RT: Taming NSA?

CrossTalk | Taming NSA? | Oct 30, 2013 | Karen Hudes:Daniel McAdams

RT: World Bank Whistleblower

SophieCo | Karen Hudes: Congress All Bribed | Oct 2013 | Karen Hudes

UN demands End to Cuba Blockade

UN | General Assembly demands End to Cuba Blockade | Oct 29, 2013 | Press Release | 2012
Vote: 188 in favor; 2 against (Israel, United States); 3 abstentions (Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau)

The Verve: Drugs don't Work

"The Drugs don't Work"

All this talk of getting old
It's getting me down my love
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown
This time I'm comin' down

And I hope you're thinking of me
As you lay down on your side
Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

But I know I'm on a losing streak
'Cause I passed down my old street
And if you wanna show, then just let me know
And I'll sing in your ear again

Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

'Cause baby, ooh, if heaven calls, I'm coming, too
Just like you said, you leave my life, I'm better off dead

All this talk of getting old
It's getting me down my love
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown
This time I'm comin' down

Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

'Cause baby, ooh, if heaven calls, I'm coming, too
Just like you said, you leave my life, I'm better off dead

But if you wanna show, just let me know
And I'll sing in your ear again

Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

Yeah, I know I'll see your face again
Yeah, I know I'll see your face again
Yeah, I know I'll see your face again
Yeah, I know I'll see your face again

I'm never going down, I'm never coming down
No more, no more, no more, no more, no more
I'm never coming down, I'm never going down
No more, no more, no more, no more, no more
[Repeat and Fade Out]

The Verve | The Drugs don't Work | 1997 | 歌词

The Verve: Bitter Sweet Symphony

"Bitter Sweet Symphony"

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Try to make ends meet
You're a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah,

No change, I can change
I can change, I can change
But I'm here in my mold
I am here in my mold
But I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mold
No, no, no, no, no

Well I never pray
But tonight I'm on my knees yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now
But the airways are clean and there's nobody singing to me now

No change, I can change
I can change, I can change
But I'm here in my mold
I am here in my mold
And I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mold
No, no, no, no, no
I can't change
I can't change

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Try to make ends meet
Try to find some money then you die

You know I can change, I can change
I can change, I can change
But I'm here in my mold
I am here in my mold
And I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mold
No, no, no, no, no

I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
Been down
Ever been down
Ever been down

The Verve | Bitter Sweet Symphony | 1997 | 谷歌:优酷:歌词

TED: Two Political Systems

Good morning. My name is Eric Li, and I was born here. But no, I wasn't born there. This was where I was born: Shanghai, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. My grandmother tells me that she heard the sound of gunfire along with my first cries.

When I was growing up, I was told a story that explained all I ever needed to know about humanity. It went like this. All human societies develop in linear progression, beginning with primitive society, then slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and finally, guess where we end up? Communism! Sooner or later, all of humanity, regardless of culture, language, nationality, will arrive at this final stage of political and social development. The entire world's peoples will be unified in this paradise on Earth and live happily ever after. But before we get there, we're engaged in a struggle between good and evil, the good of socialism against the evil of capitalism, and the good shall triumph.

That, of course, was the meta-narrative distilled from the theories of Karl Marx. And the Chinese bought it. We were taught that grand story day in and day out. It became part of us, and we believed in it. The story was a bestseller. About one third of the entire world's population lived under that meta-narrative.

Then, the world changed overnight. As for me, disillusioned by the failed religion of my youth, I went to America and became a Berkeley hippie.

(Laughter)

Now, as I was coming of age, something else happened. As if one big story wasn't enough, I was told another one. This one was just as grand. It also claims that all human societies develop in a linear progression towards a singular end. This one went as follows: All societies, regardless of culture, be it Christian, Muslim, Confucian, must progress from traditional societies in which groups are the basic units to modern societies in which atomized individuals are the sovereign units, and all these individuals are, by definition, rational, and they all want one thing: the vote. Because they are all rational, once given the vote, they produce good government and live happily ever after. Paradise on Earth, again. Sooner or later, electoral democracy will be the only political system for all countries and all peoples, with a free market to make them all rich. But before we get there, we're engaged in a struggle between good and evil. (Laughter) The good belongs to those who are democracies and are charged with a mission of spreading it around the globe, sometimes by force, against the evil of those who do not hold elections.

(Video) George H.W. Bush: A new world order ...

(Video) George W. Bush: ... ending tyranny in our world ...

(Video) Barack Obama: ... a single standard for all who would hold power.

Eric X. Li: Now --

(Laughter) (Applause)

This story also became a bestseller. According to Freedom House, the number of democracies went from 45 in 1970 to 115 in 2010. In the last 20 years, Western elites tirelessly trotted around the globe selling this prospectus: Multiple parties fight for political power and everyone voting on them is the only path to salvation to the long-suffering developing world. Those who buy the prospectus are destined for success. Those who do not are doomed to fail. But this time, the Chinese didn't buy it.

Fool me once ...

(Laughter)

The rest is history. In just 30 years, China went from one of the poorest agricultural countries in the world to its second-largest economy. Six hundred fifty million people were lifted out of poverty. Eighty percent of the entire world's poverty alleviation during that period happened in China. In other words, all the new and old democracies put together amounted to a mere fraction of what a single, one-party state did without voting.

See, I grew up on this stuff: food stamps. Meat was rationed to a few hundred grams per person per month at one point. Needless to say, I ate all my grandmother's portions.

So I asked myself, what's wrong with this picture? Here I am in my hometown, my business growing leaps and bounds. Entrepreneurs are starting companies every day. Middle class is expanding in speed and scale unprecedented in human history. Yet, according to the grand story, none of this should be happening. So I went and did the only thing I could. I studied it. Yes, China is a one-party state run by the Chinese Communist Party, the Party, and they don't hold elections. Three assumptions are made by the dominant political theories of our time. Such a system is operationally rigid, politically closed, and morally illegitimate. Well, the assumptions are wrong. The opposites are true. Adaptability, meritocracy, and legitimacy are the three defining characteristics of China's one-party system.

Now, most political scientists will tell us that a one-party system is inherently incapable of self-correction. It won't last long because it cannot adapt. Now here are the facts. In 64 years of running the largest country in the world, the range of the Party's policies has been wider than any other country in recent memory, from radical land collectivization to the Great Leap Forward, then privatization of farmland, then the Cultural Revolution, then Deng Xiaoping's market reform, then successor Jiang Zemin took the giant political step of opening up Party membership to private businesspeople, something unimaginable during Mao's rule.

So the Party self-corrects in rather dramatic fashions. Institutionally, new rules get enacted to correct previous dysfunctions. For example, term limits. Political leaders used to retain their positions for life, and they used that to accumulate power and perpetuate their rules. Mao was the father of modern China, yet his prolonged rule led to disastrous mistakes. So the Party instituted term limits with mandatory retirement age of 68 to 70.

One thing we often hear is, "Political reforms have lagged far behind economic reforms," and "China is in dire need of political reform." But this claim is a rhetorical trap hidden behind a political bias. See, some have decided a priori what kinds of changes they want to see, and only such changes can be called political reform. The truth is, political reforms have never stopped. Compared with 30 years ago, 20 years, even 10 years ago, every aspect of Chinese society, how the country is governed, from the most local level to the highest center, are unrecognizable today. Now such changes are simply not possible without political reforms of the most fundamental kind. Now I would venture to suggest the Party is the world's leading expert in political reform.

The second assumption is that in a one-party state, power gets concentrated in the hands of the few, and bad governance and corruption follow. Indeed, corruption is a big problem, but let's first look at the larger context. Now, this may be counterintuitive to you. The Party happens to be one of the most meritocratic political institutions in the world today. China's highest ruling body, the Politburo, has 25 members. In the most recent one, only five of them came from a background of privilege, so-called princelings. The other 20, including the president and the premier, came from entirely ordinary backgrounds. In the larger central committee of 300 or more, the percentage of those who were born into power and wealth was even smaller. The vast majority of senior Chinese leaders worked and competed their way to the top. Compare that with the ruling elites in both developed and developing countries, I think you'll find the Party being near the top in upward mobility.

The question then is, how could that be possible in a system run by one party? Now we come to a powerful political institution, little-known to Westerners: the Party's Organization Department. The department functions like a giant human resource engine that would be the envy of even some of the most successful corporations. It operates a rotating pyramid made up of three components: civil service, state-owned enterprises, and social organizations like a university or a community program. They form separate yet integrated career paths for Chinese officials. They recruit college grads into entry-level positions in all three tracks, and they start from the bottom, called "keyuan" [clerk]. Then they could get promoted through four increasingly elite ranks: fuke [deputy section manager], ke [section manager], fuchu [deputy division manager], and chu [division manger]. Now these are not moves from "Karate Kid," okay? It's serious business. The range of positions is wide, from running health care in a village to foreign investment in a city district to manager in a company. Once a year, the department reviews their performance. They interview their superiors, their peers, their subordinates. They vet their personal conduct. They conduct public opinion surveys. Then they promote the winners. Throughout their careers, these cadres can move through and out of all three tracks. Over time, the good ones move beyond the four base levels to the fuju [deputy bureau chief] and ju [bureau chief] levels. There, they enter high officialdom. By that point, a typical assignment will be to manage a district with a population in the millions or a company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Just to show you how competitive the system is, in 2012, there were 900,000 fuke and ke levels, 600,000 fuchu and chu levels, and only 40,000 fuju and ju levels.

After the ju levels, the best few move further up several more ranks, and eventually make it to the Central Committee. The process takes two to three decades. Does patronage play a role? Yes, of course. But merit remains the fundamental driver. In essence, the Organization Department runs a modernized version of China's centuries-old mentoring system. China's new president, Xi Jinping, is the son of a former leader, which is very unusual, first of his kind to make the top job. Even for him, the career took 30 years. He started as a village manager, and by the time he entered the Politburo, he had managed areas with a total population of 150 million people and combined GDPs of 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars.

Now, please don't get me wrong, okay? This is not a put-down of anyone. It's just a statement of fact. George W. Bush, remember him? This is not a put-down. (Laughter) Before becoming governor of Texas, or Barack Obama before running for president, could not make even a small county manager in China's system. Winston Churchill once said that democracy is a terrible system except for all the rest. Well, apparently he hadn't heard of the Organization Department.

Now, Westerners always assume that multi-party election with universal suffrage is the only source of political legitimacy.

I was asked once, "The Party wasn't voted in by election. Where is the source of legitimacy?"

I said, "How about competency?"

We all know the facts. In 1949, when the Party took power, China was mired in civil wars, dismembered by foreign aggression, average life expectancy at that time, 41 years old. Today, it's the second largest economy in the world, an industrial powerhouse, and its people live in increasing prosperity.

Pew Research polls Chinese public attitudes, and here are the numbers in recent years. Satisfaction with the direction of the country: 85 percent. Those who think they're better off than five years ago: 70 percent. Those who expect the future to be better: a whopping 82 percent. Financial Times polls global youth attitudes, and these numbers, brand new, just came from last week. Ninety-three percent of China's Generation Y are optimistic about their country's future. Now, if this is not legitimacy, I'm not sure what is.

In contrast, most electoral democracies around the world are suffering from dismal performance. I don't need to elaborate for this audience how dysfunctional it is, from Washington to European capitals. With a few exceptions, the vast number of developing countries that have adopted electoral regimes are still suffering from poverty and civil strife. Governments get elected, and then they fall below 50 percent approval in a few months and stay there and get worse until the next election. Democracy is becoming a perpetual cycle of elect and regret. At this rate, I'm afraid it is democracy, not China's one-party system, that is in danger of losing legitimacy.

Now, I don't want to create the misimpression that China's hunky-dory, on the way to some kind of superpowerdom. The country faces enormous challenges. The social and economic problems that come with wrenching change like this are mind-boggling. Pollution is one. Food safety. Population issues. On the political front, the worst problem is corruption. Corruption is widespread and undermines the system and its moral legitimacy. But most analysts misdiagnose the disease. They say that corruption is the result of the one-party system, and therefore, in order to cure it, you have to do away with the entire system.

But a more careful look would tell us otherwise. Transparency International ranks China between 70 and 80 in recent years among 170 countries, and it's been moving up. India, the largest democracy in the world, 94 and dropping. For the hundred or so countries that are ranked below China, more than half of them are electoral democracies. So if election is the panacea for corruption, how come these countries can't fix it?

Now, I'm a venture capitalist. I make bets. It wouldn't be fair to end this talk without putting myself on the line and making some predictions. So here they are. In the next 10 years, China will surpass the U.S. and become the largest economy in the world. Income per capita will be near the top of all developing countries. Corruption will be curbed, but not eliminated, and China will move up 10 to 20 notches to above 60 in T.I. ranking. Economic reform will accelerate, political reform will continue, and the one-party system will hold firm.

We live in the dusk of an era. Meta-narratives that make universal claims failed us in the 20th century and are failing us in the 21st. Meta-narrative is the cancer that is killing democracy from the inside. Now, I want to clarify something. I'm not here to make an indictment of democracy. On the contrary, I think democracy contributed to the rise of the West and the creation of the modern world. It is the universal claim that many Western elites are making about their political system, the hubris, that is at the heart of the West's current ills. If they would spend just a little less time on trying to force their way onto others, and a little bit more on political reform at home, they might give their democracy a better chance. China's political model will never supplant electoral democracy, because unlike the latter, it doesn't pretend to be universal. It cannot be exported. But that is the point precisely. The significance of China's example is not that it provides an alternative, but the demonstration that alternatives exist. Let us draw to a close this era of meta-narratives. Communism and democracy may both be laudable ideals, but the era of their dogmatic universalism is over. Let us stop telling people and our children there's only one way to govern ourselves and a singular future towards which all societies must evolve. It is wrong. It is irresponsible. And worst of all, it is boring. Let universality make way for plurality. Perhaps a more interesting age is upon us. Are we brave enough to welcome it?

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.

Bruno Giussani: Eric, stay with me for a couple of minutes, because I want to ask you a couple of questions. I think many here, and in general in Western countries, would agree with your statement about analysis of democratic systems becoming dysfunctional, but at the same time, many would kind of find unsettling the thought that there is an unelected authority that, without any form of oversight or consultation, decides what the national interest is. What is the mechanism in the Chinese model that allows people to say, actually, the national interest as you defined it is wrong?

EXL: You know, Frank Fukuyama, the political scientist, called the Chinese system "responsive authoritarianism." It's not exactly right, but I think it comes close. So I know the largest public opinion survey company in China, okay? Do you know who their biggest client is? The Chinese government. Not just from the central government, the city government, the provincial government, to the most local neighborhood districts. They conduct surveys all the time. Are you happy with the garbage collection? Are you happy with the general direction of the country? So there is, in China, there is a different kind of mechanism to be responsive to the demands and the thinking of the people. My point is, I think we should get unstuck from the thinking that there's only one political system -- election, election, election -- that could make it responsive. I'm not sure, actually, elections produce responsive government anymore in the world.

(Applause)

BG: Many seem to agree. One of the features of a democratic system is a space for civil society to express itself. And you have shown figures about the support that the government and the authorities have in China. But then you've just mentioned other elements like, you know, big challenges, and there are, of course, a lot of other data that go in a different direction: tens of thousands of unrests and protests and environmental protests, etc. So you seem to suggest the Chinese model doesn't have a space outside of the Party for civil society to express itself.

EXL: There's a vibrant civil society in China, whether it's environment or what-have-you. But it's different. You wouldn't recognize it. Because, by Western definitions, a so-called civil society has to be separate or even in opposition to the political system, but that concept is alien for Chinese culture. For thousands of years, you have civil society, yet they are consistent and coherent and part of a political order, and I think it's a big cultural difference.

BG: Eric, thank you for sharing this with TED. EXL: Thank you.

TED | A Tale of Two Political Systems | Jul 2013 | Eric X. Li

When China Rules The World

Melbourne | When China Rules The World | Sep 18, 2012 | Martin Jacques

Moyers & Company 102513

BILL MOYERS: This week on Moyers & Company… That deal between the Justice Department and JPMorgan Chase requires a second look.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: If the Justice Department were being tough on Wall Street, they would be talking about bringing criminal cases against individuals who helped to perpetrate this immense crisis.

BILL MOYERS: And historian Peter Dreier reveals the radical message of Dr. Seuss.

PETER DREIER: Stand up to arbitrary authority and take back your own life and be a fighter for justice and for your own integrity.

ANNOUNCER: Funding is provided by:

Carnegie Corporation of New York, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy, and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world.

The Kohlberg Foundation.

Independent Production Fund, with support from The Partridge Foundation, a John and Polly Guth Charitable Fund.

The Clements Foundation.

Park Foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues.

The Herb Alpert Foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society.

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Foundation.

The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information at Macfound.Org.

Anne Gumowitz.

The Betsy And Jesse Fink Foundation.

The HKH Foundation.

Barbara G. Fleischman.

And by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America, designing customized individual and group retirement products. That’s why we’re your retirement company.

BILL MOYERS: Welcome. You couldn’t miss it here in Manhattan the other day -- the big, bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch’s right wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar’s mask. “Uncle Scam,” the headline shouted. “US Robs Bank of $13 [Billion].”

Say what? That, my friends, is pure whitewash, and Murdoch’s minions know it. That $13 billion is the settlement the country’s biggest bank is negotiating with the government to settle its own rip-off of American home owners and investors -- those shady practices that five years ago helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure.

And this isn’t the only scandal JPMorgan Chase is juggling. A $6 billion settlement with institutional investors is in the works and criminal charges may still be filed in California. The bank is under investigation on so many fronts it’s hard to keep them sorted out – everything from the deceptive sales in its credit card unit to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to the criminal manipulation of energy markets and the bribing of Chinese officials.

Nor is JPMorgan Chase the only culprit under scrutiny. Bank of America was found guilty just this week of civil fraud, and eight other banks are being investigated by the government for mortgage fraud. No wonder Wall Street’s camp followers at Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and other cheerleaders have ganged up to whitewash the banks. This could be the biggest egg yet across the smug face of unfettered, unchecked, unaccountable capitalism. Let's sort this out with someone who covers Wall Street without fear, favor or flaming headlines. Gretchen Morgenson has been called “The Most Important Financial Journalist of Her Generation." She won the Pulitzer Prize for her tough journalism and her Fair Game column for The New York Times combines old fashioned, shoe leather reporting with hard-won knowledge to help the rest of us understand finance both high and low. I recommend her most recent book, written with Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment.

Welcome back.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Thank you so much, Bill.

BILL MOYERS: Is the Justice Department finally getting tough on the banks?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: I find it hard to use this $13 billion settlement number that JPMorgan Chase is entertaining as evidence of the Justice Department being tough on Wall Street. If the Justice Department were being tough on Wall Street, they would be bringing criminal cases. They would not be talking about settlements. They would be talking about bringing criminal cases against individuals who helped to perpetrate this immense crisis.

So to say that $13 billion is finally the Justice Department's getting religion, I'm just not a buyer of that. $13 billion sounds like a lot of money, but to JPMorgan Chase who over the past five years has made $75 billion, that net income, he doesn't want to part with it, believe me, but it's not a huge number.

Particularly if you were to look at what the cents on the dollar is of what they're paying to get out of these liabilities. You know, people who lost money in these mortgages, the people who lost their homes are, you know, the numbers are far larger than $13 billion. This is a number that has been struck as part of a deal that, you know, may or may not be agreeable to most of the parties at the table. But it's not a killer number.

BILL MOYERS: The Wall Street Journal and others are saying that what the government is doing is a witch hunt. They're shaking down JPMorgan.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: There’s no doubt that there was wrongdoing. They wouldn't be at the table negotiating if there was no wrongdoing.

And it's just a matter of what price each party is willing to pay or receive. So a shakedown to me would seem that JPMorgan was innocent of any of the accusations. And we know that not to be true because of what has come out in the private litigation, because of what we've seen in the courts so far.

BILL MOYERS: Defenders of JPMorgan and of Jamie Dimon will say there were no criminal cases because there were no crimes. These guys were bending the rules just a little bit. That's the way the game goes.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Eric Holder in fact has said that. You know, their behavior was amoral, their behavior as ugly, you know, but perhaps it wasn't criminal. Well, I don't know about you, Bill, but I don't really have the confidence that the Justice Department did a sufficient investigation to be able to determine whether it was criminal behavior.

Do you feel certain that they did the, you know, job that was needed to say, "Look, we have gone through all these many institutions that hurt so many people, that brought the economy to its knees, and we've determined through our thorough investigation that there were no crimes," I don't think there was a thorough investigation.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you wrote the other day that the federal judges seem to be losing patience with the banks. How so?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: There were a couple of cases that I highlighted because I thought it did show a new direction, a new sort of aggressiveness. You know, a lot of these judges -- bankruptcy judges in particular who have to see the bank's treatment of homeowners who've filed personal bankruptcy, they seem to really be getting fed up with some of the tactics that these -- the hardball tactics that the bank's litigants, you know, are doing in their courtroom.

They've had to witness so many cases of banks running roughshod over borrowers whether it's by the banks not producing the documentation that proves that they own the note underlying the property, whether they produced erroneous figures about what the borrower owed.

I mean, they have just seen chapter and verse over the last five years of really bad behavior by these banks. And I think it's finally getting to them where they're saying, "Look, we used to be sort of a believer or we would take the creditor's point of view. Now we're starting to wonder about that and really take the borrower's side."

BILL MOYERS: Bank of America was found guilty this week of civil fraud. Is it conceivable to you that Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan could be negotiating with the Justice Department because he doesn't want to go to a trial by jury in which the bank would be found guilty?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: I don't think any financial institution, Bill, wants to go before a jury nowadays. I'm sure you meet people every day as I hear from them every day about how upset they are, disturbed they are by what they've seen in their own, you know, lives, what the banks have done. So I do believe that no financial institution wants to have any of this aired before a jury.

BILL MOYERS: I actually talked to a man on the street this morning on, it was a man in the subway and he said to me, "You know, I try to follow this, but it's so complicated. These issues are so arcane, the eyes glaze over." What would you say to him about why he should keep trying to pay attention? What are the stakes for people like that?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: I think what this really underscores is two things. One is that we are still in a situation where these large financial institutions are just too big to manage and they are still threatening the populace.

We have really not fixed "too big to fail." And so until we do, until these institutions can no longer threaten the taxpayer with a possible bailout, then that's something that people really need to watch and care about. But the other thing that I think this underscores is the degree to which these large financial institutions lost their way in the years leading up to the crisis.

You know, finance at its best should be positive, it should be something that helps people. Whether it's helping companies hire more workers to produce, you know, something that people want to buy, whether it's helping homeowners to get a home and to keep the home, you know, not to have an exploding interest rate that they can't afford. Constructive finance, right. What we saw and what this $13 billion also indicates is the destructive nature of finance in the early 2000s and continuing.

I mean, the idea of putting together a mortgage security that was, you know, designed to collapse in pieces, in a heap, you know, is just a new low in my view. It is not constructive, that's not constructive finance.

BILL MOYERS: We had Goldman Sachs and others who were playing their own customers off--

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Correct.

BILL MOYERS: --against each other, putting the interests of the institution, the executives and the managers ahead of their clients.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: I call it "me-first"-ism. I mean, and you see it just all over the place. So I think that's what we really need to take away from this. And you know, people can dispute whether $13 billion is enough or whether JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon should feel -- that we should feel sorry for them because they have to pay this amount. By the way, the shareholders are paying it, not Jamie Dimon. Nobody is paying for it who actually, on the scene of these particular bad acts, remember.

So instead of focusing on the number, whether it's fair, whether the government is picking on JPMorgan, I think we just want to step back and say, "Look, this is an indication of what went wrong, how it went off the rails. And we can't let it happen again."

BILL MOYERS: It strikes some people that JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, the board, the directors, the top executives are using other people's money, the shareholders' money to buy a get out of jail free pass or to hide their own misconduct.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Well, it certainly is true that none of top executives are paying the price for any of these mortgage infractions. They certainly weren't paying the price for the $6 billion loss in the so-called London Whale episode.

In that episode there was manipulation of the market by the traders at JPMorgan to try to, you know, help their position because it was going so wrong for them.

Now, Jamie Dimon didn't take a bonus last year, and that was, you know, talked about as, you know, punishment for not having managed properly this $6 billion problem. But you know, it really does not become accountable, you're not accountable if you don't have to pay the price for some of this behavior.

BILL MOYERS: Do you find it remarkable, Jamie Dimon asking for a personal meeting with the Attorney General Eric Holder to decide in private on a penalty? Michael Hirsh in the National Journal calls it a personal summit meeting. And he goes on to say that these negotiations “would only have been possible if the government of the United States is itself afraid of disturbing the operations of the bank,” that as you have said, the attorney general himself thinks JPMorgan is indeed too big to fail.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: It seems unusual to me. And it does smack of favoritism, special treatment. It certainly was unusual I would say for Eric Holder, the attorney general of the United States of America to have a personal meeting with someone that his office is negotiating a settlement with. That raised eyebrows with me. I know I wouldn't be able to get that meeting if I asked—

BILL MOYERS: No--

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: And if I implored: no. So I mean, I think it really sends a signal also which is disturbing that, you know, again two sets of rules in America, there's one set for the people who are in positions of power, certainly in the financial world one set of rules perhaps for them, one set for the rest of us.

You know, I really don't understand why Eric Holder could, you know, would not have decided that it was the optics just didn't look that good for him to meet with Jamie Dimon. But maybe there's something behind it that I don't know.

BILL MOYERS: Well, as you know settlements by their very nature benefit both parties to some degree. What do you think JPMorgan is getting out of this?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Well, they get this PR out there that, you know, this is a huge number and that they're beleaguered, you know, bank.

But what they do get out of it in some cases is tax deductibility. Certain aspects of settlements are tax deductible. And they can use that as a negotiating chip for the entire settlement if the Justice Department allows it. So we're not clear yet on how much of this will be tax deductible. That would certainly be a benefit to JPMorgan Chase. And it would mean that the taxpayers are once again subsidizing this very profitable large institution.

Also there's a sense that, you know, maybe we can put this behind us, we've paid the freight, we are-- we've been held accountable. But again the problem with that argument is that it is the shareholders who are being held accountable, paying the price, not the actually perpetrators.

BILL MOYERS: What I hear you saying is that the wrongdoing at JPMorgan what I hear you saying is that the wrongdoing at JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon's own failure to manage the offenses created by other executives and by traders and all of that, all of that cost or much of that cost is being passed down to taxpayers and shareholders?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Yes, that's correct.

BILL MOYERS: That doesn't seem fair.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Well, that's our system unfortunately. Now, the Justice Department can say, "No, we will not allow any of this to be tax deductible." The tax rules do require that any kind of remuneration to say investors who were hurt in their mortgage securities or borrowers who are being given some sort of dispensation for the maybe abusive tactics of the bank, that will automatically be tax deductible. So there is some element of it that, you know, is off limits, it really must. But I think that when you start to do the math and you see who's actually paying the price, it really is making the wrong people pay.

BILL MOYERS: As you know, Dimon has his defenders, and they're all giving him a pass because as someone said, the company is a cash-generating machine. You can get away with these things as long as you're producing a big profit, right?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Well, that's typically been the answer. And it explains away multiple sins, as you know, Bill, such as overly-paid chief executive officers. As long as the company is making money, the millions that they take home every year doesn't really bother people. That is there is something wrong with that argument.

Also there's a lot of defenders saying, "Look, a lot of this $13 billion was the result of Jamie Dimon's purchase of Washington Mutual in the heat of the crisis, 2008, September, or/and its purchase of Bear Stearns, March 2008." And so really it's not the bad behavior of JPMorgan, it's that he took on the liabilities of these two rogue enterprises, and so now he's paying the price. But he received a tremendous amount, number of benefits by acquiring both of these companies in essentially a fire sale.

I think they had a $2 billion benefit immediately from the purchase of WaMu. And in the purchase of Bear Stearns they got a beautiful almost brand new building on Madison Avenue. So you know, I don't think that you can simply say that because much of the $13 billion has to do with these two enterprises that Mr. Dimon purchased in the fire sale that that means that it's really not a net benefit for him.

BILL MOYERS: He didn't do it as charity, he did it because he calculated it would be a very good business investment?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Correct, correct.

BILL MOYERS: So help my audience understand why the directors and the managers don't have to cough up.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: You know, it's what should we call it, the $64 trillion question? You know, you have shareholders who are accepting the status quo with, you know, they're fine with it.

You can't have change until you have the owners start to pick up the pitchforks and say, "I am not going to stand for this anymore. Someone has to be held accountable." We haven't seen that yet. And so the question is why. Well, is it because you have these large institutions such as the mutual fund organizations that don't want to rock the boat?

It's my money, it's your money that their managing. I might like them to rock the boat, but they choose not to, perhaps, because of their financial relationships with the institutions whose shares they own on my behalf. So there are many questions as to why shareholders have been so complacent about these directors. It's a real dysfunctional system all around. And until shareholders start to take action and, you know, say, "Look, we want accountability in the boardroom,"

And until you have people inside these organizations standing up and saying, "You know, I would rather be in a business that provides constructive finance for people rather than saying, “Ooh, look at the profits in this kind of, you know, creepy thing that we could construct and sell to people without them knowing it,'" until you have people on the inside who take that issue and say, "I want to be in the business of helping people, not hurting them," how is it going to change?

BILL MOYERS: Gretchen Morgenson, thank you very much for joining me.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Oh, always a pleasure, Bill.

BILL MOYERS: The wicked machinations of capitalism and finance we just talked about with Gretchen Morgenson can be overwhelming to everyday citizens struggling to make ends meet. Against a colossus like Wall Street, even committed citizen activists fighting in the trenches for democracy are tempted to throw up their hands and say, "I surrender. What's the use?"

But there is something to the old saw that the answer to organized money is organized people. Outraged citizens who press against the fault lines of a corrupt system until it cracks opens -- reminding us of what's possible. Now rarely does that happen as a nationwide mass movement, but it takes place here and there and often enough to remind us of our capacity for action.

This isn't wishful thinking; it's a careful reading of the past. See how it happens in Peter Dreier’s most recent book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20thCentury: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. Peter Dreier teaches at Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he's a distinguished professor of politics and chair of the school’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy –he imbues his students with stories of organizers, activists, writers, artists and, yes, politicians who changed history.

Peter Dreier, welcome…

PETER DREIER: Thank you, Bill. It’s great to be here.

BILL MOYERS: So you're sitting out there in California on the West Coast, 3,000 miles from what is happening in Washington. What are you thinking?

PETER DREIER: I'm thinking this is an incredible turning point in American history right now. For the last 30 years Wall Street and big business have basically put, invested, a lot of money in the right wing, in the far right, in the Tea Party, in the religious right. And they've sown the seeds of their own destruction. Wall Street and big business right now has spawned a movement that's out of control, and they can't control the Tea Party anymore. They can't control the right wing forces in the country. And so a lot of Americans are thinking that big business is in control of this, but they're not.

BILL MOYERS: So there've been some lobbyists from big business, CEOs from Wall Street down trying to talk sense to the Republican leadership and even trying to reach the Tea Party and say, "Wait a minute. You can't destroy the good faith and credit of the United States."

PETER DREIER: Right, exactly. And this is a moment similar to the Depression where a lot of big business was against Roosevelt, but they didn't want America to, like, stop working. And this is a moment where big business is vulnerable. All the polls show that Americans think that business has too much political power, the rich don't pay enough taxes, the government needs to protect us from predatory banks and from polluting corporations.

Americans are now realizing more than ever that we need to go in a new direction. And I think that's lots of evidence all over the country, maybe not in Washington right now, but all over the country there's evidence of people that are fighting back against big business and against the Right. And that's going to coalesce. And eventually we're going to see changes in Washington. But it's going to take a while because those things trickle up from the bottom, they don't happen from the top down.

BILL MOYERS: But if you talk to everyday members of the Tea Party, you will hear them express their concern for America, their anguish over what's happening to the middle class, their anger over corporate power in politics over both their party and the Democratic Party.

PETER DREIER: I think there's a big difference between the Koch brothers and Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz and the leaders and the funders of the Tea Party and most of the ordinary people who are just frustrated with the way America's going and they don't quite know what to do.

I think the Tea Party members, not the hardcore activists, but the people that tell pollsters that they sympathize with the Tea Party, they want a good home, they want a good job. They are in favor of social security. They want the government to protect them from the insecurities of old age. But they're confused and some of them are racists and some of them are right wing, but most of them are just ordinary Americans feeling a lot of pain. But the grassroots Tea Party really wouldn’t have existed without the funding from people like the Koch brothers and the free media propaganda publicity from “Fox News.”

BILL MOYERS: Don't you concede though that there are many people, conservatives and members of the Tea Party and they're not always one and the same, who really think government does more harm than good?

PETER DREIER: You know, Ronald Reagan was the one that said that government's the problem, not the solution. And a lot of people still believe that. But when you-- so ideologically many people will say that. But when you say-- do you think the government should provide social security, they'll say yes. Do you think the government should provide Medicare? Yes. Would you like your children to have government sponsored college tuition scholarships? They say yes. Do you want the government to protect your family from unsafe pollution and water and consumer products and food and medicine? They say yes.

So when you ask people what should government do? They are progressive. When you ask them sort of the big ideological question, is big government a good thing? They'll say no. But what people have to run on when they run for office is not just the ideology of being for or against government. What do you want government to do? And there the American people are in line with the long line of progressives from Hiram Johnson to Eugene Debs to Franklin Roosevelt to Martin Luther King.

BILL MOYERS: My friend, the journalist David Sirota, who writes for Salon, said the other day that the government shutdown and the budget fights are huge ideological victories for the conservative movement because they have “yanked the political discourse even farther to the right.” Do you agree with that?

PETER DREIER: No, I don't agree with that at all. I think that what's happened in this shutdown is that people realized how much they need government.

I think the American people are feeling a lot of pain right now. And it's only that something like with 9/11 happens and the first responders become the heroes of America that people realize you really need government, not just in an emergency but in on every day basis.

People understand more than ever how important it is that-- the role that government plays in their daily lives. It's not that they're ideologically in favor of big government, but they realize that this shutdown has shut down America. The Tea Party was responsible for $10 billion a week loss of our economy. And that's untenable.

And the corporate class, the Wall Street class doesn’t know what to do about that because they’ve depended on the Republican Party to be their allies. And now this unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, the Tea Party and the religious right is imploding right in front of us.

BILL MOYERS: There's so many ironies here. You know, there are also polls showing that the progressive agenda, your agenda of higher taxes on the rich, stronger regulation of Wall Street and policies to combat economic inequality, these have broad public support. But at the same time these polls show only meager, meager public support for the Tea Party. Yet look who's getting all the attention.

PETER DREIER: Well, that's a big problem. You know, all over America right now there are people fighting back on the grassroots level. And it's quite amazing how little media attention they get. For example, in Richmond, California there's a small city of 100,000 people, a progressive mayor and city council. And a community organizing group called ACCE is taking on Wall Street directly. In that city over half of the homeowners are underwater, their mortgages cost more than their homes are worth this is Wall Street's predatory practices crashing the economy. This has happened all over America.

There are over 10 million American homeowners that are underwater. And in Richmond, California the mayor and the community are fighting back and saying, "We're not going to take this anymore." They've tried to get Wall Street banks to rewrite their mortgages so they can stay in their homes and avoid foreclosure. And when Wall Street wouldn't do that, the city council said to the banks, "We're going to take these mortgages by eminent domain. We're going to buy them from you. If you don't want to sell them to us, we'll do it by eminent domain. And we're going to sell them back to the homeowners for about half the price, for the current market value." And of course Wall Street, the Wells Fargo bank and other banks, have sued the city. The federal judge threw out the suit. And they're going to win, the city of Richmond is going to take on Wall Street and they're going to win.

And once they do, that idea is going to spread throughout the whole country. There are dozens of cities ready to pounce and to do the same thing. And Wall Street is frightened. And in general Wall Street is frightened because they know the American people have had enough.

And we're not talking Occupy Wall Street, we're not talking about people sitting in and taking over the banks by civil disobedience. We're talking about using the electoral politics in one small city, in Richmond, to take on Wall Street. And this is going to spread throughout the country.

BILL MOYERS: Tell me about that mayor.

PETER DREIER: A woman named Gayle McLaughlin, who's a former schoolteacher, she's the mayor of this city. They started off-- it's a city dominated by Chevron oil, the biggest refinery and it's the biggest employer in town. And Mayor McLaughlin and a community organizing group called ACCE and the Service Employees Union have mobilized the homeowners in that city to go before the city council and to demand that the city do something.

And the mayor is responding. She's a leader in this movement. And she knows that Wall Street is looking at her as, like, enemy number one. And she's willing to take the heat because she's on the right side of history.

BILL MOYERS: Earlier this month, you wrote about the confrontation between a couple of activists on this and two plutocrats at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.

Here they were: Laurence Fink of BlackRock earned $75 million dollars last year, he's the highest paid financial services CEO in the country. BlackRock is the world's largest money manager with $3.6 trillion in assets.

William Gross of PIMCO has a personal net worth of $2.2 billion. He made about $200 million in 2011. And both Fink and Gross are on the Forbes list of “The World's Most Powerful People.”

What happened?

PETER DREIER: Well they were talking to a group of UCLA Business School students and alumni about the state of Wall Street and the state of the financial situation in this country. And two-- a couple of activists from ACCE, the community organizing group, and the Service Employees Union

They infiltrated the meeting and they asked the CEOs of PIMCO and of BlackRock.

ACTIVIST: Why are you suing the city of Richmond instead of negotiating?...

WILLIAM GROSS: Now both of us, right? Perhaps you would like to answer.

PETER DREIER: And they kind of admitted that things are tough for working people in California and all over the country.

LAURENCE FINK: We are acting as a fiduciary on behave of our client. This is not our money and if we did not stand for our clients rights in this--- and if we did not stand for this suit, we would not be a fiduciary for our clients.

PETER DREIER: Mary Kay Henry, the president of SEIU issued a statement and said, you're not representing our shareholders. You're not representing the pension funds of SEIU workers. We want you to negotiate to save those homeowners in Richmond.

They looked incredibly foolish. They looked incredibly selfish and self-serving. And I think that exposed them for what they are.

They must know somewhere in their core that they're on the wrong side of history, that they should not be kicking people out of their homes who've been working hard and paying their mortgages.

BILL MOYERS: What does that tell you? That they--

PETER DREIER: It tells you that all over the country there are people willing to stand up to these Wall Street titans and raise the fundamental questions of democracy. You know, you are making a huge fortune on the backs of working people. Profits are going up and wages are going down.

There's a recession for the majority of the American people and there's luxury and prosperity for the top one hundredth of one percent of which these two guys are members. And all over the country in North Carolina every Monday, Moral Monday, in Florida the group called the Dream Defenders took over the governor's office.

There are students all over the country fighting the fossil fuel industry by demanding that their colleges divest from these-- from Exxon oil and other major fossil fuel companies that are causing global warming.

And all over the country there are people who are taking to the streets, taking to the polls and saying, "We've had enough of Wall Street and big business and the Tea Party and the religious right. And we're going to take the country back." And I know that rhetoric is similar to what the Tea Party says. But you know, but this is about Wall Street and big business really being vulnerable for the first time probably in 30 years.

BILL MOYERS: I have to press you on that Peter, because Republicans are ruled as you know by the radicals in their party with enough votes in the House in particular to protect massive tax breaks for the wealthy, to jeopardize Medicare and social security, to attack women's rights, to reduce food stamps, to push measures that degrade the environment.

And yet, the Democrats cannot move their agenda.

PETER DREIER: Well, remember the debate over the health care bill, what is now called Obamacare. The overwhelming majority of the Democrats in both the House and the Senate wanted a public option. They wanted some kind of Medicare for all. And it was only a handful of Democrats, the corporate Democrats led by Max Baucus.

BILL MOYERS: From Montana.

PETER DREIER: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Who was chairman of the Banking and Finance Committee.

PETER DREIER: That’s right. So a small group of Democrats, the corporate Democrats were able to thwart the public will and have a public option.

So I don't think you can blame the entire Democratic party. It is true that big business has an important role to play in the Democratic party. And I think that's why we got Robert Rubin and we got Tim Geithner and we got the kinds of people that have.

BILL MOYERS: Clinton Democrats?

PETER DREIER: The Clinton Democrats. And I think that's why Obama picked, I think, the wrong people to be his financial advisors when he came into office.

BILL MOYERS: But there are with all due respect very few signs of leadership on a progressive agenda in Congress, in Washington for workers, for consumers or the environment. The Congressional Progressive Caucus 76 members, they put forth an ambitious “Back to Work” public investment agenda in education, infrastructure which is in terrible shape in this country, renewable energy. And it was categorically ignored. Yet the 90 Tea Party members in the house can shut down the government?

PETER DREIER: Well, you know, the desire of the progressive movement is for the Democrats to act more like a party, to act more like a movement.

And there are enough Democrats in both houses of the Congress to do that, but they need to be more disciplined. And also we need to realize that change doesn't happen from inside Washington. It happens from the grassroots and then changes Washington.

BILL MOYERS: But Peter--

PETER DREIER: In Congress.

BILL MOYERS: Almost every other guest on this show says the same thing you did, that it takes time, it takes patience -- and it has to come starting with Roosevelt, from the grassroots up. But we all know there's been great progress in this country on some cultural issues, particularly on gay marriage and equality for gays, but not much movement on the very issues that the people you describe are agitating about out there, environmental issues, income equality, racial justice, gun control, women's rights. Something’s not working.

PETER DREIER: There is enormous amount of movement out there. Wendy Davis, a state senator from Texas, stood up-- in a filibuster and became a cultural hero in Texas. And she--

BILL MOYERS: Yes, but the next week the state legislature, controlled by Republicans, went on and did what they would've done if she hadn't filibustered. They lost anyway despite her hero-- admittedly heroic stand and national attention, she still lost--

PETER DREIER: But that's how movements happen, Bill. Bill, they don't happen overnight. They happen--

BILL MOYERS: But in the meantime politics, electoral politics are the frustrating barrier to the change you're describing.

PETER DREIER: I agree. And it's going to take a while for that breakthrough to happen. But I think we're seeing here in New York, the bastion of Wall Street, the bastion of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, who presided over 20 years of widening inequality, gentrification, and the destruction of the middle class in New York, you now have a champion of working people, Bill de Blasio who's going to be the next mayor of New York. And things like that are happening in other states. In California, Governor Brown passed-- just signed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour--

BILL MOYERS: But didn't he oppose that last year?

PETER DREIER: He wouldn't do it a year ago, but he's doing it now. Why? Because he's responding to the strikes of the fast food workers, to the organizing of the Walmart workers, to the public opinion polls that show that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that if you work full time, you should not live in poverty, that the minimum wage still leaves you desperately below the poverty line. And Governor Brown realized that.

He also recently signed a bill to give driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, to provide a “Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights” to match New York's domestic workers bill of rights. There are legislative changes that are happening all over the country that are the result of these movements.

Think about if this were January of 1960 and I said to you, "Bill, there's going to be a new civil rights movement mostly among young people." You'd probably think like many people thought, I was crazy. But yet on February 1st, 1960 four college students in North Carolina took over the Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina and spawned a movement that spread throughout the South, created an organization called SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which engaged in freedom rides and civil rights protests and voter registration and changed our country forever. And yet no one predicted that. No one thought that was about to happen. History happens behind our backs sometimes and changed elections and electoral politics and what happens in Washington as well as all over the country.

BILL MOYERS: And in 1964 after Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater by the largest plurality on American political history, nobody thought that the conservatives, the right wing would be running the country for the next 30 years or gaining in power as they did. Can't your optimism blindside you?

PETER DREIER: You know, if I thought that I was being Pollyannaish I wouldn't be able to get up in the morning because, you know, why live in a world where things are going downhill? But if you look at the long view, all change happens two steps forward, one step backward, two steps forward, you know. So when you're in that backward moment, right, everything looks bleak, everything looks hopeless, right.

In 1911 Victor Berger, a socialist Congressman from Milwaukee proposed something he called old age insurance. And people laughed at him. He didn't get a single vote in Congress for this thing called old age insurance. And 20 years later under the New Deal-- 25 years later under the New Deal we got social security.

BILL MOYERS: And a lot of people suffered in the meantime. I mean, it's hard to ask suffering people to be patient.

PETER DREIER: The people in Richmond, California are suffering and they're not being patient. They are fighting back against Wall Street. They are taking their own lives into their own hands. And that's happening all over the country. It's not-- you don't see this in The New York Times every day. You don’t see this in The Wall Street Journal or in "The Washington Post.”

You see snippets of it, but you see the Tea Party every day, right, they have a great publicity machine. And Jim DeMint and other-- of their leaders are very good at getting publicity. But the everyday grassroots work on the ground doesn't give you the sense that there's a movement-- aborning all over the country, burgeoning in every state in the country. Because we don't see it every day.

BILL MOYERS: You know polls show a large majority of Americans favor raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Yet President Obama called on Congress to raise it from $7.25 an hour only to $9 an hour. Do you consider him a progressive?

PETER DREIER: I think President Obama, a former community organizer, understands that he is a president in a moment of crisis and he's torn between trying to be a moderate and to get things done and to be a progressive and move the country in an entirely different direction. And he's making some gestures about moving in the right direction with as you said the $9 an hour minimum wage. It's not good enough. And just like FDR, you know, said I believe you, I agree with you. But go out and make me do it.

Obama is a community organizer, right. He should understand better than anyone that he needs people out there protesting not only the protesting against Wall Street and the right, but protesting some of the moderate Democrats that are also obstacles to change. And I would like to see him encourage activists to be in the streets and protesting. And he did that a little bit a few months ago when he encouraged students on college campuses to get involved in the divestment movement over fossil fuels because he remembers when he was at Occidental College--

BILL MOYERS: Your college.

PETER DREIER: His first political act was a speech he gave against apartheid and encouraging my college, Occidental College, to divest itself from stocks doing business in South Africa. And unfort--

BILL MOYERS: 1981.

PETER DREIER: --unfortunately my college didn't listen to Barack Obama--

BILL MOYERS: -- and many of them-- most of them are not listening to Bill McKibben and the divestment movement on fossil fuels.

PETER DREIER: But many colleges did divest from companies doing business in South Africa eventually. And that helped to dismantle the apartheid government and brought us Nelson Mandela as president and changed that country forever for the better.

And I do think that the fossil fuel movement, the movement against global warming that's-- of which this is just one tactic to divest from these companies that are causing global warming like ExxonMobil, that's going to happen.

And more and more of us have to learn that history happens when you realize that change is possible. Being angry, being upset, being frustrated is not enough. People have to have hope. They have to believe that change is possible.

People won't remember this crisis unless they-- unless we see it in the historical context of a moment in American history, a turning point in American history where America's decided, "Enough of Wall Street, enough of the widening gap between the rich and everybody else, enough of this destroying our environment, enough of college students going into huge debt just to get an education and being in debt for the next 30 or 40 years." That's untenable and it's uncivilized and we have to move in a different direction. And Americans are fed up.

BILL MOYERS: Can you think of some small victories that progressive have won this year?

PETER DREIER: Sure. In Los Angeles-- has the dirtiest port in the America, the dirt-- it's high rates of asthma among children all around the port. And a coalition of the Teamsters Union and the Sierra Club and local community groups forced the Port of Los Angeles to clean up its act, to create a clean trucks program, to clean up the environment and to make it possible for the mostly immigrant truck drivers to improve their health and their working conditions. And now that is spread to ports all over the country. And so there are tens of thousands of truck drivers and residents who live near these dirty ports that are going to be healthier because of this victory in California. Another example of that is you might remember that in 2008, right after Obama got elected president, about 300 factory workers in Chicago at Republic Windows and Doors were being fired from their jobs arbitrarily and unceremoniously. And most people in that situation would say, "I guess I'm fired. I better go home and find another job." But the union led by a guy named Robles and a young organizer named Leah Fried said, "We're not going to take this."

And they organized the workers to take over the factory just like in the 1930s in Flint, Michigan and other places. And the owners of the factory eventually sold the business and the workers bought it. And now there's a factory there called New Era Windows. And it's a worker owned company that's thriving. And that's because the workers stood up.

And in a little town south of Seattle, Washington called SeaTac, Washington where the Seattle airport is located, the city council is about to vote on a $15 minimum wage for the people that live in that town and that's mostly-- and that work in that town. And that's mostly going to be people at the Seattle airport.

Now, the Seattle airport is not going to move to Mexico, it's not going to move to China. And so they have the Seattle airport where they want them. And they're going to have to raise their wages and $15 an hour isn't even middle class, right. And so in Richmond, California and in SeaTac, Washington and in Florida with the Dreamers and in North Carolina with the Moral Mondays and all over the country on college campuses there are these victories happening.

Small colleges are starting to divest from these fossil fuel companies. And so, you know, there are these hopeful signs. And if the media gave more attention to them, Americans would realize change is possible. So it's only because people are ignorant of them, they don't know about them because they're not in the mainstream media that people think that things are hopeless.

But they're not hopeless. People are on the ground are making change and they're building a movement that's going to have lasting impact. And we need to spread that message.

BILL MOYERS: Are unions hopeless? Because as you know unions have been losing members and political clout for years now.

PETER DREIER: Well, we would all hope that President Obama would've supported labor law reform. Because we have the most--

BILL MOYERS: He said he would in the campaign.

PETER DREIER: Right, we have the most pro-management federal labor laws of any country in the world. And the labor movement has suffered as a result of that. But only a few weeks ago in a suburb-- a rural suburb of Atlanta, in DeKalb County, 500 sanitation workers signed a contract with the county through the representation of the Teamsters Union.

Five-hundred garbage workers now have a union voice that they didn't have two months ago. And that is a sign that the labor movement, it's not thriving. But there are lots of experiments and initiatives happening all over the country.

That one day strike in cities around the country by fast food workers a couple of months ago-- and the growing-- activism among Walmart workers who are taking on the biggest corporation in the world and saying, "We're not going to take poverty wages anymore," those things are signs that the labor movement is starting to stand up and be counted and I've been to lots of meetings with labor leaders and labor activists where they realize they've got to change the paradigm, they've got to change the way they do organizing, or else the labor--

BILL MOYERS: How so?

PETER DREIER: --movement's going to die. They've got to mobilize young people, they've got to mobilize immigrants. They've got to go into workplaces where they hadn't gone before. They have to spend more of their budgets on grassroots organizing. They have to build alliances with the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood and the civil rights organizations and with community organizations. In Richmond, California SEIU is a key player, the Service Employees Union, in this battle against Wall Street. And so here you have the largest union in the country standing up without Wall Street on behalf of homeowners in this little small city of Richmond, California. And that's a sign that the labor movement recognizes it has to change the way it operates and save itself from extinction and become the kind of player it needs to be to move the country in a different direction.

BILL MOYERS: One of the progressive heroes in your book is Dr. Seuss. How did that happen?

PETER DREIER: You know, Dr. Seuss' real name was Theodor Geisel. What people don't realize about him was that-- you think of him as a kindly old man who wrote children's books. But in fact he was a progressive and a moralist. And when he became a children's author, many of the themes, the progressive themes that he'd written cartoons about, drawn cartoon about, became prominent in his children's stories.

So if you think about The Butter Battle Book which is about the Cold War, the stupidity of the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. And The Lorax, that was made into a movie recently, is about how corporate America is destroying the environment and we need people to stand up to them.

And then Ted Cruz was on the Senate floor reading Green Eggs and Ham on behalf of a filibuster to stop Obamacare which hadn't even started yet. And he didn't even realize what is the message of Green Eggs and Ham?

TED CRUZ: Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do!

PETER DREIER: It’s don't criticize something until you've tried it. The message that Dr. Seuss is sending in his books to young people is to stand up to arbitrary authority and take back your own life and be a fighter for justice and for your own integrity. And I think that Dr. Seuss would be very pleased with a lot of the movements we've been talking about today because these are people standing up to arbitrary authority and big power and trying to take the country back just like he argued and wrote about in Yertle the Turtle.

BILL MOYERS: Tell me briefly the story of Yertle the Turtle.

PETER DREIER: Dr. Seuss wrote Yertle the Turtle about a turtle that wanted to be the empire, he wanted to be the king of all he could see. He wanted to be the most powerful person in the land. And he was living in this little dirty pond. And he convinced a bunch of turtles to pile on top of each other so that he could be on top, he could have his throne.

And the more turtles that piled up on top of each other, the more difficult and suffering was going on underneath, but he was getting to see the whole world and he was feeling very powerful. And then on the bottom, a little turtle named Mack said, "It's really bad under here. Can you let up a little?" And Yertle said, "No."

And so eventually Mack, the turtle at the bottom burped intentionally. And the whole pile of turtles came tumbling down. And Yertle fell off of his throne into the mud pond. And the turtles looked around, they realized, "He's just like us. He's no more powerful than the rest of us."

And that's really what the story's about. It's really-- it was a metaphor for Hitler, but it was a broader story about the need for ordinary people to challenge people in power, to realize that people in power are only there because we allow them to be there. In a democracy you can take back power.

BILL MOYERS: So what would Yertle the Turtle's message be to us today?

PETER DREIER: That we can win, that we can topple the Wall Street titans, we can topple the big corporations, we can change America in a more democratic direction if we're willing to fight back and we're willing to challenge the powers that be and also realize that throughout history there are always moments when it looks like Yertle is winning, right.

But at the end Mack had more power than Yertle did because he was able to topple him just by burping. And that really means speaking truth to power, having your voice heard. And Americans are beginning to feel like their voices now can be heard. And that's why I'm optimistic, not because I walk-- I get up in the morning with rose colored glasses. Because I really do think that we're at this transformational moment in our history.

BILL MOYERS: Peter Dreier, thank you very much for being with me.

PETER DREIER: Thank you, Bill. It's been a pleasure.

BILL MOYERS: At our website, BillMoyers.com, if you want to see citizens taking action, there’s an exclusive video on how the impoverished city of Chester, Pennsylvania, fought back when the last grocery store disappeared and left the town searching for a decent, healthy meal.

BILL CLARK: Fare & Square as far as a supermarket goes it looks just like any other supermarket. As a nonprofit we won’t be judged on profitability or return on investment. We’re going to be judged on how well we meet the needs of a community and how well we provide a healthier purchasing environment.

BILL MOYERS: And Peter Dreier has made a brand new list of some up and coming activists who are leading the grassroots movements for economic, social, and environmental justice. Learn about this new generation and let us know who you would add to the list. That’s all at BillMoyers.com. I’ll see you there and I’ll see you here, next time.

M&C | Full Show: Progressives Pick Up the Pieces | Oct 25, 2013 | vm | Watch Yertle the Turtle!

1993-2013: Russia & the USA

1993-2013: Is the twenty years long "pas de deux" of Russia and the USA coming to an end?

The latest tensions between the EU and Russia over Greenpeace's stunt in the Arctic only confirmed a fact which nobody really bothers denying anymore: Western political and financial elites absolutely hate Vladimir Putin and they are appalled at Russia's behavior, both inside Russia and on the international scene.  This tension was quite visible on the faces of Obama and Putin at the G8 summit in Lough Erne where both leaders looked absolutely disgusted with each other.  Things got even worse when Putin did something quite unheard of in the Russian diplomatic history: he publicly  said that Kerry was dishonest and even called him a liar.

While tensions have reached some sort of climax over the Syrian issue, problems between Russia and the USA are really nothing new.  A quick look at the recent past will show that the western corporate media has been engaged in a sustained strategic campaign to identify and exploit any possible weaknesses in the Russian "political armor" and to paint Russia like a very nasty, undemocratic and authoritarian country, in other words a threat to the West.   Let me mention a few episodes of this Russia-bashing campaign (in no particular order):

• Berezovsky as a "persecuted" businessman
• Politkovskaya "murdered by KGB goons"
• Khodorkovsky jailed for his love of "liberty"
• Russia's "aggression" against Georgia 
• The Russian "genocidal" wars against the Chechen people
• "Pussy Riot" as "prisoners of conscience"
• Litvinenko "murdered by Putin"
• Russian homosexuals "persecuted" and "mistreated" by the state
• Magnitsky and the subsequent "Magnitsky law"
• Snowden as a "traitor hiding in Russia"
• The "stolen elections" to the Duma and the Presidency
• The "White Revoluton" on the Bolotnaya square
• The "new Sakharov" - Alexei Navalnyi
• Russia's "support for Assad", the (Chemical) "Butcher of Baghdad"
• The Russian constant "intervention" in Ukrainian affairs
• The "complete control" of the Kremlin over the Russian media

This list is far from complete, but its sufficient for our purposes.  Let me also immediately add here that it is not my purpose today to debunk these allegations one by one.  I have done so in this blog many times the past, so anybody interested can look this up.  I will just state here one very important thing which I cannot prove, but of which I am absolutely certain: 90% or more of the Russian public believe that all these issues are absolute nonsense, completely overblown non-issues.  Furthermore, most Russians believe that the so-called "democratic forces" which the Western elites support in Russia (Iabloko, Parnas, Golos, etc.) are basically agents of influence for the West paid for by the CIA, MI6, Soros and exiled Jewish oligarchs.  What is certain is that besides these small liberal/democratic groups, nobody in Russia takes these accusations seriously.  Most people see them exactly for what they are: a smear campaign.

In many ways, this is rather reminiscent of how things stood during the Cold War where the West used its immense propaganda resources to demonize the Soviet Union and to support anti-Soviet forces worldwide, including inside the USSR itself.  I would argue that these efforts were, by and large, very successful and that by 1990s the vast majority of Soviets, including Russians, were rather disgusted with their leaders.  So why the big difference today?

To answer that question, we need to look back at the processes which took place in Russia in the last 20 years or so because only a look at what happened during these two decades will allows us to get to the root of the current problem(s) between the USA and Russia.

When did the Soviet Union truly disappear?

The official date of the end of the Soviet Union is 26 December 1991, the day of the adoption by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union of the  Declaration № 142-Н which officially recognized dissolution of the Soviet Union as a state and subject of international law.  But that is a very superficial, formal, view of things.  One could argue that even though the Soviet Union had shrunk to the size of the Russian Federation it still survived within these smaller borders.  After all, the laws did not change overnight, neither did most of the bureaucracy, and even though the Communist Party itself had been banned following the August 1991 coup, the rest of the state apparatus still continued to exist.

For Eltsin and his supporters this reality created a very difficult situation.  Having banned the CPUS and dismantled the KGB, Eltsin's  liberals still face a formidable adversary: the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, the Parliament of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, elected by the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation.  Nobody had abolished this *very* Soviet institution which rapidly became the center of almost all of the anti-Eltsin and pro-Soviet forces in the country.  I cannot go in all the details of this legal nightmare, suffice to say that the Supreme Soviet presented itself as the "Russian Parliament" (which is not quite true) and that its members engaged in a systematic campaign to prevent Eltsin to implement his "reforms" (in hindsight, one could say that they tried to prevent Eltsin from ruining the country).  One could say that the "new Russia" and the "old USSR" were fighting each other for the future of the country.  Predictably, the Supreme Soviet wanted a parliamentary democracy while Eltsin and his liberals wanted a presidential democracy.  The two sides presented what appeared to be a stark contrast to most Russians:


1) The Russian President Eltsin: officially he represented Russia, as opposed to the Soviet Union; he presented himself as an anti-Communist and as a democrat (nevermind that he himself had been a high ranking member of the CPSU and even a non-voting member to the Politburo!).  Eltsin was also clearly the darling of the West and he promised to integrate Russia into the western world.

2) The Supreme Soviet: headed by Ruslan Khasbulatov with the support of the Vice-President of Russia, Alexander Rutskoi, the Supreme Soviet became the rallying point of all those who believed that the Soviet Union had been dissolved illegally (which is true) and against the will of the majority of its people (which is also true).  Most, though not all, the supporters of the Supreme Soviet were if not outright Communists, then at least socialists and anti-capitalists.  A good part of the rather disorganized Russian nationalist movement also supported the Supreme Soviet.

We all know what eventually happened: Eltsin crushed the opposition in a huge bloodbath, far worse than what was reported in the Western (or even Russian) media.  I write that with a high degree of confidence because I have personally received this information from a very good source: it so happens that I was in Moscow during those tragic days and that and I was in constant contact with a Colonel of a rather secretive special forces unit of the KGB called "Vympel" (more about that below) who told me that the internal KGB estimate of the number of people killed in the Moscow Oblast was close to 3'000 people.  I can also personally attest that the combats lasted for far longer than the official narrative clams: I witnessed a very sustained machine gun battle right under my windows a full 5 days after the Supreme Soviet had surrendered.  I want to stress this here because I think that this illustrates an often overlooked reality: the so-called "constitutional crisis of 1993" was really a mini civil war for the fate of the Soviet Union and only by the end of this crisis did the Soviet Union really truly disappear.

In the days preceeding the tank assault against the Supreme Soviet I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with supporters of the President and the Supreme Soviet.  I took the time to engage them in long conversations to try to find out for myself what each side stood for and whether I should side with either party.  The conclusion I came to was a rather sad one: both sides were primarily composed of ex- (or not ex-) Communists, both sides claimed that they were defending democracy and both sides accused each other of being Fascists.  In reality both sides were in reality very much alike.  I think that I was not the only person to feel that way in these days and I suspect that most of the people of Russia deeply felt this and ended up being  really disgusted with all of the politicians involved.

I would like to share one more personal anecdote here: these tragic days were personally quite amazing for me.  Here I was, a young man born in a family of rabidly anti-Soviet Russian emigrés, who has spent many years fighting to Soviet system and, especially, the KGB.  And yet, ironically, I ended up spending most of my time in the company of a Colonel of a special forces unit of the KGB (how we met is a long story for another post).  Even more amazing for me was the fact that for all our differences, we had the exact same reaction to the events taking place before our eyes.  We both decided that we could not side with either party engaged in this conflict - both sides were equally repugnant to us.  I was in his apartment when he received a call from the KGB headquarters ordering to show up at a location downtown to prepare a special forces assault against the "White House" (that was the street nickname of the Russian Parliament building) - he refused to obey, told his bosses to get lost, and hung up.  He was not alone in that decision: just as in 1991, neither the Russian paratroopers nor the special forces agreed to shoot at their own people (others, supposedly "democratic" forces showed no such scruples).  Instead of obeying his bosses orders, my new friend took the time to give me some very valuable advice about how to safely get a relative of mine out of Moscow without getting shot or detained (being a native Russian speaker with a foreign passport was not a very safe thing in these days).

I wanted to retell this story here because it shows something very important: by 1993 a vast majority of Russians, even exiled emigrés and KGB special forces Colonels, were deeply disgusted and fed up with both parties to this crisis.  In a way, one could say that most Russians were waiting for a THIRD force to appear on the political scene.

From 1993 to 1999 - a democratic nightmare

After the crushing of the opposition by Eltsin's thugs, the gates of Hades truly opened for Russia: the entire country was taken over by various Mafias and the vast natural resources were pillaged by (mostly Jewish) oligarchs.  The so-called "privatization" of the Russian economy created both a new class of multi-millionaires and many tens of millions of very poor people who could barely survive.  A huge crime wave overtook every city, the entire infrastructure of the country collapsed and many regions of Russia began actively planning their secession from the Russian Federation. Chechnia was allowed to secede from the Russian Federation after a grotesque and bloody war which saw the Russian military back-stabbed by the Kremlin.  And throughout these truly hellish years, the Western elites gave their fullest support to Eltsin and his oligarchs.  The only exception to this love-fest was the political, economic and military support given by the Anglosphere to the Chechen insurgency.  Eventually, what had to happen did happen: the country declared bankruptcy in 1998 by devaluing the Ruble and defaulting on its debt.  Though we will never know for sure, I firmly believe that by 1999 Russia was only a few steps away from completely disappearing as a country and as a nation.

The legacy left by the liberals/democrats

Having crushed the opposition in 1993, the Russian liberals acquired the complete freedom to write a new constitution which would perfectly suit their purpose, and with their typical short-sightedness they adopted a new Constitution which gave immense powers to the President and really very little to the new Parliament, the Russian Duma.  They even went as far as abolishing the post of Vice-President (they did not want another Rutskoi to sabotage their plans).

And yet, in the 1996 Presidential elections the liberals almost lost it all.  To their horror, the Communist Candidate Gennadi Zuiganov won most of the votes in the 1st  round, which forced the liberals to do two things: first, of course, they falsified the officials results and, second, they passed an alliance with a rather popular Army General, Alexander Lebed.  These two moves made it possible for them to declare that they had won the 2nd round (even though in reality Ziuganov won).  Here again, the West fully supported Eltsin.  Well, why not?  Having given Eltsin full support for his bloody crackdown on the supporters of the Supreme Soviet, why not also support Eltisin in a stolen election, right?  In for a dime, in for a dollar.

Eltsin himself, however spent most of his time drinking himself to death and it soon became rather clear that he would not last very long.  Panic seized the liberal camp which ended up committing a huge mistake: they allowed a little-known and rather unimpressive bureaucrat from Saint Petersburg to replace Eltsin as Acting President: Vladimir Putin.

Putin was a quiet, low key, competent bureaucrat whose main quality appeared to be his lack of a strong personality, or so did the liberals think.  And, boy, was that one big miscalculation!

As soon as he was appointed, Putin acted with lightening speed.  He immediately surprised everybody by becoming personally involved the the 2nd Chechen war.  Unlike his predecessor, Putin gave all the freedom to the military commanders to wage this war as they wanted.   The Putin surprized everybody again when he made a truly historic deal with Ahmad Hadji Kadyrov to bring peace to Chechnia even though the latter had been a leader of the insurgency during the first Chechen war.

Putin's popularity soared and he immediately used that to his advantage.

In an amazing twist of history, Putin used the Constitution developed and adopted by the Russian liberals to implement a very rapid series of crucial reforms and to eliminate the power basis of the liberals: the Jewish oligarchs (Berezovksy, Khorodkovsky, Fridman, Gusinsky, etc.).  He also passed many laws destined to "strengthen the vertical power" which gave the Federal Center direct control over the local administrations.  This, in turn, not only crushed many of the local Mafias who had managed to corrupt and  infiltrate the local authorities, it also rapidly stopped all the various secessionist movements inside Russia.  Finally, he used what is called the "administrative resource" to create his United Russia party and to give it the full support from the state.  The irony here is that Putin would never have never succeeded in these efforts had the Russian liberals not created a hyper-Presidential Constitution which gave Putin the means to achieve his goals.  To paraphrase Lenin, I would say that the Russian liberals gave Putin the rope to hang them.

The West, of course, rapidly understood what was going on, but it was too late: the liberals had lost power forever (God willing!) and the country was clearly being taken over by a third, previously unseen, force.

Who really put Putin into power?

That is the $10'000 question.  Formally, the official answer is straightforward: Eltsin's entourage.  Still, it is rather obvious that some other unidentified group of people managed to brilliantly con the liberals into letting the fox inside their hen house.

Now remember that the pro-Soviet forces were comprehensively defeated in 1993.  So this was not the result of some nostalgic revanchists who wanted to resurrect the old Soviet Union.  So no need to look to the this camp who, in fact, has mostly  remained opposed to Putin to this day.  So who else then?

It was an alliance of two forces, really:  elements of the ex "PGU KGB SSSR" and a number of key industrial and financial leaders.  Let's take then one by one:

The first force was the PGU KGB SSSR: the foreign intelligence branch of the Soviet KGB.  It's official name was First Chief Directorate of the Committee of State Security of the USSR.  This would be the rough equivalent of the British MI6.  This was beyond any doubt the most elite part of the KGB, and also its most autonomous one (it even had its own headquarters in the south of Moscow).  Though the PGU dealt with a number of issues, it was also very closely linked to, and interested by, the the world of big business, in the USSR and abroad.  Since the PGU had nothing to do with the KGB's most ugly activities such as the persecution of dissidents (that was the role of the 5th Directorate) and since it has little to do with internal security (that was the prerogative of the 2nd Chief Directorate), it was not high on the list of institutions to reform simply because it was not hated as much as the more visible part of the KGB.

The second force which put Putin in power was constituted by young people coming from key ministries of the former Soviet Union which dealt with industrial and financial issues and which hated Eltsin's Jewish oligarchs.  Unlike Eltsin's oligarchs, these young leaders did not want to simply pillage all the resources of Russia and later retire in the US or Israel, but they did want Russia to become a powerful market economy integrated into the international financial system.

Later, the first group would turn into what I call the "Eurasian Sovereignists" while the second one would become what I call "Atlantic Integrationists" (please see here and here for an explanation of these terms).  We could think of them as the "Putin people" and the "Medvedev people".

Lastly, it should not be overlooked that there is, of course, a third force which threw its full support behind this Putin-Medvedev tandem - the Russian people themselves who have, so far, always voted to keep them in power.

An absolutely brilliant formula but which has now outlived its shelf life

There is no doubt in my mind that the idea to create this "tandem" has been nothing short of brilliant: Putin would cater to the nationalists, Medvedev to the more liberally oriented folk.  Putin would get the support of the "power ministries" (defense, security, intelligence) while Medvedev would get the support of the business community.  Putin could scare the local authorities into compliance with the orders from the federal center, while Medvedev would make the US and EU feel good at Davos.  Or, let's put it this way: who would be against the Putin & Medvedev duo? Diehard supporters of the Soviet Union, rabid xenophobic nationalists, rabid pro-US liberals and Jewish exiles.  That's pretty much it, and that ain't much.

By the way - what do we see in today's opposition?  A Communist Party catering to those nostalgic of the Soviet era, a Liberal-Democratic Party catering to the nationalists, and a pretty small "Just Russia" party whose sole purpose appear to be to take votes off the other two and coopt some of the rabid liberals.  In other words, Medvedev and Putin have basically eliminated any type of credible opposition.

As I have mentioned in past posts, there are now clear signs of serious tensions between the "Eurasian Sovereignists" and the "Atlantic Integrationists" to the point that Putin has now created his own movement (the "All-Russia People's Front", created by Putin in 2011 (again, for background on that please see here and here). 

Having looked at the complex processes which ended up creating the Putin Presidency in Russia, we need to look at what took place in the USA during the same time period.

In the meantime - the US gets Neoconned

Unlike the Soviet Union which basically disappeared from the map of our planet, the USA "won" the Cold War (this is not factually quite true, but this is how many Americans see it) and having become the last and only real super-power the US immediately embarked on a series of external wars to establish its "full spectrum dominance" over the planet, especially after the events of 9/11 which deeply transformed the nature of the US society itself. 

Sill, the post 9/11 society has its roots in a far more distant past: the Reagan years.

During the Presidency of Ronald Reagan a group which later become known as the "Necons" made a strategic decision to take over the Republican Party, its affiliated institutions and think tanks.  While in the past ex-Trotskyites had been more inclined to support the putatively more Left-leaning Democratic Party, the "new and improved GOP" under Reagan offered the Neocons some extremely attractive features:

1) Money: Reagan was an unconditional supporter of big business and the corporate world.  His mantra "government is the problem" fitted perfectly with the historical closeness of the Neocons with the Robber Barons, Mafia bosses and big bankers.  For them, de-regulation meant freedom of action, something which was bound to make speculators and Wall Street wise guys immensely rich.

2) Violence: Reagan also firmly stood behind the US Military-Industrial complex and a policy of intervention in any country on the planet.  That fascination with brute force and, let be honest here, terrorism also fitted the Trotskyite-Neocon mindset perfectly.

3) Illegality: Reagan did not care at all about the law, be it international law or domestic law.  Sure, as long as the law happens to be advantageous to US or GOP interests, it was upheld with great ceremony.  But if it didn't, the Reaganites would break it with no compunction whatsoever.

4) Arrogance: under Reagan, patriotism and feel-good imperial hubris reached a new height.  More than ever before, the US saw itself as not only the "Leader of the Free World" protecting the planet against the "Evil Empire", but also as unique and superior to the rest of mankind (like in the Ford commercial of the 1980s: "we're number one, second to none!")

5) Systematic deception: under Reagan lying turned from an occasional if regular tactics used in politics to the key form of public communication: Reagan, and his administration, could say one thing and then deny it in the same breath.  They could make promises which were clearly impossible to keep (Star Wars anybody?).  They could solemnly take an oath and than break it (Iran-Contra).  And, if confronted by proof of these lies, all Reagan had to do is to say: "well, no, I don't remember".

6) Messianism: not only did Reagan get a huge support basis amongst the various crazy religious denominations in the USA (including all of the Bible Belt), Reagan also promoted a weird can of secular Messianism featuring a toxic mix of xenophobia bordering on racism with a narcissistic fascination with anything patriotic, no matter how stupid, bordering on self-worship.

So let's add it all up:

Money+violence+illegality+arrogance+deception+Messianism equals what?

Does that not all look very, very familiar?  Is that not a perfect description of Zionism and Israel?

No wonder the Neocons flocked in greater and greater number to this new GOP!  Reagan's GOP was the perfect Petri dish for the Zionist bacteria to grow, and grow it really did.  A lot.

I think that it would be reasonable to say that the USA underwent a two-decades long process of "Zionisation" which culminated in the grand 9/11 false flag operation in which the PNAC-types basically used their access to the centers of power in the USA, Israel and the KSA to conjure up a new enemy - "Islamo-Fascist Terror" - which would not only justify a planetary war against "terrorism" (the GWOT) but also an unconditional support for Israel.

There were also losers in this evolution, primarily what I call the "old Anglo camp" which basically lost control of most of its domestic political power and all of its foreign policy power: for the first time a new course in foreign policy gradually began to take shape under the leadership of a group of people which would in time be identified as "Israel Firsters".  For a short time the old Anglos seemed to have retaken the reigns of power - under George Bush Senior - only to immediately loose it again with the election of Bill Clinton.  But the apogee of Ziocon power was only reached under the Presidency of George W. Bush who basically presided over a massive purge of Anglos from key positions in government (especially the Pentagon and the CIA).  Predictably, having the folks which Bush Senior called "the crazies in the basement" actually in power rapidly brought the USA to the edge of a global collapse: externally the massive worldwide sympathy for the USA after 911 turned into a tsunami of loathing and resentment, while internally the country was faced with a massive banking crisis which almost resulted the imposition of martial law over the USA.

In comes Barak Obama - "change we can believe in!"

The election of Barak Obama to the White House truly was a momentous historical event.  Not only because a majority White population had elected a Black man to the highest office in the country (this was really mainly an expression of despair and of a deep yearning for change), but because after one of the most effective PR campaigns in history, the vast majority of Americans and many, if not most, people abroad, really, truly believed that Obama would make some deep, meaningful changes.  The disillusion with Obama was as great as the hopes millions had in him.  I personally feel that history will remember Obama not only as one of the worst Presidents in history, but also, and that is more important, as the last chance for the "system" to reform itself.  That chance was missed.  And while some, in utter disgust, described Obama as "Bush light", I think that his Presidency can be better described as  "more of the same, only worse".

Having said that, there is something which, to my absolute amazement, Obama's election did achieve: the removal of (most, but not all) Neocons from (most, but not all) key positions of power and a re-orientation of (most, but not all) of US foreign policy in a more traditional "USA first" line, usually supported by the "old Anglo" interests.  Sure, the Neocons are still firmly in control of Congress and the US corporate media, but the Executive Branch is, at least for the time being, back under Anglo control (this is, of course, a generalization: Dick Cheney was neither Jewish nor Zionist, while the Henry Kissinger can hardly be described as an "Anglo").  And even though Bibi Netanyahu got more standing ovations in Congress (29) than any US President, the attack on Iran he wanted so badly did not happen.  Instead,  Hillary and Petraeus got kicked out, and Chuck Hagel and John Kerry got in.  That is hardly "change we can believe in", but at least this shows that the Likud is not controlling the White House any more.

Of course, this is far from over.  If anything the current game of chicken played between the White House and Congress over the budget with its inherent risk of a US default shows that this conflict is far from settled.

The current real power matrix in the USA and Russia

We have shown that there two unofficial parties in Russia which are locked in a deadly conflict for power, the "Eurasian Sovereignists" and "Atlantic Integrationists".  There are also two unofficial parties in the USA who are also locked in a deadly conflict for power: the Neocons and the "old Anglos imperialists".  I would argue that, at least for the time being, the "Eurasian Sovereignists" and the "old Anglos" have prevailed over their internal competitor but that the Russian "Eurasian Sovereignists" are in a far stronger position that the American "old Anglos".   There are two main reasons for that:

1)  Russia has already had its economic collapse and default and
2)  a majority of Russians fully support President Putin and his "Eurasian Sovereignist" policies. 

 In contrast, the USA is on the brink of an economic collapse and the 1% clique which is running the USA is absolutely hated and despised by most Americans.

After the immense and, really, heart-breaking disillusionment with Obama, more and more Americans are becoming convinced that changing the puppet in the White House is meaningless and that what the US really needs is regime change.
 
The USSR and the USA - back to the future?

It is quite amazing for those who remember the Soviet Union of the late 1980 how much the US under Obama has become similar to the USSR under Brezhnev: internally it is characterized by a general sense of disgust and alienation of the people triggered by the undeniable stagnation of a system rotten to its very core. A bloated military and police state with uniforms everywhere, while more and more people live in abject poverty.  A public propaganda machine which, like in Orwell's 1984, constantly boasts of successes everywhere while everybody knows that these are all lies.  Externally, the US is hopelessly overstretched and either hated and mocked abroad.  Just as in the Soviet days, the US leaders are clearly afraid of their own people so they protect themselves by a immense and costly global network of spies and propagandists who are terrified of dissent and who see the main enemy in their own people. 

Add to that a political system which far from co-opting the best of its citizens deeply alienates them while promoting the most immoral and corrupt ones into the positions of power.  A booming prison-industrial complex and a military-industrial complex which the country simply cannot afford maintaining.  A crumbling public infrastructure combined with a totally dysfunctional health care system in which only the wealthy and well-connected can get good treatment.  And above it all, a terminally sclerotic public discourse, full of ideological clichés an completely disconnected from reality.

I will never forget the words of a Pakistani Ambassador to the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in 1992 who, addressing an assembly of smug western diplomats, said the following words: "you seem to believe that you won the Cold War, but did you ever consider the possibility that what has really happened is that the internal contradictions of communism caught up with communism before the internal contradictions of capitalism could catch up with capitalism?!".  Needless to say, these prophetic words were greeted by a stunned silence and soon forgotten.  But the man was, I believe, absolutely right: capitalism has now reached a crisis as deep as the one affecting the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and there is zero chance to reform or otherwise change it.  Regime change is the only possible outcome.

The historical roots of the russophobia of the American elites

Having said all of the above, its actually pretty simple to understand why Russia in general, and Putin in particular, elicits such a deep hatred from the Western plutocracy: having convinced themselves that they won the Cold War they are now facing the double disappointment of a rapidly recovering Russia and a Western economic and political decline turning into what seems to be a slow and painful agony.

In their bitterness and spite, Western leaders overlook the fact that Russia has nothing to do with the West's current problems.  Quite to the contrary, in fact: the main impact the collapse of the Soviet Union on the US-run international economic system was to prolong its existence by creating a new demand for US dollars in Eastern Europe and Russia (some economists - such as Nikolai Starikov -  estimate that the collapse of the USSR gave an extra 10+ years of life to the US dollar).

In the past, Russia has been the historical arch-enemy of the British Empire.  As for Jews - they have always harbored many grievances towards pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia.  The Revolution of 1917 brought a great deal of hope for many East-European Jews, but it was short lived as Stalin defeated Trotsky and the Communist Party was purged from many of its Jewish members.  Over and over again Russia has played a tragic role in the history of the Ashkenazi Jews and this, of course, has left a deep mark on the worldview of the Neocons who are all deeply russophobic, even today.  Somebody might object that many Jews are deeply grateful for the Soviet Army's liberation of Jews from the Nazi concentration camps or for the fact that the Soviet Union was the first country to recognize Israel.  But in both cases, the country which is credited with these actions is the Soviet Union and not Russia which most Ashkenazi Jews still typically associate anti-Jewish policies and values.

It is thus not surprising that both the Anglo and the Jewish elites in the US would harbor an almost instinctive dislike for, and fear of, Russia, especially one perceived as resurgent or anti-American.  And the fact is that they are not wrong in this perception: Russia is most definitely resurgent, and the vast majority of the Russian public opinion is vehemently anti-American, at least if by "America" we refer to the civilizational model or economic system. 

Anti-American sentiment in Russia

Feelings about the USA underwent a dramatic change since the fall of the Soviet Union.  In the 1980 the USA was not only rather popular, it was also deeply in fashion:  Russian youth created many rock groups (some of them became immensely popular and still are popular today, such as the group DDT from Saint Petersburg), American fashion and fast foods were the dream of every Russian teenager, while most intellectuals sincerely saw the US as "leader of the free world".  Of course,  the state propaganda of the USSR always wanted to present the USA as an aggressive imperialistic country, but that effort failed: most of the people were actually quite fond of the US.  One of the most popular pop group of the 1990s (Nautilus Pompilius) had a song with the following lyrics:

Good bye America, oh
Where I have never ever been
Farewell forever!
Take your banjo
And play for my departure
la-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la-la
Your worn out blue jeans
Became too tight for me
We’ve been taught for too long
To be in love with your forbidden fruits.

While there were exceptions to this rule, I would say that by the beginning of the 1990 most of the Russian people, especially the youth, had swallowed the US propaganda line hook and sinker - Russia was hopelessly pro-American.

The catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the West's total and unconditional backing for Eltsin and his oligarchs changed that.  Instead of trying to help Russia, the USA and the West used every single opportunity to weaken Russia externally (by taking all of Eastern Europe into NATO even though they had promised never to do so).  Internally, they West supported the Jewish oligarchs who were literally sucking out wealth out of Russia live vampires suck blood, while supporting every imaginable form of separatism.  By the end of the 1990s the words "democrat" and "liberal" became offensive curse words.  This joke of the late 1990s is a good example of these feelings (Notice the association between liberalism and Jews):

A new teacher comes into the class:
- My name is Abram Davidovich, I'm a liberal. And now all stand up and introduce yourself like I did ...
- My name is Masha I liberal ...
- My name is Petia, I'm a liberal ...
- My Little Johnny, I'm a Stalinist.
- Little Johnny, why are you a Stalinist? !
- My mom is a Stalinist, my dad is a Stalinist, my friends are Stalinists and I too am a Stalinist.
- Little Johnny, and if your mother was a whore, your father - a drug addict, your friends - homos, what would you be then in that case? !
- Then I would be a liberal.

Notice the association between being a liberal and Jews (Abram Davidovich is a typical Jewish name).  Notice also the inclusion of the category "homosexual" in between a whore and drug addicts and remember that when evaluating the typical Russian reaction to the anti-Russian campaign waged by western homosexual organizations.

The political effect of these feelings is rather obvious: in the last elections not a single pro-Western political party has even managed to get enough votes to make it into the Parliament.  And no - this is not because Putin has outlawed them (as some propagandists in the West like to imagine).  There are currently 57 political parties in Russia, and quite a few of them are pro-Western.  And yet it is an undeniable fact that the percentage of Russians which are favorably inclined towards the USA and NATO/EU is roughly in the 5% range.  I can also put it this way: every single political party represented in the Duma is deeply anti-American, even the very moderate "Just Russia".

Anti-Russian feelings in the USA?

Considering the never ending barrage of anti-Russian propaganda in the western corporate media one could wonder how strong anti-Russian feelings are in the West.  This is really hard to measure objectively, but as somebody born in Western Europe and who has lived a total of 15 years in the USA I would say that anti-Russian sentiment in the West is very rare, almost non-existent.  In the USA there have always been strong anti-Communist feelings - there still are today - but somehow most Americans do make the difference between a political ideology that they don't really understand, but that they dislike anyway, and the people which in the past used to be associated with it.

US *politicians*, of course, mostly hate Russia, but most Americans seem to harbor very little bad feelings or apprehension about Russia or the Russian people. I explain that by a combination of factors.

First, since more and more people in the West realize that they are not living in a democracy, but in a plutocracy of the 1%, they tend to take the official propaganda line with more than a grain of salt (which, by the way, is exactly what was happening to most Soviet people in the 1980s).  Furthermore, more and more people in the West who oppose the plutocratic imperial order which impoverishes and disenfranchises them into corporate serfs are quite sympathetic to Russia and Putin for "standing up to the bastards in Washington".  But even more fundamentally, there is the fact that in a bizarre twist of history Russia today stands for the values of the West of yesterday: international law, pluralism, freedom of speech, social rights, anti-imperialism, opposition to intervention inside sovereign states, rejection of wars as a means to settle disputes, etc.

In the case of the war in Syria, Russia's absolutely consistent stance in defense of international law has impressed many people in the USA and Europe and one can hear more and more praise for Putin from people who in the past has deep suspicions about him.

Russia, of course, is hardly a utopia or some kind of perfect society, far from it, but it has taken the fundamental decision to become a *normal* country, as opposed to being a global empire, and any normal country will agree to uphold the principles of the "West of yesterday", not only Russia.  In fact, Russia is very un-exceptional in its pragmatic realization that to uphold these principles is not a matter of naive idealism, but a sound realistic policy goal.  People in the West are told by their rulers and the corporate media that Putin in an evil ex-KGB dictator who is a danger for the US and its allies, but as soon as these people actually read or listen to what Putin actually says they find themselves in a great deal of agreement with him.

In another funny twist of history, while the Soviet population used to turn to the BBC, Voice of America or Radio Liberty for news and information, more and more people in the West are turning to Russia Today, Press TV, or Telesur to get their information.  Hence the panicked reaction of Walter Isaacson,  Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US outfit overseeing US media directed at foreign audiences, who declared that “we can't allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies.  You've got Russia Today, Iran's Press TV, Venezuela's TeleSUR, and of course, China is launching an international broadcasting 24-hour news channel with correspondents around the world".  Folks like Isaacson know that they are slowly but surely loosing the informational battle for the control of the minds of the general public.

And now, with the entire Snowden affair, Russia is becoming the safe harbor for those political activists who are fleeing Uncle Sam's wrath.  A quick search on the Internet will show you that more and more people are referring to Putin as the "leader of the Free World" while other are collecting signatures to have Obama give his Nobel Prize to Putin.  Truly, for those like myself who have actually fought against the Soviet system it is absolutely amazing to see the 180 degree turn the world has taken since the 1980s.

Western elites - still stuck in the Cold War

If the world has radically changed in the last 20 years, the Western elites did not.  Faced with a very frustrating reality they are desperately trying to re-fight the Cold War with the hope of re-winning it again.  Hence the never ending cycle of Russia-bashing campaigns I mentioned at the beginning of this post. They try to re-brand Russia as the new Soviet Union, with oppressed minorities, jailed or murdered dissidents, little or no freedom of speech, a monolithic state controlled media and an all seeing security apparatus overseeing it all.  The problem, of course, is that they are 20 years late and that these accusations don't stick very well with the western public opinion and get exactly *zero* traction inside Russia.  In fact, every attempt at interfering inside Russian political affairs has been so inept and clumsy that it backfired every single time.  From the absolutely futile attempts of the West to organize a color-coded revolution in the streets of Moscow to the totally counter-productive attempts to create some kind of crisis around homosexual human rights in Russia - every step taken by the western propaganda machine has only strengthened Vladimir Putin and his the "Eurasian Sovereignists" at the expense of the "Atlantic Integrationist" faction inside the Kremlin.

There was a deep and poignant symbolism in the latest meeting of the 21 APEC countries in Bali.  Obama had to cancel his trip because of the US budget crisis while Putin was treated to a musically horrible but politically deeply significant rendition of "Happy birthday to you!" by a spontaneous choir composed of the leaders of the Pacific Rim countries.  I can just imagine the rage of the White House when they saw "their" Pacific allies serenading Putin for his birthday!

Conclusion: "we are everywhere"

In one of his most beautiful songs, David Rovics sings the following words which I want to quite in full, as each line fully applies to the current situation:

When I say the hungry should have food
I speak for many
When I say no one should have seven homes
While some don't have any
Though I may find myself stranded in some strange place
With naught but a vapid stare
I remember the world and I know
We are everywhere

When I say the time for the rich, it will come
Let me count the ways
Victories or hints of the future
Havana, Caracas, Chiapas, Buenos Aires
How many people are wanting and waiting
And fighting for their share
They hide in their ivory towers
But we are everywhere

Religions and prisons and races
Borders and nations
FBI agents and congressmen
And corporate radio stations
They try to keep us apart, but we find each other
And the rulers are always aware
That they're a tiny minority
And we are everywhere

With every bomb that they drop, every home they destroy
Every land they invade
Comes a new generation from under the rubble
Saying "we are not afraid"
They will pretend we are few
But with each child that a billion mothers bear
Comes the next demonstration
That we are everywhere. 

(you can listen to the song by clicking here)

These words are a beautiful expression for the hope which should inspire all those who are now opposing the US-Zionist Empire: we are everywhere, literally.  On one side we have the 1%, the Anglo imperialists and the Ziocons, while on the other we have the rest of the planet, including potentially 99% of the American people.  If it is true that at this moment in time Putin and his Eurasian Sovereignists are the most powerful and best organized faction of the worldwide resistance to the Empire, they are far from being central, or even less so, crucial, to it.  Yes, Russia can, and will, play its role, but only as a normal country amongst many other normal countries, some small and economically weak like Ecuador, other huge and powerful like China.  But even small Ecuador was "big enough" to grand refuge to Julian Assange while China seems to have asked Snowden to please leave.  So Ecuador is not that small after all?

It would be naive to hope that this "de-imperialization" process of the USA could happen without violence.  The French and British Empires collapsed against the bloody backdrop of WWII, while did the Nazi and Japanese Empires were crushed under a carpet of bombs.  The Soviet Empire collapsed with comparatively less victims, and most of the violence which did take place during that process happened on the Soviet periphery.  In Russia itself, the number of death of the mini civil war of 1993 was counted in the thousands and not in the millions. And by God's great mercy, not a single nuclear weapon was detonated anywhere.

So what will likely happen when the US-Ziocon Empire finally collapses under its own weight?  Nobody can tell for sure, but we can at least hope that just as no major force appeared to rescue the Soviet Empire in 1991-1993, no major force will attempt to save the US Empire either.  As David Rovic's puts it so well, the big weakness of the 1% which rule the US-Ziocon Empire is that "they are a tiny minority and we are everywhere".

In the past 20 years the US and Russia have followed diametrically opposed courses and their roles appears to have been reversed.  That "pas de deux" is coming to some kind of end now.  Objective circumstances have now again placed these two countries in opposition to each other, but this is solely due to the nature of the regime in Washington DC.  Russian leaders could repeat the words of the English rapper Lowkey and declare "I'm not anti-America, America is anti-me!" and they could potentially be joined by 99% of Americans who, whether they already realize it or not, are also the victims of the US-Ziocon Empire.

In the meantime, the barrage of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns will continue unabated simply because this seems to have become a form of psychotherapy for a panicked and clueless western plutocracy.  And just as in all the previous cases, this propaganda campaign will have no effect at all.

It is my hope that next time we hear about whatever comes next after the current "Greenpeace" campaign you will keep all this in mind.

The Saker

Original Source: Here.