power, all ignored and obfuscated, hidden under the noses of the world entire, will in the years to come become an even greater threat than it is at present. http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2004/07/we-people-versus-government-of-by-and.html