PLEASE WATCH: THIS IS NEOLIBERALISM (Part I)

Please read this information, watch this documentary on neoliberalism, and share! I first wrote about and shared this excellent series over a year ago on my blog: http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/…/we-live-in-world-tha…. And I’ve shared it again and again on Facebook and in conversations ever since. I’m so grateful for this post because here it is again — the critically important information we need to know and understand. Where we are, how we got here, and what we must change becomes so abundantly clear in this documentary series. Being an informed populace, seeing and connecting the dots of these larger pictures, and embodying a strong commitment to truth, love, and justice has never before been so vital to the welfare of our nation and all of life on Mother Earth. — Molly

Films For Action

What is #neoliberalism? It's the economic ideology shared by Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, and Trump.

While the two main parties in the US have distinguished themselves mostly on social issues, it's what they not-so-secretly agree on — the so-called 'bi-partisan' Washington consensus, which represents the greatest threat to American liberty and prosperity.

40+ years of both parties serving elite corporate interests (aka neoliberalism) is what gave us Trump.

Anyone who believes another neoliberal 'bipartisan' Democrat is the solution to Trump doesn't understand the root problem.

But hey! We don't fault ordinary folks for believing this, as our neoliberal corporate media (from MSNBC to CNN to NPR) is determined to convince us that the solution to Trump is more of what got him elected.

*****

This Is Neoliberalism (2019)

Part 1: Introducing the Invisible Ideology (March 2018, 27min)
Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that exists within the framework of capitalism. Over four decades ago, neoliberalism became the dominant economic paradigm of global society. In this series, we'll trace the history of neoliberalism, starting with a survey of neoliberal philosophy and research, a historical reconstruction of the movement pushing for neoliberal policy solutions, witnessing the damage that neoliberalism did to its first victims in the developing world, and then charting neoliberalism's infiltration of the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. Learn how neoliberalism is generating crises for humanity at an unprecedented rate.

Part 2: Keynesian Embedded Liberalism (September 2018, 36min)
Neoliberalism was a reaction. It was an effort to disassemble a previous vision of society that once held sway over most of the world. In order to understand neoliberalism, it’s important to first understand the world before neoliberalism; the world which neoliberalism considered unacceptable, and in need of urgent reconfiguration. In part two, learn about the world of embedded liberalism. 

Part 3: Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society I: 1918 - 1939 (April 2019, 40min)

The story of neoliberalism is a story about the power of ideas. Embedded liberalism was in power, but it was not without resistance. Academics and businessmen who opposed the New Deal and British social democracy were only begrudgingly accepting of the situation at best, or on the warpath against government intervention in the economy at worst. These two factions allied with one another to create an idea so powerful that it would covertly undo their losses to embedded liberalism by supplanting it entirely. This is where the story of neoliberalism begins.

Part 4: Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society II: 1939 - 1950 (December 2019, 43min)

In 1939, a fragile world which had just begun to climb out of the depths of global economic depression, and ended the first truly global war in recorded history only 21 years earlier, peered downward into an abyss blacker than any it had ever glimpsed before. By the close of the 1940’s, global civilization was sitting on one of the most profound inflection points in all of human history. Much, but not all of the world, was about to experience unprecedented prosperity under embedded liberalism, and the ideals of social democracy had never been more ascendant. However, the truth was that the post-war consensus was far from safe. It was within this tension, between the magnificent gains of social democracy and the hostile road laid before it, that Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society were poised to begin dissolving the ground beneath all opponents of neoliberalism.

Please go here for all 4 parts of this documentary series: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/this-is-neoliberalism/

 

The Lies and the Truth About Democratic Socialism

Every time a corporate media pundit or a corporate democrat or a corporate republican hurls the word "socialism" as a negative — it’s communism, it’ll destroy the country, it’ll be the end of democracy, it’s something the American people won’t stand for — know that it’s a LIE and that We the People are being propagandized into acting against our own best interests and instead for the interests of the powerful.

Because of their late stage greed, narcissistic entitlement, and sociopathic disregard for the well-being of life, these oligarchs and predatory capitalists have always fought against economic, racial, social, and environmental justice.

This is why Martin Luther King and Bernie Sanders and all the democratic socialists and love and peace warriors who’ve fiercely fought for a caring society have always been demonized and dehumanized.

Now we are awakening from our long slumber and fighting back. This is what our Loving Revolution is all about — birthing a New World rooted in love, equality, interconnection, partnership, compassion, generosity, truth, peace, and justice.

This is so much greater than defeating Trump alone, who is but a symptom of the domination ideology that has been present in our country since the earliest days of slavery and the genocide of the Indigenous Peoples. It’s the whole system that must be dismantled if there’s to be any chance of creating a caring and just society and sustaining a livable planet for our children and grandchildren and all species everywhere.
This is why our movements grounded in Revolutionary Love are so vital to the well-being of us all. This is something that we all can be united around — LOVE. When those who seek to brainwash us tell us lies, let’s learn discernment and how to recognize those deadly lies. And again and again and again, let’s choose LOVE.

Bless the us all, no exceptions...

Molly

 

Why We the People Keep Losing and What We Can Do About It

This piece by Christopher Harrison is brilliant, well articulated, and absolutely spot on! Voices of truth feed my heart and soul and the awakening of us all! — Molly

The latest installment in the ongoing saga of "Why Liberals are Perennial Losers":

So, if judging by my FB feed, the two things that liberals have grabbed on to over the past few days are: Trump's behavior during the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and Nancy Pelosi ripping up a copy of Trump's speech at the SOTU. And in typical fashion, they are promoting both of these items with the typical zeal of when anything paints Trump in a negative light from their perspective. Viva la #resistance!

But here's the thing: neither of these things matter. I'll even shout it for those in the back. NEITHER OF THESE THINGS MATTER! People already opposed to Trump will look at these and say, "See! He's a hypocrite! He's an embarrassment! Nance really showed him up!"

People already supporting Trump will look at the national anthem thing and shrug, because they know deep down that it's not something to be treated as a uniform standard but rather a means to take down their political opponents or, among the more hardened of them, keep those minorities "in their place." And they'll look at Nance ripping up that speech and say, "How disrespectful to our President!"

In the end, not a single person will move an inch as a result of either of these symbolic items. And overall the right will win, because liberals cannot bring themselves to do anything other than react to what the right is doing on the terrain that the right has chosen. Anyone who has studied even basic military tactics knows that continually fighting your enemy on terrain of their choosing is a recipe for defeat -- which seems to be the only thing that the national Democratic Party is consistently good at anymore.

What is missing from liberals' approach is the complete lack of a STORY that speaks to people. Sure, we'll hear the endless platitudes from brain dead sycophants to power like Tom Perez that Democrats win "when we focus on our values," but the reality is that the Democratic Party has become so captured by and craven in the face of moneyed interests, no one really knows what their values are anymore. It's an empty slogan from a largely bankrupt wing of the political establishment, and it's an approach that has succeeded only in losing well over 1,000 state house seats, 12 governorships, and a full congressional majority over the past decade. And it helped to get one Donald J. Trump elected when the outgoing President said that a Hillary Clinton Presidency would be like a third term for him, and many people who had been initially filled with hope by Obama in 2008 only to see him betray almost all his campaign promises checked out of the process altogether or voted for Trump as a sort of political Molotov cocktail to throw through the window of the Establishment.

Now this is something that the insurgent left in the US political scene understands in spades. If you watch Bernie Sanders rallies, you may see him up there giving speeches where he hammers on the same themes over and over again. But if you look deeper, you'll also see him taking the microphone to members of the audience and having THEM tell THEIR story. This breaks down the walls of neoliberal atomization that have conditioned us all to believe that any struggles we're going through are ours alone, and helps us realize that actually we are NOT alone. It's an approach that uses story to create solidarity -- something not too far off from what religious texts and apocryphal stories in them do with people who share that faith (and which may help underscore the zeal of many of his supporters, myself included).

Taken a step further, shortly after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal in Congress, a short animated video was put out by The Intercept with her narration. The video was set 20 years in the future as AOC traveled by high-speed train from NYC to Washington to see a young woman inaugurated into the House seat that she holds now. And then she went on to tell the story of how the GND didn't stop climate change nor was the effort without losses but did manage to stave off some of its worse effects, how it created (and PAID) people in efforts of ecological repair and restoration, how it expanded (and PAID) people involved in important care work, and how this young girl from The Bronx who got involved in a vastly expanded Americorps participating in projects to mitigate damage from climate change used that as a springboard to get more involved in her community and now... was being sworn into AOC's former seat. This was a master class in how to spin a narrative that has the potential to bring people together and inspire them toward a larger cooperative purpose than narrow self-interest.

Now, ask yourself when you have ever heard of such a thing coming from the mouths of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, or any of the countless establishment politicians or hangers-on with the Democratic Party. You can't, because they don't do such a thing. Instead they talk about reforms around the edges and "protecting the middle class" and telling people they can't have nice things like M4A while supporting an overbloated military budget and incursions and coups around the globe. And that is why they lose so consistently.

Want to stop losing? Look at what this insurgent left is doing and get on board, because they understand that we human beings are hard-wired through some 250,000 years of evolution to communicate in stories. And the way you reach people is by telling them a story that gives them hope and purpose -- and sometimes even a little bit of who is to blame for the current predicaments, not out of a spirit of hatred, but rather to point out those who stand in the way of that story being made into reality.

*** FEEL FREE TO SHARE WIDELY ***

— Christopher Harrison

 

Mike Bloomberg: The Facts

These are the facts that we need to know. There are

too many reasons to name here which illuminate

the great danger of a Bloomberg presidency. 

These are among them. — Molly

 

  

Before any of my centrist and left-of-center compatriots get too wrapped up in Michael Bloomberg's extravagant media buy as some proof he's the best bet to face off with Donald Trump, keep the following things in mind: 

 

1. Bloomberg ran as a REPUBLICAN for NYC mayor the first time around. 

 

2. Bloomberg donated $11.7 MILLION to the campaign of Republican US Senator Pat Toomey in 2016, a race in which he ended up beating his Democratic challenger by less than two percentage points. Swing that race, and there's no Justice Gorsuch or Justice Kavanaugh on the SCOTUS. 

 

3. Bloomberg was a featured speaker at the 2004 Republican Naitonal Convention in which he thanked George W. Bush for invading Iraq. 

 

4. Bloomberg was the architect of the "stop and frisk" program in NYC that was naked racial profiling. 

 

5. Bloomberg still says that legalizing marijuana is "one of the dumbest things we could do." 

 

6. Bloomberg pressured members of the NYC City Council to overturn the old law that limited mayors to two terms in order for him to run for a 3rd term, and then turned around and supported a measure to restore the two-term limit. 

 

7. He has a net wealth of around $50 BILLION, making him the 9th richest person in the US. And as Max Alvarez pointed out recently, despite his claims that by refusing outside campaign donations he's immune to special interests, that vast fortune makes HIM a huge special interest dedicated to maintaining the same policies that allowed him to amass such a vast fortune (which typically involve keeping workers down).

 — Christopher Harrison

 

Nancy Pelosi: The Facts

These are the facts that we need to know. 

There are many reasons that I have long known

that Pelosi must go. These are among them. — Molly

So far during the Trump presidency, Nancy Pelosi has:

1. Passed a reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the federal government virtually unchecked power to spy on US citizens (despite her claims that the chief executive was dangerous to the country, she gave him MORE power).

2. Passed a military budget that was even BIGGER than the over-bloated amount Trump asked for.

3. Passed a new trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico on the eve of bringing articles of impeachment (giving Trump a big win in the process).

4. Overseen an overly narrow impeachment focused on issues that no one outside of DC and Democratic Party partisans really cares about, a process that resulted in all-time high approval ratings in the process.

In any sane organization, a leader with a record like this would be run out of town on the rails and never allowed within a mile of a similar position ever again. But the Democratic Party is apparently not a sane organization, because they seem intent not only on keeping her in that position, but praising her for her theatrics as some sort of grand #resistance when her actual record has been that of a wholesale enabler.

— Christopher Harrison 

 

As a Corporate Tool, Buttigieg Is Now a Hammer to Bash Sanders

Such an excellent piece! Thank you Norman Solomon! So disturbing and absolutely spot on! And these are the facts that we need to know!

Buttigieg is an incredibly dangerous, dishonest, slimy corporate tool who’s obviously hell bent on doing the bidding of his wealthy corporate donor friends. These are the predatory capitalist special interests who are determined to take down Sanders and our multigenerational multiracial grassroots movements of millions of We the People whose “crime” is uniting in huge numbers to dismantle the systems of death, inequality, injustice, and violence and instead create a just and caring society.

Let’s be clear — this is what Buttigieg and his predatory capitalist cronies are fiercely fighting to stop and crush.

Their sick greed-infested neoliberal agenda of smashing the ever growing grassroots movements of We the People is obviously their priority over all else — even if it means 4 more years of Trump.

I’m so disgusted with Buttigieg and all who’ve sold their souls to the highest bidders. And I recognize the great need to channel my outrage into that which is most needed in our world. And that certainly means not getting stuck in anger, denial, or despair.

This heartlessness and lack of integrity, truth, and consciousness that we are witness to in Trump, in corporate republicans and corporate democrats, in the corporate mainstream media, and others is also shaking millions of us out of our slumber. And this is the good news.

So, gratefully!, more and more of us are seeing through the charade and the relentless poisonous propaganda and refusing to buy what they’re selling. We’re done with the predatory capitalists ideologues, done with the lies and false promises, done with the divide and conquer politics of polarization, done with the suicidal path we’re on and all who are shoving us right towards the cliff of civilization collapse and extinction. WE ARE WAKING UP AND WE ARE DONE!

Instead we’re choosing to unite behind Bernie and our movements grounded in the many faces of Revolutionary Love — interconnection and caring, compassion and generosity, and economic, racial, social, and environmental justice.

May Love and Truth and Justice prevail! — Molly

The corporate establishment has not yet figured out how to defeat Bernie Sanders in the primary, but the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana appears dead set on damaging the progressive frontrunner as much as possible.

By

Norman Solomon 

Soon after his distant third-place finish in the Nevada caucuses, Pete Buttigieg sent out a mass email saying that “Senator Sanders believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.” The blast depicted “the choice before us” in stark terms: “We can prioritize either ideological purity or inclusive victory. We can either call people names online or we can call them into our movement. We can either tighten a narrow and hardcore base or open the tent to a new, broad, big-hearted American coalition.”

The bizarre accusations of being “narrow” and not “inclusive” were aimed at a candidate who’d just won a historic victory with one of the broadest coalitions in recent Democratic Party history.

Buttigieg has gone from pseudo-progressive to anti-progressive in the last year, and much of his current mission involves denouncing Bernie Sanders with attack lines that are corporate-media favorites (“ideological purity. . . call people names online. . . a narrow and hardcore base”). Buttigieg’s chances of winning the 2020 presidential nomination are now tiny, but he might have a bright future as a rising leader of corporate Democrats.

Weirdly, Buttigieg’s claim that Sanders has “a narrow and hardcore base” came from someone who appears to be almost incapable of getting votes from black people. In Nevada, columnist E.J. Dionne noted, Buttigieg “received virtually no African American votes.” And Buttigieg made his claim in the midst of a Nevada vote count showing that Sanders received more than three times as many votes as he did. The Washington Post reported that Sanders “even narrowly prevailed among those who identified as moderate or conservative.”

As chances that Buttigieg could win the nomination slip away—the latest polling in South Carolina indicates his vote total there on Saturday is unlikely to be any higher than it was in Nevada—his mission is being steadily repurposed. After increasingly aligning himself with the dominant corporate sectors of the party—vacuuming up millions of dollars in bundled checks along the way—Buttigieg is hurling an array of bogus accusations at Sanders.

Four months ago, while Buttigieg’s poll numbers were spiking in Iowa and big donations from wealthy donors poured in, I wrote an article with a headline dubbing him a “Sharp Corporate Tool.” The piece cited an influx of contributions to Buttigieg from the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries—while he executed a U-turn from proclaiming support for Medicare for All to touting a deceptive rhetorical concoction called “Medicare for all who want it.” I concluded that Buttigieg is “a glib ally of corporate America posing as an advocate for working people and their families.”

Since then, continuing his rightward swerve, Buttigieg has become even more glib, refining his campaign’s creation myth and fine-tuning his capacity to combine corporate policy positions with wispy intimations of technocratic populism. Buttigieg is highly articulate, very shrewd—and now, in attack mode, more valuable than ever to corporate patrons who are feverishly trying to figure out how to prevent Sanders from winning the nomination. During last week’s Nevada debate, Buttigieg warned that Sanders “wants to burn this party down.”

Please continue this article here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/24/corporate-tool-buttigieg-now-hammer-bash-sanders?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook

It’s the DNC, Stupid: Democratic Party, Not Russia, Has Delegitimized the Democratic Process

This is such an excellent article. It’s so important for us to understand how we Americans, to quote the great public intellectual Noam Chomsky, are a “massively propagandized people.” The truth has the power to set us all free!

And the truth is that the greatest threats to democracy and to our nation are NOT coming from Russia. These deadly anti-democratic and powerful predatory capitalist interests are coming from within the corporate DNC, within the corporate mainstream media, within the enablers and supporters of the status quo, within the .1% who are all fiercely fighting against the relinquishment and transfer of their power to We the People.

We cannot continue to in any way be complicit with the propagandists and the merchants of death who will do anything to maintain their hegemony — even at the cost of re-electing Trump, civilization collapse, and the extinction of most life on Earth by the end of the century. This is pure madness.

Now is the time for the Great Turning, the paradigm shift, the evolutionary leap that empowers us to stand in truth and justice and to act out of love, caring, and protection for all our human and nonhuman sisters and brothers on Earth. Now is the time to unite in Revolutionary Love. Now is the time! — Molly

 With the U.S. presidential cycle gearing up, Elizabeth Vos takes stock of lessons from 2016.

 By Elizabeth Vos

Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public’s doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party’s subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment’s willingness to address even one of these critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.

The Democratic Party’s bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the DNC, as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.

The content of the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred “pied-piper candidate.” One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.

Social Media Meddling 

Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable “pro-Hillary Clinton bias” in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.  

On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as “dark strategy.” CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations “worldwide,” specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.

The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online “troll army” under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to “to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical.” In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.

In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law. Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.

Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.

Please continue this article here: https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/04/its-the-dnc-stupid-democratic-party-not-russia-has-delegitimized-the-democratic-process/