By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
It is frequently observed that truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction, and there is no greater exemplar of that reality than the stark options facing both Americans and Amerikkkans next Tuesday.
Most eyes — and the obsession of the mainstream media –, of course, will be fixed upon the race between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican wannabe Mitt Romney to determine who will sit in the “White” House after January, 2013. Will the second so-called “first African-American president” (the first pretender to that mantle was Bill Clinton) be re-elected after a dismal first term that saw very little of the “change” Obama so blithely promised in 2008 or will enough Amerikkkans show up at the polls to topple the current upstart and reclaim the “White” House by giving the dangerously demented Romney the presidency and the key to the nuclear arsenal?
I would speculate that millions will hold their noses and vote for one of the above-mentioned to as “the lesser of two evils.” All things considered, Obama is probably the lesser of those two evils. You couldn’t pass urine between the differences between Obama and Romney on foreign policy or — their respective rhetorics notwithstanding — on economic policy. On those issues, those two candidates stand for continuity in a wide range of policies despite the decades-long failures of those policies.
Neither Obama nor Romney will change the basic thrust of U.S. foreign or economic policy because these policies are the policies that most effect the vested interests of the Top Two Percent — the mega-millionaire and billionaire controllers of the “productive” economy — the gangster banksters and corporate robber barons — who were granted the right to purchase politicians by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United a couple of years ago, and the puppet political prostitutes who are desperately dependent on the largesse of this criminal socioeconomic elite for their own political success and survival. On all of the issues that directly affect the vested interests of the elite, neither the Democrat nor the Republican will change much. read more »
The stark reality of the U.S. elections
What WRISEUP.COM supports, opposes
By Henry McRandall
Editor & Publisher
WRISEUP.COM
Many thousands of people — in almost every country in the world — have been among the readers of WRISEUP.COM. Many of you have written to ask what our overall philosophy is. It is for that reason that we now offer a rather lengthy list (subject to revision at any time) of what WRISEUP.COM strongly supports, moderately supports, moderately opposes or strongly opposes (in no particular order):
WHAT WRISEUP.COM STRONGLY SUPPORTS:
A Democracy that allows all citizens and other legal residents of any political jurisdiction aged 16 years or older not only to vote but to be able to choose from among multiple political options ranging from far left to far right.
Private Bradley Manning, Julian Assange & WikiLeaks.
Anonymous.
OWS.
Zeitgeist.
A total worldwide debt jubilee. (A debt jubilee — the cancellation of all debts — goes back to Biblical times and a complete one occurred every 49 years until the birth of capitalism 500 years ago.)
Libertarian Socialism.
The unfettered right to freedom of speech (excluding the promotion of hatred based on race, colour, creed [or lack thereof], national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability or handicap), freedom of — AND FROM — religion, freedom of assembly, freedom to dissent & protest publicly, freedom to marry any one other adult who is not within four degrees of blood relationship, and freedom from harsh & unusual punishment.
Industrial Democracy. Every worker has the right to refuse unsafe or unhealthy working conditions without penalty. Every worker has the right to refuse mandatory overtime. Every worker has the right to equal pay and employee benefits for work of equal value. A massive redistribution of wealth from the top two percent to the bottom 98 percent, and especially to the bottom 40 percent.
Total protection of Whistleblowers who expose any governmental, political or corporate corruption and/or criminality.
In the U.S., Black Reparations & Amerindian Reparations.
In Canada, First Nations Reparations.
Universal, single-payer (government payer), comprehensive health care.
Leftist Labour Unions.
Same-sex marriage.
A massive war on poverty.
A massive redistribution of wealth, income and power from the Top Two Percent to the Other 98 Percent and, especially, to the Bottom 50 Percent.
Every worker has the right to join a labour union and/or to attempt to organize the workers in his or her place of work. Every worker has the right to freedom of speech in the workplace. In every business with fewer than 25 employees, all non-executive, non-managerial employees have a right to receive and share at least 10% of the profits of the business. In every business with 25 or more employees, all non-executive, non-managerial employees have a right to share equally in at least 25% of all corporate profits and the non-executive, non-managerial employees shall have the right to elect at least 50% of all corporate directors. In the case of franchises or subsidiaries of a larger corporation, the franchise or subsidiary shall be treated as part of the larger corporation.
A Living Wage. Every full-time worker has a right to a living wage and to employee benefits or compensatory pay supplements equal to no less than 25% of their basic wage or salary. Nowhere in the U.S. or Canada should the minimum wage be less than $13 an hour.
Retirement Age. Every worker should have the right to retire on full government & employer pensions at the age of 65 years or less.
Local Media Ownership. Every local newspaper, magazine, radio station or television station should be required to have at least 60% local ownership.
In the U.S., the ACLU; in Canada, the CCLA.
World Citizenship. Every human being should have the right to live and work in any country of their choosing.
Freedom both of and from religion. read more »
Crass criminality of corporate capitalism
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
After a very lengthy examination of a very wide variety of economic statistics — mostly from official government agencies — the evidence is now overwhelming that corporate capitalism is nothing more and nothing less than massive, unprosecuted, crass criminal gangsterism. Consider just some of the facts:
Re the 47% of Americans that Satanists Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, the Kochsucker brothers and the almost unanimously illiterate and overwhelmingly racist Tea Party like to condemn for feeling they have a right to food, shelter, education and health care: More than 80% of Walmart’s full-time U.S. employees are now on food stamps, while the six heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton now have a combined net worth of more than $130 billion, making them almost twice as wealthy as the world’s second-richest family. Every one of these heirs should be in prison for life for their massive crimes against humanity.
In the so-called Third World, a child under the age of five dies every three seconds — 24-7-365 — of either starvation or disease, because of corrupt U.S. foreign policy and routinely unprosecuted criminal conduct by U.S. multinational corporations. That’s 50,000 children every day or more than 17.5 million children under the age of five dying needlessly every year. The puppet political prostitutes of the Top One Percent who legislate these policies and every executive of every one of these U.S. multinational corporation should also be in prison for life for massive crimes against humanity.
More than five million American families have been turfed out of their homes since 2007 because of the $18 TRILLION in fraudulent mortgages foist upon them by Amerikkka’s gangster banksters. That amounts to an average of over $50 million in serial frauds by each one of these financial sector executives. Every one of these felonious gangster banksters should be in prison for life for massive crimes against humanity. Five million more American families are expected to be turfed out of their homes because of fraudulent mortgages in the next three years. read more »
Who merits entitlements & who gets ‘em
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Speaking privately among his own evil ilk — mega-millionaires and billionaires who were paying $50,000 a plate to lunch with the Republican Teabagger presidential nominee — Mitt Romney felt he could really speak from the heart and not risk having the public find out what he is really all about. After all, cameras and other recording devices are banned from all of Romney’s fundraisers. But someone snuck one in. And yesterday, Mother Jones magazine had it all over the Internet. Oops!
And just what kind of sordid, savage, grotesquely immoral thoughts spewed from Romney’s precious heart? The thought that the bottom 47 percent of Americans — including at least a third of this “intellectual giant”‘s own supporters “believe that they are ‘entitled’ to food, housing and health care.” Mitt the Moron went on to boldly assert to his bloodthirsty, professionally pedicured audience that no one is “entitled” to any of these things. Unanimously salivating at the thought of poor and working-class Americans — especially non-white ones — might soon be dying on the street, if only they can get this “useful idiot” into the White House — erupted in a standing ovation so spontaneous they must all have creamed their designer jeans.
Well I have news for Mitt the Moron and all the other mongrel mutts in the Satanic cult of the Top One Percent: Every human being in the world — regardless of race, color, creed, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, disability or sickness, level of education or employment status — has a right to food, clothing, housing, health care, education, employment, necessary social services, and access to social and cultural participation. It’s all guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and committed to by the United States of America and almost every country in the world almost 64 years ago. Sample just a few passages:
“Article 23
(1) Everyone has the right to work…..to just and favorable conditions of work….and to protection against unemployment….
Article 25
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood…
Article 26
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages….higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”
That is the fundamental global law setting out the minimal acceptable standard of human material existence, subject to each country’s physical and financial capabilities — and it must be respected and obeyed by all, for both moral and economic reasons.
Although it has fallen considerably in the last few years due to the mindless and savagely destructive policies of the George W. Bush administration — hot on the heels of a generation of “trickle-down” economics, and two decades of phony “free trade” — the U.S. had been for more than 100 years the richest country in the world. But how has that enormous wealth been shared?
As far back as 1800, even most right-wing economists recognized “wages” as “the cost of maintaining a worker and his replacement (meaning his family).
I was raised in Amerikka’s northern branch plant — Canada — in the Fifties and Sixties. I came from a family of nine. My Dad dropped out of school in grade eight. But he was able to earn a level of income sufficient to support his large family without ever holding more than one job or ever having to work overtime. My Mom never had to work outside the house. And we never needed any kind of social assistance. Moreover, our situation was fairly common. How many North American families today — even families much smaller than the one I was raised in — can enjoy a decent standard of living on a single income? read more »
Why the WikiLeaks witchhunt must end
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
In what could be a last-bid desperate plea to save himself and his website from undeserved total destruction, WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange pleaded this morning — from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, England — for United States President Barack Obama to “do the right thing” and end the witchhunt against a journalistic website the entire world urgently needs.
Assange remains holed up in the embassy, even though Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has granted him political asylum, because right-wing Conservative U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron will not allow him safe passage out of the country.
Cameron insists he is bound by European Union law to extradite Assange to Sweden for “questioning” in an alleged sexual assault — i.e., having consensual sex with two Swedish women without wearing a condom. Assange maintains that he is innocent and that the Swedish government is intent on quickly turning him over to the U.S. for trial on an assortment of specious charges — including “treason” — not one of which has even been filed yet — simply for having the audacity to reveal to American citizens and the world massive criminal wrongdoing by the U.S. government and its military.
First of all, since Assange is not a U.S. citizen and has never lived in the U.S., he cannot possibly be guilty of “treason” against the U.S. Secondly, neither the U.S. nor any other country has yet to provide an iota of evidence that Assange or WikiLeaks has committed any crime, anywhere, or that his publication of leaked documents has put a single life anywhere in any kind of danger.
Moreover, American citizens — like the citizens of any other country — have an absolute right to know everything their government is up to, particularly when their government is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. read more »
The sure-fire fix for U.S. economic woes
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
There is but one sure-fire fix for the U.S. — and indeed, the world’s — current economic woes and it is certainly not the toxic brew being proposed by Mitt the Moron Romney and Paul the Parasite Ryan. Before we get to that, however, let’s take a look at just how good things have gotten for the Top One Percent and how bad they have gotten for the Other 99 Percent — and how and why:
Over the past 31 years — since the advent of Reaganomics — Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism — “supply-side” economics — “trickle-down” economics — voodoo economics — or whatever name you want to give to the cynical gimmick that has produced the most massive embezzlement in the 500-year history of corporate capitalism, the Top One Percent — the millionaires, mega-millionaires and billionaires — the gangster banksters and corporate robber barons — have much more than tripled their share of total U.S. income — at the expense of everyone else — and reduced their own tax burden to its lowest level in history. And that was the entire goal of the economic reforms pioneered by a group of economic fraudsters led by Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer.
During that time, the share of American GDP that went to wages and salaries (including the salaries of corporate executives that have soared while everyone else’s wages have fallen) has fallen from 56.5% to just 43.7%, the lowest level since the U.S. government began publishing these figures and the share of GDP that went to corporate profits has risen from 8.2% to 14.0%, its highest level, by far, in the 77 years the government has published these figures. The ratio of profits to wages and salaries is now almost 37% higher than it has ever been.
In the eight decades before 2007, there had never been even a three-month period in U.S. history when corporate profits ate up more than nine percent of total U.S. income. And there had never been even a three-month period when wages and salaries accounted for less than 45% of total U.S. income.
And the rate at which the Other 99 Percent is falling behind is increasing rapidly. In 2011, for example, wages and salaries (including the soaring salaries of corporate executives) increased by just 1.7% while prices rose by 3.4%. That means that for the Other 99 Percent, real incomes are now dropping by more than two percent every year. read more »
The Republican ticket: two psychopaths
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
It should come as no great surprise to any thinking American that psychopathic Republican Teabagger presumed presidential candidate Mitt Romney would pick another psychopath — Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan — to be his running mate.
Most Americans already know what Romney is — a fraudster, a tax evader, a traitor, an unprosecuted felon, a job killer, a racist, a misogynist (hater of women), an all-around bigot, a hypocrite and a buffoon. But what about Paul Ryan?
While the mainstream media — 100 percent controlled by the Top One Percent — try to portray him as a man of vision and the “intellectual leader” of the Republican Teabaggers, he is, in reality, neither a man of vision nor a man of great intellect — and his record proves it.
After his father died when young Paul was just 12 years old, this son of privilege — his family owns, among other things, one of the largest national construction companies in America — had no qualms about collecting Social Security survivor benefits for a full decade. It provided a comfortable living for him while he received his free university education.
Not having to work while attending university, as so many Americans do, one might have expected him to excel at university, where he majored, supposedly, in economics. But Ryan was no great genius. He did not get a PhD, or even a Master’s degree in economics, nor even an “honors” Bachelor’s degree. He barely passed. And when one looks at his proposed budget — the so-called “Path to Prosperity” — it immediately becomes evident that he does not have even the most basic understanding of economics.
But while Ryan had no qualms about living high off the fat of the land when he neither needed nor deserved government assistance, he now wants to prevent other Americans — who both need and deserve such assistance — from getting it. read more »
How & why Mitt Romney promotes hatred
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Republican Teabagger presumed presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a well-disciplined political hack, highly schooled in the art of deception. Never would such evil epithets as “nigger,” “spic,” “A-rab,” “bitch,” or “fag” cross his lips — at least not in public. Yet despite the innocuous facade, Mitt the Moron is perhaps the biggest purveyor of hatred in Amerikkka.
He doesn’t do it himself, of course. Always careful to be “politically correct” in his own public utterances, Romney employs perhaps the biggest herd of deranged derelicts in Amerikkka — to spew hatred on his behalf.
You see, Mitt Romney and his fellow thugs at seemingly criminally immune Bain Capital control another corporation, Clear Channel, which owns more radio stations than any other corporation in the country — about 1,200 of them to be precise.
And most of these radio stations carry one or more of the bevy of evil, borderline-literate, right-wing talk show idiots who pollute Amerikkka’s airwaves.
Number One among these hate-mongering right-wing talk jocks, of course, is none other than intellectual pigmy Rush Limbaugh. And Romney and his fellow thugs pay these pathetic liars each millions of dollars a year — $50 million a year in Limbaugh’s case — to do nothing other than misinform Americans and spew hatred on Romney’s behalf.
Why? read more »
On promoting ‘Jewish exceptionalism’
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
I was somewhat taken aback this morning when state-owned CBC News Network gave prominent coverage to the whiny ranting of a backbench Canadian Liberal MP.
Irwin Cotler, who briefly served as Canada’s Justice Minister and Attorney-General in a past Liberal government, wrote an open letter to IOC (International Olympic Committee) president Jacques Rogge condemning the IOC for failing — at the opening of the Olympics — to revisit the terrorist assassination of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, and demanding the inclusion of a “minute of silence” at this year’s closing ceremonies of the global sports meet.
Cotler, a former university professor and supposed human rights promoter, has long had a paranoid obsession with promoting the supposed virtues of the state of Israel and went to great pains in his letter to Rogge to assert that those athletes had been murdered simply because they were “Israelis and Jews.”
That ludicrous assertion merits some examination. The Palestinian terrorists who carried out this vicious crime were not acting in a vacuum. They were responding to a quarter century of Jewish Israeli apartheid and savage persecution of Palestinians.
I am not a Holocaust denier. I fully recognize that the Second World War Nazi genocide against European Jews was one of the most horrific and damnable passages in modern human history, resulting in the brutal slaughter of six million people. But I also recognize that it was just one of five equally horrific and damnable passages in modern human history — and no better or worse than those other four atrocities: the U.S. nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan 67 years ago this week, that killed 250,000 people and caused generations of birth defects and deformities; the 1994 Rwanda massacre in which Rwandan Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis, or 20 percent of the Tutsi population; the European-American genocide against New World natives that killed millions of people and to this day continues as a quasi-genocidal set of government policies against American Indians, as similar policies have also done in Canada; and 300 years of African-American slavery, that also cost millions of lives and the legacy of which continues to be the brutal ongoing oppression of African-Americans. read more »
The slime Romney crawled out from
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
If it is indeed true that “a man shall be known by the company he keeps,” then it would appear Republican Teabagger presumed presidential candidate Mitt Romney is “the scum of the Earth.”
The Huffington Post last night ran a lengthy article detailing some little-known facts about Romney’s history with Bain Capital, his vulture capital company that specialized in treasonously bankrupting American companies, laying off tens of thousands of American workers and offshoring their jobs to extremely-low-wage Third-World countries.
It turns out that when Romney launched Bain Capital in 1983, he had a hard time finding American investors for his vulture enterprise. So what did Mitt the Moron do? He lined up as his sole initial mega-million-dollar investors four Salvadoran families — the Salaverrias, the de Solas, the Pomas and the Regalado-Duenases — who just happened to be the four families that provided most of the funding for the right-wing death squads that slaughtered more than 40,000 innocent Salvadoran civilians, primarily in the 1980s.
Of course, if Romney had no qualms about allying himself professionally and corporately with a gang of unpunished mass murderers, he also had no qualms about lying about his involvement with them, just as he has had no qualms about lying about his own tax history. read more »
