r. carey gersten » democracy

Allowing them to dig a hole in the sand for your head?

Carey — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:03:03 +0000

Flying the Flag; Faking the News | by: John Pilger, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed | Friday 03 September 2010

Sgt. Danny H. Metzger, a heavy equipment mechanic for Engineer Troop, 2nd Squadron, 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment Joint Base Balad, became a United States citizen today during a 4th of July immigration and naturalization ceremony held in the rotunda of the Al Faw Palace at Camp Victory near Bagdad, Iraq. (Photo: DVIDSHUB / Flickr)

Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, “Propaganda,” published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the “intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society” and that the manipulators “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country.” Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism “public relations.”

Read on:

http://www.truth-out.org/flying-flag-faking-news62920

THE BIG SHORT – HOW WALL STREET DESTROYED MAIN STREET

Carey — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:47:44 +0000

Post by JimQ | TheBurningPlatform.com in Economy | Posted on 10th May 2010

Day after day, bankers have been paraded before Congressional committees regarding their role in the financial crisis which brought the financial system to the edge of the abyss on September 18,2008. Every one has claimed that they were not responsible in any way for the disaster. They blame once in a lifetime circumstances that no one could have anticipated. It was a perfect storm and they had no way of knowing. These Harvard MBA Wall Street geniuses, who collected compensation in excess of $100 million each before the collapse, had no idea what was going on within their own firms. Ignorance and stupidity is no excuse for losing a trillion dollars. The truth is that the CEO’s of all the Wall Street banks encouraged a casino culture of greed and gambling. The generation of fees became the sole driving incentive for every firm. It started with collateralizing subprime mortgages into packages of mortgage backed securities. Then they created Credit Default Swaps as insurance on these mortgages. When they ran out of chumps to put into houses, they created side bets with Credit Default Obligations that didn’t require an actual homeowner.

Read on: http://theburningplatform.com/blog/2010/05/10/the-big-short-how-wall-street-destroyed-main-street/

Those Bricks Barrick Gold Dropped on Publishers

Carey — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 04:53:11 +0000

The huge mining corporation’s legal actions against two small book presses — what do they say about our democracy?

By Philip Resnick | TheTyee.ca | April 21, 2010

The gold goliath demanded to see manuscript before printing.

Barrick Gold is a giant in the world of Canadian mining corporations, and its founder and chair, Peter Munk, has revelled in media attention for his philanthropy. For example, on April 13, the Globe and Mail reported a $35 million contribution from the gold magnate (with a matching $25 million from the Ontario government) for a new Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, “to join an elite cadre of international academic institutions such as the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.”

How could one look such a gift horse in the mouth, or quarrel with Peter Munk’s professed beliefs? According to him, “Canada has a unique opportunity to step into the shoes that America has vacated, and I think that requires an elite group of highly educated, globalized Canadians who can be the spokespersons of every aspect of globalization. I don’t mean just trade, or democracy, or multiculturalism. . . but all the things Canada stands for, from health care down to the fundamental rejection of any kind of corruption.”

Perhaps the portrait is a little too perfect. How many readers of The Tyee or Canadians outside Quebec are aware that the same Barrick Corp., on whose board sit such eminences as Brian Mulroney, has been engaged in using SLAPPs — Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation — against two small presses, one in Quebec, one based in Vancouver, that have published or announced an intention to publish books that this august corporation finds offensive to its image? It took a March 25 op-ed article in Le Devoir, the independent Montreal daily (not beholden to the powerful media interests that control so many of Canada’s leading newspapers) to alert me to the situation.

Read on: http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2010/04/21/BarrickBricks/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=210410

A Weak Constitution?

Carey — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:12:29 +0000

POSTED BY ROGER VALDEZ | Sightline Daily – SPECIAL SERIES: GAME CHANGERS #07 | April 05, 2010

Solving big problems might mean giving up some cherished myths.

(Image of US Constitution from the National Archives of the United States)

Now that the health care proposal has been approved by Congress and signed into law, some people are feeling pretty happy I suppose. Much of the angst and anger about the procedures impeding reform—reconciliation, procedural delays, etc—has receded. But the basic problems that stirred everyone up in the first place haven’t disappeared. As Alan has suggested in the Game Changers Series, the problems might be structural rather than political. The fundamental flaw in our system is not the absence of a big political majority. Democrats have that right now. Instead, the problem is the underlying document—our written constitution—that frames the debate and our deep, almost pathological, attachment to the halo of myths surrounding it. Changing the structure of our system—our constitution—is difficult and only made more so because of our flawed understanding of our own history, especially the origins of our founding document.

Read on: http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2010/04/05/a-weak-consitution

who needs terrorists when you’ve got the GOP Senators crippling government (since Bush, Cheney and Gang are no longer there to lead the charge) and Wall Street now backing them

Carey — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:40:16 +0000

Senate Republicans made a persuasive case for abolishing or reforming the filibuster on Tuesday night when they blocked a routine nomination to the National Labor Relations Board that had been held up since April.

Read on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/09/carl-levin-filibuster-cou_n_455814.html